Godspeed, my lonely angel.
First of all, what's up with me crying at the end of every other episode? It's getting a little embarrassing. It also does not bode well for Doomsday.
Second, have I mentioned that I think Steven Moffat might be the greatest TV writer alive? I find it frankly amazing that one man has the power for so much spookiness AND humor. This episode freaked me out pretty bad the first time I saw it (I have issues with things in masks), but it also made me laugh harder than possibly any other episode in the season. And not only that, but Moffat also has by far the most innovative ideas of any writer on the show. They're always so original.
I know a lot of people have complained that this episode exists in a vacuum, and even more have complained that they don't understand this whole Doctor/Reinette thing. The Doctor loves Rose, right? Well, yeah. Of course. But I have a very mundane explanation for what happened.
Moffat is not a regular writer for the show, as much as that breaks my heart. He writes one episode every season. I'm not saying that he doesn't ship the good ship Doctor/Rose. But he doesn't really need to worry (as much as RTD or another regular writer would) as much about continuity and following through with others' ideas and his own. He writes a brilliant little one-shot package and then, sadly, he is gone. Do you get what I mean? I'm not sure I'm explaining it correctly. He did what he felt was necessary to make the episode as good as possible.
The one thing that does surprise me about this episode was how eager he was to steal Reinette and take her to the stars. Talk about messing with history. Wouldn't he basically be doing the same thing as the clockwork aliens as far as history goes?
And yeah, I do think he fell in love with Reinette a little. Please don't throw things at me. None of us are really, truly, 100% committed to the person we love. You can be 99.9% committed, but there's always going to be at least a tiny part of you that feels attracted to other people. Sorry. And she's a lovely and brilliant woman. And my god, is that the most fantastic kiss on Doctor Who or what? At least in terms of staging/cinematography/etc., even if you don't think the characters should have been snogging. I put it right close behind the Nine/Rose kiss.
There's more I can say, but most of it is along the lines of "GUH DAVID TENNANT GUH," and I don't think I need to put you through that. You know how beautiful he is.