The End of Time
In 1978 I remember reading an interview with (I assume) Richard Donner, director of Superman: The Movie, who pointed to the new superhero shows then popular on TV—things like The Six Million-Dollar Man—and said something like, “We can’t have Superman just picking up a car to save someone: Steve Austin does that every week.”
This was by way of justification for the film’s climax, in which Superman turns back time by spinning the Earth backwards on its axis—one of the most cringe-worthy pieces of anti-science cinema I’ve ever seen. The argument was that everything had to be bigger, better, and more spectacular than anything that had gone before. I think I preferred the end of Superman II, where the denouement was at a much more human level.
This interview dredged itself out of the depths of my memory last week when I watched the second part of “The End of Time,” the final Doctor Who episode for the tenth Doctor, David Tennant. Writer/producer Russell T Davies has a bad habit of wanting everything bigger and bolder than last time, and with the climax of season four involving whole planets teleporting across the galaxy (with bizarrely few negative consequences to the atmospheres or structures of the planets), I guess we all knew we were in for a challenge to our abilities to willingly suspend our disbelief.
The comments thread at Circulating Library live blog of the episode indicates the level of disapproval from even hard-core fans. I won’t rehearse the objections here, so go and have a look.
Such a pity for Tennant’s send-off, when he has been one of the most popular Doctors (I thought he was great, but Tom Baker will forever be my Doctor).
Anyway, we’ve got that young Matt Smith and scripts by Stephen Moffat to look forward to, so let’s hope the series regains a little sense.
Your Comments
Catriona writes:
Tom Baker will forever be my Doctor, as well. Sometimes, I become a little frustrated by the level of “That’s it: the show’s jumped the shark now Tennant’s left, and I’ll never watch it again”-style commentary I see on some sites. After all, the show needs regeneration to work. And it has always worked, even when it was Sylvester McCoy in a wig.
Then I remember how traumatised I was as a five-year-old fan (and on every subsequent viewing of “Logopolis”) and I think, “Well, I have my Doctor. Why shouldn’t they have theirs?”
Posted: 24 02 2010 - 18:50 | Permanent link to this comment
John writes:
She never expressed it in those terms, but my mum always liked Jon Pertwee, and I’m sure Tom never cut it for her. But then the first time around I hated Peter Davison, and he was David Tennant’s Doctor!
So yeah, I’m a bit worried about Matt Smith, and whether he can pull off a 900 year old Time Lord who saw to the demise of his own people. But for crying out loud, he’s a professional actor: at least give him the benefit of the doubt until you’ve seen him in the role.
And as I said on your blog, there were bits of “The End of Time” that had me weeping. Figuratively. (Mostly).
Posted: 24 02 2010 - 19:31 | Permanent link to this comment
Catriona writes:
I only wish I’d wept during “The End of Time.” Unfortunately, I was too busy shouting, “WTF?”
I wept all the way through the last two episodes of Torchwood’s “Children of Earth” (and, indeed, the last episode of Torchwood season two), and I’ve cried through earlier episodes of Doctor Who. But never a tear in “The End of Time.”
I think part of me resents Russell T. Davies for my dry eyes.
Posted: 24 02 2010 - 20:30 | Permanent link to this comment