Real review on "Last of the Time Lords": "It's always the women"

[apollymi]

Russell T. Davies, what did you eat the night before you came up with these three stories? Seriously, they remind me of the dreams I have when I have ice cream before bed or what my mum dreams when she has pickles before bed. Hence forth, I shall refer to these three episodes as the Pickle Dream Trilogy.

As Kattan put it, one can drive a large boat, like the Titanic for instance, through the plot holes RTD left, once the episodes were all said and done. I say, one can fit the Earth and whatever rocks are left of Gallifrey in the plot holes.

Okay, yes, I thought the stuff with Martha was brilliant. Kinda been getting the feeling for a while that Freema was leaving, but it was rather nice for Martha to go out on a high note. That was a good thing; the bit with the gun and the four vials was particularly keen. But why bring John Barrowman back for three episodes for almost nothing? Okay, we got the confrontation in the radiation room in "Utopia", which was nice, and they couldn't have gotten back to present time without Jack's "spacehopper", but otherwise, there was really nothing of any importance was done with his character.

Things I hated with the episode:

• The Master's dance routine (again). We wasted five minutes of screen time on seeing John Simm boogie all over the screen. I don't mind seeing John Simm boogie, but there's a time and place.
• I don't recall there being such a thing as choosing not to regenerate, and the Master has always been more interested in surviving; why not regenerate and escape the TARDIS later? To explain this plot hole, I'm going to say healing coma, fool the Doctor, regenerate after the Star Wars funeral, and have evil Rose Lucy handy to pick up the new him.
• WTF? The Doctor made a big deal about how to fix the Paradox Machine the last episode, but Jack just shoots it and it's all better. Yes, even the Paradox Machine is in awe of Jack.
• Deus ex machina all over the damned place. Martha's meme gets everyone thinking about the Doctor and he becomes Bad Wolf II. No. Just no. Yes, Gallifreyans and especially Time Lords are telepathic beings, but not even all the remaining people of Earth thinking his name all at once will make him into a god. Turn him back to normal, sure, maybe, but a god? I doubt it.
• Speaking of back to normal, what was with turning the Doctor into Gollum? I kept expecting him to start horking like a cat with a hairball and repeating his name a lot. And maybe calling the Sonic Screwdriver the "precious".
• None of the characters changed in the least. A whole year roaming a semi-post-apocalyptic world (which didn't really feel even semi-post-apocalyptic in the least), and Martha's her same old plucky self; her nails are even still perfect (yeah, I looked). Jack's been chained up for a year, making the occasional escape attempts to make it look good for the Doctor's "big plan" I'm sure, dying and coming back over and over, and he hasn't change in the least; he even looks good in his designer grime, but I was expecting a least a bit of insanity from dying that many times, however many times that might be.
• JACK IS NOT THE FACE OF BOE.
• Jack's little speech at the end of the episode is too throwaway to be real. It didn't feel like he meant any of it, like he was saying all that to misdirect the Doctor and Martha from something. Even the little connecting "clues" between Jack and the Face of Boe ("the Face of Boe wishes to announce its pregnancy") don't make sense. Using that "clue" alone, the Face of Boe is supposed to be "later Jack", but Torchwood Jack made that throwaway line about not getting pregnant again in "Everything Changes"; even Jack isn't good enough to get pregnant later in life and make a throwaway comment about it well before it. It's the wrong order. I wonder if Jack met the Face of Boe, maybe as a Time Agent, and was told to lead the Doctor and Martha off the scent for some purpose? It'd make sense, and we wouldn't be done with Boe then.
• The Ninth Doctor said he was on a boat that people said were unsinkable and ended up clinging to an iceberg, i.e. the Titanic. Book canon has the Seventh Doctor on the Titanic as well. But RTD has said no past Doctors will return (which I don't really care for, but meh, it's Rusty's fault if he doesn't want to keep some of the better camp elements), so he's just sent the Titanic through his own plot hole.
• Whatever happened to the TARDIS being dimensionally transcendental? Assorted hordes of Genghis Khan and all that? Oh well, I guess all the plot holes weakened her integrity?
• JACK IS NOT THE FACE OF BOE.
• Where the hell is Torchwood Three? I know they were in the Himalayas a year ago, but what, did the Master have someone waiting to kill them? Was there a giant yeti laying in wait, it ate them all, Myfanwy came and fought the yeti, she got eaten, and the yeti got indigestion from Owen? Follow through, Rusty, follow through.

Things I liked:

• Evil Rose Lucy. I bet the Master and she worked out well in advance what to do if someone captured him. I also bet he took her to the End of the Universe enough to have her there to rescue him after the Star Wars bonfire, just in case.
• Good to see Martha going out on a high note. It was also nice seeing her tell the Doctor WHY she was leaving.
• Jack in chains. A little bondage is always fun.

Seriously, out of 10, I'm giving this a 3.5. And that's being generous. It's tempting to drop the series now and just follow Torchwood.

And I like this review so much that I copied this over from my GreatestJournal.

Other people's reviews I've loved:
Dark Aegis
NNWest
Seti DRD
WendyMR
Naye