T/Oxx's Reviews- This isn't fair. You've turned me onto Who.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > T/Oxx's Reviews- This isn't fair. You've turned me onto Who.

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BSam: Nov 24, 2012

Little_wh0re posted:

BSam 24

# ? Nov 12, 2014 22:22

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 18:23

NieR Occomata: Jan 18, 2009; Glory to Mankind.

Oxxidation posted:

I liked it, actually. A little too blunt for Breaking Bad, but still quality.

Fly or s2 finale? Because f fly you must've softened over the years because I remember you saying you didn't like it and it impressed its themes too obviously for your tastes

S2 finale i think I've softened on too...that final scene comes across as, well, something rtd would write but all the jane stuff in the finale is so good it's worth it

# ? Nov 12, 2014 22:22

Stormgale: Feb 27, 2010

BSam posted:

With a Grade like that maybe you should get a name change to FSam.

# ? Nov 12, 2014 22:36

Solaris Knight: Apr 26, 2010; ASK ME ABOUT POWER RANGERS MYSTIC FORCE

marktheando posted:

Of course it does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt3qZYUPi2Y

But that's not the dating sim video. :negative:

# ? Nov 12, 2014 22:39

AppropriateUser: Feb 17, 2012

Zaggitz posted:

You'd have to be some kind of unstable non human to think DoctorDonna redeems the fact that Donna gets loving erased at the end of the episode. It's that entire what if Donna horseshit made real.

This.

My reaction was the opposite of Oxx's. I felt like this finale retroactively made the entire season worse, and I didn't like it much to begin with.

# ? Nov 12, 2014 23:04

kant: May 12, 2003

Totally agree on this one. My brain says this episode should get a B but the Donna scenes are just TOO GOOD.

Plus her tragic ending makes you love the character even more so it's hard to fault the decision on practical grounds. I'm also not surprised to see it helped your opinion of Turn Left which I liked much more the 2nd time through for similar reasons.

# ? Nov 12, 2014 23:09

Regy Rusty: Apr 26, 2010

Okay, gather round, children and listen to Uncle Regy for I've got a story to tell. A story about the day I first met The Doctor.

It was a long time ago, in late 2008. I was a bright eyed young lad of 18, only a few months into my first year of college. I was still so naive, so innocent of the ways of the world. Doctor Who was still something I'd only vaguely heard of and I knew very little about it and even less about its fans. So when I heard an acquaintance excitedly talking about the DVDs she'd recently bought I made the mistake - the terrible mistake - of mentioning that I'd never seen Doctor Who.

The look in her eye, the fervor with which she exclaimed that she knew exactly what I had to watch, the eagerness with which she arranged a viewing. These should have been my clues that something wasn't right. But I didn't know. I didn't know.

And so she sat me down and showed me the two part finale of season 4 of this show. I didn't even know at the time that's what we were going to watch or I'd have pointed out what a stupid idea it was. I still don't know why this episode is what she chose to show me but there we are. As soon as they started babbling about bees and Shadow Proclamations, I knew I was in trouble.

Putting aside all the truly awful stuff about this episode, even a person who likes the episode should easily realize that it's an absolutely terrible place to start. It's filled with callbacks and returning characters that made absolutely no sense to someone like me with no context. Add to that Tennant and Tate's manic performances, the Daleks and their stupid design, and all the idiotic stuff with clones and Doctor Donnas and all that nonsense, and there is no way whatsoever I could've come away from this with a positive impression of the show. This episode singlehandedly convinced me that the show could have no redeeming features and is why I didn't give it another try for almost 3 years. Fortunately, eventually a much more level headed person managed to convince me to watch a particular episode that totally changed my mind on the show. But that's still ahead.

But that's why I didn't like it then. The second time I'd reached this episode, I'd already watched almost everything else from the show up to that point, so I had the context to actually understand what was going on. I'd long since come around to like the fast talking craziness that the Doctor and Donna get up to all the time. So I was very curious to see how it held up.

