Home › Forums › Ganymede & Titan Forum › Doctor Who – End of Time Broadcast Discussion Search for: This topic has 335 replies, 36 voices, and was last updated 15 years ago by Ben Paddon. Scroll to bottom Viewing 50 posts - 251 through 300 (of 336 total) 1 2 3 … 5 6 7 Author Posts January 6, 2010 at 7:35 pm #107866 GwynnieParticipant I read that entire argument, and all I’m left with is the horrible image of Vernon Kay as Doctor 12. Why, Andrew, WHY? Chris Barrie should be 12. It would be beautiful. January 6, 2010 at 7:38 pm #107867 AndrewParticipant > Chris Barrie should be 12. It would be beautiful. “Don’t eyeball me, Dalek Sec.” January 6, 2010 at 7:47 pm #107869 GwynnieParticipant I said Chris, not Rimmer ;) but…. yes. You know it would be amazing. January 6, 2010 at 7:49 pm #107870 JamesTCParticipant >Anyone know what became of the Stephen Fry-penned episode? Is it now lost for good? Was written for Rose/Ten, they didn’t use it for various reasons, they attempted to remount it for Series 3 but Fry didn’t have time to do the re-writes to add Martha. I don’t think they tried to remount for Series 4. >Of course they could always cast Bonnie Langford as the companion. Better yet they could dress Kate O’Mara as Bonnie Langford. >Mr. Davies? comments on Confidential that The Doctor had forgiven Harkness can smeg off. What exactly for? The Doctor wasn’t there during COE, he was off fucking the Queen so he hardly had anything to be angry about, last time they saw eachother they were flying the TARDIS together while some loud music played and then he dropped them off all in good terms. All I saw was the Doctor cheering up a friend who needed it, to add that spin on the scene takes something out of it. >Chris Barrie should be 12. It would be beautiful. Oh yes, so long as he can still do Dwarf. >Of course we should remember that episode one is going to be glorious Where are the ducks? January 6, 2010 at 8:14 pm #107872 ChrisMParticipant >What exactly for? The Doctor wasn?t there during COE, I just assumed he caught up on Earth events in the meantime. Quite a bit as happened since we saw him last and Good queen Bess, (or naughty Queen Bess as it may be- I wonder if she kept the wig on?) probably didn’t take all his time. As for the forgiving… I’m not sure Jack requires it from the Doctor*, despite what is said on Confidential. Except in the sense that he gives Jack the push to forgive himself, get on with life. Jack did a bad thing** but the best he felt he could at the time. There was no right or wrong just…wrong. I’m tempted to say ‘the lesser of two evils’ except it’s a bit of a cliche, and sits particularly uncomfortably considering what he actually did sacrifice. Something The Doctor himself has experience with. *I do hope they tone down the hero worship in Moffat’s Who. I really like New Who (some plotting aside, even then it’s fun) but that got tiresome. A reviewer on another forum I visit hit the nail on the head when he said the Doctor should just show that he’s special. They don’t need to keep on telling us all the time. Besides he was always intended to be a genius, never a god. **which shouldn’t have worked anyway, but enough with that plot stuff. CoE was cracking otherwise. January 6, 2010 at 8:44 pm #107873 AndrewParticipant > The Doctor wasn?t there during COE, he was off fucking the Queen so he hardly had anything to be angry about I take that Good Queen Bess stuff as a joke, to be honest… But the Doctor knows, surely, about the events of CoE? (He does tend to know everything.) His gesture to Jack is implicitly one of ‘okay, you’ve paid for what you did, but it wasn’t 100% wrong and you need to rejoin the world’. Otherwise it’s just ‘hey, let me get you laid, since we’re old pals’, which surely wasn’t the intent. (What Chris said, basically; it’s not straight holy forgiveness.) > Besides he was always intended to be a genius, never a god. I see this as being like the difference between science and magic – it’s only dependent on how advanced your technology is. I like the hero/icon-making RTD brought to it. Happy for it to change, no need to do the same thing over and over, but The Myth of The Doctor has really been a great part of the tone these last few days, for me. January 6, 2010 at 9:26 pm #107874 JamesTCParticipant But still Jack didn’t do anything that the Doctor wouldn’t have done. The Doctor would give up a life in favour of many lives (preferably his own but it can’t always work that way). Hell, the Doctor has done much worse, he has shoved his entire people into hell forever in the latest episode, much worse then killing a bus load of kids in favour of the entire planet (as happened in the past) and his own grandson. If anything the Doctor should be making up to Jack for not helping and leaving Jack having to kill his grandson, Jack did what he had to do, he has nothing to be forgiven about. January 6, 2010 at 10:16 pm #107877 Ben PaddonParticipant > If anything the Doctor should be making up to Jack for not helping and leaving Jack having to kill his grandson, Jack did what he had to do, he has nothing to be forgiven about. The Doctor isn’t in charge