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Doctor Who Season 3 UK (No Spoilers)

 
  

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Shiny: Well Over Thirty
10:26 / 01.07.07
I thought they went with a very effective less is more approach with Lucy/Mrs Master - she probably didn't have much more than a dozen lines between the two episodes it's true - but on rewatches one can see she's always doing something interesting with either her face or her body language whenever she's one screen, and that's something that isn't necessarily all that noticable on first watch. So I think the actress really needs to be commended for getting so much personality across without much opportunity to speak.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:41 / 01.07.07
Even crazy women have their limits, it seems.

Well, she's not a crazy woman, at least not to start with. She's a politician's wife - she made her choice, as she said in the previous episode, and being a politician's wife means standing alongside him and supporting him without question. The point being that over the course of a year of abuse and humiliation - just as the Master is shown abusing and humiliating the Jones family, the Doctor and Captain Jack - she snaps. It's really not that difficult:

i) Master = broken Doctor
ii) Master's wife = broken companion
iii) Master's relationship with companion = broken version of Doctor's relationship with companion.

The Doctor shows his companion womderful things and protects him/her, the Mater shows his companion terrible things and hurts her. The Doctor's companion initially distrusts and then loves and trusts and ultimately saves the Doctor. The Master's broken companion initially trusts and then hates and distrusts and ultimately betrays the Master. This is pretty basic narrative mirroring.

I mean, ultimately it might turn out that there was a secret plot and the Master hypnotised her to fake his death and then come back for his Chameleon ring fishcakes, but that's the structure as is.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
10:46 / 01.07.07
If the abusive spouse thing was really the intention I think we've got some crap script editing going on. When did he start beating her? Why?

There was no script to edit - it's all started in the year between episodes.

It's called using your imagination. Actually, no, it doesn't even require that much from the viewer, seeing that the evidence is all there in front of you.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
11:08 / 01.07.07
This is going to be another one of those "when did the Doctor realise that Jack couldn't die" things, isn't it?

Also, I know wee think's explained the threesome thing to you, but just to reiterate: it becomes a bad thing when at least one of the parties involved doesn't want it to be happening.

Anyway. It was a bit pap again, for sure, but I don't think it's difficult to be pap and yet still be an improvement over the previous episode. The papness generally comes from the GollumDoctor, which seemed rather unnecessary. The CGI guys did a grand job on it, but it was still daft.

And levitating Doctor. The psychic field thing I can go with, but having the nations of the world step outside and all saying "Doctor" to the heavens was a bit much. Martha didn't explain the idea to them very well, it seems - significant difference between that and secretly thinking the word.

RTD's made the mistake of making the Doctor this huge, mythical figure, whereas he always used to work best when he was just a strange vagrant, picking people up and taking them on adventures. It's the same thing that put the final nail in Fear Her's coffin and vaguely similar to the "Doctor is God" nonsense that might have been going on in the last couple of series of Old Who. I don't like this Vengeful God rubbish - it sucks the fun out. Like how Buffy got progressively worse as more characters knew about her status.

It's a bit like Doctor Who fanfic right now. And not good fanfic. There were some nice ideas in this episode, but the execution was often way off the mark. I hope they rein it in next series.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:54 / 01.07.07
Also, I know wee think's explained the threesome thing to you, but just to reiterate: it becomes a bad thing when at least one of the parties involved doesn't want it to be happening.

Well, and is going to be coerced into it by physical or emotional violence. Or indeed when the person proposing it is doing so in public, without your consent, and also in public is confirming that he is havng sex with somebody else. Or, indeed, to tie it back into story structure, when the person proposing it is the Master.

On the episode - there were a fair few things I found unsatisfactory - mainly, the Deus ex Machinaishness of the ending. There wasn't enouhg for Jack to do, there was a bit too much long focus on the variously aged Doctor looking sad. I liked Martha on her own, getting to do something other than moon about the Doctor, or at least getting to moon about the Doctor for a productive end. The ending, and the defeat of the Master, just arsed me off a bit - because, basically, the world was saved by the Power of Love. It was Fear Her writ large, basically.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
12:29 / 01.07.07
Yeah, I was less than impressed by the series finale - but I think I have been massively spoiled by the superb ending of the Family of Blood two-parter. Although that was based on a novel, not the scrawlings on the back of a fag packet, so that might explain the infinitely superior structure, plot and payoff.

