Christmas. I hate Christmas. The compulsory gift-giving, the monthlong frenzy of crass commercialism and godawful pervasive music, the tacky decorations, the senseless treeslaughter, the theological indoctrination, the eggnog-clouded family get-togethers, the unholy bastard spawn of religion and capitalism, more annoying even than each separately. Some people like Christmas. They like the hassle of the shopping, think gaudy decorations are wonderful, revel in the ceaseless torment of christmas carols, look forward eagerly to the inevitable disappointment of annual stunt-casted Chrit'mas specials on the telly, and after it all careens to a disastrous end, they set their sights on the next nationalistic and/or religious ceremony with unabated glee. I think the world can roughly be split between people who don't like Christmas and those who do (and the billion or so people who live somewhere it isn't a particularly big deal), and with the exception of those who’ve a decent reason (prepubescence, medication), I don’t think I’ve ever gotten along with people who like Christmas.
Well, I, for one, was hoping for more.
Which is the only way I can really understand the reaction to Journey’s End, which has polarised fandom more than any episode this series. Between the shallow spectacle and the shiny baubles and the anaemic paeans to the "true believers", many fans in their religious fervour feel that it is blasphemy to look over this tinsel-strewn wasteland and fail to be converted. (My reaction to this is pictured on the right.)
Well, I, for one, was hoping for more.
Doctor Who: Journey's End
Not expecting it, mind you, just hoping for it. I ended my last review with a cliffhanger, when I threatened to reveal what I thought of the cliffhanger. Partly this is because I thought it a wee bit clever; partly it's because I was too damn tired to bother trying to hammer out those extra few paragraphs; partly because time was running short; but mainly it's because I didn't want to heap praise on The Stolen Earth's spectacular cliffhanger when I felt pretty sure the resolution would fail to live up to my exacting standards, and, indeed, any standards at all.
Well, Russell T. Davies, you didn't disappoint me...and so I was disappointed. Predictably, Journey's End kicks off with startlingly poor resolutions to all three of last week's cliffhangers. Whether it's the magical hand of convenience, Jackie and Mickey's far-too-convenient materialization, or the method of conveniently writing Gwen and Ianto out of the rest of the episode, each seems like a disappointing cop-out. The density of dei ex machina in the first two minutes alone is almost enough to cause the entire episode to collapse into a black hole of arbitrary plotting. Mind you, RTD had sort of written himself into a corner here. There was no convenient Chekhov's gun lying around from earlier narratives to resolve any of the predicaments. I'd rather hoped there was something I missed and I'd be in awe of the clever escape; instead RTD just pulled rabbits out of his arse in some sort of perverse magical theatre.
Viva la Resolucion!:
The crap resolutions went well beyond the first two minutes, unfortunately. Davies has been dropping leaden hints on us all season, from Donna's hearing of heartbeats to Dalek Caan squealing and giggling about the death of the Doctor's "most faithful companion", and all seemed to land with a dull thud. In fact, the only resolutions that weren't crap were those many things that weren't resolved at all.
The least satisfying non-resolutions of the episode, and Davies' grossest derelictions of his duties as a scriptwriter, all converged on Donna. After weeks of playing up her importance ("the most important woman in the universe!") and dropping bollocks like "the pattern's not complete. The strands are still drawing together. But heading for what?" and every species in the universe predicting great things for her, we were a bit stirred up. Fans and casual viewers alike have been whipped into a frenzy, ropey strands of saliva falling from the corners of our mouths as we hurl our theories about who Donna might be and why all timelines seem to be leading to her, like so many monkeys hurling their feces at each other.
...all it requires is half-a-dozen incontinent macaques with a Speak-and-Spell...
Well, I'm sad to say, the ideas we've all been flinging about are infinitely better than the steaming pile of exposition RTD actually serves up for our consumption. The Doctor's heartbeat "rippled back, converging on" Donna because the Doctor's "complicated" and Donna's "special". A Dalek faerie has been manipulating the timelines...but the result was inevitable anyway? Why? Because Donna was "so unique."? That's all you could come up with, you incompetent bastard? Some sort of Donna-specific version of the already questionable Anthropic Principle? It's some sort of Destiny? Donna's the Chosen One? Bah. It's like that old adage about the infinite number of monkeys with the infinite number of typewriters...except that all it requires is half-a-dozen incontinent macaques with a Speak-and-Spell to best this pathetic cop-out.
