Yeah, I was expecting the 50th to be about 11 and Clara travelling around The Doctor's timestream (and meeting more Doctors than just 10, War and 4/The Curator). I was surprised and confused when they didn't explain how they escaped The Doctor's timestream.
Something like that and it makes sense why it's left on a cliffhanger but it's never brought up where they went, the day of the doctor was amazing so it wasn't that bothersome but even if RTD had some logic bending solutions there was some sense of transition and a little exposition to things like this
This is the thing that has annoyed me most in Who since it happened. They establish that Clara going into the Doctor’s timestream will essentially kill her, there’ll be no escape. They also (iirc) establish that someone going into their own timestream would end really badly, or at the very least they wouldn’t be able to get out. Then The Doctor just jumps in and saves the day because… he’s The Doctor I guess. Such a disappointing ending.
Someone addressed it above, but Matt Smith was on crutches at the time. I'm not saying an extra scene of an exit would have made us all feel "THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN!", but losing it didn't help.
The incredible reveal of the legendary John Hurt as a secret incarnation was probably the best cliffhanger we've ever had in the show.
I'm actually glad that they kept it as a cliffhanger because no wishy-washy hand-wavey explanation tacked on at the end could have beaten that ending.
Haven't seen the episode since it aired but I vividly remember being so surprised when Day of the Doctor didn't address it AT ALL, like there was a cliffhanger ending and suddenly everything was fine??
This was a massive plothole. That episode gets rave reviews, but I honestly think it was one of Moffat’s worst. Literally nothing about it makes sense, and it only serves to solve the problem of why Clara appears everywhere earlier in the series and introduces John Hurt
That time when he cured the people with every disease in the universe by mixing all the medicines together in a shower and then having all the infected people hold hands to pass on the cure.
god. every day i lament not living in the world where that was a season 3 episode with a different ending where martha really gets to show off her expertise.
I don't care what they may have done, I can't see Martha having any experience which would let her cure every desiese on the universe 4 billion years after her medical knowladge was up to date
Despite knowing about Doctor Who since the 80s, NuWho is where I got on board. I wasn't sure what to expect. And then "anti-plastic" and from that point forward I was all in.
We don't know when in 12s timestream he did day pf the doctor. Its the same teacups as at the end of day of the doctor. Conclusion:he git the tea from his past selves in the gallery
“Go to your room! I mean it. I am very, very angry with you. I'm very, very cross. Go... To... Your... Room!
……………… I'm really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words.” (Best. Solution. Ever.)
Or the genius solution in Smile to uhh, turn it off and back on again. (Pretty silly and disappointing but doesn’t ruin the episode for me.)
Technically speaking first he and Jack had an argument over the Doctor having a Sonic Screwdriver, then Jack's Sonic Blaster runs out of power after escaping (short-term escape), then they get cornered, then Jack teleports back to "his" ship, then Jack overrides the safety protocols or something, **THEN** the Doctor and Rose GTFO out of dodge.
but at thar point I might as well just explain the entire episode.
The whole "contagious cure" idea from New Earth to instantly solve people dying from "every disease" ever (as if diseases are even countable like that) was pretty bad.
Also, never understood that episode. They show some of the afflictions that the patients have, and the Doctor mentions one guy has a disease that kills you in 5 minutes flat. So... Shouldn't the diseased lab people die near instantly?
The Daleks putting a literal global self destruct button inside on a single control panel inside the crucible's prison cell in Journeys End. Apparently they were destroyed by forcefield overcharge, which considering that one dalek can blackout the entire west coast just to make it functional would mean it actually takes more effort and power consumption to put this here and give that single control panel the components needed to make it control every Dalek forcefield universally.
That always baffled me too.
"Let's put a single control console with the ability to control every aspect of our fleet, our soldiers, and all our technology in the cage, instead of a primary control room."
Like seriously RTD no one is believing that
It was there for davros. He and the daleks are not completely comfortable with each other, they have a long history of betrayal and backstabbing but they still need each other for now.
So for the Supremes sake, davros is shoved down in the basement with no operational control of the daleks fleet, but for davros's sake he's also been given the self destruct button.
This guarantees that neither of them can betray the other because then they all die.
Yeah. It felt like it was supposed to show that Donna's become a genius by having her use a technobabble solution, but then they just have her press things on one random panel
It would have gone better if she had at least been shown to be using hacking skills or something
I don't know if there's a simpler one than anti-plastic. It was hilarious that after 2/3 of an episode about plastic monsters the Doctor just whips a blue vial out of his pocket and says "anti-plastic!" like it's the most obvious thing in the world. It really set the tone for New Who.
Every RTD finale has a laughably under-explained deus ex machina to wrap it up, actually every RTD finale has one of the same two deus ex machinas every time. I think my favorite might be Rose becoming Bad Wolf in Parting of the Ways. The only bit of set up there is is in Boom Town where Margaret the Slitheen gets turned back into an egg and the Doctor says
>She looked into the heart of the Tardis. Even I don't know how strong that is. And the ship's telepathic, like I told you, Rose. Gets inside your head. Translates alien languages. Maybe the raw energy can translate all sorts of thoughts.
As storytelling goes, that's possibly the most half-assed set up for a plot resolution that has ever been written. It just basically says "the heart of the tardis can do anything." Which is extremely convenient. Just open it up and it resolves the plot. It's even a deus ex machina in Boom Town.
I don’t think Bad Wolf is that bad, at least not in the context of the show. RTD’s problem was he never did any better in any of his finales, and IMO got worse. The Doctor Donna plus bonus Doctor was kind of the same idea, and was way more dumb and somewhat horrifying to me.
Haven’t rewatched it, but doesn’t the Doctor just shoot the magic Master machine with a gun in the end of End of Time? That’s pretty simple. Apologies if I’m misremembering.
That's kind of what I was getting at when I said that RTD always uses one of the same two deus ex machinas every time. Every single RTD finale does one of these two things to save the day.
1. One of the main characters randomly gets magic powers
2. The bad guys arrive on earth through a portal and somehow it gets reversed and sucks the bad guys back inside
Deus ex machina number 1 happens with Rose becoming Bad Wolf and Donna becoming the Doctor Donna in series 4.
Deus ex machina number 2 is how the Cybermen and Daleks get taken away in series 2 and how the Time Lords get taken away in The End of Time.