Anyway:
Good things:
- Martha being an independent operative in killer black SAS type gear
- The scattered gun McGuffin - fun! Glad it was a red herring
- Captain Jack all filthy and chained up
- Face of Boe reveal
- Tennant's rarely-seen awesome powers of underacting when Martha says goodbye. That's more like it.

Bad things:
- Gremlin CGI Doctor, FFS. JUST NOT NECESSARY. He was aged and crippled anyway. For all he did post-Gremlinisation he might as well have been in a coma, which would, visually, have been much better.
- Global telepathic Batsignal for the Doctor. This is sci-fi, not fantasy, people, and that was dangerously close to being, literally, magical thinking. Although not on the part of RTD.
- Captain Jack remaining filthy and chained up for most of the episode. Use him or lose him, Russ.

It's a bit like Doctor Who fanfic right now. And not good fanfic. There were some nice ideas in this episode, but the execution was often way off the mark. I hope they rein it in next series.

Absolutely. Except that I would go further and say that it's more like slashfic, what with the dying-in-the-Doctor's-arms denouement. Sub-text, as Giles once said to Buffy, is rapidly becoming text - which was a perennial failing of Torchwood, too. There's no fun in speculating about the sexual tension between the characters when it's SHOVED IN YOUR FACE. Particularly with regard to Torchwood, sex onscreen is so ... unsexy.

And oh dear, the Master dancing and lip-synching to the Live or Die song. Save it for the inevitable musical, folks. Also, RTD to write out 100 times "I am not Dennis Potter".
 
 
Quantum
12:33 / 01.07.07
The Dobby Doctor was dreadful, I thought, and our TV changed channels so that one minute Martha was telling stories to the people like a good disciple and then everyone thought about the Dr at once and he was fixed and given magic powers. Maybe there was a convincing bit I missed, but as Haus says it was a bit too Deus. I wasn't too bothered because I was expecting a lame bit of plot to fix the Dr, my money was on the mass rebellion via the Arcangel network feeding back to the Master and crippling him so the Jones' could nab the laser screwdriver and fix the Dobby (maybe with a Master's severed hand or summink) so that humanity saves themselves and the Doctor.
But of course, he has to be the figurehead and be Jesus, so he wormed his way into the network and was the focal point which also fixed his CGI affliction and made him glow and fly.

Trivia I notice from the wikipedia article- When the Master is shot by Lucy Saxon he says, "It's always the women." He was previously shot by Chantho in "Utopia".
 
 
Quantum
12:36 / 01.07.07
Save it for the inevitable musical, folks.

Yesss. I actually loved that bit, Simms dancing around being evil, I was falling about. I couldn't take the episode too seriously from the moment the old Doctor crawled out of his dog tent, it was slash. Mind you, if Dr Who's not camp then it's not real Who.
 
 
iamus
12:56 / 01.07.07
On reflection I'm getting less thrilled about the episode. I still liked it, but I've got a well-tuned perception filter for RTD's less than stellar moments. The main problem is that he seems to be especially gifted at planting the seeds of good ideas and not really knowing how to make them flower properly. There's plenty here that works in theory, that makes it sound like it should be the bestest, most epic story yet. But it's not. I'd love to see him continue to write episodes after he steps down as producer, at the moment though, I'm seriously considering travelling the world convincing the population to intone the word "Moffat" at the moment of RTD's resignation.

Martha's gotten a bit of a bum deal this season and her relationship with The Doctor has at points been almost as icky as Lucy and The Master's. She's seen a lot of cool stuff, but she's basically been stuck in a one-way relationship where she's been constantly imperilled and done everything she can for The Doctor with little in the way of return or recognition. She's been rebound girl the whole time, had her own life and the lives of her family shat on repeatedly and has only really realised by the end of the season that that's maybe not such a good thing. When she's not in Rose's shadow, she's collateral damage in The Doctor and The Master's slashtastic ongoing love-out. In a lot of places it's almost as if the creepy sexual politics of Torchwood are impinging on Whodom.

In the context of all this, Rose saved the universe by her own resourcefulness and disobedience while Martha saved the universe by doing exactly what she was told. Easing the Doctor's loneliness not through companionship and mutual emotional feedback, but by massaging his titanic ego. His year under The Master was probably the best thing to happen to him. He's in sore need of a dominant sometimes.

There was lots of this episode that felt right. I'm always a sucker for the One Year Later stuff, even if it can oftentimes be a lazy get-out for writers. That feeling that things have been bad for a long time, and this horrible new place they found themselves in when everything when tits-up has just degenerated and degenerated. I liked Gollum-Doctor in his little birdcage showing even the most potent and powerful of beings being stripped back to the frail and wheezing core of insecurity. An I liked Martha Jones laughing at the Master when he's at the peak of prickitude.