The Naked Time(lord):
Since all of the universe seemed to be working together to foreshadow Donna's greatness, it was the least Davies could do to come up with a sufficiently over-the-top threat and implausible conclusion. Not content with merely taking over the entire universe, Davros and his friends have designed a machine that will obliterate anything and everything in all possible universes, and it's apparently fueled and propagated by 27 planets in careful balance.
The Supreme Dalek sets the mechanism for his own destruction in motion through the use of a cartoonish trap-door in the floor of the crucible, dropping Donna and the TARDIS through a long amusement-park ride into a furnace. While the TARDIS is bobbing up and down in a pool of zed-neutrinos (think of it as Doctor Who's own "trash compactor" scene), Murray Gold appears to Donna and tempts her into touching the pickled meat, setting up the episode's most important deus ex machina: the Biological Metacrisis. More of a Logical Metacrisis, the Doctor's hand is, understandably, aroused by Catherine Tate's touch, and grows into what I will heretofore refer to as "the Naked Doctor", and apparently the two of them have tainted each other in the process.
...understandably, aroused by Catherine Tate's touch...
The scenes of the Naked Doctor and Donna aping each other in the TARDIS are actually among the most enjoyable of the episode, and, of course, this entire contrivance eventually sets us up the Surreality Bomb that solves all of the universe's problems. Fortunately for the universe, Clever Donna possessed that magical human X-factor, lever-pressing-skills and the ability to shout scientificky-sounding things, allowing her to tits-up the Dalek plan in a matter of seconds, and right on time. (David Tennant yelling at the Dalek Empire to "cut it out! Just, please, stop it!" seemed to be meeting with limited success.) The final defeat of the Daleks' plan largely consisted of the Doctor, the Doctor-Donna, and the Naked Doctor spouting endless nonsense and flicking switches and turning knobs. The convenient Dalek-control-panel might have qualified as a Checkhov's gun, except that it was only revealed when needed, making it essentially a machina ex machina. The level of teachno-babble was ratcheted up so high in Journey's End my ears hurt, but without it the writer might have actually had to, in the words of the Supreme Dalek, "Explain! Explain! Explain!"
Orgy of Caanibalism:
What a bunch of rubbish were the Cult of Skaro, eh? Some elite force of Dalek superheroes they turned out to be. First we have Dalek Sec engaging in bestiality with the lower life forms, and now Dalek Caan brings back the entire bloody species from oblivion, just so he can sell them out. And for what? Shits and giggles, apparently. Mostly giggles. And a squeal or two. And rubbing his tentacles together maliciously, like a pantomime villain.
The other modern Daleks may still have compulsory-exposition problems (why is it that Daleks can't seem to do anything without saying it out loud! "Commence Disposal! Incinerate!"), but at least I know where they're coming from. Why have you forsaken me, Dalek Caan?
I sort of enjoyed his mad rantings in The Stolen Earth, but when it's revealed that he's not only already seen Journey's End (the poor bastard!), but apparently he script-edited it as well (the bastard!), I lost my enthusiasm. One part carny fortune teller ("reading is free for red hair!") and two parts mad puppet-master, his theoretical string-pulling and, apparently, unlimited power, just seemed another way to dance around actual plotting in favour of magical, unexplainey contrivance.
The Impossible Planet:
Perhaps the nadir of the episode, in terms of just plain embarrassing, nausea-inducing awfulness, was the lengthy bit when the Doctor and his little team help a wayward planet find its way home. They literally tow it, for fuck's sake. Maybe this is just intended to give Torchwood and Luke Smith something to do after being grounded for the rest of the episode, or it's an excuse to pull K-9 out of the closet for a few more seconds to hump Mr. Smith's leg. Either way, it hurt just watching it.
To add insult to injury, the entire sequence is accompanied by some of the more abominable music Murray Gold has coughed up since 2005. It seems to combine the worst elements of both "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles" and "Up with People". As they drop the hurtling Earth offhandedly back into its groove, everyone claps and hugs, The Earthlings all cheer and flail about and jump around like idiots, celebrating despite untold millions dead from the Dalek invasion. Governments the world over set off their strategic fireworks stockpiles. The ridiculous upbeatness is the same miserable excess I cited in my review for The Poison Sky, as "obnoxiously, hollowly uplifting," and it fares no better here.
Revelation of the Bollocks:
Another fine example of Davies dropping the spanner was the whole let-down of the Doctor's terrible secret. While most of the interminably talky episode consisted of tedious exposition, the scene where Davros gathers all of the Doctor's companions into some sort of shouty group therapy session falls far short of its goal. After a lengthy buildup about, to quote a tentacled muppet, "revealing the Doctor's soul", Davros's grand scheme apparently involves Daleks on parade in some sort of synchronized-swimming display and some sort of self-help based psychoanalysis of the Doctor.
