DW - The Season Six Finale

[rabid1st]

Pretty darned predictable on all fronts...

So, when I heard that River had killed "The greatest man [she'd] ever known" I knew that she would kill the Doctor one day. So, when I saw that astronaut at the lake, I knew it was River. Just as I knew that the child was River. And when I saw a duplicate Doctor, I figured the Doctor was a duplicate. So, what I had wrong was the nature of the duplicate Doctor. But that wasn't enough of a surprise to make this episode very surprising.

River continues to simply annoy me rather than impress me. There was less of her in this episode, so that's an improvement. She ends her days tucked away in a computer. She is one of his many wives and he really didn't seem to be too keen on acting out the play as it had been written. She is tremendously giddy, of course, but that is true to her character. Everyone sat around congratulating themselves at the end. And I like that River visits her mom from time to time. I like Amy as a concept, just not in execution. But I don't blame the actress as much, these days. I think Moff is just too busy with clever twists to bother making us relate to his cartoon characters.

The question, which I had also mentioned before, is the most predictable of questions...is the question, apparently. It was my story's question as well, because it has always been the question, from the very beginning. But it is hardly a surprising twist the way it is played up to be in this season.

This ending would merge nicely into my Wild Geese story. And, again, I knew that it would, because Moff is so very predictable. If he can snub his nose at the laws of time, he will. Now, if only I can focus myself on writing WG2 all out and posting it. No luck so far with sitting my butt in the chair at my desk. But...Moff keeps feeding me exactly what I need, so I have to thank him for that.

And, he ties it all up at the end, sort of, though it is still rather sloppy. This one was a little slap-happy, wasn't it? But he managed to throw all of the elements from every story at the screen, so his fans were probably thinking it was all genius. Not genius, but not as frightful as it could have been. Just...predictable in pretty much every respect. And, after my praise last time, Matt again was chewing the scenery and so, not the Doctor, for me.

Comments

[mrs_roy.livejournal.com]

Wait, you mean people actually still take an interest?

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

LOL! Apparently, some people still enjoy the show.

I can't say I had much "interest" but I did manage to finally watch it all. And, as I said, it doesn't really amount to much at the end. We didn't even get a proper cliffhanger. And, of course, *YAWN* the universe was a tangled mess of time and space and had to be put to an end. And, of course, *Double YAWN* everyone loved the Doctor so much that they clapped six times so he lived.

I would vastly have rather they kept the death of the Doctor a mystery until Christmas, but I think they thought people might just decide not to tune in and find out what happened.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Though it should be noted that the billions upon billions of fans clapping isn't what saved the Doctor, it was a duplicate Doctor that married River. Or...well...I suppose you could just say he was in a car at the time, so it counts as a marriage. Not that THAT matters much, since we see her put away in a tower at the end.

I think when we look at what the Doctor left with his other "true loves"...a sonic lipstick, a sonic screwdriver and a diary...or a duplicate self. The duplicate self looks like a pretty good deal for old Rose. My point is, as it always has been, Rose wouldn't have settled for it.

[susanb03.livejournal.com]

Wild Geese....Wild Geese :)

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

You are incorrigible. But I like it.

[susanb03.livejournal.com]

One lives in hope :) And well, I've got to give you a goal, don't I?

[awkwardduckling.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a pretty fun episode, especially in the first half with all the time-mess and the live chess... but then, I came at it with as un-critical an eye as it's possible to bring.
I would very happily read some more Wild Geese! Just rewatched all of Eccleston and Tennant, and you don't really notice when it's all spread out over a few years, but man there are quite a few tragic, painful episodes with them, and then you get to the current Doctor and there's nothing that feels so dramatic/meaningful/painful. Seems time for someone to go just so the audience can feel something other than vague amusement for a change.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

See, that's the thing, it is all vague amusement now. It isn't that it is bad. It is more reflective of Old School, actually. But, it is not so much fun for me because the Doctor is like an early Saturday morning cartoon, rather than this epic figure, and yet, Moff keeps asking us to think of him as epic.

I rewatched some Eccleston lately and reveled in how beautiful he was to watch. Of course, that made watching Eleven even more painful. I was happy to see that Rory made a favorite companion list recently. I think he's definitely my favorite male companion. Rose is my fave female, still. Though I could definitely go for some more Donna Noble.

[awkwardduckling.livejournal.com]

I think that since Rose had the romantic angle, she's sort of in a different category than any of the rest (at least in new Who, which is all I've seen). At the time, I had let LiveJournal somehow talk me into being eager for Rose to go, but then when it happened I immediately was like "OH NO THIS IS TRAGIC BRING HER BACKKKK" and...Rose did keep trying to come back! I loved her persistence even once she was mostly gone.
While I was rewatching, I liked Donna too! She seemed to have so much fun, without being in awe of the Doctor, plus she became a better person along the way. What's not to like?

