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If you want to go back to part one, click HERE.
Alright, I will continue to write words under screencaps for basically every scene and there may even be SPOILERS for Classic Who stories too. I'll not say a thing about anything that happens afterwards though, even if it had been given away in a press release by this point.
Okay first there were ghosts all over the world, but the ghosts turned out to be Cybermen from a parallel universe. The same universe that Rose's dad Pete is still alive in. They can cross over because of a breach opened by our semi-evil Torchwood Institute, and his good Torchwood needs the Doctor's help to close it.
Oh plus there are Daleks in the Torchwood building. They've just used Mickey's time traveller radiation to activate a Time Lord artefact they've brought with them called the Genesis Ark, but we don't know what it does yet.
So now the Doctor has to stop the Cyberman invasion, prevent the Daleks from doing whatever they're doing, and close the breach. And all he's got is a pair of 3D glasses.
And now, the conclusion:
It's not going well for the Cybermen, especially that one up there on the walkway who gets shot and falls off. Their new guns may be able to punch through a Dalek's polycarbite shell, but first they have to get through the shield.
Sadly the Jathaa Sunglider over there that got mentioned in part 1 was ultimately never used, because the budget for the sequence had been reallocated to the CGI for the Beast in The Satan Pit. But the magna-clamps mentioned in part 1 are going to be used, as the Doctor sneaks over in an attempt to liberate them without being shot.
He's also trying to figure out what kind of Time Lord technology the Genesis Ark is, but he doesn't have to wait long to find out as the Daleks get it into the air and open it up.
Unfortunately the Time Lords are actual idiots, as they kept the Daleks in prison without taking away their shells or disabling their weapons. Granted they're tough shells to crack (see: Dalek), but if anyone can it's the Time Lords.
But how long will it take to release millions of Daleks? I counted 16 of them coming out over 3.7 seconds, so that's 4.3 Daleks per second, or 370,000 per day. It's going to take a while.
Things are starting to seem very bleak, and Pete's making the case that they should get out of this doomed reality and back to his world. Are they actually going to abandon the universe the Doctor has been protecting for 43 years and move to a near identical alternate version? I've seen it happen before, in a couple of series actually.
Plus this is all reminding me of the first Doctor Who serial to feature a parallel universe, Inferno. That was also about a project to generate energy, led by a boss who was too stubborn to stop. Long story short, they blew up the Earth. Fortunately it was the parallel Earth and it was a bit of a Nazi planet, but that's still not good!
It's even on the Daleks from inside the sphere, weirdly, even though it was supposed to isolate them from everything. Oh hang on, did the Doctor mean nothing would touch them because they were outside reality in the Void? Never mind, I've got it now.
Anyway, the most important thing is, what does this scene look like through actual 3D glasses? The answer is... it looks like the Void stuff is floating a little bit in front of the Doctor as he moves around.
The Doctor explains his genius plan to pull the levers and suck everything with Void stuff on them back into the Void. Rose gets it... and she gets that it will include the two of them.
There is really only one safe place for Rose to be right now: the TARDIS. Or maybe in a parallel universe, which is where the Doctor wants her to be, even though his plan will seal it off forever. Pete's Torchwood team is travelling back over and taking Jackie with them, so Rose will be cut off from her mother forever if she stays with the Doctor. But she's made her choice.
But Rose wasn't having it back then either, she made her choice a long time ago, so she returns to help the Doctor even though it means never seeing her mother again. Fortunately the Doctor brought two magna-clamps, so they've both got something to hold onto when it really starts to suck. The Doctor mentions some other great teams, "Hope and Glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake," and the line's completely lost on me because I know none of them.
Oh, they're comic strip characters, apparently. And one of them's a ghost, huh... Anyway, this wouldn't be Parting of the Ways again without enemies coming up to catch the Doctor before he's ready to pull off his plan. And there also has to be one ally standing in their way.
I guess she must have gotten the next tier of Torchwood training that allows her to resist Cyberman programming as well as psychic paper. She's even got her own voice still, as she repeats "I did my duty for Queen and country" while a single tear leaks from her eye hole. I think it's supposed to be oil, which makes considerably more sense than them equipping the suit with tear ducts.
Now I'm wondering, what happened to the Cybermen who were converted on this planet? Did their conversion gear come with a supply of Void-tainted robot parts which will be carried off with the others?