of protecting the Earth 24/7. Sometimes they have to deal with their shit on their own. January 6, 2010 at 10:21 pm #107879 ChrisMParticipant I like the hero/icon-making RTD brought to it. Happy for it to change, no need to do the same thing over and over I agree to a degree. While I dislike the overt hero worship in new Who, I often found the Doctor in old Who was a bit too fallible. Many stories I saw (which to be fair wasn’t that many) seemed to end up with companions saving the Doctor, or him being overpowered too easily. Not that I have a problem with the Doctor showing fallibility either (I like it in fact it does happen in New Who too*, it’s the degree. If the Moffat Who can find a medium between the two extremes, I think I’ll be happy with that. *I think I was channeling an owl there. January 6, 2010 at 10:35 pm #107880 JamesTCParticipant >The Doctor isn?t in charge of protecting the Earth 24/7. Sometimes they have to deal with their shit on their own He has a time machine, he can’t be there 24/7 but he could go back to part of the 7. Frankly he has shown himself time and again to be the protector of earth even picking earth over his own planet. Doesn’t he make a comment about being the protector of earth in ‘The Christmas Invasion’ too? January 6, 2010 at 10:49 pm #107882 AndrewParticipant > Jack did what he had to do, he has nothing to be forgiven about. That doesn’t mean that the character doesn’t feel the need to be forgiven, or that he doesn’t deserve to be. Nor, in fact, is it necessarily the opinion of the writer that he has nothing to be forgiven for. Whatever your own take, RTD may differ, and it’s that feeling which informs the intent of the scene. It’s not invalid to understand – and feel – the difference between letting people die and chosing to take a life. January 6, 2010 at 10:53 pm #107883 Pete Part ThreeParticipant >Doesn?t he make a comment about being the protector of earth in ?The Christmas Invasion? too? “IT IS DEFENDED!”* *Does not apply in the event of a spin-off. See box for further details. January 6, 2010 at 11:54 pm #107887 Ben PaddonParticipant > Doesn?t he make a comment about being the protector of earth in ?The Christmas Invasion? too? And, as Harriot Jones says herself later that same episode, the Doctor isn’t around all of the time. This is demonstrated often in both Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and is also demonstrated a couple of times within Doctor Who itself. Where was the Doctor when the Ghosts first started appearing prior to the events of “Army of Ghosts”? January 7, 2010 at 12:28 am #107889 JamesTCParticipant >Where was the Doctor when the Ghosts first started appearing prior to the events of ?Army of Ghosts?? Shagging the Queen? January 7, 2010 at 7:57 am #107891 Tarka DalParticipant > > Jack did what he had to do, he has nothing to be forgiven about. WTF? He murdered a completely innocent child. Yes you can tag on that in doing so he saved 6 billion people from a hideous death, but he still inflicted one. Most of CoE emphasised how cold and malicious the government decision was to choose to kill the 10% (or whatever I forget the exact numbers) with the emotional message throughout being that to even sacrifice one live, any life, would be wrong – That it would be to go beyond ‘human’. I’ve never understood the flippancy which the murder of a small child (whatever the reasons) is given. Of course what made CoE so great is that it raised that question and then provided what should have been a very disturbing and uncomfortable answer. I wonder a bit if the over-use of that particular moral dilemma in popular fiction has watered down it’s impact a little with the audience to a point where to a large percentage of people it’s an acceptable thing to do, without even considering the question. January 7, 2010 at 9:40 am #107892 Seb PatrickKeymaster >>Anyone know what became of the Stephen Fry-penned episode? Is it now lost for good? >Was written for Rose/Ten, they didn?t use it for various reasons, they attempted to remount it for Series 3 but Fry didn?t have time to do the re-writes to add Martha. I don?t think they tried to remount for Series 4. I don’t think it even got as far as being written, did it? It was just an idea that he hadn’t got around to starting work on. I’m fairly sure that if there was a full script, in whatever form, there’d be a way of salvaging it (if rewrites to include Martha had been necessary for 3, surely Rewrite T. Davies would have handled them?), but the problem is that there isn’t. January 7, 2010 at 4:36 pm #107899 pfmParticipant Seeing as it was rumoured to be about Arthur/Knights of the Round Table it’s no wonder it was never made. It was probably too big for them to consider for series 2 then in series 3 there was already too much going on to fit it in. Once they knew Merlin was happening they probably gave up on it completely. That’s if it WAS a Knights/Arthur episode. It would be going into dodgy territory anyway, what with Arthur being fictional. OK Daleks are fictional, but obviously real in the Whoniverse. In The Mind Robber the Tardis crew end up in the Land of