Doctor Who!

[Storm]

Heh, this week Jas and Storm both liked it and I hated it!

I'm not sure I did like it especially, it just didn't do much harm. It was still unoriginal and a little tired, but at least it didn't insult my intelligence.

Mind you, with the benefit of a night's sleep behind me, I'm starting to wonder whether I'd tolerate it if made to watch it again. I already feel tempted to downgrade it to a 6.

Not one of the better episodes, I'm only giving it a C+.

That's a generous rating for an episode you dislike!

I missed it, but apparently Huw Edwards mentioned Torchwood in his commentary after the people in the stadium vanished as well.

Gah! Right, I'm downgrading it to a 5 then!

[jasmine]

I only liked it this week because last weeks was (in my opinion) awful. I was probably in a minority, but that just wasn't Doctor Who for me.

I'm not one for analysing, I suppose I like to overlook the little flaws and just enjoy it for what it is. I like reading everyone else's views though - even if I don't always agree with them.

Sorry you didn't like it this week arcadia. Guess that's how it goes huh? We may all like next weeks!!

[Mirela]

I liked it, it was v. spooky in places - I give it an 8 out of 10.

[arcadia]

Not one of the better episodes, I'm only giving it a C+.

That's a generous rating for an episode you dislike!

Heh! Well, I'm grading on the scale I also use for Smallville, so nothing is going to seem as bad in comparison. I've handed out plenty of E grades to Smallville, especially in the last two seasons.

I haven't awarded any A's for Doctor Who yet this series (three A-'s so far) and last series I think there were three A grade episodes. I really hope that the last two episdoes will be worthy of A grades!

[Storm]

What's been people's favourite lines since Dr Who was brought back last year?

[Mirela]

I like "Sycorax Strong! Sycorax Mighty! Sycorax Rock!" but that's actually from the Christmas episode so that's last year...I can't remember any quotes from this year off the top of my head to be honest!

[Storm]

No worries, last year counts.

In fact, my favourite's from last year as well. I think the moment when the Doctor is told, "You would make a good Dalek!" is one of the most powerful and startling lines in the history of Dr Who.

[Storm]

I've decided to make notes as the story progresses this week.

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Eight minutes in and plenty of gratuitous Eastenders links so far...

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Eighteen minutes in and I finally spot the anagram that they were plugging all these months. 'Torchwood' = anagram of 'Doctor Who'. *Slaps self for not noticing it till now.*

Plot's a bit self-indulgent and some of the dialogue's pretty throwaway so far, so no change there in RTD terms.

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Twenty-four minutes on the clock, and I notice the casket of the Sutekh sitting next to the TARDIS.

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Thirty-three minutes in and Mickey's back!!! I told you he might be!

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Forty-two minutes in and... well do I have to say it?

OH MY GOD!!! A three-way war between the humans, the Cybermen and... the DALEKS?!? Where the hell did they come from?

[Storm]

*Blows out cheeks.*

Well, it was pretty weak at times, with all the usual hallmarks of Russell T Davies glueing sudden whims together at random - making it up as he went along in fact - but it was done in such a gripping way that I found I really enjoyed it, at least in the later stages.

The first twenty minutes had some tiresome guff in it, and the Ghostbusters gag was particularly feeble, but once the episode managed to drag itself to the point it got fairly good. I do quite like the idea of these echoes-from-the-void emerging in our dimension as ghosts, although I find it thoroughly implausible that the whole world would just decide at once that they liked them.

Tracy Ann Oberman is coming across as a right smug b*tch, but I enjoyed her 'staring contest' with the Doctor before she finally backed down and called off one of the ghost shifts. Good to see Mickey back as well, I hope he takes over from Rose as the Doc's regular companion.

All that talk about Rose's life ending is clearly meant to be misinterpreted as discussing her imminent death, when it simply means the end of her fantasy life travelling the stars.

The ending was genuinely shocking, although I do feel that, just like with last season's final story, RTD has taken a concept fairly well handled earlier in the year and then reused it without anything like the same degree of subtlety. Hence the Cybermen, whose numbers were probably only hundreds before, suddenly number countless tens of thousands. In which case why did they feel the need to leave their own world? So we have another traditional enemy of the Doctor building an unbelievably huge army plucked from the human race, and are now on the brink of occupying Earth. Not actually very different from the cliffhanger at the end of Bad Wolf last year then.

There is also a hint of RTD dishing out the crowbar once more by adding the Daleks in. But then I suppose a story involving both the Cybermen and the Daleks has been long overdue, and I can't deny I jumped in astonishment when I saw the Daleks emerge from the Dimension ship.

It's still a bit lazy, with more gratuitous, ill-placed pop culture references, and in many ways it's also a blatant fanw*nk. But there's also no denying that it's an intriguing scenario, with a possible three-way war for control of the Earth in the offing. It's managed to make me impatient to see the conclusion, which I kind of wasn't expecting.

I'll give it 8 out of 10, with bonus points awarded for genuinely managing to catch me by surprise by the ending, in spite of how fanw*nky it is.

[Mirela]

I just loved the whole thing from start to finish.

