I don't know how many times I've watched these two episodes, but I still don't really know what to make of them. Even after several years, there's still so much to take in: we've seen some grand and incredible Doctor Who stories, but this is the only one, so far, that truly deserves to be called an epic. RTD throws in Daleks, Davros, Torchwood, Sarah Jane, Donna's apotheosis and Rose's second send off. Oh, and we also get Martha, Mickey and Jackie, and a fake regeneration. And a second Doctor. And the attempted destruction of the entire multiverse. That's quite a lot and you'd be forgiven for thinking this monster mash-up should never have even been attempted; that it holds together at all is a remarkable achievement. That it is even any good is just incredible, but it is often brilliant.
It's by far the most satisfying of any of RTD's finales, although, I don't like all of it, of course. More than once the joyous exuberance bubbles over into preposterousness and there are several moments that I would be happy to excise entirely.
Let's start with the Good:
- Lis Sladen. Nothing sells the threat of the Daleks like Sarah Jane crying into Luke's hair. Barrowman is trying to do the same thing for Ianto and Gwen inside the Hub, but he doesn't even get close. Sladen's greatness was her ability to absolutely convince us that any nonsense on screen was not only real but terrifying, and her performance here is a masterclass. What's more, Sarah Jane is a wonderful link back to the show's past, as demonstrated here when Davros recognises her from Genesis of the Daleks. Suddenly this isn't a one-off adventure but an installment of a fifty-year serial. Goosepimples.
- The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It doesn't take up much screen time, but this is one of the best invasions we've yet seen - considerably more impressive than the one in The Parting of the Ways, which was represented by a computer outline of Australia changing shape. Here instead we have CGI Daleks streaming across Manhattan and pouring over the Valiant, like ants over an elephant. And all this is before they even reach the ground. Later on we will be treated to the sight of them floating through the forest, screeching in Germany. "Exterminieren! Exterminieren!" The Daleks are proper scary throughout, and for once Davros isn't in charge. The Reality Bomb becomes the ultimate expression of the Daleks' fascist intolerance.
- The Harriet Jones Joke. It should be awful. It should make me cringe. But it isn't and it doesn't. It's always funny and never more so than here when we hear it for the last time, delivered by the Daleks themselves. It's funny because they are not joking, and through their ring modulators the stupid gag suddenly sounds like sinister and ruthless preparation.
- Donna. What a character, what a companion. What an ending. Her Doctor-Donna persona is wonderful, and her sudden appearance, right at the end, provides one of the best and most enjoyable reversals of fortune in the modern era. Daleks spinning, Sarah Jane and Martha grinning as they push them around, Donna in the middle just revelling in her new capabilities. Losing her, and her losing herself, is extremely sad, easily the most depressing departure of a companion since (well, I was going to say Jamie and Zoe, because of the memory thing, and I never got over Romana leaving, but, realistically) Peri's shock exit - either of them. But even before the biological metacrisis takes effect, Donna has been exhibiting Doctorish qualities, just watch her at the Shadow Proclamation, rationalising and explaining: she has become a bit Doctorish all by herself.
- Cribbins. Just wonderful. Every time.
- The Regeneration. What an ending to The Stolen Earth. Surely the greatest cliffhanger in the show's history (which is not necessarily the same as the best). Once again the nation was beside itself for a whole week as newspapers filled page after page with speculation and pubs, workplaces and playgrounds were awash with theories about what would happen. This is a trick you only get to pull once, and it was done pretty well. But the wellspring of all this feverish excitement was the underlying thought that the Doctor might actually properly regenerate. Deep down, I realised that was what I wanted. It would be worth bringing Rose back if her Doctor would then immediately die to be replaced by a different indifferent man. I am a mean person. Of course, when considered in the cold light of day, that was never going to happen. Whilst a surprise regeneration or a mid-story regeneration might be a huge coup, there's no way that the new Doctor wouldn't be shown at the end of part one. So really, we all knew that Tennant was staying on, for now. The question remained, how clever was the resolution going to be?
Now the Not-So Good.
- The Fake Regeneration. Even watching this again on DVD, William was nervous. "I know he doesn't die, but I can't remember how he does it?" I asked him what he expected. "That it'll be a cheat and that it won't really make sense." So on we ploughed with Journey's End and a few seconds later I checked with him again. "It was a cheat, but I liked it," he said. What about, I asked, if Matt Smith had turned up at this point instead? "Oh that would have been completely awesome," came the instant reply. This is pretty much how I feel about it too. It's a good trick, but the resolution, that the Doctor can fizz the 'excess' regeneration energy into a 'handy biometric receptacle' feels like a cheat. We knew the hand was for something, but we didn't know that could happen. It's all dealt with a little too quickly, a little too neatly. But, I'm not really complaining - if this hadn't happened, we wouldn't have ended up with the Doctor-Donna, and we wouldn't have had Matt Smith cast as the Eleventh Doctor and I'm not prepared to give up either of those.