Fiction and that’s how characters like Rapunzel and Medusa can appear. January 7, 2010 at 5:01 pm #107903 AndrewParticipant King Arthur’s already series canon, though, isn’t he? Thanks to Battlefield if nothing else. Not that it would matter if they did want to make him so now. January 7, 2010 at 7:55 pm #107907 RidleyParticipant WTF? He murdered a completely innocent child. More than once. January 7, 2010 at 11:49 pm #107921 GwynnieParticipant Well, what made it worse was that he looked his own daughter in the eye and murdered her son in front of her while she screamed and begged him not to. I don’t know if it was supposed to show him sacrificing his “own” flesh and blood for the sake of the world’s children, and he had just lost Ianto… but as somebody who himself has died thousands of times but always comes back, it’s sometimes hard to think that he really appreciates the permanence of death for everybody else. CoE sickened me… the almost flippant way the government started deciding who the 10% of children would be, the amount of resources and time spent trying to kill Jack when he was supposedly the only one who could help. On top of it all, finding out that the children were used as drugs… it did feel like an attempt to bombard our moral compasses with ethical questions, but I sat there thinking “you know… this probably IS what the government would do”. January 8, 2010 at 4:30 pm #107955 JamesTCParticipant Now, back to TEOT, why didn’t the Doctor heal himself using the immortality gate? With so much time after surely he would have had time to fix the machine. January 8, 2010 at 4:34 pm #107956 Jonathan CappsKeymaster Because David Tennant was leaving the role. January 8, 2010 at 5:10 pm #107024 Pete Part ThreeParticipant It does raise an interesting point though. Pretty daft thing to write into a story that’s just leading up to a death scene. January 8, 2010 at 5:21 pm #107025 Seb PatrickKeymaster Now, back to TEOT, why didn?t the Doctor heal himself using the immortality gate? With so much time after surely he would have had time to fix the machine. Because it wasn’t for healing one person, it was for overwriting the whole planet with. Naismith just THOUGHT it was for healing one person, because that’s what it did in its broken state. But it was fixed by the Master and restored to full capability. January 8, 2010 at 5:29 pm #107958 Pete Part ThreeParticipant And The Doctor, possessing a similarly brilliant mind to The Master, couldn’t alter the machine? Certainly a better use of his time than travelling the galaxy to say goodbye to his nearest and dearest, especially since he was so adamant that he didn’t want to go. January 8, 2010 at 5:42 pm #107959 Jonathan CappsKeymaster > Certainly a better use of his time than travelling the galaxy to say goodbye to his nearest and dearest, especially since he was so adamant that he didn?t want to go. It’s such a shame, because the rest of the episode’s plot holds up so well. Let’s just say that Rassilon’s gauntlet broke the machine beyond repair at the same time as it changed everyone on Earth back to normal, to stop The Master trying the same shit twice. End of Time was about a great many things, but plotting wasn’t one of them. January 8, 2010 at 5:48 pm #107960 Pete Part ThreeParticipant And eventually the Time Lords were rescued by, oh, let’s say…Moe. January 8, 2010 at 8:00 pm #107963 Jonathan CappsKeymaster > And eventually the Time Lords were rescued by, oh, let?s say?Moe. And that’s exactly what it would’ve been like if RTD had bothered to put in the one line required to explain why The Doctor didn’t heal himself. January 8, 2010 at 8:34 pm #107964 Pete Part ThreeParticipant Yes, well done to RTD for avoiding explanations of plot holes he himself created. Since the fact that the gate could heal people served no function in the Grand Scheme at all (aside from giving Naismith, a non-character, reason to kidnap The Master and fix it for this purpose) it would have probably served the plot better to gloss over this completely and thus not create this issue. I can’t wait to read the rejigged version of The Writer’s Tale just to get an idea of RTD’s writing process for this story. The whole thing just seems so… messy. January 8, 2010 at 9:56 pm #107970 Seb PatrickKeymaster I think he intentionally leaves plotholes in his work so that more people will want to buy the book. Ching ching royalties. January 8, 2010 at 10:55 pm #107975 AndrewParticipant There’s no denying that RTD’s writing is a high-wire act. He doesn’t plan ahead, and that’s both a flaw…and a huge gift. A lot of the vibrant, interesting and wonderful Who we’ve had over the last few years – not to mention amazing stuff like Second Coming and Queer as Folk – comes from that process. It’s fair to criticise when it doesn’t work, but we have to accept it’s also why the great stuff is great. He plants himself stuff to use later, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. What I will say is that there’s a basic genre/thematic argument for The Doctor not using the machine – artificially prolonging his life is a Master thing, not a Doctor thing. There’s the