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- Recap - Doctor Who, Journey's End
Recap - Doctor Who, Journey's End
- By Linnea Dodson
- Published 08/3/2008
- Doctor Who
-
Rating:
Journey's End - page 2
The Doctor yells at the Supreme Dalek to let her out. The Supreme Dalek returns that this is "Time Lord treachery," that it had nothing to do with the door, and more importantly, the TARDIS was a weapon that will be destroyed. The TARDIS is dropped down a chute while the Doctor panics and demands its return.
That's far from the Dalek plan. They have dropped the TARDIS into the core of their own ship, where the radiation will tear it apart, and that Donna is still inside is not a Dalek concern. "The female and the TARDIS will perish together. Observe," it grates at them.
From the outside, as shown on the Dalek monitor, it looks like the TARDIS is bobbing on molten lava; it's such a Lord of the Rings moment that I'm a little bit surprised that the Doctor never wails "MY PRECIOUS!" However, David rises above that in a powerful scene begging to die with the TARDIS is Donna's place - "You can do anything to me, just get her out of there!"
Inside, the console room is breaking down; fires roar up through the grating, the console sparks, and rondels are exploding. (For some reason, that's the scariest part. We've seen plenty of sparks flying from the console, but the rondels always stay in place.) Donna is screaming and choking until the heartbeat again distracts her. Only this time, it seems to be coming from the hand in its jar, which she touches.
There is an explosion of energy, around the hand and around her.
Back on the bridge, the Dalek gloats, "You are connected to the TARDIS. Now feel it die!"
Donna sits up. The hand is glowing... and suddenly an entire body glows from around it and sits up as well.
"It's you!" Donna gasps to David Tennant. "You're naked!" Alas for the fangirls, you only see him from mid-chest and up.
On the bridge of the Crucible, Rose takes the Doctor's hand.
On the bridge of the TARDIS, the other Doctor punches a button.
On the monitor, the TARDIS flickers and disappears.
Gloatingly, the Supreme Dalek asks the Doctor how he feels, and sneers that if emotions are good, then they have enhanced him with sorrow and despair.
Jack snaps "Feel this!" and starts shooting with his revolver, getting off only a few shots before he's blasted down. Rose runs to him, obviously unaware of his regenerative powers and her role in them.
The Doctor pulls her gently away as the Supreme Dalek announces "They are the playthings of Davros now." But just before he lets the Daleks herd him through the door, the Doctor looks back.
Jack winks before closing his eye again.
The battered TARDIS rematerializes among the planets, the other Doctor pulling on a blue suit jacket over a red t-shirt as he babbles about silent running and how important it is to be quiet. (It is so very characteristic of him that his idea of being silent is to run off at the mouth.)
Fandom is a bit divided as to what to call this blue-suited Doctor. "Handy" is popular, blue suit is indicative, and 10.5 is faster to type. For plot reasons yet to come, I'm going to stick with "the other Doctor" for now.
Donna is more disgusted than impressed. "Lop a bit off; grow another one? You're like worms!"
It's a good thing that David can deliver lines at lightening speed, because he's got a lot to go through in this scene; imitating Catherine Tate, being horrified that he's only part Time Lord (the new body has one heart, which human!Doctor announces "Disgusting!"), and delivering lots and lots of exposition.
The high-speed data download includes: explaining himself ("an instantaneous biological metacrisis" because Donna touched the hand full of regeneration energy), the heartbeat ("That was me... you heard me because you were special") and a long psychoanalysis of Donna, whose peppery nature has always been a shield for her insecurity complex. "Shouting at the world because no one's listening.") Most importantly, he announces that the entire season has been foreordained, but "the pattern's not complete... heading for what?"
Martha's back in Germany, getting chewed out by the little old lady who's the last defender of UNIT's base there, the soldiers having cut and run when the Daleks arrived. The little old lady talks of the Osterhagen key (alas, no Easter Bunnies) - but those who don't speak German don't know everything she's talking about.
Until she pulls out the gun. That's universal.
Martha understands the speech and calmly orders the woman to pull the trigger. She can't. The intent, if not the exact wording, is also clear as the woman tells Martha to go to Hell as Martha steps behind a hidden door.
