Journey's End - Episode Review
Once again RTD has succeeded in making me both love him and hate him simultaneously.
In some respects, Journey’s End was awful, and in others it was edge-of-your-seat quality television. I have yet to decide which side prevails.
LOVED: The DoctorDonna awesomeness. I love it when the two of them are special together. Also, the TARDIS falling into the core thingy was quite exciting. Not to mention the return of Mickey! Yay, I love him J And… German Daleks FTW!
DIDN’T LOVE SO MUCH: The bad fanfic happy ending for the Doctor and Rose. I know I’m biased because I don’t particularly like the pairing, but seriously? First the DoctorII isn’t good enough for her and she wants the original, then he tells her he loves her and she’s all over him. And the Doctor just gives the crazy genocidal version of him to her to train, sorry, um, fix?
Also, everything seemed to be a bit of a quickfix, the three Doctors pressed a few buttons, made the Daleks spin around, and then burn up. Then voila! Everything’s fine!
So there were good things and bad things about it, as with most RTD episodes.
I’m going to start on a very shallow note…
Unexpected!Naked!Tennant steering the TARDIS completely made up for Unexpected!Clothed!Jack crawling out of the incinerator.
Also, when the TARDIS was going down to the core of the Crucible, and Rose was holding the Doc’s hand, you could just tell that Jack wanted to hold his hand too. Bless J
Anyway, now that I’ve got that out of my system…
A lot of reviews I’ve read say how Martha, Jack, Mickey etc were completely superfluous. But although they didn’t play a major role, the fact that they all had weapons to destroy the Earth/Crucible/Daleks/humans etc, and how Davros uses it against the Docor by saying he made his companions into weapons. Ouch. The look on the Doctor’s face. That was one of the bits I liked most on this episode.
I liked the Mickey/Jack hugging “And that’s beefcake.” “And that’s enough hugging.” Aww, I loved that bit too much for words, and it made me laugh out loud. Love those two.
Jack having dirty thoughts about the three Doctors. Need the fanfic right now! Quick! Someone write it! I would if I could write PWP, but I can’t, so I won’t. J
The DoctorDonna. I loved clever Time Lord!Donna. Catherine Tate was fantastic, she got the Doctor’s character really well, with the fast-talking and the techno babble. She looked so smug - it was fantastic! I did miss the real Donna, though, even more so at the end. And also, goofy!Doctor, grinning away while all the companions and the real Doctor were flying the TARDIS.
The Children of Time. The Doctor’s family. I think that was wonderful, particularly when they were all flying the TARDIS together. I’ve never seen the TARDIS so full. Everything was so happy and hopeful and you could just tell something was going to go wrong.
Which it promptly did.
The Doctor went through all his goodbyes, Sarah Jane, who went home to Luke, Martha, Jack and Mickey, who went back to Torchwood (so it looks like the rumours about TW series 3 were true), Rose going back to the parallel world with her very own duplicate Doctor to keep for herself, and the Doctor and Donna are left in the TARDIS. And that’s where it all goes wrong. Everything from that moment onwards was absolutely heartbreaking.
All his companions have gone off, the previously happy family has now left home, leaving the Doctor and Donna, but the Doctor knows that Donna can’t travel with him and has to forget all about him. It’s a theory that’s been speculated about for a while now, and I always said it would be even worse than if she died. And I was right, except it was even worse than I thought it would be.
I stupidly thought that she would forget the Doctor but still be the Donna we know and love. But she’s forgotten everything about the Doctor, and so she’s reverted back to her shallow, trivia-obsessed pre-Doctor self. All that character development, all those wonderful Donna moments I have loved this season. All gone.
At least if she died, she would have died a hero’s death. But instead she forgets about the Doctor, gossips away on the phone to her mates, and doesn’t even say bye to him.
All the DoctorDonna relationship for the past season and she barely notices when he leaves! It’s not fair!
*has tantrum*
So yeah, it was awful what happened, but the ending was the saddest moment of DW so far and what with that and the Torchwood finale I am well and truly depressed.
I wish my life didn’t revolve round TV shows like this.
Ah well, the real Donna will always stay alive in my fan fiction…
Next time…
ZOMG David Morrisey! Yes please! I think I could suffer the Cybermen to see him in DW. And is it too much to ask that he and David Tennant do some more dancing together a la Blackpool?
PLZ?