Not keen on Flying Jesus Doctor. Wasn't a fan of Golden Breathey Rose until I got my head around her and Nine's arc, or I'vejustwatchedthematrix Season 4 Buffy. It's a cheap way out really. In order to work it needs to be very delicately handled, right down to the body language, which I really don't feel Tennant nailed there. The Humans collectively egging the Doctor on should be the finger that tips the first domino in the inhumanly clever course that The Doctor's been setting up behind the scenes for over a year. That's a satisfying conclusion to their battle of wills. If The Master traps The Doctor through an insane series of fiendish and clever traps then The Doctor has to do the same right back. Not win out in the end because he has, like, really great hair, and stuff.

His forgiveness was aces though and makes him, I think, the only one to have actually learned something in the time since flushing the Rachnoss down the bog in Runaway Bride. I want more of that please. In reality I want a full-blown Taoist Doctor with all the stuff that entails, but that's just me and I'm really not holding my breath for that one.
 
 
some guy
15:10 / 01.07.07
re: the Master's wife - no, it's not all there on screen. I can see the argument some of you are making but the execution was blundered in my opinion and doesn't hold up in the first half. We can do a lot of post-rationalization but that's not the same thing as "in the script."

re: the pyre in the year 100 trillion. It may have been the shipyards, but the location and color grading was just like the planet from Utopia, right down to the quarry ridge we see when the TARDIS first materializes. This could be another confusing execution hiccup but it makes a kind of poetic sense to burn the Master in the only place he was ever a good person.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
15:32 / 01.07.07
I assumed that the Master was cremated in the present. Will watch again.

Golden Breathy Rose was okay because, not only was it built up from the start but the Doctor had already made the device that could have killed the Daleks, he just couldn't bring himself to use it and become as bad as them (again). Super psychic attuned to their wavelength Doctor came out of nowhere, though I liked him telling the Master he wouldn't ask his companion to kill, just before the Master is shot by his, oh noes! The eyeronee!

I was thinking about how well things would have worked out if they'd swapped this whole Saxon thing and the Family of Blood around. It wouldn't have required much work, as the episodes are all self-contained, and the Family of Blood gives Martha the whole 'standing on her own' thing that this episode gave her. And gives a satisfying series climax too.

Dobby-Doctor was kind of cute, but the bit where the Master ages old Doctor into him was pretty disgusting no?
 
 
iamus
15:37 / 01.07.07
Golden Breathy Rose was okay because, not only was it built up from the start but the Doctor had already made the device that could have killed the Daleks, he just couldn't bring himself to use it and become as bad as them (again). Super psychic attuned to their wavelength Doctor came out of nowhere,

I agree completely.

re: the Master's wife - no, it's not all there on screen. I can see the argument some of you are making but the execution was blundered in my opinion and doesn't hold up in the first half. We can do a lot of post-rationalization but that's not the same thing as "in the script."

I dunno. It seemed fairly obvious to me, especially in the massage scene where it's flagged with big noisy klaxxons. I didn't quite expect her to shoot him at the end, but it was clear that something was up and she wasn't a happy bunny.
 
 
Imaginary Mongoose Solutions
15:44 / 01.07.07
"re: the Master's wife - no, it's not all there on screen."

Except where it is.

"Well, she's not a crazy woman, at least not to start with. "

She does a sexy dance while the universe is ripped open and death descends on the world. Now sure, she's already suffered ridiculous emotional abuse at the hands of the Master by that point (assuming the trip to "Utopia" was pre-election), but I still think that qualifies her as a bit crazy. And no, her arc isn't hard to figure out at all, the actress did such a fantastic job with Lucy. She's always speaking volumes through her actions.

In my deranged fanfic fantasies she needs to be Ten's companion.
 
 
Tom Coates
16:41 / 01.07.07
Funny episode. It was definitely gripping and it was definitely fun but I'm just not sure that I believe it was doctor who. It was also profoundly disturbing in places. Very dark for a show that my nine year old cousin watches. The faith bit was highly dodgy as was the doctor's kennel. Liked the gun being a fake. That was cool. And I genuinely like it when the companion is revealed as actually being the hero of the show, particularly martha who rocks. It's just... Gah. It wasn't doctor who. It was some other show. Something totally camp, supernatural and over the top. Hope Lady Master is interesting. It's a hard role to play for anyone, particularly hard if you're creating a version from scratch. Any thoughts on whether new gallifrey was to be populated with the master's children?
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
16:45 / 01.07.07
Hope Lady Master is interesting. It's a hard role to play for anyone, particularly hard if you're creating a version from scratch.

