'Kill the Moon' (Story Code 8.07) by Peter Harness

“This little planetoid that’s been tagging along beside you for a hundred million years, which gives you light at night and seas to sail, is in the process of falling to bits.” – The Doctor

The Moon, 2049: a distraught Clara contacts the people of Earth and asks for help – with the Doctor gone, they have just forty-five minutes to decide between saving an innocent life and all of mankind…

Earlier at Coal Hill Secondary School: Clara tries to make the Doctor see how Courtney has changed since her trip in the TARDIS, but the Doctor has already forgotten her. Entering the TARDIS the two friends are surprised to find the errant schoolgirl waiting inside the space-time ship, ready for another adventure – and to Clara’s annoyance the Doctor offers Courtney the chance to be the first woman on the Moon. After handing out spacesuits, the Doctor materialises the TARDIS; but when the trio step outside the ship they discover they are not on the Moon, but are instead on board a recycled space shuttle, its hold packed with a hundred nuclear bombs as it hurtles towards the lunar surface! Luckily for them the shuttle crash lands on the Moon, sliding to a halt on the rocky surface. As the ship settles, the Doctor, Clara and Courtney are confronted by its commander, Captain Lundvik, and her crewmen Duke and Henry. The fast-talking Time Lord manages to diffuse the tense situation, and then uses his yo-yo to point out that the gravity on the Moon has changed – somehow the Earth’s satellite has put on weight. Captain Lundvik explains that she and her crew are on a suicide mission to blow up the Moon because of the damage it is having on the Earth’s climate, threatening every life on the planet. Making their way out onto the lunar surface, Lundvik and her crew lead the way to a private mineral survey operation; the captain explains that the Mexican team of surveyors found something that caused the Moon to begin to change, but were killed before they could tell anyone on Earth what happened. Sending Henry back to prime the bombs, Lundvik leads Duke, the Doctor, Clara and Courtney into the base, which is covered in a thick mass of cobwebs – and the cocooned remains of one of the surveyors. After Duke gets the power reactivated the Doctor rifles through the base’s records and discovers that the surveyors found no minerals at all; however, they did discover an increase in the lines of tectonic stress across the surface: the Moon is falling apart. As the planetoid is rocked by a sudden tremor, out on the surface Henry investigates a small cave and is killed by a vicious creature… Inside the base, the Doctor, Clara, Courtney and Lundvik hear scuttling noises all around them; shining their torches, they see a huge black and red spider appear in the doorway. As they prepare to run Duke arrives on the scene, and is immediately attacked by the creature; with the spider distracted everyone runs to the exit, but the door closes before Courtney can reach it, leaving her alone in the room with the deadly spider – and then the gravity cuts out. As Courtney floats upwards the spider scuttles across the ceiling towards her; the Doctor manages to remover the door’s window and fling out his yo-yo for her to grab; but then the gravity returns, sending the girl falling to the floor. The spider goes straight for Courtney, but she sprays it with some handy disinfectant, which has the effect of killing the creature. Re-entering the control room, the Doctor examines the dead spider and declares it to be a giant germ. As Lundvik mourns the loss of her friend, the terrified Courtney asks to go home. The Doctor, Clara, Courtney and Lundvik return to the shuttle, where the Time Lord locks the frightened schoolgirl inside his TARDIS; Clara then asks the Doctor why they don’t all leave in the TARDIS – after all, the Moon is there in the future, so things must work out? But the Doctor refuses, knowing that pivotal moments in time can be changed by the smallest of decisions, and when Captain Lundvik demands his help, he stays. Leaving Courtney inside the TARDIS the Doctor, Clara and Lundvik explore the surface, and soon find the eviscerated corpses of the other three surveyors. Approaching a nearby cave, the Doctor is attacked by one of the spiders, but Clara quickly sees it off with the disinfectant-spray. Looking inside the cave, the trio see dozens more of the spider creatures… Dipping his yo-yo in a pool of water, the Doctor realises that it is actually amniotic fluid; he then jumps down into a crater, leaving Clara and Lundvik to carry on without him. Contacted by Courtney, Clara hears how the schoolgirl