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

Grade Journey's End


  • Total voters
    239
I wouldn't mind it being The Seventh Doctor or The Eighth, but I can see the Time Crash mold getting a bit repetitive for folks and not being able to get a full-fledged multi-Doctor story.
 
ive been trying to think who it could be, and not alot of people spring to mind, I assume this will set after Journeys End and with all the companions given all there various exits, it seems unlikely it will be any of them.

past Doctors are of course a possibility, K9 would seem to be one as well, but I really dont know, just have to wait & find out. The fanboy in me hopes its the 9th Doctor, but im guess that wont be the case. Elton & Sally Sparrow are also possiblites.

I doubt Chris will be part of Who for a long time yet.


I like many was hoping he would turn up for RTDs swan-song but that was not the case. :(

I was hoping for a resolve of the time war where we see 9's 'Born in battle and rage and fire' stuff, making him vengeful, thus, how we saw him in Rose and early season 1, until he changed in season 2 and 3 and 4.
 
I've been thinking about this episode a lot today and the more I think about it, the more I wish it had a happier ended. Yeah, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, but after spending a season with Cathrine Tate great as Donna, it is just really hard to see her regress back to Runaway Bride levels. Hopefully, Donna's life does improve and the Mother becomes much better but it was just sad to see it end that way. I still feel the way I did yesterday concerning Rose and still think Sarah Jane, Jack, Mickey, and Martha got the best send offs of the show.
 
RTD says in Doctor Who Magazine 395 that Rose's appearance there wasn't meant to be foreshadowing in that way. Rose's visit wasn't in Donna's future. She wasn't there to warn Donna about anything. She was there, looking for the Doctor. He does say that he thought it was interesting that fans assumed online that we'd come back to that scene from Rose's supposedly future POV, even though that belief was completely without foundation. :)
Even if "Partners in Crime" wasn't from a future POV, what about "Turn Left"? If that's the real Rose, then she knows things that Rose shouldn't until after "Journey's End" (Donna's last name, "he thought you were brilliant", "I'm sorry").

Of course, if that's actually Bad Wolf and not Rose (trying to set things up for Rose herself, before the unforeseeable voidship screws things up?), then that's not so much a problem. :)
 
ive been trying to think who it could be, and not alot of people spring to mind, I assume this will set after Journeys End and with all the companions given all there various exits, it seems unlikely it will be any of them.

past Doctors are of course a possibility, K9 would seem to be one as well, but I really dont know, just have to wait & find out. The fanboy in me hopes its the 9th Doctor, but im guess that wont be the case. Elton & Sally Sparrow are also possiblites.

I doubt Chris will be part of Who for a long time yet.
yeah I know.
 
I wasn't a big fan of the finale, and i was upset at the fact that no-one died (apart from the daleks of course.)
 
I wasn't a big fan of the finale, and i was upset at the fact that no-one died (apart from the daleks of course.)

Why would you be disappointed that someone didn't die? You'd hope that all of the companions lived; they're The Doctor's friends after all.
 
I wouldn't mind it being The Seventh Doctor or The Eighth, but I can see the Time Crash mold getting a bit repetitive for folks and not being able to get a full-fledged multi-Doctor story.

Well, McCoy was in confidential, dressed like The Doctor, for no apparent reason a couple of weeks ago. So, that's a possibility. I guess we'll see on the 27th. Unless it gets leaked onto the net.
 
I've been thinking about this episode a lot today and the more I think about it, the more I wish it had a happier ended. Yeah, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, but after spending a season with Cathrine Tate great as Donna, it is just really hard to see her regress back to Runaway Bride levels. Hopefully, Donna's life does improve and the Mother becomes much better but it was just sad to see it end that way. I still feel the way I did yesterday concerning Rose and still think Sarah Jane, Jack, Mickey, and Martha got the best send offs of the show.
Then I bet you won't like the last episode of The War Games. Epic serial, but ends on a major downer for all three of the characters.

I wasn't a big fan of the finale, and i was upset at the fact that no-one died (apart from the daleks of course.)
What, memory wiping wasn't big enough for you? I think that's a fate worse than death.

I wouldn't mind it being The Seventh Doctor or The Eighth, but I can see the Time Crash mold getting a bit repetitive for folks and not being able to get a full-fledged multi-Doctor story.
Well, McCoy was in confidential, dressed like The Doctor, for no apparent reason a couple of weeks ago. So, that's a possibility. I guess we'll see on the 27th. Unless it gets leaked onto the net.
Yeah, I noticed, too (he's also in this week's episode). It's possible...
 
I wasn't a big fan of the finale, and i was upset at the fact that no-one died (apart from the daleks of course.)
What, memory wiping wasn't big enough for you? I think that's a fate worse than death.