It's not as bad for the Doctor and Rose as they had less exposure. And there was nothing at all pulling on the actors, just a bit of wind to get their hair and clothes moving, so they had to pretend they were getting dragged in. Tennant had an unfair advantage as his legs were long enough that he could rest them on that weirdly steampunk lever mechanism.
Though at least one of the Cult of Skaro Daleks escapes by making an emergency temporal exit, so they don't have to contrive a reason for them to have survived next time.
Okay, the Doctor said that there were millions of Daleks, so at minimum that's 2 million. It seems like there are about 20 flying by a second, so they're going to have to hold on to the levers for at least... 28 hours.
The Void is known by different names and some people call it 'Hell' (the coordinates were all sixes). That means that this season alone, the beings that the Doctor and Rose have personally sent into Hell now include:
- The Beast (mind and body).
- Millions of Cybermen.
- Millions of Daleks.
They gave the actress a bit of help this time, putting her in a harness and hanging her from a wire, instead of relying on her ability to float. But Rose can't keep holding onto the lever like she could the magnaclamp, and she falls into the white void.
So despite all the foreshadowing about her death, Rose wasn't karmically punished for her recklessness after all! And it turns out that her dad will risk his own life to save her in any dimension, which thankfully didn't happen this time either. Pete is actually strong enough to stand in front of the Void and grab someone falling into it.
The two of them vanish and the wind dies down as the Void closes itself like paper down a plughole.
This is such a brilliant and iconic moment, it gets across exactly what they're feeling. And it was all in RTD's script, so I can't praise the director for being clever. Every now and then RTD will come up with a really good idea and this wall is one of them. (Though it is also shot very well.)
Narrator Rose warned us this episode was going to be sad by saying that she dies, but this isn't quite the ending we were led to expect. In fact it's not even the end yet, though it was the end in the script that most of the cast and crew saw.
WIDE SHOT, as he slowly walks away.The last few pages were kept secret, as all the twists with the Daleks, Cybermen and Rose's departure leaking would be one thing, but no one could be allowed to know about Rose going on a road trip.
END OF EPISODE THIRTEEN
Narrator Rose returns to tell us that she heard the Doctor in a dream. She told her mum and dad about it (and Mickey, who's also living in their mansion) and they believed her. So they all got into a Jeep and drove hundreds of miles to Norway with some really great music playing on the soundtrack. Murray Gold is killing it here. Though now I'm wondering how they got the Jeep across the North Sea. Zepplin car ferry?
Rose arrives at the beach from the start of the episode and sees the faded image of the Doctor - the final ghost from another dimension.
He's burning up a sun to get enough power for this (like he said the Daleks would've done). It's funny considering this all happened because Torchwood wanted to get 5000 gigawatts, or 5 x 1012 watts, while the Doctor's using more than 3.8 x 1026 watts just to chat to Rose.
Anyway this is Dårlig Ulv Stranden (not Dalek), which translates to 'Bad Wolf Bay'. I bet RTD was extra proud of himself for coming up with that one, even if it did mean having something happen outside of London. It's a nice cinematic location though and coming out here just for this gives the episode some extra production value.
He also has the chance to say some final words to her, and like in School Reunion and The Satan Pit he can't bring himself to say how he feels... until it's too late and the connection is lost. Was he going to say "I love you," or "Goodbye, my Rose Tyler"? We'll never know, RTD never gives us a hint.
I can tell he was plenty emotional though, as he was really off his game here. First Rose had to tell him what Dårlig Ulv Stranden translates to and then the Time Lord lost track of how much time he had left! He knew he only had about 2 minutes and even with an extra 20 seconds he was still surprised about being cut off so soon.
At least it's a happy ending for Jackie, who took one trip in the TARDIS and never returned to her old life. Instead she finally got out of her flat, moved on and changed. She got her husband back, her daughter back, and even Mickey! And Rose getting her dad back isn't the worst outcome either. Turns out that Elton was right, salvation and damnation really were the same, at least for her.
But even though Rose is the narrator, the episode continues past her departure to another even more secret scene, shot after the final filming block when everyone else was at the wrap party. The Doctor's alone in his TARDIS and he finally allows himself to cry...