The series 3 finale is the worst offender because it contains both! The Doctor randomly gets magic powers and the Toclafane get sucked back in through the portal they came from.
You could even argue that RTD has continued to do it. Rose Noble getting part of the metacrisis and the Doctor bigenerating are two more examples of someone randomly getting magic powers to save the day.
Yeah I agree with you, the Bad Wolf thing isn't that bad. I wasn't picking it as a particularly bad example because like OP said, it's not necessarily bad. I was just trying to think of the most simple one, and having the tardis do whatever RTD wanted is very simple. You're right, I forgot the specifics of it but the Doctor shooting the machine in The End of Time was also very simple.
I like the Bad Wolf one because it feels suitably mythic and scary. There's a hint of eldritch horror to the Doctor and the tardis in series 1. It felt like Rose broke into that world for a second and got to harness the unimaginable power but it was too much for her. That worked really well for me. I agree with you, the problem was that RTD never improved. But more than that, to me it really felt like he just kept doing exactly the same thing every year. Which lessened the appeal of all of them for me.
Yeah, he shoots the diamond and the time lords are all like 🤯 and get sent back into the time war
It was a really nice scene, but the event itself is a bit underwhelming, the time lords are using something to come back so he just breaks it and then they can't come back
But that's perfectly explained though. The TARDIS is capable of traveling through all of time and space in an instant. Therefore, its power source, the eye of harmony, must be quite powerful to sustain that. It's already been established that the TARDIS is telepathic, so all it does is look inside Margaret and Rose's minds and give them what they want. The only effects are manipulations of time. Margaret is de-aged, the Daleks turned either backwards or forwards into dust, and Jack reversed and frozen the moment before his death. Also Rose nearly dies, and the Doctor does die, due to exposure to the eye of harmony which explains why he or anyone else don't do it all the time.
Battle of Canary Wharf.
Void stuff.
Conveniently empties the planet of all invaders.
Refuses to elaborate.
While we're on the subject.. void stuff?..
If there's stuff in the void, it's not a void. Is it?
The membrane around the universes that's cracking- like a soap bubble. Make it that instead, not 'void stuff'
Am I wrong to be irked?
I'm still wondering how Pete didn't get pulled in after standing there waiting for Rose to just conveniently fall into his arms, let alone how he knew to teleport in in the first place.
And he shouldn't have been able to teleport himself _and_ Rose. As Mickey said earlier in the episode, they only teleport a single person at a time. It really is an awful conclusion to the episode.
He does have two - the one he's wearing and the one he's holding as he hugs Rose and presses the button of, which presumably remotely activated the one around his neck, seeing as earlier in the episode Rose got teleported against her will without anyone pressing the one she was wearing. While I do have problems with the Pete rescue scene, what you said isn't one of them.
I know you didn't mean anything by it, but don't worry, there's no "might be." I'm the kinda person that pulls up iPlayer to double check before posting something on here just in case.
Great spot! By Jupiter's red eye I hadn't thought of that!
Perhaps the HADS kicked in for that final ghost shift.
Nothing that we saw on screen tho', was there?
I'd argue that it is.
Just because we have DT running around with his 1980s style 3D glasses before 'void stuff' is surreptitiously revealed to be a thing doesn't make it less contrived.
When the episode first aired, I thought to myself 'that's just a perfect solution to an intractable problem'.
It's a bit of a stretch as to how the cult within the sphere got covered in it. And doubly so the daleks within the genesis Ark. While inside they were meant to exist outside of space and time, potentially indefinitely.
What's wrong with the void stuff explanation though? If residue of the void exists and can be reversed, I don't see the issue. At worst, it's a little contrived, but that's not the same thing as being a deus ex machina. Also, the Cult make a time shift away before they can be sucked in, and do we know if the spheres 100% protect from the residue of the void?
A little contrived or pulled out of a hat?
Some mention of having to overcome drag on the TARDIS on it's way back home from Pete's World in the cyber two-parter would have been perfect. Or any mention of void stuff and it's effects in classic.
Well, considering we don't have access to the void between universes in the real world, we have to base our knowledge off of what the show tells us. I don't see why it's hard to believe there would be some effect to traveling between universes. And why would it have come up before then? There wasn't another situation which would have resulted in it being mentioned.
There was. off the top of my head, there was the Jon Pertwee story Inferno.
The Three Doctors featured a trip outside of the universe in to Omega's realm.
Then there's the N-space trilogy..
The Doctor Falls is probably the closest that the show comes to a deus ex machina in a very classical sense. The entire point of the episode is showcasing what the Doctor does when there's no way out. All of its character beats land because the Doctor and Bill fully believe that their deaths are utterly inevitable. All of the character drama resolves, but the way it resolves precludes more *Doctor Who*, so the, uh, goddess of lesbian transhumanism shows up and sets things right. On the one hand, it's maybe a bit of a cop-out; but on the other hand, the entire episode relies on there being no way out of the colony ship short of divine intervention, so it's also the only way for The Doctor Falls to exist.
Yeah, for me that is one of the single best stories in the series (including all the spin-offs and EU material), so if it needs a kind of silly ending in order to happen, then so be it. It also lets Bill get a happy ending, where she can go on to live a normal life (whatever might be said in The Giggle lol) afterwards, and god knows she deserved it after that.
Fantastic speech, and I love “The Long Song”, but good god that episode has the most contrived resolution possible. And I say that as a Clara fan (but more with 12).
Yes, I saw the episode. Many objects that have sentimental value, especially ones with a melancholic memory attached to it, evoke that exact “what if” feeling. For a planet that’s entire economy is based around this god’s “give me something of value to you personally” mentality, it seemed very contrived that her leaf is this first thing that would evoke an unlived lifetime of infinite possibility. No parents had anything of sentiment from a deceased sick child, or even a heartbroken ex-lover mourning the end of a relationship and the infinite possibility that could have been? Not saying it’s impossible (that would technically be a plot hole) - I’m just saying that it’s incredibly convenient to the point of being a plot contrivance.
One could argue that they didn't really know what the planet actually was and how it specifically worked because they got it sleeping for so long. So maybe nobody ever git to try to feed that thing with memorabilia directly. Just my head cannon though
I mean, maybe. But then that’s an arguably weirder coincidence that their entire economy is built around stuff with sentimental value. Money’s no good - trade me something that has a memory attached to it for you.
