Doctor Who season finale (spoilers)

[jaderabbit]

I enjoyed the season finale of Doctor Who. They really did pull out all the stops. I particularly liked seeing Elisabeth Sladen in her Doctor Who context again.

One thing I didn't pick up on: Who was pulling Donna and The Doctor together throughout their run? It seems that someone must have had a hand in it, but I couldn't figure it out. Future Rose

Comments

[platypus]

I don't think skiffy cut anything from Journey's End, with its 90-minute slot. It was, I believe, said that Caan was manipulating the timelines to make things happen as they did, but how exactly was not clear.

[jaderabbit]

Ah, thank you. I caught something sort of like that, but somehow it didn't register as fact. Hmm. So maybe we're not all done with the Daleks after all.

I'll look forward to reading your thoughts on the episode soon. :)

[platypus]

I don't think we'll ever be definitively done with the Daleks; it'd be easy enough to say Caan and/or Davros escaped the final explosion. If anything, I'm a bit sick of 'wiping out' the Daleks, or reducing them to just one two, every single time we meet them in the new series. We know they'll come back, eventually, some day; they're Doctor Who's big monster. If Moffat doesn't want them -- and I doubt even that -- there'll be another showrunner sometday. So why pretend they're all dead, every last one, necessitating some handwavey technobabble explanation later as to how there can be more of them when the showrunner wants them back? (Or, as I was saying to Ken afterward, "I don't see why the Doctor was so upset about the other Doctor committing genocide on the Daleks. Everyone knows you can't actually genocide Daleks.")

I don't even doubt that the Time Lords will someday return, though I don't want it; I'd like to see the consequences of something actually stick for a change. They seemed to pave the way here by saying Caan

[drj0402]

The crazy Dalek Caan is the one that was pulling the strings.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dalek_Caan

I am waiting for the master to come back.

[jaderabbit]

Thanks. Silly Daleks.

The Master is fun, but I hope they recast him. The pencil-necked geek Master really didn't seem very threatening to me.

[cynodd]

I think it was either Doctor/Donna or Daleks manipulating Donna's timeline. Daleks makes more sense.

Yeah, I felt horrible for Donna. And for the Doctor, having to watch her go back to being her former her. At least he (hopefully) straightened her mother out a bit. But she's still going to go back to thinking she's nothing, after having saved the universe, which is horrible.

Good point about the mother issues, although Martha's isn't too bad.

[clair_de_lalune]

On thinking about it further, I guess that the Doctor can be reasonably sure that the rest of his former companions will have future happiness, while that's less than certain for Donna. Over the course of knowing her, he's discovered that she didn't find her life before him happy or fulfilling; and he has no choice but to return her to that.

I wonder what Donna would have chosen, if she'd been given a choice? Would she have wanted to go back to how she was or would she rather have let her mind burn up? River Song chose to die rather than face a life without having known the Doctor, but their relationship was, perhaps, deeper?

[jaderabbit]

I think Donna would have rather let her mind burn up. She didn't really seem to submit willingly to having the Doctor reboot her. It was the first time Donna had really felt that she *was* something, and that would be very hard to give up.

[clair_de_lalune]

Yeah, you're right. She seemed to know what was coming and nearly begged the Doctor not to do it. How sad for both of them...