Obligatory End of Time reaction post -or- Tinkerbell Jesus has Competition

[tardis_stowaway]

I am posting this from my gorgeous, shiny new macbook pro.  Everything runs so fast!  The screen makes pictures look really gorgeous.  It makes me tremendously happy. I still need to find its name.  The much-loved six year-old macbook that I'm phasing out is named Legolas.  I am considering sticking with the elven theme and naming this one Luthien, but I'm not certain about that yet.

Only slightly behind the rest of the internet, I saw The End of Time.  What a frustrating episode!  There were some individual parts that were absolutely wonderful, but overall it was a mess.  Let's do this in a bullet list form, because I am too lazy to organize it otherwise!  Good news first.

Fantastic (Or Interesting or at least Pretty Good)

-the cafe scene with Wilf and the Doctor!  Brilliant acting from both Bernard Cribbins and David Tennant.  The vulnerability and sadness had me on the brink of tears.

-the Doctor's opening speech to the Ood made me laugh my head off.  Did he really imply what I think he just implied about him and Queen Elizabeth I ?!  Asexual Time Lords my ass.  I was hoping we'd get an explanation for her fury in The Shakespeare Code, and lo, my wish was at least sorta granted.  (Hey, RTD, I think a Ten/Jack kiss would please me even more!)

-The confrontation between the Doctor and the Master where the Master talked about his father's estates on Gallifrey was intriguing (when John Simm's raving about food didn't get too...wait for it...hammy.)

-I really want the woman in Wilf's visions to be Romana III.  I will believe it's her until proven otherwise.

-Wilf's Scooby Gang of senior citizens was a lot of fun.  You go, Wilf!

-Everyone is the Master now!  I quite liked the closing scenes of John Simm in everybody's clothing, everywhere.  Forget Being John Malkovitch; we have Being John Simm.  This version involves much more maniacal laughter! Ten got one duplicate, so Simm!Master had to get over six billion. 

Illogical, Frustrating, Poorly Chosen, and Generally Bad

-What the fuck was that all about?  Whatever drugs RTD is on, he needs to take it easy a bit.  That episode made less sense than the wildest crackfic.

-Way too much of some of the stupider and more tired sci-fi tropes.  Why on Earth does the Master have a sinister cult devoted to his resurrection?  How did he arrange it?  The whole deal with the Book of Saxon and the potions to resurrect him was just dumb.  It felt like something from a poorly run game of Dungeons and Dragons.   Meanwhile, the evil rich dude with plan for immortality that goes awry made me yawn.  We've seen that all before.

-When did John Simm forget how to act?  He kicked ass as the Master in S3 (and in Life on Mars, for a non-DW example).  Here, though, he turned the crazy up to 11 and it didn't work.  The little spark of madness gleaming in the eyes of Harry Saxon was a lot more effective that meat-devouring, twitching, cackling full on crazy we saw here.  A lot of that is the fault of the script, sadly.

-Why does the Master suddenly have superpowers?! The Master is scary as a villain because of his mind.  His powers are making elaborate evil plans and manipulating people.  Jumping like a giant flea and shooting lasers from his hands didn't fit with the character and weren't really necessary.

-Waste of Lucy Saxon, who was being written totally differently that we saw her before.

-I really, really wish there had been more consequences of WoM.  When the Doctor declared himself the Time Lord Victorious, that was a huge game-changer for the character.  The cafe scene acknowledgment that he screwed up was moving, but insufficient.  Frankly, I would be more interested in exploring the darker, hubristic aspects of Ten and his parallels to the Master than...whatever that mess of a plot onscreen was.

-I don't like the apparent return of the Time Lords.  Perhaps I feel strongly about this because Nine is my Doctor, and he was defined by the absence of Gallifrey and the terrible effects of the War on his psyche (and by the love of Rose, but that's wandering off topic).  For me, as a fan who began with new school Who, Doctor Who is in may ways a show about learning to live and love despite the weight of grief and guilt.  I do enjoy classic Who, pre-Time War, but I've very rarely felt the same emotional force from it as from Nine and Ten.  I worry that undoing the Time War for the Moffat years will rob the show of some of its power.  For the Doctor's sake i would like to see Gallifrey restored, but for the sake of the show's storytelling I think it's better to keep some things impossible. 