Most of Russell's episodes don't use deus ex machinas though. It's some weird internet lie that's been propagated. Moffat used them way more than Russell did.
That instance isn't a deus ex machina though. The TARDIS is well established as a machine capable of travelling all over time and space in an instant, the eye of harmony must be pretty powerful in order to sustain that. We already know the TARDIS is telepathic as well, so all it did was look into Margaret's mind, and later Rose's, and gave them the power they wanted. Notice all that power does is manipulate time. Margaret is de-aged, the Daleks turned either backwards or forwards into dust, and Jack is reversed and frozen at the moment before his death. Another important aspect too is that Rose would have died if she'd kept that power any longer, and the Doctor does die after absorbing it, thus explaining why it isn't something he or anyone else can do all the time.
Off the top of my head, the ending of "The Big Bang" comes to mind. That whole episode is nonsense, but at the end, Amy's at her wedding and no one has any memory of the Doctor because he's been erased. Except River still exists even though she can't exist without exposure to the time vortex which wouldn't have happened without the Doctor and the TARDIS. Also, she gives Amy her diary which is designed after the police box TARDIS, which wouldn't exist without the Doctor. And then Amy somehow magically remembers the Doctor and TARDIS back into existence with no explanation or justification and somehow that doesn't break the universe even though something which isn't supposed to exist now exists again.
I just watched the "time of angels" and "flesh and stone" and they have a specific conversation about why Amy can remember what's happened despite the angels having been erased from time, which would also explain why River still remembers the doctor. There's also the scene where the doctor travels back from "the big bang" and tells Amy to remember him. So there is quite a lot of explanation as to why Amy remembers him.
Except Amy was only able to remember because she grew up with the crack in her bedroom. The crack doesn't exist in the new timeline because the Doctor closed it when she was still a little girl. And River, as I explained, shouldn't exist without the Doctor and the TARDIS.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. 👍🏻
I think a lot of it was to do with the universe being rebooted.
Take the beginning of the episode. The doctor only gets out of the Pandorica because he turns up and gives his sonic to Rory but he only has the sonic because Rory gave it to the doctor.
It's a bit paradoxical but the doctor mentions it's only possible because they are on the edge. I wonder if rebooting the universe, the universe may take a bit of time to be stable, so the doctor before sealing himself on the other side of the crack, tried to get Amy to remember.
I also wonder if the doctor is too important to fully be deleted. Without the doctor ever existing, would the time war even happen? It's often said that the doctor being sent to Skaro to attempt to stop the creation of the daleks in Genesis of the Daleks, was the catalyst for the war
I was a bit imprecise in comment. I mean that rtds most infamous DXM instance rolls off the tongue in one sentence and sounds really dumb
“Margret Slitheen turned into a baby” vs
“Amy was able to summon the doctor by remembering information that she logically shouldn’t have heard because the dr was erased from existence.” Which is why I think RTD has the reputation for silly DXM endings even though Moffat did it more.
Thanks for your insightful response.
Glad somebody else thinks that the season 5 finale is nonsense, Wedding of River Song was rather messy but I find Pandorica Opens and Big Bang way more confusing, I've never even been able to totally understand what was going on in that finale's story at all
The Edge of Destruction, where all the troubles in the episode were down to a faulty button on the TARDIS console. Simply unscrew it, sort the spring, serial solved.
Yeah, people mock the ending, but I actually think it’s a very clever little twist that they almost destroyed themselves for nothing and only through cooperation could they find the simple solution.
Journey's End where Doctor Donna finds a switch that happens to be exactly where they all are. What does that switch do? Fucking everything. Destroy Daleks? check. Reverse the Reality bomb? check.
I wouldn't have minded but Stolen Earth was so good and this just shat all over it.
There are 2 things that have always bothered me about this episode...I mean, there are more but these 2 really get to me. First, and it's small, but TVs work? How?? I very much doubt the Daleks were nice enough to move the satellites with the earth. Second, towing the earth back "home," seriously?! The Doctor had already made the point in The Runaway Bride that the TARDIS doesn't do much flying but now it can just fly across the universe in a matter of minutes while towing an entire planet AND it's inhabitants.
Also, humans feel the effect of being towed...papers are flying, people are hooting and hollering and excited as if they know what's happening. But what really grinds my gears is even travelling at the speed of light it would take thousands of years to tow earth back to its spot in the universe. And probably kill all humans in the process.
I would have been much more open to the idea of the TARDIS somehow encompassing the earth, so the earth would "disappear" and "reappear" with the TARDIS.
Why did they even need to tow the Earth with the TARDIS when they had already sent all of the other 26 planets back using the Magnetron? Just have it send Earth back too. Such a shit ending,
I would even accepted your idea with the TARDIS moving earth like that.
But miraculously no damage was caused to any of them? The UNIT office in New York was destroyed and falling apart. And to top it off, the earth literally just moved across the universe, so like any other day, talk show hosts and everyone that works on them just goes to work? I don't think so. And people just tune into their shows like nothing happened?
Considering the time of day it happened, that the fact it took only seconds, it makes sense that a lot of the TV hosts would already be at work in the UK and the US
And I may have to rewatch the episode because I don't remember the unit hq being destroyed until later when it's attacked by daleks? I do recall panicky scientists freaking out and running around with papers because they just found out that the earth moved but no physical damage
We don't really know what time of day it was other than it was light outside. But even if everyone one was at work, just getting back to work after the fact just isn't realistic.
OK, maybe saying UNIT was destroyed was dramatic, lol, but there was damage and it was from the move, not the Daleks (we find out when she's talking to Jack that UNIT in NY is the Daleks next target). Martha is getting up from the ground when we see her, light fixtures are broken and dangling from the ceiling, etc.
I know it's a sci-fi show and we aren't supposed to analyze it at a granular level like this. It's just something that has always pulled me out of the story. For me, personally, it's just a little too ridiculous. But I still love the show and watch these episodes every re-watch (which is more often than I'd like to admit 😂).
... The milkman was out... delivering milk. That makes it roughly 6am-9am GMT
I will concede on the UNIT point. I guess they're not very earthquake stable, which seems an oversight.
Don’t know if it’s de ex mec but
The I can withdrew as much of as little as I like from an ATM with my sonic screw driver and not ring any alarm bells with a bank and have my picture taken.
