End of Time, part 2, further ramblings.
More coherent ramblings this time. I list both the bits I liked and didn't like. I'll list the bad bits first, because I'd rather end with squeeing than ranting. Just so you know it won't be all moaning and wailing:).
-WHY THE FUCK WAS THE MASTER NOT THERE AT THE END TO SEE HIM OFF EXPLOSIVELY? Blah to this whole "combinations of many things kill the Doctor and it takes forfuckingever" rubbish.
-The Doctor's last words. He doesn't face death nobly at the very end. "I don't want to go" is whiny, because at that point, you should've been able to make peace with yourself, Doctor. You should have been *noble*. It sounds like Rusty's own projecting again, how *he* would react in a situation like this, how a "regular" human being would be selfish about even things that are inevitable. So they're hardly poetic words such as "It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for", like with Four, or "While there's life, there's..." with Three. Ten's dying took so long that he just kept on emoing rather than doing that whole peace and nobility thing. I just talked about the finale with a friend and she said "I've seen cockroaches go to their death with more dignity." I'm inclined to agree.
-The Doctor's death lasting so long he has time to say goodbye to so many friends. So Rusty just *has* to squeeze in extra appearances from Martha, Mickey and Rose and Sarah and Jack, et cetera. Ok, in the end, who wouldn't to say goodbye to their friends when they die? But again, as with Ten's last words, again the script slipped into Rusty projecting his own selfisness on the Doctor. So yeah, let's drag his death out just so he can go and say goodbye again. And again. And again. Instead of, you know, maybe having one poignant, powerful goodbye scene with one or two friends around him. I was disappointed that neither Wilf nor the Master were there at his final end, because he should've had a friend (or the-evil-ex-who-loves-him-anyway) at his side. It dragged on too long, and while I was excited about the prospect of the Verity Newman thing, it felt... tacked on. The moment Ten stepped out of that radiation cabinet, it started a cavalcade of emofap moments (and as you can see from my list of good bits, there are good emofap bits and then there are meh emofap bits). It was like a drama version of the thoughts of someone going "I wonder what it'll be like when I die and I wonder how this person feels, and how that person feels, and I wonder how they'll remember me"... and not in a sort of regular sorrow sense, but the sort of way a suicidal teenager thinks. The sort of thing where when you're depressed, and your depression is milking everything it can from thoughts of death and how it'd affect people around you, in that sort of "I am sitting here watching this all from on top of a cloud and oh, this is bittersweet, oh, woe is me indeed, aren't they so sorry when I'm gone?" sense. It's hard to explain, but that's kind of the feeling I got. I think that in a sense, again, this is the overall emotional immaturity problem Rusty often has with his scripts and what's often been bugging me about NuWho in general. That's often what it all comes down to in the end. Whereas my Doctor is, at his core, more mature. This Doctor needs comforting, whereas when Three and Four died, they comforted their *companions*, because they accepted their deaths at the end. I was expecting more of a frantic, dark Androzani-like atmosphere, I guess, especially after WoM. Dude, if you've got to be angsty about it and can't do peaceful, go like Fivey did.
-And the missile chase went on for too long. But I guess they wanted to put some Adventure and Explosions in for the hell of it. I could've lived without another "Allons-y!", though. Le sigh.
Good bits:
ALL THE SLASH. AND ALL THE CRIBBINS. There was plenty of mindblowing slash and plenty of superawesome Cribbins. These were always of the good.
-UNIT!Masters and China Masters and all these Masters everywhere. They are love. I love the viewscreen with various Masters all over the world and how the UNIT Master is fixing his uniform, the Naismith Master and the newsreader Master are being sexybitches, President!Master keeps grinning hysterically and Beijing!Master tries bravely to balance that giant hat on his tiny head.
-That whole bondage conversation. Too fucking epic. Picspammage will follow. Ohhyess. How much do I love it that it's the Doctor who's pleading for the Master to marry him run away with him, the way the Master always did to the Doctor in the old series? Seriously?
Master: "Tell me... Where's your TARDIS?"
Doctor: "You could be so wonderful."
Master: "Where is it?"
Doctor: "You're a genius. You're stone-cold brilliant, you are, I swear you really are."
[Master shrugs]
Doctor: "But you could be so much more. You could be beautiful. With a mind like that, *we* could travel the stars. It would be my honour. Because you don't need to own the universe. Just see it. To have the privilege of seeing the whole of time and space... that's ownership enough."
[Master's eyes start to fill with unshed tears]
Master: "Would it stop, then? The noise in my head?"
Doctor: "I can help."
Master: "I don't know what I'd be without that noise."
Doctor: "Wonder what I'd be, without you."
[Master gives a little sniffle, smiles]
Master: "Yeah."
