sholio | Doctor Who - all caught up!

Entry tags:

tv:doctor who

Doctor Who - all caught up!

We mainlined Series 4 in the last two days. BRAIN FULL OF DOCTOR WHO, HELP.

I totally called the human-Doctor-goes-off-with-Rose thing! I called it at the beginning of the season! And I didn't have any spoilers - all I knew was that Rose would be in this season somewhere, and

derry667 had said there was something shippy in the finale. At that point, my brain immediately, for some reason, leaped to "the Doctor makes himself human and marries Rose". And he did! The only thing I couldn't figure out at that point was how it could happen, and I honestly thought I was completely full of it for even thinking of such a thing, but seriously, that was the first thing I thought of.

(Sadly, I didn't actually post this prediction anywhere, so I can't prove it. But I called it. I did.)

Anyway! So much LOVE for this season! Love for the show, with its goofiness and its sense of wonder and its sci-fi futures that are really, impressively different and alien. And love for the finale, too -- I'm sure everyone who's read my Doctor Who reaction posts in the past is well aware that I wasn't the biggest fan of Rose and I hated Rose/Ten, but it was mostly because of the way that Rose's arc and lingering legacy was handled over seasons 2 and 3, not so much the character herself. And this - this really worked for me. They actually did canon Ten/Rose in a way that I didn't hate. *g* They didn't have Rose sweep in and save the day, which is what I was fearing. She did her part, but so did everyone else. EVERYONE!

Seriously, bringing back all the past Companions from the last four seasons (Mickey! Jackie! eeeee!) and having them save the world together - LOVE. &hearts ♥ It's such a great callback to the very early part of New Who, when they addressed the fact that the Doctor didn't do this, didn't revisit past Companions, was so isolated and alone. And, as Sarah Jane pointed out at the end (it was her, right? it's all running together in my head), he's not alone anymore. Family! ♥ And they all went off, happy, to resume their lives; Martha and Jack walking off hand-in-hand made me so thrilled, and Mickey's back in our 'verse now. (Squee!) And Rose got exactly what she wanted, and is sealed back in her 'verse to live happily ever after.

... and then there was Donna losing that year of her life. I ... knew something had to give, when she got the Timelord mind-meld. At least she isn't dead, and the way they've been bringing back past characters, I would be really surprised if we never see her again. But ... oh, ow. As a general rule, I really hate endings of the "... and then they all forgot" sort (which time travel shows tend to do a lot). This one didn't bother me as much as those sorts of endings normally do, in part because it was presented as the terrible sacrifice it was. But still. OW. Especially since her family will have to keep it from her, and the whole world knows about the alien invasion - the only person who doesn't is the person who saved them. So unfair!

But in general, I'm happy! This season was really a delight. I should come up with specific comments, because there were some episodes that I just loved and bits and pieces of pretty much all of them that made me laugh or grin or go "wow", but right now I'm slightly brain-dead from cramming the whole season into my head in such a short time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Eeee~! You liked! \o/ And you liked Donna! Whoo~! ♥

I do, I do! Donna is awesome. :D

I have infinite love for Donna. (Seriously - she's one of my favorite characters of anything ever, and one of the few characters I love that I'd also really like to meet in real life. ♥)

If I didn't believe that they would fix her - must fix her - I think I would still be quite upset about her fate. But as I see it as a temporary thing - no matter what the show did, this is Doctor Who, and there is timetravel, and so "temporary" is always a possibility - I can deal with it and only have my heart be a little broken when I think about it.

If you feel even vaguely interested in a beautiful Donna vid - well. Here. Beautiful Donna vid. (I watched it today for the first time, and was wonderfully moved by it. This is over two months since I watched the finale, so downloading and saving for later is definitely an option I recommend if you don't want to watch it now.)

Hee - I think I need to rewatch s4, mainline it - it was agonizing drawn out week after week, I always was left wanting more! But that finale was insanely fun, no? Even if Donna's price was so high...they better bring her back somehow, she's my favorite of the Companions and for her to have lost it all... *sniff*

(I wondered if you'd like Rose's ending...it worked for me because it showed in some ways how the Doctor has gotten over her, he's moved on and no longer needs what she gave him, even if his alt-self did still...)

