Doctor Who thread II: "I should have a hat like that." [SPOILERS]

[Dienekes]

Sadly, every Companion isn't Donna Noble.


Nitpick the First: The Daleks weren't defeated, much less "by their own stupidity." Look at their starting and ending positions: they went from a handful of raggedy survivors to a whole army of new-production units. And how did they accomplish this? By predicting how the Doctor would react, taking advantage of it, and having a fallback ready in case they needed extra leverage to get away at the end. True, they left Earth without wiping out humanity; but with their newly reinvigorated forces, they likely believe they can come back and do that at their leisure.

A bit of a miscommunication here. Stupidity or WWII planes not and. The stupidity comes from a few other episodes. I recognize that the Daleks weren't stupid in that one.

Nitpick the Second: WW2. Churchill, Blitz, monoplane fighters (Spitfires, even!)? WW2.

*headdesk* you're right that was a very sloppy mistake.

Nitpick the Third: Those fighters were re-fitted with Dalek technology, courtesy of the Daleks themselves. Even so, two-thirds of them were wiped out in the attack. And again, the Daleks weren't defeated in the episode.

Pilots who never before were in space manage to fight off a Dalek command ship. The fact that the ship was even crippled at all was an embarrassment.

[Philistine]

Eh, clearly our mileages varied then. I was much more perturbed that the Spitfires continued to maneuver as if they were still in atmosphere; but given that, I have no problem with the idea that other upgrades could be carried out in a way that was basically transparent from the pilots' point of view. A trigger is still a trigger whether it's connected to a machine gun or a ray gun, for example. Under those circumstances, I have no problem with the idea of the pilots giving a good account of themselves. Plus, I had the impression that the Dalek ship was already pretty battered even before the RAF started in on it.

[Thufir]

Yeah, the whole thing with that episode was the Daleks were already weak, having barely survived the destruction of their race (For the umpteenth time), and that was portrayed well (Unlike in the series 3 two-parter). That's why they had to resort to trickery and so on.

[Sanguine]

by the end of it we were seeing nigh-invincible killing machines being taken out by a teenager with a baseball bat!

To be fair it was a super-baseball bat, enhanced by the Hand of Omega. Also that story did manage to make Daleks impressive, even with Ace handing them their behinds on multiple occasions.

[BRC]

Spitfires in Space is what I consider the low point of season five. I don't mind the idea, I just hate that they go straight from "Well, I have a couple ideas" to, what couldn't have been more than an hour later, a squad of fully equipped ships with trained pilots that all work perfectly despite never being tested. Even if he could perfectly adapt a Spitfire for space, make the controls such that a standard pilot could fly it, and do it all with WWII tech levels, at least give him a day or two in which to physically make the adjustments.


As for the Daleks in general, they have to be used properly. The thing is, at least in NuWho, the show dosn't really know how to handle reoccurring antagonists. For the most part, each epsiode ends with the doctor thoroughly defeating whatever threat he's up against at that point, or at the very least handling the problem in some way, the problem with the Dalek's in NuWho can be traced back to the episode "Dalek".

Dalek was a great episode, it was the perfect was to introduce the Doctor's most classic enemy to new audiences, it demonstrated the Dalek's personality, their resilience, their relationship with the Doctor, their resourcefulness, and most importantly: the danger they represented. However, in that episode they established that this one Dalek was the only Dalek left, and then they killed it.

In doing that, they established that there were no more Daleks, which means that every time they wanted them to show up, rather than just saying "Some Daleks are wandering around causing trouble", they had to figure out how some Daleks survived the total destruction of their race, again.


Now, Season Five kind of fixed that, by creating a new group of Daleks and letting them get away the Daleks can now be featured as standard antagonists again, without explaining how these ones survived. However, with the exception of the lone Dalek in Big Bang, they havn't really been featured, probably because they are, while dangerous, a threat we understand, and that's not how the Grand Moff does things.

Now, thoughts about Night Terrors
[spoilers]

I thought it was good. The whole Windows thing bugged me too, and while it was scary, I wasn't exactly terrified (Mind you, I have no special phobia of dolls). The Dolls were just a creepier-than-average threat.

No, the Best parts of the episode were Matt Smith doing his "Genius Madman" routine, what with "We can't open the cupboard, but we need to open the cupboard. No, that would be crazy, under no circumstances should we open the cupboard. It's decided then, we open the cupboard!".


Also, I loved how desensitized Amy and Rory have become to the Doctor's shenanigans. When they find themselves in the Dollhouse they just kind of sigh and move on. I don't know why , I just enjoyed that.
[/spoiler]

I know that the Ponds probably won't stick around longer than another season (I forget if they are coming back for the next season, but if they are it will almost certainly be their last. Three seasons is a lot of time for a Doctor, much less a Companion.

That said, I hope they keep having two companions rather than just one pretty girl. They don't have to be romantically involved (In fact, I hope they arn't, Amy and Rory covered that ground pretty well I think), but I like the idea of expanding the regular cast, it makes it easier to have situations like in the latest episode, the Doctor doing one thing and the Companions doing another.

It also means you don't need to choose between "Young, attractive british everygirl from the current year" and "Any other type of character ever" for the companion. How about this, in season 7 we have:

The Doctor
Alice: A young, attractive, british everygirl. Before meeting the doctor she was a waitress.
Sam: Full name Sam#2467, a young, attractive everygirl who grew up on a terraforming station on the planet Serith in the early 2400's. Before meeting the doctor she helped maintain the robots the station used.

Mind you, this would be tricky. A good companion is a character we like and can easily understand, this is why few companions had much in the way of special skills beyond being a determined, reasonably intelligent human being. Martha was a med student (and Rory is a nurse), but it's not often you see them using their medical skills. This means that, while Sam could be a robotics technician, it wouldn't be a good idea to have her building or repairing or reprogramming robots every episode (you could say that, since she's only worked on terraforming robots from this one station on this one planet, she dosn't know what to do with any other kind).

You would have to make the culture they come from different enough to avoid Sam (To keep up with our example) being indistinguishable from a modern girl except that she keeps mentioning she's from the future, but you would also need to make sure she dosn't just become a walking description of her culture and background. If you sprinkle Sam's dialogue with future-slang. If you turn her into a Fish-out-of water future character who keeps trying to talk to cars and doesn't understand what a cow is, then she just turns into a deadweight distraction. Basically they'd have to be able to handle modern times as well as standard companions handle visiting the future; that is to say they more or less do fine after having any especially relevant technologies and/or social customs pointed out to them.

But now I'm rambling.

[Sanguine]

The Doctor
Alice: A young, attractive, british everygirl. Before meeting the doctor she was a waitress.
Sam: Full name Sam#2467, a young, attractive everygirl who grew up on a terraforming station on the planet Serith in the early 2400's. Before meeting the doctor she helped maintain the robots the station used.

I second this. However could we switch out Alice for someone from the past. Say 1800s or earlier, possibly very early 1900s. After all there was a period where the Second Doctor had no contemporary companions. He had Jamie from the seventeen-hundreds and whats-her-name who I believe was from the 21st century.

[Mauve Shirt]

Watched most recent episode. Meh. Another perception filter. Rory acting out of character (I'd expect Rory to stay by Amy's side, even when she turned into a doll, instead of running away.) Wonder if the guest writer was adopted, or just has parent issues.

[Mercenary Pen]

I second this. However could we switch out Alice for someone from the past. Say 1800s or earlier, possibly very early 1900s. After all there was a period where the Second Doctor had no contemporary companions. He had Jamie from the seventeen-hundreds and whats-her-name who I believe was from the 21st century.

I don't think you could easily do past companions as easily beyond a certain point without nearly every episode devolving into 'past companion suffers from culture shock at the state of the future'- you'd certainly have trouble picking anyone remotely close to an 'everyman' or 'everywoman' character prior to the start of the industrial revolution...