And you know that at this point, Ten totally would not be bullshitting, either. And then there's the bitchslapping. And then there's the bondage. And the guyliner. And the neck-cracking. And the purring (fuck, the purring). And that extra thigh strap. And the Doctor suggesting they can find the source of the Drums together and the Master HAS TEARS IN HIS EYES when he thinks about it. D: How fucking slashy can you get?
-Now, SHH! Listen to your Master.
Also, this. I... I... reasonabsurd just pointed this out and I... I...
I think that says *everything*.
-The Doctor calls Donna his best friend. <3 D'awwwwwwwww. This is of the good. I hope that with practice, Donna learns to turn that flashback energy into a superpower. Although, to be honest? If half a dozen Masters stalked me in an alleyway, leering and advancing with intent, I'd overheat and explode as well. Ahem.
-WORST RESCUE EVAR!
-The Time Lords call Doctor/Master "The Enmity of the Ages". They have a fucking legend. Of. The. Doctor. And. The. Master. A motherfucking LEGEND.
-I'm glad the Drums were all timey-wimey and a paradox. The Timeys could've retconned the baby Master's brain when they brought him back, going to fiddle with his timeline as a child, and so on. The plot makes no fucking sense, but it's okay, because that kind of helps to handwave it all and enjoy the ideas. This is great, because it allows me to ignore the Drums because they bloody well didn't exist in the classic series. And now the Master can be evil again, without an excuse!
-That whole conversation with Wilf, the Doctor and the revolver. God. It's so intimate, so powerful, and beautiful. And it's disturbing and just... fuck. The Doctor regretting what he's done and doing *good* emo. The Doctor not taking the gun, even if killing the Master would save the entire human race. Because the Doctor can't. Fuck. And David and BCrib are just so, so brilliant in this, with those tears in their eyes. I have been rewatching it to cap it, and Cribbins is making me tear up when he pleads the Doctor to take the gun. THIS DIALOGUE, DAMN IT...
"If the Master dies, what happens to all the people?"
"I don't know."
"Doctor... what happens?"
"The template snaps."
"What, they go back to being human?"
[Doctor nods]
"They're alive? And human?"
"Then don't you dare, sir, don't you *dare* put him before them."
[Hands gun to Doctor]
"Now, you take this; that's an order, Doctor. Take the gun. You take the gun and save your life. And... please don't die. You're the most wonderful man and I... [sobs] don't... want you to die!"
[Doctor clasps his hand over Wilf's, over the gun, rejecting it.]
"Never."
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
And then when he hears it's all about the Time Lords, he takes the gun anyway. Fucking win.
-UNIT!Master. Lots and lots of little UNIT Masters.<333333333333333333
-And of course, the whole GET OUT OF THE WAY bit. SERIOUSLY. FUCK. There are no words. But I will flail anyway. I... just... fuck. Again, I will ramble more once I get to the picspam stage. But the slash was mindblowing. And the tension was just WAAH. A real three-way Mexican, I mean Gallifreyan stand-off. And as astrogirl2 so aptly pointed out, the Master, when he comes back, is so going to brag about having killed Rassilon:).
-The mysterious lady was a nice touch. I also really liked them never really telling us who she was. The most likely candidates so far seem to be Susan or the Doctor's mother or Romana, but I actually like the fact that it's a mystery. Keeps you guessing. And that's so very rare when it comes to fanboy scripts (the fannish mind always likes to make connections and conclusions, so we get a lot of Grand Explanations for Everything with certain writers). I like.
-And and and there was generally awesome acting from the main stars, yes. We got Simmtears. And you know the power of Simmtears. Hell, I'm mostly really pleased that I didn't hate this as much as I hated the end of S3. They wrote the Master much better now, even with the crack and the unnecessary silly bits. Now he got so much more to do and it was a pleasure to see John really sinking his teeth into the role. And the scenery. And tramps. And Daaaave always does great angst. Even with the more tiring emofap moments, the acting is still good and he looks heartbreakingly beautiful when suffering. He's at his best when he's all covered in scratches and tears and broken glass and stumbling and crying with those giant saucer eyes of his. And Timothy Dalton was great fun. (I am still amused at them bringing back fucking Rassilon. That's such a headfuck, because my mental Rassilon always looks like Brian Blessed, not James Bond. But he made a pretty damn good Time Lord tyrant.)
-Eleven and his wibblyfingers are showing great promise. I'm still going to be hanging out in Ten/Simm!Master land for quite a while, obviously, but I'm also looking forward to the new kid. The trailer looks interesting, too. Can it be Neil Gaiman time nao?
Next up: HQ picspams and Doctor/Master frothings galore. Also, we need an EoT Doctor/Master ficathon. Just sayin'. I'd organise one myself, but I'm crap at that sort of thing and too impatient with people, but holy fuck, there should be fic. Bucketfuls of it. We can has?