I worry now that they're going to hit a big reset button and undo everything that happened in the RTD years, maybe even making it some little side universe that not even the Doctor remembers.  I will be royally pissed off if that happens.

Also, from the few classic episodes I've seen with them, the Time Lords on Gallifrey are boring.  Not just boring to their prodigal son, the Doctor:  boring to watch.  I really hope their reappearance is temporary.

Overall

You can't fully judge the first part of a multipart episode without seeing the rest.  However, with the exception of a few great moments, this is not a promising beginning of the end.  Russel T. Davies wrote from his weakness (messy, nonsensical plots) rather than his strength (characters and emotions).  Let's hope somebody took the time to edit part two better.

Comments

[mysticalchild_isis]

I am so very with you on just about everything. I actually really love Timothy Dalton, so I was interested to see him as a Time Lord, but I agree that undoing Gallifrey-go-boom would lead the show losing much of its current resonance, and the Time Lords themselves are difficult to write around. Having them there is sort of like having the whole Justice League- there's just so much power, you either have to ignore it, or write super bombastic stories to give them something to do.

And I was both interested and surprised to see everyone guessing that the woman in Wilf's visions is Romana or Susan or the Doctor's mother. I got a much more sinister vibe from her, but maybe it was just my own suspicious mind.

I worry now that they're going to hit a big reset button and undo everything that happened in the RTD years, maybe even making it some little side universe that not even the Doctor remembers. I will be royally pissed off if that happens.

I would be seriously unhappy if this was true. Hell, I get mad when people say Eight wasn't canonical, and the TVM was silly and not particularly good.

[tardis-stowaway.livejournal.com]

Timothy Dalton was rather great in as our spitting narrator. It's the whole herd of Time Lords that bothers me. (What is the collective noun for a group of Time Lords? A pomposity of Time Lords?) Your comparison to the Justice League is very apt.

Reset buttons are such a nasty thing to do to fans! Also, Eight is totally canonical; his appearance in the Doctor montage in The Next Doctor should have silenced all the haters. (We don't know which if any of his adventures can be considered canon, and they certainly seem to be ignoring his little "half-human" aside, but anyone trying to declare him totally uncanonical doesn't have a leg to stand on.)

[mysticalchild_isis]

Indeed! Timothy Dalton should have just been the narrator. Or perhaps a Time Lord who escaped destruction (like Rassilon, who still hung around after death, or Omega, who had that weird out of phase/alternate universe thing going on). I agree that having a very small handful of Time Lords around be fun, especially if Romana or Brax were among them.

[reverendjmg.livejournal.com]

I wish that instead of bringing back the Time Lords, who, I agree, are incredibly boring and never featured much in the old show anyway except to provide a boring backdrop against which the Doctor could be wacky and colorful, they had brought back another particular Time Lord who escaped the Time War the way the Master did (e.g. Romana, who was protected by virtue of being in a parallel universe, or the Rani, who you'd think would have thought of something so save her skin).

My vote is that the woman talking to Wilfred on the television screen is evil. "Don't tell the Doctor" has got to be a bad plan--but now that you've suggested it, I'm having all sorts of delicious fantasies about how Romana III could show up and smack the Doctor around for being a pompous jerk. Time Lady Victorious!

[tardis-stowaway.livejournal.com]

Yeah, having one or two refugee Time Lords would be great, especially if the Time Person in question was Romana. That could happen within the existing framework of the show and add a level of interest (and, if it was Romana, a measure of happiness for the Doctor) without the problems of having a whole bunch of pompous folks in silly headdresses poncing around.

Hmmm, Wilf's TV woman could certainly be evil, but the jury's still out. "Don't tell the Doctor" does seem like a bad plan, but it could be Romana or other good character worried that the Doctor is too unstable and afraid of his own death to be trusted.

[reverendjmg.livejournal.com]

True, Romana once accused the Doctor of having a latent death wish (unfortunately, I can't remember the episode in which this occurred). I think it would be interesting to see flashbacks of how things were on Gallifrey--just to explore the Doctor's relationship with them--and I've always been curious about the Adventure That Started It All, in which the Doctor first obtained his TARDIS and made good his escape (he mentions at one point that he rescued it off a scrap heap). But the Time Lords are going to want to step in and take control of everything and make sure nobody has any fun, and if they don't, then they're not being written properly.