To get the obvious out of the way: Rose didn't really die. Instead, she ended up in "Pete's" universe, together with Jacky, Mickey, Pete, and a baby sibling on the way.
The Genesis Ark the four Daleks were carrying around.. wait.. first.. those four Daleks were special. They are the Cult of Skaro,'above and beyond' the Dalek Emperor in Dalek society. They are tasked with 'imagining' and trying to understand the mindset of other species. They are the only Daleks with proper names (Thay, Caan, the rest I can't remember), and they are the ones coming up with new ways to exterminate other people. They are the only ones who escaped the universe, but they took the Genesis Ark from the Time Lords. The Genesis Ark is, as it turns out, a TARDIS-like prison ship. It contains a few million Daleks, who are of course let loose over London, creating some rather fantastic scenes of Cybermen and Dalek armies fighting in the skies and streets of London.
Now... the solution to all this horrible stuff.. you know those 3D-glasses the Doctor was wearing? Turns out they're capable of detecting 'Voidstuff'. Voidstuff is some residual plotmagic that sticks to items that have crossed the void (including everyone who has crossed between Pete's World and our universe, plus the two friendly robot races). By opening the Torchwood gate of our universe into the Void, all things with Voidstuff residue will get sucked back into the void. Sadly, this includes Rose. She would be safe in the alternate 'verse, but of course she refuses to go there. In the end, she nearly gets sucked into the Void, but her dad saves her at the last minute, and brings her to his 'verse.
BUT.. the Daleks probably haven't all gone. We see one Dalek (I think it might've been the black one, not sure) issueing a command to initiate some temporal transfer, and he fizzes out of existence. So somewhere in our universe's timeline, there is at least one escaped Dalek. And strangely, although we do get a shot of Cybermen sucked into the air, we never actually see anything but Daleks getting sucked into the Void. Future scripts can probably bring back Cybermen with minimal troubles.
Oh, and the dialogue between the Cybermen and Dalek are quite funny. Especially the Supreme Dalek's assurance that 4 Daleks would be more than sufficient to kill 5 million Cybermen.
The episode ends with a short prelude to the Christmas (!) special, called "The Runaway Bride". A bride is on the TARDIS, the Doctor is confused. And hereing lies the worst part of the episode: the bride is played by Catherine Tate. She (IMNSHO) is a completely unfunny BBC 'comedienne', who can only play one type of obnoxious character. In fact, for a moment I thought the Doctor had ended up in some weird BBC crossover advertisement.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
That's pretty-much it in a nutshell. I thought the residue thing was something that came from having travelled through time? In which case I was left thinking "what about all the Doctor's previous Companions, will they get sucked through as well?" Maybe I missed a line of dialogue that clarified matters.
Talk about Deus Ex Machina - actually, more like Cana In Machina (which, if I could be arsed to work it right, would read "Bitch from inside the machine"). Head Torchwood bimbo somehow manages to retain her emotions and come to the rescue at one point, as a Cyberman. And cry robotic (cyborgal?) tears. Daft, really. I wonder if it was sort-of a reference to "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" in that like Kirk she went into the process saying something that got carried over and inserted as a major bit of programming. . ?
And what about her, and others Cybered from proper-Earth? They didn't come through the void, so they wouldn't get sucked back in. Unless the Cybermen brought all the spare suits through, which would be Void-attractive. I think it was probably just a FX failure that meant you didn't see any Lumicverse Cybermen go back through the portal. . . But that's not to say there aren't some of those proper-Earth ones still lurking about!
Catherine Tate. . . Her first series had its moments, a couple of funny characters. NOT "Am I Bovvered?" girl (my wife does a perfect imitiation of her BTW), but the annoying-office-worker, and the crap-anecdote couple. But the second series was awful (apart from the extended Ginger sketch) as there was really nothing more that could be done with any of her old characters, and her new ones weren't any good. Anyway, I'm not prepared to write off the Crimbo ep as bound to fail just on the basis of her presence in it.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
There's time-travel residue, and there's void residue. Void residue is what caused things to get sucked into the opened breach. Time-travel residue is what opened the Genesis Ark.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Slightly relevant: The Dalek Song Posted by Zipacna (Member # 1881) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: Head Torchwood bimbo somehow manages to retain her emotions and come to the rescue at one point, as a Cyberman.