Anyway. I've been writing this all day and there were more bits I liked and disliked, but I'll get back to capping.
The Doctor is dead. Long live the Doctor.
-WHY THE FUCK WAS THE MASTER NOT THERE AT THE END TO SEE HIM OFF EXPLOSIVELY? Blah to this whole "combinations of many things kill the Doctor and it takes forfuckingever" rubbish.
-The Doctor's last words. He doesn't face death nobly at the very end. "I don't want to go" is whiny, because at that point, you should've been able to make peace with yourself, Doctor. You should have been *noble*. It sounds like Rusty's own projecting again, how *he* would react in a situation like this, how a "regular" human being would be selfish about even things that are inevitable. So they're hardly poetic words such as "It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for", like with Four, or "While there's life, there's..." with Three. Ten's dying took so long that he just kept on emoing rather than doing that whole peace and nobility thing. I just talked about the finale with a friend and she said "I've seen cockroaches go to their death with more dignity." I'm inclined to agree.
-The Doctor's death lasting so long he has time to say goodbye to so many friends. So Rusty just *has* to squeeze in extra appearances from Martha, Mickey and Rose and Sarah and Jack, et cetera. Ok, in the end, who wouldn't to say goodbye to their friends when they die? But again, as with Ten's last words, again the script slipped into Rusty projecting his own selfisness on the Doctor. So yeah, let's drag his death out just so he can go and say goodbye again. And again. And again. Instead of, you know, maybe having one poignant, powerful goodbye scene with one or two friends around him. I was disappointed that neither Wilf nor the Master were there at his final end, because he should've had a friend (or the-evil-ex-who-loves-him-anyway) at his side. It dragged on too long, and while I was excited about the prospect of the Verity Newman thing, it felt... tacked on. The moment Ten stepped out of that radiation cabinet, it started a cavalcade of emofap moments (and as you can see from my list of good bits, there are good emofap bits and then there are meh emofap bits). It was like a drama version of the thoughts of someone going "I wonder what it'll be like when I die and I wonder how this person feels, and how that person feels, and I wonder how they'll remember me"... and not in a sort of regular sorrow sense, but the sort of way a suicidal teenager thinks. The sort of thing where when you're depressed, and your depression is milking everything it can from thoughts of death and how it'd affect people around you, in that sort of "I am sitting here watching this all from on top of a cloud and oh, this is bittersweet, oh, woe is me indeed, aren't they so sorry when I'm gone?" sense. It's hard to explain, but that's kind of the feeling I got. I think that in a sense, again, this is the overall emotional immaturity problem Rusty often has with his scripts and what's often been bugging me about NuWho in general. That's often what it all comes down to in the end. Whereas my Doctor is, at his core, more mature. This Doctor needs comforting, whereas when Three and Four died, they comforted their *companions*, because they accepted their deaths at the end. I was expecting more of a frantic, dark Androzani-like atmosphere, I guess, especially after WoM. Dude, if you've got to be angsty about it and can't do peaceful, go like Fivey did.
-And the missile chase went on for too long. But I guess they wanted to put some Adventure and Explosions in for the hell of it. I could've lived without another "Allons-y!", though. Le sigh.
Good bits:
ALL THE SLASH. AND ALL THE CRIBBINS. There was plenty of mindblowing slash and plenty of superawesome Cribbins. These were always of the good.
-UNIT!Masters and China Masters and all these Masters everywhere. They are love. I love the viewscreen with various Masters all over the world and how the UNIT Master is fixing his uniform, the Naismith Master and the newsreader Master are being sexybitches, President!Master keeps grinning hysterically and Beijing!Master tries bravely to balance that giant hat on his tiny head.
-That whole bondage conversation. Too fucking epic. Picspammage will follow. Ohhyess. How much do I love it that it's the Doctor who's pleading for the Master to marry him run away with him, the way the Master always did to the Doctor in the old series? Seriously?
Master: "Tell me... Where's your TARDIS?"
Doctor: "You could be so wonderful."
Master: "Where is it?"
Doctor: "You're a genius. You're stone-cold brilliant, you are, I swear you really are."
[Master shrugs]
Doctor: "But you could be so much more. You could be beautiful. With a mind like that, *we* could travel the stars. It would be my honour. Because you don't need to own the universe. Just see it. To have the privilege of seeing the whole of time and space... that's ownership enough."
[Master's eyes start to fill with unshed tears]
Master: "Would it stop, then? The noise in my head?"
Doctor: "I can help."
Master: "I don't know what I'd be without that noise."
Doctor: "Wonder what I'd be, without you."
[Master gives a little sniffle, smiles]
Master: "Yeah."
And you know that at this point, Ten totally would not be bullshitting, either. And then there's the bitchslapping. And then there's the bondage. And the guyliner. And the neck-cracking. And the purring (fuck, the purring). And that extra thigh strap. And the Doctor suggesting they can find the source of the Drums together and the Master HAS TEARS IN HIS EYES when he thinks about it. D: How fucking slashy can you get?
