Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Who Finale

I caught the finale last night. I wasn't sure what to make of the 'Heart of the Tardis' when we first caught a glimpse of it and I'm less sure now. Holy Deus Ex Machina, Batman! This episode is in some ways the most disappointing of the new series, while in others it continues to exceed my wildest expectations for how good it could be. Spoilers follow.

I'm sure the the Doctor's first on screen kiss will get folks all fired up but it's his second kiss, of Rose, that confused me the most. Captain Jack had been flirting with Doctor (and Rose, and just about everyone else) and the Doctor had been pretty at ease with it, so given that Jack was basically saying his goodbyes figuring he was about to be exterminated by the Daleks (and had already kissed Rose), the kiss shouldn't have been a surprise. What was more of a surprise was that the Doctor kissed Rose during the whole transference of the orange glowey gas vortex thing.

The best of it was the Doctor's decision when faced with having to answer the Emperor Dalek's challenge. Activating the Delta Wave will kill all the Daleks, but it will also kill everyone on the station (himself and Jack included) and the entire population of Earth circa the year 200,000. There are colonies of humans elsewhere, so his choice boils down to: (1) either destroy all the Daleks and most of humanity, or (2) let the Daleks harvest every human on Earth to increase the size of their army. The Emperor Dalek asks him, "Are you a killer or a coward?"

I'm glad they let us see the Doctor's choice ("Coward.") before doing the all-too-easy wrap-up. Here's the resolution in a nutshell: Rose looks inside the Tardis console, gets the power to know and manipulate all of time and space (grrrrr), turns the Daleks to dust, restores Jack's life, scatters the Bad Wolf clues (hokey), and then is saved by the Doctor's kiss before the Vortex overwhelms her. This sounds like a rejected script from the McCoy years!!!

I really wanted the Bad Wolf clues to have something to do with the Master. No such luck. I love that they set out to tie the whole series together. I loved the fleet of Dalek ships and the streams of Daleks invading the satellite. The Emperor Dalek was awesome. Rose's conversation with Mickey and her mom was pitch perfect and tied together the themes of the show deftly, while showing us that her character really is "worth saving." She gets it. The Doctor was right about her. It's great stuff. I just wish they hadn't found a lorry big enough to tug open the console.

We only get a few seconds of Tennant after the regeneration. We'll have to wait for the Christmas special to see what he's all about.
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