I still hated the Daleks. I still hated Davros. But the things that really bothered me were the things that I hadn't understood well enough to even remember. Rose's return is awful and her getting a clone Doctor to live happily ever after with is so unbelievably stupid that it just disgusts me. I was so sick of the show's adoration of Rose, and capping it all off in such a cheap way was pathetic. But what I really find unforgivable is Donna's fate. I cannot believe that people can think it "feels right" to have Donna end up with all of her memories removed. Her life at home was depressing and miserable and now she's going right back to that, without even fond memories of the much more exciting things she got up to. Whatever happens to Rose and Martha, at least they'll always know what amazing things they'd done. And Donna gets none of that? It's so incredibly unfair and mean and it makes me almost angry at RTD for doing it. I don't even generally feel particularly strongly about this show, but this episode gets to me.

So gently caress this episode both for making me unfairly hate this show, as well as for giving the best companion the most awful fate. That's why this episode is the F-iest of Fs. I only gave the first part a D to emphasize how much I hate the second part. It's this episode that makes me so glad RTD is no longer involved with the show.

# ? Nov 12, 2014 23:26

Glenn_Beckett: Sep 13, 2008; When I see a 9/11 victim family on television I'm just like 'Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaqua'

Donna having literally every ounce of character development ripped out of her is a bad creative decision, objectively so.

# ? Nov 12, 2014 23:37

Tempo 119: Apr 17, 2006

Here's a quote that made me laugh, knowing that the following 3 episodes were all about riding Ten's screwdriver and saving a billion universes:

Toxxupation posted:

Basically, "Midnight" comes across as an episode that is an indictment not only of the worst excesses of Ten as a character, but of RTD's worst excesses. It's, essentially, RTD owning up to how Ten and Ten's writing come across and revealing it for what it is- pulling back the curtain, as it were. And on some level, I have to respect the man for being so committed to self-correcting like this.

So of course they turn out to be pretty much Occ's favourite episodes...

# ? Nov 12, 2014 23:42

mind the walrus: Sep 22, 2006

Glenn_Beckett posted:

Donna having literally every ounce of character development ripped out of her is a bad creative decision, objectively so.

The fact that Wilf explicitly acknowledges this--I can't loving believe Occ didn't note this--really rams home that no matter how much you say "well it got a reaction out of you didn't it :v:

" Donna's fate is ultimately a giant steaming glob of poo poo thrown right into the viewer's face immediately after we watch RTD's Favorite Pet get literally everything she ever could have possibly loving wanted.

If I honestly thought RTD was trying to make a point about how you're supposed to do the right thing even if it costs you everything like Occ supposes then maybe I could get on-board with it, but at best that's subtext and considering how many knots RTD had to bend the Who universe into in order to give Rose her fairytale ending it really doesn't play like he was trying to make a larger point. It plays like he knew who his favorite was and he knew who fans would be most upset to see get hosed over, and so he treated himself and then gave the middle finger to anyone who dared not to fall in love with his insipid little blonde chav.

If Rose got a more subdued ending, even with the Doctor finally dressing her schoolgirl aspirations down a peg and saying "I love you but you really have to grow the gently caress up, now quit trying to punch holes in the universe just so you can ride my 900 year-old pole" then I could swallow the point being made about Donna, but as it stands it just feels like RTD is saying "the popular cheerleader gets everything because she's pretty and perfect and she just plain deserves it while the plucky misfit who never had much of an edge outside of raw grit and determination gets nothing and well that's what you get for doing the right thing sometimes." Considering the type of person most Whovians are likely to relate to more, that's really loving insulting.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:09

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

Right from his very first story, Davros has a long history of being betrayed or abandoned by his own creations. He created the Daleks too well, their unwavering belief in their own superiority and thus the inferiority of everything NOT-Dalek means that they MUST betray him, there is no way they could ever allow themselves to follow the commands of Davros no matter how much they need him or how much of an asset he could be.