world of difference between using your regeneration to heal and finding a machine to keep you going. If he HAD done it, it would have been reasonable, legitimate…and yet felt utterly wrong. I’d argue that genre alone gives you a pass on some such things. The Enterprise sometimes investigates planets ‘just because’, the casts of musicals burst into song and hard-bioled detectives fall in love with prime suspects. And The Doctor doesn’t drag out a generation by hooking it up to life support. January 9, 2010 at 12:38 am #107979 pfmParticipant Nothing excuses how crap Naismith and his daughter are. They should have been revealed as being Time Lord-controlled/influenced in some way. At least that would have explained how convenient them using the Gate was. It would have made the Time Lords’ plan seem less ridiculous too. Still, you’ve got to praise RTD for the explanation of the drums…right? As always, the performances and direction sell the bollocks. January 9, 2010 at 1:06 am #107981 Ben PaddonParticipant I never had any problems with Naismith and his daughter. She was an arrogant daddy’s boy, and she spoilt her daughter and had a ridiculous amount of money and resources to do so with. It could’ve been tidier, definitely, but I didn’t have any problem with their role in the story. January 9, 2010 at 1:53 am #107984 AndrewParticipant With those two characters it’s really about screen time. The relationship was quickly and clearly drawn…but they were thrown away so swiftly once they had served their purpose that a potentially-intetesting pair of characters got reduced to plot-device. The same happened with the the two green aliens (anyone notice that their faces were pink in Confidential, but not in the main show? Looks like a costly post-produtcion fix to me). RTD wrote loads more for them, fleshing out the characters and having fun with them. But it got dropped. This last two-parter’s biggest crime, arguably, was having twice as many ideas as it needed. The Nainsmiths would, in a regular ep, have been an interesting pair to cause, and suffer the consequences of, something ghastly. The Time Lords could have been a seasons-worth of Big Bad. Too many ideas here, too few in Planet of the Dead. If it weren’t for the oomph it would have stolen from Donna’s conclusion, I’d say Ten’s swansong would have been more satisfying if it happened with Journey’s End… January 9, 2010 at 2:00 am #107985 RidleyParticipant Seems like the solution would have been to be rid of Planet of the Dead and make The End of Time a three-parter. January 9, 2010 at 2:32 am #107987 ChrisMParticipant >If it weren?t for the oomph it would have stolen from Donna?s conclusion, Speaking of Donna, I wasn’t keen on her conclusion at all. She just seemed to be there to give Wilfred someone else to worry about. (I liked her role in the previous episode though with the rather emotional discussion in the coffee shop. That was a wonderful scene. I’m worried I’m turning into a big softy.) I buy the idea of the Doctor implanting a fail-safe in Donna’s mind to deal with the problem of her memories returning. But for that fail-safe to incorporate a huge energy burst that knocks out all antagonists in the near vicinity… that’s a whole new power out of nowhere (well, unless you include regeneration energy) to tie up a small thread. If there wasn’t enough time for a more satisfying* conclusion to that thread**, I wish they’d snipped it out altogether. Donna can turn into a Master, it’s not as if she’s not going to get better. *Ok, that’s subjective Some people might like the energy blast fix. It did look good, to be fair. **If the Doctor can turn people into energy blasting weapons, can he literally blast people with his own mind? I’d imagine he would chose not to even if he could, it not really being his style (and it might deplete his own life-force), but with all the Master superpowers as well, it makes me wonder… January 9, 2010 at 2:42 am #107988 AndrewParticipant > Speaking of Donna, I wasn?t keen on her conclusion at all What she got in End of Time wasn’t her conclusion for me – just a coda. A small grace note to suggest she’s still around and still Donna – plus a way of putting a loved character in jeopardy as Earth goes to hell. Of all the issues I have with the final story, Donna’s appearance wasn’t one. When Rose came back – to get her free Doctor Double love-clone-with-added-Donna-personality – I thought it cack-handedly undermined the lovely conclusion the character had previously been given. Both Rose and Donna’s reappearances this time around impressed me for the simple reason that RTD didn’t fuck it up. So yes, absolutely, she’s there for Wilf – and the Doctor, and the audience – to worry about. Jeopardy being a key part of the show, that makes sense. The story wasn’t designed as a particular farewell to her, she’s had that already, but a lot of the Davies mission statement has been about the ways in which lives continue after the Doctor has visited them. Putting the two together, especially in a story in which Wilf is ‘the companion’, is economical, sensible story-building. January 9, 2010 at 3:14 am #107989 