GALLIFREY RISING:
I keep signing on to do an 'End of Time part two' reaction post. But then I get halfway through and I'm not entirely sure what I want to say, and I sign out again.
Which is as good a place as any to start, I suppose, and sort of says a lot about what I thought of the episode: amazing, in places. Fantastic. Good, broad humour, lovely little character moments, and the coda was - for the most part - wonderful to see. I didn't even mind Ten's meltdowns, all that much.
But the plot was a load of old mince, wasn't it? Which is fine! Sometimes, that's fine. But so much of the hype, the previews, the reviews, the interviews, had been geared towards this grand finale, this 'epic', that when the whole thing turned out to be this exercise in hollow sci-fi, guffing great big clouds of nonsense into a plot that they'd spent the previous specials aiming towards, and - we were told, right there in the script - the previous episode setting up for, it just felt... flat. Case in point: Gallifrey. They've spent the whole series - sixty episodes - mythologising this place, these people, and they bring them back for... what? Twenty minutes? And the planet appears above the earth and is gone as quickly as it came, while they re-run a couple of shots of PANIC! from Sarah Jane Adventures underneath...
It felt empty.
But the good bits were very, very good.
Good:
- Cribbins. Oh, god, Cribbins. Wilf as Luke Skywalker was priceless, but that speech about him not having killed anyone in the war, and then his wife being down there on Earth, and then 'I don't want you to die': brilliant. Two wonderful actors, playing with a wonderful script. This is what he's good at, RTD, and this is what he's given Doctor Who, a great big beating heart at the centre of this mad, wry old thing. Wonderful.
- And Tennant, I suppose. Tennant was bloody good in that lovely little scene, too. I forget, sometimes, that he's a properly good actor, because sometimes he's so good that you don't notice, and sometimes that good acting is buried beneath him mugging his way through a load of old sci-fi waffle.
- HE WILL KNOCK FOUR TIMES. What a pay off. Brilliant. And RTD at his best, sweeping the epic away and dealing with the little things, the real people, the real emotion of a situation. Ten going into freefall was terrific, because the Tenth Doctor has always been mad, he's always been selfish, and he's been a man on the run for a long while now. And he always knew he was going to save Wilf.
- Sarah Jane. God, Sladen didn't even have to say anything. She just... knew. I knew she knew. That this was it, she was never going to see him again. God, she'd good. DAME ELISABETH SLADEN has a nice ring to it, am I right? Queen Elisabeth.
- ROSE! Oh, god, and Jackie. The coda was such a beautiful idea. I've seen a lot of people complaining about it, but it worked, for me. A fitting tribute, I'd have been annoyed if we didn't get to see these characters one last time. They might never come back, within the Whoniverse at large. And it played with an idea that's always struck me: that The Doctor's companions die, but - for him - they always exist, somewhere. But he'll never be able to go back and see them, not really, not properly. Just glimpses. Tragic, truly tragic. And then, Ood Sigma in the snow. Lovely. (What the hell happened to the Ood, anyway? All that stuff about them evolving too fast, what was that? Guff. That's the guff I'm talking about. Just sloppy, dropped threads. Silly. Oh, this is suppose to be about the good bits, right?)
- Jack and Alonso, actually quite... sexy? God, what is wrong with me, Barrowman was approaching attractive in series one but turned tail and has been running away from it with great haste ever since. But... just as it was nice to see the companions one last time, it was nice to revisit the monsters. And in a canteena scene, no less! Brilliant.
- Clair Bloom. Marvellous. A wonderful actress, very beautiful, and I love that we were never told who she was. Even though we're pretty much being told who she was now, by everyone who's not RTD: The Doctor's Mum? Shakes head. She's Donna. Donna, Donna, Donna. Because, when Wilf asked who she was, The Doctor looked at Donna. And she fulfilled Donna's role: since day one, we've been told that The Doctor needs someone to stop him, from going too far. And that's what Donna's always done, in the show, stopped him going too far. And just one look at Clair Bloom... well, that's my two pence, anyway. Spend them wisely. What a gift, though. What a brave decision, too. (Also, how much did she look like Sladen when she was in her Time Garb? Sarah Jane is a Time Lady, OMG!)