[BRC]

Watched most recent episode. Meh. Another perception filter. Rory acting out of character (I'd expect Rory to stay by Amy's side, even when she turned into a doll, instead of running away.) Wonder if the guest writer was adopted, or just has parent issues.

Rory is loyal, but he's not quite THAT loyal. It might be one thing if he attacked Doll!Amy, but I don't think it's out of character for him to run away from the creepy, murderous doll that was until recently his wife.

[CurlyKitGirl]

There is Epic Fail in my Agatha Christie episode.
It was doing so well too . . .
Still, there's time for it to save itself.

[SuperPanda]

There is Epic Fail in my Agatha Christie episode.
It was doing so well too . . .
Still, there's time for it to save itself.

That's quite a stinging remark there. Personally I quite liked the episode in a "this is pure wacky" sort of way.

[Androgeus]

That's quite a stinging remark there.

I see what you did there, but I don't think it'll cause much buzz.

[Weezer]

I don't think you could easily do past companions as easily beyond a certain point without nearly every episode devolving into 'past companion suffers from culture shock at the state of the future'- you'd certainly have trouble picking anyone remotely close to an 'everyman' or 'everywoman' character prior to the start of the industrial revolution...

I'm rewatching Old-Who and Leela is a great example of a past companion (technically she's from the future but her society had devolved to stone age level so it's the same thing), she occasionally stumbles over modern/future things but she's portrayed as highly intelligent so she quickly recovers herself. All in all it makes for a good companion, especially since she's so fiery.

[Thufir]

Spitfires in Space is what I consider the low point of season five.

Worse than the idiocy in the Silurian two-parter?

Yeah, I get the implausibility of getting them working so quickly, but to be honest the idea is just so amusing that I give it a pass.
...Which, come to think of it, is a good example of current Who not always taking itself seriously.

It also means you don't need to choose between "Young, attractive british everygirl from the current year" and "Any other type of character ever" for the companion. How about this, in season 7 we have:

The Doctor
Alice: A young, attractive, british everygirl. Before meeting the doctor she was a waitress.
Sam: Full name Sam#2467, a young, attractive everygirl who grew up on a terraforming station on the planet Serith in the early 2400's. Before meeting the doctor she helped maintain the robots the station used.

Yeah, a non-contemporary companion would be good. Or an alien companion.

Rory acting out of character (I'd expect Rory to stay by Amy's side, even when she turned into a doll, instead of running away.)

No, 'cause if he did that, he would also be turned into a doll, and no-one would be left to tell the Doctor so he could fix it.

Wonder if the guest writer was adopted, or just has parent issues.

Why are those the only two possibilities? And Mark Gatiss is a bit more than just any old guest writer.

I'm rewatching Old-Who and Leela is a great example of a past companion (technically she's from the future but her society had devolved to stone age level so it's the same thing), she occasionally stumbles over modern/future things but she's portrayed as highly intelligent so she quickly recovers herself. All in all it makes for a good companion, especially since she's so fiery.

Also, travelling with the Doctor I think you would get used to things outside what you previously considered the realms of possibility pretty damn quickly.

[Dr. Simon]

Why are those the only two possibilities? And Mark Gatiss is a bit more than just any old guest writer.

Yes, more like: is a massive fan of horror movies and all the associated tropes. This is, after all, one third of League of Gentlemen, and writer and presenter of a History of Horror.

[chiasaur11]

Rory is loyal, but he's not quite THAT loyal.

He is that loyal. He just isn't that stupid.

You know, like that bit in Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Reepicheep says "No, it's a good idea not to fight right now."

If you can help by doing something dangerous, then you do the dangerous thing. If you can't, you don't, because it does no-one any good and might do them harm when you can't help later.

[Sunken Valley]

Here it is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Here it is, you know exactly what’s in store. Now’s the time we laugh until our sides get sore. Now’s the time we crown the king of…wait, I went off topic there.

Okay, here is Sunken Valley on Finales. Each finale has been spoilered. Some of them have Curly protectors. I hope that, when Curly gets through that part of her watch through, she looks back at these and thinks “man that Sunken Valley had it right”. Or “Sunken Valley has lost his mind almost as much as the film critics of 2011”. Either way, I hope she reads this. She is the awesomest pony out there. Who is from Oxfordshire. Who joined the Playground in spring 2008. Who also does write ups of Doctor Who.

Just to note, I’ve read enough interviews and books to know that in Nu Who, being a non-showrunner writer is much like being a hollywood writer. The guy at the top knows how it’s going to go down and tells you what to do without your say. All you do is fill the plot holes and think of Funny things for the Doctor to say. Some bigger writers like Mark Gatiss have lee-way. For some of the bigger writers like Moffat and Gaiman, briefs were famously put down as “Steven Moffat’s Episode” or “Neil Gaiman’s episode”. Thus most things are the showrunners responsibility.

These reviews do not affect the quality of other sci-fi shows. Doctor Who is, even at it’s worst, the best sci-fi show out there which isn’t in re-runs. Or hidden away on Sky Atlantic. The Finales are being judged against each other.

Season 1 Finale

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The first Doctor Who finale was decent. The Bad Wolf build up, I did not notice. I would not have noticed it if 9 had not raised the issue in “Boom Town”. It started off with funny (the “bad future” popular TV shows). Then it builded up by revealing that the Doctor caused it. All the threads from the previous episodes built up to reveal the bad wolf and it’s heart: Daleks, led by an emperor who almost had me convinced it was Davros. This Finale also used the TARDIS: for one thing they had a Dalek on the TARDIS. The Finale wasn’t too flashy either. The finales always up the scale as they progress. The domination of 200,100AD earth is not that big. The action did drag when the Doctor grew character development and started wangsting. Then there is the Doctor Who annual Deus-ex Machina. This one wasn’t so bad. The heart of the TARDIS had already been forshadowed in Boom Town (a piece of info that to this day ranks that bottle show ep above Fathers Day). Bad Wolf as a Bootstrap Paradox makes this ep ahead of it’s time, before Moffat started using Bootstraps as his M.O. This Deus-ex was more of a chekov’s gun, more Allosaurus than Red Strikes True (OOTS Reference). This is considered Rose’s Mary Sue moment. But Rose isn’t a full blooded Mary Sue, not really. She’s more of a relationship sue. So is the Doctor, although he fixes the relationships of others. Rose is far too stupid to be a full sue and needs the Doctor to bail her out. She’s a damsel in her first 5 eps, She then causes disaster upon disaster by awakening a ancient killing machine, recruiting an evil companion and messes with time. Twice! Bad Wolf!Rose is really her “I’m useful moment”. 9’s transformation into 10 was also a surprise, as I had thought he was staying on for another year.

Season 2 finale

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I’m gonna say this, Season 2 was not as great as Season 1. I think there must have been a lower budget or something. It certainly felt lower budget than any nu who season before or since. But in a Merlin-esque way, the episodes often stood alone better than Season 1. Whilst none of them topped Empty Child some of them were good. School Reunion, Idiot’s Lantern, Satan Pit, Fear Her (yeah I know I’m gonna get flak for this one but this was cool especially as it was bottle show), Girl in the Fireplace etc. The link, however, was glaringly obvious in a manner as impolite as Moffat’s take on “hint hint’s”. Torchwood was far too obvious. Every episode mentioned Torchwood. It was a fun drinking game. But then we saw Torchwood. It was not as impressive as expected. Nothing really registered an impact. Then the Cyberman came through (fun fact, MtM brought them through. Well the actress who went on to play MtM. Who was MtM’s cousin in canon. Another reason to hate MtM). This was awesome. Then the Daleks came through. Double Awesome! Cybermen vs Daleks!!! But not really. Doomsday was bad in that it did not make the fight impressive. The Daleks OTK’ed the Cybermen. Then this Genesis Ark came out of nowhere. Did not like that. I also felt the deus-ex was contrived. Sucking all the cybermen and Daleks out of London I get. But all the Daleks in the Ark as well? And it wasn’t London but the world. Second most contrived deus-ex of all RTD history. Then there is the wagnsting. Say what you will about RTD’s later years, this is his worst wagnst of all. Wagnsting with the Doctor I get. Wagnsting about companions I get (especially as Rose was a cool character, if getting tiresome by that stage (twas around Love and Monsters that she got annoying)). But people I don’t care about (Jackie and Pete)? No. Just no. Overall a mis-fire.

