Previously: Reality TV was even worse in the future and the Doctor though Rose was dead. But she isn’t! She’s just captured by Daleks.
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The Parting of the Ways
Marines: When I originally wrote my part of this recap, three months ago, this was a lot of squealing about finishing a 13-episode season. Well, that took us a bit longer than anticipated between holidays and relocations and naps and stuff, but still: HOORAY FINISHING EVEN SHORT THINGS! Now, episode:
The Daleks all scream at Rose to predict the Doctor’s next move, since she knows and understands him. She doesn’t tell them that knowing the Doctor means knowing he’s a bit unpredictable. I mean, a wide tooth smile, waving around his sonic screwdriver, a convenient way out of trouble. That’s all I got.
Kirsti: Honey badger don’t need no stinking plan!
Sweeney: Contrivance will always save the day.
Mari: Before too long, the Daleks detect that the TARDIS is headed for them and prepare to attack. It’s Rose’s turn to yell, saying that they’ll kill the Doctor because the TARDIS doesn’t have any weapons. Yeah, the Daleks are kind of counting on that. They launch the missiles and we watch them connect with our beloved blue box.
We cut inside, where the Doctor are Jack are intact, and very busily pressing TIME! and SPACE! buttons on the console. Jack confirms: they’ve got a fully functioning force field, all thanks to Margaret’s interplanetary surfboard! THANK YOU RANDOM ALIEN PROP!
K: Welcome back, Contrivance! We love you, old friend.
Sweeney: Right on schedule, too!
Mari: Is it weird that I wouldn’t totally call that contrivance? Sound off in the comments.
We vworp, vworp onto the Dalek ship and AROUND Rose, so that she’s suddenly on the TARDIS. A Dalek also ends up on the ship and the Doctor yells at Rose to duck. Jack blasts the Dalek with his defabricator gun. The Doctor and Rose share a reunion hug.
Unfortunately, the defabricator gun was only good for one shot.
Outside, a doubly creepy Dalek voice tells the Daleks to have patience.
Inside, Rose asks the Doctor what is up with all those Daleks. Jack says that word on the galactic streets is that the Daleks just up and disappeared. The Doctor explains: they went off to fight a big war. The Time War against his people, The Time Lords. All of his people died, but they took the Daleks with them. Or so he thought. And he almost thought it was worth it, but here they are surrounded by Daleks, and still, he’s the last Time Lord.
Rose is all, “if we almost didn’t survive up against ONE Dalek, our chances up against an army of them aren’t looking good.” Nine does that thing he does where he is all, “EMOTIONS OVER!” and cheerily says that there is no use talking about it. They should go outside and see if the Daleks will lay down some Villain Gloating and maybe reveal their evil plan, or something.
Sweeney: They can typically be counted on for that. Villains gonna gloat, gloat, gloat.
Mari: The Doctor walks right out of the TARDIS. Daleks: EXTERMINATE, etc. They blast their plunger beams but it’s stopped by that nifty force field. Jack and Rose are hanging back inside the TARDIS because they aren’t insane. The Doctor is just all, “COME AT ME, BRO.”
He calls his companions out because the force field can hold anything back. “Almost anything,” Jack adds, completely unhelpfully. The Doctor wasn’t going to reveal that to his ancient nemeses. More serious now, the Doctor approaches the Daleks and hits them with a little history lesson: Do you know what they call me in the ancient legends of the Dalek home world? The Oncoming Storm. Know why? ‘CAUSE HE’S GONNA BRING THE RAIN AND THUNDER Y’ALL. I just made that part up, but you’d have to expect that snark if your nickname is the Oncoming Storm.
K: That’s a pretty sweet nickname, you have to admit.
Sweeney: I’ll file that away for the next time I go bowling.
Mari: I think I’ll try it out next time I’m at Starbucks.
Anyway, the Daleks may have removed their emotions, but the Doctor is betting they are still feeling that little spark of fear. If this were a stare down between people, we’d be getting reaction shots. The typical glaring, shuffling, etc. Instead, we cut from the Doctor threatening to the Daleks moving their eyepieces back and forth. It is hilarious and probably not supposed to be. The Doctor asks how they survived the Time War and the Super Creep Dalek growls, “they survived through ME.”
