eve11 | Doctor Who 4x13: Journey's End (Reply)

Oh, Donna. You were brilliant. The rest of the plot was a leaky crazy sinking ship around you (still in a generally tolerable way), and you were brilliant. Funny, quirky, smart, brave, shouty , and brilliant, and that was just in the finale. You are hands down my favorite companion of the new series, and quite possibly my favorite one of the WHOLE series. And now, you're back to square one and it makes me so, so sad and angry.

"Not those times, not one line, don't you dare." I find it interesting that River Song apparently knew what the fuck she was doing when she handcuffed the Doctor to the wall to give herself the chance to go out as she wanted, to choose memories and this particular life over survival as someone else. Part of me is extremely, extremely irritated that the Doctor didn't learn his lesson, and didn't give Donna a choice. I think Donna might have chosen mind-wipe over death maybe, but oh, it just broke my heart.

I hope her family can convince her she's so much more. I hope the Doctor is rubbish at human mind-wipes AND knows fuck-all about human brain capacity, because hey, there is precedent for that kind of thing at least in the audios. I hope Donna pulls a Charley Pollard, because yes I know it was the cheesiest line in the audios and all but oh, how could you just forget something as wonderful as all that? Man, I'm going to be bummed out for a while longer here. So very Flowers for Algernon, but without even her ability to remember how brilliantly fantastic she was. The end, after she woke up, was so painful to watch :(

It was almost, almost worth it, to see her temp her heart out and mimic the Doctor's mannerisms and flit about the console and set the Daleks spinning (so, SO OLD SKOOL CHEESE! Woot!) and save the fucking universe. Almost.

In other news:

- Mickey gets to choose to stay, but Rose has to go back? Color me confused. Doc leaves her to clean up his crazy human-Timelord mess and goes off to gallivant across the universe? As Jackie Tyler would say, what a typical man ;) That whole scene just fell flat for me. Unless half-human (Three-Quarters? say some of us who decide that Paul McGann is canon) Doctor can grow himself a TARDIS and then whiz Rose around the parallel world, I think they're going to have a difficult relationship. Well, Torchwood's got a lot of tech in it, someone please write me a story where they really do have a happy ending because I'm just going to be jaded and weirded out by Rose's end between now and then. Also, I maintain that Half-to-three-quarters-Human Doctor whispered "Let's shag like bunnies" in Rose's ear. But overall, if I were Rose I'd be like, WTF? I loved this jerk? I mean, RTD could have at least made an effort to have it be Rose's choice, and not the Doctor saying, "here, this is what's best for you." That one rang almost worse than mind-wiping Donna. Oh man, now I'm back to crying for Donna. :(

- Again, why did they not mention that Davros was basically pulling out Rose's Bad Wolf tech? That's what it was, right? Same deal, dispersed to atoms. If they had made that clearer, it might possibly have at least marginally tied up that Bad Wolf thread that just happened to be left blowing in the wind.

- Someone on the daily mentioned that Blue!Doctor == Valeyard, or at least close enough, yeah? That's a hell of a take on it. I like it.

- There was a gratuitous, completely unnecessary LACK OF ACE! When I saw somewhat plump round-faced woman coming out of the castle in Germany I was like, OMG ACE!!! But it wasn't! Fail, Rusty! But oh, Daleks talking in German FTW!!! Exterminaren! Hahahahaha!

- Davros was very cool. Davros pushed the Doctor's buttons and the Doctor pushed his right back. That was actually really well done, Davros making the Doctor face his messes (though he goes right the fuck back to running away from them at the end of the episode, *sighs*). Him and Sarah Jane had a great little scene. Also, on the topic of Old School cheesiness, I loved Rose and Sarah Jane exchanging greetings on either side of a malfunctioning Dalek. Ha! Parts of that extended scene in the Vault though were not directed very well, or possibly scripted very well. It's gotta be tough with that many characters running around though.

- Um, didn't Captain Jack drop the little bomb-thing that was supposed to go off if he dropped it, when he was teleported out? If so, "Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an ~~Earth~~Crucible-shattering kaboom!"

- Still don't know who closed the TARDIS door to lock Donna in. There was a brief mention that it was somehow past echoes of the Human-Timelord amalgam leading up to the crucible point? Actually I thought that whole section was very well done. I kind of liked the idea of the hand growing a new doctor, and I think the scenes with him and Donna on the TARDIS were my favorites next to Doctor Donna's pwnage of the Daleks. ETA: Oh! I forgot about Dalek Caan-- he might have been behind that part of things.

- I'm handwaving the faux regeneration and the general silliness of the plot, and the speed at which the cliffhangers were resolved. I figured it would go something like that, so was unsurprised when something like that happened. Oh, but I did like the bit where Davros ostensibly destroyed the TARDIS; that was cool. Poor powerless Doctor. But he would have felt it, if the ship had really died, right? Maybe he knew she still had something up her sleeve.

- Towing the Earth is perhaps the silliest thing I've seen in quite a while. What we needed there was-- I don't know, perhaps just the barest veneer of technobabble or something? I wish RTD had had the stones to write in a character like Nyssa and possibly at least maybe try to at least write some mathematical or physics-inspired metaphors. I'm not really holding my breath for the Moffat to do any better on that front.

- In conclusion, did anything else happen in that episode? I don't think so. I think Donna was brilliant, fantastic, amazing, and saved the universe and then got the rawest companion deal since Jamie and Zoe. Oh, Donna. Prove them all wrong. And don't ever, EVER, go quietly.