I'd taken that to be a reference to part 1 where whatshisname (um, Mr. Thing who the Daleks suckered to death) mentioned Torchwood guys received psychic training, thus why the psychic paper didn't work. Perhaps that training enabled the bimbo to retain her mind, traping it for a while behind whatever it is that produced the rubbish she was coming out with. Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
It's also been noted that the Cybermen stopped everything when the news broke of the original Cyber leader's destruction - that's what allowed Jackie to escape. So, it's possible that Yvonne recieved an incomplete upgrade. Or, the fact that it was so rushed (they referred to it as "emergency upgrade"). Or, that she was kinda nuts to begin with. Or, perhaps the Doctor busted the inhibitor when he proposed something to her and the other Cybermen (she could have been part of the attack force downstairs - where else could she have gotten the gun?).
Or, a combination of all these factors. The end result was a fitting scene where Yvonne got a little revenge...Leave us to dispute SOMETHING for the next six months...
Mark
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Brilliant. Speechless. I got interrupted towards the end of the episode - I like to watch them interruption free. Oh Well. Luckily I had downloaded it.
FANTASTIC.
At least they always have a way to bring Rose back in the future.
I assume there is no 'alternate universe' Doctor - or Timelords - confirming they live somehow outside the universe?? Or at least Gallifrey is/was?
No Face of Boe, I thought he would play some part in the end of season 2.
Posted by FawnDoo (Member # 1421) on :
quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: I assume there is no 'alternate universe' Doctor - or Timelords - confirming they live somehow outside the universe?? Or at least Gallifrey is/was?
No, I get the impression that while there might be millions of universes and realities there's only ever one Gallifrey. I don't think the planet and it's inhabitants are outside the universe so much as they might be quite central to all of them. Just speculation on my part, though. I'm not up on a lot of the audio stories but from the TV show I think a lot about Gallifrey was kept deliberately vague.
quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: No Face of Boe, I thought he would play some part in the end of season 2.
I thought RTD had confirmed he would appear in the next series?
I'm sure he said in an interview that his secret would be a major plot point. I wonder if they'll have another Bad Wolf/Torchwood running hint. If they do and it concerns the Face of Boe's secret it would carry on the pattern established up till now - Bad Wolf all the way through the first series, Torchwood mentioned once in the first and then all through the second - maybe the FoB's secret will be mentioned once in the second series and referred to in the third?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, as long as it's mysterious. The constant references to "bad wolf" made people think "oh man, what could this be about?". But the constant references to "Torchwood" merely elicited an increasingly irate "yes, we know you're making a new show, now give it a bloody rest!". So, if there is a running theme in season 29, it had better be at least moderately intriguing.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I'd like to think that the Bad Wolf references that we've had in season 2 still have some relevence than the season 1 finale... I think there have been 3 so far - one very vague and two more obvious. The Torchwood Bad Wolf virus and the Bad Wolf Bay.
Posted by Not Invented Here (Member # 1606) on :
Overall, I thought the last episode was quite cool. Unfortunately, I thought it was stylistically similar to the first episode, which I thought was rubbish. I have to confess these are the only two I have seen from this series, but if the others are similar I suspect I would get annoyed before I had watched them all.
The problem I thought both episodes suffered from is that there was simply too many 'emotional' bits that seemed to drag forever. Also, I think there's a severe lack of suspense building due to the single-episode story format. Okay, I know the ending was a two parter and that RTD enjoys weaving together lots of seemingly unconnected episodes, but compared to old-style 5/6 episode storylines, it's hardly the same. Perhaps this is why I get annoyed with the schmaltz - to me it feels like there's hardly any time to get to know the characters and empathise with them. The first episode was the perfect example of this - why exactly was RTD expecting us to be symapathetic towards Cassandra, a baddy we saw for about 5 minutes an entire season ago? And the Face of Bo's secret, why should I give a rat's arse about a character that had what, 5 lines in two episodes, again spaced a whole season apart? It better be a bloody good one, I'll tell you that.
Anyway, enough bitching. The Dalek/Cyberman dialogue was absolutely classic. Made the episode for me. The effects were damned cool as well. Did ANY of the Daleks get destroyed? And have we ever had Cyberman VS Dalek before?