The Doctor turns and the Dalek in charge of the dramatic lighting flips a switch (I’m guessing) (S: Definitely the best Dalek job ever.) so that now we can see the huge Super Creep. The music gets dramatic as we see the full reveal. The Doctor looks up and helpfully announces that we’re looking at the Emperor of the Daleks. The Emperor says that the Doctor’s Inferno did indeed take out all of the Daleks, but its ship survived and it went bouncing back through time. The Doctor starts to say that he gets it and the Subject Daleks yell at him for interrupting. The Doctor is all, “UH NO,” because he’s the Doctor and he’s got five billion languages so if anyone is going to shut up– and here he turns around angrier than he usually gets– it’s the Daleks.
The Emperor continues: they waited around in deep space, harvesting the waste of humanity. By that it means that they killed lots of humans and harvested what they deemed salvageable, which wasn’t very much. They built an army of Daleks out of the dead. Rose says this mean the Daleks are half human and gets yelled at for blasphemy. The Doctor is shocked. Since when do the Daleks have a concept of blasphemy?
K: I must admit, I might have been more open to the concept of religion at my religious high school if I’d had Daleks yelling “DO NOT BLASPHEME!!” at me.
Sweeney: Church leaders ’round the world, take note: your faith probably just needs more sci fi TV references.
Mari: Emperor says he created life from dirt, so he’s the god of the Daleks. The subjects cry out, “worship him!” and the Doctor pronounces them all insane, driven insane by their own existence, by the smell of humanity on their, um, steel.
That’s their cue to end up the catch up sesh and the gang heads back into the TARDIS, the Doctor with one last smile.
The cries of “exterminate!” and “worship him” all melt together as the Doctor has feels because he has a whole bunch of insane Daleks to deal with. Again. And last time that ended in a whole lot of death.
We vworp, vworp back to Satellite Five. The Doctor disembarks and starts shouting orders about shutting things down. He’s surprised to see that Lynda is still on board, but she wouldn’t leave him. Rose gives a look like, “bitch, please. You’ve been on a 1/4 of an adventure.” The girl programmer from last episode says there aren’t enough shuttles which is why she’s still there. In all, there are about 100 people stranded. We see that chaos for a second and then head back to the Dalek ship as they are approaching Satellite Five. The Emperor is sermonizing about purifying the Earth with fire and living in paradise, etc.
K: It’s like the religious edition of the Big Book of Villain Gloating.
Mari: Floor 500. Everyone is staring as the Doctor rips wires out of the work stations, clearly on a mission, but never too busy to explain his plan: Oh, come on, it’s obvious. A great big transmitter! This station! If I can change the signal, fold it back, sequence it…anyone? Jack’s got it: a delta wave. Basically, delta waves make Dalek go BZZZZZZZ. Trouble is that the Doctor needs three days to get it all ready and the Daleks will be there in 22 minutes.
Jack explains that they can’t be blown out of the sky because of a forcefield, but that won’t stop the Daleks from inviting themselves on board. They’ll be after the Doctor and the delta wave up on floor 500. Jack is going to protect the last five floors with the surfboard, forcing the Daleks to enter on floor 494 and fight their way up. Fight who? Well, Jack, Lynda, Rose and the two programmers. Wait, the Doctor needs Rose’s help, so that leaves four. Jack says they better get a move on, then.
K: So my plan of being all “LOL NOPE” and hiding in the TARDIS is out then?
Mari: That plan lives on in my heart.
Lynda says thank you to the Doctor and promises to do her best. He promises the same and leans in for a kiss but it gets awkward and he pulls away. They settle on a handshake and I have all the second hand embarrassment. Jack comes up next to say his goodbyes too. Rose tells him not to be so final. He grabs her face in his hands and says she’s worth fighting for. He kisses her and she looks a little embarrassed, a little shocked by it. Jack turns to the Doctor and says he wishes he never met him. He takes the Doctor’s face in his hands as well and says he was better off a coward. He kisses him too and takes off with a, “see you in hell.”