Totally, the person we know as Donna is dead. Watching her at the end gossiping on the phone was horribly sad; she became this absolutely brilliant character (and that's even before the, what did they call it, metacrisis?) and all of that was taken away and will never be again. And the Doctor has to leave her behind knowing he can never see her again. That's far worse then if she had simply died. It really is "everlasting death"...
 
That's far worse then if she had simply died. It really is "everlasting death"...
I missed that piece of prophecy the first time around, but it definitely caught my attention the second time around. Either your dead or alive, so normally "everlasting death" wouldn't mean anything, but what happened to Donna was everlasting death.
 
Which is exactly why I believe the Daleks should be given a couple years break. That should give the writers enough time to figure out how to make them look like a convincing enemy again.

Well they were about to achieve ultimate strategic victory over the entire Multiverse through their titanic Reality Bomb, something that even Q couldn't do in the context of his setting, but the individual Daleks seemed noticebly weaker than other post-Time War members of their race like Van Statten's Dalek and the Cult of Skaro (they didn't even cause the companions to combust on hand contact when they were grappled with in the Vault).

Their brief taking over of Earth seemed clumsy, over staffed and underpowered, calling for them to swarm over UNIT targets with a reduced sense of aloof invincibility shown before (I bet a Time War era scout ship with just a infantry section of Daleks onboard would've done the same work in a quater of the time).

In the meantime, I would actually like to see more of the Sontarans, the Cybermen (preferably from our universe), and the Judoon.

Or the Toclafane when the Master returns? Loyal henchballs on tap when ever he opens a portal? Maybe see much more of the mysterious Utopia.
 
Just think we could have had Davros for companion in the X-mas special.
davrosonboard.gif
 
Davros needed Daleks to do his plan and Caan needed Davros to do his plan so The Doctor could wipe them out.

Caan wants to wipe out the Daleks after seeing them kill billions of aliens.
Caan rescues Davros as part of his master plan.
Davros makes new Dalek empire which goes about exterminating millions.
Caan reveals that his plan was for the Doctor to wipe out the Daleks.

I'm still having trouble understanding the logic in Caan's Master Plan.

Exactly. The whole thing was fucking retarded and just an excuse for Russell T. Davies to cram in as many characters as he possibly could for his grand finale. Why would the TARDIS be designed to be driven by six people? It's designed specifically for one Time Lord.

They spend all this time setting up the end of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE. The day is saved by Donna receiving the Doctor's mind, fair enough. That was foreshadowed and was justifiable technobabble. But they save the day by throwing a few switches. The ENTIRE UNIVERSE and they throw a few switches, like in every other fucking RTD episode. RTD's utter lack of ingenuity or imagination popped out of the TV and gave us a nice mouth-fucking. I was fisted by his incompetence. Awful.

I think this pretty much sums it up. I'd just like to add that this episode is like the "Sombreroprise" of Doctor Who - a clusterfuck of stuff thrown together "just because we can."

While I quite like the Sombreroprise, I didn't like Journey's End. Wilf & DoctorDonna are probably the only things saving it from getting a "Poor" vote. Just how many doomsday devices are laying around Earth? Here, let's just throw a necklace to SJS that can blow up the station, give UNIT a plethora of nukes that will blow up the Earth, and while we're at it, why not put the controls for all the Daleks right next to where the TARDIS materializes so we can flip a switch and make them all go wacky. That was STUPID. DoctorDonna just has to flip a switch and the Daleks start spinning in circles? The Daleks, not to mention Davros, are smarter than that - why the hell would there be a switch that would technobabble them into spinning around like idiots? I'm glad RTD is going away. He might have wonderful ideas, but his ideas are executed like a poorly-written story on fanfiction.net!

Good: Donna; Wilf; SJS/Davros reunion; Davros's "you use them as your weapons" speech; German Daleks

Bad: clusterfuck of guest appearances - K9 was the final straw. I love him as much as anyone, but couldn't you just have Mr. Smith do it? Did you really need to come up with the "I need the TARDIS base code" line so you could come up with a solution out of thin air in the next two seconds JUST to get K9 involved? Seriously, I was expecting goddamn J. Edgar Hoover to carry in the kitchen sink and hook it up to Mr. Smith so they could save the day with Harriet Jones's ghost and QEII both doing the can-can to celebrate afterwards; also, the abundance of doomsday devices that I already elaborated on and the copious nods to fans - they're nice, but when you chuck a bunch of them in, they get old really fast. We already surmised about Gwen's ancestors, we don't need a montage of previous episodes - it feels wrong without classic series stuff in it. Why would the Doctor care about some one-off character and not Adric, Sara Kingdom, Katarina, or any of the other people he's met that died?

Ugly: Rose/TenHuman; towing the Earth; regeneration cop-out making us end up with 2 Tennants (I liked DoctorDonna though). Why not have Ten regenerate to an unconscious Eleven, and then have the hand regenerate into TenHuman/DoctorDonna and replace all of Ten's stuff with TenHuman?
 