I did like Rose's ending, which surprised even me, because you know how I feel about Rose. *g* But the problem I always had with Rose was that I felt like they were doing the Mary Sue thing with her - making her out to be the best Companion ever, having the Doctor obsess on her, having the whole universe revolve around Rose's angst. And in these episodes, Rose - well, it sounds kind of mean to say "got taken down a peg" but that's kind of what happened. She had to confront the fact that she's not the only person in the Doctor's life, that she wasn't the one who saved the universe, and, in the end, she had to settle for something that wasn't quite what she wanted, because it was the right thing to do. She grew up a little. That was all I ever wanted to see from her storyline - precisely the kind of perspective that we actually got in this episode.

Oh, you are *good*! I was trying to figure out why, after disliking Rose so much, this ending didn't bother me, and you just nailed it on the head like a hammer! See? This is why you are awesome. (In case you didn't know)

Aww, thank you! :D

It took me awhile to figure it out myself. I'd been braced for the Rose episodes to really annoy me, and then they didn't, and I really had to think about what was different this time. If they'd only handled it more like this before, I think I would never have minded her at all.

Jackie!!!!

Totally personal blathering -- For me the best thing about season 4 was that my little nephews (8 and 5) became fans and could not wait for the finale on Sci-Fi and insisted on watching the download w/me on my laptop, even though their mother was all, "but don't you want to wait and see it on the big TV?" Ah, kids. :D

That's completely awesome, about your nephews! *giggles at your icon* THIS SHOW IS SO WEIRD.

Tellmetellmetellme - what did you think of Ep 10, Midnight? Me? I *loved* it. Really different for Doctor Who and very tense and spooky and oh my, DT just knocked it out of the park (again!) in the scenes where the entity was controlling him. :)

I loved it! It was one of several episodes in the season that really gave me a "yay sci-fi" feeling, and I really love "closed-room" episodes of any show, assuming of course that they're well-done. It's not too hard to get tension from epic space battles, but I love it when the characters are all put in a very tight set, where the only tension in the episode comes from their interactions and reactions. This episode was a great example of that.

I think this has been the strongest season of Doctor Who since Christopher Ecclestone's, although that might just be because I thought Donna was all kinds of awesome. Like you, I knew that something like that had to happen at the end, and while it hurt like hell, it felt...right somehow. And no one ever dies in Who *coughDavroscough* so there's no way she's not coming back. I hope

I'd love to know what you thought of the library episodes in the middle of the season - they seemed to polarise my friends-list like nothing else (except possibly the finale) with some people hating River Song and others (including me) loving her.

I wasn't so keen on Rose's ending at the time, because it felt like the Doctor ditched her somehow, but reading meta and fic since the series has finished has helped a bit. It still isn't necessarily what I would have chosen for her, but I'm a bit happier about it than I was.

You watched it all at once? And still have the coherency to type a post? *is impressed* :D

Donna was awesome! I loved her! The library episodes - I did really enjoy them, and I wouldn't say I hated or loved River Song. She just -was. I had no strong reactions to her one way or another. The implication that she was his wife or lover was pretty strong - I assume most people are thinking that - but she could also be a future Companion, and I don't think she looks like she'll be annoying to have around. *g*

I was a bit let down about Donna because it was sort of a Dallas type ending. You know where Pam dreamt the year that Bobby died. but I loved having Jackie and Mickey back :D
I'm going to miss Donna :(

Yeah ... I've never really enjoyed memory-wipe endings, and it's a lousy thing to do to her. But ... she's still alive, and she's at home, and since her mother and grandfather do know what happened and what she's capable of, maybe they'll push her to be a little more than she was before.

And - Jackie and Mickey! Yes!!!

I squeed out loud when the Torchwood crew showed up in the finale. I had just finished watching both seasons of TW, and I had no idea that I was going to get to see them again, so I was absolutely delighted. (Probably would have felt the same way about Sarah Jane if I was more familiar with classic Who, or watched her spin-off.)

I loved Donna so, so much. She was a true companion for the Doctor, not a kid looking up to him, not a naive little thing being shaped by him, but entirely her own person. A real "mate." And what happened to her really, really sucked. She grew so much over that season, grew to trust herself, to understand that she was worthwhile and could do things. And all that was taken away. :( I cried and cried for her. But yeah, at least she isn't dead. :;sigh::

I was thrilled to see the Torchwood gang - my only problem with it was that I had been so crushed about Owen and Tosh that I couldn't help a little bitterness ... I wanted them to be there, damn it!