On the Crucible, Jack has been thrown into the incinerator. Somehow his regeneration powers not only allow him to survive that, but to crawl back out from the wrong side of the hatch without a scorchmark on his coat. Impressive!
Deep in the heart of the castle is a room full of switches and lights, which activates as Martha comes in. She starts trying to contact the rest of UNIT.
Sarah Jane is upbeat about being told by the Dalek guard that "prisoners will be taken for testing." As far as she's concerned, they're getting closer to the Doctor every minute.
Rose and the Doctor have been imprisoned in CGI and spotlights, but the Doctor is surprisingly cheerful, because he's figured something out: Davros is as much a prisoner of the Daleks as he is. Annoyed, Davros moves on to threaten Rose, but she's equally unimpressed. It turns out that Caan had foretold Rose's return, "and not even the Supreme Dalek" is willing to mess with one of Caan's predictions.
Caan flipflops and singsongs about one of the companions dying again, and the Doctor starts shouting. That pleases Davros, who wants the Doctor to reveal his true nature to his companions. What that precisely is supposed to mean not even Davros knows, but he looks forward to discovering it.
It's time to test the "Reality Bomb" which sounds so much like a 60s spoof movie - probably one starring Peter Sellers - that it's impossible for me to take seriously. The prisoners are being herded into what looks like a large corridor; when the Daleks are distracted by a woman who falls and panics, Sarah Jane runs to the nearest door, sonics it open with her lipstick, and calls Mickey to freedom. Mickey tries to get Jackie, but she's helping the woman who fell. Just before the people are literally disintegrated by the harnessed power of all the planets, the dimensional jumpers recharge. Mickey holds his up before the window in the door, and Jackie teleports out just in time.
Rose and Donna are begging their respective Doctors to explain it, but it's up to Davros to technobabble that the reality bomb cancels out the electrical field holding atoms together, thus blowing whatever it is aimed at into very, very tiny bits. The Daleks have been using it to blow away the stars that went out, and intend to literally turn all of reality into its component parts, leaving the Daleks as the only life in the galaxy.
The Master would be so jealous if he knew.
That's far from the Dalek plan. They have dropped the TARDIS into the core of their own ship, where the radiation will tear it apart, and that Donna is still inside is not a Dalek concern. "The female and the TARDIS will perish together. Observe," it grates at them.
From the outside, as shown on the Dalek monitor, it looks like the TARDIS is bobbing on molten lava; it's such a Lord of the Rings moment that I'm a little bit surprised that the Doctor never wails "MY PRECIOUS!" However, David rises above that in a powerful scene begging to die with the TARDIS is Donna's place - "You can do anything to me, just get her out of there!"
Inside, the console room is breaking down; fires roar up through the grating, the console sparks, and rondels are exploding. (For some reason, that's the scariest part. We've seen plenty of sparks flying from the console, but the rondels always stay in place.) Donna is screaming and choking until the heartbeat again distracts her. Only this time, it seems to be coming from the hand in its jar, which she touches.
There is an explosion of energy, around the hand and around her.
Back on the bridge, the Dalek gloats, "You are connected to the TARDIS. Now feel it die!"
Donna sits up. The hand is glowing... and suddenly an entire body glows from around it and sits up as well.
"It's you!" Donna gasps to David Tennant. "You're naked!" Alas for the fangirls, you only see him from mid-chest and up.
On the bridge of the Crucible, Rose takes the Doctor's hand.
On the bridge of the TARDIS, the other Doctor punches a button.
On the monitor, the TARDIS flickers and disappears.
Gloatingly, the Supreme Dalek asks the Doctor how he feels, and sneers that if emotions are good, then they have enhanced him with sorrow and despair.
Jack snaps "Feel this!" and starts shooting with his revolver, getting off only a few shots before he's blasted down. Rose runs to him, obviously unaware of his regenerative powers and her role in them.
The Doctor pulls her gently away as the Supreme Dalek announces "They are the playthings of Davros now." But just before he lets the Daleks herd him through the door, the Doctor looks back.
Jack winks before closing his eye again.
