From: doctor{at}doctor.nl2k.ab.ca (The Doctor)

In article ,
launcelot   wrote:
>On Jan 1, 9:24=A0pm, "pbow...{at}aol.com"  wrote:
>> Well, I was pretty scathing in my original review of part one, but
>> after being persuaded to rewatch it I revised my opinion upwards on
>> second viewing (though on third, watching it as a lead-in to part two,
>> I was sorely tempted to fastforward in more than a few places).
>
>
>
>Phil, I feel your pain.   But - setting aside all the cheese and chop
>suey - I'd like to briefly add something else in comment about the
>finale that I don't see mentioned elsewhere.
>
>For me, I think what I've always really liked and valued about Doctor
>Who is (or was) its firm convictions about the nature of good and
>evil.  As kid-fare, it's the responsible option to be morally
>instructive and Doctor Who always made it doggedly clear that whatever
>was lurking in the dark or going bump in the night had nothing to do
>with anything supernatural.   It might look like magic to the
>credulous observer but the Doctor would ever expose it as rational
>science.  The devil never made them do it - it was always their own
>greed, hate, jealousy or sheer bestial instincts that prompted the
>monsters towards their depravity.
>
>With RTD - and in this two parter - we get the superstitious stink of
>prophecies and destinies, as if life is lived on rails and so that
>choices and intentions are irrelevant and, therefore, there is no such
>thing as responsibility.   I find no value in a Doctor Who that
>suggests fortune telling or spiritual evil have any credibility.  I
>reject this episode as much as I reject The Satan Pit, etc.
>
>
>Then, on another level, I also hate this fashion of retcon for its own
>sake ... and retcon mitigation in particular.   For example, with the
>Master, we suddenly learn that his whole career of evil was
>effectively the result of some kind of criminal psychological
>assault.   I'm sorry, I don't find that clever writing - it just ruins
>a favourite character by messing up its motivation.   Same with the
>Time Lords.   What was always valuable about them as characters was in
>their contrast to the Doctor - not because the Time Lords were
>meglomaniac baddies, but because they disdained to own any kind of
>moral responsibility and act to prevent the arbitrary cruelty and
>depredations of other sentient beings.    Again, turning the Time
>Lords into the baddies of the week wasn't clever IMO - just another
>retcon short-term gesture and long-term waste.
>
>When I heard Dalton called Rassilon as a throwaway flourish, I
>thought, yeah, actually that's enough from you RTD - please go now.
>
>What I don't see in Mofatt is anything of him being an RTD clone.  I
>detect Mofatt as a rational humanist and expect this is the territory
>he will direct the show back into.  He's a good drama writer too.
>
>ALK

Dalton might a Lord President like Borusa who wants to
be a corrupt President Eternal.
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