Rose tries to get assurance from the Doctor that Jack will be okay, but there is nothing to say to that. He can’t know.
Floor Zero. Jack gets the attention of the stranded and asks one last time: any more volunteers? He’s got a small group of people standing beside him, but everyone else is in no hurry to step forward. Jack says he needs them to mount a defense against the invading army. Rodrick, winner of The Weakest Link steps forward and says there are no Daleks. The production assistant from the Weakest Link volunteers while Rodrick is still speaking. I guess she thinks, “if that idiot says it’s not true, it must be.” (K: Legit,) Jack thanks her and tells the rest of them that the Daleks will head upstairs, not down, but that isn’t a promise. They should be quiet, even if they hear fighting. Even if they hear the volunteers dying. The eight willing to fight get on the elevator and head back upstairs.
K: It’s pretty BAMF-tastic considering they’re all going to sudden and almost instant death.
Sweeney: Having seen to the end of the episode, this is now clear to me, but the guaranteed death thing was not particularly evident at this point. I’m not suggesting that these volunteers are anything less than badass, but at this point it was more, “Going to fight highly formidable odds,” than “SUICIDE MISSION,” which, you know, was necessary to get even those eight volunteers.
Mari: 500. The Doctor and Rose are still working. “Suppose…” Rose starts, but stops herself before she can finish the thought. The Doctor urges her to do so. She asks why they can’t use the TARDIS to just go back to last week and do something about the current mess. He answers, “Soon as the TARDIS lands in that second, I become part of events. Stuck in the timeline.” Rose figures it was something like that and that’s a brilliant answer because even though I don’t think it makes sense to most of us, most of us would also expect something about the impossibility of crossing timelines.
There is another thing the TARDIS could do: take them away. They could just peace out and let the bad things happen as history would intend them to. Rose says the Doctor would never, but he says that doesn’t mean she can’t ask. She says nothing. “Never even occurred to you, did it?” She laughs off the compliment, the sentiment. The Doctor hears or notices something and announces that the delta wave has started building. He runs over to the console to see how long it’ll take to finish. Whatever he sees, he hangs his head. Rose asks how bad it is and this is kind of awkward, but I’ll let Kirsti answer that question. If I get into the rest of this scene, well…
GO AHEAD KIRSTI!
Kirsti: “Rose Tyler, you’re a genius!” the Doctor yells. He can use the TARDIS to cross his own timeline and sort shit out. He runs into the TARDIS, Rose following, and starts yelling orders. He’s either going to save the world or tear it apart. Rose recommends aiming for the first one. He says he’s just got to go and power up one of the work stations outside and runs out the door. Once he’s clear of the TARDIS’ force field, he stops. Then he turns and looks at the TARDIS a little tearily. He points his sonic screwdriver at it, and the TARDIS starts vworp vworping. Rose bangs on the door, yelling at him to stop, but it’s too late.
Sweeney: I’m not a huge fan of Rose, but I had some feels for her and her desperation to return to the Doctor and the near-certain demise that would await her there.
K: Some feels is better than nothing…
The TARDIS flies through the vortex with Rose still banging on the door. A hologram of the Doctor appears by the control panel, saying that this is an emergency protocol. Hologram!Doctor delivers a message from the ACTUAL Doctor – if she’s seeing the message it means that they’re in fatal danger. He promised to look after her, so he programmed the TARDIS to take her home. And it can never come back for him, because whatever he’s facing, it’s bad enough that it can’t be allowed to get its hands on the technology in the TARDIS. “Let the Tardis die. Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it. No one’ll even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner,” he says. If she wants to remember him, she can do one thing. He looks directly at her, tears in his eyes, and tells her to have a good life, a fantastic life.
Sweeney: The whole not-looking-NOW-I’M-LOOKING was meant to be feelsy, I think, but it was really just creepy.
Mari: LA-LA-LA-LA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU.
K: Me neither, Mari. Me neither.
