Thoughts on the Who finale.
Jul. 6th, 2008 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cherryThis is special, guys. I'm attempting to engage fannishly.
First, let me say that I was a bit wary going in to this one. I remember how excited I was last year after Utopia and The Sound of Drums, and my only reaction to The Last of the Time Lords was "Seriously? SERIOUSLY?" I find that for me, RTD generally falls short with endings -- up front, he's not my favourite writer on the series -- and I think a goodly number of his scripts would be better if they ended about five minutes earlier than they did. Moffat has written most of my favourite episodes, so I am excited for his reign.
There were quite a number of bits that I loved, and what seemed at first an equal number that I did not. In retrospect, however, my problems with the episode have grown in importance.
The bits I loved first, though:
MICKEY! When I was talking to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tellitslant about The Stolen Earth, my first comment was "Needed moar Mickey." The only bits of S2 I liked were directly Mickey-related. I love how he's badass without being hard core, that he's going to miss Jackie the most. It makes me sad that there's nothing left for him in the Alt world, that Rose couldn't even be bothered to come outside to say good bye. I'm pretending that they had tearful goodbyes inside, and she tried to convince him to stay, because even though they're not together, I think they should be friends.
I think I love his ending best of all. "What'll you do?" "Anything. Just you watch." Because that's how I think companions should leave, head high, hopeful, and having grown. Also? JACKMARTHAMICKEY, arm in arm, walking off into the sunset.
MARTHA! I love Martha. Even the upper echelons of UNIT can perceive her extreme awesomeness. She's grown so much, and though she's willing to make the hard calls, she tries to find another way first. I love how obviously it was that she and Jack have kept in touch -- "Martha Jones, voice of a nightingale," their hand holding on the crucible and as they walked off together at the end. I suppose this segues nicely into:
JACK! This is the Jack I fell in love with, all the way back in S1. Cocky and sometimes thoughtless (teleporting away from your trapped team?), but uninhibited, smart, and loyal. Adore him and Sarah Jane, whom I really need to see more of.
The TARDIS is supposed to be flown by six people. There's something so perfect about that, even without the scene of everyone working together to bring it home.
Harriette Jones has always been one of my favourite characters the show has produced. She was so brilliant in this, creating the subwave and organizing the resistance, making a sacrifice no one should have had to. Standing by her decision from TCI. That's why this bit doesn't have capitals, because one of Ten's first actions was to play on age-ism and sex-ism to depose a legally elected ruler who made a decision he disagreed with, altering the course of history. It's one of the things Ten has done that make me dislike him most.
The more I think about it, however, these bits of awesome don't compensate for what I found to be some of the deeper problems.
Davros says that the true nature of the Doctor's soul is that he turns the people around him into killers. We then see him flashing on some of the many people who've dropped around him like flies -- over the course of the new series, of course. While it would have been nice to see some Old School bits in there, like Adric's death, or Susan, who presumably perished in the Time War, that is not my biggest issue with how this is framed.
Martha, Jack, Mickey, Sarah Jane, and Jackie, have all come up with ways on their own to stop the destruction of, let's recap, the UNIVERSE. They are standing there, ingenious, facing down Daleks and ready to give up their lives to stop the entire multiverse from ceasing to exist. As far as they know, the TARDIS is destroyed, the Doctor is helpless, and they're dealing with something that can move planets and destroy the fabric of reality. They're not his failure, they're brilliant.
Something comes back to bite the Doctor, and I want it to be his hubris, his tendency to make decisions he has no authority to, his tendency to laugh while there's destruction and horror around him, the fact that he treats a lot of people poorly. I want, like we've seen a few times, for the situations to be of his own creation: from The Long Game to Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways, his deposition of Harriette Jones creating the power vacuum the Master took advantage of.
Rose. Rose, Rose, Rose. I don't hate Rose, I just sometimes hate what RTD and co have done to her. S1, I quite liked her for the most part. She was painfully young sometimes, and treated Mickey poorly, but she was brave, excited, and often clever. She grew, even if I don't always think it was in positive ways. S2 felt to me like a 13 episode regression, until she ended up on a beach, sobbing. "This is the day I died," the voice-over tells us. What I wanted, what I desperately wanted for her, was for her to walk away, realizing how much she's learned and seen, and how much good she could do in the world at large. Instead, she ends up with pretty much everything she could have wanted -- her mother, her (rich instead of dead) father, a new sister, her incredibly loyal friend/sometimes boyfriend, a job saving the earth, and the opportunity to make anything out of herself she could want -- and all we're told is that her life is over.
My personal fanon, until this point, was that she took a few deep breaths, stopped crying, and got on with her life. Spent some times defending the planet, reconnecting with her family, maybe got her A-level and went to college, and just generally got on with her life. Instead, we find out that she spent the last however-many years it was in her timeline trying to get back -- from what I understand, this predates the stars going out, even. So she gets back and, well, spends most of her time walking around with a gun while things blow up around her, or locked in a cage. Then, she gets unceremoniously dumped back into the Alt Verse with a knock-off Doctor to heal and have not!TimeBabies with. (Interesting side note: Given DoctorDonna, the only one on that beach who hadn't attempted or committed at least one Dalek genocide was Jackie. Real!Ten has a number of genocides under his belt, so his hypocrisy here is quite blatant.)
