'One man, travelling through space and time, in a box’

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Spoiler alert for Journey’s End, just in case anyone hasn’t watched it yet!

Well. That’s it.

How do I feel about it? Action packed, certainly, emotional, definitely, satisfying, almost. It was full of good ideas, resolutions to plotlines, occasionally too much so for its own good. It was like a finale to all RTD’s storylines, making way for the new regime, so it really was ‘Journey’s End’!

Firstly, the resolution to the cliffhangers. When we left our heroes last week, a number of them were facing certain death. It would be churlish to complain that we still have DT as the Doctor, but the feeding of the regeneration energy into his severed hand*, and the idea that the Doctor could choose not to regenerate did seem to mess with the canon**.

I felt that the closing off of Torchwood was to shut down what was probably a story strand too far (and about a team that, without Jack, many Who viewers aren’t invested in). It’s interesting to see how they’ve set up the new series of Torchwood, though, which just happens to have a couple of vacancies.

The ‘new’ Doctor, and the Doctor-Donna - somehow I didn’t quite believe that Doctor-Donna really understood the techno-babble, though I have no problem when the Doctor launches into it. I was very sad to see Donna turn back into shouty Donna, but it also demonstrated just how much the character had changed for the better, and contrasted with Davros’s claim that the Doctor turns his companions into killers.

The return to Bad Wolf Bay – oh, this was an emotional scene. Rose finally got her Doctor, but she didn’t get her Doctor. It was a resolution of sorts, and the only one possible, but it felt wrong for her to kiss him, (as Billie Piper herself admitted), as she’d really only just met this 'new new new' Doctor. How my heart was breaking as ‘our’ Doctor turned away from them.

I also loved:
The Doctor: ‘I didn’t need to change, I didn’t want to. Why would I? Look at me!’ (absolutely)
the daleks in Germany, ‘exterminiren’! (genius)
Donna to Jack: ‘you can hug me…no, really, you can hug me’ (well, wouldn’t you?)
Davros recognising Sarah-Jane, harking all the way back to Genesis of the Daleks,

K9 popping up to make an appearance.

Everyone together in the Tardis, making sense of the fact that it should really be piloted by 6 people (and Jackie not being allowed to touch anything).

Finally, David Tennant. Seriously, is there a better actor on TV at the moment? He was magnificent, playing all the emotions throughout the episode; his pain when Davros showed him what he’d turned his ‘children of time’ into; making the ‘new’ Doctor a totally different person. ‘Our’ Doctor could never have taken the final step to destroy the daleks***.

I think my heart broke just a little further as he stood in the rain talking to Wilf, and then returned to the Tardis, alone once again. As RTD said in Confidential, ‘you have to come back to one man, travelling through space and time, in a box’.

It seems a long time till Christmas, but thankfully, this time, I don’t have to wait till then.

*despite doing my best to avoid it, I had picked up an internet rumour about this during the week, but then I’d also picked up various rumours about who the new Doctor was going to be!
**yeah, yeah, I know!

***yes, we all know they'll be back again