Doctor Who: The End of Time part 2
Jan. 2nd, 2010 05:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThat worked.
I wrote the first version of this while I was still crying, and it was a bit flaily and wah and not big on the making sense, so I try again.
And it's kind of embarrassing because I can see how the plot is about as shaky as usual and RTD is being manipulative and all, but still, it worked.
It worked because of The Doctor, The Master... and Rassilon.
Primarily it worked on me because of the relationship going where I'd been waiting for, and the symbol I didn't know would hit my buttons until it happened.
There's two things about The Master that are important to me, two parts that, even though he's a mass murdering bastard, still have me rooting for him just a little, just hoping he'll change just enough. And they're both the absolute refusal to let the universe win. He won't let it kill him. And he won't let it take his mind. We see it when he's basically a walking corpse but still won't let go, and we see it in Survival where others are falling to the beast but the Master just will not. And, yeah, sometimes it looks like death wins, but it never sticks. And then there's the actually losing his mind... I really hated that. Lots of layers of reasons. Everything I said last week stands. Making it about insanity hits all the bad old stereotypes in a row.
But here... it made it something done *to* him, something with a single discrete source, someone he could get mad at and it would actually help. It wasn't just attacking the man, it was attacking the illness. And all that with burning up his life, the lightning from his hands that I really hated last week, when it became part of that moment... he's just hitting back. Not with technology or anything but his own life and his own will. Don't let the crazy win, use it, use it all, throw it back and beat it. And he's winning.
And finally it's aimed at a target that we can agree with.
There's corners of problem all over it - if someone drives you nuts it doesn't generally help when they're dead. I mean, they stop making it worse, but it doesn't fix anything.
But it's emotionally satisfying as all hell to have that symbol in there. This is the bastard who hurt him when he was a kid and broke his brain for his whole life. Smite.
It was done to him. It was done to him deliberately. And once they'd done it to him they just wrote him off.
And he fucked their shit up for it.
And it saved the world and The Doctor both.
That right there worked for me really powerfully.
I've been wanting to get The Master aimed at the right target for the longest time. I've been wanting to say those things to him that The Doctor said. And here they were, tested, together, and finally ending up aiming the same way... heh, metaphor same way, still literal opposites. And it's the story I've wanted to see. I didn't think they'd write it. I thought they'd screw it up again. And there it was.
The thing where the story then ignored him and he faded out into the death of Gallifrey and/or what the Doctor had just described as hell... that's sort of a problem. Because it's the ending for a bad guy, but did he just do a redemption thing? But he'd know what the consequences were, so did he choose that?
It's the story just dropping it right then that's the only remaining niggle.
But it did a lot of that.
Donna.
:eyeroll:
And woman in white, who never got a name or a proper hint who she was. I've seen people equally certain she's a number of old school characters, so, not a proper hint if you can't tell which way it's pointing.
I missed women getting things done. I missed companions. Wilf is brilliant, but the story ended up really lacking strong women.
The cliffhanger was all very scary, but it only led to the bit where Donna was there only to have her head explode because The Doctor left her with a defence system. Not because Donna is brilliant mind, not because of any choice of hers, just because RTD wanted to leave that thread alone for the rest of the story so he made the Doctor have already fixed it. Would it have been so terrible for Donna to figure out how to do that? Something brilliant, something only she could do. Give her a moment. She is not a damsel in distress. Except for this time. :eyeroll:
The logic of leaving Donna there unconscious really seriously doesn't work, because The Master has a few billion bodies to task to go pick her up and see what's up with her, and why wouldn't he?
Because the story doesn't want him to is the only reason. boo.
The way the Master interacted with himself... calling one of himself Sir and all of them cooperating? Really? Because I'm having trouble with that concept. He's working in a team and not backstabbing anybody! What up with that?
But, two things that make it work.
One, he is patient. The plan with Saxon took 18 months to set up and execute, and he had to play nice with humans the whole time. Only playing nice with himself for a few days? Patience.
And two, he calls himself the master of disguise, but really, he's a roleplayer. He has fun getting into characters. He's in character when nobody else is around even. Old school canon says so. So here he is with almost seven billion new characters to be! How much fun is that? Fun! So it's going to be a while before any of him get bored, just from the sheer novelty of all the characters he has there. Some of them more boring than others. In any chain of command he's going to want to be at the top, even when he already is. But over the short term? He'll play.
