DW: Last of the Time Lords
Jul. 1st, 2007 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI rewatched it, and I don't see how the parts fit together. It's like they're telling two or three different stories that don't quite fit or something.
Mostly what I felt watching this time was nothing.
The thing is, when a character is clueless and finds things out, the audience can identify with them and find things out along with them and that's how the story pulls the audience in. That's the usual reason for the existence of the companion, on account of the Doctor knowing everything. If the companion starts out knowing something the audience don't know *and* the audience don't know they don't know it... *rereads sentence to check* ... yeah, if we don't know to wait for the secret we have no suspense so there's no point in holding the secret back from the audience. So the moment we find out the gun thing isn't the story, they *restart* the story, they're telling a different one. And Martha is laughing at *us* for buying into the first story, for getting invested in it at all. And... how is that supposed to pull us in?
So Martha finding out what the Toclafane are works because she don't know and we don't know... but it also don't work because the Doctor knows already and doesn't react. I mean, his whole reaction is made of not-reacting. So it kind of means less than it should?
I've already said repeatedly that the earth buying the Doctor's divinity instead of Saxon's means nothing whatsoever because he gets the belief without earning it.
The fact that RTD can't see that explains a *lot* about Rose.
"The one thing you can't do - stop them thinking."
That line really really doesn't work. I mean, the thing the Daleks can't do is touch, we heard that one thing line before. But the defining thing the Master *does* is stop them thinking. Mind control they name is Master. So what's with that line?
Now the point I started to care about the story was when the Doctor was back. Not when he was glowing - I can't watch that without *facepalm*, it anti-works, it's a godawful mess of overloaded unearned symbolism. I mean when the FX stop being the story and David Tennant is back selling it with the acting.
It's like how the first filmed ending of Blade didn't work because they'd set up an intense personal confrontation and then turned one of the guys into a CGI effect.
So, so often I want to show people who make TV and films that bit of DVD extra, because they show exactly where that went wrong.
You've got to have the intensity, the emotion, the two actors bringing it and sparking off each other, or you've not got a story. You've just got an effect.
The three words - "I forgive you" - they work, in that scene, sort of, as soon as the light goes out. But... it doesn't track in the *other* scene where he was working up to the words. Does it? He risks everyone's lives, presumably doesn't tell them exactly why if they're just communicating in signs like the three fingers, and it's so he can steal the screwdriver and point it at the Master and... tell him "I forgive you" as he fires? Because that doesn't work at all. I mean, it's not just me, right? That doesn't track. And he does fire - that's how he finds it only works for the Master.
That whole sequence really baffles me. I think it's to make Martha look more awesome later. Everyone has tried their best, given their best shot, and failed, so when Martha turns up with a plan it makes her look awesome by contrast. Only Martha's plan was to hand it all over to the Doctor, who had just failed. It doesn't make her look awesome, it makes her look very, very ill informed, bordering on stupid.
If your entire plan is basically "Get a man to do it" then it's a piss poor plan. Bottom line.
So anyway, DT gets his face back, the Doctor and the Master get some alone time together.
That should work.
Why it looked overexposed to the point of bleaching out their expressions I don't know. I vaguely hope it was just my TV.
But the thing is, it's the specifics again. The Master just used the get out of jail free card. He keeps hold of it. He can therefore use it *again*. It travels in time and space and he's the Doctor's equal so he can make it go to the end of the universe or any other damn place he wants.
Therefore, when the Doctor has that lovely moment where he says the Master won't push the button because he would die too?
The Doctor is wrong on two levels at once.
... and this is the godlike? No.
If I'm wrong about who ends up holding the transporter then I'm mildly wrong about the setup, but it just means the Master has to grab the get-anywhere and then push the boom button.
So the emotions work, but the plot setup doesn't. This is my exact complaint about Boom Town, the plot doesn't setup the confrontation yet the characters act like it does, which makes them look stupid.
