Series 8, Episode 7 | 1 part | First broadcast: 4 October 2014 | Writer: Peter Harness | Director: Paul Wilmshurst
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald
- Samuel Anderson as Danny Pink
- Ellis George as Courtney Woods
- Hermione Norris as Captain Lundvik
- Tony Osoba as Duke
Summary
The Doctor takes Clara and student Courtney Woods to the Moon in 2049, only to find it aboard a shuttle laden with nuclear weapons, crewed by astronaut Lundvik and her team on a one-way mission to destroy it after gravitational anomalies cause catastrophic tides on Earth. Investigating an abandoned lunar mining base, the group discovers that the Moon’s mass has been steadily increasing because it is, and has always been, an enormous egg about to hatch a creature inside. With time running out and the Doctor infuriatingly refusing to make the choice for them, he leaves Clara, Courtney, and Lundvik to decide humanity’s fate alone: detonate the bombs to kill the creature, or let it live and risk the unknown consequences of its hatching. Clara puts the decision to the whole of Earth via broadcast, and at the last possible second reverses the countdown, allowing the creature to hatch harmlessly and lay a new egg that becomes a replacement moon. The episode ends on one of the series’ most notorious confrontations, as a furious Clara excoriates the Doctor for abandoning her with an impossible moral burden before declaring she never wants to see him again.
Interesting Facts
- The episode was originally written for Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor before being reassigned to Capaldi’s incoming Twelfth Doctor era.
- Executive producer Steven Moffat instructed writer Peter Harness to “Hinchcliffe the shit out of it for the first half” — a reference to 1970s producer Philip Hinchcliffe’s famously frightening era of the classic series.
- Filming took place in Lanzarote’s Timanfaya National Park, the same location used for the 1984 Fifth Doctor serial “Planet of Fire,” closed to the public during the shoot.
- The episode generated significant controversy and polarized reviews over its perceived allegory for the abortion debate, alongside criticism of its scientific inaccuracies regarding the Moon’s mass and gravity.
- Jenna Coleman’s performance in the episode’s climactic TARDIS confrontation was universally praised by critics and earned her a BAFTA Cymru nomination for Best Actress.
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