Assuming we are going to have a Lady Master, and that the body this Master will be using is Lucy's, then I kinda have a feeling that the actress that will be playing Lady Master is more than superb enough to make it work.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
17:59 / 01.07.07
re: the Master's wife - no, it's not all there on screen.

Having just watched the repeat, I can safely say that yes, yes it is.
 
 
osymandus
18:10 / 01.07.07
Still not getting this messiah part . The Doctor used the masters own weapon against him , but he was entirly the conduit not the instigator (if you want to refernce it to a god , its more Thoth from the Egyptian phatanon , the self made being of word or logos)Thinking about it the Doctors propably far similaar in chacrter to Thoth (or a more modern concept Merlin ). Afterwards when asked if everyone had forgoteen he was pleased and didnt want anyone knowing who he was again. The I forgive you part was robbing the master of his revenge. (and trying to help the last over member of his kind)

Secondly its a reverse of the masters trick . as everyone took him as their lord and master the reverse of their escape was to focus it on another being a word the "doctor" becomes the liberation not the man (not evey one would have seen him so how could it )

For those who have read Grant Morrisons the Invisibles its the idea of a bullet that does the damage.

(for those others with an intrest in the occult and watched teh series it seemed to be a greater refernce this series ?? Or is that just me)
 
 
Feverfew
18:46 / 01.07.07
Wait a minute.

Rushed? Confused? Maybe slightly disappointing?

Why am I getting flashbacks to the last episode of the first season of Life on Mars?
 
 
Lama glama
22:47 / 01.07.07
Still not getting this messiah part

Then, with no offense meant, you clearly didn't watch Last of the Timelords. It couldn't possibly be any more Messianic. The Doctor rises from a state of almost death, he's restored through the power of faith, after his disciple travels the word preaching about him. He forgives the Master. That Jesus dude was big on forgiveness too. It's not exactly subtle.

I was slightly irked by this episode. After such a strong build up in the previous two episodes, it just felt bloated and left me feeling hollow and a little angry at the end. It could have done with the firm hand of better editor and director and the script editor should have culled a lot of it. Other than that, there were a few fantastic moments. Martha was brilliant throughout. Jack and the Doctor were good too, but woefully underused. The revelation of Jack=Boe almost makes me almost certain that he'll be pushed further into the background during Torchwood 2.

The skies are made of diamonds moment with the Toclafane were genuinely disturbing. In fact, the entire episode was frankly unsettling. The ultimate fate of humans, to be trapped at the end of the universe as infantile, homicidal orbs is as bleak as Doctor Who has ever been. Having recently re-watched The Long Game (which features the hellish floor 500 where "the walls are made of gold) I'm unsurprised that Utopia (where the skies are made of diamonds) couldn't have been anything other than a living nightmare.

Sad to see Martha go, but with an apparent announcement about her future involvement in the show being made tomorrow, I hope we haven't seen the last of her. The Titanic at Christmas should be fun. Just hope he doesn't run into the several incarnations of himself that have already been on board.
 
 
osymandus
05:59 / 02.07.07
Clearly i did , and clearly given my last post i linked it to a differnet group of gods of which there was a much stronger resembalance (just because theres a subtle link to a populist icon dosnt mean to say thats it ). Mithras , Baldur and Dionysus along with Horus are other "similar" self raising deities (free from gluten too ). Forgivness is also a big part of a lot of the others mentioned, also the Masters kicks come fomr people reacting and hating him , if he cant have that , his schemes become rather hollow. however Doctor did not suffer , sacrafice himself or return from death.

Afocus or talismanic champion of the people makteh not a messiah figure. If anything was closer to teh Lone Ranger . Appearing doing the deed and then riding off into the metaphorical sunset with people going "who was that finley quaffered mod " and "My Paul Weller looks young these days"
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:15 / 02.07.07
It seems to me that part of the point of the end of season three, in terms of Martha's arc, was for so many viewers to be wanting her to stay, and for the Doctor to be wanting her to stay, but for leaving to be the only thing she could do, really. It was nice to see some real consequences being shown, in terms of how utterly shellshocked her poor family is - I shudder to think what a year working as the Master's serving staff might have been like - and it was nice that both Jack and Martha took the same lesson from the whole experience. I'm sure plenty of people wanted to make "Haha, Jack thought of his team at Torchwood when he was being tortured" jokes, but the serious point is that in as much as they might be fuck-ups who nearly destroyed the world, they are indeed his responsibility (like the Master, do you see): he has to go back, if only to limit the damage they can do next season.