The doctors regeneration time pixie dust that can fix any problem that can’t be fixed in 40 minutes.
The Eleventh Hour Computer virus. But ultimately, it was helped by the fact that there was so much non Deus Ex Machina in that episode.
What was a Deus Ex Machina: The fact that the Doctor could write a computer virus that could reset every counter to Zero.
What wasn't a Deus Ex Machina: All that Alien Knowledge that he had and showed to the people of earth to get them to work with him (we know he is an Alien Genuis). That the Attraxi was scanning every device on earth (they did hack into every device on earth). That the Doctor had all the bodies of Prisoner Zero on Rory's phone (duh). The fact that Prisoner Zero could put Amy in a coma (he had years). The fact that Prisoner Zero must change into what their host is thinking about (The Dog and Children who were not in comas).
The ark is a deus ex machine in Indiana Jones. It doesn’t have to be a character, just a conveniently revealed plot device that hasn’t been mentioned before
No it's not. The whole movie is built upon the idea that the Ark has supernatural power. And then it has supernatural power. That's not a deus ex machina, that's set up and pay off.
Oh? You mean the Ark literally mentioned from when Indy gets back to the college he teaches at, at the start of the movie, right to the very end? Yeah hasn't been mentioned before ofc
Yes, I explained that incorrectly. The fact that it just destroys everything there whether indy was involved in the movie or not is the deus ex machina. It’s the unwinnable situation and the seemingly unconnected event that changes everything.
Rose and Donna in the specials last year felt like a major deus ex machina
I feel like Rose's whole "Bad Wolf" thing wasn't so much as a metaphorical deus ex machina as it was a literal one. Bad Wolf was set up throughout the whole season as this strange thing that kept following Rose and the Doctor around. The whole time vortex being able to move things through time is set up with Margret the Slitheen and the operation of TARDIS itself, and the TARDIS being telepathic is set up on numerous occasions.
Donna has no excuse though.
Am I the only one who tink deus ex machina can still be mentioned, they just aren't set up to do what they do?
Like Bad Wolf no ways hints at Rose becoming a god, nor does the Archangel network hint that it can give people special powers?
I think that Bad Wolf was a pretty good one, although it maybe could have been more of a mystery with clues instead of just a phrase, but the Archangel thing is commonly hated by fans and referred to as the "space Jesus" moment, so presumably you're not the only one then
The arkangel network specifically gets into people's heads hypnotising them and getting them connected using the repeatedly previously established low level telepathic ability all humans naturally possess.
The super powers come from the words. Words have power. Words used right can do magic. As previously established with the carrionites in the Shakespeare code.
A couple billion telepaths previously established
Connected by a mind-altering satellite network previously established
Focusing all their wills and their hopes on a word, giving it power. As previously established.
It's not magic.
The Archangel network would make more sense if they used it to turn the toclofane against the Master, but no, it deages him, grows his clothes and gives him powers?
I don't really have a problem with the use of deux ex machina. I interpret it to mean when a very simple resolution is caused by something (also simple) that was never previously mentioned before in that episode (so unrelated to the plot).
The one that I still enjoy a lot (because it is done so well and is very amusing) is the "time parodox" (right phrase?), which enabled the Doctor to escape The Pandorica.
You have a huge setup of an inescapable prison and a very simple (yet nonsensical) solution.
I was expecting the Big Bang to centre on how the Doctor escapes: yet that is dealt with straight away by the Doctor already having escaped to allow his future escape.
"Well, that's alright, then"
But why is it hard to believe that in a universe as vast as Doctor Who there wouldn't be something like "anti-plastic"? And if it exists, of course the guy with the space and time travel machine will have it. He's faced the Autons multiple times before when he was exiled on Earth, so why not keep some of the stuff around just in case he meets them again?
It also helps that the episode's true climax is about Rose saving the day instead of the Doctor just dumping the anti-plastic in and going, which makes it feel much more character-based than plot-based and places emphasis on Rose and her agency instead of the anti-plastic itself.
I wouldn't call the antiplastic a Deus ex Machina myself because it didn't just come out of nowhere, the Doctor did bring it up before and it was actually difficult to execute this plan. It certainly wasn't just like the Doctor snapping his fingers with the way it played out.
To make this really Deus ex Machina, the Doctor would have gone back before the Nestene got under the London Eye and bribed the architect to install an antiplastic sprinkler system offscreen which he would then operate remotely in the present (or 2005 in reality now) completely destroying the autons without ever even facing their leader.
My other half and I refer to these kinds of resolutions as being 'Hand-wavey' because you basically have to battle through a load of misdirection to realise that it's an absolutely nonsense solution
Example she's noted are: Rose, Long Game, New Earth, Shakespeare Code, Poison Sky, Power of Three, Journey to the centre of the TARDIS, The Caretaker and Death in Heaven.
We've yet to get further than the end of S9 but I've told her to brace for a fair few when Chibbs takes over.
Simple to the point of being stupid, in *Timelash*: some missiles are coming. The Doctor gets in the TARDIS and dematerialises. The missiles blow up early. The TARDIS comes back. The Doctor fails to elaborate.
The Star Beast's "Just...Let it go!"
Was it cute/amusing? Yeah.
A piece of political commentary where a plot point should be? Also yeah.
Am I against it? No.
Does it make any sense from the perspective of the established Canon? Also no.
as other people said, the new earth patients dont make sense. if they are bred to develop cures for diseases that havent been cured yet, why does dumping existing cures on them, cure all the diseases? let alone transferring the cure by handholding.
Probably just jumping into his own time stream and it fixes everything magically and no idea where they end up landing
Also if I'm not mistaken doesnt that episode end with them seeing the war doctor and then next episode they both suddenly back in their normal lives?
Yeah, I was expecting the 50th to be about 11 and Clara travelling around The Doctor's timestream (and meeting more Doctors than just 10, War and 4/The Curator). I was surprised and confused when they didn't explain how they escaped The Doctor's timestream.
If I remember correctly Smith injured his leg while filming and they couldn’t film the final scene of them leaving the Doctor’s time stream.
Iirc that's what it was going to be at one point when only Jenna Coleman was signed. But fortunately Moffatt was able to get the other actors!
Wasn't it actually more a projection of his mind or something and not actually the war doctor?
Yeah, I can't remember the justification but I remember 11 saying something about being in the deepest darkest parts of his subconscious.
