Doctor Who 4.13, Journey's End
Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.11 through 4.13, and for Torchwood 2.13.
Oh, thank heaven that wasn't as ridiculous as last season's finale. It was, of course, frequently cringe-inducing even while I enjoyed myself. But I sort of liked being embarrased by parts of it. Clearly I have been exposed to too much Michael Scott.
I went for a long walk after I finished watching this, not really trying to process the episode, but I think I came to some conclusions. Before I really begin, let's just get this out of the way: here's what's going to happen to Donna.
Donna's not thick enough, even pre-Doctor, to think she slept through an entire year and a half. When things start happening like, she notices her dad is dead (or left her mum, it wasn't totally specified in Turn Left) and one of her mates slips and mentions Donna's wedding and her fiance who died, Donna's going to realize that something's not quite right. And Sylvia and Wilf are going to try to make up some excuse for why Donna lost her memory, but they're going to be total rubbish at it, and Donna's still Donna, even if she doesn't have time for skinny piece of nothing John Smith when she's on the phone with her friend. (If the Doctor had been someone Donna was attracted to, that would have gone differently, which is one of the character bits that I thought was pretty brilliant.)
So, because she can't get any answers from anybody, Donna's going to take matters into her own hands and go see a hypnotherapist in secret or something, and she's going to start to remember weird things and suddenly be able to fix stuff she could never figure out before. Wilf will quietly freak out because Donna is important enough to them, at least, that they would rather have her like this than not at all.
Meanwhile, Torchwood is going to need the Doctor's help for something, but what they end up with is the dormant DoctorDonna instead. And because Torchwood's got a bajillion alien gadgets, they'll find some way to contain the extra energy and DoctorDonna will save the day again, then go on to find some sort of higher calling with her memories - if not the new knowledge - intact.
The beauty of this plan is that I can believe it to be 100% true even if nothing like this ever happens on Torchwood. I mean, it's not like they show every adventure TW ever has, right?
To actually address what happened to Donna, her family is one reason why I can't condemn the Doctor for making the choice he did - to save Donna's life at the expense of her memories, even while Donna herself might have chosen the opposite. It was horrible of course, and painful to watch, but it would be one thing for her to travel with the Doctor for good, popping in or phoning once in awhile but mostly remaining absent. It would be another thing entirely to watch Wilf's face when he learns that his granddaughter died saving the universe (and all the other universes, to boot.)
I don't know much about Classic Who, but I do know that, at least once, the Time Lords wiped the memories of the Companion(s) and returned them to Earth. I find it interesting that at a time when the Doctor has just condemned his double for destroying the Daleks, in effect condemning himself for ending the Time War and destroying his own race along with it, the Doctor then chooses to act like the other Time Lords might have. Then again, he's always exhibited this trait - he knows best, he's very clever, the humans need to do what he says even if they don't like it. He loves humans for their curiosity and their stubbornness but not for their free will, at least not when it crosses with his own volition.
Lastly, destroying Donna's memories to save her life is exactly the thing that River Song forbid him to do to her in Forests of the Dead. Remember, if he'd died instead of River Song, then they'd have never met, and she'd have had no memories of him. River Song knew the name Donna Noble - clearly she knew what happened to Donna, and wasn't about to allow the Doctor to sacrifice her own memories to save her life. She forbid him to do anything that would change an instant of it.
Still, the Doctor watched River Song die what must have been a horrible death, and there wasn't some trick he could use this time to preserve Donna in mind and spirit if not in body. I'd like to think that the Doctor saved Donna's life by wiping her memories - even though Donna didn't want it that way - at least partially because he hadn't been able to save River Song in body.
And yet, what came first? That particular possibility was fresh in River Song's mind because she met Donna. The Doctor couldn't let Donna die because River's death was fresh in mind. One thing slips and everything does. The present is the past, and the past is the future. (God, I love time travel.)
What I think it comes down to is a choice between Donna, the present companion, and River, the presumed future companion. Only one of them can have her memories of the Doctor...and only one of them can live. Whose life do you save, and whose memories? Your friend's - or your lover's?
Hell of a choice, isn't it?