So I love that in this story, with the Doctor captured and in his power and Davros enjoying the opportunity to taunt him... the Doctor quickly picks up that even before the story has started the Daleks have already betrayed Davros and he knows it. His uncomfortable,"We have.... an arrangement...." is perfect, he's the weird uncle they keep in the basement, the pet/tool retained for functional reasons alone. Yes Davros is the Doctor's captor, but he's every much a prisoner himself and the sad thing is that this is the best he can ever hope for. When the Doctor offers him the chance to come along with him at the end and he rejects it, it makes a lot of sense because even though Davros has been betrayed and abused by his own creations, he still can't let them go - he still has that desperate need for his "children" to love him/need him and is willing to put up with the humiliation of the way they treat him because he "loves" them and desperately believes that eventually they'll come around and accept him as their leader/respected adviser.

That all of this has happened before the story begins is wonderful, because it's inevitable that it would happen but would get in the way of the rest of the story if it happened during the episode.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:24

PriorMarcus: Oct 17, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT BEING ALLERGIC TO POSITIVITY

mind the walrus posted:

Considering the type of person most Whovians are likely to relate to more, that's really loving insulting.

And people say I take this show too seriously.

Donna's fate is awesome, Rose's is acceptable I guess.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:24

Big Mean Jerk: Jan 27, 2009; Well, of course I know him.
He's me.

Toxxupation posted:

oxx does too

It's the only episode of breaking bad we both agree is subpar outside of the season 2 finale which we also agree is subpar

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha

You're a madman.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:30

Android Blues: Nov 22, 2008

I think these episodes are pretty bad not for any larger thematic reason but because they introduce a whole bunch of characters who crowd the script and don't do much except, "hey, it's Jackie and Mickey! Hey, it's Sarah Jane!". The notion that Jackie has become a teleporting soldier with a massive laser cannon is just so patently silly and ill-explained, especially.

Also the resolution is mega weak. All seems lost, then Donna throws some just-introduced-at-that-very-second switches and all the Daleks spin around and wail in defeat. Also they're so long. The memory wipe/Rose gets everything she wanted scenes are just a side-note to something I find basically mind-numbing all the way through.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:35

Gaz-L: Jan 28, 2009

There's something either about the scripting or performance in that flip-the-switches scene that drives me crazy. Like, most technobabble on sci-fi TV is bullshit, especially on Who, but it's normally either at least plausible BS, or backgrounded enough that you can ignore it and go "Eh, it's magic", but that scene just rubs your face in "LOOK AT HOW MUCH UTTER SHITE SHE'S TALKING! YOU WATCH THIS CRAP, YOU FUCKIN' TWAT!"

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:44

MrL_JaKiri: Sep 23, 2003; A bracing glass of carrot juice!

Jerusalem posted:

I don't remember doing this, but if I did then I apologize, because the last thing I want to do is spoil you on anything that hasn't happened yet

You were talking about Jamie and Zoe you big idiot

Soothing Vapors posted:

This is every Doctor Who cliffhanger though. Like the end of Utopia where they're stranded in the future and about to die!!!! But then they just teleport out because whatever.

The cliffhangers in the revival are... not so good in general.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:50

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

I actually liked that aspect of it. Sure it's undeniably nonsense technobabble but that was kind of the point - that Donna provides that spark of human innovation/ingenuity to the Doctor's genius and comes up with solutions that nobody else would have ever considered (including the Doctor, which is extremely important). In the past people have complained that it is stupid that there is a dial in Davros' dungeon that makes all the Daleks spin around in circles, but of course that is not what it does.... but it is what Donna is capable of MAKING it do.

Is it a hamfisted, subtle as a sledgehammer way of getting the point across? Absolutely, but that's kind of RTD's thing. Donna represents a different way of thinking, an ability to question and find new ways of looking at the universe, and that all comes out when she hijacks Davros' equipment and completely upends the Daleks' long thought out plan.

