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, it also feels like a huge reset button has been pressed, which is a writing technique I can never identify with. Pete pointed out above that it had been building up to this for the entire two-parter, and he's right -- but that doesn't make a bad solution good. A horrible idea can be built up for a long time and be tied well into the story, but that doesn't make it a good idea. The fact of the matter is that it was still a substantial cop-out, and it essentially rendered the entire episode meaningless, even when you consider the memories built up by the main characters.
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True, it is a reset button. However, sometimes the only way to deal with having built up a huge threat is to have it removed. It's a sad fact of sci-fi writing. If you think the reset button should never be used in DW, did you also hate The Doctor Dances? That has a reset button at the end - "Just this once, Rose, everybody lives!" We NEED that sort of optimism after a series of brilliant but dark Battlestar Galactica. 2 resets in 41 episodes seems good to me.
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Lucy Saxon was also acting very weird and inconsistent throughout this episode.
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She was?
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she seemed like she was high or drunk or something, because she was really out of it, and I mean in a hugely noticeable way. She seriously looked like she was on some kind of tranquilizer or antidepressant or something.
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And?
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And then at the end, even though she seemed to have no regrets about supporting the Master throughout the entire episode and presumably for the year before
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Except for the look of disgust after he kisses her, the look of unhappiness as she hands him his coat like a servant, the look of betrayal as he is massaged by another woman, the (offscreen) reaction to his suggestion of a threesome, and the shiner under her right eye. Yes, otherwise, they had a lovely relationship
Also, she's made utterly nihilistic and probably doolally by his showing her the end of creation. Hence the strange behaviour? Unless, of course, RTD put it in for no reason because he secretly hates Doctor Who.
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she suddenly switched sides at the end, and said "Doctor" right along with everyone else, and in fact fired the shot that killed the Master at the end. That seems like very inconsistent or possibly just lazy writing to me, like RTD needed a character to fill multiple roles, so he used the same one in two places with little regard to established characterization.
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I for one was watching Lucy throughout most of her scenes (mainly because I want to take her home and cuddle her all night) and it's very clear what her character is thinking, and why she switches sides. Harold Saxon, her Harry, who was so good to her father and literally promised her the world, starts to ignore her, beat her up, and cheat on her with other women. Oh, and he makes her go mad.
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Russell T Davies also threw out pretty much my entire perception and understanding of a Time Lord's regeneration process in this episode, seemingly ignoring previously established continuity. He has made regeneration not only a very minor issue ("it's only a bullet, just regenerate"), but also seemingly a process of will rather than a fact of biology. It has never been stated or even implied in any previous situation involving regeneration in either the new series or the classic series, and it seemed to me that RTD changed the fundamental principle behind regeneration in this episode, which I strongly dislike.
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Romana II, Destiny of the Daleks. She decides to regenerate, and picks the form of Lalla Ward (woohoo!) after some deliberation.
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I was also very surprised when the Master was actually killed off. I know it was made obvious that there was a return route established, as Tom said above, but I still just didn't like how RTD just saw fit to simply kill the Master. Even if the Master does make his return later on, there was still a sense of finality to that final scene between the Doctor and the Master, which there shouldn't have been, because the Master has supposedly died many times before, and there has never been any kind of reconciliation or anything like that between the Doctor and the Master at the end, and it also screws with the audience's perceptions. Even though it was obvious that the Master survived in some way, the scene was definitely treated as an ending (especially the cremation scene), and it just shouldn't have been written like that where it's being so harped-on if he's just going to come back. It somewhat cheapens the scene, the episode, and the Master's eventual return.
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I had no idea the Master would die, and I found that whole scene very moving. The reconciliation never happened before for 2 reasons. 1, old Who was less emotional, and 2, in old Who the Master wasn't the only other Time Lord. Imagine you wiped out the whole Human race to defeat an enemy who survived anyway, and after decades you meet another Human who survived. No matter who it is, you'll be ecstatic just to be with someone else like you. For the Doctor to know that a Time Lord survived his inferno, even of he is a Grade A Bastard, must have been a very hope-inspiring moment. When he cradles the Master's broken body and weeps, I thought Tennant was superb and the whole scene made sense to me.
How do you know he'll return, by the way?
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The cremation scene itself seemed rather strange. My friend Steven noted that the Doctor was following Native American practices for disposing of the body, and I'm not really sure why. It just didn't seem like a very Time Lord or Doctor-like practice and the scene felt rather strange
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Because you are a Time Lord yourself, and you know about their death rituals.