The battered TARDIS rematerializes among the planets, the other Doctor pulling on a blue suit jacket over a red t-shirt as he babbles about silent running and how important it is to be quiet. (It is so very characteristic of him that his idea of being silent is to run off at the mouth.)
Fandom is a bit divided as to what to call this blue-suited Doctor. "Handy" is popular, blue suit is indicative, and 10.5 is faster to type. For plot reasons yet to come, I'm going to stick with "the other Doctor" for now.
Donna is more disgusted than impressed. "Lop a bit off; grow another one? You're like worms!"
It's a good thing that David can deliver lines at lightening speed, because he's got a lot to go through in this scene; imitating Catherine Tate, being horrified that he's only part Time Lord (the new body has one heart, which human!Doctor announces "Disgusting!"), and delivering lots and lots of exposition.
Martha's back in Germany, getting chewed out by the little old lady who's the last defender of UNIT's base there, the soldiers having cut and run when the Daleks arrived. The little old lady talks of the Osterhagen key (alas, no Easter Bunnies) - but those who don't speak German don't know everything she's talking about.
Until she pulls out the gun. That's universal.
Martha understands the speech and calmly orders the woman to pull the trigger. She can't. The intent, if not the exact wording, is also clear as the woman tells Martha to go to Hell as Martha steps behind a hidden door.
On the Crucible, Jack has been thrown into the incinerator. Somehow his regeneration powers not only allow him to survive that, but to crawl back out from the wrong side of the hatch without a scorchmark on his coat. Impressive!
Deep in the heart of the castle is a room full of switches and lights, which activates as Martha comes in. She starts trying to contact the rest of UNIT.
Sarah Jane is upbeat about being told by the Dalek guard that "prisoners will be taken for testing." As far as she's concerned, they're getting closer to the Doctor every minute.
Rose and the Doctor have been imprisoned in CGI and spotlights, but the Doctor is surprisingly cheerful, because he's figured something out: Davros is as much a prisoner of the Daleks as he is. Annoyed, Davros moves on to threaten Rose, but she's equally unimpressed. It turns out that Caan had foretold Rose's return, "and not even the Supreme Dalek" is willing to mess with one of Caan's predictions.
Caan flipflops and singsongs about one of the companions dying again, and the Doctor starts shouting. That pleases Davros, who wants the Doctor to reveal his true nature to his companions. What that precisely is supposed to mean not even Davros knows, but he looks forward to discovering it.
It's time to test the "Reality Bomb" which sounds so much like a 60s spoof movie - probably one starring Peter Sellers - that it's impossible for me to take seriously. The prisoners are being herded into what looks like a large corridor; when the Daleks are distracted by a woman who falls and panics, Sarah Jane runs to the nearest door, sonics it open with her lipstick, and calls Mickey to freedom. Mickey tries to get Jackie, but she's helping the woman who fell. Just before the people are literally disintegrated by the harnessed power of all the planets, the dimensional jumpers recharge. Mickey holds his up before the window in the door, and Jackie teleports out just in time.
Rose and Donna are begging their respective Doctors to explain it, but it's up to Davros to technobabble that the reality bomb cancels out the electrical field holding atoms together, thus blowing whatever it is aimed at into very, very tiny bits. The Daleks have been using it to blow away the stars that went out, and intend to literally turn all of reality into its component parts, leaving the Daleks as the only life in the galaxy.
The Master would be so jealous if he knew.
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Article Series
This article is part 2 of a 2 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
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Recap - Doctor Who, Journey's End
Comments
Comment #1 (Posted by lisa)
Rating:
Nice recap. I don't think Rose was responsible for the universe's walls starting to break, though. What she actually said was that the dimension canon wasn't working, then the stars started going out, and it started working. I think we're supposed to assume that the Dalek's work on the reality bomb is what broke down the walls and made it possible for Rose to return, not the other way around. So, the comment about the other Doctor being her jailer to make sure she doesn't destroy the universe was a bit harsh, I think. That said, I'm not involved in the fandom, so I was kind of shocked to hear that people see the Doctor's actions at Bad Wolf Bay as anything other than giving the woman he loves what he thinks will make her happy. If you watch the Confidential, it's clear that's what RTD intended, whatever various fan groups speculate. (and Moffat really said that? I hope he was kidding)