Season 3 finale

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Hey it’s our first Curly write-up finale! And our only Curly Finale. Season 3 was much better quality. The two two-parters were the only truly bad episodes. Everything else rocked. As Curly will tell you. Mr Saxon was a twist I bet no one else got at the time. I liked the Master. Always did want him back. But what I didn’t get was Utopia. Or rather the twist that immortalised Utopia from the worst ep of Season 3 to the one of the most gripping moments of UK TV. There was a poll of the best Doctor Who cliffhangers (top 25) a while back. Link is lost to time but this cliffhanger came in as number 10 (ha! Considering where the master went next). Yana twist was special. John Simm made the episode “Sound of Drums” cool. Would not have been the same without him. I will however admit that Last of the Time Lords bears many uncomfortable resemblance with Day of the Moon. Massive time gap, starting a rebellion, dubious deus-ex. But there is a distinct difference between this one and Day of the Moon. The year gap actually meant something, there was a clever trick which made sense, it didn’t resort to something which made little sense multiple times (time travelling Nixon, the whole fake death stunt), and it had something special to pull it off. That was called Simm. Simm and Tennant had a real connection between them. It was cool. Simm would have made an awesome Doctor and Tennant an awesome Master. They’re both two impressive charismatic actors. Now for the jesus doctor. This was actually quite clever. The Doctor beats the Master the same way he offset the Doctor. Using that psychic network. It was a very good threat escalation, having the baddy win for a year. I will admit that maybe having the Jesus Doctor just become his normal self and then release the energy by blasting the laser screwdriver would have been better than the over the top we got. Plus this finale has captain Jack. Cannot go wrong with Captain Jack in Who. Torchwood on the other hand…. The weepy scene with the master was naff, but then again, if I didn’t want stuff like that, I’d just throw the TV in the bin. All TV inevitably turns to scenes like that. And that is all I will say about wagnsting. Ever.

Season 4 finale (warning Curly protection at level 5! Do not enter. Until you get to that write up. Then drop in and agree with Sunken Valley)

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Season Four Finale was perhaps the awesomest finale out which was not Season Three. No truly bad eps. Sure, Pompeii and Doctor’s Daughter were dubious but not Fails like years before or since. River Song was cool as well back then, although when I heard that Moffat was taking over I knew Alex Kingston would return. The Season four build up was clever as there were multiple build ups. Those who noticed Rose may not have noticed the missing planets. Those who noticed the missing planets (me) may not have noticed doctordonna. It was obvious that Davros would return. It was obvious that the planets were abducted for use as fuel in a superweapon. It was obvious that the companions would come back en masse. Davis likened the finale to the song “live and let die” but with the slow bits removed. That’s why Journey’s End had 15 minutes stapled on to it for an extended goodbye. Then there was the Twist, the Regeneration. Curly probably won’t think much of this one due to hindsight, but in June 2008, this twist was EPIC. Tennant actually went into hiding for a week so that no one would ask him questions about it. In that cliffhanger poll I mentioned this hit number 1. 30 years of cliffhangers (doctor Who was off air for 18 years and all but five of the cliff hangers were TOS) and this was number 1. And it was solved by a chekov’s gun which had already been used last season! And in Torchwood! The second Doctor as impressive as well, not contrived as some would think. The false deus-ex machinas of the warp stone and Osterhaagen key were cool too. Doctordonna herself was like Badwolf Rose. Although this time she was a Red Strikes True in terms of the scale deus-ex and chekovs guns. The Doctor having memory wiping powers was weird though. Why does he not do that more often? Donna’s reverse character development was a clever “death” for her. Nice circular arc. If this was possible in OOTS-verse, I think we’d finally be able to beat Tarquin.

End of Time (Curly protection at level 9001! You Don’t want to come here! End of Time was the last ever Rusty story in a series of 5 specials designed to ease the transition from him to Moffat. Please come back when you have got this far.)

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Normally I turn off my criticism when it comes to Christmas Specials. Today is an exception. The Specials are pretty decent. I admit that Planet of the Dead was a bit bad but it was so fun compared to the intense Waters Of Mars. This was Rusty at his best and his final adventure. I guessed that the timelords were coming back for many reasons. One, they declared the resurrection of the John Simm Master, which in itself would be a twist so they had to be planning something bigger. Two, they had Timothy Dalton in an unknown role which was marked in the cast page as “the narrator”. For a show like Doctor Who, you do not waste Timothy Dalton on a role like “the narrator”. Three, there were lots of other “the’s” in the cast list. There was The Doctor, The Master, The Narrator, The Woman, The Scientist and The Visionary. Clearly all timelords are japanese and share the first name “The” (that would be an awesome meme what I said just now here’s another one, River’s Timelord Title: The Graduate) And finally four, they had to wrap up the time war somehow. Originally, they were going to have the timelords making an alliance with Daleks but they could not do that because of Victory of the Daleks. Anyways, I thought this finale was good but you could tell Davis was spent, panting and begging for release from the treadmill of showrunner. The Master was less impressive than he was as Saxon. Bernard Cribbins was a good companion, nice to see a companion older than the actor playing the Doctor. The Master Race was cool and clever. The double whammy of it and the Time Lord’s return was number 19 in that cliffhanger poll. The Time Lord’s themselves sounds good on paper, but on screen they looked a bit wasted, like venom in Spiderman 3. The Woman (Doctor’s mum) was weird. The Deus-ex machina was forgettable and contrived. The four knocks were good, but they share the same problem as the Right Four Words. In that they did not actually cause what the prophecy said they would. The goodbye to all the companions was nice. Clever how they got the Rose goodbye in.

Season 5 Finale (Level 3 Curly Protector. You can come in Curly, but Season 5 will be ruined for you. If it’s not ruined already by the end of season 6. By ruined I mean completely spoiled. You’ve already had the following spoiled: Amelia Pond, Spitfires in Space the Crack in Time, the Lone Centurion, An early warning of the Silent and you probably know what happens to Rory in episode 9. You’ll also get “Lodger” spoiled for you if you don’t watch it by ep 12. Seriously I recommend you watch season 5 without write ups. Watch one a day and you should be fine. It won’t take much time at all. Then you won’t have anything else ruined for you.)