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Nov 13, 2014

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:55

howe_sam: Mar 7, 2013; Creepy little garbage eaters

Gaz-L posted:

There's something either about the scripting or performance in that flip-the-switches scene that drives me crazy. Like, most technobabble on sci-fi TV is bullshit, especially on Who, but it's normally either at least plausible BS, or backgrounded enough that you can ignore it and go "Eh, it's magic", but that scene just rubs your face in "LOOK AT HOW MUCH UTTER SHITE SHE'S TALKING! YOU WATCH THIS CRAP, YOU FUCKIN' TWAT!"

Yep, the whole DoctorDonna bit just didn't work for me, it was just too much on top of too much.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:56

Glenn_Beckett: Sep 13, 2008; When I see a 9/11 victim family on television I'm just like 'Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaqua'

MrL_JaKiri posted:

You were talking about Jamie and Zoe you big idiot

The cliffhangers in the revival are... not so good in general.

From what I've seen, most of the classic run cliffhangers are similarly instantly resolved.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:56

Dias: Feb 20, 2011; by sebmojo

Jerusalem posted:

I actually liked that aspect of it. Sure it's undeniably nonsense technobabble but that was kind of the point - that Donna provides that spark of human innovation/ingenuity to the Doctor's genius and comes up with solutions that nobody else would have ever considered (including the Doctor, which is extremely important). In the past people have complaining that it is stupid that there is a dial in Davros' dungeon that makes all the Daleks spin around in circles, but of course that is not what it does.... but it is what Donna is capable of MAKING it do.

Is it a hamfisted, subtle as a sledgehammer way of getting the point across? Absolutely, but that's kind of RTD's thing. Donna represents a different way of thinking, an ability to question and find new ways of looking at the universe, and that all comes out when she hijacks Davros' equipment and completely upends the Daleks' long thought out plan.

Yeah, that's so dumb that I can't hate it. It's also spoofing the Doctor's manicness and dumb tech talk, which I'm fine with.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 00:57

Some Strange Flea: Apr 9, 2010; AAA; Pillbug

In your opinion, what part of the series so far would be most improved by a single, precise deployment of the word "loving" from The Doctor?

# ? Nov 13, 2014 01:14

Irony Be My Shield: Jul 29, 2012

Doctor Donna was fun to watch, but for me that didn't really make up for how hilariously non-existant the plot was. The daleks were trying to destroy the universe, but fortunately they were stopped due to someone saying random nonsense.

Donna's ending is pretty bad too. Would it have killed them to try and at least show that Donna's retained some of her development, and that she's now gonna go and have a successful life and stand up to her mother? It really does feel like it's back to square one, which is deeply disappointing for a character who grew so much.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 01:23

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

Irony Be My Shield posted:

It really does feel like it's back to square one, which is deeply disappointing for a character who grew so much.

Donna was always fighting her own fear that she was somehow inadequate, compensating by being loud and aggressive. The fact she's now back home with not just Wilf but also Sylvia looking out for her and giving her the support and love that she needs suggests that she won't have that same gnawing doubt any longer that maybe she really is unimportant and irrelevant and not worthy of happiness.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 01:31

Regy Rusty: Apr 26, 2010

Jerusalem posted:

Donna was always fighting her own fear that she was somehow inadequate, compensating by being loud and aggressive. The fact she's now back home with not just Wilf but also Sylvia looking out for her and giving her the support and love that she needs suggests that she won't have that same gnawing doubt any longer that maybe she really is unimportant and irrelevant and not worthy of happiness.

You are Wrong and I want to hit you with a brick

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:02

NieR Occomata: Jan 18, 2009; Glory to Mankind.