The hologram flickers and disappears. Rose yells that he can’t do this to her, and runs to the control panel, trying everything she can think of. But it doesn’t work. The TARDIS stops vworping, and she runs out the front door to find herself on the Powell Estate. She runs back inside and tries again to make it move, but it’s dead. Outside, Mickey’s running towards the TARDIS, having heard it coming. Okay, how is it that companions can hear the TARDIS from forever away but passersby are always like “Nope, didn’t hear a thing”?? Whatever. Rose leans dejectedly against the outside of the TARDIS and cries. Mickey asks what’s wrong and she throws herself into his arms.
Satellite Five. Jack opens a comms channel and asks Rose to read him the internal laser codes that are showing up on the screens of floor 500. The Doctor says she’s gone, and Jack’s all “DUDE, WTF.” He asks if the Delta Wave will ever be ready, and the Emperor appears on a screen to be all “LOL NOPE”. But, you know, in a creepy Dalek way. Well. Not exactly “LOL NOPE”. The wave will be ready soon enough, but there’s no way to calibrate it to distinguish between humans and Daleks. If the Doctor uses it, everyone and everything will die. And it will be the Doctor’s fault.
“If I am God, the creator of all things, then what does that make you, Doctor?” the Emperor says. It’s quite possibly the strangest piece of “Neener neener, I know you are but what am I?” that I’ve ever heard. The Doctor stares coldly at the screen and snaps that the human race won’t die out because there are colonies out there. But all Daleks are within range of the delta wave. He has to protect the universe from the Daleks, and tells Jack that he had to make a decision on behalf of every living thing on earth: die, or become a Dalek. Jack tells him to keep working. He’s never doubted the Doctor, and he never will. (S: Feels for you too, Jack.) They grin at each other. The Doctor looks at a BAD WOLF logo on the wall and asks the Emperor how it managed to scatter those words everywhere he went through time and space. The Emperor’s reply is basically “*shrug*” because apparently it wasn’t him.
Back in 2005, Rose is at a cafe with Mickey and her mum. Jackie and Mickey make awkward nothing-y conversation while Rose stares broodily out the window. Jackie suggests she eat something, and Rose snaps “Two hundred thousand years in the future, he’s dying, and there’s nothing I can do.” She doesn’t just want to sit there eating chips. Right, so you come up with a plan WHILE EATING CHIPS. If there are chips in front of you, you eat the chips. God, Rose, it’s not difficult.
Mari: I do all my best brooding while eating, so I don’t even know what her problem is.
K: SRSLY. Jackie says the Doctor did the right thing in sending her home, but Rose can’t imagine going back to her old existence now. She had a better life with him, a life where you don’t just give up. You stay and fight for what you believe in.
Satellite Five. Jack puts Lynda on the observation deck, and tells her that she’s his eyes and ears regarding the position of the Dalek fleet once they get into the station. She’s to report all movements to him. They’ll know where she is, but there’s a super strong door to protect her. LOL, OKAY. He asks the production assistants how long they’ve got until the fleet arrive, and the response is basically “Uh, they’re already here”. Dalek ships stream past the window and Jack yells “This is it, ladies and gentlemen. We are at war!“. Daleks pour from the ships.
Back at the Powell Estate, Mickey tells Rose that she can’t mope forever. She has to start living the kind of life the Doctor could never have. The kind of life she could have with him. Rose suddenly notices the words “BAD WOLF” scrawled in giant chalk letters in front of her.
She turns, noticing more and more BAD WOLF graffiti. Mickey says it’s been there for years and doesn’t mean anything, but Rose disagrees. It’s not a warning. It’s a message, telling her that she can get back to the Doctor. She runs off.
Sweeney: SRSLY? Please don’t let this be it, because the vague “IT’S OUR ~*COSMIC LINK*~ ACROSS TIME/SPACE!” resolution is deeply unsatisfactory and a total fucking let down.
K: Floor 499. Jack tells his troops to stand their ground, and wishes them luck. Lynda looks at the screen on the observation deck and says that Jack was right – they’re breaking in at floor 494. The whole satellite shakes and the Daleks pour in.
Powell Estate. In the TARDIS, Rose says they just need to persuade the TARDIS to make the return journey, on account of it’s psychic and all. And in order to do that, they need to open the heart of the TARDIS so she can communicate with it. Dude, no.