So I can believe it. He's patient and he has glee in new toys. That works.
The Time Lords.
Oh, the Time Lords.
I can really, really buy that.
Rassilon.
Glorious!
... also, I forgive them for not using the same actor as played him in the audios, cause I think he was black and they'd end up with rather a lot of black bad guys at once.
It clicks into place like Rubiks Cube. The earlier version, kill his own people to stop the Daleks, it's simple and it seems to fit, but now we've got these other layers it seems more like those times you've got one side of the puzzle and the others are still a jumble. Now it's *brilliant*. The Doctor saw the danger, all of it, and stopped it.
And if the Time Lock on the war is a bubble and they've made that little hole in the bubble then all that shiny can come out and play if other writers want to go there.
It sounded great, all those names you can spin story around.
The only slight problem is believing that out of a whole race there's only two that don't feel like destroying the universe, but if Rassilon was destroying the objectors I guess that gets more likely.
Two of them, one the woman in white, who presumably used terribly clever Time Lordy stuff to do all that messaging back through time while hiding behind Rassilon. Because clearly that makes sense.
... of all the dangly plot threads and things that shake apart when you poke them, her involvement is the part that irritates me most. Because it was built up to be significant, to be important, to be a reveal that changes the Doctor's mind and his life... and we don't know why.
Why did that seem like a good idea?
I mean having two of them and only one getting a face is fair enough, leave some mysteries for the next guy to pick up, but having the one we've got questions about just vanish with it all unanswered, that's a bit rubbish.
Plus, you could tell RTD wanted that final confrontation with the gun. He'd decided there had to be a gun. But why the hell was there a gun? I mean, what he ended up doing could have been done with the sonic.
The thing is though, that wouldn't have shown the Master what the Doctor's choice was. Or the audience, but since it was the Master that then saved the Doctor, it was the Master that needed showing for in-universe continuity.
Basically the woman in white set things up so the Master would know, on his own terms, that the Doctor cared.
So, slash fairy then?
... it's as plausible as all the other guesses. :eyeroll a lot:
The interaction between The Doctor and The Master was exactly what I'd wanted. I think it worked, both plausibly and emotionally. And thank fuck, it let the actors be to actually act. No ageing makeup, no CGI, no tinkerbell, just two actors who can really bring it if given the chance. And they did. The speech about how the Master could be beautiful, and the final confrontation, that was just brilliant.
The thing I was most worried about was that RTD wouldn't love the Doctor for the same reasons I do. The bit with the gun... The Doctor never would. He's a 'coward' every time. We know that, we've seen that, and it was RTD that wrote some of that, but... well, after CoE and Waters of Mars he wrote some stuff I disagreed with blood and bone, and I was worried he'd changed his mind. So the Master uses the words, never would, coward, and I'm talking to the screen, and I'm actually worried... and RTD's fail elsewhere brings win to the dramatic tension right there. Because it was so personal and so layered right then, the Master just daring him to do it and totally hurt that he would (and yes he'd just tried to kill him but hey, that's the Master), and then the idea the Doctor could just take power, and think about it, everything he could do if he ruled the Time Lords in Rassilon's place... but he's run from that before.
So he comes up with a third option. Which is what he does.
And never mind that without the gun the option would be obvious, because that whole scene, that was beautiful.
And earlier with Wilf trying to get him to take the gun? I loved them both. I totally loved them both.
But there was that niggly thing... Hearing that it was a choice between the Master or the human race, it doesn't seem to leave much choice. Or when it was Time Lords or the universe, and those two not invited, that's not much of a choice either. It didn't feel like the Doctor had in his hands two things where he wanted both of them and had to choose.
Until after. Until Wilf.
And the Doctor didn't know who would be knocking, and neither did we.
Surprised me even with all the clues in. Win.
David Tennant really made that speech. You could see how much he wants to live and how easy it would be, just once, how easy it would be to call it the greater good and just... let this one go. They even both wanted that!
But it was like the Doctor said about the gun, kill them before they kill you, that's how the Master started.
And thinking, just this once, that your life is worth more?
Save your life and lose your soul. Your essence, the choice you've always made. Because this is what he's about.