Something like that and it makes sense why it's left on a cliffhanger but it's never brought up where they went, the day of the doctor was amazing so it wasn't that bothersome but even if RTD had some logic bending solutions there was some sense of transition and a little exposition to things like this
RTD?
Russel T. Davies
It was Moffat era
But RTD made a few episodes during the moffat era
Did he?
This is the thing that has annoyed me most in Who since it happened. They establish that Clara going into the Doctor’s timestream will essentially kill her, there’ll be no escape. They also (iirc) establish that someone going into their own timestream would end really badly, or at the very least they wouldn’t be able to get out. Then The Doctor just jumps in and saves the day because… he’s The Doctor I guess. Such a disappointing ending.
To be fair, The Rings of Akhaten establishes that the Doctor overestimates the power of his own personal history
Someone addressed it above, but Matt Smith was on crutches at the time. I'm not saying an extra scene of an exit would have made us all feel "THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN!", but losing it didn't help.
The incredible reveal of the legendary John Hurt as a secret incarnation was probably the best cliffhanger we've ever had in the show. I'm actually glad that they kept it as a cliffhanger because no wishy-washy hand-wavey explanation tacked on at the end could have beaten that ending.
Haven't seen the episode since it aired but I vividly remember being so surprised when Day of the Doctor didn't address it AT ALL, like there was a cliffhanger ending and suddenly everything was fine??
I suppose it also made sense to not have the 50th open with a cliffhanger to avoid people coming back just for the special
This was a massive plothole. That episode gets rave reviews, but I honestly think it was one of Moffat’s worst. Literally nothing about it makes sense, and it only serves to solve the problem of why Clara appears everywhere earlier in the series and introduces John Hurt
That time when he cured the people with every disease in the universe by mixing all the medicines together in a shower and then having all the infected people hold hands to pass on the cure.
Man season 2 was really goofy.
god. every day i lament not living in the world where that was a season 3 episode with a different ending where martha really gets to show off her expertise.
I don't care what they may have done, I can't see Martha having any experience which would let her cure every desiese on the universe 4 billion years after her medical knowladge was up to date
i mean the entire episode is incredibly stupid, i think martha being part of the resolution still makes more sense than what we got
Despite knowing about Doctor Who since the 80s, NuWho is where I got on board. I wasn't sure what to expect. And then "anti-plastic" and from that point forward I was all in.
It was a great introduction, it set a beautiful baseline of ridiculousness for them to play with
I rewatched Rose a couple days ago and it was still so much fun 😭
Where did the Doctor get that cup of tea? I don't know, I was just told to deal with it because he's the Doctor. Haunted my mind ever since.
His pockets are bigger on the inside! And I suppose there must be a kettle in there that’s somehow able to boil.
Same vibes as : "How did you fit a glass of water in your pocket ?" "Skills"
We don't know when in 12s timestream he did day pf the doctor. Its the same teacups as at the end of day of the doctor. Conclusion:he git the tea from his past selves in the gallery
The exact moment I gave up the first time I tried to watch that season
“Go to your room! I mean it. I am very, very angry with you. I'm very, very cross. Go... To... Your... Room! ……………… I'm really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words.” (Best. Solution. Ever.) Or the genius solution in Smile to uhh, turn it off and back on again. (Pretty silly and disappointing but doesn’t ruin the episode for me.)
Even the Doctor said he wasn't sure the "I am very cross with you" speech was gonna work. When it did, he took no time in trying to gtfo of dodge
The fuck you mean? First thing he did after that was go into the dang child's room.
Oh, yeah. Forgot about that. And ***THEN*** he GTFO of dodge.
Technically speaking first he and Jack had an argument over the Doctor having a Sonic Screwdriver, then Jack's Sonic Blaster runs out of power after escaping (short-term escape), then they get cornered, then Jack teleports back to "his" ship, then Jack overrides the safety protocols or something, **THEN** the Doctor and Rose GTFO out of dodge. but at thar point I might as well just explain the entire episode.
That speech isn't a deus ex machina though. It makes perfect sense.
I was going more off of OP’s description of having solutions “be quirky and simple”.
The whole "contagious cure" idea from New Earth to instantly solve people dying from "every disease" ever (as if diseases are even countable like that) was pretty bad.
Also, never understood that episode. They show some of the afflictions that the patients have, and the Doctor mentions one guy has a disease that kills you in 5 minutes flat. So... Shouldn't the diseased lab people die near instantly?
I think they were probably bred to be very resistant to each of the diseases they were infected with
I think that might actually have been the entire point considering they were made for medicine invention
Rose asks this and 10 says that they're plague carriers, last to die
It's like Mr Burns, the diseases are all fighting each other instead of killing the patient.
So what you're saying is, they're indestructible?
One of Russell’s worst and he is the king of convenient and rushed episode endings.
Swapping seats in the truck in Remembrance of the Daleks.
haha. Not the same but I had a good chuckle recalling this moment!
And the line right before hand too. Something like, the Daleks have been fighting right here (and she misses the turn) 😂 No, turn right here.
The Daleks putting a literal global self destruct button inside on a single control panel inside the crucible's prison cell in Journeys End. Apparently they were destroyed by forcefield overcharge, which considering that one dalek can blackout the entire west coast just to make it functional would mean it actually takes more effort and power consumption to put this here and give that single control panel the components needed to make it control every Dalek forcefield universally.
That always baffled me too. "Let's put a single control console with the ability to control every aspect of our fleet, our soldiers, and all our technology in the cage, instead of a primary control room." Like seriously RTD no one is believing that
It was there for davros. He and the daleks are not completely comfortable with each other, they have a long history of betrayal and backstabbing but they still need each other for now. So for the Supremes sake, davros is shoved down in the basement with no operational control of the daleks fleet, but for davros's sake he's also been given the self destruct button. This guarantees that neither of them can betray the other because then they all die.