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I’ll admit, it was a no-brainer for Steven Moffat to be head writer. He always did write the best eps of Doctor Who. He proved this once again with 11th Hour. After that, it was clear that his success was a one track wonder. Beast Below was good, but not Moffat standard so effortlessly set by Blink and Empty Child. Other episodes were of low quality, with Spitfires in Space, Silurian idiocy and the ruining of the angels fighting for the worst moment of Season five ON THIS FORUM. To say nothing about Vampires of Venice. Now for the cracks in time. The Doctor should do up his fly more often . But seriously, it was hamfisted. Davis’s hints were all smooth “blink and you’ll miss it” hints. The crack in time was shoved into all the stories it appeared jarringly. It ruined the two parters by just “appearing” out of nowhere, stealing the show as River Song would do in season 6. Now for the finale. I thought all of the guest stars coming together to give the Doctor the painting was cool. It also refutes people who say that Davis interfered with scripts too much. That’s nothing compared to Moffat weaving whole plots. The worst thing about Moffat’s plot weaving is that writers who are “friends” of his (Toby Whitehouse, Mark Gattis, Steve Thompson) got let off and got lee-way. Episode 12 was excellent and brought massive build up. The cliffhanger was tense. In the cliffhangers poll previously mentioned, it was number 2. When first saw this episode I thought, how are they going to continue that. Moffatsays that when writing a two-parter, he likes to shift the scene and move away from the story and then go at it from a different angle. That’s not how you write a story! But it worked this time. Just. Fortunately, this meant it was no longer a problem for the Big Bang, which was mined with enough problems to topple the Pirate episode as “worst ep of Doctor Who”. The Doctor getting out of the pandorica was extremely cheap and was the most ridiculous deus-ex out. As were the Galactic Alliance turning into stone. Moffat says there was no other way out because the Galactic Alliance would not work as it would be too busy arguing with itself. Well if that’s the case, why did you put it in, Moffat? Why did you put it in if it’s very presence is pointless. Moffat also says that he put the Stone Dalek in because he wrote the script and realised it didn’t have the villain. THAT’S NOT HOW YOU WRITE A DOCTOR WHO STORY! Even if you want to be daring, that’s not what you cut out. I expected the one who created the Alliance. The one who blew up the Doctor’s TARDIS! Not some knockoff Dalek. The Pandorica’s use as a deus-ex to restore the universe would also have worked so much better if we’d had some technobabble applied to it. The same would have applied to a lot of the episodes of the Moffat Regime. With the fact that we have not had any real action, the Doctor’s complaining about how he had to go into the crack looked bad and naff. It was also pointless. Episode 13 was pointless.

Good Man Goes to War

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This is the season reviled by Sunken Valley. It’s the point where Moffat decided to go for the complex plotting route. But I’ve said this before, there are complex plots and contorted plots. This plot is so contorted that it’s confusing. It’s too fast paced and there is constant gallivanting from place to place. Even using the TARDIS I’m sure we would not have to so much gallivanting. I know two authors off the top of my head who do complex plots (there are likely more), but these two I guarantee you’ll all know. One is JK Rowling. The other is Rich Burlew. When both of these do complex plots it’s ok and really good and it makes you want more. When Moffat does it, it’s alienating. I can’t explain it any better. Maybe someone else can. I respond to comments about how Impossible Astronaut was written like a finale. That’s how Moffat visualised it, a finale which was actually the first two episodes. And it suffered from similar problems. Moffat changes the scene once again and goes at the story from another angle between the two parters but this time, it suffers. We would like to know what happened just after Amy shot the astronaut. We want to know what Amy and Rory said when River revealed her true identity. We did not get this. If you do not resolve the immediate cliff hanger, what’s the point of doing it? I have already mentioned my grievings for Day of the Moon in the Season three finale section. The rest of the season was of poor quality (Almost people was ruined by Rebel Flesh, Pirate episode was written by the afore mentioned Steve Thompson. In fact it doesn’t matter because I am rendering that episode non-canon.). The one exception was Doctor’s wife (Gaiman for Showrunner! Why not, Douglas Adams did it.). Constantly we are shoved hints of eye patch lady and the quantum pregnancy. The twist to the almost people was amazing, although I had called it a long time ago. In the cliffhanger poll it came number 6 (although the poll was made 5 days after the episode had aired.) Good man goes to war was disappointing. The Doctor’s Army was a bunch of people who we never met and didn’t care about. Nor did the Doctor rise higher or fall further. You do not rise higher than surviving the time war. And you do not fall further than being the master’s pet on a chain for a year. Certainly intimidating a bunch of HUMAN soldiers is not high rising. Nor is finding out that you are a monster. Or getting poisoned with a kiss. Then there was River’s identity. It was too obvious and not nearly as impressive a twist to end the show for three months on. By this point River has become annoying. She’s is demoting the Doctor to a guest star in his own show every time she appears. I have already spoken enough on how Let’s kill Moffat was a disappointment. I just hope wedding of River Song is good.

Here are the episode scores
Season 1 finale: 9/10
Season 2 finale: 7/10
Season 3 finale: 10/10
Season 4 finale: 10/10
End of Time: 8/10
Season 5 finale: 6/10
Season 6 finale: Let’s see shall we?

Please comment about this. I can respond to anything in more detail.

[dehro]

Three seasons is a lot of time for a Doctor, much less a Companion.

whilst I agree, I can't help thinking that they've chosen 3 young people/characters/actors for a reason, i.e. keeping them on the show for a great deal of time.
I know that's not quite how it works, of course, but there's the fact that we have now witnessed the perma-death of the Doctor, which in theory means no more further regenerations (wasn't he running out of those anyway? I have lost count).. which means this should be the final doctor..
which poses the question of either finding a way to beat even perma-death to accomodate another regeneration (we now know however that this is supposed to be a fixed event in Time, and that it's about 200 years away, it is the current doctor/actor that does the dying, and it looks like fixed points in time are indeed fixed, under the current writers team's rules).. or milking this as long as possible with the current doctor.
I'm not considering the option that they would go for a grand finale and indeed end the show after one or two more seasons.. because I don't wanna, and because I'm guessing there are enough viewers for the BBC not to cancel the show.
so, under the assumption that the current doctor will stay around for at least another few more seasons..I wouldn't mind the current companions to tag along for a bit longer..except I guess River Song who has now almost come full circle, I guess, which is a shame because I liked the idea.

[Mauve Shirt]

There's supposed to be two more regenerations, Doctors apparently have 13 lives. They may have scrapped that I suppose.

[SuperPanda]

There's supposed to be two more regenerations, Doctors apparently have 13 lives. They may have scrapped that I suppose.

In an episode of the Sarah Jane Smith Adventures in which Matt Smith guest stared as the doctor his answer to how many times he can change his face (a.k.a. regenerate) was 507. I'm going to write this one off as "The Doctor Lies" though. Still that was a fun episode for SJSA involving the 11th doctor and 2 past companions.

I see what you did there, but I don't think it'll cause much buzz.

Oh, I got swatted.

Yeah, I get the implausibility of getting them working so quickly, but to be honest the idea is just so amusing that I give it a pass.
...Which, come to think of it, is a good example of current Who not always taking itself seriously.

Season 5 was great and I enjoyed it wonderfully. I personally loved "The Beast Below" and "Victory of the Daleks.

Warning Season 5 specific spoilers.

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My complaints which crept up in both of those episodes were these:
In Beast Below two things were poorly done which marred an otherwise beautiful episode. 1) Smith's "angry" moment felt too much like Smith trying to be angry 10 instead of himself. I've seen him sense then deliver expertly what he was suppose to do in that scene, but his performance in that episode fell short. 2) The long montage of background reasons to lead up to Amy's choice (no, not the episode, the button she pushed). It was 3 times as long as it needed to be and very much over dramatic. It felt like one of RTD's less favorable gimiks instead of a plot point by Moffat.

Victory of the Daleks - The only complaint in the episode itself was pacing. The writer didn't allow the story enough time to progress and evolve as it could have, instead everything was rushed to cram it into a single episode. I think this had the potential to be a very funny season long arch or a very good two parter. The self destruct cookie is still one of my favorite props in all of Who.

Both episodes: The cracks in time and space which appeared after the Tardis left and got both ominous music cords and close up zooms. Its particularly bad in retrospect because Victory's only relation to the finale is unveiling the new Dalek look (which I don't personally prefer) and Beast's relation is with the paitning, neither of them are connected to the crack in time and space.

Now I personal can extrapolate that since the cracks are caused by the Tardis, they are like a prequake, spreading out from the places the Tardis visits. But since halfway into season 6 we still have no idea what actually happened to the Tardis that made it blow up, that's a meaningless conclusion to draw. If hints as to how the Tardis blew up had been strewn through the finale then the cracks would have played an important part in foreshadowing.

