10.14: Doomsday

In which the walls between the worlds slam shut, and Rose is lost forever. For a bit.

Broadcast: July 2006

Watched: August 2021

“Social interaction will cease.” Look, it's a line from the episode that sums up the episode, look.

I've got a theory about the 10th Doctor: he needs to lose Rose to work. Okay, last of the Time Lords, yada yada, but he's quite puppyish after Eccleston so it doesn't really hit. It's only after Doomsday that he gets the edge of sadness you need to balance him out.

I remember why Rose's departure gets so much of the episodeL there was a whole generation for whom the show was about her. But now we know she's back in just over a year, and we lose a companion every five minutes, it feels kind of funny, and it's a miracle it works as well as it does. RTD's instinct to immediately drop the bride in (I'd weirdly sort of forgotten we were going to see Donna this soon?) is a good one.

Anyway. That's the ending. First, there's a war to get through. The scale of the war and the occupation is a) bigger than anything the show has done so far, and b) suggests an implausibly high number of cybermen.

“It's like Stephen HAwking meets the talking clock.” For a scene which is just Nick Briggs arguing with himself, this is still amazing. Feels right that the Cyberman want an alliance, the Daleks just reply, f**k you, we're bastard hard. “We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?” “Four.”

Oh Raj dies, there's a surprise.

Love that Jackie's panic in this episode is the one that's been going on since Aliens of London. Also that there's a moment in which it looks like she's going to go the way of the parallel universe version, like a bad dream that comes true.

Mickey clearly much cooler now, wisecracking not panicking: this may be why he and the Doctor are finally pleased to see each other (to the extent that the latter isn't even annoyed he lets all the Daleks out of the genesis arc). And the reaction shot the two share when Jackie says “there was never anyone else” is the funniest thing in ages. The scene of her reunion with Pete also works far, far better than it has a right to do.

I knew the end of the season was a His Dark Materials rip off. I hadn't quite twigged that this episode has dust in it, too. It is very Doctor Who that the Doctor wears dumb glasses on and off all episode and we just accept it as the Doctor being a tit, rather than a plot point.

The way the Doctor avoids saying goodbye to Rose, then betrays her by sending her through to the other world against her will, is a reminder that, whatever else he is, he is a tit. Also, not big on consent.

It's great. But sorry, 15 years on (fuuuuck) I really don't care about Rose. Mind you, “Two universes would collapse”, “So?” almost got me all the same.

This video is titled, “Rose and the Doctor are separated forever”. Are they, though.

Other things:

• Is “I did my duty” a mantra that allows Yvonne's mind to survive? (That cyber tear, oh bugger off.)

• Jake's arrival is very cool and later on he gets to be the clever one. Again, I fear Doctor Who plotting is being led by the question of who someone, somewhere, wants to bang.

• It is funny but bleak that the cybermen escape because humans can't agree to destroy them. Bit fash of RTD, mind.

• The Daleks ask the Doctor how he survived the Time War - nice reversal of Parting.

• An entire temporary alliance between good guys and cybermen is agreed off screen and lasts 90 seconds: would have got an episode and a half out of that in the old days.

• The two-way screaming as Rose almost falls into the void is pretty badly done. It makes no sense that Pete would manage to catch her. “And this is the story of how I died” oh stop it.

• ...is Mickey also living at Pete's house? Bit weird.