Who wrote Boom Town?
Russell T Davies.
Dude needs a writing partner who can do plot. And tell him when he's on crack. And wrap the story that he started up rather than getting bored and doing something different instead.
Then they all end up back on the Valiant in time to not create problems when the rest of the world hits rewind. Because if the Time Lords get rewound too then there's a rather massive problem. I mean think about it - the Master and the Doctor can't end up back where they started because that's the Valiant and that continues linear. But if they stay where they were fighting then they stay at a point in spacetime that now no longer exists. And also get stranded on a clifftop without a TARDIS a year away from Martha.
... that would be fun ...
But they've still got the go-anywhere.
Dammit, that wristband was way the hell too powerful to drop into a story. You can't put anyone in any kind of corner if they can press the magic eject button.
So ANYway, they're back on the Valiant and that whole confrontation about what to do with the Master really works out. Except for... the humans made a choice to punish a crime against humans, and the Doctor overrules them on the basis that he's a Time Lord. And... he has that authority? Given by whom?
Incidentally, if Jack wanted to protect the Master he could have done the human shield thing. Maybe it would be riskier than staying very still, but it seems unlikely. So Jack's inaction kind of places him on the human-execution side without in fact making that choice out loud.
And then he lets go of the prisoner so he can have a word with the Doctor... why? So the pair of them can fail to see a woman in a red dress pick up a gun?
Maybe they didn't want to see her.
Unpleasant possibility, don't think the story supports it.
But I was unsatisfied with the positioning, it didn't seem to support her momentary invisibility either.
I love that bit where the Master is dying in the Doctor's arms.
Aside from the tiny thing where I still don't like this clown Master. He's not the same guy. That's what it feels like to me, not because he's gone crazy but the specific expressions of it. It seems so different it feels weird them having that same history as the other guys.
So it's not-Master in the Doctor's arms and... has the good stuff fall out sort of.
I didn't hate it this time. I didn't feel much at all. Except for the death scene and the forgive you.
I think as a story it is very flawed even without getting into the specific ways I didn't like it as Doctor Who. The intermittent existence of the get-out-of-jail-free and the waste of suspense followed by laughing at the audience, those kind of wreck it.
Then we get to the ethnicity issues (making the family slaves in maids uniforms without commenting on it? making Martha's assessment of herself feeling second best stand unchallenged when "I only take the best" would be the perfect quote to fix the whole thing? I read someone meta about it and it makes me very depressed) and the feminism issues (entire plan is let the shiny man fix it, plan is therefore lose) and... the fun really falls out.
And then there's CGI wrecking my purely love-the-Doctor based enjoyment of it. I mean, I've said before I think he looks like a weasel when he's asleep but he's so engaging when he's awake he suddenly makes himself attractive. That's all in the personality, animation... and not at all in the CGI animation. And even the shiny glowy floaty bit just made him look un-him.
So I have trouble finding bits to like that some other bit doesn't wreck.
I love that Jack chose his team but has the option of his Doctor, but we didn't get that as a story or a relationship, we got that as a closing line that was just oddly placed. I know the Boe thing had to go at the end before he ran off or they'd have time to ask and he'd see them react and they'd have to clear it up one way or the other, but... Jack had the perfect out with the salute. Salute is the say goodbye. It's respect and 'sir' and yet also the episode CJH and pulling in those associations and that's all good. Goodbye, turn, run home.
Not goodbye, turn, turn back for joke, turn away and watch the Doctor react to joke instead of Jack make a choice.
Jack was not the story. Jack didn't have a story. We got a joke instead.
I hate that.
And he was used as the weapon that can't die.
Using people as things is one definition of evil, using people as a means to an end as opposed to an end in themselves. The Master used people to get things done. If the Doctor does too, what makes him better?
Well, the specific stuff he wants done, clearly, but... it's niggly and sad and needs fixing and to fix it needs hugs and being sad about people that haven't been trying to kill him.