There's no such thing as the little people.
They're all worth dying for.
It fixes what I found evil about Waters of Mars, and it is exactly why I love the Doctor.
RTD screwed things up, but that was his middle of the story, when everything gets dark. I still think he went too far, but with this ending he fixed a hell of a lot of it.
I was expecting The Doctor to regenerate in that cabinet. In the first few minutes after he didn't I thought I'd have liked the episode better if he had. Everything after that was just a bit... well. It made Wilf not have to carry the guilt. It showed us everyone got everything all wrapped up happy, as close as the Doctor can manage. I'm sure there's people who like that kind of ending, but I'm not usually one.
But as it went on, I realised it was a different story. This was a different kind of death than the Doctor has faced before. Not a sudden blow and a quick regeneration. This was slow. He had time to see it coming, to think about it. And it was painful, at least towards the end, but he didn't hole up and try and avoid the pain. He used the time to take a tour of everything he would be losing. And for the first time in a very long time, it feels like he is losing something, every time he 'dies'. With that little speech in the cafe from the previous episode, plus this, it puts the stakes back in, even without putting a countdown on the Doctor's lives. Because this matters to him. We see how it matters.
And it bookends with him walking out the TARDIS in the silly hat. That was him running away from his end, when he threw himself into adventure and excitement and really wild things. That was him determined not to care, in the hopes it would hurt less. But this was him knowing he is dead, but still with this little bit of time. He's there making sure, for everyone he cares about. Being that little extra bit of help, the way he can. Caring. Feeling it all.
The details bother me. Martha married who? I tell you, I was honestly wondering if they'd bounced to another universe again. Continuity! How physics works there can go hang, but emotional continuity would be nice.
And something needs saying about the Jack bit at the end.
My stomach did a flip seeing him. Not a happy one. He hurts too much.
This is a man who lost everything. This is a man who killed his own grandson.
And the Doctor just had to kill his world again - a world where he was a father and a grandfather, once. Where are his descendents? Did he just kill them again?
But this is RTD in the closing minutes of a tearjerker ending.
Instead of getting into that, at all, what happens?
The Doctor finds a pretty boy for Jack.
... even if all Jack had lost was Ianto, that's ... we'd need to know how long it had been, and it would take time, and it would require *knowing* each other for it to mean anything, and... as it was? It was tasteless. It was empty and shallow and wrong.
Of course Jack will move on. He has to. He's going to live forever and he keeps on healing and even if he doesn't want to he'll find himself living again.
But this wasn't the way to show us.
Most of the other endings just did nothing for the characters in them, or didn't even quite make sense. Why only visit the modern day writer, not the original? Though having watched the Confidential I see what RTD means about not looking both ways crossing the road and kind of have to approve of that bit. Very meta.
The point though was the Doctor doesn't have time to spend a life with any of these people. He might only have a few hours. Or minutes. It could have taken him as long to do as it took us to watch. So he can't give them himself, his time, it's all gone. So instead he gives them these little helping hands, the best he can do with the time he has. And while there's no way in hell he can help Jack's major pain, he knows how loneliness feels, and how corrosive it can be, so, here, he can help just a little with that. He's trying, and I think the way it's all a bit tiny and huge at once is part of the message. Like christmas presents, like the most thoughtful thing that he and only he could bring. Because he cares about them all.
So I'm not sure I like what the story did for anyone else, but for the Doctor, that was the right and necessary ending.
And it was, finally, a proper send off, and a sad to see him go, for the tenth Doctor... even though the three middle specials had me only looking forward to the next writer.
Could be RTD's been a bit clever.
... hmph.
I think it had all RTD's usual flaws, running around not really doing much between emotional confrontations, limiting things to a tiny number of players even when the effect is global, the ending that doesn't know when to quit... but he made them work. The plot still pulls apart quite a bit, but it worked for the emotions it was bringing. So I think this was a bit win.
*waves bye* to David Tennant. I didn't want him to go either.
As for the new guy... there a whole minute and already blowing up the TARDIS? ! This does not endear him to me. Though to be fair it was mostly the regeneration that done it. Still, the glee at being in another pickle already, that works. And there's some very promising scary bits in the preview ad. We'll see.
I'm looking forward to the next season.
