vilakins | Doctor Who: Doomsday

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Doctor Who: Doomsday

I don't suppose I'm adding much to what everyone else has said, but anyway:

Good

Daleks (even if they were an action replay of last season).

Cybermen and Daleks meeting and exchanging snark. Who knew the Daleks had a sense of humour?

Jackie and Mickey survived!

Cool Dalek music reminiscent of the end of last season (I love my sound system and big damned woofer).

Rose was brave and resourceful--for 90% of the ep anyway.

Mickey was great and deserves a hell of a lot better than he probably got.

Yvonne finally doing something useful and crying oily tears (the only tears I wanted to see in this ep, note).

Bad

Pretty much everything from Rose's dad rescuing her from the void. As many have said, it should have ended there. However we get to see a Rose who, months later (I assume), still hasn't moved on or grown at all. I think a better ending would have been her looking out to sea as at we see at the beginning, then turning away to Mickey, or the camera pulling back to show him standing further back. I'd have really liked to see her getting on with her life, and I do hope Mickey does if she doesn't.

[rolls eyes] All that blubbing cancelled out her bravery with the big lever (which I just knew had to be used in the climax--you don't build a prop like that otherwise).

Ugly

OK, I'm not the Who fan so many others are, not having seen that much, but to me, the Doctor doesn't cry, certainly not over a short-lived companion he earlier very sensibly sent off. I've cried and mourned my cats, yes, but the Doctor is an alien who has seen entire civilisations and races die. I thought it sentimental in the extreme that he had to say goodbye to her at the end. I was squirming with embarrassment for him.

Yet...

Now that RTD has got his Mary Sue out of his system, I'm hoping we're going to see a different sort of companion next season.

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Now that RTD has got his Mary Sue out of his system

But has he? That's what I'm worried about.

I'd have really liked to see her getting on with her life

Interesting that she says she's working for Alt-Torchwood. If she were to meet the Alt-Doctor, that would be one of the places to be. I'd consider that a plot-bunny, apart from the fact that I have absolutely no desire to write this Rose. If I were to write an AU Rose, I'd rather write something more in the Necessity-verse. I like Necessity!Rose.

Supposedly, she is scheduled for a mid-season episode. I don't know for sure, though.

I do wonder about Alt-Doctors... he said when the Timelords died, travel between universes shut down and time/space got unfriendly and cold. Which implies to me that, well, there are no Alt-Timelords, or the highways would still be working, under Alt-Rules.

(Someone else said, though, that that was probably the universe with the Cushing Doctor, which would make an amusing run-in.) :)

Piper? I didn't know that. [whimpers]

She's a good actor, and I like Rose if she's being sensible and brave, but after that last bit, I'd rather not see her again.

While it might make up for that being her final scene, unless she gets all Torchwoodified and a tad anti-Doctor-on-principle, it wouldn't be a lot of fun, no. (And even then, I don't think I'd put it past them to write it as a cheesy "woman scorned" thing.) And it'd be terribly unfair to the new person to get saddled with the ramifications of that last scene, before she's even established.

OK, I'm not the Who fan so many others are, not having seen that much, but to me, the Doctor doesn't cry, certainly not over a short-lived companion he earlier very sensibly sent off.

Having watched the Doctor since episode 1 'the Unearthly child' I agree. He has seemed upset when a companion leaves but cry, never. Even when one of them dies no tears. I long ago came to the conclusion that he treats his companion like we treat short lived pets like hamsters. He knows from the start he will out live them a thousand times and although he misses them he has enough practice to accept their going.

As I said, I've cried for my pets (very much so), but he's an alien who has lost a lot more. Crying reduces him to our level.

rozk posted fic about Rose with alt-Torchwood meeting alt-Doctor about three hours after the episode finished airing.

But as Torchwood was set up in response to the Doctor here, it must have been there too because they seem to have deviated so little in most ways. Despite their different histories, they still have Torchwood in the same very new building and Harriet Jones as PM, and her encounter with the Doctor was what propelled her career forward.

Hmm. Maybe if they're bringing Piper back for a guest appearance next season, that's what they're going to have up their sleeve.

I had a nasty thought re Jackie's pregnancy... you know how Peter Pan ends up taking Wendy's daughter to Neverland instead?

It didn't need to be the Doctor, though. It could have been any alien invasion that triggered the founding of Torchwood (and, honestly, the Doctor wasn't too necessary to Tooth & Claw, provided someone worked out what the diamond was for - all Sir Robert had to do was listen more to his father as a kid), and any public crisis where she made a name for herself could propel Harriet Jones to power. There are some major differences in the universe, in the people and what they do, like Lumic, like Pete's personal history.

Even worse, consider what happened with Nine when Jabe said "I'm so sorry" -- he cried one tear for Gallifrey.