Okay serious question time

So basically i lost the entirety of my journey's end writeup and had to restart from scratch when writing this review

after picking away at this loving review for...god, a good six hours combined across both drafts of this review i ended up killing any plot summarizing in this review and moved straight into analysis

if anyone has noticed, the normal way i write reviews is provide as full a summary i can of the events and then spend the rest of the review analyzing what i did and didn't like about the episode in question- sometimes i'll mix it up and go like "this happened, and I thought this when I saw it, then this happened, and I thought this when I saw it" but usually my reviews cover the events within them chronologically as they happened, with my coverage of the climax saved until the end of the review

in this one i basically just picked and chose what scenes I wanted to specifically cover (saving the climax until the end of the review; it works well as a way to "close" the essay narratively speaking) in a way that I felt was more relevant to me

this was partially a time thing- i had to get this loving review done and i was losing my loving mind with so much writing- but also partially because the one part of these reviews i hate, and mean utterly hate writing is the summaries, because it's just a big vomit of words that it's hard to write dynamically and requires no critical thinking

so my question is, and i want you to be honest and not tell me what i want to hear: do people enjoy the summaries portions of my reviews? i assume most people in here are big who fans and have seen the episodes in question, but do the summaries provide a use to you as a reader? have their been times you've had no idea what the episode i was reviewing was about, and did the summaries jog your memory? or did they come across as boring filler from a guy who really overwrites these reviews (because boy oh boy i am NOT concise)

basically, oxxidation really enjoys them because they give him more freedom to focus his own reviews, so they'll probably stick around in some form but i really, REALLY hate writing the summaries portions of the reviews and I'd like the thread's honest opinions on those specific portions of them

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:03

DoctorWhat: Nov 18, 2011; A little privacy, please?

The summaries are fun because, through your tone, we can get more insight into what individual moments you liked.

For instance, I loved Sarah Jane's mortal terror at Davros's appearance, because she was there when the Doctor first met him in 1975. But you don't know about that context - so how did YOU feel about it?

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:05

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

I haven't seen the show past season 3, so I appreciate the summaries. I give them a thumbs up.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:06

Regy Rusty: Apr 26, 2010

The summaries are useful to me because very frequently I don't remember episodes at all. I only ever watched the vast majority of these once, and some of them don't stick in my head that well. So yes I do get something out of them.

THAT BEING SAID if you want to stop writing them it is not really too much more effort for me to just look up the plot summary on wikipedia when you're about to post a review. So do what you feel like!

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:06

Dias: Feb 20, 2011; by sebmojo

As one of the few people that read it without ever watching the episodes, I liked the summaries. However, I was probably the minority here and if it ain't fun to you, might as well drop it.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:10

Annakie: Apr 20, 2005; "It's pretty bad, isn't it? I know it's pretty bad. Ever since I can remember..."

I totally noticed it was missing and was sad because I wanted your reaction to things like Mickey and Jackie popping in and saving Sarah Jane and 10.5's creation and such.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:11

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

I'd say don't worry about summarizing every event or aspect of the plot, but just hitting the major points/scenes that stood out or served to emphasize a point of your analysis.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:19

Senor Tron: May 26, 2006

Flea Wars posted:

In your opinion, what part of the series so far would be most improved by a single, precise deployment of the word "loving" from The Doctor?

DON'T loving BLINK.

That comes a close second to:

Ninth Doctor posted:

No! 'Cause this is what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna rescue her! I'm gonna save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I'm gonna save the Earth, and then, just to finish off, I'm gonna wipe every last ~~stinking~~ loving Dalek out of the sky!

I like the summaries, because we get to see your reactions to more moments as they occur in the episode.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:22

Oxxidation: Jul 22, 2007

Doctor Who
"Journey's End"
Series 4, Episode 13

Let's talk about characters.