I don't know that I can actually be terribly coherent about what happened to Donna. She was brilliant as DoctorDonna (I think Tate pulled it off much better than Tennant), and I could see exactly where it was going, but it didn't make it any easier to watch. I still haven't properly forgiven the Time Lords for what they did to Jamie and Zoe, but at least with those two there's a chance they'd remember. Do I think that dying would have been better? I don't know, but --
I hate that the show keeps setting up companions who will only leave when the only other option is death -- and don't exit under their own power even then. Neither Donna nor Rose have any agency in how they leave. Everything Donna has learned, every way she's grown, is torn away from her completely, and like I said above, I go back and forth on how much Rose has grown at all.
And then, at the end, the Doctor is alone. Boo hoo. I stopped having sympathy for him for that long before the end of S3, where he ended up alone because he mistreated two people who would have really loved him.
You'll notice that I didn't mention the plot itself. This is because I don't know that there was enough of it to properly discuss.
This may all seem a little harsh. I think, in the end, what I loved was all character based -- Martha, Jack, Mickey, and Sarah Jane are some of my favourites, and Donna is made of awesomeness. Mickey, Jack, Martha, and Sarah Jane went out quite well, but I feel that the end to Donna and Rose's arcs were deeply problematic. Last of the Time Lords left me incredibly exasperated, and Doomsday didn't work for me on any level. I'm still trying to figure out where this one fits in with these. Like I said, it had bits that I enjoyed, but I think that a lot of the issues I had with it run deeper.
On the bright side: If Torchwood has Martha, Mickey, and re-awesomed/de-emo'd Jack? I am hopeful for its future.
In conclusion: Moffat time now, please?
First, let me say that I was a bit wary going in to this one. I remember how excited I was last year after Utopia and The Sound of Drums, and my only reaction to The Last of the Time Lords was "Seriously? SERIOUSLY?" I find that for me, RTD generally falls short with endings -- up front, he's not my favourite writer on the series -- and I think a goodly number of his scripts would be better if they ended about five minutes earlier than they did. Moffat has written most of my favourite episodes, so I am excited for his reign.
There were quite a number of bits that I loved, and what seemed at first an equal number that I did not. In retrospect, however, my problems with the episode have grown in importance.
The bits I loved first, though:
MICKEY! When I was talking to
tellitslant about The Stolen Earth, my first comment was "Needed moar Mickey." The only bits of S2 I liked were directly Mickey-related. I love how he's badass without being hard core, that he's going to miss Jackie the most. It makes me sad that there's nothing left for him in the Alt world, that Rose couldn't even be bothered to come outside to say good bye. I'm pretending that they had tearful goodbyes inside, and she tried to convince him to stay, because even though they're not together, I think they should be friends.I think I love his ending best of all. "What'll you do?" "Anything. Just you watch." Because that's how I think companions should leave, head high, hopeful, and having grown. Also? JACKMARTHAMICKEY, arm in arm, walking off into the sunset.
MARTHA! I love Martha. Even the upper echelons of UNIT can perceive her extreme awesomeness. She's grown so much, and though she's willing to make the hard calls, she tries to find another way first. I love how obviously it was that she and Jack have kept in touch -- "Martha Jones, voice of a nightingale," their hand holding on the crucible and as they walked off together at the end. I suppose this segues nicely into:
JACK! This is the Jack I fell in love with, all the way back in S1. Cocky and sometimes thoughtless (teleporting away from your trapped team?), but uninhibited, smart, and loyal. Adore him and Sarah Jane, whom I really need to see more of.
The TARDIS is supposed to be flown by six people. There's something so perfect about that, even without the scene of everyone working together to bring it home.
Harriette Jones has always been one of my favourite characters the show has produced. She was so brilliant in this, creating the subwave and organizing the resistance, making a sacrifice no one should have had to. Standing by her decision from TCI. That's why this bit doesn't have capitals, because one of Ten's first actions was to play on age-ism and sex-ism to depose a legally elected ruler who made a decision he disagreed with, altering the course of history. It's one of the things Ten has done that make me dislike him most.
The more I think about it, however, these bits of awesome don't compensate for what I found to be some of the deeper problems.
Davros says that the true nature of the Doctor's soul is that he turns the people around him into killers. We then see him flashing on some of the many people who've dropped around him like flies -- over the course of the new series, of course. While it would have been nice to see some Old School bits in there, like Adric's death, or Susan, who presumably perished in the Time War, that is not my biggest issue with how this is framed.
Martha, Jack, Mickey, Sarah Jane, and Jackie, have all come up with ways on their own to stop the destruction of, let's recap, the UNIVERSE. They are standing there, ingenious, facing down Daleks and ready to give up their lives to stop the entire multiverse from ceasing to exist. As far as they know, the TARDIS is destroyed, the Doctor is helpless, and they're dealing with something that can move planets and destroy the fabric of reality. They're not his failure, they're brilliant.
