![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerWell, Part 2 of 'The End of Time' was not quite as bad as I had feared.
RTD seemed to do something rather odd - he got half-way through bringing Donna back then seemed to think better of it. Was it that he just wanted to use Wilf as a character, but flt that he couldn't do so without at least nodding to Donna?
So, the Master was evil because the Time Lords sent a signal to him which had the effect of sending him bonkers. They sent a signal to him because he was one of the two Time Lords outside the time-lock around the Great Time War (good grief, this sentence is turning into a big ball off wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey) and the other one was the one who had put them there. And why was he outside? Because he'd fled to the end of the universe and hidden his very identity, after having been brought back from death (again) because he was the Ultimate Bad-Ass. As a result, presumably, of the Time Lords driving him into mad evilness. That's either very neat or a complete causal nightmare, and I'm not sure which.
I can buy that having resurrected the Master, the Time Lords would bring back Rassilon himself. If that one-line reference was meant literally, then this might be a fanboyish nod to the so-called Cartmel Masterplan from the late 1980s, that would among other elements have alluded to Rassilon being an dictatorial figure that the Doctor, or a rather a precursor of him, had helped to depose. (Mind you, with his tendency to zap people who disagreed with him at the conference table, he rather reminded me of another baddie.)
I was surprised by how many questions were left unanswered, especially in such a long episode. Who was the Older Woman? What, if anything, was special about Wilf? (I rather think that was an unfortunate bit of over-egging by RTD; it was enough that in Wilf the Doctor has a companion he can in some ways see as a father-figure). Is that it for the Time Lords, or are they presumably bounced back to the end of the GTW only now with a crazed and half-dead Master for company?
The final scenes were, despite being very extended, a nice way of giving closure to the Tenth Doctor and, very clearly, to RTD's era on the show. They also very much made clear (and RTD said as much in Confidential afterwards) that RTD's view of regeneration is that it is to all intents and purposes death for the incarnation in question. The spaceport bar scene was both a nice gag and a nod to what happened to Captain Jack, whilst the book-signing one was a touching second coda to Human Nature (the first being of course the Remembrance Day service at the end of the original).
The trailer for the new season wasn't shown where we were watching, but it is available on YouTube. All I'll note for now is that not only is at least one Dalek back (what a surprise) but it's neither gold nor black but apparently grey. And appears to be wearing webbing (!) Whether this is Significant remains to be seen.
RTD seemed to do something rather odd - he got half-way through bringing Donna back then seemed to think better of it. Was it that he just wanted to use Wilf as a character, but flt that he couldn't do so without at least nodding to Donna?
So, the Master was evil because the Time Lords sent a signal to him which had the effect of sending him bonkers. They sent a signal to him because he was one of the two Time Lords outside the time-lock around the Great Time War (good grief, this sentence is turning into a big ball off wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey) and the other one was the one who had put them there. And why was he outside? Because he'd fled to the end of the universe and hidden his very identity, after having been brought back from death (again) because he was the Ultimate Bad-Ass. As a result, presumably, of the Time Lords driving him into mad evilness. That's either very neat or a complete causal nightmare, and I'm not sure which.
I can buy that having resurrected the Master, the Time Lords would bring back Rassilon himself. If that one-line reference was meant literally, then this might be a fanboyish nod to the so-called Cartmel Masterplan from the late 1980s, that would among other elements have alluded to Rassilon being an dictatorial figure that the Doctor, or a rather a precursor of him, had helped to depose. (Mind you, with his tendency to zap people who disagreed with him at the conference table, he rather reminded me of another baddie.)
I was surprised by how many questions were left unanswered, especially in such a long episode. Who was the Older Woman? What, if anything, was special about Wilf? (I rather think that was an unfortunate bit of over-egging by RTD; it was enough that in Wilf the Doctor has a companion he can in some ways see as a father-figure). Is that it for the Time Lords, or are they presumably bounced back to the end of the GTW only now with a crazed and half-dead Master for company?
The final scenes were, despite being very extended, a nice way of giving closure to the Tenth Doctor and, very clearly, to RTD's era on the show. They also very much made clear (and RTD said as much in Confidential afterwards) that RTD's view of regeneration is that it is to all intents and purposes death for the incarnation in question. The spaceport bar scene was both a nice gag and a nod to what happened to Captain Jack, whilst the book-signing one was a touching second coda to Human Nature (the first being of course the Remembrance Day service at the end of the original).
The trailer for the new season wasn't shown where we were watching, but it is available on YouTube. All I'll note for now is that not only is at least one Dalek back (what a surprise) but it's neither gold nor black but apparently grey. And appears to be wearing webbing (!) Whether this is Significant remains to be seen.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 01:54 pm (UTC)WHAT - HAS - IT - GOT - IN - ITS -POCKET-SES?
Does this show make my Buffy look big?
Date: 2010-01-02 06:10 pm (UTC)Mind you, it looks fun.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 09:07 pm (UTC)I was assuming that it was the Doctor's mother. As for Wilf, this was definitely a dangling loose end: never did explain why he was special despite the Doctor actually making a speech in Part 1 about how he had to be special somehow.