I have found that, as a general rule, my favorite pieces of media - stories, films, games, whatever - are ones which, ironically, don't feel like they were made for me. It ties back into my neurotic dislike of emotional manipulation; when I get the impression that there's something focus-tested, something deliberately aimed, at my demographic, or my sensibility, my opinion of it tends to drop sharply. Art connects, but that connection, to me, should be mutual, passive, a link formed between two interests traversing separate but adjacent paths. Anything else makes me feel like a dog with a biscuit in front of its face. It's why I'm still a shameless fan of Homestuck, in spite of myself and in spite of itself, because it's never wavered from being the ridiculously indulgent playhouse of its creator. We, the audience, can go along for the ride if we like, but it's still going to traverse the road of its choosing no matter how much we shout directions at it.

But the relationship between creator and audience is a complicated one, and even more complicated when it comes to big, collaborative projects (AAA gaming, film, television) and/or long-term serial ones (comics, novel anthologies). A good novel, cover-to-cover, should take you about two weeks at most if it really gets its hooks into you, and for many books, the story's a one-and-done affair, where the characters and the roles they played can be relived but rarely expanded on by their creator. Longer-form media, however, and especially television shows, demand much more time investment, and that alone can create a much stronger bond with a certain type of audience. I remember my parents once told me that, when they watched Breaking Bad for the first time (and bitterly grumbling at me for getting them hooked in the first place; for someone who doesn't like TV on the whole I sure do seem to get other people addicted to it), they found themselves discussing the characters at their dinner table like Jesse, Walter et al were members of their own family. They cut the conversation short and felt kind of creeped out by the whole thing, but the effect is there - an audience exposed to characters they like, over a long enough period of time, can eventually feel some degree of ownership over them. Look no further than, again, Homestuck, which has created its own private Gehenna of AU's, fanfiction, and crossovers with every other work you would care to name and several that you really, really wouldn't.

All of this is to say that, on one hand, I can respect Russell T. Davies' decision to see off the characters of Donna Noble and Rose Tyler in the way he did - his characters, his script, his work, his choice. But my other hand...well, let's say that if this analogy were more literal, my fingerprints would be on file and I'd be posting this from inside a Welsh jail. I've heard they're actually quite nice, but they serve too much soup.

I've dreaded "Journey's End" from the very beginning of this thread. It's my most hated episode of the revival, my most hated episode of TV, one of the very few pieces that can get past my usual cool detachment and not-entirely-ironic self-loathing and make me Actually Mad at a thing that, I know, is completely petty and harmless. It locked in my loathing of Davies as a creator; it calcified my distaste of Rose Tyler as a character; it offends every sensibility I have when engaging any piece of media from Pale Fire to Super god damned Mario Bros. Nearly every high point in the past four series has, retroactively, been dulled for me by the existence of this loving thing, and by its final ten minutes in particular. It's legitimately, literally awful, something to be almost admired in its complete ineptitude, its lack of taste and respect for its characters, its seething disregard for every single aspect of craft. And while I could go on like this for a while, let's move on.

I'm going to get the minor quibbles out of the way before moving on to the part that actually matters. "Journey's End" is a dull, dull episode, downright soporific for a finale and even more so for a Davies ending. The entire middle act consists of watching a few characters stand around under spotlights while a shouty wheelchair man tries to make a shouty alien man feel bad about himself. Plot points and devices come out of nowhere, or from disconnected continuities (the Osterhagen Key, the Warp Star) only to sputter out and die after five, ten, fifteen minutes wasted on their drama. The technobabble is loving suffocating and so disconnected to actual events that the characters had might as well be chanting in pig-Latin when playing with all those cheap prop computers. The central conflict is ridiculous and ineffective, "Boom Town" to the umpteenth power, not only because the Doctor is getting lectured on morality by a dude who is literally about to kill literally everything, but also because Davros seems to have a bit of significant trouble getting any serious charges to stick; it was a real riot when he talked about all the people who had sacrificed themselves for the Doctor and we were treated to a brief flashback reel of forgettable side-characters suffering stupid, avoidable deaths, such as Astrid and her forklift ride to Hades. Davies gathered up all of these characters from across his entire private cosmology and didn't let them do anything. They just stood around and waited for the deus ex machina to show up.