Ben PaddonParticipant I agree wholeheartedly. After Donna’s remembrance during the Part One cligghanger I was worried RTD would shoehorn the DoctorDonna into the second episode and Tate would get top billing. That concerned me because the story wasn’t supposed to be about her, and it would have undermined the entire point of the story. The way they dealt with her remembering wasn’t perfect, but it was better than her either a) running around as the DoctorDonna being magnificent and contributing to the plot, or b) dying. January 9, 2010 at 7:04 am #107990 ChrisMParticipant >What she got in End of Time wasn?t her conclusion for me – just a coda. Oh, I meant more the conclusion to her thread in this particular story rather than a conclusion to Donna as a character. (The fact they married her off does seem rather final, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she is brought back at some point.) It’s mainly the whole energy blast thing and how quickly that got her out of jeopardy that I don’t think worked that well. It never spoilt the episode as a whole I just think it could have been handled better. Even if it just meant joining the masses of Masters. That wouldn’t have been that interesting but it would have been more credible. (I’m aware I’m talking about credible things in a show that focusses a lot on the incredible. ;) Point is, the gate had been established at this point. This is a whole new power the Doctor has never shown before.) January 9, 2010 at 8:55 am #107991 Pete Part ThreeParticipant My problem with Donna is simply how it was handled in Part One and the fact that Wilf hinted that, deep within her subconscious, she was unhappy. RTD should have established that her only real worry was a lack of money, which would have made the lottery fix more satisfying. As it was, it seemed that Ten was just throwing money in her direction to avoid having to to deal with the problems his previous fix had created. Irritation number 2 was the way “her awakening” was bundled into the list of cliff-hangers like it would be an important part of Part Two, and was then dismissed in less than 5 minutes. I loved Tennant’s line about her being his best friend though. It’s an interesting quandary though. To have Wilf (a flawless part of the story) you have to at least mention Donna. But her conclusion in Journey’s End was SO perfect, that anything after since superfluous. >anyone notice that their faces were pink in Confidential, but not in the main show? Looks like a costly post-produtcion fix to me Yes, and I was surprised that this isn’t more noticeable in the episodes themselves. January 9, 2010 at 10:29 am #107992 Michael WarrenParticipant ^It’s mentioned in the commentary podcasts – it looked wrong on film, like a bad makeup job instead of an intentional design choice, so they had The Mill change their colouring post-production. January 9, 2010 at 2:41 pm #107993 AndrewParticipant > (The fact they married her off does seem rather final, but I wouldn?t be surprised if she is brought back at some point.) I would. I don’t anticipate any of RTD’s extended family of characters showing up in the Moffat era. Being married off is only as final going home to your family, though. If Davies were still writing, as I say, ‘Life goes on’ is part of his thesis – an adventure that saw glimpses of the married-and-wealthy Donna wouldn’t be massively unlikely. January 9, 2010 at 2:49 pm #107994 MuzzyParticipant I could see Jack and Sarah Jane popping up in an episode or two somewhere down the line if their respective series’ continue successfully, but yeah I think we’ve seen the last of Donna/Rose/Martha/Mickey etc. Unless Martha and Mickey do finally turn up for Torchwood… January 9, 2010 at 4:27 pm #107995 AndrewParticipant Actually, yeah – Jack’s origin in a Moffat story and Sarah Jane’s in old Who might make them exceptions. (Am I right in thinking Moff’s the only one who knows the truth about Jack’s missing memory?) January 9, 2010 at 4:31 pm #107997 Kris CarterParticipant So what is it? January 9, 2010 at 5:00 pm #107996 AndrewParticipant Bah – connection drop-out led to a double post. January 9, 2010 at 6:08 pm #107998 Tarka DalParticipant If we’re on to series Moffat talk perhaps we should move to the other thread. It beat’s all this two page kerfuffle. January 9, 2010 at 6:30 pm #107999 Pete Part ThreeParticipant See you on the other side. January 9, 2010 at 6:39 pm #108001 MuzzyParticipant >(Am I right in thinking Moff?s the only one who knows the truth about Jack?s missing memory?) I watched The Empty Child/Doctor Dances the other day and wondered about this. Completely forgot it was ever mentioned TBH. I didn’t really remember enough Torchwood episodes to be sure whether it had been resolved or not either. It hasn’t, has it? January 9, 2010 at 7:28 pm #108003 pfmParticipant I doubt he actually knows what happened in that time, it’s just something he wrote in so they could use it later if they wanted to. Once Torchwood got up and running there was no need for that. They created a much more interesting history for Jack. 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