In the Angels two parter Moffat delivered his masterstroke of foreshadowing: The jacket which was lost and then back and then lost. What looked like a sloppy error was actually Amy experiencing the finale happening before we did, which is awesome. Since Moffat has proven that he can do subtle very well it only annoys me more when he has the close up shots of the crack, quantum pregnancy, or Doctor's Death date in every episode.

Okay, here is Sunken Valley on Finales.

Personally:

S1

Mostly I'll agree with you. Personally I think Rose's moment was forced and not very interesting in and of itself, and I think it was the start of her transition from somewhat likable trouble magnet into Suedom.

I can't hate it too much through, without this I'd never have gotten the Jack I love now. If anyone is guilty of being a Sue in this universe (other than the doctor) Jack probably counts, but he's so wonderfully slimy about it that I let him slide.

S2

Oh the melodrama. This episode had a moment in it which was tense, action packed, comedy gold and instead of that we got to focus on saying goodbye to a companion most of us wish had already left.

S3

If TinkerbellJesusDoctor had been done with a better special effect, a little less melodramatically, and with a moment of technobable (specifically the phrase "Reversing the polarity") then this would have been a perfect finale.

I personally am confident that the hate TinkerbellJesusDoctor gets is because of how close it is to being great, but how it missed that marked in the worst possible way.

s4 (Spoilered for Curly protection)

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Hate.

Its not that it had a bad plot, or bad characters... its that it was done so very badly.

Again: Hate.

Turn left was very fun and very well done, but I don't count it as part of the finale the way I count Utopia as part of it. As for the cliffhanger in the middle, I had known that it was Tennant's last year on the show (the specials were announced after) and so it did catch me by surprise. This was one of the good parts of the show. The "Oh that, no problem at all" fix to the cliffhanger felt cheap.

Yes they had a chekov's gun that was sitting there and it lead into a funny story and plot, I just think that the false regeneration should have slowed the Doctor down a while and had a lasting effect on his performance. Considering he gets captured almost imediately after it wouldn't have been much to have him still be hurting for the rest of the episode and showing it.

Too many companions, too many characters. Gwen and Ianto could have been wonderful in a cross over episode, instead they show up in order to be told to sit home and keep the light on. Same with Luke (From Sarah Jane Smith Adventures). Mickey and Jacky didn't need to come back though they were more interesting in this episode set than Rose was.

Simply put there was too much character interaction and plot for the time they aired it in and they rushed what was there instead of giving it its proper due. Could have been the most awesome of them all, turned into my least favorite finale.

s4.5 Ten specials

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With all the plot lines except the Time Lords coming back - they learned from Season 4 and presented something beautiful and fun.

On the Time Lords - Rusty only really learned how to let a threat build up and become truely awe inspiring when he got to working on Children of the Earth and Miracle Day. And Children of the Earth has had his best plot resolution yet because of the lasting effects it has had on the character(s) involved.

S5 Moffat's only finale, careful Curly.

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Yes it was corny. Yes it was cheesy. Yes the plot didn't make a lick of sense if you think about it marginally linearly. There was a Fez, a Mop, a great big box, soap boxing from Stone Henge, and a jolly good ride for everyone, including my giddy aunts. The Big Bang dragged, and the drama which the stone Dalek was suppose to add to things wasn't there. The Stone Dalek redecayed and then some anything the Dalek's won back in Victory. Finally River getting a Dalek to beg for mercy was the first time I started not liking the character, and the very first time I started hoping she wouldn't show up anymore. I rank it equal with Season 3: Amazing lead in but utimatly a big let down.

S5.5 (Mid season 6 break)

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River's reveal was not very impressive and actually felt more like something you'd see in a fanfic instead of what I expected from Moffat. The Doctor's Death cannot be an actual event in time which will remain fixed, which means that Moffat is going to need to worm his way out of it.

The one seed so far for the Doctor Avoiding his death is for Ganger Doctor to reform, as he said he could in Rebel Flesh, and take the real Doctor's place. This also makes sense as the Doctor was invited to his own death and as such his future death has already happened in his own timeline.

For the record I will be disappointed with Moffat if this is what the explanation turns out to be. I will be even more disappointed if he kills of the doctor permanently and turns the show into the adventures of Rory, Amy, River Song, and Sexy as they search for a way to bring the Doctor back.

River's character progressing backwards with her as someone who intimately knows the doctor was a wonderful and clever piece of writing as Curly already said, and said well too. River's "power creep," for lack of a better phrase, such that even while she keeps becoming less and less River she is also becoming more and more important (and "awesome") in universe however detracts from that.

When we meet her fully formed she is a friend/companion of the Doctor's who knows him better than anyone else and who has a sonic screwdriver because he gave it to her explicitly to save her life.

Next time she's less refined but she can fly the Tardis better than he can and speaks Gallifreyan. If this lead to a plot that brought back the Timelords for real it would have been great. The Tardis teaching her how to fly it was good.

Next time she's got a Time Agent's vortex manipulator and is so scary that Dalek's beg her for mercy.

DA-lek's DO NOT bEG for MERcy! DAleks DO not BEleiVE IN merCY! exTERminATE exTERminATE!

Next time one of the most important people in the Doctor's life (death) which was already implied as well as being a super capable gunslinger when before she was just an archaeologist.

Next Time she is the daughter of the two current companions and part time lord.

Finally she is the most wanted war criminal ever.


If Moffat had lightened up instead and just let the subtlties of the character disolve the way he had planned then it would have been one of the most brilliaint things I've seen done with a TV show script. Sadly he did not. Since he was so close to the mark, and missed it so badly, I rank it along side TinkerbellJesusDoctor. Something that should have been awesome that went so very very wrong.

Panda Scoring of Finales

S1 8/10
S2 6/10
S3 8/10
S3 if I close my eyes through TinkerbellJesusDoctor? 10/10
S4 5/10
S4.5 8/10
S5 9/10
S5.5 7/10
S5.5 without the Sontoran Nurse? 5/10
S5.5 if Moffat had thrown us a twist on who River really was? 9/10

[Friv]

My own series finale reviews:

Season 1 - Liked it a lot.

Season 2 - Did not like it so much.

Season 3 - Liked it until the end, then liked it again after Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor was over.

Season 4

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AAARRRRGGGHHH!!!

The Stolen Earth was a great episode. Journey's End was failure in a box. The doctor's not really dead, because screw you, that's why! There's a human doctor, because screw you, that's why! Human and Time Lord DNA can never mesh (except with Jenny six episodes ago, I guess, and also River later on?) because screw you, that's why. The Doctor forcibly removes all of Donna's character development while she begs pitifully for him not to, because screw every person in the world, that's why. If Donna had died, I would have been less furious than I was with this episode. It was so bad. So so bad. So angry-making. At the time, I believed that it would not be possible to make a worse season finale than that one

Season 4.5

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I was wrong.

Literally every moment of this finale was atrocious. It was Mystery Science Theatre-worthy. I am frankly stunned that anyone has anything nice to say about it. The Master was reduced from a cunning mastermind to a joke. His crazy electrical powers were embarrassingly badly designed. His entire character arc was redesigned so that he was only crazy so that the Time Lords could escape. Rassilon was a comic-book supervillain, obliterating anyone who voiced mild objections to his absurdly evil schemes. The Master's cunning plan to conquer the world is nonsensical when you consider that this is THE MASTER, the man who never takes orders from anyone. And we're expected to believe that billions of him would just blindly follow each other's orders? Hell, why does he have to point facts out to other versions of himself? They're all him! They're all that smart! Oh, and all of the Doctor's worries about Donna are meaningless, because he designed a failsafe so that if she ever started to remember what happened, everyone around her would be knocked out (?!), she'd pass out, and everything would be fine again, so really the Doctor's earlier constant warnings and urgency was more of a deliberate jerk fakeout than anything else.

