...NEW DR WHO TOINIGHT, EPISODE 13, THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 18/6/05...

[Mr Ruh]

So Rose becomes a literal deus ex machina - a god from a machine - to get rid of the Daleks.

Slightly disappointed that Tennant isn't going to be Scottish, but looking forward to his run. He has a great ability to do both light and shade without trying so hard (as was sometimes Eccleston's problem).

[Richmond Clements]

The regeneration was a nice suprise, as I wasn't expecting to see it here (I'd avoided all spoilers this week, but assume this had probably been leaked), I thought we'd get to see it at Christmas.

[Endjinn]

Yup, it was me. A mighty damn good gig it was too.


Watching the episode again this morning I was doubly impressed by the looks of Jack's face when he saw the Tardis leaving without him, and Mickey when Rose said there was nothing left for her in London 2005.

[Artificial Idiot]

I thought Tennant went down as saying that he was not going to cover up his Scottish accent this time...

And yeah, I thought it was going to be at Christmas as well. Although, I do think it was very nicely handled here.

[Leigh S]

I agree that the ending was another cop out, and I thnk theya re really going to have to work to actually have proper plots next year or people are gonna get pretty tired of these magic resolutions. However, on the whole I enjoyed it.

to take some of the nitpicks...

"Why spend a whole episode making the 'plot device' machine only to
not use it or even make a big fuss of it? What was the point? To
keep the Doctor out of the action? Why do it? It makes no sense?"

The Doctor was hoping he could make it Dalek specific if he had enough time. In the end, he didn't, so was left with a machine he could only try and bluff the Daleks with.

What exactly was the point of the tv shows plot from last week? The
daleks wanted to keep the population subdued for invasion? But then
wipe out the planet instead?

I thought it was purely to get more genetic material, after running out of "prisoners and refugees"

but to add more from last week:  

Why did Lynda initially tell The Doctor it was "brilliant" he had been chosen to be in BB?

Why did the controller put Rose and Jack in instant Death Games, rather than in other BB houses, where they would be safeuntil the Solar Flares?

[Artificial Idiot]

Maybe the Controller just didn't give a damn about his companions, but didn't want to leave them floating around in the TARDIS in case they tried to track the Doctor down?

And to pick up on the nit picks...

The whole Bad Wolf nit pick isn't really justified either. It's quite obvious at that point Rose is not her self, she's dying and she's talking in riddles. I doubt any human would think straight with that amount of power inside them, so she latched onto the first words she saw and cast them throughout space and time.

[Richmond Clements]

The way I see it, you an either watch it and look for stuff that's wrong, or just watch it, go with the flow and enjoy yourself.

[paulvonscott]

I think people are enjoying it, but it's hard not to see problems with it.  By pointing them out, they hope they'll be resolved in future.  I think Watcher has a point, if there is a consistant flaw, people will eventually spot it, and when you see how a magician does their tricks, the magic fails to satisfy.

If you really enjoy something, you can forgive it's faults, what's perfect after all?  But if those faults spoil your enjoyment a little, it's fair to flag them up.  We shouldn't have to turn off our brains to watch a TV show.

I think they've gone for what's emotional and cool at the expense of what makes sense at times.

I personally thought that Bad Wold was a self creating concept, that happened and would happen again whenever the time vortex was threatened.  But I'm not sure it really is here.  The only threat is to the Earth, and the galaxy will be full of Daleks, which is a problem we've had before.  Unless by killing the Doctor, time would be in trouble at some point in the future, and this was the point to stop it.  But that's all so far off the tracks, that it's not a reasonable answer.

Basically it was some magical gubbins to make rose be the hero and save everything at the end, tying in the words bad wolf.  I had hoped there would be something more complex to the build up of bad wolf, beyond the words, but that's all it was, a few post it notes in time.

There is the danger that people actually say, after they've thought about it, that they still don't know what Bad Wolf is.

[Leigh S]

I watch it, enjoy it, then as I think about it later, it all starts to unravel... :)

[paulvonscott]

Anyway, my video player has paid the ultimate price for not recording Dr Who and is in the bin.

Now, where did I put that spare video...

[Richmond Clements]

I'l be taping the repeat tonight.

And I have a question. The Doctor mentioned that the daleks call him 'The Oncoming Storm' or something. Is this from the comic strip? Only I seem to recall something like this in one of them...

[Bico]

I just thought it wasn't the best wrap-up to the series, myself, but some people seem to either be reading too much into the fact that RTD isn't that great a sci-fi writer (hence his not being able to deliver a resolution as satisfying as anything the fans were thinking of), or they seem to almost be taking a bad episode of the show as a personal affront to their intelligence - the show is camp nonsense and should be enjoyed as such.  It's probably worth bearing in mind how awful quite a few people suspected the series would end up being *coughcoughRandallAndHopkirkDeceasedcoughcough*.

[Leigh S]

Yeah - I'm with the Bear on that point - the series should by rights have stunk.  I suppose its the fact that so much of it is good, that the silly bits and odd resolutions to things stand out even more.

[paulvonscott]

*coughcoughRandallAndHopkirkDeceasedcoughcough*.

Hey, some of us liked that y'know!  

[JimBob]

 I've been genuinely surpised by how good a series it's been and how far it's managed to reach people who never talk about or watch science fiction. Seeing kids running around pretending to be daleks has been great, particularly as i was expecting the show to be awful.
 Best british genre show since ultraviolet.