Mickey says that if she goes back, she’ll die. Apparently Rose has no fucks to give, and says there’s nothing here for her. Mickey sad pandas.
Sweeney: She definitely could have softened that delivery a teensy bit. Way harsh, Tai.
Mari: Poor Mickey is just a virgin who can’t drive.
K: Poor Mickey…
Satellite Five. Daleks prowl the halls. Jack tells his troops to fire up the lasers. They try to do so, but Lynda announces that the Daleks have overwritten all their defences. The volunteers start firing at the approaching Daleks, but their force fields just absorb the bullets. “You lied to me!” one woman screams at Jack through her comms device before getting exterminated.
Back at the Powell Estate, Mickey’s got a heavy chain set up between his Mini and the TARDIS console panel. My mum had a classic Mini when we first moved to England and it wouldn’t go over about 45mph. Driving on the motorways was basically admitting that you had a death wish. In short: this is a terrible plan. He floors the pedal to the metal (I’m sorry, how can I not?) (M: truly, how could you not?) and burns out his back tyres, creating clouds of smoke. The panel moves a fraction, then the chain snaps. Okay, show. Whatever.
Satellite Five. Lynda says the Dalek advance guard has made it to floor 495. Jack grins – he’s got something special planned on floor 495. We cut down there to a Dalek asking someone to identify themselves. “You are the weakest link. Goodbye,” the Anne-Droid says before vapourising three Daleks. Jack cheers. But the next one to enter blows the Anne-Droid’s head off. Womp womp. The Daleks break into the ventilation shafts because why spend time climbing stairs when you can use vertical air shafts?! But instead of heading up to the top five floors as expected, they start heading down to where the survivors are hiding. They round up the screaming survivors, chanting “EXTERMINATE”. Rodrick yells that they can’t exist and it’s not fair. Lynda turns the sound off on her viewing screen, and announces that the Daleks killed everyone on Floor Zero. And on that cheerful note, I hand over to Sweeney to bring us home!
Sweeney: Rose mopes some more as her mom tells her that the plan was always doomed to fail and all the Doctor ever wanted was for her to be safe. Rose pulls the “I met my dad,” card. Timing, Rose. This is a hefty bomb to drop when you’re about to disappear again to near certain death. Shit. Jackie runs off, overwhelmed.
Satellite 5. Lynda watches her screen and sadly reads off to the Doctor that entire continents are being wiped out. Grand Master Dalek proclaims that it has created heaven on Earth.
Jack, meanwhile, goes to the last of his volunteers and informs them that they’re now it. They are the last line of defense. The two programmers from before flirt a little more before they die. (M: Not as good as a last meal, but okay.)
Mickey, meanwhile, is on one hell of a character redemption mission: he tells Rose that he’s not having her give up just yet. He says they just need something bigger and he looks up to see a big yellow tow truck rounding the corner. Jackie hops out and tells Rose she’s only got it until 6:00, but it is exactly the sort of thing her dad would have done. D’aww. She tells Rose to get out of there before she changes her mind.
K: Sometimes I can’t stand Jackie, and other times – like here – she’s basically my favourite person ever.
Sweeney: On the whole, Jackie and Mickey have been plot fodder – giving them actual motivations has frequently been secondary to however they can help get Rose from A to B, but I’m thankful for moments like this where there seems to be both that movement and a little bit of character development simmering below the surface.
Satellite 5. Jack and his crew open fire on the Daleks, hiding behind a cage. They don’t seem to be effective, but eventually manage to take out the eye-camera-thing on one, just before the lady programmer is shot. The guy programmer goes on a fruitless suicide mission fit of rage, shooting the Daleks with no aim and is promptly murdered.
This leaves…Lynda. She tells the Doctor that she’s got a problem – they’ve found her. The Doctor assures her that the side of the ship she’s on is reinforced. She anxiously says she hopes so, but watches as they attempt to burn a hole through the door. Then she turns around and sees Daleks floating up to the window. Dramatic music plays, leading us to the glass shattering. Lynda screams and dies.
K: This gave me feels. Lynda never asked to get involved in any of this, yet she stood up and helped nonetheless.
Sweeney: Same. This whole sequence of big deaths was pretty heavy, but Lynda’s got to me most of all.