I wrote the first version of this while I was still crying, and it was a bit flaily and wah and not big on the making sense, so I try again.
And it's kind of embarrassing because I can see how the plot is about as shaky as usual and RTD is being manipulative and all, but still, it worked.
It worked because of The Doctor, The Master... and Rassilon.
Primarily it worked on me because of the relationship going where I'd been waiting for, and the symbol I didn't know would hit my buttons until it happened.
There's two things about The Master that are important to me, two parts that, even though he's a mass murdering bastard, still have me rooting for him just a little, just hoping he'll change just enough. And they're both the absolute refusal to let the universe win. He won't let it kill him. And he won't let it take his mind. We see it when he's basically a walking corpse but still won't let go, and we see it in Survival where others are falling to the beast but the Master just will not. And, yeah, sometimes it looks like death wins, but it never sticks. And then there's the actually losing his mind... I really hated that. Lots of layers of reasons. Everything I said last week stands. Making it about insanity hits all the bad old stereotypes in a row.
But here... it made it something done *to* him, something with a single discrete source, someone he could get mad at and it would actually help. It wasn't just attacking the man, it was attacking the illness. And all that with burning up his life, the lightning from his hands that I really hated last week, when it became part of that moment... he's just hitting back. Not with technology or anything but his own life and his own will. Don't let the crazy win, use it, use it all, throw it back and beat it. And he's winning.
And finally it's aimed at a target that we can agree with.
There's corners of problem all over it - if someone drives you nuts it doesn't generally help when they're dead. I mean, they stop making it worse, but it doesn't fix anything.
But it's emotionally satisfying as all hell to have that symbol in there. This is the bastard who hurt him when he was a kid and broke his brain for his whole life. Smite.
It was done to him. It was done to him deliberately. And once they'd done it to him they just wrote him off.
And he fucked their shit up for it.
And it saved the world and The Doctor both.
That right there worked for me really powerfully.
I've been wanting to get The Master aimed at the right target for the longest time. I've been wanting to say those things to him that The Doctor said. And here they were, tested, together, and finally ending up aiming the same way... heh, metaphor same way, still literal opposites. And it's the story I've wanted to see. I didn't think they'd write it. I thought they'd screw it up again. And there it was.
The thing where the story then ignored him and he faded out into the death of Gallifrey and/or what the Doctor had just described as hell... that's sort of a problem. Because it's the ending for a bad guy, but did he just do a redemption thing? But he'd know what the consequences were, so did he choose that?
It's the story just dropping it right then that's the only remaining niggle.
But it did a lot of that.
Donna.
:eyeroll:
And woman in white, who never got a name or a proper hint who she was. I've seen people equally certain she's a number of old school characters, so, not a proper hint if you can't tell which way it's pointing.
I missed women getting things done. I missed companions. Wilf is brilliant, but the story ended up really lacking strong women.
The cliffhanger was all very scary, but it only led to the bit where Donna was there only to have her head explode because The Doctor left her with a defence system. Not because Donna is brilliant mind, not because of any choice of hers, just because RTD wanted to leave that thread alone for the rest of the story so he made the Doctor have already fixed it. Would it have been so terrible for Donna to figure out how to do that? Something brilliant, something only she could do. Give her a moment. She is not a damsel in distress. Except for this time. :eyeroll:
The logic of leaving Donna there unconscious really seriously doesn't work, because The Master has a few billion bodies to task to go pick her up and see what's up with her, and why wouldn't he?
Because the story doesn't want him to is the only reason. boo.
The way the Master interacted with himself... calling one of himself Sir and all of them cooperating? Really? Because I'm having trouble with that concept. He's working in a team and not backstabbing anybody! What up with that?
But, two things that make it work.
One, he is patient. The plan with Saxon took 18 months to set up and execute, and he had to play nice with humans the whole time. Only playing nice with himself for a few days? Patience.
And two, he calls himself the master of disguise, but really, he's a roleplayer. He has fun getting into characters. He's in character when nobody else is around even. Old school canon says so. So here he is with almost seven billion new characters to be! How much fun is that? Fun! So it's going to be a while before any of him get bored, just from the sheer novelty of all the characters he has there. Some of them more boring than others. In any chain of command he's going to want to be at the top, even when he already is. But over the short term? He'll play.
