Doctor Who – 4x13 – Journey’s End (Grade/Discuss)

[David cgc]

Well, not really. Space is a vacuum, so the only way to lose heat is by radiation, which is slow. That's part of the reason half the planet doesn't freeze at night. And, besides, they handwaved it with the Dalek atmospheric/heat shield (though you'd really only need it for the heat. Gravity would hold on to the atmosphere just fine).

 

[zenophite]

I guess you guys missed my post about my system.

Excellent
Very Good
Good
Mediocre
Terrible

That's the rating system I use for shows, although I'm still not quite satisfied with Very Good. I want a term that sits in the middle between Excellent and Good, and Very Good is the best I can ever come up with.

"pretty neat" or "swell"?

In any case.... after all the great buildup in the Stolen Earth I thought this episode had a handful of decent scenes tied together with a ridiculous storyline. I haven't seen an apocalypse this comical since buffy the vampire slayer or angel (and that's not a compliment) While I did manage to enjoy it in a superficial way I thought that on whole this finale left me with a bitter aftertaste.

Pros:
on the surface I thought it was neat to see all the recently featured companions together.
special effects were pretty good
daleks can still offer some mild fun (especially in german)

Cons:
-red herring regeneration
-the whole episode felt rushed.
-davros' appearance seemed tacked on and did not strike me as anything but a gimmick.
-while it was initially cool to see all the companions in one episode their presence also started to seem more like a gimmick than anything else.
-a really nonsensical story or rather the story as a whole (davros being so insane as to want to destroy the universe) could have worked well if it hadn't been filled with so much nonsense.

 

[TedShatner10]

I wonder why Davros' console could control every vital operation within the Crucible and the escorting saucer fleet, backfiring the Dalek's Multiverse erasing uberweapon and blowing everything up? Wasn't the Vault intended to isolate Davros and Caan as well, so they wouldn't meddle with the Dalek Supreme's operations (unless it was Davros secretly building that command console on the sly with the Daleks down with him secretly loyal only to him, perhaps launching a coup within Crucible after the Multiverse outside the Medusa Cascade was destroyed)?

 

[Mr Awe]

I guess you guys missed my post about my system.

Excellent
Very Good
Good
Mediocre
Terrible

That's the rating system I use for shows, although I'm still not quite satisfied with Very Good. I want a term that sits in the middle between Excellent and Good, and Very Good is the best I can ever come up with.

I agree that your 5 point system is better than the current 5 point system. The current system is all relative to Average and the obvious question, average to what? Doctor Who, Sci Fi, TV in general. Your system avoids that. Although I think Good and Mediocre are fairly similar. Mediocre means middling, not below the middle. So, some other word for "Mediocre" that implies somewhat bad but not terrible. At any rate, with your system, I'd still want something between Good and Very good!

Instead, I'd like to have a more finely graduated system. 7 points as Starkers suggested (although I agree it's hard to distinguish between Above average and Good). Or, I'd prefer a 10 point system and just used numbers. I'd give a 7/10 for the finale.

Mr Awe

 

[Jax]

Space is COLD, absolute zero COLD. That is my gripe with that scene, not necessarily the TARDIS towing the planet bit.

It will still take time for the Earth to cool down due to the atmpsohere and am sure it didn't take the Tardis too long to get us back. All the science in WHO is mostly laughable but thats the whole point.

 

[Mr Awe]

So how about...

Fantastic!
Great
Very Good
Good
Mediocre
Poor
Terrible

?

I don't care for mediocre. It's less concrete. I've seen definitions ranging from poor quality to middling. I'm trying to thinking of an alternative. Perhaps "tolerable." Also, maybe instead of "very good" how about enjoyable?

So:

Fantastic!
Great
Enjoyable
Good
Tolerable
Poor
Terrible

I don't know. It's tough using words! I prefer numbers myself! It's a 7!

Mr Awe

 

[Jim Steele]

Ah, that's what I was trying to get to! If a race can manipuilate black holes, then flying a shielded planet across the galaxy is peanuts.

Towing the Earth over a vast distance at faster than light speeds? My brain simply won't accept it. That scene will make me cringe until the day I die.

I guess that means I'm not a "true Who fan" or whatever.

As an aside, now that I've calmed down a bit, that's pretty much the only bit of the episode that bugs me now. It still doesn't deserve a higher grade than "average", but at least I've learned to like it for what it is.

Doomsday pisses all over it still, but then Doomsday pisses all over 99.9% of genre television*.