The Bad:
- I managed to get the house to myself to watch this one, while the Not We were out visiting Granny for New Years handshakes and whatnot (priorities, 'Tell her I fell over on the ice'). That bit where The Doctor jumped out of the Vinvocci ship? God was I on the edge of my seat... hoping no one came in to see that, to have that be their resounding impression of what Doctor Who is. Toe-curlingly embarassing.
- And the Vinvocci themselves! They, what, just flew off in their spaceship? Convenient! I know, there are things that have to sacrificed, especially in such a seminal story in the show's history. He could have visited them in the coda? No, he couldn't, it would have been awful. But... ich. There must be a better way, RTD's been doing this for a long time. The Naismiths, too: set up in 'Planet of the Dead' and they ammounted to cardboard cut out villains with no real motivation - and a bloody odd father/daughter relationship, all told - and no point other than to further the plot. Sloppy.
- The coda! The wonderful, beautiful coda. But Verity? Really? Why? He has a time machine. He wants to find out what happened to Joan, why not go and visit Joan? Because that wouldn't have fit, would have been too hard a story to tell in such a short space of time. So, don't tell it. It didn't need to be told. Was anyone waiting to find out what happened to her? A dozen fanfic writers, maybe, but in general, no. It felt like an excuse to bring Jessica Hines back - good, fantastic, she's great - but didn't really serve the story. For me. Also, how much did the book look like Northern Lights? Too much! Also also, how much of a fannish nightmare is the fact that The Journal of Impossible Things is out there, written by a woman who can amass a reasonably impressive bookstore crowd? There are already ming mongs in long-term therapy over the fact that The Doctor does most of his running about in a post-invasion earth.
- Donna. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But what a waste. What a waste of a brilliant talent. And that would be fine, it would be gracious, if there'd been a point to her being there that extended beyond acting as a prop, just this thing that goes in Wilf's house because... well, it's a thing we've seen in Wilf's house. She had what in her head? Ray guns? I don't care, a lot of histrionics that didn't really pay off. For me, anyway. I want to love the Donna bit of the coda, as well, because it's lovely to see her relaxed, to see her where she wanted to be when we first met her, to see The Doctor making her life easier and giving her what she wanted - what she'd always secretly wanted - a means of supporting her family. And that he lent a pound off Geoff to buy her the lottery ticket? Lovely (and a recurring motif=; The Doctor does the same thing to get rid of the teacher he's replacing in 'School Reunion'). But... compared to what Donna was, what she could be - not the DoctorDonna, but Donna with The Doctor, brilliant, beautiful Donna seeing everything and feeling something about it - winning the lottery feels like a booby prize. Second place. Overwriting sad with a sort of... fake happy? I don't know how to explain it. It doesn't sit well, though.
- Martha's hair. Also, that she's married to Mickey. But mostly her hair. Cornrows and a beard, that's how we know it's the future. And her taste in men is, what, Rose's slops? What a load of old shit. It does mean Martha and Mickey are free to wander in and out of Torchwood and Sarah Jane as they please, which is A Good Thing. But... ach. I felt like I was watching Cleopatra 2525 - by way of In the House with Cleopatra - and Martha was never that for me. Always smart as a whip, always pragmatic, but never... RUN RUN SHOOTY LAZERS DIE ALEIN SCUM DIE. No.
- 'I don't want to go' - hang on a minute, I thought he was supposed to be brave? Don't get me wrong, I love what RTD's been doing, dealing with this odd problem, the fact that, sometimes, The Doctor showing up makes things worse than they'd have been otherwise. But... he's supposed to be the hero. And he's not going anywhere, he's coming back, in the Spring, it's right there in the NEXT TIME trailer. The regeneration itself was beautifully done, I love that the Tenth Doctor's emotions having always been so heightened meant the TARDIS blew up and GLITTERED by way of tribute, but... a scaling down of the histrionics would have been nice. Oh! He didn't realise he was coming back, did he? No. No he didn't. BUT WE DID. And sometimes these things need to be taken into account, especially when we've known about them a year in advance...
AND... Matt Smith. I could almost wet myself, all of the many, many times I've watched the trailer. Properly mad, in a non-contrived way, and lovely at leaping about. And gorgeous! With nice clothes! Love the look of the new series, too, sort of... a magical, children's literature-y vibe about it. That 'so, what have you got for me?' TARDIS shot is pure Narnia (and also very Pertwee Regeneration, am I right? Shut up, I'm always right). So excited.