Not that they learnt about responsibility from the Doctor's example, of course. The other reason both Jack and Martha might want to take a break is to get away from being stuck in an absurdly dysfunctional relationship with someone who continually neglects them. Y'know, he even says "I've been wandering too long, maybe it's time for a change now I finally have someone to look after - the Master!" Okay, you can say that the Doctor can't get too attached to his companions because he'll outlive them - except, er, Jack is immortal now, more or less? - okay then, maybe he just needs someone who's the same species... But still. Both of them should have been a bit "standing RIGHT HERE, dude!" during that scene.

I thought it was a particularly sad touch to have the Doctor do his whole "Ooh, where shall we go next?" routine and for it to not cut the mustard. That "Cor, lawks, we could go back and meet Henry the Eighth, or to the planet Zoglon!" stuff might have worked with Rose, but Ms Jones has had enough. While we don't know how long Martha spent having relatively fun if still dangerous adventures with the Doctor prior to 'Utopia' ('Blink' makes it clear there are more adventures than we've seen), I think it was almost certainly less than a year - maybe a LOT less, which means Martha has more experience of wandering an apocalyptically ravaged nightmare Earth than she does of merry jaunts in the Tardis. So no wonder she wants out.

The question is whether she'll get it, but that's for another thread.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:24 / 02.07.07
By the way: I could cope with the Master ordering the murder of a tenth of the population of Earth and enslaving the rest, torturing the Doctor, Jack, Martha's family and pretty much any woman who crossed his path, but when he compared Martha negatively to Rose, that's when I wanted him dead. And that's also why Floating Jesus Doctor annoyed me - I could cope with how it looked, and I could certainly cope with the explanation of how it worked, such as it was, and I could even cope with the slightly cloying "we must all believe!" stuff - what I didn't like was how Martha's role in saving the world was just to do what the Doctor told her, which in turn was just to go around telling people how great he was, so that he could become super-powerful for a few key moments. I hadn't even got the impression from 'The Sound of Drums' that the Doctor had time to whisper a plan to her - I would really rather a lot of it had been her own initiative...
 
 
Lurid Archive
10:55 / 02.07.07
But it makes more sense that it wasn't Martha's plan, because that is her role in the story. She is, at least compared to Rose, passive and in a sense stunted by the Doctor's lack of support and attention. Wonderful and terrible as the Doctor is, it doesn't change the fact that he is still engaged in a somewhat abusive relationship with Martha - abusive is too strong here, but from his position of power he does very little to actually help Martha grow as a person, and is content to enjoy her adulation while giving little back.

I think of the Master's comparison to Rose as meant for Martha, even though it is directed toward the doctor, because he wants to exploit that resentment in her by comparing her to someone that the Doctor actually did love and reminding her of what she doesn't have. But the Masterr is concerned with Martha, not the Doctor, and what she might do. Because, in the end, while the Doctor got his floaty saviour moment it was Martha who worked hard to make it work and fought for a whole year while the doctor waited to be rescued. This is sort of the point, isn't it? That despite following orders and being kept in the Doctor's shadow, Martha still manages to find some measure of independence and self esteem.

Having said that, I have very limited critical faculties when it comes to Who, and admit to tearing up during those last scenes.
 
 
h1ppychick
10:58 / 02.07.07
Martha love aside, did anyone else think that Doctor Tom looked a bit like a descendant of I-think-her-first-name-was-Kathy Nightingale and a vigorous Northern farmer?
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:59 / 02.07.07
Not a bad end to the season really. I guess that The Master getting away using Jack's vortex manipulator would have been a touch (Dalek voice) temporal shift.

I liked some of the descriptions of what had happened to other parts of Earth, it sort of underlined that the world hadn't just rolled over and submitted to the Master's rule. Nasty moment with Martha's Mum describing how they'd all been forced to watch Japan burn.

The Toclafane irritated me throughout to be honest. Cool looking monsters certainly, but I just didn't find the childish voices creepy in the slightest.