No, I really don't like emo!Doctor.

he treats his companion like we treat short lived pets

I agree, that's the only relationship he can have with human companions. However much you care for them you know their forever is only a short section of yours.

If Torchwood's creation was different, then none of the people born after that in our universe should have existed in theirs. This sort of thing is why I loathe that sort of AU which was done far too much in Star Trek. People wouldn't meet and mate with the same partners, nor would the same egg and sperm meet to produce their children. Bah.

Yes, I'm a sad nitpicker. I'm very aware of this. ;-)

Oh so have I, even for Fred hamster. That's why I don't have pets, I can't stand loosing them. I still think that he had to learn not to cry, he may be alien but he's too much like us ( his curiosity,his love of life, his laughter) not to have cried once upon a time eons ago. He's just grown up and we are still children.

People, Time-Lords included, do learn from their experiences though, and so far as we know, this is the first companion he was close to in any way, that he has lost *since* the end of Gallifrey. If the loss of his people had such a profound impact on him, it might influence how he feels about losing his companions.

Also, on someone else's journal, someone (I lose at recall) pointed out that he might have learnt his lesson after the business with bumping into Sarah-Jane. He finally got to see how his leaving affects *them*.

Personally, I can take emo! or non-emo!Doc. It's just a different approach.

That's not DW's theory of divergences from timelines, though. Their theory is that time reforms as close to the original shape as possible; it's pretty explicit in Father's Day, so it's not a bug in their universe, it's how they've modeled it intentionally. And in T&C, who does the Doctor really save, single-handedly? Just Victoria, whom they strongly hint was bitten anyway, and whom Robert could have saved with a bit more attention to his Dad. (Rose does save the lot in the barn, but they could have done the same without her there.)

But there are a number of times that the doctor sacrificed a regeneration for a companion. There are also a number of times the doctor chose a companion over the (albeit temporary) fate of a planet. (Just saw one last night when Three agreed to help the Axons consume the planet Earth for dinner rather than sacrifice Jo Grant - and he had only known her for three adventures).

I think to say that the doctor treats his companions like pets is to diminish his essential tragedy. We see the same idea in Greek myths with some of the gods and their mortal lovers.

Also, all regens have different personalities. This is just the emo!boyband doctor. I accept that. I don't like him nearly as much as Nine, or Four, or even Eight, but tant pis. All doctors must pass - eventually.

And one final point - if you buy the movie with Eight, the doctor's mother is human. Inter-species shipping is canon. (Spouse adds that Leela hooked up with a Gallifreyan too.)

All that being said, I loathed the emotionally manipulative ending. And DWC with Rusty D saying that killing Rose was never an option. Bleh! My fic overestimated him. He couldn't do a proper MarySuicide after all. I wanted Rose splattered all over the void.

And one final point - if you buy the movie with Eight, the doctor's mother is human.

Only if you buy he wasn't joking, which there's some indication he may have been. Buying the movie means you sort of overlook multiple TV-canon lines where the point is that he's fully alien.

That said, yeah, Leela hooked up with an alien (and his granddaughter hooked up with a human, and Peri with Yrcanos), and the show never seemed speciesist, really. (Maybe a bit biased towards mammals, though.) I'd think interspecies shipping is just fine in the original.

Exactly. It's out of character.

Yes, I could accept that this particular regeneration is emo!boyband (love it!) but Nine got very attached to Rose too, another one to give up one of his 13 lives though I can't see him doing the sentimental last scene. I wish we'd had more of him, but RTD would still have written final emo fest. :-(

Their theory is that time reforms as close to the original shape as possible; it's pretty explicit in Father's Day, so it's not a bug in their universe, it's how they've modeled it intentionally.

The problem is that the Doctor explicitly states in 'Army of Ghosts/Doomsday' that multiple universes are formed by every decision -- and that's not quite the same as a universe which was altered by time-travel as happened in "Father's Day".

I can't remember what the 3rd Doctor said about the alt-Universe he visited in "Inferno", which is the only other case of TV-canon that I can think of where a parallel universe was visited.

In the book-canon, it was explicitly stated that alt-universes are shortlived things that are an abberation; that contradicts what the Doctor said in Doomsday. But book-canon doesn't really count in an argument about TV-canon.

As far as I can recall, there are two general theories about multiple universes:
(1) they are created by every decision made, they always exist everywhere
(2) they are created by the history-alteration caused by time travel

Now, Who has never subscribed to the 2nd theory, and for much of its existance it hasn't subscribed to the 1st theory either.

(sigh)

Thanks. I liked that.

Their theory is that time reforms as close to the original shape as possible

I can see that with the Doctor travelling about changing things in ours all the time; time is viscous and sticky, and what happened in Father's Day didn't change the present much; Jackie just had different memories. :-) But in this ep, there are untold universes formed by things like whether I had an egg for breakfast or not. :-(

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Doctor Who: Doomsday

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