Sometimes I think about how long their is until the new series airs and I feel sick.
Cheerio, Michael. xxx
Which is as good a place as any to start, I suppose, and sort of says a lot about what I thought of the episode: amazing, in places. Fantastic. Good, broad humour, lovely little character moments, and the coda was - for the most part - wonderful to see. I didn't even mind Ten's meltdowns, all that much.
But the plot was a load of old mince, wasn't it? Which is fine! Sometimes, that's fine. But so much of the hype, the previews, the reviews, the interviews, had been geared towards this grand finale, this 'epic', that when the whole thing turned out to be this exercise in hollow sci-fi, guffing great big clouds of nonsense into a plot that they'd spent the previous specials aiming towards, and - we were told, right there in the script - the previous episode setting up for, it just felt... flat. Case in point: Gallifrey. They've spent the whole series - sixty episodes - mythologising this place, these people, and they bring them back for... what? Twenty minutes? And the planet appears above the earth and is gone as quickly as it came, while they re-run a couple of shots of PANIC! from Sarah Jane Adventures underneath...
It felt empty.
But the good bits were very, very good.
Good:
- Cribbins. Oh, god, Cribbins. Wilf as Luke Skywalker was priceless, but that speech about him not having killed anyone in the war, and then his wife being down there on Earth, and then 'I don't want you to die': brilliant. Two wonderful actors, playing with a wonderful script. This is what he's good at, RTD, and this is what he's given Doctor Who, a great big beating heart at the centre of this mad, wry old thing. Wonderful.
- And Tennant, I suppose. Tennant was bloody good in that lovely little scene, too. I forget, sometimes, that he's a properly good actor, because sometimes he's so good that you don't notice, and sometimes that good acting is buried beneath him mugging his way through a load of old sci-fi waffle.
- HE WILL KNOCK FOUR TIMES. What a pay off. Brilliant. And RTD at his best, sweeping the epic away and dealing with the little things, the real people, the real emotion of a situation. Ten going into freefall was terrific, because the Tenth Doctor has always been mad, he's always been selfish, and he's been a man on the run for a long while now. And he always knew he was going to save Wilf.
- Sarah Jane. God, Sladen didn't even have to say anything. She just... knew. I knew she knew. That this was it, she was never going to see him again. God, she'd good. DAME ELISABETH SLADEN has a nice ring to it, am I right? Queen Elisabeth.
- ROSE! Oh, god, and Jackie. The coda was such a beautiful idea. I've seen a lot of people complaining about it, but it worked, for me. A fitting tribute, I'd have been annoyed if we didn't get to see these characters one last time. They might never come back, within the Whoniverse at large. And it played with an idea that's always struck me: that The Doctor's companions die, but - for him - they always exist, somewhere. But he'll never be able to go back and see them, not really, not properly. Just glimpses. Tragic, truly tragic. And then, Ood Sigma in the snow. Lovely. (What the hell happened to the Ood, anyway? All that stuff about them evolving too fast, what was that? Guff. That's the guff I'm talking about. Just sloppy, dropped threads. Silly. Oh, this is suppose to be about the good bits, right?)
- Jack and Alonso, actually quite... sexy? God, what is wrong with me, Barrowman was approaching attractive in series one but turned tail and has been running away from it with great haste ever since. But... just as it was nice to see the companions one last time, it was nice to revisit the monsters. And in a canteena scene, no less! Brilliant.
- Clair Bloom. Marvellous. A wonderful actress, very beautiful, and I love that we were never told who she was. Even though we're pretty much being told who she was now, by everyone who's not RTD: The Doctor's Mum? Shakes head. She's Donna. Donna, Donna, Donna. Because, when Wilf asked who she was, The Doctor looked at Donna. And she fulfilled Donna's role: since day one, we've been told that The Doctor needs someone to stop him, from going too far. And that's what Donna's always done, in the show, stopped him going too far. And just one look at Clair Bloom... well, that's my two pence, anyway. Spend them wisely. What a gift, though. What a brave decision, too. (Also, how much did she look like Sladen when she was in her Time Garb? Sarah Jane is a Time Lady, OMG!)
The Bad:
- I managed to get the house to myself to watch this one, while the Not We were out visiting Granny for New Years handshakes and whatnot (priorities, 'Tell her I fell over on the ice'). That bit where The Doctor jumped out of the Vinvocci ship? God was I on the edge of my seat... hoping no one came in to see that, to have that be their resounding impression of what Doctor Who is. Toe-curlingly embarassing.
