The polite death sentence of German Daleks
Exterminieren! Exterminieren! The delight of hearing this new Dalek war cry over the German countryside was followed a moment later by doubting that the oh-so-superior Dalek master race would “Sie” the human scum they’re about to obliterate.
In some ways it’s a paradigm for the whole episode, from unprecedented games with regeneration energy, through to a final return to the solar system where the moon has been loitering around until the earth is returned for it to orbit again. Provided you never stop to ask if it makes sense, Journey’s End was a wonderful climax to the fourth series, and a stonking thrill-a-minute ride of ingenuity and story telling vim. The apotheosis of Donna Noble as half-time Lord, half human, unravelling into the tragedy of Donna Noble, gossipy temp with nothing special about her, is one of the showcase tragedy moments of the series. The new Davros is as brilliantly mad as the old one ever was. The insane Dalek Caan is a brilliant piece of characterisation. And I could lengthen that list with other gems.
Yet, while I know that on one level, sci-fi doesn’t have to make sense within our limits, it would be nice if there was a greater sense of internal logic than loose-end tying. If the laws of physics are going to be broken, then an explanation within the logic of the fictional universe is generally needed, even if it is simply the superior technology of the Time Lords. The emotional power of reuniting old friends can’t quite compensate for over convenient dei ex machina. How exactly do Mickey and Jackie manage to materialise in exactly the right place to save Sarah Jane? And so on.
I enjoyed this episode tremendously, because it moved along fast enough not to ask any such questions. I think the ambiguity the story highlights of the Doctor’s morality always catching him up in so much violence underlines an ongoing question at the heart of the series. But I can’t help feeling that too much was too neat, and underneath there are more niggling questions that will be more apparent when watched again. As an experience, a five star roller-coaster. As a good story … hmm, I think my inner jury’s still out.
July 5th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
This was the highlight of my saturday, (Yes, I know I am sad) But to hear “Extermieren!” just as Martha had teleported was just hilarious xD
July 6th, 2008 at 3:49 am
Hi Doug. Yes, I think I am with you on this episode. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed at odd points in a way that I didn’t last week. I am not sure about the odd-job junior doctor, and I was a bit disappointed with the resolution to the cliffhanger — I’d had too long to think about it. I think I thought it would be utterly sublime and instead it was just pretty good.
July 6th, 2008 at 5:49 am
I thought it was a pretty cool episode. It’s not Star Trek so I don’t expect the physics to be the highlight of the show, just a good story. Sie can also mean You as in all of you in which case it is not necessarily polite as there is only one form, du would just be one person and they aren’t addressing a specific person.
July 6th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Sorry guys, but this was possibly the worst story of the four seasons. I watched it again this morning to be sure I felt this way, and I simply couldn’t find anything to like. The Dalek Supreme was impotent, and for the first time in any Davros story, I didn’t feel like the Daleks’ creator was a serious threat. For that matter neither were the Daleks. They were disposed of far too easily and cheaply, with a cloud of last-minute, deus-ex-machina technobabble.
It was one cop-out after another. I knew I’d hate the regeneration — and that it would involve the right hand — but they could have done something better than that! The Doctor-Donna business DIDN’T. WORK. AT. ALL. Donna as a motormouth Time-Lord was as offensive as the fishwife Donna from Runaway Bride, and I completely lost the empathy I’d built up for her over the season. We didn’t even get to see the Daleks exterminate anyone, save the indestructible Captain Jack.
Rose (like all the other returning commpanions) had virtually nothing to do, and the epilogue at Bad Wolf Bay makes a complete mockery of her season-two swan song. As if things couldn’t get worse, the Doctor double was the lowest point of all, and the fact that’s he’s half human was horribly contrived to provide the cheap fairy tale ending at Bad Wolf Bay.
Donna’s fate was tragic, but I was unable to appreciate it because my emotional investment in the character was completely shattered in this story (so I just didn’t care), and also because it was really a cop-out masked as tragedy. We have Dalek Caan repeatedly promising that one of the Doctor’s companions would die, but the “death” turns out to be a figurative one. This kind of meaneuver worked once (for Rose at the end of season two), but not here. At this point it’s a transparent formula for jerking us around.
