My Soul Hath Elbow Room!

I've been putting this off and putting it off, and you'll probably see why soon enough: it's long. This was the final 8DA story, by the way: the series has ended now. I hope 4DA fills the gap as admirably as I'm expecting. On the whole, I've enjoyed 8DA a lot more than Big Finish's main line, which I am now hopelessly behind on.

( SPOILERS for all of 8DA, including multiple character deaths. Also spoilers for 'Waters of Mars' and 'The End of Time', if anyone has yet to watch those. )

An emotionally packed climax, some serious long-term impact for the Eighth Doctor's future, Daleks... there's a reason this took me so long to process, and that's that this finale was incredible.

The Four Doctors wears its main attraction on its sleeve, of course. It's also a Dalek story, and a time-faffery story (as usual. I mean, how else do you get four Doctors into the same room?). And unlike the previous Christmas specials, they're saying it will never be released as a standalone; the only way to get it is to purchase a subscription to the main Doctor Who line that includes the December 2010 release (#142, The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories).

( Whether that's worth it or not really depends on what you're hoping to get out of it, I think. )

The only thing that The Four Doctors fails to deliver is fanservice. Given the choice between a fanservice story and a well-told, moving one, I'll take what we have every time.

But... maybe next time we can have a bit more fanservice?

I'm starting to think that Big Finish's whole modus operandi at the moment is 'fixing the plots that RTD screwed up'.

Well, that and 'tying up the bloody timeline in ever more ingenious knots'.

This month, it seems to have been the turn of Journey's End, Waters of Mars and End of Time, all at once.

Spoilers follow.

( '[The TARDIS] could be anything in this hangar. That fighter plane, say, or that barrel of fuel, or it could even be hiding behind that stone ziggurat...' )

In short: get this one, yes yes yes. It probably works better with Survival of the Fittest to give it context, but it was moving and well-plotted, thought-provoking and, at one point, utterly hilarious. It ends on a somewhat bittersweet note, and I think I'll miss Klein as a companion even though she was only in the role for three episodes. It's not melodramatic, it doesn't rely on deus ex machinae or bombastic, overblown emo speeches (although there are a couple: the Doctor's always up for some preaching, and then Crichlow does one later). It's just a good story, with wonderful characters, beautifully told.

Ooh. It's nearly April. That's... let's see...

Sixth Doctor reunites with Jamie
Eighth Doctor Adventures restarts

And... that other thing...

Oh, yes...

ELEVEN.

April is going to be a good month for Who geeks, one way or the other.

Or, Canon Done A Smrt.

The most logical way to do this, I think, given how much each of the Christmas Specials informed my viewing and listening of the others, is chronologically from the Doctor's perspective. Therefore, the 2009 Doctor Who Christmas special that I am starting with is... An Earthly Child, the Big Finish subscriber's bonus.

( And you have a son! How did you manage that? )

/\/\/\

Being Human is meant to be mildly diverting entertainment when there's nothing else on, not induce a three-minute phobiatastic squickfest that left me curled up on my computer stool and muttering the f-word over and over again. What the hell, guys? I get it, he's dying horribly. There's no need to show me.