The worst part of this is that the Doctor seemed to actually be bothered by it. When Davros is gleefully thrashing about screaming, "The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun...but this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your children of time, transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor, you made this.", an appropriate response might have been "You've got to be fucking kidding me." I would have to assume that Davros was just taking the piss with lines like "This is my final victory, Doctor...I have shown you...yourself!", but instead David Tennant gets all misty-eyed and has a series of flashbacks to mostly-RTD-scripted episodes from the last three or four years set to maudlin music.
...the reddest of herrings, gaping plot wounds, implausible contrivances and poor science.
The whole suggestion that Davros was going to reveal something deep and interesting about the Doctor was just another false promise in a script rife with the reddest of herrings, gaping plot wounds, implausible contrivances and poor science. What's with the Doctor and Davros misusing the term "wavelength"? These guys are supposed to be smart. Much as everyone feared, the stars all going out at once, with no consideration for the time it takes light to travel anywhere, was the "I wouldn't know science if it bit me in the arse" error it first appeared to be. What was the point of rounding up guinea pigs to test the reality bomb on, except as a contrivance to get Jackie, Mickey and Sarah Jane up to the crucible? What was Jackie shooting at in the sky when she first beamed over from the parallel universe? Oh...and in space, no one can hear you drop a spanner.
The Pretention Cannon:
It's almost a given now that Martha continues her unbearable-streak she's been on since at least The Last of the Time Lords. As usual, she's hobbled by most of the episodes most atrociously hamfisted dialogue ("Yeah, but I've got a higher authority, way above UNIT. And there's one more thing the Doctor would do."), but Freema Agyeman's affected line-reading doesn't improve matters. I think she may have borrowed Rose's new teeth for the duration of the Crisis on Impotent Earth. It's as if she's settled on portraying the character as a grim, serious, emotionally-disabled automaton, which may have some narrative justification, but sucks away all of the fun and appeal that the character used to have.
She may convince us she's the kind of self-important git who would set off the Doomsday device, but she can't seem to convince us to give a damn.
Not much else about the episode works in her favour either. Entire scenes delivered in German almost as poorly pronounced as her English; Harper's unusual depth-of-field games when she repels her mother with her outflung fingers; a costume that consists of a parachute complete with ripcord; shouting "noooooooooooo...!" as the Daleks defuse her insignificant threat with their transmat.
She may convince us she's the kind of self-important git who would set off the Doomsday device, but she can't seem to convince us to give a damn. She'll fit in perfectly on Torchwood; let's hope they don't feel the need to bring her back to Doctor Who any time soon.
Sloppy Seconds:
Speaking of returning guest-stars, Rose's is one casket Davies should never have re-opened. Rose's "arc" ended (excellently) two seasons ago, and Rose getting her pet doctor in Journey's End (Frank beat me to the wording, but, really, no other words will do) pisses all over the far more satisfactory Doomsday.
The argument that the Naked Doctor needs Rose Tyler to heal him, or even that eliminating the Daleks makes him need healing at all, remains thoroughly unconvincing, and the treacley mess on the beach just comes across as an excuse to throw the Rose/Doctor shippers a stale bone. If a "human-timelord biological metacrisis" can't survive, I was, of course, left wondering if the Doctor just left Rose cavorting with an impending corpse, instead of just a genocidal mockup of himself and the best temp in Chiswick. Even if he doesn't drop dead within hours, Rose isn't likely to be satisfied with the short end of the stick. After travelling the universe with the Doctor, she's isn't likely to be any more satisfied settling down with the Naked Doctor who works in a chip shop than Donna would be with being mind-raped and stranded back on Earth.
The Biggest Backfire in History:
Journey's End had a few redeeming features...there was
the...um...no...wait...I'll think of it...ooh, I've got it! Bernard
Cribbins didn't suck. Then again, he really never sucked, now did he? Well, how about the faux-German Daleks? They were entertaining. And, of course, there was Donna.
The final insult of Journey's End was Donna's terrible fate. Catherine Tate has been, easily, the best thing to happen to Doctor Who since at least sometime in the seventies. Donna was supposed to travel with the Doctor forever, more or less. She certainly deserved better than she got.
...like a schoolboy pulling the wings off of a butterfly...
The Doctor leaving Donna as an amnesiac ticking time-bomb is not a satisfying conclusion to her plot arc. Sure, it was emotionally devastating and all, and Tate's unparalleled acting sells the horror of it far more than anyone else could have. An actual death would have been a far more dignified coda for Donna (and would have actually lived up to Caan's prophecy of a companion death, unlike the annoying bait-and-switch Davies keeps pulling). In one fell swoop, like a schoolboy pulling the wings off of a butterfly, Davies has reduced Donna to the shallow caricature we all met with some trepidation in The Runaway Bride.
Donna's mantra about being "just a temp" led to a great deal of speculation among the fans ("...temp...tempus...time. She must be a time lord!"). That, of course, all turned out to be much ado about nothing, as the only thing that made her special was her accidental cross pollination with the Doctor. The end result of her character arc was to have no arc at all; she was just a placeholder. It's like the world's worst reset-button. You see, for Davies, Donna was just a temp all along.
Biomatching Receptacle: Talk to the handy plot device.
Temporal Prison: A Chronon Loop. That’s that cleared up, then.
Osterhagen Key: Big bomb.
Barrowman Damping Field with Performance Containment Inversion: Hey, we can dream.
This was brilliant. And the more I think about it, the more brilliant it seems. Elegant. Explosive. Terrifying. Devastating. Thrilling. Thought-provoking. It is everything Doctor Who can and should be, and it wraps up the natural arcs of the most important characters that had been introduced in the four years of the Russel T. Davies era. Or am I imagining it? Am I imagining the symmetry, the closure of loose threads, the deft weaving of various running threads that suddenly culminate all at once in a single explosive and tragic episode? I certainly don't think that I am, but it seems like I must have watched a completely different episode from everyone else because very few people seem to have anything good to say about it.
Speaking of Rose, the conclusion to her four-season-long arc was by far the most gratifying, largely because the Doctor actually said certain things about his relationship with Rose that I've been saying for years. I've never been one to believe that the Doctor requited Rose's feelings for him. I have, however believed that their relationship was special because she made him a better man. She made the bitter and jaded Christopher Eccleston into the more optimistic (though still scarred) David Tennant. She helped him get over the horror of destroying two civilizations, one of which was his own. The Doctor basically says as much in this episode, and gives Rose and the Hand Doctor exactly what they deserve: each other. I don't really understand why a fully-fledged copy of the Doctor has been interpreted by the fandom as a sex doll, but then again, I've never owned one, so I suppose I don't know what I'm talking about. As far as I'm concerned, this is the perfect conclusion to Rose's story. Last time we visited Bad Wolf Bay, we were told that Rose could never return, but that had zero credibility (I mean, come on, Mickey had already done it!) and there was no real closure: the shadow of Rose continued to hang over to program. That shadow is now lifted, and both she and the Doctor can get on with their lives; the story no longer calls out for resolution but the possibility is left that sometime two, five, ten, or twenty years down the road Billie and David can both return to the program, together, if the need should arise. 
Now, about Donna. It's heartbreaking, it's sad, and she doesn't deserve it. It really, truly hurts. But that's not something that should be held against the episode, because that's how stories are told. And this one has been told excellently. That Donna's departure disturbed, upset, and, ultimately, bovvered so many fans is to the credit of both Russell and Catherine. But the departure was strangely appropriate. The threads leading to this finale have been woven through the fabric of this series. The Doctor and Donna as a single entity was hinted at ages ago. I'm thinking in particular about the notion of Donna (and companions in general) as a part of the Doctor that has been externalized, that Donna acts as the Doctor's conscience. I mentioned this specifically in my review of 
Ultimately, though, in spite of all of the faults, and even if I'm really just crazy, seeing tied-up threads where none exist, it still has to be said that this episode was a blast nonetheless. Big, explosive, scary, full of thrills, and full of heart. Watching it was a pleasure and re-watching it was even more of a pleasure, for all the reasons I've listed in my review but also for all the reasons Stuart listed in 
Which is the only way I can really understand the reaction to Journey’s End, which has polarised fandom more than any episode this series. I'd hoped to come here and join in the celebrations of a job well done
by everyone at Upper Boat. Here is a photo of me banging my head against the table (not really) on Saturday
night as I read the comments in the reaction thread here and elsewhere
online. Once again, everyone seemed to have missed the point, become oh so very serious and forgotten one very specific thing, even though it's reiterated over and over to the point of cliche, 
I bet Gillane Seaborne was livid. She's sat at home, downing another glass of Chardonnay, and then next minute she's plonked in the BBC News studio trying her best to explain to the newsreaders and anyone now bothering to watch what exactly that last 65 minutes on BBC1 was about and why, for fuck's sake, Tennant was still Doctor Who when they'd all convinced themselves he was going. All she wanted to do was get back to her glass of wine rather than try and defend the whole cop-out regeneration and three Doctors bollocks (not a physical aberration, more a creative one). I had visions of a baying mob outside the newsroom screaming for Russell's blood. But no, the baying mob is on the internet and they're mad as hell and aren't gonna take it anymore.
Before Journey’s End started, I had a moment of panic singularly unique to Glasgow in summer.
And then there was Donna. Oh, Russell T Davies, why? Why did you do this to us? What was this, an exercise in point scoring? A reminder to us plebs that ultimately you’re in charge? Because that’s what it felt like. It felt like Russell saying a big up yours to the naysayers. Perhaps this was his punishment for all the criticism of Catherine at the start. ‘Oh, they think she can’t act then? They think Donna’s a horrible character? I’ll show them. I’ll write her into being one of the best companions the show’s ever had, and give Catherine every opportunity to showcase her skills as an actress, to the point where you really, really care about her. That you forget the criticism you had of Donna and of Catherine from 
And more crucially, Rose and Martha. A meeting that’s been building for two seasons, and one we needed done properly, especially after Rose’s bitching at the social networking webcast last week, and the shadow Blondie cast over Martha’s stint as chief ankle-twister. 
And Bernard Cribbins, of course. Wonderful throughout his appearances in the series, his sad farewell speech to the Doctor, as he alone realises how lonely and forsaken the Time Lord is, was again pitch-perfect. As was that final shot, the rain-sodden Doctor all alone at home. Any kind of ‘what?!’ moment to set up this year’s Christmas special would have undermined what was an intensely strong moment.
Blimey, wasn't David Morrissey fantastic tonight? I mean, WOW! And phew, too! Just imagine how disappointed we'd have been if David Tennant had regenerated into himself or something pathetic like that! That would have been a massive cop-out and they'd have lynched RTD for sure. And top marks for pulling off a Paul McGann Time War flashback so we could watch him regenerate into Eccleston. Brilliant! But killing Rose and Martha - who saw that coming? However, I have to admit that shoehorning Harriet Jones into the Dalek Supreme and McCoy's cheeky cameo as "Dr." Osterhagen did over-egg the pudding a little, even it was cleverly done (I loved the subtle reference to the Kandyman). And while I'm having a hard time swallowing the fact that Donna was actually Romana all along (Temp = Time, Noble = Lord - slaps forehead - of course!) that bit at the end when John Simm unleashed all of those Cybermen into the TARDIS was f**king mental! What? What? WHAT?
I suppose he did ask for it. After all it was his decision to plump for the biggest and boldest cliffhanger imaginable, and while it certainly generated more anticipation, excitement and column inches than I thought possible, he must have known deep down inside that the resolution would polarise the audience: giddy relief for those of you who love David Tennant and acute disappointment for those of us who don't (or who just wanted last week's surprise to be "real"). Ramping up the tension by claiming that only a handful of people knew the truth - not even the Head of Drama had seen it (what, really? the Head of Drama didn't have a say in the casting of the 11th Doctor?) - was simply asking for trouble as well. Perhaps Russell watched it 15 times in the week leading up to transmission so he could work out exactly what the hell was going on. 
Journey's End makes 
But Journey's End isn't a disaster by any means. There are some really powerful ideas buried beneath all the bullshit and bluster. When Davros (perfectly brought back to life by Julian Bleach) makes the Doctor concede that he weaponises his companions (as they prepare to commit genocide at the drop of a hat) was chilling stuff and it was great to see the Daleks working towards a "final solution" (reinforced by the appearance of some German Daleks, which was very neat). In fact, Davros has never been better and his ranting, taunting madness was the only thing that actually felt right.
Even the "heartwarming" scene where Rose gets to live happily-ever-after-with a clone of the Doctor is problematic, to say the least. It's certainly didn't deliver the syrupy pap that I'd feared. It felt incredibly odd and slightly perverse, and it's played like that too, thank heavens. And while Rose is doing her best to embrace the possibilities of a life with the next best thing, it's still so very wrong on oh so many levels. It opens up all sorts of questions, too. For instance, how long will it take her to tire of an aging bloke with no time machine? I'm waiting for the inevitable slash fiction where they go through a really messy divorce and the Doctor ends up living with Jackie instead.
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