First, I got a huge kick out of feeling I was sponsoring Sarah-Jane’s car. I mean, honestly, talk about a squee-moment when I saw this:


I mean, my nickname on a licence plate in a Doctor Who episode? Oh... my... goodness! I got a total kick out of that.

Okay, that was the random comment of the week. On to business now. My main concern this week was to see whether an episode could do Rose and Ten justice when it also included many other former characters. I mean, I knew they going to have Sylvia and Wilf (paintball gun vs Daleks? FTW!) I knew they were bringing back Jack (squeee! I love Jack!), Martha, Sarah-Jane, plus introducing Luke, Ianto and Gwen, and that all felt a little overwhelming when they had so much to deal with. When you’ve got to give everyone a little bit of screen-time, I was bound to feel cheated about Rose and Jack.

But... I should have had faith in RTD. I think I already said that last week, but really, I should’ve. That guy loves the Doctor and Rose too much to deny them a proper reunion.

Anyway, let’s deal with the companions first. I enjoyed seeing them all again, yes, though I’d have been all right if they hadn’t been included. Rose and Donna not withstanding, the only one I was truly interested in was Jack, because I’ve always loved his character, and I was extremely eager to see some Ten/Rose/Jack interaction. In the end, I didn’t get *much* of that dynamic, but it was still awesome to see him again, and he’ll be in tonight's episode, so yay!

It was also interesting to see Jack in his Torchwood environment. Beware I have yet to see a single episode of Torchwood. Planning to start watching this summer. Anyway, I loved it that Jack was playing it tough because he just had to. Earth was falling apart, Ianto and Gwen, while ready to fight, knew it was a lost cause from the moment he told them he couldn’t do anything, Rose and Donna couldn’t sum up any strength when the Doctor was dying, and so he was there, standing up, doing what he had to do, putting his own feeling aside because someone had to take charge and do what the Doctor would’ve done. Many times, and especially during the regeneration scene, I felt Jack was a true hero, that he’d collapse afterwards but put on a brave face for Rose and Donna’s sake.

Yet everyone’s faith was endangered when the Daleks arrived. I loved watching each of their reaction to discovering they were under Dalek invasion. All of them have met the Doctor’s arch-enemies before, and they all know how deadly and dangerous the Daleks are.


Again, Jack, while terrified when he realised they were dealing with Daleks, immediately tried to comfort both Ianto and Gwen. He’s gone through this once. In fact, he died in S1, exterminated by a Dalek. He knows there’s nothing they can do, yet even after he tells his companions there’s nothing he can do, he’s still fighting the fight and trying to find a way out.


Sarah-Jane, too, was terrified by the Daleks, having met them back when she was travelling with the Doctor. They’re her nightmare from the past, and I found that scene where she hears their threat and cries silent tears very moving.


Rose, of course, upon hearing the Dalek’s ‘EXTERMINATE!’, is thrown back to the heart of the events in Canary Wharf. Daleks are the reason why she got separated from the Doctor in the first place. They terrify her, and they took the Doctor away from her *twice*.


Daleks, too, were fascinating in this episode. Granted, I love Daleks. They are, by far, my favourite villains, first because they’re hardly beatable, second because their design is fantastic (which is the reason why I disliked the Human-Dalek in Evolution of the Daleks – they had lost their essence, then.) I loved meeting Davros for the first time (I’m a New-Who fan); I thought the prosthetics were absolutely amazing to create him, and he scared me out of my wits. Dalek Supreme was so arrogant it chilled my blood, and Dalek Caan’s crazy tirades made me grin; I’m sure Nick Briggs had a blast dubbing him.


But you know what I was waiting for. I spent so much time thinking of the reunion, how I’d like it to happen, how it could happen, and how it would happen that seeing it for real made my heart-rate shoot through the roof. What I feared most was that RTD wouldn’t let us see that seeing each other again woke up their emotions and feelings for each other. I imagined they’d get together to fight some random villain, smile at each other and act as if Bad Wolf Bay hadn’t happened. That’s what I’d have disliked.

