SpaceScotsman

I love that "Lonely Mountains: Downhill" isn't woke, even though it gives fine grained control over your characters design, like a "feminine" body with facial hair.

No, the better solution is to add more black bars to the side so that it fits on to a wide screen.

"Envisioned as an important connecting vein that will one day see trains running from Helsinki, Finland, to Palermo, Sicily,"

Surely the important connecting vein here is a link to Finland, on the other side of Europe and across the sea from Italy, but then I'm not a rail engineer so what do I know.

Yes, if the government was sane and allowed a physical card as an alternative/backup, but the UK gov wants to make it digital only.

Some important context here is that Switzerland already has a national ID card system, this is an extension allowing people to use a digital version if they prefer.

I'm not saying that isn't going to be without its privacy concerns, but them narrowly voting that in is a far cry from, oh I don't know, the UK government forcing an entirely new scheme on people without a referendum.

I\ don\'t\ know\ what\ you\ mean,\ I\'ve\ never\ encountered\ any\ annoyances.

Labour were voted in on a mandate of "change" specifically. Literally, their one word slogan used during campaigning. Now, obviously they're the single transferable party, so nothing was actually going to change, but I do want to make sure no-one forgets that was their one promise.

Pike got his "that's rough buddy" moment.

I am very glad we got to revisit this storyline. There was a lot left to explain in that dimensional prison, and using it as a finale to neatly wrap a lot of different plot threads was great. I was really interested in that guardian figure from the earlier episode, knowing now that it ended up being Batel in a kind of asymptotic time loop is pretty crazy, but it is a very poetic ending. She can't really live a life with Pike, and this is an ending that gives her meaning.

When Batel's hands started glowing for a moment I genuinely thought she was going to regenerate à la time lord. And in the end I guess she kind of did! I half expected her to start babbling about some cosmic koala when she had stars in her eyes, I'm glad she didn't. The ending took a serious tone, and that worked very well.

This episode uses what is effectively a dream sequence and those you have to be careful with. It works well here because the concept of time, cause, and effect have already been established as in play here so even if it never turned out as the actual in-universe outcome, it still feels like it has meaning. I note that the show giving us Pike's alternate future had he not (will he have had not? tenses are hard with time travel) got in the accident for me cements the fact that he really is going to end up as his future vision told him. There's no avoiding it now.

I am not sure I really followed a lot of the treknobabble in this one. I don't get how the entity managed to reconstruct itself, nor why there was a whole debate about phasers being complementary instead of additive. But as a plot device to get things moving it was serviceable. Also, just a note, if you're firing a stream of ANTI protons into the atmosphere, one would expect the antimatter to annihilate on impact with the upper atmosphere. I did find it hilarious that there's two massive red lasers with the same power as a star beaming in through the balcony and none of the natives there were bothered by it enough to get out of their seats!

The planet design was really cool, the big floating churchey architecture was giving me Halo vibes. It's interesting that the planet has no warp travel but still makes contact with alien races. I wonder if then the Feds would bother to help them out in the aftermath, or if they just left them to it. They kind of should take responsibility, given it was them that unleashed the evil in the first place. Even if it's just to loan them that eye regeneration thing for a few hours.

Overall, this was a nice finale, and given it didn't end on a pointless cliffhanger, and wrapped up most of the threads well, one of the better ones as TV dramas go.

Oh, look at that pretty twinkling shooting sta- oh shit, that's another one of elon musk's pointless billionaire space toys. I can't even relax by just looking at the stars anymore.

I really enjoyed this one.

We finally get some real movement on the Ortegas trauma that was set up earlier in the season and the solution, forced exposure therapy, is pretty wild. Ortegas managed to overcome it fairly well, which does back up the "she passed her psych eval" stated in an earlier episode. Not only does she overcome a personal problem, but she actually manages some form of diplomacy across multiple alien species. Way to go.