And the ending! Ooooh, the ending! Not bothering to explain who the Woman was was bad, but I will let it slide in the face of the mind-boggling *&!^@#% that was the last five or ten minutes. Wilf locks himself in the most idiotically-designed failsafe system in the world, a system literally built so that someone has to die to use it. Who does that? Who DESIGNS that? He does it after everything else is over, so it's really just his stupidity that causes the Doctor to die. And then the Doctor whines about it, like a frustrated teenager who got a bad grade. Whining. And then he goes to make everything happy for everyone, and Martha and Micky are married even though she was already engaged to someone and showed no interest in him whatsoever in their episodes together and then the Doctor whines for a bit more, destroys his TARDIS, and makes absolutely sure that everyone knows that this is a competition, and by god David Tennant and Russel T. Davies didn't want to leave. Let's just see how thoroughly we can shoot the entire run of the character in the foot by making him out to be a whining loser for ten minutes at the end of his run.

Ahem.

So, yeah. I was not exactly a fan of the Season 4 or Season 4.5 finales, is what I'm saying.

Season 5

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It wasn't extremely tight, but by god it was fun. So much fun. I like recursive paradoxes, I loved that there was a plot seed moving on into the next year. Over all, I really loved this one.

As for the half-finale...

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Any objection you raise to it, I will counter with Commander Strax. That is all.

My summary:
S1 8/10
S2 7/10
S3 6/10
S3 8/10, but it would have been a 9 with a better climax.
S4 5/10
S4.5 0/10
S5 9/10
S5.5 8/10, but it would have been a 7 without Strax in it being amazing.

[Thufir]

Sunken Valley on Finales.

I hope that, when Curly gets through that part of her watch through, she looks back at these and thinks “man that Sunken Valley had it right”. Or “Sunken Valley has lost his mind almost as much as the film critics of 2011”. Either way, I hope she reads this. She is the awesomest pony out there. Who is from Oxfordshire. Who joined the Playground in spring 2008. Who also does write ups of Doctor Who.

Fixed that for you.

OK, so my first response is short but the others are long and therefore spoilers.

S1:
Personally, I'm fine with this one. I don't consider Bad Wolf to be Rose's Sue moment. Apart from anything else, that's not Rose. Rose is in control of it, but the power is the Time Vortex, and anyone could have done it (This raises unfortunate questions of course, such as why didn't a Time Lord do this and end the Time War at the cost of one regeneration, but let it pass). As you say, the power of the Heart if the TARDIS had been foreshadowed, as had Bad Wolf, so it all knitted together quite nicely. It showed off Rose's best quality as a companion - incredible loyalty - and gave us the perfect Rose/Doctor moment, making that true connection over the perception of Time.

S2:

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OK, firstly Fear Her is not a good point of S2 by any stretch of the imagination. It doesn't bother me as much as it does some, but it does interest me either.

Now, the finale. Firstly, one of the typically cited big issues with the RTD finales is deus ex machina reset button solutions. As I said, the first one I didn't mind, because it was foreshadowed. It was built up as the arc word throughout the course of the series, so when it happened, it made sense. In subsequent series, the arc word was always something to do with the problem rather than the solution, so while we got the "Oh!" moment when the setup came about, the resolution had to stand on its own, leaving it rather flimsy.

Now, I didn't think Torchwood was that unimpressive. It wasn't a surprise, of course, because we'd been told what it was going to be back in episode 2, but it worked for me. That said, things might have been more interesting if Torchwood had been an or the antagonist for the finale rather than just being the people who inadvertently let the villains in.

Cybermen vs Daleks!!! But not really. Doomsday was bad in that it did not make the fight impressive. The Daleks OTK’ed the Cybermen.

This doesn't bother me either. Because frankly, there was no other way that fight could go (Also Daleks do the best smack talk). The Daleks were always the Doctor's greatest enemy, and they'd been bigged up even further in the revival as the adversaries in the Last Great Time War. No way Cybermen, let alone Cybus-men, could stand up to that.
That said, it meant the Cybermen were basically superfluous after a point. Another way to make things more interesting would have been to have the humans and the Doctor side with the Cybermen against the Daleks, as the lesser of two evils.
As to the Genesis Ark... ehh, it kind of works, but would have been better saved until later, so we could have had more Cybermen(+Humans+Doctor?)/Dalek conflict before unleashing the "Daleks win" machine (You may note that in the course of responding to this quote I appear to have changed my mind and am now agreeing with you. This is in fact the case)
But overall, there wasn't enough time to do these interesting things as things stood. Perhaps if the Cybermen had come through earlier in Army of Ghosts and then the Daleks at the very end of the episode? Or perhaps there should have been only one villain for the finale to stop it feeling cluttered.
Oh, and the reset button made no sense. The angst I didn't mind so much? But, yeah, definite angst.

S3:

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The two two-parters were the only truly bad episodes.

Wait, what? You consider Human Nature/Family of Blood to be bad episodes?
I just don't understand the way your brain works.

Mr Saxon was a twist I bet no one else got at the time.

As I mentioned when Curly was doing her reviews, yeah they did. It was guessed as far back as The Runaway Bride, I think, because "Mister Saxon" is an anagram of "Master No. Six", also we knew another classic villain was returning, and the Master was the obvious one.
Professor Yana was a twist I doubt people got.

Now for the jesus doctor. This was actually quite clever. The Doctor beats the Master the same way he offset the Doctor. Using that psychic network.

See, beating the Master using the psychic network I have no problem with. Beating the Master by turning into Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor I have a problem with. And what does that have to do with psychic-ness anyway? The psychic network can influence the way people think and act, that makes sense. The Master used it to stop people suspecting him at first and then to keep them afraid. The Doctor used it to give himself superpowers. To quote the Time Lord himself, "What?!"
etc, etc, I've said this all before and my opinions haven't changed.
Replace that little section with something that makes more sense, and I'll reckon this to be a great finale.

Plus this finale has captain Jack. Cannot go wrong with Captain Jack in Who. Torchwood on the other hand…

Hey, Jack is fine in Torchwood. The rest of it is of highly variable quality, but he's fine.

The weepy scene with the master was naff, but then again, if I didn’t want stuff like that, I’d just throw the TV in the bin. All TV inevitably turns to scenes like that. And that is all I will say about wangsting. Ever.

And that scene was good.

S4 (Kurli do not read):

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It was obvious that the planets were abducted for use as fuel in a superweapon.

No, it really wasn't.

The large number of companions meant none of them really got to shine. They didn't have time to.

The regeneration I can sort of buy, though in some ways it's kind of one of those cliffhangers instantly and easily resolved that SuperPanda was recently complaining about

The false deus-ex machinas of the warp stone and Osterhaagen key were cool too.

The Osterhaagen Key was a massive let-down. It should have been something much more interesting.
The best thing about those false solutions was Davros calling the Doctor on his weapons hypocrisy.

Doctordonna herself was like Badwolf Rose.

I'm OK enough with the idea of the metacrisis. I mean, it's a bit random, but it works.
What I'm not OK with is the idea that adding human to Time Lord automatically makes an even bigger genius. Time Lords are millennia ahead of us, so I just don't buy that adding Donna (Who while brilliant is, let's face it, not the brightest of people) to the Doctor (A genius by the standards of genius Time Lords) makes a more intelligent Doctor. And she didn't need to be more intelligent than the regular Doctor, or even as intelligent as him. Being close would do it.
Oh, also we reached the pinnacle of the Daleks' villain decay. I don't care how clever you are, a ship designed and built by genii whose greatest imperative is to ensure their own survival will not have controls in it which can be instantly repurposed to make those genii look like idiots, or instantly genocide them. Give me some technobabble, something obscure taken from the TARDIS and used to mess with the ship, but not just the existing controls on the ship.

And then the TARDIS tows Earth back home. Unnecessary, cheesy, and displaying a frustrating disregard for physics as I recall - things shake about right, like an earthquake or something? Because somehow being towed across space is different to just hurtling through space in orbit round the sun while rotating?