(ETA: And after sleeping on it, I have another thought, too: allowing Donna to die could have very well destroyed the universe, or at least the Earth. If the Doctor hadn't done this horrible thing to Donna, he wouldn't have told the story to River Song. A dead friend is sad, but a fate worse than death is the sort of thing that sticks with you. It seemed like River Song was willing to accept death - hers or his - as a possible side effect of knowing the Doctor. And yes, she's brilliant, but they were under a lot of stress. Without Donna's fate weighing heavily on her mind, I think it's entirely possible that it might not have occurred to her what the Doctor's dying in the library would mean. And if the Doctor had died in the library, he and Donna wouldn't have been on the Crucible to merge and save the day. So either the reality bomb works and destroys all matter in the universe, or Martha doesn't waste much time talking, and uses the Osterhaugen key, destroying the Earth but saving the universe.
It's possible I'm putting too much emphasis on the role of River Song, but I'm a wee bit obsessed if you couldn't tell already.)
Okay, anyway. That's already skirting the edge of tl;dr territory, so I'll try to do a quick run-down of the other stuff.
Things that I kind of liked even while they made me cringe:
* Towing the Earth back to its proper position with the TARDIS. Even though, yes, the music was great, and yeah, it was awesome to see all his former companions helping to pilot the TARDIS, and the celebratory cheering and hugging when they realized they'd succeeded was one of those rare scenes that reminded me of the end of Farscape's Through the Looking Glass. So see? It was so corny and yet I couldn't help but like it.
* DoctorDonna making the Daleks spin and everyone pushing them around like oversized children's toys. I think what I liked about this is that Donna actually realized how freakin' ridiculous the Daleks are as villains. (And seriously, how many more times can the destroyed-for-good-no-really-we-mean-it-this-time cheeseball villain make a return?) Although for some reason the Daleks speaking German made me laugh and laugh.
* I admit it, Rose and Clone!Doctor on the beach was easily the thing that made me cringe the most, and yet I loved every second of it. I mean, they gave Rose a partially-human Doctor that she could have for her very own. How ridiculous is that? And yet, Rose gets what she kind of wanted in The Impossible Planet and the Doctor gets to have that thing he made himself give up in Family of Blood. I can't help feeling that, of the two of them, Clone!Doctor got the better end of the deal, in a way. He was already going to grow old and die, so he might as well be as happy as he can be for the time being. And yet, despite what Sarah Jane said to the Doctor as she left the TARDIS, he is lonely, and he always will be. (At least until he meets River Song again and realizes that the best way to combat that is to have someone to come home to between adventures and when his companions inevitably leave him.)
* Gwen Cooper is a distant relation of Gwyneth, who died closing the rift in The Unquiet Dead. I've been wondering for two and a half years if they were ever going to address the fact that both characters were played by Eve Myles and they basically had the same name. I thought it'd be something a bit less prosaic than, oh, Gwen is a family name, after great-great-great-great Aunt Gwyneth who died in a gas explosion in the 1850s. But you know what? I'm done with special girls. I'll take it. (And, I have a cousin who resembles me enough that I call her Mini-Me. We look far more alike that my sister and I do. So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm okay with the occasional identical cousin and/or distant niece, especially if it means a great guest star comes back to play a different major role.)
Things that I liked and didn't have to cringe over:
* Oh, Martha Jones, how are you so awesome? (Martha and Jack hand-in-hand leaving the TARDIS? Gold. Although, did anybody notice if Martha was still wearing an engagement ring?)
* Rose and Martha never really did interact or meet onscreen, but Martha's "Oh my god, he found you" and Rose's "she is good" pleased me greatly. (Also, I like to think they had a big party on the TARDIS before landing in the park. Because, Jack and Rose didn't really get to catch up much, either.)
*JACKIE and MICKEY OMG. I was so pleased to see them show up. How I missed them. Mickey, perceptive as ever - he figured out what would happen with Rose and a partially-human Doctor probably before even the Doctor(s) did. And Jackie - there was that hilarious bit about not allowing Jackie to pilot the TARDIS, and then she totally got him back by telling him she'd named her son "Doctor" - only of course that was a lie, and she'd named him Tony! I don't know why "Tony" is funny in this context. It just is.
* Of course Jack would be exactly Donna's type. Ha!
* Jack purposely getting "exterminated" in order to sabotage the ship. The wink at the Doctor. The way this episode was one big continuity-fest.
* Catherine Tate's performance was simply stunning throughout the whole thing.
* Sarah Jane knew Mickey, who knew Jack, who knew Martha, who knew Donna, who knew Rose (who was glad to see Sarah Jane again.) I admit it, I was a total sucker for the New Who Companion greatest hits album.
Thing that I still do not like, no matter how many times you namecheck her, and even if we ARE getting both Martha and Mickey on Torchwood next season:
* THOSE BASTARDS KILLED TOSH.