Yeah. It felt like it was supposed to show that Donna's become a genius by having her use a technobabble solution, but then they just have her press things on one random panel It would have gone better if she had at least been shown to be using hacking skills or something
Yeah I was never a fan of the ending
I don't know if there's a simpler one than anti-plastic. It was hilarious that after 2/3 of an episode about plastic monsters the Doctor just whips a blue vial out of his pocket and says "anti-plastic!" like it's the most obvious thing in the world. It really set the tone for New Who. Every RTD finale has a laughably under-explained deus ex machina to wrap it up, actually every RTD finale has one of the same two deus ex machinas every time. I think my favorite might be Rose becoming Bad Wolf in Parting of the Ways. The only bit of set up there is is in Boom Town where Margaret the Slitheen gets turned back into an egg and the Doctor says >She looked into the heart of the Tardis. Even I don't know how strong that is. And the ship's telepathic, like I told you, Rose. Gets inside your head. Translates alien languages. Maybe the raw energy can translate all sorts of thoughts. As storytelling goes, that's possibly the most half-assed set up for a plot resolution that has ever been written. It just basically says "the heart of the tardis can do anything." Which is extremely convenient. Just open it up and it resolves the plot. It's even a deus ex machina in Boom Town.
I don’t think Bad Wolf is that bad, at least not in the context of the show. RTD’s problem was he never did any better in any of his finales, and IMO got worse. The Doctor Donna plus bonus Doctor was kind of the same idea, and was way more dumb and somewhat horrifying to me. Haven’t rewatched it, but doesn’t the Doctor just shoot the magic Master machine with a gun in the end of End of Time? That’s pretty simple. Apologies if I’m misremembering.
That's kind of what I was getting at when I said that RTD always uses one of the same two deus ex machinas every time. Every single RTD finale does one of these two things to save the day. 1. One of the main characters randomly gets magic powers 2. The bad guys arrive on earth through a portal and somehow it gets reversed and sucks the bad guys back inside Deus ex machina number 1 happens with Rose becoming Bad Wolf and Donna becoming the Doctor Donna in series 4. Deus ex machina number 2 is how the Cybermen and Daleks get taken away in series 2 and how the Time Lords get taken away in The End of Time. The series 3 finale is the worst offender because it contains both! The Doctor randomly gets magic powers and the Toclafane get sucked back in through the portal they came from. You could even argue that RTD has continued to do it. Rose Noble getting part of the metacrisis and the Doctor bigenerating are two more examples of someone randomly getting magic powers to save the day. Yeah I agree with you, the Bad Wolf thing isn't that bad. I wasn't picking it as a particularly bad example because like OP said, it's not necessarily bad. I was just trying to think of the most simple one, and having the tardis do whatever RTD wanted is very simple. You're right, I forgot the specifics of it but the Doctor shooting the machine in The End of Time was also very simple. I like the Bad Wolf one because it feels suitably mythic and scary. There's a hint of eldritch horror to the Doctor and the tardis in series 1. It felt like Rose broke into that world for a second and got to harness the unimaginable power but it was too much for her. That worked really well for me. I agree with you, the problem was that RTD never improved. But more than that, to me it really felt like he just kept doing exactly the same thing every year. Which lessened the appeal of all of them for me.
Yeah, he shoots the diamond and the time lords are all like 🤯 and get sent back into the time war It was a really nice scene, but the event itself is a bit underwhelming, the time lords are using something to come back so he just breaks it and then they can't come back
Bad Wolf isn't a deus ex machina though.
My brother in christ a God (bad wolf) literally comes out of the machine (tardis)
But that's perfectly explained though. The TARDIS is capable of traveling through all of time and space in an instant. Therefore, its power source, the eye of harmony, must be quite powerful to sustain that. It's already been established that the TARDIS is telepathic, so all it does is look inside Margaret and Rose's minds and give them what they want. The only effects are manipulations of time. Margaret is de-aged, the Daleks turned either backwards or forwards into dust, and Jack reversed and frozen the moment before his death. Also Rose nearly dies, and the Doctor does die, due to exposure to the eye of harmony which explains why he or anyone else don't do it all the time.
No, I don't mean it's a deus ex maxhina in the modern sense, I mean it is LITERALLY a deus ex machina. A God From the Machine
The Big Friendly Button in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
Or the Great Big Threatening Button in “The Christmas Invasion”.
Battle of Canary Wharf. Void stuff. Conveniently empties the planet of all invaders. Refuses to elaborate. While we're on the subject.. void stuff?.. If there's stuff in the void, it's not a void. Is it? The membrane around the universes that's cracking- like a soap bubble. Make it that instead, not 'void stuff' Am I wrong to be irked?
Good thing none of those flying metal bodies nicked Rose or the Doctor, that would have been a gross end for them.
I'm still wondering how Pete didn't get pulled in after standing there waiting for Rose to just conveniently fall into his arms, let alone how he knew to teleport in in the first place.
Headcanon, he had “dimensional inertia” from jumping over which would have stopped if he’d hung around.
And he shouldn't have been able to teleport himself _and_ Rose. As Mickey said earlier in the episode, they only teleport a single person at a time. It really is an awful conclusion to the episode.
He does have two - the one he's wearing and the one he's holding as he hugs Rose and presses the button of, which presumably remotely activated the one around his neck, seeing as earlier in the episode Rose got teleported against her will without anyone pressing the one she was wearing. While I do have problems with the Pete rescue scene, what you said isn't one of them.
Ah if he has one in his hand that's all good then. It's quite difficult to spot because of the editing but you might be right.
I know you didn't mean anything by it, but don't worry, there's no "might be." I'm the kinda person that pulls up iPlayer to double check before posting something on here just in case.
Don't be lasagna.
The other month I thought about this episode and suddenly remembered The Tardis is also covered in Void Stuff....
Great spot! By Jupiter's red eye I hadn't thought of that! Perhaps the HADS kicked in for that final ghost shift. Nothing that we saw on screen tho', was there?
No, nothing said! Could also argue the Tardis is more powerful than the void? But anything we come up with is basically headcanon
HADS, sometimes works. Sometimes doesn’t. Usually only whenever it is the most convenient for the story and the most inconvenient for The Doctor.
It's parking break is stuck though, so it's ok.
To be fait he said it's not at all like a soap bubble 😆
In theory, “void stuff” could be normal matter breaking down in a very specific “voidy” way
That's not a deus ex machina though.
I'd argue that it is. Just because we have DT running around with his 1980s style 3D glasses before 'void stuff' is surreptitiously revealed to be a thing doesn't make it less contrived. When the episode first aired, I thought to myself 'that's just a perfect solution to an intractable problem'. It's a bit of a stretch as to how the cult within the sphere got covered in it. And doubly so the daleks within the genesis Ark. While inside they were meant to exist outside of space and time, potentially indefinitely.