Donna’s reverse character development was a clever “death” for her. Nice circular arc.

This is basically the reason I'm OK with the metacrisis. So sad and yet so good.

End of Time (Corly do not read):

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The Master was less impressive than he was as Saxon.

And apparently constantly dying just gives you superpowers. Who knew?
Seriously, could have been interesting if the superpowers supposedly burning up his life force had actually had any detrimental effect on him.

The Master Race was cool and clever.

I have issues with the feasability of it. I mean, you can see how it's kind of a logical extension of the machine's existing abilities, but that's the thing - it's an extension of those abilities, and all the Master did was fiddle around with basically the software. I think something like that would require some sort of hardware alteration as well. And there was no explanation for it beyond basically, "He's clever" (A simplistic crutch of an explanation which RTD resorted to a little too often for my liking)

The Deus-ex machina was forgettable and contrived.

Which one do you mean? When the Doctor shot the diamond after the pointless melodramatic switching between targets? The Master using the diamond to summon Gallifrey back in the first place? Or Rassilon literally handwaving away the Master's copying of himself onto humanity? (The last one is the one I hate the most)

The four knocks were good, but they share the same problem as the Right Four Words. In that they did not actually cause what the prophecy said they would.

OK, I'm not going to get into an OotS argument here, suffice to say I disagree with you, but this case is far less ambiguous, because the prophecy never stated the four knocks would cause anything, merely that they would happen, and by implication, that they would precede, signal, herald the Doctor's death. Which is exactly what they did. No-one ever said they would cause his death. And that was a perfect end for Ten to my mind. After all his fighting, defeating impossible enemies, all the bombast, the grandstanding, all the destruction... after all that, he gave up his life to save one old man.

The goodbyes... some people have an issue with that sequence. I think it dragged on a little, and the bit where Mickey and Martha are apparently married now makes me RAGE
But I'm fine with it in principle, it is something Ten would do, and I love his last line.

OK, just spotting something here which is annoying me, so I'm going to make another general point:

Davis

Davies. Russell T Davies (Haven't noticed Russell being misspelled recently, but I've seen it in the past, so I thought I'd mention it).

S5 (Curli might want to avoid, but up to you):

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Davies’ hints were all smooth “blink and you’ll miss it” hints. The crack in time was shoved into all the stories it appeared jarringly. It ruined the two parters by just “appearing” out of nowhere, stealing the show as River Song would do in season 6.

Now, I don't mind this. Because this was a different sort of arc to Davies'. As in, it was actually something of a story arc over the series, rather than just hints which paid off in the finale. The Doctor noticed what was going on much quicker. While it would still have worked if we had the same amount of information as the characters and maybe a little more if we were paying attention, I feel it was better with the definite dramatic irony of us knowing it was even more of a problem than the Doctor realised.
And I don't find it jarring. Either it was a little extra which didn't detract from anything in the episode, or it was an actual plot point. It certainly didn't steal the show. If your show is stolen by an inanimate element of the scenery, chances are it's a bad show. Doctor Who is not a bad show.

Now, the finale.
Pandorica Opens is brilliant, we seem to be in agreement on that so I'll not address it.
Taking the action away at the start of Big Bang worked to heighten the tension I feel. We could see how things were different and wrong as a result of what happened, but didn't know how our heroes would get out of it. Though we could be pretty confident Rory was going to save the day.
Now, the release from the Pandorica. Ridiculous? Well, the Doctor did appear with a mop and a fez, so yes, in that respect. Cheap? It's a slight paradox, but it's perfectly possible with time travel. I would have liked a line or two about how such paradoxes are potentially very dangerous, but that's not really something we need to be worrying about given the whole end of the universe situation, but I have no problem with it happening.

Now the Galactic Alliance. I can see there are issues, but as I see it it worked. Because it showed the Doctor from the point of view of his enemies. He told us about the story of the Pandorica, and we realised that that is how his enemies see him, and stopping him is the only cause which could cause all these races to work together.
And them fossilising? It's a way of showing they've been erased from existence. "Show, don't tell" is generally viewed as a good thing in storytelling, and the explanation of what had happened would have carried considerably less weight without a visual representation.

Moffat also says that he put the Stone Dalek in because he wrote the script and realised it didn’t have the villain. THAT’S NOT HOW YOU WRITE A DOCTOR WHO STORY!

But it is. That's how you write any story. You write, and then at some point you think "This story doesn't have this. It would be so much better if it had this." And so you add it in.
And in this particular instance, a villain was an important element, but couldn't be the actual focus of the story.

I expected the one who created the Alliance. The one who blew up the Doctor’s TARDIS! Not some knockoff Dalek.

But we couldn't have had that. The arc was planned out and that villain is not revealed yet. And I'm glad s/he wasn't. My worry at the end of Pandorica Opens was that Moffat had done the RTD thing - written himself into a corner, with too much messed up to resolve it all satisfactorily in a single episode, and I feel I was right. It wasn't an issue because Moffat didn't resolve everything in that episode. He left some things open for the ongoing story arc.

The Pandorica’s use as a deus-ex to restore the universe would also have worked so much better if we’d had some technobabble applied to it.

You mean like an imprint of the former unaltered universe, combined with a restoration field powered by an exploding TARDIS?

I've made the point earlier that my issue with many of the RTD finale resolutions was that they basically came out of nowhere (And didn't always make sense), with Bad Wolf being the exception because it was foreshadowed throughout the series.
Now certainly the use of the Pandorica wasn't foreshadowed throughout the series. But. It was indicated and explained in the course of the episode. The restorative properties were established when it was used on Amy, the addition of the imprint of the unaltered universe was established by the restoration of the fossilised Dalek, and we had been told the TARDIS was exploding at every point in history simultaneously. While he was late to fully explain himself, as is his wont, the Doctor was talking about 'Big Bang 2' for quite a while, and he was only prevented from properly tackling this idea of his by the pressure brought on by the partially restored Dalek.
Basically, the majority of the episode was spent on solving the problem, as opposed to the majority of the episode being spent on the problem getting even worse and then the Doctor making up something nonsensical to solve everything in 5 minutes before the denouement.

Also, Big Bang broke out of the trend of every finale having to be bigger and more pressing than the last. While technically the end of the universe is about as big as you can get, it didn't feel big because of the nature of how it was happening. We weren't zipping across space, jumping around, tossing about high-powered weaponry, no high-powered action, no sound and fury. The atmosphere was more claustrophobic. We felt that the end of the universe was closing in around them as they worked to stop it - much more in the Moffat style, of course. Action is not required, and in some cases it can detract from the real story.

Good Man Goes to War

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The Doctor’s Army was a bunch of people who we never met and didn’t care about.

I think a lot of people would disagree with you there.

Nor did the Doctor rise higher or fall further. You do not rise higher than surviving the time war. And you do not fall further than being the master’s pet on a chain for a year. Certainly intimidating a bunch of HUMAN soldiers is not high rising. Nor is finding out that you are a monster.

Now, I have issues as well with the "rise higher than ever before and fall so much further." I think the episode might well have been better if River's first appearance had been when she appeared after the battle.
That said, you're not looking at it from the Doctor's point of view. Surviving the Time War is not rising high at all for him, because he was forced to basically genocide two species, one of which was his own. Defeating a rather powerful enemy of his with no bloodshed? That is a true and great victory to the Doctor.
And as for the fall, throughout that year as the Master's slave, he had a plan he knew would work, and he never gave up. At the end of AGMGTW he gave up, albeit briefly. The fall would have been more convincing if he'd been left like that for a while, and also possibly if more of his friends had died in the battle. But all the same, it reached the point where he seriously considered giving up his entire way of life as the Doctor. Compare The Beast Below "And then I find myself another name, because I won't be the Doctor any more." Being made to doubt everything he has done in his entire life (At least since he stole the TARDIS)? That's a massive fall for him.