Seriously.
Oh, thank heaven that wasn't as ridiculous as last season's finale. It was, of course, frequently cringe-inducing even while I enjoyed myself. But I sort of liked being embarrased by parts of it. Clearly I have been exposed to too much Michael Scott.
I went for a long walk after I finished watching this, not really trying to process the episode, but I think I came to some conclusions. Before I really begin, let's just get this out of the way: here's what's going to happen to Donna.
Donna's not thick enough, even pre-Doctor, to think she slept through an entire year and a half. When things start happening like, she notices her dad is dead (or left her mum, it wasn't totally specified in Turn Left) and one of her mates slips and mentions Donna's wedding and her fiance who died, Donna's going to realize that something's not quite right. And Sylvia and Wilf are going to try to make up some excuse for why Donna lost her memory, but they're going to be total rubbish at it, and Donna's still Donna, even if she doesn't have time for skinny piece of nothing John Smith when she's on the phone with her friend. (If the Doctor had been someone Donna was attracted to, that would have gone differently, which is one of the character bits that I thought was pretty brilliant.)
So, because she can't get any answers from anybody, Donna's going to take matters into her own hands and go see a hypnotherapist in secret or something, and she's going to start to remember weird things and suddenly be able to fix stuff she could never figure out before. Wilf will quietly freak out because Donna is important enough to them, at least, that they would rather have her like this than not at all.
Meanwhile, Torchwood is going to need the Doctor's help for something, but what they end up with is the dormant DoctorDonna instead. And because Torchwood's got a bajillion alien gadgets, they'll find some way to contain the extra energy and DoctorDonna will save the day again, then go on to find some sort of higher calling with her memories - if not the new knowledge - intact.
The beauty of this plan is that I can believe it to be 100% true even if nothing like this ever happens on Torchwood. I mean, it's not like they show every adventure TW ever has, right?
To actually address what happened to Donna, her family is one reason why I can't condemn the Doctor for making the choice he did - to save Donna's life at the expense of her memories, even while Donna herself might have chosen the opposite. It was horrible of course, and painful to watch, but it would be one thing for her to travel with the Doctor for good, popping in or phoning once in awhile but mostly remaining absent. It would be another thing entirely to watch Wilf's face when he learns that his granddaughter died saving the universe (and all the other universes, to boot.)
I don't know much about Classic Who, but I do know that, at least once, the Time Lords wiped the memories of the Companion(s) and returned them to Earth. I find it interesting that at a time when the Doctor has just condemned his double for destroying the Daleks, in effect condemning himself for ending the Time War and destroying his own race along with it, the Doctor then chooses to act like the other Time Lords might have. Then again, he's always exhibited this trait - he knows best, he's very clever, the humans need to do what he says even if they don't like it. He loves humans for their curiosity and their stubbornness but not for their free will, at least not when it crosses with his own volition.
Lastly, destroying Donna's memories to save her life is exactly the thing that River Song forbid him to do to her in Forests of the Dead. Remember, if he'd died instead of River Song, then they'd have never met, and she'd have had no memories of him. River Song knew the name Donna Noble - clearly she knew what happened to Donna, and wasn't about to allow the Doctor to sacrifice her own memories to save her life. She forbid him to do anything that would change an instant of it.
Still, the Doctor watched River Song die what must have been a horrible death, and there wasn't some trick he could use this time to preserve Donna in mind and spirit if not in body. I'd like to think that the Doctor saved Donna's life by wiping her memories - even though Donna didn't want it that way - at least partially because he hadn't been able to save River Song in body.
And yet, what came first? That particular possibility was fresh in River Song's mind because she met Donna. The Doctor couldn't let Donna die because River's death was fresh in mind. One thing slips and everything does. The present is the past, and the past is the future. (God, I love time travel.)
What I think it comes down to is a choice between Donna, the present companion, and River, the presumed future companion. Only one of them can have her memories of the Doctor...and only one of them can live. Whose life do you save, and whose memories? Your friend's - or your lover's?
Hell of a choice, isn't it?