* Terminal blowhards, read this.

 

[Brent]

Why would you not be able to accept it? We just saw it, it indeed is possible in the Doctor Who universe.

 

[Jax]

Why would you not be able to accept it? We just saw it, it indeed is possible in the Doctor Who universe.

If you can't accept that then how do you accept the other 99% of Who stuff...or SG, TREK, B-5 and so on

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I suppose it's a matter of perspective/opinion. I didn't think the gap between Fantastic and Above Average was all that big either...

I think the 7 options works well. We have one option each at the top and bottom for the very best and the very worst episodes, plust five options inbetween for everything else.

I don't know, mediocre to me is kinda disappointing, or indifferent, terrible is "I couldn't make it through." so poor fills the gap between the two nicely. Great, and Fantastic seem to be close to synonymous though.

I agree that your 5 point system is better than the current 5 point system. The current system is all relative to Average and the obvious question, average to what? Doctor Who, Sci Fi, TV in general. Your system avoids that. Although I think Good and Mediocre are fairly similar. Mediocre means middling, not below the middle. So, some other word for "Mediocre" that implies somewhat bad but not terrible. At any rate, with your system, I'd still want something between Good and Very good!

Instead, I'd like to have a more finely graduated system. 7 points as Starkers suggested (although I agree it's hard to distinguish between Above average and Good). Or, I'd prefer a 10 point system and just used numbers. I'd give a 7/10 for the finale.

In regards to "Mediocre," I've always viewed it to being about equivalent to Okay or maybe a little lower. Passable, but nothing to right home about.

With that in mind, I could see Poor being in there, but I think Great is too close to Excellent/Fantastic/Brilliant. *shrug*

 

[Jim Steele]

Why would you not be able to accept it? We just saw it, it indeed is possible in the Doctor Who universe.

Because I am simply unable to suspend my disbelief that high for that long.

Why are people acting so butthurt about it? It obviously didn't irk you guys in the same way - cool, glad you enjoyed it. It just didn't sit right with me and I've already given my best answer as to why.

*shrugs*

 

[Jim Steele]

Why would you not be able to accept it? We just saw it, it indeed is possible in the Doctor Who universe.

If you can't accept that then how do you accept the other 99% of Who stuff...or SG, TREK, B-5 and so on

That's ridiculous. So ridiculous that it doesn't even deserve this response.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Ah, that's what I was trying to get to! If a race can manipuilate black holes, then flying a shielded planet across the galaxy is peanuts.

Towing the Earth over a vast distance at faster than light speeds? My brain simply won't accept it. That scene will make me cringe until the day I die.

So, your brain doesn't break understanding how regeneration, the TARDIS work (both the mechanics of its motion and its interior), and so on? I don't think it's that much of a leap.

 

[Brent]

Why would you not be able to accept it? We just saw it, it indeed is possible in the Doctor Who universe.

Because I am simply unable to suspend my disbelief that high for that long.

Why are people acting so butthurt about it? It obviously didn't irk you guys in the same way - cool, glad you enjoyed it. It just didn't sit right with me and I've already given my best answer as to why.

*shrugs*

I think it is more that you don't want to believe it, or you don't like it. Because if you really wanted to, I bet you could choose to believe it is possible in the context. It makes sense based on everything we've seen of the Timelords capabilities.

 

[Hobs202]

Just a quick thought. Why didn't the Doctor give Rose the choice of returning to her own Universe?
Isn't that a bit cruel?

Yep, that was a bit forced. Obviously, if she was in our universe there is no conceivable reason why she and the human Doctor wouldn't actually travel with the real Doctor. But that won't work for real world reasons. So, the forced split just like the original time Rose was stuck in the alternate reality. But supposedly she was dumped there because the human Doctor was too dangerous in our universe. Huh? Is he any safer in the other one? If he's so dangerous, isn't Rose in danger? Bizarre.

Here's the question, though? Would Rose even WANT to stay in our universe, given that our Earth is smoldering wreck at the moment? Also, she's listed as "dead" in our universe, while she has a job and a father and baby brother in the parallel universe. Given the choice between our not-so-great Earth vs the parallel Earth, I think she would have gone with the parallel Earth.

 

[jbny67]

The idea that a TARDIS would take six people to pilot properly goes all the way back to the original design for the 2005 series, in which the set designer surmised just that (or something for a minimum crew of three in usual situations, each managing two sides fo the pedestal). Why not have six consoles facing inwards, but to have six people each with a different function? If it were just one, I'd rather have one console (and a chair) to manage everything than be forced to run around a column all the time.

