The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End
By now I know what to expect with the series finales. They
are big, very very big. A little reminiscent, and generally plotwise a massive
disappointment. So, keeping that in mind you can’t be disappointed with The
Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, because they merely ran true to form. In fact,
they were the pinnacle of overblown, over the top stories laced with awful
plotting and a very drawn out ending.
Although there are a few specials to go, you could be
forgiven for seeing this one as Russel T Davies’ and David Tennant’s swansong.
We even got a regeneration of sorts! What really got me was how unsatisfying
the resolution was. Which is RTD’s forte it seems, building up on a huge scale
and then not really having anywhere to go except a big reset button or
exploring the realms of incredulity.
So. We have planets throughout the universe disappearing,
and at the start of the story the Earth becomes one of them. Why the TARDIS
would not be taken with the Earth is anyone’s guess, it had landed there and so
being left in the empty space when the Earth is stolen made no rightly sense to
me.
Not only do we have a Dalek army, a Dalek supreme, but Dalek
Sek and Davros are back too. Julian Bleach’s Davros is wonderful, perfect
casting as the mad creator of the Daleks, and he looks fantastic, true to the
original, so a big thumbs up for that. All the important characters are back
for the finale – the characters that have made the first four years of the new
series. Rose, Mickey, Rose’s Mum (grooooooan), Martha, Captain Jack, Sarah Jane
(always wonderful to see her) and Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister. They
all come up with ingenious ways to destroy the Earth so the Daleks can’t have
it, but it all comes to naught in the end.
Because this series is about Donna. And she’s been saying
she’s no-one, so it must be her who saves the day. So here’s the thing that
killed the story for me. Donna-Doctor. Doctor-Donna. Whichever it was. As the
TARDIS is seconds away from destruction, Donna touches the Doctor’s hand in a
jar (this is the hand he lost in ‘The Christmas Invasion’ by the way) and
creates a new Doctor, combined with Donna. So yes, we have two David Tennants!
Then Donna herself inherits the Doctor’s mind, combined with hers, and presses
a few buttons and stops everything.
Let’s look past the fact that pressing buttons is a very
weak way to resolve the situation, and consider then that it is NOT Donna that
saves the day, but the Doctor-Donna. It’s nothing inherit in Donna perse, but
the combination of minds which allows her to be the heroine. For me, that
defeated the purpose of having her being the key to it all. BIG TIME.
That for me was the single biggest issue with this epic
story which looks great although it’s full of many other crappy elements like
the Oster-Haagen key, and the end of the first part where the Doctor starts to
regenerate and then doesn’t cause he didn’t want to. Then we have the ending
with Rose. Rose is sent back to the alternate Earth and given the new version
of the Doctor, who is incidentally human. I’m sorry, but AS IF. Let’s also look
past the age difference and oh so much that’s wrong with the idea of a
relationship between the two, he’s a friggin’ facsimile. It’s dreadful, awful,
shite.
The ending doth drag too, and all we really needed to see
was what happened to Donna, who has her memory of the Doctor wiped because
otherwise it will kill her. And this is really sad. And again unsatisfying for
this viewer. In fact, I may have preferred her to actually die. Dalek Caan is
continually saying one of the companions is going to die, and then no-one does.
So, in short, grand on scale, vision and design, short on
plot and satisfaction. In short, the antithesis of every series finale RTD has
given us.
3/10
The Next Doctor
And we’re back with another Christmas special, starring
David Morrissey as Jackson Lake, who thinks he’s the Doctor with his faithful
companion Rosita (played by the brilliant Velile Tshabalala) facing off against
Miss Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan) who is equally brilliant. In fact, the these
actors make the show wonderful, seriously wonderful.
The first three quarters of the episode is just a great
romp, with some clever twists. I love the idea of the Doctor thinking that
Jackson must simply be a future incarnation, and then he has a sonic
screwdriver which is just… a screwdriver! Brilliant! And the TARDIS is a hot
air balloon! Wonderful stuff! Then we have the Cybermen, and their ‘Cybershades’
very strange creatures with cyber-faces but a sort of shaggy black carpet as
the costume. Ok, they look pretty crappy.
The show is full of wonderful moments and reveals, it’s
truly magical in places, sad in others. Highly entertaining. It was the best
Christmas special of all.
Until… the Cyberking. Oh gawd. What were they thinking? A
huge Cyberman walking around London destroying everything with like a control
deck and Miss Hartigan at the controls. She appears to be an early feminist
too, but the script doesn’t treat her well which I didn’t like and seems almost
anti-feminist in the way it portrays her. It looks a bit rubbish this
CyberKing, but in concept it’s even worse. It’s a kind of lame concept which
may have been used because RTD couldn’t think of anything else when faced with
the question – ‘What are the Cybermen up to?’.
The story is the first to be shot in HD, and it looks
magnificent. The improvement in picture quality is massive. I enjoyed that
aspect and the performances of the guest cast. And the first three quarters is
pretty awesome. Hard to get past the CyberKing though…
6/10
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