Elsewhere, Jack is still firing. “Last man standing.”
The Doctor has sad face about Lynda, but keeps working. God Complex Dalek tells him that if he keeps working on what he’s doing he will kill off mankind.
Meanwhile, Jackie’s yellow truck plan is underway. They shout at Mickey to, uh, keep doing exactly what he’s doing. Very helpful advice, ladies. But he does and it works. The door breaks open and Rose stares into the heart of the TARDIS. It does crazy glowy things to her eyes and the door slams shut before she blinks off, leaving Mickey and Jackie standing there a bit bewildered.
Quick shots of: Jack’s last stand. The Doctor at work. TARDIS flying through space. Rose getting her glowy-TARDIS-heart-stare on. The quick cuts end with Jack’s luck coming to an end. The Daleks shout, “EXTERMINATE!” again. Jack says he kind of figured that and tosses his gun to offer himself up for extermination.
Upstairs, the Doctor is stoked because his thing is finally ready – just in time for a fuck ton of Daleks to show up. Except, instead of just killing him, it’s time for villain gloating conversation. (K: It wouldn’t be Traumaland without it!) God Complex Dalek says that what it really wants is to see the Doctor become like it, destroying all of mankind. “Hail, the Doctor, The Great Exterminator.” The Doctor says he’ll do it, and holds the handles. He’s told to prove himself as either coward or killer. The Doctor throws his hands up, saying he chooses coward any day.
K: It gives me instant feels for poor sweet Nine, so broken and alone and still reeling from the Time War.
Sweeney: He asks what will become of him and when he’s told that he’ll be exterminated he says that maybe it’s time and he offers himself up as well, though with a bit less gusto and a bit more resignation than Jack.
BUT WAIT. The TARDIS rolls up. Rose steps out and the glowy light budget on this episode must have been through the roof. The electric bill alone was probably equivalent to the entire rest of the production costs for the episode.
Mari: It wouldn’t have been hard to beat because, plungers and whisks, girl. Plungers and whisks.
K: Gotta love the BBC and their “what can we make from the stuff in the kitchen?” approach to props!
Sweeney: The Doctor asks what she’s done. Her face is wet with tears and her voice is thinner as she says she looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into her. The Doctor says that she looked into The Time Vortex, which no one is meant to see.
A Dalek tries to shoot Rose but she of the glowy eyes also has crazy glowy powers and she deflects that shit handily. “I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself,” she says. She explains that she takes the words and scatters them in time and space, a message to lead herself there. Hmm. On the one hand this is definitely better than the conclusion I had reached before. On the other I don’t actually entirely get it so I’m not sure how to feel about it.
Mari: TARDIS-Rose took the words on the wall of Satellite Five, “Bad Wolf” and scattered them out in time as clues to lead herself back to this moment, in the future. Where it already happened. YEAH.
K: I really really want to use a gif from season 3, but I’m going to restrain myself so as to not spoil our Snows. I’m sure 90% of you can work out which one it is anyway…
Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, “spoilers, sweetie.” But Jack Skellington accurately sums up where I’m at right now.
Moving on: the Doctor says that the entire vortex running through her head will burn her. Glowy Eyed Rose tries to have a feelsy conversation but is interrupted by disrespectful Daleks, so she tells them to shut the fuck up. She says she can see how tiny they are in the whole of existence. She stares disintegrating the Daleks around her. She says that everything must die and the Time War ends, exterminating every last Dalek. The Doctor tells her that she’s done it and now must stop – just let go. She says she can’t because she brings life and we see Jack gasp awake. The Doctor tells her that she can’t just go around fucking with life and death but she corrects that she can. You know, because she is.
K: Hush, you. Personally, I love the cheese. And that “I think you need a doctor” line? He knows exactly what he’s getting into, and it gives me feels.
Sweeney: I don’t even know what to do with that, because that line was the worst part of that entire conversation. So.
The Doctor breathes the TARDIS’s heart back into it or whatever. Downstairs Jack is alive and wondering what the fuck is going on. He runs upstairs to watch the TARDIS blink of without him. SHIT. Brought back to life only to be straight up abandoned in space and time. Some fucking luck.