So I can believe it. He's patient and he has glee in new toys. That works.
The Time Lords.
Oh, the Time Lords.
I can really, really buy that.
Rassilon.
Glorious!
... also, I forgive them for not using the same actor as played him in the audios, cause I think he was black and they'd end up with rather a lot of black bad guys at once.
It clicks into place like Rubiks Cube. The earlier version, kill his own people to stop the Daleks, it's simple and it seems to fit, but now we've got these other layers it seems more like those times you've got one side of the puzzle and the others are still a jumble. Now it's *brilliant*. The Doctor saw the danger, all of it, and stopped it.
And if the Time Lock on the war is a bubble and they've made that little hole in the bubble then all that shiny can come out and play if other writers want to go there.
It sounded great, all those names you can spin story around.
The only slight problem is believing that out of a whole race there's only two that don't feel like destroying the universe, but if Rassilon was destroying the objectors I guess that gets more likely.
Two of them, one the woman in white, who presumably used terribly clever Time Lordy stuff to do all that messaging back through time while hiding behind Rassilon. Because clearly that makes sense.
... of all the dangly plot threads and things that shake apart when you poke them, her involvement is the part that irritates me most. Because it was built up to be significant, to be important, to be a reveal that changes the Doctor's mind and his life... and we don't know why.
Why did that seem like a good idea?
I mean having two of them and only one getting a face is fair enough, leave some mysteries for the next guy to pick up, but having the one we've got questions about just vanish with it all unanswered, that's a bit rubbish.
Plus, you could tell RTD wanted that final confrontation with the gun. He'd decided there had to be a gun. But why the hell was there a gun? I mean, what he ended up doing could have been done with the sonic.
The thing is though, that wouldn't have shown the Master what the Doctor's choice was. Or the audience, but since it was the Master that then saved the Doctor, it was the Master that needed showing for in-universe continuity.
Basically the woman in white set things up so the Master would know, on his own terms, that the Doctor cared.
So, slash fairy then?
... it's as plausible as all the other guesses. :eyeroll a lot:
The interaction between The Doctor and The Master was exactly what I'd wanted. I think it worked, both plausibly and emotionally. And thank fuck, it let the actors be to actually act. No ageing makeup, no CGI, no tinkerbell, just two actors who can really bring it if given the chance. And they did. The speech about how the Master could be beautiful, and the final confrontation, that was just brilliant.
The thing I was most worried about was that RTD wouldn't love the Doctor for the same reasons I do. The bit with the gun... The Doctor never would. He's a 'coward' every time. We know that, we've seen that, and it was RTD that wrote some of that, but... well, after CoE and Waters of Mars he wrote some stuff I disagreed with blood and bone, and I was worried he'd changed his mind. So the Master uses the words, never would, coward, and I'm talking to the screen, and I'm actually worried... and RTD's fail elsewhere brings win to the dramatic tension right there. Because it was so personal and so layered right then, the Master just daring him to do it and totally hurt that he would (and yes he'd just tried to kill him but hey, that's the Master), and then the idea the Doctor could just take power, and think about it, everything he could do if he ruled the Time Lords in Rassilon's place... but he's run from that before.
So he comes up with a third option. Which is what he does.
And never mind that without the gun the option would be obvious, because that whole scene, that was beautiful.
And earlier with Wilf trying to get him to take the gun? I loved them both. I totally loved them both.
But there was that niggly thing... Hearing that it was a choice between the Master or the human race, it doesn't seem to leave much choice. Or when it was Time Lords or the universe, and those two not invited, that's not much of a choice either. It didn't feel like the Doctor had in his hands two things where he wanted both of them and had to choose.
Until after. Until Wilf.
And the Doctor didn't know who would be knocking, and neither did we.
Surprised me even with all the clues in. Win.
David Tennant really made that speech. You could see how much he wants to live and how easy it would be, just once, how easy it would be to call it the greater good and just... let this one go. They even both wanted that!
But it was like the Doctor said about the gun, kill them before they kill you, that's how the Master started.
And thinking, just this once, that your life is worth more?
Save your life and lose your soul. Your essence, the choice you've always made. Because this is what he's about.
There's no such thing as the little people.
They're all worth dying for.
It fixes what I found evil about Waters of Mars, and it is exactly why I love the Doctor.
