Doctor Who 4x13 - "Journey's End"
 

"Journey's End" by Russell T Davies
The Doctor's dead (for 23 seconds), Rose is hilariously incompetent yet still ends up shagging David Tennant by the end of the episode, somebody gets killed (lol just kidding), end of series.

Oh, and:

COMING CHRISTMAS 2008

THE RETURN

OF THE CYBERMEN

Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why.

It was an absolutely fantastically brilliantly amazing wonderful enjoyable 65 minutes and definitely the best episode of the whole four new serieses

In a break from form, I'm rating this in "the grand scheme of all Doctor Who" rather than on a per-series basis, so it's got a 6 for "good". Probably the only way the RTD era could have been wrapped up suitably with the minimal of plotting outrage among fans.

Nice fun-poking at the TVM.. "Part-human, part-Time Lord.. well that's wizard"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAH gugugugugugugugugugugugugug

The Doctor's dead (for 23 seconds) - When?
Rose is hilariously incompetant yet still ends up shagging David Tennant by the end of the episode - Oh really, when?

The preview for Christmas was crap as (if anyone uses the net or reads papers) we already knew.


I enjoyed the episode but the ending seemed rushed and confusing. When Donna stopped the Daleks shooting and started making them spin I got confused to how and what she was doing. I don't know why Rose had to go back to the parallel world when Mickey didn't. They didn't think this part through. I didn't like the TARDIS dragging the earth either. It seemed silly to me. I'll watch this episode back tomorrow to see if I can understand it more and then it will be Doctor Who withdrawal symptoms from then on. :(

Whoopsies, I broke the poll. Please re-vote, everybody.

I gave the episode 7/10 as i thought RTD tried to put too much into 65 minutes and it didn't really do much for me. I did really like it, but i felt like there was something missing... maybe it's because i had read a lot of spoilers over the week :)

Uh... wow. I have to admit that was pretty disappointing. I thought Donna was going to wind up being a chemeleon arc'd Time Lady or something that wasn't... completely random. Too much to hope for, I know.
I can't really form a good rating right now because I was left with more of a ";____;" and "... wut." feeling than anything else.

Oh well... goodbye one of the best companions ever. :(


... and goodbye RTD. :D (I'd like to think all the characters were dancing around because of that.)

NEVER FORGET RUSSEL T DAVIES, YOU DID THIS!!!!! I NAME YOU... FOREVER... YOU ARE THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS!!!!!!!!!

Rat, your avatar and sig banner could induce seizures...

It's a fun 65 minutes... Plot wasn't very strong though, a bit too silly at points. But oh well, everything's wrapped up. (6/10)

As he said to me over IM earlier today, it reflects his mental state after watching Journey's End.

I think he may be on to something here, I'm starting have a bit of a headache...

That was pretty much my mental state a while after I posted the first post I posted in here. Hence the second one.

Shower calmed me down though. All in all, good birthday despite the episode. :D

I hope you realize the irony of that sentence...

I do now, yes.

Side effects for "Journey's End" may include:

• Sinus Irritation
• Bleeding from the Nose
• Tinnitus
• Detached Retinas
• Mild Semi-Permanent Psychosis
• Seizures lasting up to four hours
• Sudden Craving for the Blood of nine million Babies
• Bleeding from multiple orifices
• Stomach Ulcers
• Kidney Failure
• Terminal Brain Malfunction
• Persistent Vegetative State
• Spontaneous Combustion
• and Death

Well, I wasn't even going to post anything in this thread because I thought this episode was so bad it wasn't even worth discussing, but here we go:
As much as I would like to make generalized statements about how terrible it is in the context of both the Old Series and the New Series, I don't have the liberty to do that. However, I would be quite perturbed to discover that in the "grand scheme of all Doctor Who", fans considered this to be "good." I would be quite frightened to know what a "bad" episode qualified as. I mean, this episode inflicted enough irreversible brain damage as is. If this is good I'm surprised Danny isn't a vegetable by now.

Things that were TOTALLY necessary to wrapping up the series:
1. Shocking cliffhanger that gets resolved in a record 22 seconds!
2. Two Doctors! One so that Rose can be happy, the other so that we can continue on with the show.
3. German Daleks that can't actually speak German correctly!
4. TARDIS = giant tow-truck for Earth
5. Rose's mum (hell, even the Doctor acknowledged how useless she is at the end of the episode when he told her not to touch anything)
6. Doctor Donna! lolz!
7. REALITY BOMB OHS NOES!

All of the major plot points of the episode just seemed to be one giant fanwank. I'm sure all the fangirls were squealing when they got to see their precious Rose kiss the now part-human Doctor (OMG NOW THEY CAN B TOGETHUR FoReVeR!!!). But was it important to the plot at all? No. I'm pretty sure RTD could've written the episode without the unnecessary regeneration scene--which by the way accomplished nothing in the 22 seconds in which it occurred except to confuse the hell out of everyone. And were his explanations any good? No. Using big science-y words like "neutrino" does not qualify as a valid explanation (does he even know what the fuck those are?).