In the original series, we only ever saw TARDISes with one operator, namely for the Master, the Rani, and the Meddling Monk. All the other Time Lords seemed to dispense with a TARDIS entirely, timply popping in wherever and whenever they needed to do it. The most "modern" TARDIS we saw was arguably the Rani's, which had a round console; we could infer that as TARDIS design advanced from the days of the Doctor's type 40 (and whatever the Master and Monk were driving) that fewer crew were required for optimum operation, to the point that not many Time Lords even used TARDISes anymore when they bothered to leave Gallifrey.

This only leaves the "Rassilon Impermature", or the symbiotic link a Time Lord shares with his TARDIS. Under normal conditions, would a type 40 be linked with six Gallifreyans, or just the commander? It's impossible to know, but we do know that operating it with just one is okay.

Mark

There's been talk about a 6 man crew being needed to operate a Tardis correctly going back long before the new series. However, I can't recall if it was ever mentioned on the show before.

 

[Hobs202]

I wonder why Davros' console could control every vital operation within the Crucible and the escorting saucer fleet, backfiring the Dalek's Multiverse erasing uberweapon and blowing everything up? Wasn't the Vault intended to isolate Davros and Caan as well, so they wouldn't meddle with the Dalek Supreme's operations (unless it was Davros secretly building that command console on the sly with the Daleks down with him secretly loyal only to him, perhaps launching a coup within Crucible after the Multiverse outside the Medusa Cascade was destroyed)?

First of all, there were ordinary Daleks guarding the controls.

Secondly, we don't know the exact details of the "arrangement" between Davros and the Supreme Dalek.

Remember, the controls in the vault didn't seem to affect the Supreme Dalek.

 

[Hobs202]

The idea that a TARDIS would take six people to pilot properly goes all the way back to the original design for the 2005 series, in which the set designer surmised just that (or something for a minimum crew of three in usual situations, each managing two sides fo the pedestal). Why not have six consoles facing inwards, but to have six people each with a different function? If it were just one, I'd rather have one console (and a chair) to manage everything than be forced to run around a column all the time.

In the original series, we only ever saw TARDISes with one operator, namely for the Master, the Rani, and the Meddling Monk. All the other Time Lords seemed to dispense with a TARDIS entirely, timply popping in wherever and whenever they needed to do it. The most "modern" TARDIS we saw was arguably the Rani's, which had a round console; we could infer that as TARDIS design advanced from the days of the Doctor's type 40 (and whatever the Master and Monk were driving) that fewer crew were required for optimum operation, to the point that not many Time Lords even used TARDISes anymore when they bothered to leave Gallifrey.

This only leaves the "Rassilon Impermature", or the symbiotic link a Time Lord shares with his TARDIS. Under normal conditions, would a type 40 be linked with six Gallifreyans, or just the commander? It's impossible to know, but we do know that operating it with just one is okay.

Mark

There's been talk about a 6 man crew being needed to operate a Tardis correctly going back long before the new series. However, I can't recall if it was ever mentioned on the show before.

I thought it was mentioned in a Patrick Troughton episode, but I can't remember which one.

 

[Brent]

There is one thing I didn't quite grasp or understand in the episode. Why was it required for Donna to touch the hand for it to regenerate a doctor out of it?

I get that the remainder of his regeneration energy went into the hand, ok, fine. What I don't get is why when Donna touched it, at that moment, it was able to regenerate a new body. What was special about Donna that made it regenerate? What did it need that she had?

 

[Jim Steele]

Ah, that's what I was trying to get to! If a race can manipuilate black holes, then flying a shielded planet across the galaxy is peanuts.

Towing the Earth over a vast distance at faster than light speeds? My brain simply won't accept it. That scene will make me cringe until the day I die.

So, your brain doesn't break understanding how regeneration, the TARDIS work (both the mechanics of its motion and its interior), and so on? I don't think it's that much of a leap.

And the same argument gets trotted out again.

I have no problem accepting the fantastic. I've been a Who fan all my life for christ sake.

To me, the towing of the Earth (at FTL speeds, with little more than a shudder on the surface, etc) is in the same catgory as the Fifth Doctor's zero gravity cricket ball antics in Four to Doomsday - Yes, ok, it happened on screen, but I really don't want to think about it.