Again, I was wrong to worry.

First, RTD took his time building up the Ten/Rose tension throughout the episode. We’d had a first glimpse into what he was planning last week, in Turn Left, when Ten finally realised that Donna had met Rose:


It went on in the beginning of The Stolen Earth, and while at first I was a tiny bit disappointed that we hadn’t seen the Ten’s explanation to Donna about Bad Wolf on screen, this totally made up for it:



Eyes twinkling with happiness and hope. I hadn’t seen Ten looking so hopeful and happy since he last travelled with Rose, and yet, Rose not withstanding, he’s facing something very ominous.

I felt so very sad for Rose when she was left out of the subwave network. The Doctor noticed her absence an acknowledged it, but still, she was the only one they couldn’t see or hear. I know some people were annoyed with her apparent jealousy towards Martha, but I think it’s mostly that at first she was certain that she’d be the fourth one in the subwave communication, and suddenly she wasn’t, and Martha took the space she thought she’d have. She felt powerless and left out.



Then, finally, the TARDIS landed on Earth, in an atmosphere that was very much like what I’d hoped for when it came to the Ten/Rose first encounter.


And then... well, words fail me, so I made a picspam instead:


                                                                 "Just... the darkness is coming."
                                                                 "Anything else?"




Then of course, since happiness *can’t* be about fluffy flowers growing on the shoulder of blue rabbits, Ten and Rose couldn’t get the hug (snog, let’s face it, if they’d reached for each other in the end, they’d have snogged) they were craving.


As RTD says in the Confidential, every love scene should have its Dalek to spice things up.






By that point I was crying. The scene was everything I was hoping for and more. Romantic, angsty, desperate, and definitely acknowledging Ten and Rose’s feelings for each other.


Ten regenerating was definitely something I didn’t expect. It made me cry even more of course, especially seeing Rose and Donna’s tears and Jack bravely trying to take charge when he’s probably just as overwhelmed as they are. But he can’t regenerate! He can’t! Like Rose says, he can’t! *sobs*


There’s lots of speculation going on about the sort of outcome we’ll get tomorrow of course. No-one really expected Ten to die and regenerate, not when it’s been well known that David Tennant has signed up for next year’s specials and even possibly for another year in 2010. People have seen him shoot scenes for future episodes, too. His performance as Hamlet with the RSC stops in January 2009, right when DW starts being filmed again. So... unless they’ve been making up the biggest lie and stand-up they’ve ever done in the history of television, David Tennant is still going to be the Doctor (and that’s a huge sigh of relief for me, because I couldn’t deal with real regeneration now – love Ten too much!)

What I noticed is that Ten got shot sideways by the Dalek. Granted, from what little I know about Time Lords, if he’d been shot full-blast, regeneration wouldn’t even be possible. But still. Maybe he’s got enough body functions still working properly for his body to decide that switching every single cell is a bit overkill? Well anyway, there’s the arm-in-a-jar, too. We’ve been getting shots of that arm in the console room since the beginning of S4, when they could have ditched it ages ago. They haven’t, so obviously it’s going to be used at some point, won’t it?

Also, there’s Martha’s Great Big Red Button (the Osterhagen Key) which will HAVE to be used, since Harriet Jones strictly forbid its use. I’m sort of afraid it’ll be one great big reset, that one. Not sure how I feel about that.

And then there’s my own little theory, which is that, if I understood correctly, the twenty-seven stolen planets (and therefore the TARDIS) are hidden in a tiny pocket of time within the Medusa Cascade, one second ahead of the rest of the universe. Come out of the Medusa Cascade and whatever happened inside won’t have happened. Which... I’m not too keen on either. I want that whole running-towards-each-other scene to have happened. I want Rose to have cradled the Doctor’s head as he was dying. I want him to have smiled through the pain of agony. I’m a sadist, I guess. ;) And I want more Ten/Rose, definitely more Ten/Rose. SQUEEEE!

Anyway, I really can’t wait to see what RTD came up with. One more day to go, and tonight... tonight...


SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!