[Jahkaivah]

Season 4.5

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I was wrong.

Literally every moment of this finale was atrocious. It was Mystery Science Theatre-worthy. I am frankly stunned that anyone has anything nice to say about it. The Master was reduced from a cunning mastermind to a joke. His crazy electrical powers were embarrassingly badly designed. His entire character arc was redesigned so that he was only crazy so that the Time Lords could escape. Rassilon was a comic-book supervillain, obliterating anyone who voiced mild objections to his absurdly evil schemes. The Master's cunning plan to conquer the world is nonsensical when you consider that this is THE MASTER, the man who never takes orders from anyone. And we're expected to believe that billions of him would just blindly follow each other's orders? Hell, why does he have to point facts out to other versions of himself? They're all him! They're all that smart! Oh, and all of the Doctor's worries about Donna are meaningless, because he designed a failsafe so that if she ever started to remember what happened, everyone around her would be knocked out (?!), she'd pass out, and everything would be fine again, so really the Doctor's earlier constant warnings and urgency was more of a deliberate jerk fakeout than anything else.

And the ending! Ooooh, the ending! Not bothering to explain who the Woman was was bad, but I will let it slide in the face of the mind-boggling *&!^@#% that was the last five or ten minutes. Wilf locks himself in the most idiotically-designed failsafe system in the world, a system literally built so that someone has to die to use it. Who does that? Who DESIGNS that? He does it after everything else is over, so it's really just his stupidity that causes the Doctor to die. And then the Doctor whines about it, like a frustrated teenager who got a bad grade. Whining. And then he goes to make everything happy for everyone, and Martha and Micky are married even though she was already engaged to someone and showed no interest in him whatsoever in their episodes together and then the Doctor whines for a bit more, destroys his TARDIS, and makes absolutely sure that everyone knows that this is a competition, and by god David Tennant and Russel T. Davies didn't want to leave. Let's just see how thoroughly we can shoot the entire run of the character in the foot by making him out to be a whining loser for ten minutes at the end of his run.

Yeah, that just about sums it up. Only think I liked about that finale was that Donna's grandfather had a large part in it.

[dehro]

I find myself being much more forgiving, and taking the show for its entertainment value (I'm easily entertained, apparently).

I don't much care about continuity errors on vast scale, or equally ponderous retconning involving the pantheon of the Whoniverse, because I've only ever known nu-who, so I would be unable to have an informed opinion or bias towards ..adjustmens, major or minor as they may be, to the series' history.

[Dvil]

Just finished watching "The Daleks" Serial from William Hartnell's era. So far, the first doctor's not very nice is he? Deliberately locking Ian and Barbara in the TARDIS (IIRC) during "An Unearthly Child", outright lying to everyone including his own granddaughter (although I know of the Cartmell Masterplan) during "The Daleks"... No, not a nice bloke at all.

It took me a while to watch "The Daleks" because of how long it is, so presumably I should be able to watch "The Edge of Destruction" fairly soon, since it's only about an hour long. It's just a tad difficult to find the time to watch the longer serials, though if necessary I'm not averse to splitting it up (as I had to do for "The Daleks").

[Androgeus]

3 things about Specials Final

Spoiler

Show

I love the power glove. it's so bad.
I love the amount of ham Dalton brought to role.
The switching target scene is hilarious

[Friv]

Just finished watching "The Daleks" Serial from William Hartnell's era. So far, the first doctor's not very nice is he? Deliberately locking Ian and Barbara in the TARDIS (IIRC) during "An Unearthly Child", outright lying to everyone including his own granddaughter (although I know of the Cartmell Masterplan) during "The Daleks"... No, not a nice bloke at all.

Yeah, the First Doctor is a bit of culture shock for people who are used to the newer one. He started off with very little empathy for people who weren't himself, and gradually learned it over the course of the first season.

In addition to the things you mention, there's his amazingly blase attitude towards the Dalek-Thal war and the fact that either side could be genocided. "Yes, it's very tragic, but it's not really our problem, is it?" It was kind of entertaining how many serials in the first season relied on having him lose access to the TARDIS somehow so that he couldn't just say "Screw all y'all" and wander off.

[Dvil]

In addition to the things you mention, there's his amazingly blase attitude towards the Dalek-Thal war and the fact that either side could be genocided. "Yes, it's very tragic, but it's not really our problem, is it?" It was kind of entertaining how many serials in the first season relied on having him lose access to the TARDIS somehow so that he couldn't just say "Screw all y'all" and wander off.

That's a point of view I hadn't really considered, but I can't deny how true it is. "It's not really my problem" seems to sum up his entire point of view in "An Unearthly Child" and "The Daleks".

Incidentally, I just watched "The Edge of Destruction". It was... interesting. Not what I was expecting, at all. I may have to re-watch The Brink Of Disaster in order to accurately give my opinion of it.

[Reverent-One]

Season 4.5

Spoiler

Show

I was wrong.

Literally every moment of this finale was atrocious. It was Mystery Science Theatre-worthy. I am frankly stunned that anyone has anything nice to say about it. The Master was reduced from a cunning mastermind to a joke. His crazy electrical powers were embarrassingly badly designed. His entire character arc was redesigned so that he was only crazy so that the Time Lords could escape. Rassilon was a comic-book supervillain, obliterating anyone who voiced mild objections to his absurdly evil schemes. The Master's cunning plan to conquer the world is nonsensical when you consider that this is THE MASTER, the man who never takes orders from anyone. And we're expected to believe that billions of him would just blindly follow each other's orders? Hell, why does he have to point facts out to other versions of himself? They're all him! They're all that smart! Oh, and all of the Doctor's worries about Donna are meaningless, because he designed a failsafe so that if she ever started to remember what happened, everyone around her would be knocked out (?!), she'd pass out, and everything would be fine again, so really the Doctor's earlier constant warnings and urgency was more of a deliberate jerk fakeout than anything else.

And the ending! Ooooh, the ending! Not bothering to explain who the Woman was was bad, but I will let it slide in the face of the mind-boggling *&!^@#% that was the last five or ten minutes. Wilf locks himself in the most idiotically-designed failsafe system in the world, a system literally built so that someone has to die to use it. Who does that? Who DESIGNS that? He does it after everything else is over, so it's really just his stupidity that causes the Doctor to die. And then the Doctor whines about it, like a frustrated teenager who got a bad grade. Whining. And then he goes to make everything happy for everyone, and Martha and Micky are married even though she was already engaged to someone and showed no interest in him whatsoever in their episodes together and then the Doctor whines for a bit more, destroys his TARDIS, and makes absolutely sure that everyone knows that this is a competition, and by god David Tennant and Russel T. Davies didn't want to leave. Let's just see how thoroughly we can shoot the entire run of the character in the foot by making him out to be a whining loser for ten minutes at the end of his run.

Spoiler

Show

So a character showing regret and/or anger at the fact that they're dying and there's nothing they can do about it is being a whiny loser? Even when they spend their last minutes helping people? Harsh.

[Dienekes]

Spoiler

Show

So a character showing regret and/or anger at the fact that they're dying and there's nothing they can do about it is being a whiny loser? Even when they spend their last minutes helping people? Harsh.

Spoiler

Show

When compared to how all the other Doctor's I've seen do it, yeah, kinda.

2: I refuse to be cheated!
3: Don't cry, I'll be back baby.
4: I'm going out with a smile, and a vague sounding sentence
5: Well this feels different
9: I'm gonna change now Rose. And you know what? I was bloody fantastic.
10: *overlong 15 minute long death sequence* I don't wanna go
11: *not actual transformation, but he thought he was going to die* GERONIMO!

When compared to the others, yeah 10's death sequence seemed melodramatic, unnecessary, flow interrupting, and whiny.