There's a rumour that Rose might be turned into a Cyberman...Russell said there'd be a shocking exit for her so if this is true then a cyberised Rose doesn't come much nastier...

[arcadia]

I thought it was pretty good, but not as good as I had hoped. That might just be because I read spoilers for it, so I knew about Rose's 'death' voiceover at the start and knew that the Cybermen, Mickey and the Daleks were coming back.

I did think they built up the suspense well though and it was good to finally see Torchwood. I liked the staring contest and the Doctor's demo with the pane of glass. Cool!

The Ghostbusters bit made me cringe! I laughed at Peggy's "Get out of my pub!" though.

The Cybermen vs Daleks thing does seem a bit contrived to me, but I hope they can make it work.

I'm giving this one an A-.

[Storm]

Yes, it was certainly very contrived, but you can get away with it so long as it's nicely contrived, which it was here. But for sure I don't want them to give us one of these self-conscious super-scale epics at the end of every season, as it's a very blatant hype-tool.

Along with the Sutekh casket, did anyone notice another reference to Dr Who seasons past? The Doctor mentioned the Eternals, whom he encountered in the story Enlightenment from 1982.

One other historical point; the Doctor's claim that travelling between realities is impossible is shown to be wrong, but he should already have known that after travelling to a parallel universe in the 1970 story Inferno.

I now reckon, having closely re-watched the teaser for next week, that Rose and Jackie cross to the 'other' Universe to help battle the Cybermen, and they decide to stay there with Pete.

[jasmine]

arcadia said:

I liked the staring contest and the Doctor's demo with the pane of glass. Cool!

I had to laugh at the staring thing - DT just sat there looking smug!

[Storm]

Okay, everyone, I've managed to download some dynamite off the Internet; the script to the final episode of this year's series of Dr Who was mysteriously leaked by unknown sources at the BBC, and I found the site where it was posted!!

So, folks, having studied the script in all its glory, I can now reveal to you all how the episode concludes.

**DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANT SATURDAY'S FINAL EPISODE RUINED**

I'm leaving a gap here so you can avoid reading the spoilers if you like.


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The episode progresses dramatically through the confrontation between the Daleks and the Cybermen. After initial violence, they agree to set aside their differences and form an alliance when they realise that their aims coincide; they both wish to assimilate the entire human race into their cyborg selves, and realise that they can form a new super-cyborg by taking the mightiest features of both Dalek and Cyberman and integrating them onto the human form. This hybrid they call the Megafilaxocybertachyosuperstrontioidalek, or mega-phil for short.

Jackie and Rose are captured, and they are the first to be upgraded; Jackie into the new Megafilaxocybertachyosuperstrontioidalek model of cyborg hybrid, Rose into its sidekick Squelch. The Supreme Dalek declares the universe is now there for the Daleks and the Cybermen to conquer, with the Megafilaxocybertachyosuperstrontioidalek and Squelch at the vanguard of their mighty armies. But this robo-rotter alliance is suddenly hoisted on its own pertard when the Megafilaxocybertachyosuperstrontioidalek turns on its creators, sweeping both the Supreme Dalek and the Cybercontroller off the face of the Earth by mooning them and letting rip with several mighty big blow-offs.

Now the war accelerates with the surviving Daleks, Cybes and humans joining forces to try and bring down the Megafilaxocybertachyosuperstrontioidalek before it can flatten the world with its bionically-charged methane emissions. Just as the Doctor and Mickey are preparing to face the Megafilaxocybertachyosuperstrontioidalek and Squelch, the Daleks suddenly decide it'd be one heck of a giggle to change sides again and they tell the Megafilaxocybertachyosuperstrontioidalek that they were just kidding and that they were on her side all along.

So the Doctor is forced to flee to the parallel universe Germany, where, by a well-deserved-but-unexplained stroke of good fortune, he finds a superlaser hidden inside the World Cup itself, and that England haven't been knocked out. To release the awesome power of the superlaser, the Doctor need only score a spectacular goal for England in the final and lift the trophy to the heavens while sneering, "Aside, Zidane, you yesterday's man, I'm the champion and you're rubbish, I've already done the Olympic Torch thing and now I've won the World Cup too, yippeeeeeeee!", and not only does he score a spectacular goal, he scores a hat-trick for England-And-Gallifrey United against Germany in the final while singing Hitler Has Only Got One Ball, with one shot hitting the bar and clearly not getting anywhere near to crossing the line but the goal being given anyway, and then when he lifts the trophy, roaring with triumph and showing off all his teeth right the way down to the whiter-than-white roots, an enormous beam of power flies out from the globe at the apex of the World Cup to all corners of the planet in both universes and reduces all the Cybermen and Daleks to atoms in milliseconds, and the Doctor says, "Cor ain't I clever?", but of course the beam strikes Rose and Jackie in their cyborg forms and kills them, but not before the Doc nicks a sly snog from both of them...


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Don't know about you lot, but I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

***SATIRE ENDS***

[Mirela]

Grr, and there I was thinking that was going to be REAL spoilers for the final episode