Something comes back to bite the Doctor, and I want it to be his hubris, his tendency to make decisions he has no authority to, his tendency to laugh while there's destruction and horror around him, the fact that he treats a lot of people poorly. I want, like we've seen a few times, for the situations to be of his own creation: from The Long Game to Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways, his deposition of Harriette Jones creating the power vacuum the Master took advantage of.
Rose. Rose, Rose, Rose. I don't hate Rose, I just sometimes hate what RTD and co have done to her. S1, I quite liked her for the most part. She was painfully young sometimes, and treated Mickey poorly, but she was brave, excited, and often clever. She grew, even if I don't always think it was in positive ways. S2 felt to me like a 13 episode regression, until she ended up on a beach, sobbing. "This is the day I died," the voice-over tells us. What I wanted, what I desperately wanted for her, was for her to walk away, realizing how much she's learned and seen, and how much good she could do in the world at large. Instead, she ends up with pretty much everything she could have wanted -- her mother, her (rich instead of dead) father, a new sister, her incredibly loyal friend/sometimes boyfriend, a job saving the earth, and the opportunity to make anything out of herself she could want -- and all we're told is that her life is over.
My personal fanon, until this point, was that she took a few deep breaths, stopped crying, and got on with her life. Spent some times defending the planet, reconnecting with her family, maybe got her A-level and went to college, and just generally got on with her life. Instead, we find out that she spent the last however-many years it was in her timeline trying to get back -- from what I understand, this predates the stars going out, even. So she gets back and, well, spends most of her time walking around with a gun while things blow up around her, or locked in a cage. Then, she gets unceremoniously dumped back into the Alt Verse with a knock-off Doctor to heal and have not!TimeBabies with. (Interesting side note: Given DoctorDonna, the only one on that beach who hadn't attempted or committed at least one Dalek genocide was Jackie. Real!Ten has a number of genocides under his belt, so his hypocrisy here is quite blatant.)
I don't know that I can actually be terribly coherent about what happened to Donna. She was brilliant as DoctorDonna (I think Tate pulled it off much better than Tennant), and I could see exactly where it was going, but it didn't make it any easier to watch. I still haven't properly forgiven the Time Lords for what they did to Jamie and Zoe, but at least with those two there's a chance they'd remember. Do I think that dying would have been better? I don't know, but --
I hate that the show keeps setting up companions who will only leave when the only other option is death -- and don't exit under their own power even then. Neither Donna nor Rose have any agency in how they leave. Everything Donna has learned, every way she's grown, is torn away from her completely, and like I said above, I go back and forth on how much Rose has grown at all.
And then, at the end, the Doctor is alone. Boo hoo. I stopped having sympathy for him for that long before the end of S3, where he ended up alone because he mistreated two people who would have really loved him.
You'll notice that I didn't mention the plot itself. This is because I don't know that there was enough of it to properly discuss.
This may all seem a little harsh. I think, in the end, what I loved was all character based -- Martha, Jack, Mickey, and Sarah Jane are some of my favourites, and Donna is made of awesomeness. Mickey, Jack, Martha, and Sarah Jane went out quite well, but I feel that the end to Donna and Rose's arcs were deeply problematic. Last of the Time Lords left me incredibly exasperated, and Doomsday didn't work for me on any level. I'm still trying to figure out where this one fits in with these. Like I said, it had bits that I enjoyed, but I think that a lot of the issues I had with it run deeper.
On the bright side: If Torchwood has Martha, Mickey, and re-awesomed/de-emo'd Jack? I am hopeful for its future.
In conclusion: Moffat time now, please?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-07 05:24 am (UTC)Err. Right.
Also, Daleks? Getting tired of them. Exactly how many times do we need to go through the no Daleks - billions of Daleks - no Daleks cycle?
The Doctor genocides them at least once per season. (Did you know genocide was also a verb? True fact.)
As for regenerations thing, what I think was implied was that the limit on regenerations was artificially imposed, and the Time Lords could have offered the Master a new set of regenerations in exchange for fighting in the war. I suspect it's a get out of jail free card that will be played at some point in the new series.
I'd have rather they never backtracked, as, like you, my personal fanon involved Rose getting a life and moving on.
I hate that she was reduced to this over the course of the series.
Martha... never gelled for me.
To each their own. *G* I love her to bits, but I hate how she ended up being treated, and there were some bits that were just painful. S2 didn't do anything at all for me (save the Mickey bits), so I know where you're coming from.
That said, I still like TW!Jack enough that he's pretty much the only reason I keep on pushing through Torchwood. (Of course, I'm only half way though S1 there, so that may not last.)
Honestly? My recommendation would be to watch They Keep Killing Suzie, Combat (the episode Noel Clarke wrote), Captain Jack Harkness, and the finale, then skip right to S2. CJH is my favourite os S1, as it is full of Jack&Tosh goodness, and for something that happens to Owen which makes me laugh. For the most part, they seem to pretend S1 didn't happen. S2, does not take itself as seriously for the most part, and as such is rather less full of fail and face-palming, though still unintentionally LOL-arious.
Like said above, if I were to build my own Torchwood, Martha, Mickey, and Jack would definitely be my fist round drafts, so I am hopeful.