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Leaving Rose with the romantic angle was the correct thing to do. I wish RTD had made a better case for that.

One companion with a romantic relationship makes it different and refreshing, something that we haven't done before or since. I think RTD had that one idea though, so he kept returning to it, rather than finishing it. And Moff has the one idea that the Doctor can cross his own time line. Moff plays with the laws of time and, to my way of thinking, creates a universe where nothing can be taken very seriously---even marriage and death.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I think the continuing popularity of Ten and Rose (and Donna) fan fiction speaks for itself. Interesting that although in the early days it was dominated by 10.5 AU stories, as time has gone on people have returned to the original.

As for the new stuff, I don't not enjoy it, but there is no emotional investment there. Never has been. I'm genuinely baffled by the nice, intelligent people who post many thousands of words of ecstatic meta on Moffatt's DW. Sorry, I just don't get it. If that makes me a sad diehard Tennant fangirl, people have called me worse things.

I saw an awful lot of Hollywood references in the finale. But what intrigued me most was that we saw River doing precisely what so many people complained that Rose did - putting her personal devotion to the Doctor above the general health of the universe, and we were meant to find that gloriously romantic. It was fun watching the people who despised the Doomsday Cannon and assumed it was an entirely selfish gesture on Rose's part having to justify River's behaviour.

I remain mildly intrigued to see whether we've seen the last of River - I think we might have moved on another century or so by the next series.

And, though I'm probably in a tiny minority, I certainly wouldn't rule out a Tennant/Piper spinoff movie.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

A Tennant/Piper spin-off movie would be wonderful, of course.

I found the finale shallow, especially in light of LAST season's finale, which was much the same. I mean we pulled everyone out again, time was going crazy, the universe was dying, everyone IN the universe was all about the Doctor. And they save the day through the most ridiculous of personal coincidences with a timey-wimey Doctor trick. That's the problem with Moff's whole "he can cross his own time line" stories--you know from the beginning how it ends. Of course, the good thing about Moff is he is consistent and sticks to his storyline. So he's a good writer in that sense.

River is twenty times more clingy than Rose. I mean, we all know she's living in a fantasy of belief in him, even as we are told that people shouldn't put that sort of faith in him. I was thinking about Rose and how she never truly had blind faith in the Doctor. On the contrary, she believed he needed her. And I think one of the best parts of JE was when he admitted that he did need her. "He needs you, and that is very me."

In one of the other comments, someone says how they let the internet turn them against Rose, but looking back they can see that she really was the most persistent of companions. Letting down Rose is really what should shame the Doctor most.

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

I had a friend who thought it was brilliant. I called him daft and explained why he was wrong.

(I don't think he believed me, though, lol)

I don't overly hate River. And I think Alex has done a commendable job trying to sell the crap story she's been given. But, dare I say it, this whole story was rushed?

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

You know, I think it felt rushed because it didn't have the two episode arc it needed. But had it had the arc, I feel that it would have gone along the lines of the one where baby Melody was stolen away. There would be even more outlandish temporal confusion and self-congratulation. So, I like that it was shorter. It was a mistake putting that lightweight cyber story in front of the finale. Because, well, we didn't have much to take seriously then.

Of course, there are people who argue that Doctor Who shouldn't be very serious. People who now love Moff and Matt because they avoid any deeper emotion in the show and they let the audience have a good time. I would argue that I'm not really having that good a time. If it wasn't all preordained for the Doctor to win, I might enjoy it. But this sort of writing allows us to know all that will happen ahead of time and not in a nice way. Like we know what happens to River, where she ends her days, and the "handcuff' reveal and the whisper in the ear...none of it is truly very interesting.

It is like parts of a puzzle for 5 year old kids. Sure, nice that all the pieces are there...but hardly worth the effort of thinking about them.

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

Honestly? I think it needed at least one more episode for River's angst to make any sense. I can't believe she went from being programmed to kill him to loving him so much it completely rocked her life.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, I never believed she loved him in any true sense of the word, so perhaps that is why it doesn't bother me. I mean, what we have with River is what we have always had, a woman who tells him not to change one little thing about their relationship at the moment she dies. In that context, she and the Doctor are just playing their roles. He has to marry her in order for nothing to change and so he does it. I don't know that she loves him. I think that she just acts out what is prescribed for her. So, Moff is free not to have to write anything romantic or deep.