- Destiny. I know that writing a long running story in installments like this must be a mix of forward-planning and making-it-up-as-you-go. I don't have a problem with that. I don't mind when thinking ahead comes unstuck (the duck pond with no ducks in The Eleventh Hour?) and I don't mind when earlier bits of a story serendipitously happen to connect to whatever idea the writer has just had. What I don't like is the habit RTD seems to have of pointing out these happy coincidences and attributing them to some vague sense of destiny. We get it here with Donna and we will get it again with Wilf. "Oh," says the Doctor, "it's more than that, as if the universe was binding us together, as if this was always going to happen, to lead to this moment and echoing back through time." I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist and I don't like it. It's a personal thing, but you can't start messing about with ideas of destiny (and therefore also free will) in a show about time travel, surely? Why can't it just be coincidence that Donna bumped into the Doctor again? To suggest otherwise puts extra weight on events that are already, in the words of Marty McFly, pretty heavy.
- Prophecy. Once again, just like Rose's hyperbolic pronouncements at the beginning of Army of Ghosts, we get prophetic statements that don't do anything other than pretend things are going to be worse/more exciting than they will turn out to be. Throughout the story Caan ("crazy drunk Dalek dude" according to William) keeps chuntering on about "one of them [the Doctor's companions] will die!". No, they don't. Unless Rose being in a parallel universe is a 'death' (it was last time), or Donna's amnesia is the same as dying. Either way, it's much less interesting than the prophecies of Pompeii, where the concrete certainty of the seer was undermined by the mutability of events.
- Davros and the Daleks. Oh, Davros is pretty good here actually, albeit a bit more bonkers (giddy even) and a bit less calculating than of old. But the chief problem with Davros is that, whether or not he is in charge of the Daleks or their 'pet', once he is on screen, the Doctor stops talking to the Daleks and they fade into the background. And while I appreciate that something pretty climactic has to happen when the threat level has been ramped up to include the entire multiverse, I am getting bored of the Daleks being utterly destroyed down to the last atom every time they turn up (Emergency Temporal Shifts aside) and then magically returning, a million strong, a few months later.
- Towing the Earth back. Is it cool? Or stupid? It's deeply stupid, although I'll put up with it just for the grin that Martha delivers straight down the camera. As for the TARDIS needing six pilots to be flown properly, I can just imagine River's response to that: "Or, sweetie, you could learn to multi-task?"
- I'll never get over the Shadow Proclamation being an organisation rather than a document. I can cope, just about, with it being an organisation based on a document ("At the UN Charter in New York today...") but we never even get given that fig leaf.
- Rose. Oh, of course she should be here with everyone else. But the fact that she is here just shows how she throws the programme off-balance. The love-story with the Doctor makes her too important for ensembles and this elevated status (compared with the other companions) means so much must be pushed aside for her to be accommodated. Having said that, I did like it when Martha turned up on the Subwave screen and Rose had no idea who she was. In your face, Tyler. So we get all the slow-running and the gooey-looks and then, bleurghhh, we are back on Bad Wolf Bay. I didn't like this the first time, but I can't believe we have to do this again. Even worse, this time Rose gets given her own play-Doctor. Oh well, if it means that's the last we see of her then it's a price worth paying but, to be fair, if it wasn't for Rose's infatuation, would we have ever got River? Also, missing London and turning up in Norway is worse than hitting Aberdeen instead of Croydon.
It's silly, isn't it, the things that bug you when you're watching something you love. Ah well, as always, the brilliant things are more numerous and more important that than the bits I would change - not that I'd ever be in a position to change them anyway.
When the credits eventually rolled (love that ending, the Doctor, alone, empty) the boys collapsed back against the sofa and, in unison, breathed one word.
"Epic."
And then they said a ton of other stuff, some of which I wrote down.
"I liked both episodes," said Chris. "In the first one, I liked how they didn't show Davros for ages and ages, even though we all knew it was him. It kept it mysterious. And I liked how it was just an ordinary Dalek that killed the Doctor, that makes them all seem more dangerous than if it was the Red One. I'd say that was one of the most memorable stories ever. The second one was amazing, I liked how everyone worked together and how Jack, Martha and Sarah Jane all had weapons to fight the Daleks."
"Both ten out of ten, obviously, but it was really sad how Donna left," said William. "She was a good Doctor and it was really unfair how she had to lose her memory when Rose got her own Doctor, like a reward. But both of them had to go, because neither of them would have left if it was just up to them. I want to know what the other Doctor said to Rose on the beach though."
"I dread to think," I said, accidentally out loud.
"I think it was 'You were brilliant'," said William, ignoring me.
"No," said Chris, "I think it was 'I love you.'"
Then they looked at each other.
"Ewww!"
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