Better than last season's ending at least. Plus liked the Doc's vaguely pissed off final "What?". I'm hoping for a two Doctors Christmas special but RTD has gone on the record as saying he's not a fan of "cross-over" between Doctors (still, he said something similar about the Master).
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:18 / 02.07.07
She is, at least compared to Rose, passive

Demonstrably untrue. Martha has to save the Doctor in 'Smith and Jones', 'The Shakespeare Code' and '42'; she has to look after him and the Tardis in 'Human Nature'/'The Family of Blood'; she even has to get a job to support him in 'Blink'. And in general her attitude has been a lot less adoring and unquestioning than that of Rose (at least season 2 Rose). She has a huge crush on him, but she's also more prepared to treat him as an equal, whereas with Rose there was always more of a sense of a generation gap (sadly this is probably where Martha went wrong - she doesn't quite get, for a while, that the Doctor is not really young...).

Agree about the emotional abuse, though, and the fact that the Master was twisting the knife.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:36 / 02.07.07
I missed the front half of the conversation about Jack's vortex manipulator. Did the Doc break it or is it still quasi-functional as a teleport?
 
 
iamus
12:41 / 02.07.07
Yeah see, the more I think about it, the more I think that Martha is a fucking excellent character who really lives up to her medical roots.

She fixes people and things and doesn't really ask for much in return. In the end, she leaves The Doctor because she knows it's never going to work, but she's taught him about himself and really helped him to come back into his own again. He's really needed that.

Hrrrrrrmmm. First I loved it...... then not so much....... now I'm swinging back again. This season has my mind going this way and that and I can't tell if that's because the character arcs are very confused or if they're brilliantly underplayed.
 
 
Quantum
12:52 / 02.07.07
It's totally broked. Can't have Torchwood jaunting around with futuretech.
 
 
Quantum
12:56 / 02.07.07
Everyone was recently saying how good the music has been, what about for the last episode? I'm going to watch it again and dance about to I Can't Decide.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
13:15 / 02.07.07
It's totally broked. Can't have Torchwood jaunting around with futuretech.

I though The Doctor said something about how it would let him go anywhere twice, the second time to apologize. Could have been a joke I suppose.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:18 / 02.07.07
I'm going to watch it again and dance about to I Can't Decide.

People seemed really divided about this scene, but I thought it was amazing - the slightly nausea-inducing combination of manic breeziness and the genuinely disturbing elements of the Master's reign (the fucking dog bowl, the fact that the Doctor comes crawling out of the tent when the bell rings, the way the Master treats women). It kind of amazed me that people were complaining about this and the use of 'Voodoo Child' when we had 'Toxic' way back in the second episode of New Who.

(Oh, and can we start treating "this isn't really Doctor Who" and "the real Doctor would act like this instead" the same way we treated "she is a plant" and "he has a gameplan" in Big Brother threads?)
 
 
Seth
14:41 / 02.07.07
I've loved the use of every pop tune in Dr Who, because Dr Who is like the best pop music to me. There are so many ideas, so many details that anchor it within its time and place, so many references, a massive heart that's unquestionably in the right place, stakes a bloody impressive claim to near-universal appeal, knows itself very well and doesn't take itself at all seriously.

I would like more pop music in Who.

I also am not sure that I can comprehend complaints about deus ex machina in Dr Who. Isn't almost every crisis solved in this manner? Doesn't every episode feature the device at least once? It seems to be one of the fundamental ways in which the series operates.

I enjoyed the finale very much. I really like that hyper-compressed story telling style in which details are hinted at rather than overtly stated. As virtually all the telly I watch employs those tricks it might just be that I'm more used to it than some. It makes for excellent rewatch material.
 
 
A fall of geckos
14:45 / 02.07.07
"People seemed really divided about this scene" - Yes, I've noticed this as well. I can see why it's so divisive - it was totally over-the-top in a way which doesn't exactly mesh with the rest of the season. But it worked for me as well. I think the exaggerated nature of the scene spelled out how insane the whole situation was. And the Master reminded me of Caligula (especially the I Claudius version).
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:50 / 02.07.07
I really liked that, a lot. For me it's all about the story, and whether that works, rather than the elements. I'm getting that the story didn't work for quite a lot of you, but for me it did, and it was a cracking one.

The Doctor forgiving the Master is now one of my favourite scenes, but then I've always been a sucker for that shit. And Martha's "leaving" was quite heartbreaking too.

I guess what it all comes down to is that I've never realised before now that what's been missing from my life is a Who finale that's essentially a cross between Flash Gordon, the New Testament and Half-Life 2.
 
  

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