I think my whelm is in the next shaft to your whelm, however it has no nails left to polish because they self-destructed in an heroic effort to keep my small intestine from leaping up and strangling my brain.

I personally enjoyed it.

And what were the two things that induced this hooliganesque behaviour?

Ah. Entirely and completely understandable.

YES.

Just finished. The rest was all handwavy dramaticness but Donna! And the bullshit on the beach, which peeved me for at least two reasons. I think. Maybe more.

Well, DAMN.

Still waiting for a torrent so I can read spoilage.

Well, shit.

Please tell me it wasn't at least at the level of embarrassment as the Tinkerbell!Doctor.

*goes back to refreshing torrent sites*

Whew. That's a small consolation. LotTL seriously made me consider quitting the show altogether for a while. Now, I'm mighty curious about those two things you hated! Ack. Must not spoil self. Damn the stupid torrent for not being up already.

My whelm never expects that much out of a thirteenth episode, because it's learned that dear old Rusty can't write endings that don't threaten the structural integrity of the glass on my TV screen. It also knows to keep savoury food on hand to counteract all that sugar. Or to throw at the screen. One or the other.

On that basis, it came out rather better than I feared it might. There were lots of little moments I liked, and there was slightly more plot than last week, though you still had to squint and try not to notice that the Bad Skience was... well, pretty dreadful really.

There was one moment of utter disbelief near the end at RTD's bullish determination to have his cake and eat it, and I still wish he hadn't gone there, but I am now working on obliterating it from my mind. Sadly, I could probably do with the Doctor's help on that.

I love this show because I can't ever remember a time when I wasn't watching it. My earliest memories of it are of seeing the Yeti bumbling around in the underground, and the earliest stories I remember the plot for (from seeing them live, rather than watching on video/DVD in later years) are Jon Pertwee's second season, where the Master was introduced. It is my favourite show ever ever ever, and while I was still a bit dubious whether I counted it as the same show during the Christopher Eccleston season, I've come to embrace it fully since.

The season enders do tend to be a bit of a let-down, it's true, although that's one of the things that I'm hoping that Steven Moffat may be able to improve upon. But I've seen The Krotons, The Horns of Nimon and The Twin Dilemma. I know the depths to which the show can plummet, and somehow it always seems to be able to pull itself back up and find another gem of a story afterwards.

Admittedly there aren't too many opportunities for gems between now and 2010. :-(

Oh, my, how did I forget to mention Timelash? Fortunately by the late 80s I had discovered other not-quite-closet Who fans and was buying old episodes under the counter at comic marts.

Those final two Sylvester McCoy seasons promised so much for the future. I still haven't forgiven Jonathan Powell and Michael Grade, even now that we have a new show.

God help Donna if she gets a cold.

Mrs Noble: Oh for god's sake why don't you just go to the doc---
Wilf: NOoooooooooooooooooooo!
Donna:

temaris made a good point in that simply because Donna hasn't got her memories doesn't change the fact that she was biologically altered. She's still the Doctor-Donna, but without any of the memories that would give it context. Can you imagine what she's going to do now? My vote? That she dreams of things, things that gradually shape her back towards who she was with the Doctor, and sleepwalking she builds a copy of the machine in the TARDIS that took the Doctor and made him into simple human John Smith and then took him back to Gallifreyan. Let's have Donna literally become a Time Lord, eh?

Actually, I think RTD has no idea what a Time Lord is (since one doesn't have to be from Gallifrey to be one, for instance) and one of their rites of passage according to last season's finale was to look into the Time Vortex. Kind of like, um, let's see... Rose? (Who then went on to build a dimensional cannon, a time machine for Donna, and for whom a dead or dying TARDIS held momentary flickers of life). Rose and Donna as Time Lords. That would've been the way forward for me.

Or maybe not. I... sort of lost the plot a bit. LOL. Last year I thought about what I would have done with the finale, but this year I'm not sure I'd know. I seem to be stuck in a Time Lord resurrection loop, LOL.

See, I knew you would be underwhelmed! This is why I didn't look at your post while I was waiting for my interminable download. I wanted to remain excited. I thought it was awesome.

I totally agree. It was so awesome up until that. All that was incredibly sad and awful, but, you know, the episode just wasn't angsty and tragic enough until then.