End of Time pt 2: immediate reaction

[ionlylurkhere]

I am bloody unhappy about the companions in this, even though no one died:

• The Martha/Mickey spoiler was true, then. BAH. That makes me exceptionally grumpy, on many, many levels. (And yet, I am already assimilating it into my personal canon. Either (happy version) they are in a poly marriage with Tom and possibly other people as well, or (tragedy version) Tom died in ways that Martha blamed on UNIT, and Mickey helped her get over it &c.) MARTHA HAD AWESOME HAIR, THOUGH. I might concentrate on that.
  
• Donna didn't get fixed -- which I wasn't expecting but was sort of hoping for -- but nor did she die. I did like the "did you think I wouldn't have given her a defence mechanism?" bit.
  
• Given Midshipman Frame's appearance, that space bar is clearly where Jack currently is having run away from Torchwood (which annoys me a bit because of the self-indulgent nature of chucking every prop ever who isn't definitely a BAD GUY in there, I mean WTF Hath? They're from a timeframe way in advance of the present day, it seems). On one level, I think it's simplistic and reductive and fucking annoying to show Jack getting over everything by him being ready to maybe chat up someone new, but on another I would love to see Russell Tovey in putative Torchwood S4 (not that that would happen).
  
• And the woman in white who appeared to Wilf is clearly meant to be Romana N, and the fact that they didn't just come out and say it in some ways makes it worse.
  
• Much more minorly, Billie Piper really can't do Rose's voice any more, can she?
  

Like most of the overlong specials, the bit of it that was the length of a normal episode was basically all-right-ish (it all felt overly literal to me, though, very technobabbley; it comes off quite badly in comparison to the touch of strangeness you get from the better treatments of the Time Lords in old and particularly middle school), and then we got the overindulgent shite in the extra runtime. Admittedly, the dying-to-save-Wilf was a superb touch (especially Wilf's getting trapped in there by unthinkingly going to the rescue) but all the stuff surrounding it, especially Ten shouting at the ceiling that it was unfair and not really rowing back from calling Wilf who has just stuck at his side through all that unimportant and so on, was much too far over in the direction of "Tennant and RTD don't really want to leave, so they're putting their feelings onto Ten". There was a bit of that in the cafe scene last time, but this was far more pronounced, even to the point of the Doctor seemingly resisting the regeneration and (it seemed to me) making the TARDIS break itself to save him. I can accept that Ten is much more self-involved than most previous Doctors, but the way they approach regenerations they know are coming (with the exception of Two, who's being punished against his will) is nothing like that. Argh.

I'm not sure how I feel about the drums at the moment. At the moment it feels too far over on the side of retconning the Master's motivations into something massively oversimplistic. But I do like paradox-y plotting.

Also oversimplistic: "the Time Lords went COMPLETELY EVIL at the end". Though LOL at bringing them back for all of ten seconds. On the other hand, it would seem to completely close off the possibility of their return (which Moffat would want, if he hates them as much as some of his interviews suggest), and also hopefully not allow Eleven to mope over them because he's just seen that they really were evil. I dunno. (Incidentally, did I really hear the Doctor calling the President Rassilon? Are we supposed to think that Rassilon came back [from the rubbish DWM version of the Matrix or his tomb in the Death Zone or something] to lead the Time War and went evil in the process? I suppose that would at least be a plausible person for Romana to stand aside for?)

Erm, I liked the Master/Doctor stuff? I sort of wonder if I'd be much happier if I'd turned it off just after the President threw the thing into the hologram of Earth and imagined the rest for myself. OTOH, then I'd have missed the "end of the Time War" stuff, which I did quite like, because RTD's good at those evocative phrases when it's stuff that he's not going to show, but apparently incapable of achieving the same effect in his detailed plotting. ('Cos the return of the Time Lords really should have had the same sort of feel to it as that, to my mind, rather than being all about walking over a bridge or whatever.) And I may already be plotting fic about how the Visionary's prophecies are in fact your good old projections from the Matrix that the Time Lords always had, but things have gone so horribly wrong in the Time War that only she can communicate/interpret and has been driven mad in the process.

I'll be honest, though, it is the Martha/Mickey that pisses me off the most. Shallow shipper is shallow.

ETA: Ooh, I remembered the fail from right at the end. No, Eleven, having hair longer than a crewcut does not in fact make you a girl. I have a sneaking suspicion that scene was written by Moffat, but I'm going to screw my eyes tight shut and tell myself it was Rusty.