The first forty minutes of "Journey's End" feels exactly like that, standing around, killing time, waiting for Catherine Tate to save the day. And I will praise, without reservation, as always, Tate's performance here; she's a loving dynamo and I could watch her Tennant impersonation for hours. The way she playfully torments the Daleks, rendering the universe's greatest threat completely toothless, is a beautiful mirroring of what she's done to Ten all throughout her season, constantly deflating his vanity or blunting his psychopathic edge when either start coming to the surface. And it's hard not to feel a little surge of triumph when the TARDIS, finally manned by a full team of pilots, pulls Earth back home. All the farewells and goodbyes do nothing for me, but at least they're not too jarring or lengthy.

And then, we come to Darlig Ulf-Stranden. Which does not, in fact, as noted, mean Bad Wolf Bay, but something closer to lovely Wolf Bay. Oh, the aptness, it tastes so bitter.

I'll have to jump forward a bit now and work back. Donna's eventual memory-wiping at the Doctor's hands was given clear and adequate foreshadowing. She giddily proclaimed that she'd travel with the Doctor forever (never a good sign; the Doctor's Companions either give up or die young); she repeatedly gained what she wanted most only to have it torn away from her later, as in "Runaway Bride" and "Forest of the Dead"; she was established, as in "Turn Left," to still be a good and selfless person at heart, with or without the Doctor's influence. If this scene had been all there was to the ending, I'd have been sore, I'd have complained, but I'd have moved on. Because what I want from stories, first and forever, is proper structure. I don't give a tupenny gently caress about "heart" or "emotion" or "feeling good," I want all to see all of the links in a story connect in their proper places at the proper times; I believe that if this should happen, then the "heart" will, to a greater or lesser extent, follow. Donna's ending, though tragic and in my opinion downright cruel, was properly structured. All the right components were in place - the foreshadowing, the reason, the sacrifice, the performance. It could have been bearable, if not enjoyable.

But then something else happened. You know what happened. It's what always happens. She's what always happens. Rose Tyler happened.

The Doctor's little gift of his clone to Rose isn't just repulsively saccharine, unforgivably indulgent, and more than a little unsettling if you think about it for more than two minutes, it completely fucks the structure of Donna's denouement. Donna has, throughout her entire season, been selfless, self-sacrificing, and unrelentingly competent, her only downfall being a classic flaw of the Companion, a blithe disregard for the danger she was so often putting herself into; the metacrisis that nearly fried her brain happened to her through no choice or fault of her own, and she was still able to use this backhanded little gift long enough to pull everyone's fat out of the fire one last time. Her story was a classic one, the thankless hero, the hero who received no reward but never expected one either, the little spark of human compassion and kindness amidst the cold entropic "justice" of the world at large. Rose, on the other hand, is a selfish, whiny, aggressively useless character and continued to be such even during her much-touted comeback; even when she receives her own private Tennant 2.0 she still bitches about it for almost two minutes before she gets some sweet nothings whispered into her ear.

All the other characters keep what they've won, Rose gets everything she ever wanted - and Donna loses everything she ever had. This isn't a sour note. This is a nail bomb dropped in a piano. During a children's recital. In an animal shelter. On Christmas Eve.

There is something rudely, shockingly, revoltingly, astoundingly spiteful about these two scenes placed side by side, Davies giving his pet a great big present while, once again, tossing his second-stringer characters into whatever hackneyed and cruel situations his brain cooked up. The events themselves are even worse, owing, again, to Tate's performance - her meltdown as the metacrisis starts burning up her mind is heartbreaking, and the actual memory-erasure feels uncomfortably rapey, Donna screaming tearful denials and cringing away from the Doctor's touch. That single scene reverberated throughout the entirety of Davies' tenure for me, making everything he put his hand to that little bit worse, and dropped "Journey's End" down a pit so deep and dark that my second-least favorite episode wouldn't even be able to hear the echo when it hit the ground.