is now posting online pictures of her adventure on the Moon. As another tremor rocks the Moon, Clara and Lundvik watch in horror as a huge fissure opens up ahead of them, causing the space shuttle - and the TARDIS inside it - to topple over the edge… Returning to the mining base, Clara and the captain are joined by the Doctor; to reassure them that Courtney will still be safe inside the TARDIS, the Time Lord puts the girl’s image up on a monitor, and then berates her for using Tumblr. The Doctor then explains the mystery behind the Moon’s varying mass, amniotic fluid, and spider infestation: the spiders are bacteria, swarming over a creature that is 1.3 billion tonnes and growing – the Moon is actually an egg, and after a hundred million years it is getting ready to hatch! The Doctor is fascinated by the imminent birth of a unique creature, but Captain Lundvik just wants to know how to kill it. The Doctor is furious at the prospect of an enormous corpse floating in the sky, but the captain points out that the alternative is to let the Earth be destroyed: its atmosphere will be stripped away, the change in gravity will cause tidal catastrophe, and huge chunks of ‘eggshell’ will crash onto the planet’s surface. Clara looks to the Doctor for a decision, but the Time Lord won’t help her: it is not his decision to make, the choice belongs to humanity – Clara and Captain Lundvik must decide. Following the Doctor’s instructions, Courtney brings the TARDIS to the base; however, as she joins Clara and the captain the Doctor steps inside, closes the door, and then leaves in his ship, deliberately stranding everyone else! With millions of spiders now swarming over the lunar surface, Captain Lundvik prepares to detonate the nuclear bombs; but Clara is against the idea of killing a baby, even if it means unleashing a giant alien exo-parasite upon the Earth below. Unwilling to bring about the destruction of all life on Earth, Lundvik activates the bomb, noting that they still have forty-five minutes in which to stop the countdown should the Doctor return for them. When a monitor flares to life with a call from Earth control via a TV satellite, Clara sees a way of broadcasting a message to the people below and asking for their help in making the difficult decision she, Lundvik and Courtney now face: if mankind vote to kill the creature they should turn off their lights, but leave them on if they choose to let it live. As more tremors herald the Moon’s break-up, Clara and Courtney use binoculars to look through a porthole at the Earth – what will humanity decide..? With just five minutes left, Clara looks again at the Earth and watches as the last remaining lights go out – the decision from Earth is unanimous. The bombs’ remote detonator counts down to zero… but at the last second Clara steps forward and aborts the destruct command! To everyone’s surprise the TARDIS reappears and the Doctor urges them all inside, taking them to a beach on Earth from which to watch as the Moon hatches. To their astonishment and relief they watch as the egg shell disintegrates, leaving behind a huge, beautiful, winged creature. As the alien flies off the Doctor answers Captain Lundvik’s question of what happens next: history has been changed, and the events of the Moon’s hatching will rekindle humanity’s interest in the stars; by the mid-Twenty First Century humankind will set off into space and go on to spread across the entire universe, enduring to the end of time. Not only that, but the alien has laid an egg – there is a new moon in the sky! After Captain Lundvik thanks Clara for stopping her, the Doctor points her in the direction of NASA with the aim of restarting the space programme; he then takes Courtney and Clara home in the TARDIS. However, once Courtney has left the TARDIS Clara vents her fury at the Doctor, objecting at being manipulated and patronised by him; Clara has had enough, and no longer wants to see the Doctor any more. Storming out of the TARDIS, Clara walks away as the ship dematerialises; meeting up with Danny, Clara explains how she is done with the Doctor, but Danny is not so sure... That night, Clara stands alone at her living room window, looking up at the Moon and now seeing it in a whole different light…


Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Samuel Anderson (Danny), Ellis George (Courtney), Hermione Norris (Lundvik), Tony Osoba (Duke), Phil Nice (Henry), Christopher Dane (McKean)

Directed by Paul Wilmshurst
Produced by Peter Bennett
Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
4th October 2014 @ 8.30 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor, Clara, Danny and Courtney