I loved Donna for all the reasons you named - and was depressed over the ending to her story for the reasons you brought up, too. I guess that it didn't depress me as much as it could have because I so totally thought she was going to die; it was just a massive relief that she didn't! Yes, she lost it all, but there's still so much she can do, and so far every single major character from the last three seasons has been back at least once, so I'd be shocked if she doesn't turn up again! Shocked, I say! *g*

I loved this season! I loved the finale, too, though I'm very sad about Donna.

Glad you enjoyed it too!

I did love it! I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I loved Rose's ending, too, but felt that Donna would really have been more fairly served by - and I cringe even typing this - killing her off rather than leaving her with no memory of her personal growth and accomplishments. She's the only one of the New Who full-time companions I really enjoyed as a character unto herself, so I don't say this lightly.

But really, the fourth season was just a joy. It's the first season that I was really "hooked" on the show and not just watching because my son and

crazymadi did.

I do see what you're saying about Donna, but ... as much as I hate that they took that away from her and that her family is going to have to lie to her, she does have the potential to be the self-actualized person that she became. In my own head, at least, there's no reason why she can't go on to do bigger and better things with her life on Earth - she may not remember any of the things she did, but that better, brighter person is still there, in potentia, inside her.

Yeah, I was very, very, very mad at what they did to Donna, because Hello! Go back one season to Human Nature/Family of Blood where the Doctor used the Chameleon Arc to make himself human and remove his Time Lord memories.

Why, oh why, couldn't "Uncle Rusty" have used that for Donna to remove the Time Lord stuff from her mind and let her continue on w/o being the shallow P.I.T.A. that we saw at the beginning of Runaway Bride? (Only thing I can think of is that RTD is just "too good" to use Paul Cornell's idea. :-P)

I really liked how Donna had changed and progressed this season and then, to just wipe it all out? Grah!

My love for Donna was because she was older, more established as a person (and, like me - stuck doing the temp route! :-p)... not to mention, she was friends, first and foremost with the Doctor. The whole "We're not married" bit between them was so perfect! (And, again, echoes between a friend of mine & myself - everyone's like, "Why don't you two just date?" Me: "Nooooo!" *laugh*)

I want for Donna to be saved in some way so we can see her again in the future! I hope Moffat, as the new show runner, will find a way to do so. :)

I think this is where a show starts to suffer from having a huge canon with lots of "miracle" items. It's also a problem in Stargate, in the Harry Potter books and pretty much every superhero comic ever written. At this point, pretty much any problem they can come up with in the Doctor Who universe could probably be addressed by some item that's been introduced in the show over the last 40 years. - and, yeah, it's an oversight by the writers, but my mind boggles at trying to keep all of that straight. In SGA, they have about a half-dozen known ways of curing or fending off incurable diseases or fatal injuries, though each one comes with its own set of problems (nanites, stasis pods, Ascension device, Goa'uld healing device, sarcophagus ... probably others I'm forgetting ...) but they tend to conveniently forget them in the course of the episode, even when the entire audience is yelling at the screen, "Put him in the stasis pods! GOD YOU IDIOTS!" *g*

Anyway, considering that New Who has a history of bringing back past characters for guest appearances, I would not be at all surprised to see Donna again somehow.

I adore Donna - thought her "end" was tragic in a poetic way. Can totally live the "OW" of it because it was a "good ow" if you know what I mean. As you said, they didn't make it as if losing her memory was an easy way out (as I've seen done before) but rather they showed from the Doctor and her grandfather's reactions the true tragedy that it was. So yeah, two thumbs up from me on that one.

But, as I believe I've said, the way they wrote Rose out just annoyed me. I still firmly hold the stance that Doctor Who is the one show where the lead character should not be set up with a canon OTP. The companions are allowed to fall in love with the Doctor - as even Sarah Jane did way back when, but the idea that he should reciprocate the "won twu luv" of any of them irks me. And to make it happen with someone as juvenile and self-centred as Rose? UURRRGGHHHH!!!!!

Up until now, I'd always harboured the hope that Rose would grow up and lose her self-centredness. Now, I'm just glad she's gone (and with the new production team coming in, I can hope that she's gone forever now).