Honestly, if RTD is going to trap the Doctor’s best companion in a parallel universe and say she’ll never see the doctor again, he should have the balls to follow through with that. If he sets us up with repeated predictions about another companion dying, he should bloody well have the balls to kill someone. Does he think we’re all five-year olds who can’t handle good storytelling??
Classic Who never copped out in so many ways; never pulled punches with body counts; never betrayed the audience so aggressively in every other sequence.
Check out the Den of Geek review, which I actually think is too charitable.
July 6th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
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July 7th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Well, I cried. Quite a bit at the end. And I thought I didn’t care about Donna. But obviously I was wrong. Or maybe it was her grandad, or the Doctor being left alone again, in the rain, again.
And how you could call the Bad Wolf Bay scene a ‘fairytale ending’ I do not know. It was still incredibly sad. The Doctor was still on his own. And Rose didn’t get the real Doctor, even if his mind etc were the same.
But oh my goodness, on another lighter note, there was some COMEDY in that episode. Captain Jack with his ‘3 Doctors’ thing. Legend. And the “Watch it Space Man” “Watch it Earth Girl”. Too funny. And of course the German Daleks. Had to stop the video right there…Too good…
So yeah, it was good television. Best television I’ve watched all week. Longer if it hadn’t been for Hollyoaks…
July 7th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I’m interested by your strong reactions, Loren. Clearly the audience didn’t feel “betrayed” — it was the highest chart positioning in the show’s 45 year history (number 1 for the week, 9.4 million on the overnights), and an incredible AI figure of 91. So I think that while some of us fans didn’t enjoy it as much as other episodes, the real TV audience out there just loved it. As Ken Deep said on Podshock, it’s really worth watching it with kids, or letting the kid inside of you out
July 7th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I let out my inner child every time I watch the show, Mark. Doctor Who has always been a kids (family) show, but one which always encouraged kids to grow up (much to Mary Whitehouse’s outrage back in the Hinchcliffe era)). Victories were never so cheap and easy as in this episode. And the cop outs were so bad here — by any standard. That many people liked this finale says a lot about taste these days, I suppose… But remember, part of RTD’s success is the way he has mainstreamed Who so that it appeals to the lowest common denominator. Don’t pat yourself on the back to be in that company.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Loren, I find the idea that RTD has “mainstreamed” Who very odd. Until the fag-end of the Tom Baker years at least, Who has always been mainstream in the UK. It failed to update itself enough and slowly got left behind, partly a victim of low production values, and increasingly of bad scheduling. You may have mislead yourself in thinking of it as a niche product for some kind of elitist Whovian cult. Mainstream does not mean lowest common denominator, either.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Monday night … and I’ve only just got to watch it. Wow. There were a lot of unanswered questions. The whole thing about the three words between the Doctor and Rose nearly feels like pushing the boundaries too far. But dealing with the violence, dealing with what’s got out of control, seemed a powerful enough vehicle to sweep away the faults.
Splendid effects and CGI. And a story that kept on ending - every five minutes for the last twenty there was some other twist and turn. How can the Christmas special possibly compare with the pace and passion from this weekend’s episode? They’ll need to take a completely different tack …
But four more from Mr Davies - whatever will he end his run on?
July 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Doug, I’m not misled about anything, nor do I suppose Who was watched only by elitists. But its fanbase was never like it is today. Look around you (hell, you’re the one in the U.K.!) The program adored by many for so long is now adored so ubiquitously — from the classroom to Buckingham Palace, by pub-goers and critics, from literature professors to cabdrivers. Your entire nation, especially after that atrocious finale, is in awe of it.
And while we’re on the subject, a touch of elitism doesn’t hurt now and then. Mark points to the fact the finale had astronomically high AI’s, which reinforces my point about lowest common denominators. On the strength of “AI’s”, we may as well accept that Keanu Reeves is a good actor, Dan Brown writes good fiction, and McDonald’s food is as good as gourmet cuisine.
July 8th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
But I don’t think this fan-base is any different from the one it used to have. Oddly the main exception is literature professors, but that’s about the changing nature of texts and TV between the era of classic Who and New Who.
July 14th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Here’s an excellent review from Behind the Sofa. Every word so true.