Originally Posted by Ross Hendrie
Hmm, I wasnt too impressed I must say. The whole "humans going to utopia" thing was very poorly done, it was a very poor attempt at fillibustering for the whole episode between the return of Captain Jack and then return of The Master.
The return of said persons brings it up to (barely) a 9/10.
|
Agreed with Ross here. The episode itself was actually
quite disappointing. The "humans going to utopia" thing had no relevance to anything and I found myself just going "huh? what? um, okay, sure" for the first 10-15 minutes or so of the episode. The whole main plotline just seemed pretty meaningless to me. I didn't understand much, if any, of it. It all just whizzed by with so little explanation. I just didn't get it. It felt hurried and rushed and quickly put in place. It
felt like a placeholder, before I even knew what place it was holding.
I must say I also found the way the Doctor greeted Captain Jack to be quite odd. Jack had been looking for the Doctor for so long, and the Doctor hadn't seen Jack for so long. I was just kinda like "WTF?" at their reunion. It was so rushed and low-key... it seemed a bit out of character for both the Doctor and Jack.
The real subject of discussion here is the return of the Master, obviously. I will say that I preferred Derek Jacobi's debut as the Master to the (admittedly little) amount we saw of John Simm so far. Derek Jacobi played it perfectly -- low-key, scary, evil, sinister. What the Master should really be, in my mind. After the regeneration he seemed a bit too excitable and boyish -- testing out his voice, for example, and the "bye bye" line all seemed a bit out of place. But I won't judge him too soon, and also, I know what regeneration can do to a Time Lord's persona.
All things considered, I feel this episode most truly deserved an 8/10. But because of what it is, I feel as though I'm obligated to give it a 9/10, so that's what I'll do -- although it just barely, if at all, deserves it.