Maybe Jack left because he realised he's never going to be evil enough to get the Doctor's full attention. He'll never be broken enough. Or needy enough.
... oooh, nasty possible parallels for Ianto. Who sticks with the newly-evil injured girlfriend even when it all goes horribly wrong.
If that caretaker role gets unbalanced then it gets icky.
If the only person who can get the Doctor to settle down is the one who needs fixing more than the whole rest of the universe put together... granted in a certain twisted way it makes sense, but eeeeeew on a personal level.
The whole partnership of equal-but-differents thing is much more of the good. Jack should have been proper accepted partner by the end. But his story was so much a tag on - in the tag scenes - that it doesn't feel like any acknowledgement that he gets invited along at all.
And the TARDIS would have got over not liking him just like that then?
And while I'm on the subject of TARDIS... It's crucial to the plot and yet it's never explained. The Doctor locks the coordinates permanently, *permanently*, so even the Master, who is his scientific and technological equal *at least*, cannot unlock them. Therefore the Master can only travel between the two points, and therefore the rest of the plot.
And then the Master cannibalises the living TARDIS and turns it into something inside out, something that brings time here instead of bringing a bit of here into time.
So far, so setting up the Toclafane.
But... Jack breaks it with a machine gun. If the Doctor had broken it with a machine gun the first time he saw it then the world would never have been decimated or needed saving. And also the Master would have looked a bit silly when he assumed it would work and put the music on.
Now I want to write that. The Doctor risks it and sonics the paradox thingy so it don't work, the Master on global television yells "Here Come the Drums" and puts a soundtrack on and goes to the window to look... the world watches with vast puzzlement and the Master has a stroppy tantrum.
*facepalm*
So if it was that easy to break, the Doctor not breaking it means he sets up all the problems for Martha and the year of torture for Jack and himself, and that's... not heroic. Really. When you get right down to it.
Furthermore... the TARDIS was (a) locked in spacetime to those two places (b) turned into the anti-TARDIS. We're quite clear on this. And it was presumably wired in to the Valiant making it remember the original timeline somehow. Or not, but I like it when things use existing explanations.
So... how, precisely, by the time Martha has taken her family home, changed clothes, given out flowers, gone with Jack to Cardiff, and gone back to decide to stay and actually be a Doctor... which would all take, what, a day? Two? Call it three to be generous.
How, precisely, in those three days, does the Doctor do what the Master couldn't and restore the TARDIS to perfect working order and the exact same control room as before all the fuss.
I mean, I can think of a way. He's always had backup control rooms. We've wandered around the TARDIS going looking for a new one before, yesno? That would be in... the one with the hand, because at the end Sarah Jane gets left behind. So, if the Doctor had a *new* console room, that would make sense. And... rather make it difficult to do anything permanent to the TARDIS because she could grow a new control room. And what happened to the living heart of the TARDIS when it was trapped in that paradox machine? TARDIS has trauma! Needs hugs!
... er, sidetrack.
But anyways, I thought of a way involving backup control rooms and the ability to eject / convert to fuel any part of the TARDIS including the control room (including when you're standing in it) to combine to get rid of the paradox machine and restore the TARDIS.
But I can't think of *any* way of repairing the TARDIS that the Master could not have done.
... *thinks. thinks. thinks* ...
Okay... the one resource that the Doctor has and the Master hasn't is Jack's Vortex Manipulator. Space hopper it might be, but time travel it is. So the Master might have needed parts and materials not available in this century if he wanted to fix the TARDIS. And then when Jack has to shoot the TARDIS it's okay because now he can go on a quest to find all the parts. Which would obviously make him very busy and explain how come he could get cleaned up but not have a nice bit of emotional resolution where the Doctor says it's all okay now and he's fixed the TARDIS not to run away from Jack and would he come back pretty please? I mean we got some of that, 'you're welcome' I think it was, but he weren't offering much, and the decision had already been made. Off screen. We only saw unalterable result.