- And the Vinvocci themselves! They, what, just flew off in their spaceship? Convenient! I know, there are things that have to sacrificed, especially in such a seminal story in the show's history. He could have visited them in the coda? No, he couldn't, it would have been awful. But... ich. There must be a better way, RTD's been doing this for a long time. The Naismiths, too: set up in 'Planet of the Dead' and they ammounted to cardboard cut out villains with no real motivation - and a bloody odd father/daughter relationship, all told - and no point other than to further the plot. Sloppy.
- The coda! The wonderful, beautiful coda. But Verity? Really? Why? He has a time machine. He wants to find out what happened to Joan, why not go and visit Joan? Because that wouldn't have fit, would have been too hard a story to tell in such a short space of time. So, don't tell it. It didn't need to be told. Was anyone waiting to find out what happened to her? A dozen fanfic writers, maybe, but in general, no. It felt like an excuse to bring Jessica Hines back - good, fantastic, she's great - but didn't really serve the story. For me. Also, how much did the book look like Northern Lights? Too much! Also also, how much of a fannish nightmare is the fact that The Journal of Impossible Things is out there, written by a woman who can amass a reasonably impressive bookstore crowd? There are already ming mongs in long-term therapy over the fact that The Doctor does most of his running about in a post-invasion earth.
- Donna. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But what a waste. What a waste of a brilliant talent. And that would be fine, it would be gracious, if there'd been a point to her being there that extended beyond acting as a prop, just this thing that goes in Wilf's house because... well, it's a thing we've seen in Wilf's house. She had what in her head? Ray guns? I don't care, a lot of histrionics that didn't really pay off. For me, anyway. I want to love the Donna bit of the coda, as well, because it's lovely to see her relaxed, to see her where she wanted to be when we first met her, to see The Doctor making her life easier and giving her what she wanted - what she'd always secretly wanted - a means of supporting her family. And that he lent a pound off Geoff to buy her the lottery ticket? Lovely (and a recurring motif=; The Doctor does the same thing to get rid of the teacher he's replacing in 'School Reunion'). But... compared to what Donna was, what she could be - not the DoctorDonna, but Donna with The Doctor, brilliant, beautiful Donna seeing everything and feeling something about it - winning the lottery feels like a booby prize. Second place. Overwriting sad with a sort of... fake happy? I don't know how to explain it. It doesn't sit well, though.
- Martha's hair. Also, that she's married to Mickey. But mostly her hair. Cornrows and a beard, that's how we know it's the future. And her taste in men is, what, Rose's slops? What a load of old shit. It does mean Martha and Mickey are free to wander in and out of Torchwood and Sarah Jane as they please, which is A Good Thing. But... ach. I felt like I was watching Cleopatra 2525 - by way of In the House with Cleopatra - and Martha was never that for me. Always smart as a whip, always pragmatic, but never... RUN RUN SHOOTY LAZERS DIE ALEIN SCUM DIE. No.
- 'I don't want to go' - hang on a minute, I thought he was supposed to be brave? Don't get me wrong, I love what RTD's been doing, dealing with this odd problem, the fact that, sometimes, The Doctor showing up makes things worse than they'd have been otherwise. But... he's supposed to be the hero. And he's not going anywhere, he's coming back, in the Spring, it's right there in the NEXT TIME trailer. The regeneration itself was beautifully done, I love that the Tenth Doctor's emotions having always been so heightened meant the TARDIS blew up and GLITTERED by way of tribute, but... a scaling down of the histrionics would have been nice. Oh! He didn't realise he was coming back, did he? No. No he didn't. BUT WE DID. And sometimes these things need to be taken into account, especially when we've known about them a year in advance...
AND... Matt Smith. I could almost wet myself, all of the many, many times I've watched the trailer. Properly mad, in a non-contrived way, and lovely at leaping about. And gorgeous! With nice clothes! Love the look of the new series, too, sort of... a magical, children's literature-y vibe about it. That 'so, what have you got for me?' TARDIS shot is pure Narnia (and also very Pertwee Regeneration, am I right? Shut up, I'm always right). So excited.
Sometimes I think about how long their is until the new series airs and I feel sick.
Cheerio, Michael. xxx