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Which makes him the perfect guy to lead the Time Lords in a big nasty war now, especially as the only present members of their race with any fighting experience would be mad like the Master or to moral for the nasty stuff like the Doctor.Heinrad wrote:Somebody who laid the foundations of his planet's society is not necessarially going to be sweetness and light.
I haven't had chance to watch it yet but knowing the ending:What I'm wondering his how, exactly, Captain Jack wound up in the Star Wars cantina, anyway? I should probably finish watching Children of Earth at some point.......
SPOILER! (select to read)Jack's lover and Grandson die. He's probably keen to be alone and drunk as far away from everyone as he can get. The Doctor pushing him in the direction of Alonzo is likely going to at least give him a brief bit of solace, maybe even the start of something more long term. Either way it should stop him reverting to being the miserable bastard he was in early Torchwood.
I've seen that complaint a few times and don't get it, she sees a guy in a big coat in the distance and in shadow, on New Years Eve when she's likely had a few as well. Why would she recognise him [at least] six months later? Compared to the fifth Doctor learning in advance he'll be fighting the Master when he looks liek Tennant that's nothing.The only one that jarred, really, was Rose's. Seeing her mother in hot pants was bad enough, but don't you think Rose would've remembered when the Tenth Doctor picked his outfit and started wearing that trenchcoat?
A few moe thoughts what I has had thinking about it whilst being unable to sleep:
What I really liked about this story is that it took things I didn't think had worked very well in the show before and turned them into virtues.
Last time he was in the show the Master had a shit plan we were supposed to take terribly seriously when he was acting like a loon. Here he's got a shit plan ect but it turns out we're not supposed to be taking him seriously at all, he's the rather pathetic side show and Rassilon effectively switches off that plot with a click of his fingers. That should have completely undermined the whole story and had me shouting "So what was the point of the last hour and a half then?!?!" at the screen but instead by setting up the Master's pathetic-nes so completely and making him realise what a pawn he's been it makes his own self sacrifice (and that's how I read it as, it's really the only way it can work thematically) plausible and even a hands in the air moment as he gets his own back on the people who ruined his life.
Also, and more obviously, the episode basically reaches the same end point as Eccleston's last show, but with Time Lords in place of Daleks as the evil force tm from the Time War returning to wreak havoc. In Parting of the Ways there's great effort to try and make 9 look all big and heroic and as if he's going out in a blaze of glory, but ultimately all he does is fiddle with wires whilst all of humanity gets killed and then cowers in a corner when Rose saves the day. Despite his self sacrifice for her the attempt to make it seem bigger than it really is undercuts the whole thing.
Here, the Doctor jumps out that spaceship fully intending to make that ultimate heroic sacrifice, and instead gets thwated at every turn and winds up pretty much redundant, his main contribution at the end having been done an hour earlier in his conversation with the Master where he plants the idea of what his life could have been in his mind. In the end the tragedy is that he's determined that if he's going he's going out on his terms but doesn't get a chance. And then when he thinks "Well, at least I'm alive still" something as simple as a locked door finishes him in as drab and ordinary a way as possible, even if it does save Wilf. All that anger and rage he gets from dying having basically failed to do much is so much more satisfying and emotional that the faux Eccles heroics. And very different from anything we've had before at the point of regeneration, where normally he's stoically brave. Closest would be his panic in The War Games, but even that doesn't reach the same level of desperation that starts when he hears those knocks.
That's part of what annoyed me about the Smith scene, after a regeneration that did new and interesting things for the show we get a intro scene that's far to much like the last one. Except here he's sprouting on with no one to talk to for no readily apparent reason.
Even with that flaw though, and despite me mostly enjoying the other specials as knockaround fun, I can't remember the last time Who got me thinking this much in a positive way, beyond "How do we explain this plot hole then" and "Was that an injoke" stuff. Midnight possibly (which I think is a bit of a underrated one, I still love the ambiguity at the end over how much of the humans actions were down to alien interference and how much is just normal people breaking down in a crisis).
