this is the kind of errant pedantry...
I was right in my prediction of the semblance of a regeneration. I was also right in my prediction of a total anticlimax, because there was never any way it was going to be real.
The beginning was all right. Lame excuse to keep Team Torchwood out of the action. Whatever. TOSH!
Davros, Caan and the Dalek Supreme With Extra Cheese monologued a lot. I had a hard time paying attention.
Then there was the Osterhagen Key and the little bomb necklace thingy and all the companions DOING WHAT WAS NECESSARY, and the Doctor went all sadface. Like what, Doctor, you didn't see this coming? Davros is SO RIGHT. You trained them by example to take responsibility not only for themselves, but for the entire human race, whether they had a moral or ethical right to that responsibility or not. The difference between them and you is that A) they're human and B) they haven't GOT magical powers of supersmarts or a TARDIS or a one-man Duex Ex Machina field (or a nice juicy contract) like you do. So what do you expect? And don't frelling be disapproving of them now; you shook your sanctimonious finger at Harriet Jones, too, and see where that got you, prick.
Jackie got, what, two lines? What was the point of bringing her back except to say you did? Also, when she said "I'm so sorry" and teleported into the other room, leaving the prisoners to die... great, let's get back to the old season 2 mentality of "It's okay to let these other people die as long as we're having fun and we remember to say 'sorry' at some point."
Mickey got maybe five lines. Same question applies.
Okay, the clone. FREAKING WIN. Even my mother, who has always been much less invested in this show than I have, thought that the part-Donna Doctor [hereafter DoctorDonna] was hilarious. I pretty much saw where it was going in regards with Rose from the beginning, but at least I enjoyed it while it was just Tennant doing his best Catherine Tate imitation. That whole scene was hilarious! I could have lived with Donna being the Doctor's companion for as long as the show itself lasted. I loved Martha on her own, but Donna simply has [had] the best relationship with the Doctor of all the NuWho companions.
And then, as if DoctorDonna wasn't awesome enough? DONNADOCTOR. OMG YES. It's Donna but without her self-esteem issues, which were the only things holding her back! Plus magical powers of supersmarts! But STILL HUMAN! Best of all species, all in one. You knew it couldn't last. DonnaDoctor was so awesome she would have broken every television in the UK -- and then she would have broken the internet when people tried to bootleg.
Then the day was saved and it was time for half a dozen endings. That's what you get for bringing in a bajillion companions.
Every one of these endings was crap, but some were more crap than others. If I were sad, I would be too sad to even be sad any more. If I were angry, I'd be too angry to see. I can't be either, so I'm just bloody disappointed. I'm giving you the dreaded disappointed stare from across the ocean, RTD. Feel it boring into the back of your balding skull. I never even had a problem with the Master. I LIKED the Master. I don't have Old Who fan rage. I don't think "Oh no, you're ruining the artistic value of the story with your progressive pop-culture reinventions of classic ideas!" I quite like that sometimes. But you know what? What you did here was just gratuitous. And if there's one thing that is the biggest turn-off in fiction, it's gratuitousness. You kicked your audience in the balls just because and now your audience isn't saying, "Oh it's so beautiful" while stars and birdies of pain fly around their heads -- they're saying, "Well, fuck you too" and winding up a left hook.
Ending 1. I'm neutral about Rose as a person. I'm neutral-leaning-towards-repulsed by Rose as a companion, and by Rose and the Doctor together. But if I did care? I would be so pissed about this compromise cop-out ending for their relationship. The implication is that Rose, being all shiny and perfect, will just have to heal a broken Doctor all over again like she did with Nine -- but people don't work that way. Rose has changed. This human Doctor is a stranger to her. She isn't shiny and full of life anymore, she's jaded and full of regret and has now been denied the only thing she ever wanted from the real Doctor, which was to stay with him. I mean, I don't ship these guys, but having had some of my own ships sunk in some pretty bad ways -- character death, actors leaving shows, etc -- I have sympathetic pain for this ship. Worst ending for a ship ever. Maybe Rose & Doctor Clone can find common ground in griping about how much of a prick Real Doctor is.
Ending 2. Sarah Jane is sweet. Okay, I didn't have a problem with this goodbye. I think it's lovely that Sarah Jane has a happy life and is over her pining.
Ending 3. Sigh. Great. Yeah, just put Martha and Mickey on Torchwood. It's not like I've been through the two-season crucible with Ianto, Gwen, Tosh & Owen, four relative newcomers to the Whoniverse, and stuck with them through silliness, camp acting, illogical plots, bad science and poor scripts in order to learn to love them for their perseverance and their oddly touching character moments, and then cry with them through their losses. No. It's not at all like I'm attached to the idea of giving a fair chance to unknowns and developing them from blank slates. Nooo.
If Ianto and Gwen don't get 2nd & 3rd billing after Jack in season 3, I'm gonna be slightly pissed. As much as I love Martha and think Mickey's all right, I care enough about Torchwood as an independent show to not want it tied down by being forced to exist on standby while all the DW rejects get dumped there.