Why waste good emotion-story like that?
Blah.
ANYways, plot hole plugged - Jack fixed the TARDIS with the Vortex Manipulator.
... the Master clearly couldn't borrow and return it?
... bugger.
... er, Jack clearly couldn't be mind controlled by the Master, even if he did fall for the Archangel signal enough to like him. Clearly because he was still being defiant a year later. So the Master couldn't have just asked for the thing.
And... there's no way he could arrange Jack to be drugged unconscious long enough to steal it and fix it and take a trip and break it and give it back...
Why would the Master give it back? Well he did see Jack wearing it in the future I suppose.
The only way the Master couldn't use it to fix the TARDIS (if that is the missing thing to fixing the TARDIS) is if he didn't know about it.
Which, okay, possible.
... I keep turning this story around to find ways to make it work and I think I'm making rather big tangles of it. Oh well.
So anyway, the *other* way the Doctor could fix it and the Master couldn't is if the Doctor is more magic than the Master. Which... Professor Yana could build things that amazed the Doctor, the Master is supposed to be his equal, and inability to fix a TARDIS has never been a problem of his before, unless he ran out of parts.
It's just stupid is what it is. The TARDIS is in danger! Oh noes!
... oh look, it's all better, so that's okay then.
That never got sorted out. There's a whole story that didn't get told. How did it get fixed?
How long did it take?
How many days did the Captain stay with the Doctor to do tidying up?
And what is the Captain's role in relation to UNIT and the British government?
Is that thing where they were wanted terrorist criminals - which happened before the reset - actually going to vanish without consequence? Because they didn't address that in the slightest, and Martha and her family went home, and... what happened to that?
They set up so much story last week and then they set up a new one and then they set up *another* new one and only answered that.
That's my lingering feeling about the whole thing. Just jaggedy bits of story that leave whacking great holes.
Mostly what I felt watching this time was nothing.
The thing is, when a character is clueless and finds things out, the audience can identify with them and find things out along with them and that's how the story pulls the audience in. That's the usual reason for the existence of the companion, on account of the Doctor knowing everything. If the companion starts out knowing something the audience don't know *and* the audience don't know they don't know it... *rereads sentence to check* ... yeah, if we don't know to wait for the secret we have no suspense so there's no point in holding the secret back from the audience. So the moment we find out the gun thing isn't the story, they *restart* the story, they're telling a different one. And Martha is laughing at *us* for buying into the first story, for getting invested in it at all. And... how is that supposed to pull us in?
So Martha finding out what the Toclafane are works because she don't know and we don't know... but it also don't work because the Doctor knows already and doesn't react. I mean, his whole reaction is made of not-reacting. So it kind of means less than it should?
I've already said repeatedly that the earth buying the Doctor's divinity instead of Saxon's means nothing whatsoever because he gets the belief without earning it.
The fact that RTD can't see that explains a *lot* about Rose.
"The one thing you can't do - stop them thinking."
That line really really doesn't work. I mean, the thing the Daleks can't do is touch, we heard that one thing line before. But the defining thing the Master *does* is stop them thinking. Mind control they name is Master. So what's with that line?
Now the point I started to care about the story was when the Doctor was back. Not when he was glowing - I can't watch that without *facepalm*, it anti-works, it's a godawful mess of overloaded unearned symbolism. I mean when the FX stop being the story and David Tennant is back selling it with the acting.
It's like how the first filmed ending of Blade didn't work because they'd set up an intense personal confrontation and then turned one of the guys into a CGI effect.
So, so often I want to show people who make TV and films that bit of DVD extra, because they show exactly where that went wrong.
You've got to have the intensity, the emotion, the two actors bringing it and sparking off each other, or you've not got a story. You've just got an effect.
