'Last of the Time Lords' Oh my giddy aunt, oh crumbs!!

I have held off on reviewing 'Last Of The Time Lords' for several weeks. I have now seen it twice & have had several weeks to sit with it & ruminate over it. My considered opinion? An inept, embarrasing & deeply frustrating travesty!

Here's why...Firstly; the casual off-handed nastiness of it. The Doctor has a dog bowl & lives in a tent with hay on the floor...Fabulous darlings!!...thought the Production Office! How wonderfully degrading! Oh! I know!... let's chuck a plastic pop song over it & have a whole glitzy montage of the Doctor's miseries inflicted by the Master. If you have to show the Doctor suffering (which is fine because it creates drama & makes his final victory sweeter) don't be so damned flip about it Russell & Co! Also, the shrinking Doctor looked utterly ridiculous. He was shrunk basically to make the Master seem more intimdating by comparison. This is lazy writing. Make the Master seem more intimidating by his deeds, his words & by the acting performance. As if the Doctor would shrink with age anyway? This is just arrant silliness. A chance to create a second rate Yoda/ Lord of the Rings type of gimp. And what was with the big eyes? "Oh we have to make him look REALLY sad because the viewers won't be able to just imagine that or draw their own conclusions". Why the oversize head? "oh we have to make him look tragic yet also strangely cute of course!"

The most disappointing thing however was the inexcusable laziness of the """RESOLUTION""" of Martha's character. If the unrequited love storyline was going to prove such an unresolvable problem, why push her character that way all season? We are robbed of the chance of watching her character develop slowly in confidence & wisdom next season by having her turned into a cliche no-nonsense action woman on a quest for "oh I don't know...a year?!, Let's make it seem REALLY dramatic" & writing her out for the lions' share of next season. A one minute montage of Martha sludging through snow & sleet for a year doesn't cut it for character development I'm afraid. Lazy, lazy, lazy. It seems the Production Office believes nothing gives a greater sense of drama than casually upping the scope?! A silly slitheen attack? Let's call it WW3!, Dalek & Cybermen trouble?, it's Doomdsay!!! Also, as the Co-Pilot pointed out, the casual reference to Japan burning after the Toclaphane attacks; show it damn it!! Big words, no action.

I won't delve into the ridiculous religious iconography & "magical" conclusion that 'flipped the bird' to hard science & credibility. Suffice to say it was rubbish. The delicate Paradox machine that the Doctor didn't want to breathe or even think too hard near lest he rattle it & break its concentration? Let's get Captain Jack to shoot from the crotch at it like a bi-sexual John Rambo. Everyone will have forgotten it's so delicate after the fabulous diva like re-birth of the Doctor & Murray Gold laying on the gluggy treacle. Anything's possible with magic! (and when you need to wrap up a ridiculously convoluted plot, a character (Martha) & a whole season in about 4 minutes)

'Sound Of Drums' was flawed, but fun & I really hoped the game would be lifted for this, alas it was an absolute fizzer. :( :( :(


A grumpy Lucozer...