Ending 4. Okay, I take it back. I am mad. What happened to Donna was. Just. Plain. Cruel. And gratuitous. *spits*
You fucked with my Super Temp and I will never forgive you for that, RTD.
And now that Donna has had her run, I can truly say I've found My Companion. Everyone has their Doctor (usually the first one they saw) and their companion. Too bad mine have never met, because my Doctor is Nine and my companion is Donna. See if you can top them, Moffat: I dare you.
(Also, secondary anger -- Best Companion Family goes to the Nobles, esp. Wilf, and what the Doctor did to them was just as cruel if not more so than what he took away from Donna. I know I can't blame the Doctor for just saving Donna's life, but I can blame him for not at least easing the pain Wilf is going to feel every day for the rest of his life, watching his Donna bereft of the joy of stars and not even knowing it, by taking away Wilf's memories, too. And I can totally blame RTD for Donna's ending, so.)
And lastly: this is twice now in this season that there have been elderly male characters who had just the right personalities and desires and senses of wanderlust to make great companions. So the Doctor can't give any joy and wonder to old people who would love to have some joy and wonder in their lives before they die, apparently. Only to young women who will inevitably have to be painfully separated from him before they've even begun to live in the primes of their lives, so that they will have to live in regret and longing and pain after he's gone. Thanks, Doctor. Great example you give to a global society that has pleeenty of empathy and love for the elderly and doesn't at all shove them into corners and under rugs so that people don't have to look them in the face and understand mortality, and also so that people don't have to think about the contemptibly low quality of death in our "civilized" times.
*deep breath*
I have some other personal issues like boredom and loneliness and fear of mortality going on right now and I recognize that I'm projecting a lot onto what is, after all, just a TV show. But if we can't project ourselves onto fiction, in both positive and negative ways, then what is the point of creating fiction at all?
But I also understand how to simply be entertained for entertainment's sake, and I do think that there were bits and pieces of this finale that were quite entertaining. I wouldn't have missed it, and I'll still watch the show. (Though honestly? Victorian Cybermen? Cybermen in general? God, and just after we'd got the gratuitous Dalek story out of the way, too. *groan*)
I'm done now.
Iroh's story from "Tales of Ba Sing Se" made me cry, by the way.
-rave
ETA: This is another good review which I agree completely with, including some positive things I didn't mention, like the mutual Rose/Martha appreciation. Now that my blinding rage over Donna has subsided somewhat, I'm not projecting as much of it onto other parts of the episode. And also, as several people have pointed out, Doctor-brained Donna does lose some awesome points because her 100% humanity was part of her attraction for the whole series. But my basic opinion is still the same: lame, lame, lame.
ETA 2: Okay, my inner writer was the first part of me to be insulted. But now that I've had time to think about it, my inner feminist is coming out to join in the Nerd Rage, too. So, Donna is awesome as Plain Human Donna, but she has low self-esteem and needs the Doctor to finish solving all their misadventures, even when she does most of the initial sleuth work (Doctor's Daughter, I'm looking at you). But as soon as she reaches out on her own and gains all the intelligence and self-worth of the quintessentially male main character (and admit it, this show was created in a time when it was not so politically incorrect to create a superior male who tows around pretty women to have adventures, even if you try to deny that that's what it is now), she's punished with physical pain and the ultimate intimate violation of having her memories -- AND her self-discovery, her self-worth -- surgically removed.
"For one moment she was the most important woman in the universe." WHAT. WHAT is this shit, Doctor. She was the most important woman in the universe so she could do what all women are only good for, which was to give "birth" to another one of YOU? A clone you could disown and fob off on another woman, a woman you haven't got the balls to admit you love? AND THE ONLY REASON SHE WAS THERE TO SAVE YOUR BONY ASS WAS BECAUSE AN INSANE ALIEN HAD MANIPULATED TIME AND SPACE TO PUT HER THERE.
Which would be better: to die at the height of one's existence, at a point of enlightenment, of supreme knowledge and bursting with pride and joy in what oneself has become? Or to lose all of that and continue living, but in a state of boredom, unformed longing, and vague self-loathing? Reduced to being a petty, slightly despicable woman who's taking her own personal fear of a bleak future out on her friends and family in the form of being abrasive and demanding? The only consolation is that she gets to keep her relationship with her grandfather -- but she'll never know why he looks at her with sadness. She'll think he's resigning himself to death soon, or something. They might drift apart because of that horrible secret between them.
I relate strongly to Donna. Even to petty, despicable Donna, because a future free of adventure is one of my greatest fears, too, and when I've been sitting in one house all summer alternating between the couch in front of the TV and the chair in front of my computer, a future of profound boredom is not so much a threat, it's a reality. I've noticed myself becoming irritable with my parents and they're two of my best friends in the whole world. And the idea of gaining what Donna gained, and then losing not just the continued opportunity for adventure but the memory of it ever happening? It is a nightmare.
I'm really fucking angry about this ending, and it's not going away.