Journey's End

[tencrush]

Okay, slightly more ordered thoughts on Journey's End.

• First few minutes: SHIT. That's not cliffhanger resolution, Russell, that's just fucking copping out of a plot point you've blatantly inserted just to keep people watching and nothing more. The redirecting of the regeneration energy was a cheap and nasty stunt to pull, and the way it played out, the "Now... where were we?" "Regenerate? Moi?" blasé nature of the scene even made the actors involved cringe. And it's not often we see Barrowman cringe, let's face it, he normally just does whatever it says in the script and feels fabulous about it. And speaking of cringing... the Hub's in a time bubble, is it, Ianto? Again, Russell, pulling a sekrit weapon out of absolutely fucking nowhere does not constitute what the minions working you for seem to want us to label as "brilliant storytelling". Rubbish. Cheap, nasty, substandard writing. Plus, what you were really doing there was telling us "These two have served their purpose for now, let's put them in stasis because I'm too lazy to work out what else to do with them." Yuck. Just to annoy us, of course, to compensate for these two AWFUL resolutions, Russell gives us one example of a great cliffhanger resolution in the shape of unexpected-Mickey-and-Jackie. That's more like it.


• No, honestly, for some reason, once Ten started regenerating at the end of The Stolen Earth, I really let myself believe that there was going to be a regeneration. I'd heard all the rumours, I was spoiled about the two Doctors thing, and the fact that one of them goes off with Rose, and yet... I thought the whole thing was a brilliant ruse. I thought they'd really cleverly hidden the fact that Tennant was going to regenerate. Yeah, alright, so I'm a dickhead, but honestly, he was REGENERATING... you can't just cop out of a regeneration like that, Russell, it's a disgustingly dirty trick and it's made me glad you're fucking off. Good riddance.


• What's with the stereotypical old German woman, by the way? Did the Indigo thingy take Martha to a Germany filled with comedy 70's porn German landladies?


• Ummm... Rose crossed a bunch of parallel worlds just to find the Doctor?? Way to go on the characterisation there, Rusty. I always knew that the whole point of Rose is that her life is just absolute shit and not worth living without him. I mean, I fanwanked away that she learned something and that she was on a parallel world moving on with her life post Doomsday, but thank you for reminding me that it was just absolutely ridiculous of me to think that.


• Yes, so... 10.5. I'm trying to work out what the reason was for creating 10.5, and not having Donna just turn into the DoctorDonna due to the regeneration energy, and seriously, I'm afraid the only reason I can come up with is theat 10.5 exists purely so that he can go off and snog Rose later. That is so cheap and nasty. The one good thing to come out of the snogging, though? It's a scene that not only non-shippers like myself HATE with a passion, but look, the Ten/Rose shippers hate it too!! That's what comes from trying to please everyone with your fanwank, Russell, you end up pissing off THE ENTIRE WORLD.


• Yo... who's with me that Mickey and Jackie are an item? Come on. Young child and Alt!Pete notwithstanding, there was totally something going on there.


• Oh... some good things: The Doctor turning his companions into weapons thing was actually a reasonable and valid point and struck a chord, and Davros' maniacal evil laugh was hysterical.


• Having said that, the Dalek threat seemed simply nonexistent. The actual Dalek/Davros/Realitybomb storyline had no tension in it whatsoever. It was rubbish. And how exactly would 10.0 have solved the problem? Would he have let the Daleks live and rehomed them somewhere?


• YAY UNEXPECTED K9!!! Good Dog!


• DONNA WAS FUCKING BRILLIANT. DOCTORDONNA EVEN MORE SO. Condemning her to a life where all her character progression was for nothing is a fucking evil thing to have done to her. Seriously. It's fucking awful.


• Despite all this, there bits of this episode I quite enjoyed. Overall, though, no.


• TRAILERWATCH: Yeah, that was David Morrissey. The fact that he was in the trailer kind of tells me that he's not the new Doctor. He was however, standing in front of something to with a boat or indeed an airship, and those Cybermen were Cybus Industries Cybermen. From the alt!universe. Rose's alt!universe. Why doesn't someone just kill me now?


• ETA: LOL BTW, at Ten's insistence that Ten.5 was some sort of genocidal maniac. Was that just because Ten.0's own attempts at genocide were so shockingly unsuccessful?

TORCHWOOD THINGS:
Yeah, Gwen and Ianto may as well not have been in this episode and Jack was just some other guy. At least Sarah Jane got to be slightly worried and eager to get back to Luke. Jack just saunters off through the park with Martha (Yeah, Martha, the UNIT drone Martha, good Lord, why on earth would he offer her a job??). Maybe he'll go and check on what's left of his team in a day or two, yeah? It's not like he cares about them or anything.

I don't mind the idea of Mickey being in TW. Martha being in TW, however, may make me stop watching. Sorry Gareth, but not even your buttony nose can make that one better. She's a godawful actress, she's a badly written and inconsistent character, I can't stand her. They couldn't write a decent story for her in three episodes, what on earth makes them think they could do it for a series?

I'm so depressed right now.

Comments

[encyclops.livejournal.com]

You said it. The regeneration angle was particularly cheap, but I forgave it a little when it eventually became a key part of the story.