So, finally all I can say is goodbye Rose, who I could tolerate, and good riddance to her mum, who I couldn't stand.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Quick note: Listening to the commentary, they DO have an explanation for the lack of lots of Cybermen going through the main breach at Torchwood - indeed, perhaps overall. In AoG, the Doctor does make mention that the ghosts are coming through MULTIPLE dimensional faults in the world; the main one where the voidship came through is therefore like the lighthouse the Cybes used to come through via their own means. Note that there were never any ghosts seen IN the Canary Wharf facility.
So, when the Doctor turned the main breach into a vacuum cleaner, all the smaller fault lines reversed as well and the Cybermen got sucked back into the ones they came from. Likewise, all the Daleks came through the main hole (via voidship, prison ship, or whatever) and thus returned via that one too.
They just didn't really EXPLAIN it all that well, but it does make a certain amount of sense. It STILL doesn't affect why the TARDIS didn't get sucked anywhere, nor why Pete managed to say unsucked long enough to catch Rose (or really, how that whole sequence worked in the first place). I'm happy with this explanation though, and I'll chalk all the rest up to Davies' usual "not thinking about the science" dramatic license.
Mark
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Throwing the following in, from a local cartoonist. It shows that the Daleks CAN in fact be used for good:
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: It STILL doesn't affect why the TARDIS didn't get sucked anywhere
I can't help but wonder if the TARDIS herself is the reason why it didn't get sucked in. We know TARDIS is alive in the respect that she has an artificial intelligence literally interacting with the Doctor and getting inside his mind. Most likely she could just sense what the Doctor was up to and switch on something to anchor herself in the same way that the Doctor used those anti-gravity things.
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
The TARDIS didn't go through to the mirror universe, so why would it have any voidstuff anyway(ignoring the earlier episode this series when it went there)?
The bit where Pete came through and saved Rose really annoyed me. Why did he suddenly decide to go back? How did he somehow appear in exactly the right place? Why wasn't he sucked in?
There were less contrived ways to save Rose. Oh well. Very good episode over all. I felt the goodbye at the end lasted too long, but it was very well shot. When Catherine Tate appeared I was completely confused, I thought it was some strange BBC advertising stunt as well. Glad the Doc was confused too.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"The TARDIS didn't go through to the mirror universe, so why would it have any voidstuff anyway(ignoring the earlier episode this series when it went there)?"
What do you mean, "ignoring the earlier episode"? That's like saying "Why should the Daleks have been sucked in? They didn't pass through the void (ignoring the part earlier in the episode when they did)."
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
I didn't say "earlier in the episode", I said "earlier in the series".
I was thinking of the episode earlier in the series when the TARDIS first ended up in the alternate universe, but now I think about it, I'm not so sure it passed through the void to get there. And there's nothing to say that the voidstuff would still be stuck on it all this time later.
That's the only occasion where I can remember the TARDIS being in the position to get voidstuff stuck all over it, since it didn't go through dimensions in the two part finale.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
You're not following. You can't ignore earlier episodes any more than you can ignore earlier parts of this episode. It doesn't matter what episode the TARDIS went through the interdimensional void.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
What Johnny said was right, but garbled. In fact, the TARDIS DID go through to the Lumicverse - but in the aforementioned episode earlier in the series. The difference is, it didn't get there via the Void, so has no Voidstuff, so won't get sucked in. And the only reason the Doctor has Voidstuff is because he gets taken through it to Pete's universe in this ep. The big plothole is that at no point does Rose go through the Void (until the end of this episode). . . Unless she did so to get to the Lumicverse in "Age of Steel," which means the TARDIS did too, in which case it should have Voidstuff! It's a circular argument!
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
What Lee said.
I'm terrible at explaining things.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
If it did go through void which I believe the Doctor says is what lies between alternate dimensions or at least the nothingness - then the fact that they were IN an alternate dimension means that they passed through voidstuff. The Doctor also said that the Timelords used to do it all the time... maybe he should be swimming in it - or maybe he hasn't before.
ALTERNATIVELY - if you just pass once or twice - it's not too bad - the Daleks and the Cybermen were in there for god-knows how long (were the cybermen half through when they were the 'ghosts'?) compared to the Doctor and Rose and Pete's gang so were sucked in more readily.
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