But aside from that crappy could-have-been-written-by-an-adolescent-fangirl ending, I loved the fourth season finale - and the whole season really. Donna rocked. Martha's return rocked. Jack was pretty cool too. Mickey! Jackie! Sarah Jane - and her son Luke too! Even Gwen and Ianto made me smile - and they mentioned Tosh and Owen!

Y'know, Rose and the Human!Doctor clone had actually died together saving the universe, then I'd be TOTALLY on board with the shippy end to Rose's story. But the fact that she was given her very own version of the Doctor to play with and yet she's still acting like she's hard done by because the Time Lord version didn't choose to stay with her? UUURRRGGGHHHH!!!

BTW - weren't Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead just totally awesome? I adore Steven Moffat as a writer and can't wait to see where he takes the show when he takes over as head writer.

Heh. Well, you know how I feel about Rose. I was genuinely surprised that she didn't really annoy me in the finale, but I think I was willing to forgive a lot considering that she didn't just come sweeping into town on a white horse and save the day, which was totally what I was afraid of. There was a "chosen one", but it was Donna, not Rose. Rose ended up being mostly sidelined while other people saved the day. I was just fine with that. And running around with her dimension-jumping device and her Dalek-killing gun, she was actually pretty cool. That last bit, though, where she gets a Doctor of her very own and she's still pining for the one she can't have - that was such a jaw-dropping "Oh god, grow UP, woman!" moment, and I think it kinda made the scene for me that the Doctor wasn't indulging her; he wasn't mean about it, she was still a valued ex-Companion, but he was pretty clearly closing the Rose chapter of his life. Right now, I feel like the door is closed on Rose; she has her own version of a "happily ever after", and I will be very happy to let her have her happy ending and never see her again.

BTW - weren't Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead just totally awesome? I adore Steven Moffat as a writer and can't wait to see where he takes the show when he takes over as head writer.

Totally with you on this! Although -

xparrot had a post awhile back (and I need to go find it now that I've seen the episodes and can read all the discussion) worrying that we'll see even MORE shippiness in the show, because Moffat's episodes tend to be really heavy on the ship - even though it's usually not Doctor/Rose, he clearly likes writing romance. But his episodes are fantastically well-written and creative and creepy; I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does with the series.

That last bit, though, where she gets a Doctor of her very own and she's still pining for the one she can't have - that was such a jaw-dropping "Oh god, grow UP, woman!" moment, and I think it kinda made the scene for me that the Doctor wasn't indulging her; he wasn't mean about it, she was still a valued ex-Companion, but he was pretty clearly closing the Rose chapter of his life.

Yeah. I suppose, I've found it hard to get over the jaw-dropping "Oh god, grow UP, woman!" bit. It's kinda sad because it is (hopefully) the last we see of her. Rose's last moments on screen (hopefully forever) are her being a selfish brat. It's an awful way to go out. And as you said, for the rest of the episode (and her guest appearances in previous episodes) she wasn't half-bad. But that just screamed GODAWFUL SHIPPER FANFIC to me.

And Moffat's fondness for romance doesn't worry me per se. And yeah, he's definitely got a penchant for that stuff - after all, this is the guy who wrote Coupling (one of the cleverest and funniest shippy sitcoms I've ever seen). I may be a non-shipper, but I don't mind romance in the show so long as it's not a Doctor/Companion OTP. Well, as I said, the companion falling in love with the Doctor, I don't mind (and I'm not sexist about it - I don't mind Jack's unrequited crush on the Doctor either). I just prefer the Doctor himself not to be OTP about it. So far, even with River Soong's apparent special place in the Doctor's life, Moffat hasn't crossed that line.

But his episodes are fantastically well-written and creative and creepy; I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does with the series.

That's the thing, really. I think I could even live with the shippiness, so long as he keeps that up.

We've spent the past several months watching Dr. Who as a family, and now I'm ready to jump in and fan it, and don't know where to start.

Um, any Who smarm out there?

- Helen

Sadly, from all I've heard, Who fandom is a wasteland populated mostly by shippers. *g*

I can ask

naye. She's been in Who fandom for a while, and if there's anything out there, she might know about it!

I wrote a friendshippy little Martha/Ten thing at the end of season 3 - here.

Thanks, I've just asked her how to do Who fandom.

And am saving your fic for bedtime reading. :-)

- Helen

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Doctor Who - all caught up!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject