Doctor Who: Doomsday

[kerravonsen]

Okay, here we are, the last episode of New Who Season 2...


Does it make me as heartless as a Cyberman if I say that my main reaction to what happened to Rose was "Darn, she's not dead." Because I was completely unmoved by Emo!Rose and Emo!Doctor, really.

Ahem.

Good:
Yes, a fanboy's dream, Daleks versus Cybermen. I did wonder whether the Cybermen would be vulnerable to Dalek blasters, and they were. Let's face it, Dalek technology is much more advanced.

Oh these fun lines:

"Identify yourself."
"Identify yourself first."

(LOL!)

"There is one way in which you are superior to Daleks -- dying."

The Cyberized leader of Torchwood "I did my duty to Queen and Country" stopping the other Cybermen, yay!

Bad Wolf bay, hmmmm.
Rose did some nice bluffing in front of the Daleks about Bad Wolf, though.
And the Dalek secret society, hmmmm.

I'm actually glad for Pete and Jackie. Maybe because they weren't overly emo. I like a good hug.

What the Genesis Ark actually was -- a Time Lord prison ship, that was a very nice use of existing Who-tech, I like it when a McGuffin surprises me and makes sense at the same time.

Bad:
Well, as I said above, emo!Rose just irritated me, rather than moving me to tears as apparently some were.
And I was dissappointed that they didn't kill Rose, though it did explain the prologue.

Void-stuff? Oh, c'mon. Oh well, technobabble is technobabble. And it was a reason for the 3D glasses, and they had been fun to see.

More musings:
Note that one Dalek used an "emergency temporal shift" which probably means that there is one Dalek left in the universe to cause trouble. After all, they couldn't actually wipe all the Daleks out, as I've grizzled about before.

"Am I ever going to see you again?" Depends whether Billie does some guest roles, doesn't it? But really, has it occurred to nobody there that in a parallel universe, there would be a parallel Doctor? And parallel Daleks, too. Mind you, since it's a parallel universe, who knows what sort of Doctor the Alt-Doctor would be, or if he's still alive, or if he ever left Gallifrey... Mind you, if Torchwood was started by Queen Victoria getting cheezed off by the Doctor -- and it does seem that the Alt-Torchwood was interested in the Doctor, because Pete makes some remark about "At least I know who you are now" (implying that he'd read Torchwood data on the Doctor) which would seem to mean that there is an Alt-Doctor... but there wasn't an Alt-Rose, though. So the origins of Alt-Torchwood are rather... murky.

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

But really, has it occurred to nobody there that in a parallel universe, there would be a parallel Doctor?

It did to me when she heard him calling. I thought an AU Doctor was going to show up.

Sigh. The blubbing was annoying, went on far too long, and rather spoiled my enjoyment of what was a hugely fun ep otherwise.

[kerravonsen]

It did to me when she heard him calling. I thought an AU Doctor was going to show up.

No, that wouldn't make sense, because the Alt-Doctor wouldn't know her, because there was no Alt-Rose in that universe.

And by "nobody" I guess I meant not the viewers (who would certainly think of it) but the characters.

Sigh. The blubbing was annoying, went on far too long, and rather spoiled my enjoyment of what was a hugely fun ep otherwise.

Yeah. I think we could have done without the last farewell message. It would have been much better leaving it with the scene with both of them cheek-to-wall. It would have been more final, more realistic. Sometimes you don't get to say goodbye. That would have been poignant and angsty. The goodbye on the beach was overkill.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

No, that wouldn't make sense, because the Alt-Doctor wouldn't know her, because there was no Alt-Rose in that universe.

Yeah, true. I wonder if all the Timelords were wiped out in that one.

Mind you, I hate that sort of AU,and always have when it was done in Star Trek. I loathe the idea that every decision creates a new universe (where does the energy and matter come from) and that there are many versions of each person. If that thought isn't bad enough, the illogic outrages me: if the universe is sufficiently different that they have airships etc, then the whole history from that divergence is changed. People born since then in our universe wouldn't be in that one, and people certainly wouldn't meet and have a child with exactly the same genes (i.e. egg and sperm) as Mickey's parents did. /rant

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Oh, that didn't bother me; I assumed the universes diverged shortly before Rose was conceived (or possibly, in the AU, miscarried) - in fact, probably just as Mickey was born, to explain why he was genetically identical but called Ricky. We used to have airships, so maybe someone just decided they were greener than aeroplanes and went back to them.

I did think about alt-Doctors, and what I'd have liked, if we had to have a continuation after the Wall bit (which everyone seems to think would have been a good ending) would have been to see Rose busy working at Torchwood, and explaining in the voiceover that it was fun and interesting, and maybe, who knows, she can use it to find another environmentally-sound way to reach her own universe, or track down an alt-Doctor. But then she'd look round and smile at Pete, Mickey and Jackie who happen to be wandering past her office, and say that life isn't so bad as it is.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That would have been so much better. And there must have been an alt-Doctor if there's a Torchwood. :-)

[kerravonsen]

Mind you, I hate that sort of AU,and always have when it was done in Star Trek. I loathe the idea that every decision creates a new universe (where does the energy and matter come from) and that there are many versions of each person.

I find it fun to play with from a storytelling point of view, but I agree that the theory itself is distasteful -- it renders every decision meaningless.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I find the whole idea repellent.

I like to play with AUs in fic because I'm not positing uncounted universes, but asking, "What if this one was different?"

I must post Delta Domeheads, rescued from zine limbo a while go, because I have some characters discuss this question among others.