Live Doctor Who Finale Watch Along Thread

[GeneralMusings]

Anyone staying up and fancy watching it with me?!

That's the issue I've found. Usually more time to create a bond,character develop get to know bit more etc instead less of that some random episodes and boom end of season.

Shame because together they had good chemistry but seems less time together next season and who knows about the whole snow and anything else. Maybe solved next season or he is hoping it's forgotten and moves on

That was shit.

I don't get Ruby's mum being ordinary and simply pointing to 'name' Ruby.

What's with all the snow?

Who is Mrs Flood? Why is she dressing / talking like past companions?

Disappointed by Ruby's parentage
Salt/mavity thing not tied up
Mrs Flood's identity - I agree, RTD himself hasn't decided yet
Why Ruby can make it snow - just ignored
Why Carla referred to Suteckh as Beast
73 yards not really being addressed fully

I'd thought it would have made more sense for Ruby to be time lady related somehow. This would have made sense with the supernatural snow elements, with her travelling back to warn Ruby/follow Ruby everywhere in that timeline, with her mother leaving her there as opposed to time-travelling, for an easier life. Had assumed she was going to end up being connected to the Doctor in some way, which made their very quick bonding/familiarity/closeness to be more intimate/credible than just having common ground as foundlings.
Names that came up included Susan/River/Romana/Amy or Jenny, especially as Georgia Tennant is blonde, although clones tend to be subfertile and Amy couldn't have any more children after River. There'd even been speculation that Ruby was dropped at Ruby Road by 13 (how 15 would have forgotten that was down to bi-generating/another plot line). Instead, RTD kept to simple and for me dull instead.
Ordinary is the new superpower just didn't work for me.

Wonder how soldier-girl will make their appearance next season.
When the Doctor brought life back to all the dead planets, did he bring back Skaro?

Yes! This is how I felt too. I thought it might be Mel

Watched on iPlayer this morning, then Unleashed.
I liked the Remembered Tardis, but the Doctor asked Ruby to keep thinking about it until it solidified, but it was full of his memories and not hers.
I liked that Melanie was taken over by Sutekh, added extra peril. But when everyone was brought back, she was magically back at UNIT!
I liked how they tricked Sutekh to get close to him.
I liked how this Doctor's emerging personality was evidenced by his turmoil over defeating Sutekh, being the one to bring death to him, while bringing back life to everywhere else.
I loved how he was calmly explaining to Ruby why she should leave her Mum be, and Ruby completely ignores him! I did shed a tear at the subsequent reunion!
I do agree with previous posters that it's strange that Ruby's Mum has turned out to be someone average, but RTD said in Unleashed that the new family would feature in the next series, so I think that there is more to be revealed here.
I thought that the bit where they all stood with Ruby when the Tardis left at the end was overly schmaltzy.
As for Mrs Flood, I really didn't know what to make of that ending! My first thought was Mary Poppins on acid! Who knows where that will go!

This has to be the longest post I have ever done on MN!

The whole universe is dead including suns but a random woman isn't so he could get some metal which presumably he could have picked up anywhere because so many structures were still intact. Just why?

Yes, I wondered this too....

Doubt the kids will even bother to watch that again with me later and honestly...I am going to give up. I keep trying to make it a family thing, like it was with me and my parents...but that's just nostalgia talking. This isn't remotely like the classic or new who levels of entertainment and quality.

We did watch it together -one teen fell asleep other was on phone and meh.

Think we'd already decided we were about ready to give up - but yes it's nostalgia that meant we've continued to watched so long.

I liked the energy of this episode, and feel like the Doctor is inhabiting the character a little more - or it just takes me a while to get used to someone new.

And what I liked the most about this episode is that they brought back the original actor who voiced Sutekh in the 70s - he is 91 years old now and sounds exactly the same now as he did back then. I loved that.

BUT.... so much about this episode didn't make sense. I was disappointed that Ruby's mum was just a random ordinary woman - I had hoped her mum would turn out to be RiverSong and that she would end up being the Doctor's daughter or something. Total let down.

Also, still none the wiser as to Mrs Flood - one minute she seems nice, then she seems cryptic and creepy, it's starting to annoy me now.