The three words - "I forgive you" - they work, in that scene, sort of, as soon as the light goes out. But... it doesn't track in the *other* scene where he was working up to the words. Does it? He risks everyone's lives, presumably doesn't tell them exactly why if they're just communicating in signs like the three fingers, and it's so he can steal the screwdriver and point it at the Master and... tell him "I forgive you" as he fires? Because that doesn't work at all. I mean, it's not just me, right? That doesn't track. And he does fire - that's how he finds it only works for the Master.
That whole sequence really baffles me. I think it's to make Martha look more awesome later. Everyone has tried their best, given their best shot, and failed, so when Martha turns up with a plan it makes her look awesome by contrast. Only Martha's plan was to hand it all over to the Doctor, who had just failed. It doesn't make her look awesome, it makes her look very, very ill informed, bordering on stupid.
If your entire plan is basically "Get a man to do it" then it's a piss poor plan. Bottom line.
So anyway, DT gets his face back, the Doctor and the Master get some alone time together.
That should work.
Why it looked overexposed to the point of bleaching out their expressions I don't know. I vaguely hope it was just my TV.
But the thing is, it's the specifics again. The Master just used the get out of jail free card. He keeps hold of it. He can therefore use it *again*. It travels in time and space and he's the Doctor's equal so he can make it go to the end of the universe or any other damn place he wants.
Therefore, when the Doctor has that lovely moment where he says the Master won't push the button because he would die too?
The Doctor is wrong on two levels at once.
... and this is the godlike? No.
If I'm wrong about who ends up holding the transporter then I'm mildly wrong about the setup, but it just means the Master has to grab the get-anywhere and then push the boom button.
So the emotions work, but the plot setup doesn't. This is my exact complaint about Boom Town, the plot doesn't setup the confrontation yet the characters act like it does, which makes them look stupid.
Who wrote Boom Town?
Russell T Davies.
Dude needs a writing partner who can do plot. And tell him when he's on crack. And wrap the story that he started up rather than getting bored and doing something different instead.
Then they all end up back on the Valiant in time to not create problems when the rest of the world hits rewind. Because if the Time Lords get rewound too then there's a rather massive problem. I mean think about it - the Master and the Doctor can't end up back where they started because that's the Valiant and that continues linear. But if they stay where they were fighting then they stay at a point in spacetime that now no longer exists. And also get stranded on a clifftop without a TARDIS a year away from Martha.
... that would be fun ...
But they've still got the go-anywhere.
Dammit, that wristband was way the hell too powerful to drop into a story. You can't put anyone in any kind of corner if they can press the magic eject button.
So ANYway, they're back on the Valiant and that whole confrontation about what to do with the Master really works out. Except for... the humans made a choice to punish a crime against humans, and the Doctor overrules them on the basis that he's a Time Lord. And... he has that authority? Given by whom?
Incidentally, if Jack wanted to protect the Master he could have done the human shield thing. Maybe it would be riskier than staying very still, but it seems unlikely. So Jack's inaction kind of places him on the human-execution side without in fact making that choice out loud.
And then he lets go of the prisoner so he can have a word with the Doctor... why? So the pair of them can fail to see a woman in a red dress pick up a gun?
Maybe they didn't want to see her.
Unpleasant possibility, don't think the story supports it.
But I was unsatisfied with the positioning, it didn't seem to support her momentary invisibility either.
I love that bit where the Master is dying in the Doctor's arms.
Aside from the tiny thing where I still don't like this clown Master. He's not the same guy. That's what it feels like to me, not because he's gone crazy but the specific expressions of it. It seems so different it feels weird them having that same history as the other guys.
So it's not-Master in the Doctor's arms and... has the good stuff fall out sort of.
I didn't hate it this time. I didn't feel much at all. Except for the death scene and the forgive you.
I think as a story it is very flawed even without getting into the specific ways I didn't like it as Doctor Who. The intermittent existence of the get-out-of-jail-free and the waste of suspense followed by laughing at the audience, those kind of wreck it.
