Doctor Who 4x13
Jul. 5th, 2008 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmatonakThat ending is not acceptable.
Allow me to expound further.
Sarah Jane goes back to her Doctor Home Activity Kit. Rose gets married off to the ersatz Doctor. The others don't really get an ending. And if Donna so much as hears the barest little whisper about how she spent her summer vacation, her brain will explode. I don't buy it. Yes, okay, she's not allowed to be a Time Lady for some reason. Her poor little monkey brain will just pop under the pressure of containing the Doctor's wonderfulness. She needs to forget some of the technical details, maybe hang about in a Donna-centric familiar environment for a while. Instead, she gets something that feels an awful lot like a severe punishment. She cries, she begs, it's obviously traumatic. But, you know, the Doctor is above petty things like human decency.
If it's really necessary, she should know. He knows, so she does. It's the central conceit of the episode. She should agree, or at least be able to reason with him as an equal. But we can't have any equals to the Doctor, except for fifteen minutes when someone needs to flip switches. No more than lip service to reason and compassion here, thanks.
What about the ersatz Doctor? He's half-Donna in the same way she's half-Doctor. He admittedly has some behavioral problems. Fine. But, apparently, he got the good half. I'm tempted to say, he got the male half. Because there's no question of his brain exploding from too much Time Lord wonderfulness. The possibility isn't even mentioned. And, for doing her part to save The Entirety of Everything Everywhere, Donna Noble gets a forcible lobotomy from Time Lord Daddy, who knows what is best.
Fuck that.
My final word on Russell Davies is this: he sucks at endings. He's a really good writer in so many ways, and I think I can see what he was trying to do in this episode. What he did, alas, is make me finally agree that the people who call him a sexist ass have a point. This is not the ending I wanted for Donna. That's not really a problem. The problem is that this ending isn't even really consistent on its own terms. It exists to serve an agenda. RTD seems to have taken a deep huff from the bad parts of the Joss bag.
I choose to believe Donna will be struck by lightning some day and it'll all come back, or most of it. And she'll ring up Sarah Jane and have a cuppa. And her brain won't explode and she'll just be another Companion who saved the world, except she'll have awesome model kits in her garage.
Okay. On to the parts that sucked less.
I love Rose so much. I just do. Billie Piper is really good at her job.
Apart from the ending, Donna was actually classic Donna. She doesn't just defer to the Doctor. Ever. And, as grating as it was to see her doing her impression of David Tennant, I have to hand it to Catherine Tate. I was squicked because the impression was a good one. Donna, for as long as the script let her keep being Donna, was awesome.
Mickey. I admire your ability to read the writing on the wall, old son. There's a million of 'em out there, so keep your chin up.
I really expected the Time Lords to come back. And they sort of did, because three Time Lords were needed to solve the problem. But that isn't what I meant. However, if Davros can die in the Time War and return, so can, oh, just to pick a name at random, Romana.
You know what I think really happened? When Donna told him how to fix the chameleon circuit, he got all petty and jealous because he hadn't thought of it, plus some possessive sour grapes because part of him doesn't really want to fix it anyway. And he got all petty and nasty and dressed it up in a "greater-good" rationalization like he does. Because, when RTD is in charge, that's the soul of the Doctor.
Actually, that's a bit of an overstatement.
The Ninth Doctor would have fixed Donna properly.
Allow me to expound further.
Sarah Jane goes back to her Doctor Home Activity Kit. Rose gets married off to the ersatz Doctor. The others don't really get an ending. And if Donna so much as hears the barest little whisper about how she spent her summer vacation, her brain will explode. I don't buy it. Yes, okay, she's not allowed to be a Time Lady for some reason. Her poor little monkey brain will just pop under the pressure of containing the Doctor's wonderfulness. She needs to forget some of the technical details, maybe hang about in a Donna-centric familiar environment for a while. Instead, she gets something that feels an awful lot like a severe punishment. She cries, she begs, it's obviously traumatic. But, you know, the Doctor is above petty things like human decency.
If it's really necessary, she should know. He knows, so she does. It's the central conceit of the episode. She should agree, or at least be able to reason with him as an equal. But we can't have any equals to the Doctor, except for fifteen minutes when someone needs to flip switches. No more than lip service to reason and compassion here, thanks.
What about the ersatz Doctor? He's half-Donna in the same way she's half-Doctor. He admittedly has some behavioral problems. Fine. But, apparently, he got the good half. I'm tempted to say, he got the male half. Because there's no question of his brain exploding from too much Time Lord wonderfulness. The possibility isn't even mentioned. And, for doing her part to save The Entirety of Everything Everywhere, Donna Noble gets a forcible lobotomy from Time Lord Daddy, who knows what is best.
Fuck that.
My final word on Russell Davies is this: he sucks at endings. He's a really good writer in so many ways, and I think I can see what he was trying to do in this episode. What he did, alas, is make me finally agree that the people who call him a sexist ass have a point. This is not the ending I wanted for Donna. That's not really a problem. The problem is that this ending isn't even really consistent on its own terms. It exists to serve an agenda. RTD seems to have taken a deep huff from the bad parts of the Joss bag.
I choose to believe Donna will be struck by lightning some day and it'll all come back, or most of it. And she'll ring up Sarah Jane and have a cuppa. And her brain won't explode and she'll just be another Companion who saved the world, except she'll have awesome model kits in her garage.
Okay. On to the parts that sucked less.
I love Rose so much. I just do. Billie Piper is really good at her job.
Apart from the ending, Donna was actually classic Donna. She doesn't just defer to the Doctor. Ever. And, as grating as it was to see her doing her impression of David Tennant, I have to hand it to Catherine Tate. I was squicked because the impression was a good one. Donna, for as long as the script let her keep being Donna, was awesome.
Mickey. I admire your ability to read the writing on the wall, old son. There's a million of 'em out there, so keep your chin up.
I really expected the Time Lords to come back. And they sort of did, because three Time Lords were needed to solve the problem. But that isn't what I meant. However, if Davros can die in the Time War and return, so can, oh, just to pick a name at random, Romana.
You know what I think really happened? When Donna told him how to fix the chameleon circuit, he got all petty and jealous because he hadn't thought of it, plus some possessive sour grapes because part of him doesn't really want to fix it anyway. And he got all petty and nasty and dressed it up in a "greater-good" rationalization like he does. Because, when RTD is in charge, that's the soul of the Doctor.
Actually, that's a bit of an overstatement.
The Ninth Doctor would have fixed Donna properly.
