f4f3 | Late Arrivals at the Doctor Who finale...

Journey’s End

I finally managed to see the Doctor Who series finale last night. A very impressive piece of work.

Starting from the beginning, the title nagged at my memory. At first I thought it was a reference to Arthur C Clarke’s “Childhood’s End”, a novel which centres on the ability of humans to evolve to a higher state, which would have been a nice allusion to the affect the Doctor seems to have on those around him.

More pertinently, though, the episode shares its title with a play by R.C. Sheriff, a play set in the British trenches of World War One, dealing with the effect of war on ordinary people turned into soldiers.

This Journey’s End is also a war story. That theme is played on several times in the episode, from the military nature of UNIT, through the various destructive plans hatched by the Doctor’s “children”, the repetitive saluting, to the genocide committed by a Doctor “born in war” (I, like Unblinkered, was a little unsure of the suitability of German-speaking Daleks chanting “Exterminate” quite so close to Nuremburg, by the way).

As a piece of plotting involving almost the entire cast of the last three series, I thought it came off fairly well, but it was far from flawless. Martha’s journey to Germany, and indeed the whole “Key” sub-plot didn’t add much to the proceedings – she could have as easily delivered her warning to the Daleks, and been transported to the Crucible, from New York. Gwen and Ianto’s appearance was token, but then, what would we have done with another two soldiers on the Crucible or in the Tardis?

Jack was well handled (which I’m sure he enjoyed) and managed to be brave, clever and surprisingly restrained in the hugging department.

Sara-Jane was consistent, Jackie less annoying than usual, Mickey a nice-to-see, but not much more.

Rose left me cold. Maybe because I’d accepted her exile, and having her come back cheapened the emotional impact it had first time round. And the fact that Billie Piper played her like a botoxed alien didn’t help.

The duplicate doctor? A nice moment, good initial impact, but too silly for words. There was no way he could make it past the end of the episode, so it was hard to get too worked up about him. Dumping him on Earth 2 was logical, but there are an awful lot of Doctor Analogues littering the galaxy now – The Doctor, The Doctor Lite, Mrs Doctor, The Doctor’s Daughter and Donna with her latent Doctor Brain. Still, I’ve been asking for a Three Doctors arc for a while now, and it was good to have it, even if only for 20 minutes or so.

Donna herself – well, it was the “Flowers for Algernon” ending, crossed with “And then she woke up and it had all been a dream”. Dramatically it worked, in terms of a single episode, or even a single series, but it does leave yet another loose end dangling.

I think this stands as an excellent wrap-up for RTD’s stint on the show, and gives us a good illustration of the strengths and weaknesses of a serial character who’s been around for 40 years now. There’s a deep and rich Who Universe, a sub-creation full of four decades of marvellous toys – loathsome villains, stout companions, heavens and hells, whistles and bells. Davies took out more of those toys, and treated them better, than anyone who’s been at the helm for a long while. But at the end of each series, all of the toys get put back in the box, and everything is as it was. The Doctor is still in the Tardis, still on his own, still ready for another adventure. The necessary tragedy of the eternal hero is that he hasn’t reached, he’s no nearer, to his own journey’s end.