Then we get to the ethnicity issues (making the family slaves in maids uniforms without commenting on it? making Martha's assessment of herself feeling second best stand unchallenged when "I only take the best" would be the perfect quote to fix the whole thing? I read someone meta about it and it makes me very depressed) and the feminism issues (entire plan is let the shiny man fix it, plan is therefore lose) and... the fun really falls out.
And then there's CGI wrecking my purely love-the-Doctor based enjoyment of it. I mean, I've said before I think he looks like a weasel when he's asleep but he's so engaging when he's awake he suddenly makes himself attractive. That's all in the personality, animation... and not at all in the CGI animation. And even the shiny glowy floaty bit just made him look un-him.
So I have trouble finding bits to like that some other bit doesn't wreck.
I love that Jack chose his team but has the option of his Doctor, but we didn't get that as a story or a relationship, we got that as a closing line that was just oddly placed. I know the Boe thing had to go at the end before he ran off or they'd have time to ask and he'd see them react and they'd have to clear it up one way or the other, but... Jack had the perfect out with the salute. Salute is the say goodbye. It's respect and 'sir' and yet also the episode CJH and pulling in those associations and that's all good. Goodbye, turn, run home.
Not goodbye, turn, turn back for joke, turn away and watch the Doctor react to joke instead of Jack make a choice.
Jack was not the story. Jack didn't have a story. We got a joke instead.
I hate that.
And he was used as the weapon that can't die.
Using people as things is one definition of evil, using people as a means to an end as opposed to an end in themselves. The Master used people to get things done. If the Doctor does too, what makes him better?
Well, the specific stuff he wants done, clearly, but... it's niggly and sad and needs fixing and to fix it needs hugs and being sad about people that haven't been trying to kill him.
Maybe Jack left because he realised he's never going to be evil enough to get the Doctor's full attention. He'll never be broken enough. Or needy enough.
... oooh, nasty possible parallels for Ianto. Who sticks with the newly-evil injured girlfriend even when it all goes horribly wrong.
If that caretaker role gets unbalanced then it gets icky.
If the only person who can get the Doctor to settle down is the one who needs fixing more than the whole rest of the universe put together... granted in a certain twisted way it makes sense, but eeeeeew on a personal level.
The whole partnership of equal-but-differents thing is much more of the good. Jack should have been proper accepted partner by the end. But his story was so much a tag on - in the tag scenes - that it doesn't feel like any acknowledgement that he gets invited along at all.
And the TARDIS would have got over not liking him just like that then?
And while I'm on the subject of TARDIS... It's crucial to the plot and yet it's never explained. The Doctor locks the coordinates permanently, *permanently*, so even the Master, who is his scientific and technological equal *at least*, cannot unlock them. Therefore the Master can only travel between the two points, and therefore the rest of the plot.
And then the Master cannibalises the living TARDIS and turns it into something inside out, something that brings time here instead of bringing a bit of here into time.
So far, so setting up the Toclafane.
But... Jack breaks it with a machine gun. If the Doctor had broken it with a machine gun the first time he saw it then the world would never have been decimated or needed saving. And also the Master would have looked a bit silly when he assumed it would work and put the music on.
Now I want to write that. The Doctor risks it and sonics the paradox thingy so it don't work, the Master on global television yells "Here Come the Drums" and puts a soundtrack on and goes to the window to look... the world watches with vast puzzlement and the Master has a stroppy tantrum.
*facepalm*
So if it was that easy to break, the Doctor not breaking it means he sets up all the problems for Martha and the year of torture for Jack and himself, and that's... not heroic. Really. When you get right down to it.
Furthermore... the TARDIS was (a) locked in spacetime to those two places (b) turned into the anti-TARDIS. We're quite clear on this. And it was presumably wired in to the Valiant making it remember the original timeline somehow. Or not, but I like it when things use existing explanations.
