![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Slightly longer thoughts
There may be more later but, in a nutshell ...
The reality bomb was a toss weapon.
Daleks like to make more Daleks and more spaceships and more weapons. In order to do this they need materials from conquered planets using slave labour to extract and process said materials. If they destroy all matter in the multiverse then there will be no more Daleks, no progress, nothing to aspire to ... the Daleks aren't that stupid.
Testing a weapon designed to destroy all matter in the multiverse inside your own mothership is dumbness on an epic scale ... testing it on a frightened bunch of Humans is largely pointless.
Supposedly the Daleks are a match for the timelords1 so why would they include/tolerate a remote control device in Davros' chamber? The whole point of Daleks is that they aren't machines! They are malicious and alive and choose to be the way they are. The idea of a comedy remote control device is just ludicrous.
Catherine Tate doing a very very poor David Tennant impression ... no.
The whole Human/Timelord hybrid stuff ... no.
Ruining a superb ending by giving Rose a sex toy clone ... no.2
For all the hoo ha, the companions seemed, in the end, largely irrelevant ... the only one that mattered to the story was the gurning horror.3
The Osterhagen key was superb, it would have been much better had there been a plea for time from the Doctor rather than a cheesy teleport trick.
Sarah Jane's amulet proved to be utterly worthless (and now destroyed) so clearly RTD thinks that his Deus ex Machina is more important than The Sarah Jane Adventures' plot.
Having Donna choose to die as who she had become rather than return to what she was would have been a more powerful ending (in my opinion) than the Doctor ignoring her choice and wiping her mind.
The whole Earth-towing incident wasn't a bad thing necessarily4 but it was largely unnecessary. I don't think it worked in a dramatic sense, in a narrative sense or in a special effects sense.
Long story short ... Deus ex Machina is a rubbish habit to get into, and the double episode was chock-full of it.
1 Otherwise why is it that the much-lauded Time War wasn't over in five minutes, ending with the timelords giggling off into the distance?
2
s0b I have to acknowledge that sometimes a happy ending isn't appropriate ... or actually happy.
3 Catherine Tate ... for those who weren't paying attention.
4 Though the way it was done sucked ... should have vanished and reappeared in a cosmic FWOOSH FWOOSH FWOOSH
The reality bomb was a toss weapon.
Daleks like to make more Daleks and more spaceships and more weapons. In order to do this they need materials from conquered planets using slave labour to extract and process said materials. If they destroy all matter in the multiverse then there will be no more Daleks, no progress, nothing to aspire to ... the Daleks aren't that stupid.
Testing a weapon designed to destroy all matter in the multiverse inside your own mothership is dumbness on an epic scale ... testing it on a frightened bunch of Humans is largely pointless.
Supposedly the Daleks are a match for the timelords1 so why would they include/tolerate a remote control device in Davros' chamber? The whole point of Daleks is that they aren't machines! They are malicious and alive and choose to be the way they are. The idea of a comedy remote control device is just ludicrous.
Catherine Tate doing a very very poor David Tennant impression ... no.
The whole Human/Timelord hybrid stuff ... no.
Ruining a superb ending by giving Rose a sex toy clone ... no.2
For all the hoo ha, the companions seemed, in the end, largely irrelevant ... the only one that mattered to the story was the gurning horror.3
The Osterhagen key was superb, it would have been much better had there been a plea for time from the Doctor rather than a cheesy teleport trick.
Sarah Jane's amulet proved to be utterly worthless (and now destroyed) so clearly RTD thinks that his Deus ex Machina is more important than The Sarah Jane Adventures' plot.
Having Donna choose to die as who she had become rather than return to what she was would have been a more powerful ending (in my opinion) than the Doctor ignoring her choice and wiping her mind.
The whole Earth-towing incident wasn't a bad thing necessarily4 but it was largely unnecessary. I don't think it worked in a dramatic sense, in a narrative sense or in a special effects sense.
Long story short ... Deus ex Machina is a rubbish habit to get into, and the double episode was chock-full of it.
1 Otherwise why is it that the much-lauded Time War wasn't over in five minutes, ending with the timelords giggling off into the distance?
2
s0b I have to acknowledge that sometimes a happy ending isn't appropriate ... or actually happy.3 Catherine Tate ... for those who weren't paying attention.
4 Though the way it was done sucked ... should have vanished and reappeared in a cosmic FWOOSH FWOOSH FWOOSH
Re: Opinion from the outside
And I think you're being a little unfair expecting an episode to stand on its own; especially the end of series finale.
Re: Opinion from the outside
But it should still be possible for it to be entertaining. When I saw the hand in a jar and the creation of the half-human-half-timelord thing I just accepted it, because I assume there's some pre-amble I missed. However, the acting, the dialog and the atmosphere of the episode should be able to stand alone.
I cringed when Tate started wizzing the Dalek's around, I cringed when they wheeled one out of the room with glee. I wondered when the Tardis would finally blow up after being immersed in that huge ball of weird energyness, despite the fact that it was evident to me it couldn't blow up without some major issues later, it was still badly handled in the episode.
I'm not condemning the entire series based on one episode, but I do believe an episode can be entertaining even if you've never watched the series.