Marleen’s NO SPOILERS Doctor Who Thread – Part II

[John Hoare]

This thread continues this discussion. The topic was split because the system kept running out of memory. Wankers.

Topic

[TheLeen]

Well, what a letdown that was.

[Andrew]

Oh this is going to be interesting…

[TheLeen]

Shall I keep this one for next time I have PMS? :P

Nah, I’ll type it all when I have the time… although the two episodes were bloody long, so in order to remember all of the stuff I disapprove of, I’d have to watch them again, like in the olden days, with pencil and paper ready.

To cut it short for now: too much of everything.

[Jonathan Capps]

Quite how you could like the terrible Turn Left and have big problems with the finale is baffling to me!

[Andrew]

> Quite how you could like the terrible Turn Left and have big problems with the finale is baffling to me!

THIS!!!!!!!!!

[Pete Part Three]

>THIS!!!!!!!!!

THIS!!!!!!!!!

And Midnight is awesome.

[Dave]

It looks like Marleen’s fallen out of love, maybe it’ll take another thread to remind her what she liked about Doctor Who in the first place.

[ChrisM]

The finale is good.

But, I can see how many would dislike it. Particularly considering THAT scene. Oh dear.

[Seb Patrick]

I thought it was the best of the finales so far. It was stupid, over-the-top, messy, confusing, badly-explained, schmaltzy and overlong. But gloriously so!

Also Davros.

Also Cribbins.

[John Hoare]

I loved most of the finale.

But the more I think about it, the more the whole two Doctor thing – and Rose going off with the second Doctor – can fuck right the fuck off.

[TheLeen]

> It looks like Marleen?s fallen out of love,

Nooooooo. No no no no no.

> I thought it was the best of the finales so far.

I thought the finales have gotten gradually worse… (I can’t remember whether I preferred the 2nd or 3rd at the time – but still)

> It was stupid, over-the-top,
> messy, confusing, badly-explained, schmaltzy and overlong.

And I thought I had to write a summary… :P

> But gloriously so!

Really? :(

Ah well – I don’t want to discuss this based solely on my bad mood ;) I have a little much to do at work right now, so it may have to wait until Saturday…

[TheLeen]

I figured I’d rather get this over with and do over time!

Ah, where to start. Like I said, it was bloody long (which is not necessarily a bad thing – on the contrary, actually) and my memory is kind of blurry already.

What I liked:

– Donna at her best. I loved Catherine Tate in this, especially in the end when she did the “Ha!” and the “Oh yes!” – and now I’m a bit sad that she’s gone for good. (but I hope they stick with it, this time.) What the Doctor said to Donna’s mum at the end was good, too.
– German Daleckery
– Harriet Jones.
– Jackie and Mickey. (Slightly underused, sadly)
– I was actually pleased to see Sarah Jane. (Although she was in no way crucial to the story. But then, who was?)
– The idea of the stars going out.
– Davros was kind of cool.
– How Rose wasn’t part of the WebEx – at least it came as a surprise.
– The Shadow Proclamation.
– List probaly incomplete.

What I didn’t like:

– Rose. She didn’t act or sound any like I remember her. And: she hardly DID anything. After all the dimension-hopping, TARDIS-milking, future-foretelling and kicking-arse-ness (which was never explained!) – she fucking doesn’t do anything in this episode but provide a level of emotional drama for the Doctor. Which (at least as far as I am concerned) didn’t work. It should have worked.
– K9. I feel evil mentioning it. But I think in an epic, mature, desperation-based series finale, he has no place. unlike one of those early-series two-parters, which would have been perfect for him.
– The idea of a 27-planets-doomsday machine. (Granted – it LOOKED pretty. But I didn’t like the idea.)
– The “cliffhanger” at the end of The Stolen Earth. No, actually, that’s not true. It was a good cliffhanger. But the way it was shrugged off at the beginning of Journey’s End, in this “no big deal, let’s move on” way, I didn’t like. Cheating…
– How the TARDIS pulled Earth back.
– It’s new, it’s a first, it’s never been there; but the Doctors know just about enough about how fast he’s going to age to tell Rose everything about it on a beach. (By the way – how did they get home from there? Call a cab? ;))
– The Doctor II exiled for genocide? Riiiight… look who’s talking… anyway: very unconvincing reason for dropping him off in a parallel world.
– List probably incomplete.

Things I feel I should have known beforehand

– Still don’t know what the Cloister Bell is.
– Should Osterhagen mean anything to me? Or was it made up for the episode?
– Davros
– ALL of the bloody spin-offs. Mr Smith?