So... how, precisely, by the time Martha has taken her family home, changed clothes, given out flowers, gone with Jack to Cardiff, and gone back to decide to stay and actually be a Doctor... which would all take, what, a day? Two? Call it three to be generous.
How, precisely, in those three days, does the Doctor do what the Master couldn't and restore the TARDIS to perfect working order and the exact same control room as before all the fuss.
I mean, I can think of a way. He's always had backup control rooms. We've wandered around the TARDIS going looking for a new one before, yesno? That would be in... the one with the hand, because at the end Sarah Jane gets left behind. So, if the Doctor had a *new* console room, that would make sense. And... rather make it difficult to do anything permanent to the TARDIS because she could grow a new control room. And what happened to the living heart of the TARDIS when it was trapped in that paradox machine? TARDIS has trauma! Needs hugs!
... er, sidetrack.
But anyways, I thought of a way involving backup control rooms and the ability to eject / convert to fuel any part of the TARDIS including the control room (including when you're standing in it) to combine to get rid of the paradox machine and restore the TARDIS.
But I can't think of *any* way of repairing the TARDIS that the Master could not have done.
... *thinks. thinks. thinks* ...
Okay... the one resource that the Doctor has and the Master hasn't is Jack's Vortex Manipulator. Space hopper it might be, but time travel it is. So the Master might have needed parts and materials not available in this century if he wanted to fix the TARDIS. And then when Jack has to shoot the TARDIS it's okay because now he can go on a quest to find all the parts. Which would obviously make him very busy and explain how come he could get cleaned up but not have a nice bit of emotional resolution where the Doctor says it's all okay now and he's fixed the TARDIS not to run away from Jack and would he come back pretty please? I mean we got some of that, 'you're welcome' I think it was, but he weren't offering much, and the decision had already been made. Off screen. We only saw unalterable result.
Why waste good emotion-story like that?
Blah.
ANYways, plot hole plugged - Jack fixed the TARDIS with the Vortex Manipulator.
... the Master clearly couldn't borrow and return it?
... bugger.
... er, Jack clearly couldn't be mind controlled by the Master, even if he did fall for the Archangel signal enough to like him. Clearly because he was still being defiant a year later. So the Master couldn't have just asked for the thing.
And... there's no way he could arrange Jack to be drugged unconscious long enough to steal it and fix it and take a trip and break it and give it back...
Why would the Master give it back? Well he did see Jack wearing it in the future I suppose.
The only way the Master couldn't use it to fix the TARDIS (if that is the missing thing to fixing the TARDIS) is if he didn't know about it.
Which, okay, possible.
... I keep turning this story around to find ways to make it work and I think I'm making rather big tangles of it. Oh well.
So anyway, the *other* way the Doctor could fix it and the Master couldn't is if the Doctor is more magic than the Master. Which... Professor Yana could build things that amazed the Doctor, the Master is supposed to be his equal, and inability to fix a TARDIS has never been a problem of his before, unless he ran out of parts.
It's just stupid is what it is. The TARDIS is in danger! Oh noes!
... oh look, it's all better, so that's okay then.
That never got sorted out. There's a whole story that didn't get told. How did it get fixed?
How long did it take?
How many days did the Captain stay with the Doctor to do tidying up?
And what is the Captain's role in relation to UNIT and the British government?
Is that thing where they were wanted terrorist criminals - which happened before the reset - actually going to vanish without consequence? Because they didn't address that in the slightest, and Martha and her family went home, and... what happened to that?
They set up so much story last week and then they set up a new one and then they set up *another* new one and only answered that.
That's my lingering feeling about the whole thing. Just jaggedy bits of story that leave whacking great holes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-01 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-01 10:12 pm (UTC)And so right about the new askew.
:-/
no subject
Date: 2007-07-02 04:38 am (UTC)yep, that about sums it up for me!