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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The End of Time: Part Two”

Well, as I noted yesterday, the David Tennant era of Doctor Who is officially over and in the next episode, we will see a young actor named Matt Smith -- no relation to the other Smiths in the DW universe, I trust -- taking over the role of the Doctor. Russell T. Davies will be leaving too and Steven Moffat -- writer of some of the better Doctor Who episodes -- will be taking his place.

As a result, I was not quite as annoyed with this episode as I was the episode before it. The hungry cyborg/Master still bothers me -- for that matter, so does the Mighty Morphin' Power Master -- but they are not really deal breakers. Nor did I mind too much the sillier elements: for example, that fall from a great height that theoretically should have killed the Doctor outright but instead just stunned him a little. Or for that matter, the magic radiation that killed people but still left a certain alien free to travel about without worrying about contaminating anyone.

RTD did take time to indulge all his greatest hits: armed confrontations, moving planets, Star Wars references, arbitrary visits to characters of previous episodes, etc. He always had a flair for the epic that he could not always fulfill as well as he should -- though given the fact that he's been working on three shows -- Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures -- it seems amazing that his screenplays work as well as they do.

Anyway, we never do find out Wilf's big secret -- although we do find out at least one secret about him. Nor do we quite learn the true identity of the Woman in White who kept popping up in the previous episode. Yes, she appears to be a Timelady but apart from that, who is she really? Why does the Doctor seem to recognize him. Show writer Julie Gardner has supposedly outed her as the Doctor's mother -- but RTD did not officially concur -- perhaps so that the new guy's writing staff can come up with their own explanations.

RTD has received more than a little criticism about how he first wrote Donna Noble into a situation where she faced certain death and then rescued her at the last second. Granted, her rescue was so unexpected that I kept the Monty Python crew to show up and start singing about how she was saved at the last minute. But I am kinda glad he did not decide to exploit her death for cheap emotional points and even more glad that he gave her a happy ending. Her ending may not make the most feminist fans of Doctor Who very happy -- but they made sense in view of what we already learned about the character in previous episodes and I was glad to see that her new spouse actually seems to care for her.

Perhaps Donna will have children with her new husband and perhaps someday one of them will accompany a future incarnation of the Doctor on his travels through time and space. Of course, that seems unlikely now. But then at one time, a second Doctor Who series seemed unlikely too.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The End of Time: Part One”

Of course, it always seemed obvious to me that if the Master was ever to come down with an eating disorder, it would undoubtedly involve raging hunger -- just like in this episode.

But still... A hungry cyborg? A cyborg who is resurrected through potions?

Granted, series creator Russell T. Davies deserves kudos for resisting the temptation to toss in a visual reference to Meatloaf's “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” (After all, the title seemed reference enough as it was.) But did we also need visual references to Silence of the Lambs, Stargate, The X-Files and seemingly almost every sci-fi movie and TV show that is not Doctor Who?

I suspect that Davies' true love is really fantasy and indeed, if you look at most of his Doctor Who as basically sword-and-sorcery stories set in space -- with Captain Jack being Fahred to the Doctor's Grey Mouser and the Doctor's various female companions playing Maid Marion to his Robin Hood -- then the stories do not seem so weird. One of these days, Davies is going to settle down and start working on a fantasy series that is either similar to his beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer or else similar to Wizards and Warriors. However, at this point, I am still not sure whether or not that would be a good thing.

Anyway, I did like certain scenes in this episode -- including a brief glimpse of my beloved Donna Noble and quite longer glimpses of Donna's grandfather. Indeed, one of the best scenes of the episode -- if not, the whole series -- is a brief conversation in a cafe between the Doctor and Donna's grandfather.

I am not sure how I feel about the episode's end. After all, that pun was pretty bad. But I will give it credit for boasting the most memorable cliffhanger since “Utopia.”

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Midnight”

My, this was one creepy episode.

My, this was one creepy episode.

No, seriously, it was creepy.

No, seriously, it was creepy.

I've come to have very low expectations when it comes to the episodes of this series that were written by Russell T. Davies, but this one actually manages to be creepier than last week's episode (and last week's was very creepy, indeed.)

