#The cybermen keep sneaking up on ya

[chosetoseethebestinyou]

The Doctor / Me watching Doctor Who, like, once a season:

can't believe I keep falling for this. Even more so can't believe the doctor keeps falling for this.

[noblechaton]

ultimately I feel Stolen Earth/Journey's End is at least RTD's best finale in terms of spectacle. and everything feels properly tense and urgent thanks to the lead in from Turn Left and feels generally cohesive with the rest of the series. lots of good payoffs to various elements that felt earned. meta-crisis Doctor is definitely some plot device but because of the hand stuff throughout the series and beforehand, it doesn't feel as sudden or out of nowhere. nobody's getting forgotten in the story, like the Cybermen from series 2, or left in some state that'll never be revisited, like Martha's family from series 3. really love that Dalek Caan twist too

still kind of lacking otherwise though. like Stolen Earth is largely fine if a bit sluggish on the Doctor's end of things but Journey's End is a lot of standing around doing nothing for a near hour with those that do attempt to do something being teleported into the Standing Room where they then stand for a few minutes themselves. I also think the Daleks' plan is kind of too much. "We will be the only thing in existence!!" okay man. cool. I know that won't happen because then the show ends lmao. it's just too ridiculous a threat I feel. one you know can't be paid off. also feel Davros wasn't used that well - he was put into what's basically a prison, but he can give orders?? and while it's cool to see older stuff return, I think something meatier would have been nice for him

and really it's sort of a victim of something that continues into the Moffat era where they keep trying to up the stakes but in doing so things just get sort of more boring and convoluted and difficult to really get into. this one has tension throughout but by the time the meta-crisis Doctor fucking rhino charges at Davros with his big dumb plot gun only to get skmazzed instead I just didn't really care anymore. he goes flying and then Donna goes flying and you're just like "Oh. Okay." and you check out mentally

a good way of avoiding this would have been to have meta-crisis and Donna - if not the other side characters - sneak through the Crucible and do various things to try and stop the Daleks instead of them just. threatening everything with bombs and then being teleported into the janitor's closet. ya threaten explosions enough times and it just gets dull lol

it's still good of course - RTD/etc.'s floor is largely at worst "good" at this point - and it feels very satisfactory on the whole but it's the sort of plot that needed a third episode and some further revisions on the script I feel