In short, the episode was melodramatic and so utterly meaningless in the course of the entire series that Donna was able to feasibly wake up, receive a text message from a friend about the sky being filled with planets, call her friend and tell her she was being silly, and then go on to have a normal gossipy conversation. The New Series hasn't been all that great, but this is definitely its lowest point, and by definition, that would make it probably one of the worst if not the worst episode ever.

IN-FUCKING-DEED.

+ YouTube Video

In that case you'll be disappointed with the explanations in 95% of the Doctor Who stories out there. Have fun.

As for the "Totally necessary" stuff - if you made an episode that just tied up loose ends it would be, frankly, a bit shit.

It'd be less shit than this.

Though I may just be butthurt over the seemingly unnecessary tragic loss of my favorite companion next to Jack and Romana.

It may have actually been somewhat less tragic if she just... died. Yeah, that would start parent drama, but a heroic death would have been somewhat more appealing to me than what happened instead. Not sure why.

+ YouTube Video

Disagreed. Almost every explanation I've ever heard on Doctor Who makes more sense than the convoluted mess that sprung from RTD's mind. I honestly, honestly don't know how you can compare them. (Besides, Megan's been exposed to a fair bit of Doctor Who by now... and she has never once criticized or thought twice about an explanation given in the old series. I don't usually take issue with them either. At least writers back in the good old days knew how to make events happen that actually made sense for the most part. Even if the explanations are somewhat lacking, at least the events are not completely fucking mind-blowingly preposterous and then followed by shit explanations.)

Of course there should be extra stuff in there. It just shouldn't be shit.

I don't think I have particularly high standards when it comes to plot explanations. I've watched a lot of crap in my day and I will usually swallow whatever is fed to me willingly, so long as it makes some sort of sense in the context of the story. I also feel that less is more, and that the simpler the explanation, the easier it is to swallow. I felt that most of the plot points in Journey's End were so needlessly preposterous that RTD could not feasibly come up with a satisfying explanation. David Cronenberg once said of film, "Every movie has its own rules and you can really set up any game that you want, but once you do that you really have to play that game, otherwise the audience knows that something’s wrong and something’s not working." Although he was referring to violence in film (seeing as how when he said this in the '80s he was still focused on horror films), I think that this idea can be extended to rules of any kind in any visual medium. The overall tone and conventions of the show have been established since the '60s. Now, this is not to say that these unwritten rules can never be broken (change is certainly a positive thing, and in the science fiction genre there's a lot to work with). As an example, I've been told that Midnight was uncharacteristic of Doctor Who in that there was no real explanation given in the end for the episode's events. Yet even though it differed from the norm, Midnight's ending was poignant and lent an appropriately unsettling tone to the episode as a whole. The rules of Doctor Who may have been bent for a bit, but within the context of the episode the lack of explanation was perfectly apt. The same cannot be said for Journey's End, for the entire episode was absolutely, utterly ridiculous. Perhaps it could have been halfway decent if there were explanations given, in laymen's terms, as to why these specific events occurred and why they were important to the plot. The fact of the matter is, he could've written a suspenseful finale without introducing outrageous and virtually incomprehensible plot points.

As Danny said, so far in my exposure to Doctor Who I have not been dissatisfied with any of the explanations. When you're watching low-budget science-fiction, you learn not to be overly judgmental and to try and view things conceptually. Sadly, in this day and age, with high-budgets and great special effects, we are constantly shown fantastic visuals but there's rarely a point behind them. What becomes visually stimulating no longer becomes conceptually stimulating. And to be honest, I'd take cardboard props and a fascinating story ANY day over shiny CGI and a story that feels more like an afterthought.

Again, like Danny said, of course there should be other stuff in the episode. I just think it would be nice if the extra stuff didn't make me want to beat my head against the wall.

Agreed. I was sad to see her portrayed in her very last moments as a loud and obnoxious idiot. Sure she's normally pretty boisterous but it would've been nice if she had a more dignified departure.

I'll reverse the polarity of the neutron flows. I'll have to agree with Pete on this one if I'm honest. There was lots of crazy science in old Who that just isn't possible. Wasn't there a Tom Baker episode where they catch a star in a net? Didn't Peter Davison float around in space without exploding? There is so, so much to be picked apart in the old series. Hell, they've even made a book about it http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-E.../dp/0786419903

I was right -- you are better at owning people in the face when I'm not with you.

Was generally alright (forgive my vote I found it somewhat better first time round), but there were a lot of things that annoyed me and rather spoiled the arc for me.

- Torchwood: was there really a point in them being in this arc at all? Given the part they played in this episode, not really.
- Mickey: Apart from Torchwood continuity's sake, did he really need to be here?
- Jackie... need I say more.
- LALZ WE MADE TEH DR FEEL BAD ULTIMATE VICTORY!1!!!11!11!1
- Osterhagen Key: Apart from playing a part in the last point... did it really need to be dreamed up? I would find it worrying that UNIT's most secret and ultimate weapon is a planetwide suicide button...
- The regeneration thing... why did they have to have a regeneration if they're not going to have a new Doctor? On top of that, the two Doctors thing wasn't explained well.