Plus it turns out the bride is played by famous comedy actor Catherine Tate! Rose was played by a famous pop star, so that seems to be the theme for people who join the Doctor, but is she the new companion? Viewers at the time already knew, there was a press release a few days earlier spoiling it, but I'll keep my mouth shut.
The bride is clearly a bit surprised and unhappy to be here, while the Doctor's just confused, saying "What? What? What?" Hey, he introduced "Allons-y" in part one and now he's got another catchphrase in part two. This whole season's basically the Tenth Doctor's origin story! Anyway they can't hang around for long, as they needed to take the sets apart for the move to the new studio.
will return at Christmas in
THE RUNAWAY BRIDE
THE RUNAWAY BRIDE
CONCLUSION
Doomsday is the dramatic conclusion to probably the most epic story that Doctor Who has filmed in a couple of offices, a staircase, and a warehouse yet. It's like a remake of Dalek with slightly more money, though with a very different destination. Dalek was all about how the Doctor had changed because of the Time War, while this is all about getting everything in place so that Rose can leave the show.
It's been heavily hinted that Rose was leaving for a while now, in fact she even says "this is the story of how I died" at the start of the episode, and the story does a good job of tying up two seasons worth of threads to give her a tragic departure where she gets everything she wanted except the thing she wanted most. The series is kind of having its cake and eating it, as she gets her dad back, and he gets back together with her mum, and she's rich, and she's got a good job that she's qualified for, and her mother's not lonely anymore! It's a ridiculously happy ending, and it's also a gut punch for emotionally invested viewers.
The original Doctor Who did not make a habit of absolutely crushing its audience at the end of every season, but that's what we're doing here! RTD's style is to make the audience feel feelings and that's now become a defining part of the series. Fortunately travelling with the Doctor is worth having your heart broken, allegedly. Though I'm not sure everyone watching was in the mood for a jarring final twist about a mysterious bride in the console room. Life goes on, but that was maybe too soon?
Personally I was okay with how they handled Rose's departure here, but then she wasn't my first companion. I was already familiar with Doctor Who's tradition of cycling in a new companion or two every couple of years. The series needs someone with fresh eyes who can ask all the questions. Rose had gotten to the point where she could answer questions, and that couldn't last too much longer. Well okay it could've done, the classic series had a super-intelligent Time Lord companion and a super-intelligent robot dog. At the same time. But I guess RTD Doctor Who was more calibrated for the EastEnders (or Hollyoaks) audience.
Anyway, the last episode promised Daleks and Cybermen and this more than delivered on that. But it's not the pew pew battle of lasers that's the main appeal here, it's their war of dumb petty insults. The scene ran the risk of being too silly for the show's most dangerous villains, but it turned out to be entirely in character for a whole race of furious babies. In fact the dialogue is typically pretty strong here, especially in the other stand out scenes like Jackie meeting Pete.
I really liked how the episode gave Jackie that scene with Pete near the end and made it about her; it's only fair after Mickey got his big departure in Age of Steel. Sure Rose was willing them on from the sidelines, but for once it wasn't all about her own feelings. Unfortunately the story didn't really give Rose much to do in general. Or the Doctor. For the first half all they could do was stand around and wait to be rescued and once the rescue was complete all that was left was to pull two levers that would magically solve all the problems!
At least the extremely convenient solution got adequate set up, with the Doctor whipping out his 3D glasses every time he looked at anything that had travelled through the Void. Honestly I've got to give it all a pass. Escalating the threat to ridiculous levels maybe wasn't ideal, but it was resolved in a logical way that also provided the means to give characters a satisfying exit. I can't complain about that.
It's always a bit risky for a series to write out its entire supporting cast at once, but it does give the episode and season something special that doesn't come along too often for Doctor Who: finality.
RATING
I suppose the question now is, which is better, Doctor Who's Doomsday, or Star Trek's The Doomsday Machine?
Well if you want a tense thriller with space combat, the Trek episode is the one to go for. But Doomsday is RTD-era Doctor Who done right. Okay it's maybe not the best episode of the series, it's not even the best this season, but it's a funny, entertaining story that does its characters justice as it sends them off. And it gives the revival's first companion an ending worth crying about.
8/10
(To be honest, Justice League Unlimited's The Doomsday Sanction may actually be a better episode than either of them, but it's close).
COMING SOON
In the meantime, why not share your own thoughts about the series 2 finale. Did Russell T Davies nail it this time, or was this one a miss for you?
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