Davies does very poorly in my eyes as a matter of course because he so often tries to paper up his incompetence with big and often unearned emotional moments, and when I'm not enjoying what I see, emotion only serves to piss me off further, because I know I'm being manipulated. The subsequent scenes with Wilf and Sylvia were something I just wanted to get over with (though Tate's flawless reversion into the shrill, gossipy Donna of old just drove the knife in further), and good God, gently caress that so-often-gif'd scene of Tennant doing his big wibbly stare into the camera during the rain. I might have been through all this once before, but I was still not in a good mood by the time this episode finished, so throughout mine and Occ's post-episode chat I'll admit that I was ready to harness the unassailable power of my harsh language and unscrew his loving head with it.

I honestly thought for a while that if any episode made Occ decide to end this pathetic little collaboration it'd be "Journey's End," but I also knew his reactions to stuff can be a bit unpredictable and the opposite was just as likely to be true. And while I can't fault him for liking it, and while I even predicted what his arguments in its favor would be, I still got a little bit Krakatoa when I heard them being made. Because Occ's problem - and it is a problem, and it's a common problem not just limited to breathless Californian nerds - is that when he experiences something he likes, something that makes him feel good, he will disregard, downplay, or rewrite every component of this work that might go against that feeling. So I got the arguments he made in his writeup, only with less elaboration and therefore even more infuriating: "This episode was about Donna." And yet so much of it was about Rose, and look at where Donna ended up. "The important thing is that Donna did this selflessly, she always would have." Yes, agreed, but look at her punishment, and Rose's reward. Are you seriously saying Rose was being selfless? "No, she was being selfish, but the important thing is to do good, regardless of whether you're rewarded." But Rose was rewarded! Are you telling me that the selfish get a prize and the selfless get punishment? What kind of loving moral is that? "That doesn't matter." And that's when I start looking up the prices of cross-country plane tickets, and shovels, and lengths of strong, strong rope.

It matters. It absolutely loving matters. The feel-good fuzziness of "Journey's End" is a veneer, a patina, a false front behind which is the kind of artistic clusterfuck I'd normally never suffer through twice. The fact that it gives you a little triumphant rush inside doesn't excuse its incompetence and thoughtless, short-sighted cruelty, and while this work is Davies' and not mine, I still have the right to type up a WHOLE LOTTA loving ANGRY WORDS about it for people I hate on the Internet.

Truth be told, this was even worse for me because it came on the heels of "Midnight" and "Turn Left," two very competent outings by Davies that arrived less than a month before "Journey's End." And that, I think, is what finally damned him for me; I can grumble through overly "emotional" writers, incompetent ones, indulgent ones, long-winded ones, so on, so forth. What I don't want to do is sit through the fumblings of a creator who genuinely seems to lack control over their own work. Davies' wildly uneven flailings provided ironic entertainment from time to time but turned ugly as often as they amused, and at no point did it ever feel to me that he ever succeeded on purpose; his swinging arms just happened to hit a button with a smiley face instead of a frowny face from time to time. "Midnight" and "Turn Left" started making me think the contrary, and then this happened. That was it. I was done with him, and I'm still done.

What follows is the "Year of Specials," a weird scheduling quirk that gave Who fans five hour-long episodes (one being another two-parter) in lieu of a regular season. Not entirely sure why this happened, the thread can feel free to fill in. I'll be honest, my writeups for this bunch may feel a little anemic compared to that wall of noise overhead, because at this point, I've checked out on Davies. The worst arrived, bowled me over, and went on its way; all that's left of his run is a few more choked gasps before he follows in the wake of "Journey's End." I never would have sat through his stuff a second time if it weren't for my brilliant little bit of manipulation leading Occ to post this thread in the first place, and after this, I doubt I'll ever fire up anything from these series again. Davies is on his way out. I'll be glad to see the back of him.

Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Nov 13, 2014

# ? Nov 13, 2014 02:25