I agree for the most part, but it's better than a reset button.

It's easier to own in the face when I don't have to be around you playing Keff and Murray. Both of them kill brain cells and I need those for maximum pwnage.

Whoops. :o

Also, let it be known that "Journey's End" was the biggest flop in TV history.

I don't usually download the episodes, but I made an exception for the last two of this series because of all the spoilers now flying around freely post-UK-broadcast, so here's what I thought of "Journey's End".

Perhaps creatively, but 9+ million viewers - the Beeb's saying, "Meh, we'll take it."

Although it didn't quite live up to what we got with "The Stolen Earth" (great cliffhanger, but you just knew that hand would come into play at some point after the close-up earlier in that episode), I thought "Journey's End" was fun. Not great, but fun. Lacking in the areas everyone else here has already discussed in greater, more explicit detail, but hey, it's an RTD Season Finale, those almost always lack substance and logic, big time. (See below.)

I suspect that it may have been painful for some to see the Daleks rendered utterly harmless, but this has, in fact, been done before (may I recommend part two of the Jon Pertwee installment "Deth to the Daleks"). That they were defeated virtually single-handed by Ms. Bovvered (who was actually fun to watch through all that - female Doctor, anyone?) may indeed inflict even more despair on Dalek Lovers everywhere, not to mention seeing them getting pushed around by Rose and Sarah-Jane - although something like that has also happened in the past (Pat Troughton's "Evil of the Daleks", the cliffhanger to Part Five - "Trains...trains...trains...").

So, "Journey's End" - far from perfect. Total pantomine in a lot of places. Not the best of the series, obviously. Not even close when a brand new -4/10 rating is specially introduced here for it. But hey, it's RTD's last Season Finale (yay), so it will likely start going uphill from here, now that Little Mr. Moffat's starting to gain control of the remote. "Journey's End" - something of a mess. But boy was it fun.



Past RTD Season Finales: "Parting of the Ways" was great, but I can't help but think that the whole "Bad Wolf" thing is still largely unresolved. And I'm guessing that Danny could probably indicate at least ten problems with "Last of the Time Lords" and a hundred for "Journey's End". "Doomsday" might be more of a challenge, since it actually got a few things right - 1) Daleks vs. Cybermen - tell me the fans haven't dreamed of that for decades, and 2) a suitable, dramatic send-off for Rose, the emotional impact of which many felt might be badly diluted by her return this season - and it was. Nothing against Billie, she's fantastic, but Danny's always maintained that writing the character out in "Doomsday" would have been better off remaining as canon.

Still, nice to see a happy ending. I'm a hapless sucker for those. :rolleyes: <3 :dalek::tardis:

This was just an odd episode in my opinion. I mean, if they were towing Earth back and there were gale force winds blowing while it was being towed, what about the people outside? Did the Doctor think, "Oh, well, they'll just die. No harm done. Just killing a lotta people who are dumb." or what? And wouldn't the stars that were in the way strike the Earth as well?

And WTF up with the Ostrohagen Key? Why would anyone in their right mind invent somethin' like that!? And U.N.I.T. being the ones who invented it, too! Last option my ass, you don't blow up the fucking planet as a last option.

(I'm only posting so I'm not kicked off. But I really needed to get that off my chest.)

Stop, think about the logistics of that question, and then brace yourself for a shocking new revelation:

You are a moron.

Clearly this guy has no idea why space is actually called space. Funnily enough it's because an absolutely astronomical proportion of it is... empty space.

Plus it probably went into Hyperspace or the Time Vortex, so it wouldn't bump into any stars even if space weren't all that empty. :P
I mean, if it didn't go into either one of those it would have taken an incomprehensible amount of time to get it back in place.

Sid Sutton had to put a tube on the end of his camera so that stars wouldn't collide into it.

Although not physically unwatchable, I have voted as such because staring at a blank wall would have been a better utilisation of my time.

A few things which regrettably have clung to my mind after over a week:

RTD has no sense of scale; 25 nukes can blow up the planet? Aye right.

Donna saying a bunch of random words destroyed the Daleks. I'm confused; is Doctor Who meant to be science fiction or fantasy?

The last 15 or 20 minutes seemed completely superfluous. The whole saying goodbye thing could have been easily compressed into 2 or 3 minutes as opposed to drawing it out into something which was most of the reason this episode was over an hour long.

Why was the Earth the last planet left? What purpose did that serve? It hardly served as a problem at all.

Probably more, but none which can come to mind right now.


Oh, also, hi, I'm back.

I'm not going to stand a chance arguing my point but I loved it but didn't like the fact that we had 3 gadgets that very nearly saved the world. Thank God they weren't used but fighting and creeping past Daleks could have been more interesting.

Lucky Jack was with Sarah because she would never have detonated the Warp Star, I couldn't see her doing it. Especially as shes so keen to get back to Luke!

Oh and what the hell Murray. Danny's post on another thread reminded me that Murray's music was pretty much all recycled and the some cues were just awful!

I hated the regeneration, what cheap cliff hanger, hate it that they messed around like that with one of the principles of the show