No one even seems to notice.

there’s an inherent problem with “oh noes the universe is about to go up OOPS sorted d00ds”, where all the action takes place in one tiny bit room of it: old-skool dr who essentially traded off the constraints of low budget against not even being reminded of all the lives on all the other stars: the much higher production values these days constantly ramp up such thoughts these days, and they kinda need to be dealt with (this is probably where i used to insert my anti d-Uggl.ass adams rant, isn’t it?)

the technobabble climax was like an insane cadenza — it’s verbal cgi and i think RTD has always used it very wittily*, never more than here — anyway i LOVED it (esp.the sense that davros was sitting through it thinking “this is just gibberish, when i talk such gibberish i always LOSE, it’s not FAIR”)

*he’s very flippant about the proprieties of SF insofar as they’re hidden rationalisations of the technological practicality of a given medium in a given TV era — and this is excellent — but he’s not quite so flippant about the proprieties of soap-opera-as-emotional-technology; or at least, the only spanner he can throw into that works is a rather sentimentalised post-stonewall counter-dynamic, a dynamic that doesn’t merely equate boy-gets-girl with happy ending; but does rather reach glass-ceiling cruise-speed at happyface pansexual flirtiness (i want twrchwwd to be abt the tensions and grind of the Unlicenced Zone, not its e’d endless awesomeness)

I don’t hate Donna’s mum as much as Rose’s mum.

That finale had lots to enjoy but it also demonstrated the decline in Russell T Davies’s writing for the show. He seems to have become obsessed that the show needs to be high-concept sci-fi but he’s lost sight of how high concept works. (a) If you’re going to create a big concept you need to follow it through - if the walls between different realities are breaking down, wouldn’t that show itself in more ways than Rose and her mum popping across dimensions? How precisely do you tow a planet across the solar system and only knock over the furniture? How exactly does aligning a few planets create a reality bomb? So, are we actually saying the doctor can clone himself from body parts? Oh and actually how DID he stop himself regenerating? How actually did a zap of energy release the doctorness inside Donna? Why are the people of earth debating the appearance of 26 new planets rather than being UTTERLY FUCKING SENT MAD by it? (b) But this doesn’t mean we need more explanations to make it make sense. The worst thing about this series has been the clunky exposition and the need to wrap everything up. You wrap up stories through action, through people’s behaviour; that’s what tells good stories. If you have characters having to explain to each other in silly technobabble what’s going on you’re just giving the IMPRESSION of an explanation, not explaining anything. This episode had so much to explain but very few resources to explain it with - even taking into account the extra 20 minutes…

Which sounds carping and of course I am delighted with the revived Dr Who and the classic series was never exactly short of technobabble and dodgy concepts. But given how sure-footed the first two seasons were, I hope Moffat takes stock and raises the writing standard.

I think the interesting thing that RTD has done to Who is to make it about these relationships more than the adventures (and ten adventures a year can start to get a little samey). the difficulty, much like the difficulty in doing too many Dalek stories, is finding new ways of doing it. Moffat’s Who can easily be more of the same, though I would say he will dial down the emotional and dial up the snappy and witty. I want a bit more risk taking, but have really enjoyed this series and the lowish common denominator expectations I have for this (and should have for what is a populist TV show trying to please everyone).

With nu-Who I really am a glass half full person. I’ve got half a glass a beer AND a receptacle I can top up - from the Moffat tap in 2010.

In many ways the specials intrigue me, no regular companions demands lot of Tennant.

RTD on the other hand is good at making you like characters you think you won’t - Mickey, Jackie, Donna. (OK some people never liked Jackie). I appreciate the work he put in, and made us put in, there. Sally Sparrow and her dopey indie dude are charming and wonderful but there’s no work involved.

I don’t mean to criticise Moffat - I’ve loved all his episodes so far and I’m really looking forward to seeing what he does with the show. But I also loved the preposterousness and gooeyness of RTD’s era, and Saturday’s ep made me realise I’ll miss it.

He’s much better at winkling bits of emotion out of tricksy sci-fi concepts: Donna’s vanishing kids, “the same rain”, etc. But that’s not necessarily sentimental.

Well I’d argue that, in his untouched-by-RTD scripts, Moffat can embrace sentimentalism just as happily. The difference is he does it SO MUCH BETTER although perhaps that is just because it’s done in a way that delight adults MORE than kids?

I understand it, but I don’t feel it.

(Futures and Pasts)

…or RTD just shoved it into the script as a red herring, of course.

i wondered if dalek khan was talkin about himself maybe — he is now one of the “children of time” bcz he was “seen thru time” or whatever, hence his crossin the floor so handily

Er, but no-one actually died (unless Doctor-Donna counts as a death, which it clearly doesn’t). The Flowers For Algernon ending was effective because it robbed us of something which was looked like it could be momentarily entertaining. The promise of the Doctor with an equal (cf old Romana days) and playing to Tate’s strength as a mimic - no other companion could have pulled off her Tennant routine anywhere near as well.

Of course we were also robbed of the wonderful possibility of Davros as a companion briefly!

*River Song as future wifey and Jessica Hynes as sorta parallel wife.

i: of tardis temp-crew dynamics with “normal” spaceship crew permanence: viz star trek and its many generations, my lovely firefly/serenity and so on
ii: the issue of sentimentality - which i agree is more a fantasy than an SF tool: joss whedon uses it as a pitiless gimlet to bore sharp holes between body and brain, which is where RST gets some of his ideas from, but JW’s unusual (in SF anyway) in that i think he sees mother-child as the primary love-unit, not boy-girl, and works everything round that; rusty is blubberingly lumpen when it comes to the primary boy-girl/boy-boy love-thing, once it’s actually happening (which is QaF season II was AWFUL), i think bcz he believes in it kinda sorta the big soppy sap (this is partly why i prefer torchwood agenda, where casual zipless promiscuity treated as the norm; a gay male way of dealing with there being more than ONE primary love-thing) (tho to be fair this is what this two doctors/two gfs ending also took in: i liked rose for stubbornly protesting the unfairness of the settlement, “do not go quiet into that long night er parallel light”, but yeah, life and esp.timelife does involve parcelling out love between differing objects boo bah

I guess there’s been research done showing which old school companions the new audience even faintly remember, and the intersect between memorable/available/can vaguely act is very limited. I’d not be surprised, given she’s so conceptually bring-backable and given that she was a companion during the peak ratings era, if we didn’t see Romana again sometime, but that’s about it. RTD is very happy to pull a macguffin out to advance or distract the story, but very very wary of it being an old-continuity macguffin, without heavy trailing.

(i assume there are continuity-piffle reasons SOME of them couldn’t have been called up — oh noes! it’s adric!! — but it’s the kind of rationalisation of constraints that disappoints me, given that amusingly gaming the rationalisation of constraints is one of RTD’s things)