Rose wakes up on the Jack-free TARDIS, asking what’s going on. The Doctor lies to her and says that he just sang a song making the Daleks run away. Rose tries to remember about the light in the TARDIS, but he doesn’t help her out. He looks down at his hand and sees it glowing. He turns to her with a bit of a crazy eyed feelsy look, saying that he was going to take her to so many places. He babbles about how she might go and so might he, but not like this. He has no idea how many heads he’ll even have – he’s got to undergo a rather dodgy process. He explains that his body is dying, but Time Lords have a way of cheating death, which is what he’s doing now. “Before I go, I just want to tell you you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you know what? So was I.” The music swells as Rose smiles. Then he bursts into crazy flame light. When it stops, he’s David Tennant (K: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS). Ten process his new teeth and then asks where he was. “Oh that’s right, Barcelona.” End credits.
DONE. FINISHED! YAY! I’M SO HAPPY!
I’m happy about the finishing. Still kind of #meh about the show, albeit determined to at least give the next season a try. I hated most of that Rose/Nine conversation on Satellite 5, but there were plenty of things I did appreciate. His crazy rambling on the TARDIS, for example. (Except for the part where he didn’t tell her what really happened. That irks me.)
In past episodes when I have complained about things I have had rather specific grievances – things that I think were genuinely badly done. Bits of those things were still present. This show seems to take such insane leaps and has, thus far, done very little to build a cohesive, consistent universe. It relies on big speeches to get points across that it doesn’t seem equipped to actually convey with actual story. The combination of shitty effects and aggressive speechifying and over-the-top contrivance just isn’t my jam. I think it’s because it straddles the line of being camp without actually committing to being camp, which I do love.
However, in spit of how much I totally could have done without a few key scenes in this episode, there was a lot that I liked, which I guess means that I think they’re getting better at the storytelling pieces. All the little moments with all the non-main characters were lovely and heartbreaking. And there was a bit of an, “Oh, you actually went there,” with ditching Jack. It was genuinely unexpected but also truly believable, which was another snaps-for-you touch.
I’m proceeding with caution. I think the show is better now than it was in the beginning. I’m finding my quest to like it more than I do a little exhausting, but, like I do want to love this show like everyone else does. And, you know, slow but steady march of progress and all that.
Mari: I try to remind myself that I was pretty much there when I finished my first watch of series one. I mean, not quite where Sweeney is because I loved these character way more. I also had some semblance of Snow life in that I didn’t know that this was Eccleston’s last episode and I was DEVASTATED. And confused. The point is that it gets lost in the YAY FEELINGS I have now, but I once struggled with plenty of the above as well.
I’ll say more about series 1 when we get to the episode rankings (basically: NINE ROOLZ, THESE PLOTS DROOL), but I just have to say that I love this episode. I have so many feelings for Nine, partially for reasons that are spoilery. If we just focus on this episode, though, it’s kind of depressing how he goes out. He’s determined to defeat the Daleks, keep Rose safe, keep Lynda safe and save humanity. He basically does NONE OF THAT. Rose kills the Daleks, Rose comes back, Lynda dies and then, he’s done.
The Bad Wolf thing is pretty weak and serves as a plot point mostly if you are able to overlook to enjoy the character development and feelings.
I’m pretty excited to see how it goes in Season 2, which I remember only a little about. WEE.
K: Admittedly, I watched this episode in September so it’s been a while since I’ve had to think about it and it’s possible that I’m looking at this episode through the rose coloured glasses of hindsight. For me, it’s a fabulous mix of feels and OMG WTF and tying everything together. The first time I saw this, the Bad Wolf thing nearly blew my mind because I hadn’t noticed all the little hints throughout the season. This meant that rewatching the season was pretty fabulous, because I picked up on so much that I missed the first time around. I love Nine and his sassiness, but I’m thrilled that we’re about to hit season 2 (which is my favourite of ALL THE THINGS) and Ten, who is 1000000% my Doctor. Onwards, friends. Onwards.
Next time on Doctor Who: Meet the new guy, David something or other on S02 E00 – The Christmas Invasion.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
