Heart Cooks Brain: Doctor Who Season 4 Finale, Journey's End

SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't seen the episode, but you still want to read this (Which I'm telling you, you do.) you can find a synopsis here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey%27s_End_%28Doctor_Who%29

Now I know that it is strange to start with the last episode of the fourth season of a show, but I have to admit, it was this episode that inspired me to start writing about television. I could not stop thinking about it after I watched it last night, and woke up this morning with the same burning in my chest as I had watching it. It usually makes sense to start at the beginning, but like Donna, it has been burned from my mind, leaving only the devastating ending.

She lost all of her memories of the Doctor, and of who she had become with him!

To be given such a gift and have it ripped away from you, and to give someone so much and have to take it away, it just killed me to watch it. Donna begging the doctor "Please don't make me go back" as he wipes away any memory of him, of saving the universe, of being "Doctor-Donna", of being better than she ever thought she could be. I never thought that any ending could be sadder than Rose and the Doctor's incredibly painful separation in "Doomsday", but this one was even worse. Rose was left with her amazing memories, and the knowledge that the Doctor loves her. Donna had none of that, and her begging the Doctor just before he wipes her mind made me wonder what she would have chosen for herself. Life, and never knowing the Doctor or her own importance, or the certain death that having a Time-Lord's mind would bring her. Rose and the Doctor's ending made me sob, but his goodbye with Donna has definitely stayed with me in a different way. When he said all of his other goodbyes to his "Children of Time", it was clear that for each one, their time with him had changed their lives for the better, and helped them actualize as human beings. Even as he credits Rose for making him better, it seems clear that Davros' assertion that he has made them worse, turned them into weapons, could not be more wrong. Donna losing the knowledge of who she could be is what really kills me here. I almost think she would have rather died as the Doctor's companion than lived as "just a temp", as someone who truly believes that she is "nothing special".

Wait, did other things happen in this episode? I think I remember that there were other people besides Donna in this one...oh wait, EVERYBODY was in it! The beginning was cute, all "Oh no, everyone is in peril! OH MY GOD... they're fine, it's cool". I was incredibly excited to see Mickey and Jackie teleport in to save Sarah Jane, a little bummed that all Gwen and Ianto got to do was sit around and be useless (timelock!) and glad we didn't get a true regeneration from the Doctor. I NEEDED to see he and Rose hug it out as soon as possible. The plot was invariably messy, but Davros' desire to destroy reality by destroying every atom in the universe was suitably bone chilling for me. As usual, the plot wasn't really the point, so I won't belabor all of the hows and whys of it. I liked the little twist at the end of Dalek Caan conspiring to destroy his own race, and pointing out that the Doctor will "kill" Donna by taking away her memories of him. It was a roller coaster of emotions, from the jubilation of seeing Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, Rose, Martha, Donna, Mickey, and TWO Doctors flying the earth home in the TARDIS, to the double whammy of Rose's and Donna's goodbyes.

Speaking of Rose's goodbye, this is where it gets a bit tricky for me. It was almost washed away by the utter hopelessness of Donna's send off, but moving that aside, I cannot decide what to think about it. I'll admit, I'm a sucker for the way Billie Piper and David Tennant make those big, loving eyes at each other, and even though she annoys me sometimes, I have always bought the love between the Doctor and Rose. (I think it was actually just as apparent and beautiful with Nine, and I was longing for just a glimpse of Christopher Eccleston in this "kitchen sink" episode.) When the "other Doctor" told Rose that he could spend his one life with her, I got a little choked up. But like Rose, I still cannot quite get my head around the idea that they are the same. "He's me, I'm him." And the knowledge that the "proper Doctor" loves her and has to leave, while his human counterpart gets to grow old with her is just a little kick in the teeth for me. Not to say that seeing Piper and Tennant kiss passionately wasn't pretty satisfying,
I'm just not sure how to feel about that particular development, or
even how I'm supposed to feel about it. Sorry for the Doctor? Happy for Rose? Happy that at least one version of the the Doctor, with his memories and mind, gets to be with her? Sad that Rose gets an imitation instead of the real thing? I really liked the "Two Doctors" conceit, and felt that having the Doctor watch himself commit genocide against the Daleks once again had great emotional resonance. It also gave us the fun and cuteness of having TWO David Tennants on screen at once. I'm just not sure if I liked the way they resolved the two Doctors issue, or the Rose and Doctor love issue.

I really liked to the goodbyes that everyone else got, kind of a "goodnight, not goodbye" kind of a thing. It really emphasized the feeling that these people are bonded together, and they will see each other again. Watching them on the TARDIS they felt like a family, and I hope that is something touched upon in future seasons. Though I do like the idea of the Doctor as a lonely god, knowing he has these incredible people out there to count on makes me feel better, and I think they should affect the character and make him feel better too! I like Sarah Jane's line "You act like the loneliest man in the universe, but you have the biggest family in the world!" She is clearly talking about his role as Earth's caretaker there, but she was also acknowledging that Davros wasn't far off when he called them the Doctor's "Children of Time".

All in all, I think that "Journey's End" was a fitting send off for both Catherine Tate as Donna and Russell T. Davis as showrunner. It was a lovely goodbye, even though it was also soul-crushingly depressing. I think as a writer, that is clearly what Davies was going for. I was really happy to see all my old friends from all four seasons (I do miss you, Christopher Eccleston!), but I think that even without geeking out over that, It was still a well-written and performed piece of television. I think that a non-fan would definitely enjoy it, so if you are one of those people, catch it on repeats, come over to my house and watch my DVR, or go to YouTube and watch it. You won't regret it.