There's that focus on femininity again. Lundvik even sharply corrects The Doctor when he assumes that the President of the United States is a man in 2049. Seconds later he disappears into the Tardis to leave the three women debating what they shall do with all the lovely nuclear bombs they brought to blow up the moon.

A lot of critics think that showrunner Steven Moffat has a problem writing women. I'm one of them. Aside from Madame Vastra, who I should point out is gay and therefore not interested in men, Moffat's female characters rarely pass the Bechdel Test. As his time goes, he simply cannot seem to fathom the idea of having a woman whose sole purpose isn't pleasing/winning the affections of/impressing/being willing to die for The Doctor. There are bright spots early in his writing career like "Blink" and "The Empty Child," but Series 8 has seen exactly zero that I recall.

I think that Harness sees this, and was using the script of "Kill the Moon" to bring it to light. Note, for instance, how he very slyly references "Blink" when The Doctor tells Courtney to put in a DVD to find him after he and the Tardis are separated. That was also the episode in which Martha mentioned she and the Tenth Doctor had seen the moon landing in person, something Twelve makes a joke about as Courtney steps out onto the surface.

So there we are...a life-or-death choice in the hands of three women representing the acme of female empowerment; Maiden (The teenage Courtney), Mother (Clara, who has been a nanny and says she wants kids in the episode) and Crone (Lundvik says she has no children). In the end they decide to let the moon hatch, an act that further drives home the abortion metaphor by saying the explosion was "aborted".

That's when The Doctor comes waltzing back in, gets them away in the Tardis and tells the three women how proud he is that they made this decision. They watch the moon hatch and birth a new, harmless life form that inspires humanity to take to the stars and start their march towards empire. It's a glorious moment that he was sure would happen because he had absolute faith in Clara to make the right decision.

For this, she threatens to slap him so hard that he will regenerate.

Normally I'm opposed to when it becomes The Clara Show, but here it was dead on the money. Clara cuts down The Doctor, claiming that he knew exactly what was at the heart of the moon and could have told them at any time that it wasn't dangerous, an act that would have removed the whole reason for the debate in the first place. Maybe Twelve was remembering the death ray of Harriet Jones and how it destroyed the Sycorax, but to Clara that's not how it felt.

This story continues on the next page.