RTD screwed things up, but that was his middle of the story, when everything gets dark. I still think he went too far, but with this ending he fixed a hell of a lot of it.
I was expecting The Doctor to regenerate in that cabinet. In the first few minutes after he didn't I thought I'd have liked the episode better if he had. Everything after that was just a bit... well. It made Wilf not have to carry the guilt. It showed us everyone got everything all wrapped up happy, as close as the Doctor can manage. I'm sure there's people who like that kind of ending, but I'm not usually one.
But as it went on, I realised it was a different story. This was a different kind of death than the Doctor has faced before. Not a sudden blow and a quick regeneration. This was slow. He had time to see it coming, to think about it. And it was painful, at least towards the end, but he didn't hole up and try and avoid the pain. He used the time to take a tour of everything he would be losing. And for the first time in a very long time, it feels like he is losing something, every time he 'dies'. With that little speech in the cafe from the previous episode, plus this, it puts the stakes back in, even without putting a countdown on the Doctor's lives. Because this matters to him. We see how it matters.
And it bookends with him walking out the TARDIS in the silly hat. That was him running away from his end, when he threw himself into adventure and excitement and really wild things. That was him determined not to care, in the hopes it would hurt less. But this was him knowing he is dead, but still with this little bit of time. He's there making sure, for everyone he cares about. Being that little extra bit of help, the way he can. Caring. Feeling it all.
The details bother me. Martha married who? I tell you, I was honestly wondering if they'd bounced to another universe again. Continuity! How physics works there can go hang, but emotional continuity would be nice.
And something needs saying about the Jack bit at the end.
My stomach did a flip seeing him. Not a happy one. He hurts too much.
This is a man who lost everything. This is a man who killed his own grandson.
And the Doctor just had to kill his world again - a world where he was a father and a grandfather, once. Where are his descendents? Did he just kill them again?
But this is RTD in the closing minutes of a tearjerker ending.
Instead of getting into that, at all, what happens?
The Doctor finds a pretty boy for Jack.
... even if all Jack had lost was Ianto, that's ... we'd need to know how long it had been, and it would take time, and it would require *knowing* each other for it to mean anything, and... as it was? It was tasteless. It was empty and shallow and wrong.
Of course Jack will move on. He has to. He's going to live forever and he keeps on healing and even if he doesn't want to he'll find himself living again.
But this wasn't the way to show us.
Most of the other endings just did nothing for the characters in them, or didn't even quite make sense. Why only visit the modern day writer, not the original? Though having watched the Confidential I see what RTD means about not looking both ways crossing the road and kind of have to approve of that bit. Very meta.
The point though was the Doctor doesn't have time to spend a life with any of these people. He might only have a few hours. Or minutes. It could have taken him as long to do as it took us to watch. So he can't give them himself, his time, it's all gone. So instead he gives them these little helping hands, the best he can do with the time he has. And while there's no way in hell he can help Jack's major pain, he knows how loneliness feels, and how corrosive it can be, so, here, he can help just a little with that. He's trying, and I think the way it's all a bit tiny and huge at once is part of the message. Like christmas presents, like the most thoughtful thing that he and only he could bring. Because he cares about them all.
So I'm not sure I like what the story did for anyone else, but for the Doctor, that was the right and necessary ending.
And it was, finally, a proper send off, and a sad to see him go, for the tenth Doctor... even though the three middle specials had me only looking forward to the next writer.
Could be RTD's been a bit clever.
... hmph.
I think it had all RTD's usual flaws, running around not really doing much between emotional confrontations, limiting things to a tiny number of players even when the effect is global, the ending that doesn't know when to quit... but he made them work. The plot still pulls apart quite a bit, but it worked for the emotions it was bringing. So I think this was a bit win.
*waves bye* to David Tennant. I didn't want him to go either.
As for the new guy... there a whole minute and already blowing up the TARDIS? ! This does not endear him to me. Though to be fair it was mostly the regeneration that done it. Still, the glee at being in another pickle already, that works. And there's some very promising scary bits in the preview ad. We'll see.
I'm looking forward to the next season.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 12:18 pm (UTC)... there's a lot of *facepalm* in there. A *lot*.
It's not that I didn't notice it, it's just that I was having a Master moment first.