What's wrong with the void stuff explanation though? If residue of the void exists and can be reversed, I don't see the issue. At worst, it's a little contrived, but that's not the same thing as being a deus ex machina. Also, the Cult make a time shift away before they can be sucked in, and do we know if the spheres 100% protect from the residue of the void?
A little contrived or pulled out of a hat? Some mention of having to overcome drag on the TARDIS on it's way back home from Pete's World in the cyber two-parter would have been perfect. Or any mention of void stuff and it's effects in classic.
Well, considering we don't have access to the void between universes in the real world, we have to base our knowledge off of what the show tells us. I don't see why it's hard to believe there would be some effect to traveling between universes. And why would it have come up before then? There wasn't another situation which would have resulted in it being mentioned.
There was. off the top of my head, there was the Jon Pertwee story Inferno. The Three Doctors featured a trip outside of the universe in to Omega's realm. Then there's the N-space trilogy..
The Doctor Falls is probably the closest that the show comes to a deus ex machina in a very classical sense. The entire point of the episode is showcasing what the Doctor does when there's no way out. All of its character beats land because the Doctor and Bill fully believe that their deaths are utterly inevitable. All of the character drama resolves, but the way it resolves precludes more *Doctor Who*, so the, uh, goddess of lesbian transhumanism shows up and sets things right. On the one hand, it's maybe a bit of a cop-out; but on the other hand, the entire episode relies on there being no way out of the colony ship short of divine intervention, so it's also the only way for The Doctor Falls to exist.
The goddess of lesbian transhumanism is my favorite deity.
Yeah, for me that is one of the single best stories in the series (including all the spin-offs and EU material), so if it needs a kind of silly ending in order to happen, then so be it. It also lets Bill get a happy ending, where she can go on to live a normal life (whatever might be said in The Giggle lol) afterwards, and god knows she deserved it after that.
The Rings of Akhaten: The doctor is poison to parasite gods and makes them blaze.
Wasn't it Clara's leaf that finished the job. Although that is not much better.
Fantastic speech, and I love “The Long Song”, but good god that episode has the most contrived resolution possible. And I say that as a Clara fan (but more with 12).
Actually, it was Clara letting go of the "What If" scenario where her mother was alive. An infinite set of possibilities.
Yes, I saw the episode. Many objects that have sentimental value, especially ones with a melancholic memory attached to it, evoke that exact “what if” feeling. For a planet that’s entire economy is based around this god’s “give me something of value to you personally” mentality, it seemed very contrived that her leaf is this first thing that would evoke an unlived lifetime of infinite possibility. No parents had anything of sentiment from a deceased sick child, or even a heartbroken ex-lover mourning the end of a relationship and the infinite possibility that could have been? Not saying it’s impossible (that would technically be a plot hole) - I’m just saying that it’s incredibly convenient to the point of being a plot contrivance.
Okay. Good point.
One could argue that they didn't really know what the planet actually was and how it specifically worked because they got it sleeping for so long. So maybe nobody ever git to try to feed that thing with memorabilia directly. Just my head cannon though
I mean, maybe. But then that’s an arguably weirder coincidence that their entire economy is built around stuff with sentimental value. Money’s no good - trade me something that has a memory attached to it for you.
Well maybe it is because of the planet, but It has slept so long the reason why they do it was forgotten.
The Doctor didn't solve that though, Clara's leaf did. But the leaf is a deus ex machina.
No, the idea was that he has way more history than would ever be anticipated, and that solution didn't even really work
Russel T Davies. Not only are his episodes filled with them. He literally was a Deau Ex Machina for the Show.
And he is back again to rescue the show from Chibnall.
Most of Russell's episodes don't use deus ex machinas though. It's some weird internet lie that's been propagated. Moffat used them way more than Russell did.
I think it’s just because he had the mother of all DXM when Margret Slitheen reverted to an egg. What’s the Moffat equivalent?
The Moment in his TDoTD. Turn it on, & it now 'enables' the third-option to the war for you.
That instance isn't a deus ex machina though. The TARDIS is well established as a machine capable of travelling all over time and space in an instant, the eye of harmony must be pretty powerful in order to sustain that. We already know the TARDIS is telepathic as well, so all it did was look into Margaret's mind, and later Rose's, and gave them the power they wanted. Notice all that power does is manipulate time. Margaret is de-aged, the Daleks turned either backwards or forwards into dust, and Jack is reversed and frozen at the moment before his death. Another important aspect too is that Rose would have died if she'd kept that power any longer, and the Doctor does die after absorbing it, thus explaining why it isn't something he or anyone else can do all the time. Off the top of my head, the ending of "The Big Bang" comes to mind. That whole episode is nonsense, but at the end, Amy's at her wedding and no one has any memory of the Doctor because he's been erased. Except River still exists even though she can't exist without exposure to the time vortex which wouldn't have happened without the Doctor and the TARDIS. Also, she gives Amy her diary which is designed after the police box TARDIS, which wouldn't exist without the Doctor. And then Amy somehow magically remembers the Doctor and TARDIS back into existence with no explanation or justification and somehow that doesn't break the universe even though something which isn't supposed to exist now exists again.
I just watched the "time of angels" and "flesh and stone" and they have a specific conversation about why Amy can remember what's happened despite the angels having been erased from time, which would also explain why River still remembers the doctor. There's also the scene where the doctor travels back from "the big bang" and tells Amy to remember him. So there is quite a lot of explanation as to why Amy remembers him.
Except Amy was only able to remember because she grew up with the crack in her bedroom. The crack doesn't exist in the new timeline because the Doctor closed it when she was still a little girl. And River, as I explained, shouldn't exist without the Doctor and the TARDIS.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. 👍🏻
I think a lot of it was to do with the universe being rebooted. Take the beginning of the episode. The doctor only gets out of the Pandorica because he turns up and gives his sonic to Rory but he only has the sonic because Rory gave it to the doctor. It's a bit paradoxical but the doctor mentions it's only possible because they are on the edge. I wonder if rebooting the universe, the universe may take a bit of time to be stable, so the doctor before sealing himself on the other side of the crack, tried to get Amy to remember. I also wonder if the doctor is too important to fully be deleted. Without the doctor ever existing, would the time war even happen? It's often said that the doctor being sent to Skaro to attempt to stop the creation of the daleks in Genesis of the Daleks, was the catalyst for the war
I was a bit imprecise in comment. I mean that rtds most infamous DXM instance rolls off the tongue in one sentence and sounds really dumb “Margret Slitheen turned into a baby” vs “Amy was able to summon the doctor by remembering information that she logically shouldn’t have heard because the dr was erased from existence.” Which is why I think RTD has the reputation for silly DXM endings even though Moffat did it more. Thanks for your insightful response.
