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Every year since the show came back, the folks at the "Children in Need" TV charity drive have had something to do with Doctor Who, be it a quick scene or a preview of an upcoming episode. This year they did the latter, showing three minutes of the early part of David Tennant's final story. Spoilers!
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The brain Ood mentions that "...they are returning, but too late, too late, far too late..." - I wonder who he is referring to? Is it time to open the old book on the Time Lords' return again?
-------------------- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
That was my assumption. Also, unless I'm mistaken he mentioned getting married to whats'erface from the library. So no telling how long a span it's been between the Waters of Mars and the next one.
posted
Which would explain why she is so pissed off at him in "The Shakespeare Code", anyway!
If the Time Lords return then the writers would need to find a reason for the Doctor to continue on his travels, surely? He left Gallifrey because he was bored but that was before he fought in a war, destroyed his planet and his people, and spent a long time as the only remaining Time Lord. If they return, wouldn't he want to go home and live on the planet that he so obviously missed when he was describing it to Martha?
Registered: Nov 2004
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Part 1 has aired. Solid B+ from me - there is a LOT going on in this episode, pretty much ALL of it is setup, and I feel that so much was glossed over and will never be followed up on. It's quite typical of Russel Davies' writing style to increase the stakes so high that basically NOTHING could live up to it - he's threatened the extermination of the Earth several times, the destruction of ALL reality, and now the end of all time (whatever that is). Still, it has an awesome cliffhanger and the long-expected return of new-bad-old guys. Notes:
- The TARDIS has some new tricks: it can lock & unlock using the key as a remote keyfob, and it can "cloak" by moving a second out of sync with the local time stream. This last one may have been picked up in "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith", where the Doctor was prevented from reaching the TARDIS by exactly that.
- The Book of Saxon? Ressurrection of the Master by using Lucy's DNA, blue goo and a bunch of nutcases willing to sacrifice themselves to bring him back? Lucy trying to kill him off herself by tossing a Molotov at him? This stuff alone was worth an episode!
- I dunno if it was deliberate, but there were at least two locations that have been seen before, which they made little effort to disguise: The stable where teh TARDIS lands is the same one where Jackson Lake kept his stuff in "The Next Doctor", and the underground parts of the Immortality Gate were located in the same basement that Cassandra was hiding out in during "New Earth".
- So Barack Obama has taken over from President Winters, whom The Master killed in "The Sound of Drums". Not sure of the appropriateness of that... And everyone seems to hold him to be the savior of the economy, and that he had an "instant" fix to all our money problems? As if repeated alien invasions helped any...
- How did the Doctor track the Master to the run down industrial area (tm) twice? The Doctor said he could "smell" the Master, which is presumably a new thing since ol' Doc often spent several episodes of the old series cluelsss that a disguised Master was standing next to him.
- Hands-down the best scene in the episode is the quiet dialogue between the Doctor and Wilf in the cafe. It seems this Doctor is really gloomy over the prospect of dying - that he thinks he still dies even if he regenerates, since "some new man" takes over and all that this Doctor is ceases to exist.
- The Doctor is amazed that the Master actually DOES hear four beats, and that he's not just nuts. Obviously there's something to this... James Bond, who turns out to be the Lord President of Gallifrey at the end of the Time War, says it's literally the four beats of the two hearts of a Time Lord.
- And EVERY HUMAN on Earth gets turned into the Master. This means that Sarah Jane and her gang, Gwen and Rhys, the Brigadier, and basically everyone else gets to enjoy being John Simm for a while.
- In the final shot, James Bond is flanked by two people who are covering thier faces. One is obviously the woman in white who has been shepherding Wilf along; the other's hair and body shape looks VERY much like Matt Smith, th eleventh Doctor who has yet to show up. WTF?
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I watched it and got a solid WTF. Admittedly I was full of Christmas lunch but I still failed to get most of the plot. It eas entertaining but I'm not full of confidence that I will understand it all at the conclusion of part 2.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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Bit of a wasted opportunity, that. As one of the Who blogs pointed out, you could have had cutaways to the face of John Simm leering from a pram; two John Simms obviously transformed mid-shag (a la They Live). . . Instead we get the revelation that all the inhabitants of a council tower-block look the same. News flash, Russ - they already do.
You may have been trying too hard. There really wasn't all that much of a plot. Some people tried to resurrect the Master. His wife sabotaged it, and he came back more insane than before. Some guy found an alien healing device that's supposed to work on whole planets. The Master used it to copy his own template onto the whole planet, turning everyone into copies of himself. End of part one.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Oh yeah, the plots bollocks - it's just a McGuffin to get from David Tennant to Matt Smith. What happens in between is largely going to be filler.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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The scene with Wilf stuck in the radiation booth made me cry. I am such a big girl.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Also, 906? Ignoring the series long error with the Doctor's age, this means that the 10th doctor was only alive for 6 years at most. No wonder he's so pissed off about dying. Even Colin Baker's Doctor stuck around for at least 50 years.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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