-Now, SHH! Listen to your Master.
Also, this. I... I... reasonabsurd just pointed this out and I... I...
I think that says *everything*.
-The Doctor calls Donna his best friend. <3 D'awwwwwwwww. This is of the good. I hope that with practice, Donna learns to turn that flashback energy into a superpower. Although, to be honest? If half a dozen Masters stalked me in an alleyway, leering and advancing with intent, I'd overheat and explode as well. Ahem.
-WORST RESCUE EVAR!
-The Time Lords call Doctor/Master "The Enmity of the Ages". They have a fucking legend. Of. The. Doctor. And. The. Master. A motherfucking LEGEND.
-I'm glad the Drums were all timey-wimey and a paradox. The Timeys could've retconned the baby Master's brain when they brought him back, going to fiddle with his timeline as a child, and so on. The plot makes no fucking sense, but it's okay, because that kind of helps to handwave it all and enjoy the ideas. This is great, because it allows me to ignore the Drums because they bloody well didn't exist in the classic series. And now the Master can be evil again, without an excuse!
-That whole conversation with Wilf, the Doctor and the revolver. God. It's so intimate, so powerful, and beautiful. And it's disturbing and just... fuck. The Doctor regretting what he's done and doing *good* emo. The Doctor not taking the gun, even if killing the Master would save the entire human race. Because the Doctor can't. Fuck. And David and BCrib are just so, so brilliant in this, with those tears in their eyes. I have been rewatching it to cap it, and Cribbins is making me tear up when he pleads the Doctor to take the gun. THIS DIALOGUE, DAMN IT...
"If the Master dies, what happens to all the people?"
"I don't know."
"Doctor... what happens?"
"The template snaps."
"What, they go back to being human?"
[Doctor nods]
"They're alive? And human?"
"Then don't you dare, sir, don't you *dare* put him before them."
[Hands gun to Doctor]
"Now, you take this; that's an order, Doctor. Take the gun. You take the gun and save your life. And... please don't die. You're the most wonderful man and I... [sobs] don't... want you to die!"
[Doctor clasps his hand over Wilf's, over the gun, rejecting it.]
"Never."
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
And then when he hears it's all about the Time Lords, he takes the gun anyway. Fucking win.
-UNIT!Master. Lots and lots of little UNIT Masters.<333333333333333333
-And of course, the whole GET OUT OF THE WAY bit. SERIOUSLY. FUCK. There are no words. But I will flail anyway. I... just... fuck. Again, I will ramble more once I get to the picspam stage. But the slash was mindblowing. And the tension was just WAAH. A real three-way Mexican, I mean Gallifreyan stand-off. And as astrogirl2 so aptly pointed out, the Master, when he comes back, is so going to brag about having killed Rassilon:).
-The mysterious lady was a nice touch. I also really liked them never really telling us who she was. The most likely candidates so far seem to be Susan or the Doctor's mother or Romana, but I actually like the fact that it's a mystery. Keeps you guessing. And that's so very rare when it comes to fanboy scripts (the fannish mind always likes to make connections and conclusions, so we get a lot of Grand Explanations for Everything with certain writers). I like.
-And and and there was generally awesome acting from the main stars, yes. We got Simmtears. And you know the power of Simmtears. Hell, I'm mostly really pleased that I didn't hate this as much as I hated the end of S3. They wrote the Master much better now, even with the crack and the unnecessary silly bits. Now he got so much more to do and it was a pleasure to see John really sinking his teeth into the role. And the scenery. And tramps. And Daaaave always does great angst. Even with the more tiring emofap moments, the acting is still good and he looks heartbreakingly beautiful when suffering. He's at his best when he's all covered in scratches and tears and broken glass and stumbling and crying with those giant saucer eyes of his. And Timothy Dalton was great fun. (I am still amused at them bringing back fucking Rassilon. That's such a headfuck, because my mental Rassilon always looks like Brian Blessed, not James Bond. But he made a pretty damn good Time Lord tyrant.)
-Eleven and his wibblyfingers are showing great promise. I'm still going to be hanging out in Ten/Simm!Master land for quite a while, obviously, but I'm also looking forward to the new kid. The trailer looks interesting, too. Can it be Neil Gaiman time nao?
Next up: HQ picspams and Doctor/Master frothings galore. Also, we need an EoT Doctor/Master ficathon. Just sayin'. I'd organise one myself, but I'm crap at that sort of thing and too impatient with people, but holy fuck, there should be fic. Bucketfuls of it. We can has?
Anyway. I've been writing this all day and there were more bits I liked and disliked, but I'll get back to capping.
The Doctor is dead. Long live the Doctor.