(ETA: And after sleeping on it, I have another thought, too: allowing Donna to die could have very well destroyed the universe, or at least the Earth. If the Doctor hadn't done this horrible thing to Donna, he wouldn't have told the story to River Song. A dead friend is sad, but a fate worse than death is the sort of thing that sticks with you. It seemed like River Song was willing to accept death - hers or his - as a possible side effect of knowing the Doctor. And yes, she's brilliant, but they were under a lot of stress. Without Donna's fate weighing heavily on her mind, I think it's entirely possible that it might not have occurred to her what the Doctor's dying in the library would mean. And if the Doctor had died in the library, he and Donna wouldn't have been on the Crucible to merge and save the day. So either the reality bomb works and destroys all matter in the universe, or Martha doesn't waste much time talking, and uses the Osterhaugen key, destroying the Earth but saving the universe.
It's possible I'm putting too much emphasis on the role of River Song, but I'm a wee bit obsessed if you couldn't tell already.)
Okay, anyway. That's already skirting the edge of tl;dr territory, so I'll try to do a quick run-down of the other stuff.
Things that I kind of liked even while they made me cringe:
* Towing the Earth back to its proper position with the TARDIS. Even though, yes, the music was great, and yeah, it was awesome to see all his former companions helping to pilot the TARDIS, and the celebratory cheering and hugging when they realized they'd succeeded was one of those rare scenes that reminded me of the end of Farscape's Through the Looking Glass. So see? It was so corny and yet I couldn't help but like it.
* DoctorDonna making the Daleks spin and everyone pushing them around like oversized children's toys. I think what I liked about this is that Donna actually realized how freakin' ridiculous the Daleks are as villains. (And seriously, how many more times can the destroyed-for-good-no-really-we-mean-it-this-time cheeseball villain make a return?) Although for some reason the Daleks speaking German made me laugh and laugh.
* I admit it, Rose and Clone!Doctor on the beach was easily the thing that made me cringe the most, and yet I loved every second of it. I mean, they gave Rose a partially-human Doctor that she could have for her very own. How ridiculous is that? And yet, Rose gets what she kind of wanted in The Impossible Planet and the Doctor gets to have that thing he made himself give up in Family of Blood. I can't help feeling that, of the two of them, Clone!Doctor got the better end of the deal, in a way. He was already going to grow old and die, so he might as well be as happy as he can be for the time being. And yet, despite what Sarah Jane said to the Doctor as she left the TARDIS, he is lonely, and he always will be. (At least until he meets River Song again and realizes that the best way to combat that is to have someone to come home to between adventures and when his companions inevitably leave him.)
* Gwen Cooper is a distant relation of Gwyneth, who died closing the rift in The Unquiet Dead. I've been wondering for two and a half years if they were ever going to address the fact that both characters were played by Eve Myles and they basically had the same name. I thought it'd be something a bit less prosaic than, oh, Gwen is a family name, after great-great-great-great Aunt Gwyneth who died in a gas explosion in the 1850s. But you know what? I'm done with special girls. I'll take it. (And, I have a cousin who resembles me enough that I call her Mini-Me. We look far more alike that my sister and I do. So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm okay with the occasional identical cousin and/or distant niece, especially if it means a great guest star comes back to play a different major role.)
Things that I liked and didn't have to cringe over:
* Oh, Martha Jones, how are you so awesome? (Martha and Jack hand-in-hand leaving the TARDIS? Gold. Although, did anybody notice if Martha was still wearing an engagement ring?)
* Rose and Martha never really did interact or meet onscreen, but Martha's "Oh my god, he found you" and Rose's "she is good" pleased me greatly. (Also, I like to think they had a big party on the TARDIS before landing in the park. Because, Jack and Rose didn't really get to catch up much, either.)
*JACKIE and MICKEY OMG. I was so pleased to see them show up. How I missed them. Mickey, perceptive as ever - he figured out what would happen with Rose and a partially-human Doctor probably before even the Doctor(s) did. And Jackie - there was that hilarious bit about not allowing Jackie to pilot the TARDIS, and then she totally got him back by telling him she'd named her son "Doctor" - only of course that was a lie, and she'd named him Tony! I don't know why "Tony" is funny in this context. It just is.
* Of course Jack would be exactly Donna's type. Ha!
* Jack purposely getting "exterminated" in order to sabotage the ship. The wink at the Doctor. The way this episode was one big continuity-fest.
* Catherine Tate's performance was simply stunning throughout the whole thing.
* Sarah Jane knew Mickey, who knew Jack, who knew Martha, who knew Donna, who knew Rose (who was glad to see Sarah Jane again.) I admit it, I was a total sucker for the New Who Companion greatest hits album.
Thing that I still do not like, no matter how many times you namecheck her, and even if we ARE getting both Martha and Mickey on Torchwood next season:
* THOSE BASTARDS KILLED TOSH.
Seriously.