We are left to assume that she loves him for all of those visits to her in prison. And compare that with the visits she says she gets in the prison of the computer. How lovely an image that is for the Doctor, his women imprisoned. Rose in another universe. River, mentally, in a library computer. Donna in her own mind. Any Time Lady he might love, trapped forever in a time loop around Gallifrey. The woman in white, perhaps, reaching out to him only to have him trap her again. Amy and Susan got off easy, just being trapped at home on Earth. And I suppose Martha is thankful everyday that she got over him in time.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I think what I mean to say here, is that while I agree with you that one more episode allowing the audience some sense of where River's "Great love" comes from would have helped the story, there was no chance that given one more episode, Moff would have given you any insight into River's motivations. River doesn't matter to Moff at all. Emotional consistency or deeper feeling are not something he wants to deal with in his stories. So, had we given Moff an extra episode, he would have spent it on more references to past episodes and a longer time with the Doctor as a soothsayer...and he would have left River with those mercurial changes of mood, hoping the audience would take his word for it that THIS IS THE DOCTOR'S GREAT LOVE.

Because she told us she was, right?

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

I don't believe, in any measure of the word, that the Doctor loves her beyond affection.

BUT I also don't believe that River believes she loves him, either. And I think we're at least meant to believe she does, even if it's more of a hero-worship love delusion, sort of the way Martha loved the Doctor (but at least to her credit got the fuck over it). We never see it happen. I mean, it goes from "Let's Kill Hitler" to Boom! they're married from River's point of view. She just becomes an archaeologist on her own and dedicates her life to being a good girl without any further nudges from or even interactions with the Doctor? That's sloppy sloppy plotting. It would have taken very little to have made this supposedly "epic" arc work in a believable way, and Moff blew it.

Although, I will say you're right, especially in light of all this new cannon: the Doctor has pretty much always been and will continue to be an emotionally-stunted right bastard, lol.

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

I agree it was a bit predictable - not in the details but in the outcomes. And you are all up to date just in time for the Christmas Special!

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Yes! I watch it all rather reluctantly these days. But it is what it is...which is a modestly entertaining parody of Doctor Who. Even Old School, you must admit, wasn't this much of a parody. Except, perhaps with the Sixth Doctor, who I also didn't enjoy very much. I will say I like Matt better than Colin Baker.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

DW is a soap opera. Discuss.

TV execs love soaps. They are never resolved, so they can go on and on until the audience stops watching. Like recreational drugs, they need to be taken in ever-escalating doses to produce the necessary high. So the soap mimics reality, but becomes less and less attached to it, since there needs to be ritualistic blood-letting at regular intervals to keep the audience titillated. And the inevitable result is that with each escalation of the odds, the characters become less credible, and whether the overall result is an angst-wallow of the first order of the triumphalism of "Clap three times and save the day" or "Everybody lives!", the viewers find it more difficult to suspend disbelief and identify with them. The characters are eventually reduced to cartoons and, to economise on time and creativity, writers tell, rather than show us, plot developments that are more and more divorced from the fundamental rule of good narrative, that character drives plot.

Even The Archers has succumbed to this process, alienating regular listeners by introducing the melodramatic and OOC tragic death of Nigel Paregeter to mark the show's anniversary. Inevitably, there will be scenery-chewing, clunky dialogue and inconceivable storylines. Novelty and irony will be administered in increasing doses in an attempt to woo audiences with a spurious display of significance. But what is really going on is that the original creative concept is being reduced first to genre and then to product. It's entirely appropriate that, in the UK at least, the Christmas DW episode goes head to head with East Enders for the most outrageous storylines.

[soophelia.livejournal.com]

A week ago, they released "mini-sodes" to tide fans over until Christmas: it featured Amy, Rory, The Doctor and River. It was very Doctor/River-centric (which made the Doctor/River shippers very happy, especially when the Doctor and River had to sneak around, because the Doctor is cartoonishly afraid of Rory, so they could have a date and have sex. http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2011/12/01/doctor-who-extra-5-thoughts-about-night-and-the-doctor/

Moffat was recently quoted as saying that no one can understand the Doctor (or a man) except his wife (then Moffat says that the only one that truly understands the Doctor is River Song). I think he's full of shit, but I acknowledge that's the shipper in me (plus the way he said it, it seemed he was devaluing all of the Doctors other companions.)

He also said that River Song might come back, but it depends on Alex Kingston. I really love Alex and it pains me to see her play such a one dimensional character. I loved her as Elizabeth Corday and I miss seeing her on an actual dramatic role where she can really be allowed to act.

I never thought any showrunner could keep me from loving a show, but Moffat has done it.