Slightly longer thoughts
Jul. 7th, 2008 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
binidjThere 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
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 09:32 am (UTC)Know what it reminded me of? An outgoing plot-team/GM going full on to tie up all their loose ends because they are THEIR loose ends whether or not leaving some stuff for the next guy would make sense.
The cloned doctor thing, on reflection, I think that a gang of fan/slashficcers broke into RTD's office and slipped some Marysue juice into his latte.
The setup of the penultimate episode COULD have made the finale into something AWESOME (JFS' idea about Badwold/Rose for example).
You're bang on the money about Daleks and their aims - They are Nazi's - Self declared supreme beings who want to exerminate all lesser races and competition not blow stuff up, just because.
Testing the wangmangletron on human prisoners was just pulling the wings off flies and Daleks don't do that because Daleks couldn't even frame the concepts required.
Davros though? Davros salvaged the episode for me. His whole thing about the soaring, olympian heights of the Doctor's hypocrisy was perfect... Never carry a gun? Turn people into weapons though...
Donna? Love or hate KT, that ending for the character blew goats. At least give her the choice the Gods gave Achilles, to die a hero or live a long and unremarked life. Better still to have her regenerate into someone else with most of Donna's memories and have fun with THAT storyline.
Towing the earth? I was expecting something messianic out of a RTD episode, so this wasn't as bad as I expected... I mean the choral music wasn't too full on and there were not hordes of seraphim giving the Doctor a tongue baptism as the TARDIS flew through space.
The 6 pilots thing was a nice touch though, liked that.
I'd be ashamed to end a campaign arc in a game I was GMing on an episode like this and when good fanfic beats what the author produces, it really is time to go.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 12:50 pm (UTC)Absolutely with you on the Donna/Achilles thing, it would have been so much better.
And yes, six pilots was very cool, even telling Jackie not to touch anything was cool.
There was good stuff in the episode, it's just that it was eclipsed by the toss.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 12:59 pm (UTC)I do like the fact that the hero of that episode was, in a way, a Dalek :-)