What I learned:

– The Doctor should always keep a spare hand, because then he won’t have to regenerate his 13 lives away. (see also: series four’s 101 new ways to immortality)
– Germans always keep their technology in Castle Wolfenstein. (see also: Indiana Jones)

Random observations:

– I really should’ve watched all those spin-offs.
– I really don’t know why they never cast Germans for German roles. The German lady’s German sounded… well, not horrible, but very noticeably foreign.
– Rose’s story is told and over; Donna’s gone for good; Martha is still an insufferable bore (There were sweet sides to Martha in series three, why didn’t they show any of that in sereis four?). At least we’ll be getting a fresh new start.
– Jack Harkness always comes back from the dead with ihs clothes intact. That doesn’t make sense, and it should be changed. (Cheating! *g*)
– How can Donna go back to a normal life when she’s been absent for what must have been months? Surely they would’ve had to make up a coma or something to explain it? Because her mates would ask her about it? For example that night, on the phone?
– And they may never mention the Doctor, not a single word about him, because her head will explode, but he can go out there and talk to her in the kitchen ;) handy.
– The Doctor Donna thing – I just want to say that I didn’t mind it. Didn’t especially love it, but it worked for me. Unlike much of the rest.

Actually, scrap that. This “Like/Dislike” thing doesn’t work for the finale.

There were a lot of tiny little things that only irritated me on the whole. I didn’t HATE the episode, like I hated, let’s say, The Doctor’s Daughter. But it was… it just didn’t leave me with a good feeling. I wasn’t scared, I didn’t cry, it didn’t touch me. Why?

I think part of the reason WHY it didn’t touch me was the WAY over the top setting.
– In series one, boom, Dalek invasion, scary; Rose becoming omnipotent, epic; the (not sexual) kiss in the end, touching.
– Series two, boom, Cybermen invasion, fair enough; Dimension Jumping and all that, okay; goodbye scene, very sad.
– Series three, the Master enslaves Earth – that should have been scary, but the “one year of slavery” thing was already too much for me to… tune in properly. Doctor aging quickly… nothing I ever wanted to see. Touching end – maybe, but I don’t remember it at all.
– Series four, Daleks again (sigh); this time, it’s not Earth that is threatened, not just the universe, no, ALL universes; the Doctor becomes two Doctors and Donna becomes half of a Time Lady; the ending left me cold…

And even worse than me not really caring is this: “You’ve faught Daleks in series one already” “yeah, but they were, like, mad Daleks. These ones are PROPER Daleks.” Well, *I* was a LOT more scared of the ones in the first series; secondly, Caan (of course) and Davros (yes) and also the rest of them that were about to destroy everything, including themselves – are definitely madder than any Dalek I’ve ever seen before; thirdly, it felt like the episode wanted to make itself look scarier AT THE EXPENSE of the series one finale. It kind of killed all of series one’s “Bad Wolf” storyline. And that’s not okay. It did piss me off a little. No telly show should give you the feeling that you need to protect earlier episodes. But then, they managed to totally kill the emotional epic of series two’s finale as well by giving Rose half-a-Doctor to play with.

As for ALL OF THE DOCTOR’S FRIENDS UNITED… I see how they wanted to give the fans something special, but it just felt so forced and unnatural. And OF COURSE K9 had to jump out of the corner. The problem that the whole nostalgia thing just doesn’t… work for me. Not THAT good anyway.

Not everything was bad. Yeah, yeah, it was good to see so much Cribbins. But we could’ve seen much Cribbins in a different series four finale.

So, what would I have wanted this to be like?

– End Rose’s story, but do so in a… better way.
– If there needs to be a happy end for Rose, give her a proper one (with a second Doctor that is 100% human. And not a git.)
– If that wasn’t possible, have the second Doctor die in the episode. Or better yet, no second Doctor, ever (the hand thing was… not good.)
– Have the balls to properly kill off side characters instead of sending them into exile, making them immortal, giving them amnesia and the likes. At least when it was so dramatically announced beforehand! Cheating!
– Stop trying to come up with bigger better Daleks that kick more arse than before. Because they were INTRODUCED as kicking ultimate arse in the first place. Trying to make them morer scarier is… kind of childish.
– Really, enough with the Daleks. The occasional Dalek would be fine. I loved the Dalek in “Dalek”, and he scared the shit out of me, but ever since, each time I see them, they’ve been less of a thrill.
– I wish they’d given the TARDIS more to do. I know *someone* shut the door. But in other episodes, I felt like the TARDIS was truly alive, and with a bit of a personality, too. I would’ve liked that.

But that’s nit-picking, now. The main problems are the ones I described in the middle of the wall of text here.
– Too much of everything.
– The sacifice of earlier epic and emotional moments for the sake of making this appear better, which pissed me off.
– It wasn’t “outright bad”, but I’d been hoping for “really good” and it was only somewhere in between.
– I just didn’t feel it.

[Tarka Dal]

I think my reaction after watching the Series Four finale at the House of Symes boiled down to “Toss, but brilliant toss”. Although I found myself agreeing with lots of your points so on a second viewing it’s likely I wouldn’t be quite so satisfied.

[Seb Patrick]

Davros, though.

[John Hoare]

Davros was entirely bloody underused. And not, I don’t think, in a way that makes any satisfactory point, either.

[Tarka Dal]

Which was great yeah, but as TheLeen sort of said…Daleks AGAIN.

[Tarka Dal]

Which was great yeah, but as TheLeen sort of said…Daleks AGAIN.

[Tarka Dal]

Which was great yeah, but as TheLeen sort of said…Daleks AGAIN.

[Author]

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