“Kill the Moon” is the latest episode of “Doctor Who” which just aired the other night. Seven episodes down and I’m not seeing much of an improvement in terms of story quality. It had its entertaining moments (mostly thanks to Capaldi), but the stories and creative elements seem to still be lacking. In my opinion, the show appears to be running on empty and needs a bit of a jump start again.

So far, this has turned out to be my least favorite season. I keep expecting that one episode to come along that really knocks it out of the ball park. But we’re over half way through the season and it hasn’t happened yet. The show really needs to get off Earth and away from Clara’s life and relationship at the school and just get back to some good ‘ol science fiction stories.

This week saw the Doctor take Clara and newbie kid companion Courtney Woods to the moon (not Ralph Kramden style) thirty-five years into the future. Once there, they run into a team of astronauts hauling a whole lot of nukes.  Apparently, something is happening to the moon which in turn is creating havoc on Earth.  But without giving away too many spoilers, I think this story might have been better suited if it didn’t take place on Earth’s moon and instead involved another alien planet’s moon.

A few things I didn’t like about this episode is that the characters of the astronauts weren’t flesh out very well, the newbie kid companion was more annoying than interesting, and for whatever reason they were playing the character of the Doctor as more of a senile jerk this time around (though Capaldi always manages to make it entertaining).

On the plus side, there was a great character moment between the Doctor and Clara at the end of the episode which was a turning point in their relationship. It was one of the best scenes thus far this season and probably one of the more real dramatic scenes this series has seen to date.  Let’s just say that Clara was really pissed at the Doctor.  And in what will surely be one of the more quotable lines from the series:

Clara: “Tell me what you knew Doctor or I’ll smack you so hard you’ll regenerate.”

And speaking of regeneration, earlier in the episode, there was a throwaway line that pretty much did away with the limited regeneration issue that has always plagued the Doctor and series as a whole.  I’m sure the following line will be in great debate for years to come.

Doctor: “You’ll have to spend a lot of time shooting me because I will keep on regenerating. In fact, I’m not entire sure I won’t keep on regenerating forever.”

Overall, this episode was just okay. Not bad, but not great by any means.  But if I was to rate this season up to this point, I would probably give it about two and a half stars out of five. At the very least, I would like to upgrade it to a three star season, but it doesn’t have that many episodes left to get there. But hey, any “Doctor Who” is better than no “Doctor Who.”

Embedded below is Episode 7 of “Doctor Who Extra” followed by the preview for next week’s episode entitled “Mummy on the Orient Express.”  I’ve also included the clips that accompany the two quotes above.