I've come to have very low expectations when it comes to the episodes of this series that were written by Russell T. Davies, but this one actually manages to be creepier than last week's episode (and last week's was very creepy, indeed.)

It's not often you see an episode that seems to have been inspired not only by The Twilight Zone but by a recent House episode. Moreover, it's not often that you see such an episode pull off such a plot.

It's not often you see an episode that seems to have been inspired not only by The Twilight Zone but by a recent House episode. Moreover, it's not often that you see such an episode pull off such a plot.

And to think mi mejor amiga has been trying to get me to go on a pleasure cruise.

And to think mi mejor amiga has been trying to get me to go on a pleasure cruise.

Okay, I'll stop.

Okay, I'll st--

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Fires of Pompeii”

Yet another reference to how dangerous the Doctor can be. (Oh, geez, if you're going to set us all up for yet another reference to the first series' “Trial of a Timelord,” then go ahead and do so. We get it already. The Doctor can be evil. Because he's all about fighting entropy and stuff.)

And, of course, another episode about my current favorite hija de London, Donna Noble. (Okay, Jackie Tyler was a favorite as well but she doesn't appear on the show anymore.)

And, of course, an interesting mishmash of actual history, pseudo-history and historical fantasy. The show, of course, chose to take the rather controversial position that nasty, evil aliens who want to take over the Earth are a bad thing. How dare they?!

And yes, references to so-and-so being a daughter of London or Dallas or New York are going to be on my mind for some time to come. Just the price you pay for watching this kind of stuff.

I did like that ending though. Donna Noble really is a -- oh, you'll see.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Partners in Crime”

Oh, cool. Donna Noble's back.

I heart Donna Noble.

Donna Noble completes me.

Donna Noble is cool. (Oh, wait, I've said that.)

And, oh, yes, there was a bit of a mystery in this episode, but the story didn't really take off until Donna and the Doctor met.

Although I was a bit disappointed that the inevitable allusions to Ghostbusters did not lead to the reappearance of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Some people just have no sense of history.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Runaway Bride”

Oh, great. A week after my breakup with my former bride-to-be, I broke down crying halfway through a viewing of Sweet Charity. Why? Because I had just gotten to the part when Charity's boyfriend was breaking up with her and for some reason, the scene evoked bad memories.

Yet weeks later, I'm watching an episode of Doctor Who that seems calculated to push all my emotional buttons and I don't even shed a tear. (I did cry the morning after, but I wasn't exactly thinking about the episode at the time.)

The emotional buttons in question:

1. Disrupted wedding? Check.

2. Bride-to-be who has issues with her parents. Check.

3. Reminder of a past girlfriend (Doctor Who's, of course, not the bride's, though that certainly would have made for an interesting subplot). Check.

4. Torrent of endless heartbreak. Check, check and check.

And yet again, I note, I did not shed a tear.

I don't know how to explain it. I still go off when I see certain reminders of my bride-to-be though I do not go off as often as I did two weeks ago. But it seems a trifle unfair to take it out on the show and I must admit that “The Runaway Bride” was one of the better episodes I've seen. (Someday, I'll give my thoughts on earlier episodes but not right now.)

Anyway, the story proved to be very entertaining. I must admit to having a soft spot for spunky redheads and while the runaway bride of the episode's title was not hardly the brightest companion the Doctor has ever had, she was certainly one of the most memorable.

I'm not sure what to say about the not-so-subtle anti-marriage subtext (after all the romantic rhetoric about marriage in Season One's "Father's Day" episode, this episode's take on marriage seems a bit harsh). Nor do I really want to comment on the subplot concerning a deadly single mother. (Yes, another single mom. Apparently the show's writers have a weakness for such characters.)

And what's with the episode's last-minute deus ex machina? Could it be connected to a future episode?

It's interesting to compare this series' “so what?” attitude to interracial relationships to the “let's shock the bourgeois” attitude seen in Borat. Of course, it would be argued that any series that has an alien as its protagonist and Earthwomen as its secondary characters would have to have a liberal attitude towards interracial relationships lest it suffer a charge of hypocrisy. After all, who would want to watch a show that expects you to buy the lead female character mooning over an alien but has trouble depicting a relationship between a black Earth man and a white Earth woman? Okay, some people probably would, but not the type that I prefer to know.