2. Journeys End
Who to Blame? Russel T. Davies OK, guys I ain't no Davies-hater but I'm not a fan of his big finale episodes as a general rule. They were sort of an annual 'biting-off-more-than-you-could-chew-fest' and the Series 4 closer entitled 'Journey's End' was not only no exception but in many ways the biggest anti-climax of his career. From a plot's point of view it is an anticlimax. In the first part (The Stolen Earth) we see the Doctor's impossible struggle to reach the Earth, experience loss as Harriet Jones sacrifices her life for the good of the resistance movement and despair as Donna faces the extinction of her entire race. Part two features The Doctor standing still in the basement of the daleks listening to Davros berate him. The companions spend thirty minutes walking about each with the same plan. Donna has the most interesting plot which sees her stand in the TARDIS with a new human Doctor. Ultimately however it is the resolution to this plot that is the most disappointing. After all of the Doctor's friends fail in their goals Donna gets zapped by Davros, unlocking the Doctor-mind inside her brain. Donna defeats the daleks by pressing some buttons in the right order. After an uninspired plot this resolution not only disappoints but makes no sense. If the daleks are keeping Davros in the basement as their pet then why would they give him a control panel of any kind let alone a control panel that can manipulate the movements of every Dalek shell in the fleet? From the point of view of what was promised this episode was a disappointment, it saw the teaming up of every modern-day companion along with some of the side characters. It was going to be a pretty spectacular plot that justified the presence of all of those people. Instead, as previously stated they mainly walk around for a bit before all flying the TARDIS together. Also, throughout every episode in series four a different aspect of the plot was foreshadowed. Why were the bees disappearing? Not because of some fascinating alien plan to destroy the food chain on planet earth by removing the most vital link but because it turns out bees are aliens who went home after staying on Earth for a bit. Who was the threefold man that Dalek Caan kept referencing? Not a cleverly disguised character who had been there all along hiding in plain sight who possessed multiple, opposing personality traits that proved him to be important in some way but the Doctor, his human double and Donna who turned into three versions of the Doctor because he put his regeneration energy into his severed hand and a bit of it went into Donna. From the point of view of Rose/The Doctor fans there's a lot left to be desired. The greatest romance that the show has ever known is resolved by inventing a new clone especially generated to be Rose's Boy Toy. Ultimately no one gets what they want. The Doctor is still lonely. Rose makes it quite clear that she doesn't consider human-Doctor to be a patch on the real thing and the human Doctor doesn't even get to live past the end of the episode considering that a Time Lord-human meta-crisis cannot exist and will destroy a human mind. Over all this episode is not only an anti climax to the three part story, it is also an anti climax to the promise of the entire series and ultimately a disappointment when it comes to the Doctor - Rose story line which had been built up and payed off years ago.