Also didn't understand why the Tardis was responding only to Ruby's memories when surely the doctor had many more, stronger memories of the Tardis? Like everything was pointing to Ruby being mysterious and special by birth...but no. That didn't make sense. At least with Clara, back in the day, that whole impossible girl stuff sort of added up and made her actually special and unique, but this time around it all fell totally flat.

If only they could have thrown in a 'Are you my Mummy?' at the meeting in the cafe 😁. Kidding.

I did like the special effects which I thought were great, but what I think has been missing this whole series is the comedy. There used to be bucket loads of clever one liners, a lot of which were very funny, but we haven't really seen that since the Capaldi era. Or it would be nice to have some characters whose mere presence is a bit of light relief, like Drax the Sontaran or similar. In fact they should just bring him back, end of.

I thought it was incredibly disappointing actually. So many unanswered questions.

As a poster on Reddit said (ty JackAndrewThorne)
All this episode needed to have worked for me would be for them to say "The Tardis rebelled against Sutekh by connecting itself to Ruby back when they were on Ruby Road". All the weirdness around her was just the Tardis at work the whole time, and not actually related to Ruby.

That would have been better than "something becomes important cos we made it so/we build people up in our heads."

Also didn't understand why the Tardis was responding only to Ruby's memories when surely the doctor had many more, stronger memories of the Tardis?

I think because It was the Time Window Tardis and it was Ruby’s window? But that’s a bit hand wavy!

I’m not really convinced a 15 year old in 2004 would have a handy hooded cloak instead of a regular coat

me neither unless it was, as a pp said, a young treacherous Claudia Winkleman!
Nah, it made no sense. If you were doing the cloak on a normal, it should have been set at Halloween or a New Year fancy dress. RTD had long enough to work out an arc, pre-write it and re-edit and smooth out any creases. That he hasn't means there are loose ends for series 2 and it's a long game or he couldn't be mithered or he's a bad writer. Having loved It's a sin and most of Years and years, I am as to why he gets it wrong with .

I didn’t much like the redesign of Sutekh. I could see where they were coming from, but the masked character from Pyramids of Mars was much more chilling and dangerous.

I agree with the comments above - as soon as everyone dies you just know what’s coming - another easy flick-a-switch reset. All suspense and jeopardy ends at that point.

Most of it was OK.

I hated Ruby’s mother being a random teenager, so banal when they could have had much more exciting options, nd the reuniting was so so so gooey.

But pleased to see Mrs Floood is properly evil and will be back. maybe the master?

Ruby's mother being ordinary made absolutely no sense to me.

I think that Ruby's mum being ordinary would have worked if they'd have leaned more into the different rules at play between the god-like beings of other planets, explaining the mistaken ascribing importance to her mother's identity.

Other than that I think it nicked too much of the Big Bang, with every planet and every part of history dying at once, restored by memories etc.

The whole idea about identifying her mum using 2046 DNA ignored the idea that her mum might be foreign/from the future etc. Or was the whole trip a trap for Sutekh?

I didn't like to at all. I really wanted to, but it was just a nonsensical mess.

I'm afraid I thought the episode was complete shite. Last week's episode was pretty good (for the series) but this one had...

• a meaningless plot (no logic to any of it)
• no tension (everyone in the universe is dead, well let's wait for the Doctor to do some timey wimey stuff and put everything right)
• a stupid conceit (the Doctor's biggest nemesis wipes out absolutely everyone in the Universe except three - because he wants to know who Ruby's mum is 😲)
• a stupid twist - (Ruby's mum was a nobody)
• far too much badly acted emotion (does Ncuti get paid by often he cries?)
• no resolution of who Mrs Flood is.

I've watched Doctor Who for ever - really don't like the way it has gone since Peter Capaldi finished. Maybe I'm just too old and grumpy to bother with it anymore.

I liked the one liner about Susan Twist and the tea.

Wow, really derivative from the MCU!
Everyone turns to dust, then a superhero timetravels to reverse it?

I enjoyed it, but really, not original

If the Tardis is sentient and can even appear as a person, why didn't she know Sutekh was about in her innards and do something about the situation aeons back?

When Captain Jack tried to travel by hanging onto the outside of the TARDIS, she felt it, and tried to shake him off...

Yes. And there didn’t seem any reason for Sutekh to come now, rather than a decade sooner or later m. It wasn’t really tied back to the salt or to the music snatcher etc.