Wow.

Just wow.

What an incredible disappointment.

The cliffhanger resolution was ...predictable, but I figured it wasn't even going to take thirty seconds to be sorted and that we'd still have the same Doctor by the end. But that's fine, I can live with that.

The rest was just a painful mish mash of let downs and cop outs. Gawd, the duplicate Doctor? What was RTD thinking? "Ah, here's a shitty genre cliche I haven't used yet! Paul, to the Tritemobile!"

The best, most exciting elements of this story - Davros, The Doctor himself, and the cut and thrust between the two were criminally underused and in the case of Davros - utterly wasted. Also, the Dalek "SUPER DUPER DESTRY-TEH-UNIVERSE-O-MATIC" device was such a ridiculously overblown piece of nonsense, faux "epic" arse-dribble of a perilous plot device that I found it simply incredible - literally, as in "without credibility".

And, when I thought they couldn't possibly outdo that bollocks for overblown nonsense, they go and "tow" the Earth back in place. What.

Just what. What?

What. Pah.

Rose's return to her universe was a desperate attempt to evoke memories of Doomsday but completely failed to capture that episode's sense of despair and longing. At the end of Doomsday I was reduced to (manly) tears. This scene reduced me to "meh".

Lastly, Donna should have died. Properly. None of this "mind wipe" tosh (he had to fit a reset button in somewhere didn't he?).

Frustratingly, everything else was absolute gold. Catherine Tate's performance in particular was absolutely brilliant. Her emotional pull, her resonance - her sheer versitality really shone through here. I honestly don't know how anyone can say she's a bad actress after this. The woman is phenomenal.

Series 4 has been bloody fantastic for the most part, and I'll certainly be buying the box set. But damn, that was a letdown. Midnight, Turn Left and Stolen Earth were beautiful examples of RTD at his best - an amazing writer when he wants to be. But Journey's End featured everything about his writing that I dislike - most notably his reliance on genre cliches, Voyager-esque technobabble resolutions to everything, and trying so very hard to be "epic" that he completely misses the mark.

Voted average in lieu of a "Frustratingly bad with some flashes of brilliance" option.


And before the usual suspects pounce on me with accusations of "RTD bashing" and "not being a true fan" - bite me. Kthxbai.

It's too bad I didn't read the thread further before posting - this is exactly what my head's tried to tell my fingers to type! I agree with 100% of your post.
 
Why would you be disappointed that someone didn't die? You'd hope that all of the companions lived; they're The Doctor's friends after all.
Actions should have consequences; the creation of a second Doctor, extermination of the Daleks... those should have had a price. But while Donna paid the price for the creation of the second Doctor, this time, the Daleks were wiped out for free. They've had successively lower price tags each time: the burning of Gallifrey, the death of Rose (or would've, had Nine not sacrificed himself instead), the sealing of the walls between universes.

But this time, the alt-Doctor killed the Daleks for free.
 
Another reason, to prove these Daleks were complete failures is that, among the infinite parallel universes, none featured victorious Daleks, hence destroying the in-episode universe as well (hope my English was not a failure on this post).
 
Why would you be disappointed that someone didn't die? You'd hope that all of the companions lived; they're The Doctor's friends after all.
Actions should have consequences; the creation of a second Doctor, extermination of the Daleks... those should have had a price. But while Donna paid the price for the creation of the second Doctor, this time, the Daleks were wiped out for free. They've had successively lower price tags each time: the burning of Gallifrey, the death of Rose (or would've, had Nine not sacrificed himself instead), the sealing of the walls between universes.

But this time, the alt-Doctor killed the Daleks for free.

Not really, though. The woman who virtually saved the whole of creation was reduced to a tabloid-loving texting loudmouth, much as she was before she met The Doctor. A lot of humans on Earth (and possibly the other 26 planets) were almost certainly killed as well. The Doctor had a darker version of himself created that needed to be shoved off into a parallel universe, Harriet Jones died, the TARDIS was almost destroyed...

People certainly paid the price. The repercussions were there.
 
Yeah, I knew that. I'm looking forward to it, especially if the rumors are true that
The Cybermen seen in that episode are actually the Mondas Cybermen. Just a rumor, mind you, but I still have my fingers crossed. :D
The Cybermen feature seem to have the Cybus Industries logo on them

Indeed, that was the very first thing I looked for and, alas, it looks like the Cybus Industries logo on their chest.


The special is actually called "Ghosts In The Machines", and features

Two warring Cybermen from two different realities against one another There are the familiar Cybermen face plate (resembling a serpent), but dressed in wraith-like garments

The doctor's going to need a mop to clean up all the Alt universe stuff that bleeded through. This is probably going to bigger than the Cardiff Rift
 
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