My biggrumble with this episode is the ending. I saw it coming a mile away, there's no practical way to end it other than finding some excuse to write out the good!gorn. I think the episode did not even need the aliens running things behind the scenes, it would have been perfectly fine to just have the spatial anomaly and a crash landing as the setup.

I hope that Ortegas remembers that La'an killed the Gorn, that will make for some nice drama later. I also hope that Ortegas remembers enough that she could try to advocate for the Gorn. While this episode wasn't quite "Darmok", Ortegas shows a lot of aptitude for cross-species communication, and that needs to be used alongside her piloting.

The Uhura-Pike drama was a bit less enjoyable. At the end of the episode pike basically says he would have stayed anyway, which undermines the whole B-Plot of the episode. If anything it should have been a Pike-Una debate. And with a more pressing need than "These people need a vaccine absolutely right now but also they can wait a couple days if need be".

The Doctor tricking Rose is a very well done scene. He acts as if he's just figured something out off the cuff of what Rose just said and then as Rose is kept busy in the Tardis he runs out and comes to an abrupt stop. It's a good subversion of the "doctor will magically solve everything" trope.

I agree we needed a bit more from the Daleks being behind the scenes on earth. We get that from Rose/Bad Wolf's meddling in history, and the spreading of the message around, but we didn't really see much about what the Daleks really did throughout history. Which is odd because at one point we hear a human say they died off ages ago - so humans at this point in time know what Daleks are... but we the audience have no clue for the context.

This was a pretty good finale and a nice send off for 9/Eccleston. It wrapped up the various story threads fairly satisfactorily, it managed to be exciting enough, and there were plenty of jokes, meaningful choices, and good direction.

I like the Dalek emperor concept - a sort of napoleon complex megalomanic dalek that fancies itself as a god. The religious language feels very human, which helps to sell the corruption as one thats gone beyond just the basic biology. In a way, these Daleks are less Dalek than the Rose-Dalek we saw earlier in the series. Doctor's speech here is very good - at the core of hate there lies fear. Fear that you might become the thing you hate, or that you might have to face it, or that you may have to question your hatred. Eternally applicable message for the real world.

When the Daleks are invading the station, as pointed out, they have no need to go and kill the humans on level 0. They do it anyway - maximum cruelty is the point. Later Lynda in her safe bubble (though not as safe as Rose's) also meets the her cruel fate. The use of the slow-cutter-through-steel trope subverted by a silent extermination is an excellent piece of writing and direction. The idea that they're not just exterminating individually rather melting entire continents at once is horrifying.

This is really where Rose's feelings for the doctor turn into something beyond simple friendship. You can see it in the jealous look she has for Lynda-with-a-Y, and her later saying she has nothing left to live for in 2005. The doctor-initiated kiss scene still feels a little too early for the Doctor for it to be romantic, but it is a nice moment all the same, and it works in a breath-of-life metaphor kind of way.

On The Bad Wolf - this is a very nice wrapping up of the storyline as it mirrors well what the Daleks have done. They went through humanity's history and changed it to drive the outcome they wanted, which is exactly the same as what Bad Wolf did. It also sets up a character that gets to appear later on (and maybe a second time, depending on what the most recently finale meant).

Both the mid-episode goodbye and the final farewell are really very well done. Holo-doctor turning to face Rose is a nice touch. It could be programmed in, or her might just have known exactly how she'd react when recording it. 9's sorrow at not being able to follow on with Rose is a good lead in to her and 10's much closer relationship. 10's regeneration is nice, his spiky hair popping in was a nice touch, and Tennant looks so young here.

Nit pick: As much as I like the concept of the Dalek Emperor, its design is silly. It's totally impractical. Not a nit-pick for this ep, rather for the state of current TV: I remember when it was only ever at most a couple of months hiatus between a season and holiday specials. Not years-and-maybe-never.

Final remarks for 9s run: It was a good revival, as revivals go, and it definitely got the momentum going even if it had a couple of off moments. It is a pity that 9 never had longer to develop his character.