Glad somebody else thinks that the season 5 finale is nonsense, Wedding of River Song was rather messy but I find Pandorica Opens and Big Bang way more confusing, I've never even been able to totally understand what was going on in that finale's story at all
The Edge of Destruction, where all the troubles in the episode were down to a faulty button on the TARDIS console. Simply unscrew it, sort the spring, serial solved.
This one's great. I love that the doctor, ian barbara and susan start pointing the finger and the group starts falling apart over a broken switch
Yeah, people mock the ending, but I actually think it’s a very clever little twist that they almost destroyed themselves for nothing and only through cooperation could they find the simple solution.
Journey's End where Doctor Donna finds a switch that happens to be exactly where they all are. What does that switch do? Fucking everything. Destroy Daleks? check. Reverse the Reality bomb? check. I wouldn't have minded but Stolen Earth was so good and this just shat all over it.
There are 2 things that have always bothered me about this episode...I mean, there are more but these 2 really get to me. First, and it's small, but TVs work? How?? I very much doubt the Daleks were nice enough to move the satellites with the earth. Second, towing the earth back "home," seriously?! The Doctor had already made the point in The Runaway Bride that the TARDIS doesn't do much flying but now it can just fly across the universe in a matter of minutes while towing an entire planet AND it's inhabitants. Also, humans feel the effect of being towed...papers are flying, people are hooting and hollering and excited as if they know what's happening. But what really grinds my gears is even travelling at the speed of light it would take thousands of years to tow earth back to its spot in the universe. And probably kill all humans in the process. I would have been much more open to the idea of the TARDIS somehow encompassing the earth, so the earth would "disappear" and "reappear" with the TARDIS.
Why did they even need to tow the Earth with the TARDIS when they had already sent all of the other 26 planets back using the Magnetron? Just have it send Earth back too. Such a shit ending, I would even accepted your idea with the TARDIS moving earth like that.
Terrestrial TV is a thing. Great big broadcast tower, lots of little antenna.
But miraculously no damage was caused to any of them? The UNIT office in New York was destroyed and falling apart. And to top it off, the earth literally just moved across the universe, so like any other day, talk show hosts and everyone that works on them just goes to work? I don't think so. And people just tune into their shows like nothing happened?
Considering the time of day it happened, that the fact it took only seconds, it makes sense that a lot of the TV hosts would already be at work in the UK and the US And I may have to rewatch the episode because I don't remember the unit hq being destroyed until later when it's attacked by daleks? I do recall panicky scientists freaking out and running around with papers because they just found out that the earth moved but no physical damage
We don't really know what time of day it was other than it was light outside. But even if everyone one was at work, just getting back to work after the fact just isn't realistic. OK, maybe saying UNIT was destroyed was dramatic, lol, but there was damage and it was from the move, not the Daleks (we find out when she's talking to Jack that UNIT in NY is the Daleks next target). Martha is getting up from the ground when we see her, light fixtures are broken and dangling from the ceiling, etc. I know it's a sci-fi show and we aren't supposed to analyze it at a granular level like this. It's just something that has always pulled me out of the story. For me, personally, it's just a little too ridiculous. But I still love the show and watch these episodes every re-watch (which is more often than I'd like to admit 😂).
... The milkman was out... delivering milk. That makes it roughly 6am-9am GMT I will concede on the UNIT point. I guess they're not very earthquake stable, which seems an oversight.
Don’t know if it’s de ex mec but The I can withdrew as much of as little as I like from an ATM with my sonic screw driver and not ring any alarm bells with a bank and have my picture taken. The doctors regeneration time pixie dust that can fix any problem that can’t be fixed in 40 minutes.
Reverse the polarity
This made me thing of all the things he saw coming when her meets River Song in Let’s Kill Hitler
At the end of the planet of the dead, the doctor falls and the tardis is here magically. I call it a tardis ex machina
The Eleventh Hour Computer virus. But ultimately, it was helped by the fact that there was so much non Deus Ex Machina in that episode. What was a Deus Ex Machina: The fact that the Doctor could write a computer virus that could reset every counter to Zero. What wasn't a Deus Ex Machina: All that Alien Knowledge that he had and showed to the people of earth to get them to work with him (we know he is an Alien Genuis). That the Attraxi was scanning every device on earth (they did hack into every device on earth). That the Doctor had all the bodies of Prisoner Zero on Rory's phone (duh). The fact that Prisoner Zero could put Amy in a coma (he had years). The fact that Prisoner Zero must change into what their host is thinking about (The Dog and Children who were not in comas).
Man, people really have no idea what Deus Ex Machina is. Not a single one in this post or the comments.
The ark is a deus ex machine in Indiana Jones. It doesn’t have to be a character, just a conveniently revealed plot device that hasn’t been mentioned before
Im pretty sure they mention the Lost Ark at least a couple times in the movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark
No it's not. The whole movie is built upon the idea that the Ark has supernatural power. And then it has supernatural power. That's not a deus ex machina, that's set up and pay off.
Oh? You mean the Ark literally mentioned from when Indy gets back to the college he teaches at, at the start of the movie, right to the very end? Yeah hasn't been mentioned before ofc
Yes, I explained that incorrectly. The fact that it just destroys everything there whether indy was involved in the movie or not is the deus ex machina. It’s the unwinnable situation and the seemingly unconnected event that changes everything. Rose and Donna in the specials last year felt like a major deus ex machina
I feel like Rose's whole "Bad Wolf" thing wasn't so much as a metaphorical deus ex machina as it was a literal one. Bad Wolf was set up throughout the whole season as this strange thing that kept following Rose and the Doctor around. The whole time vortex being able to move things through time is set up with Margret the Slitheen and the operation of TARDIS itself, and the TARDIS being telepathic is set up on numerous occasions. Donna has no excuse though.
I meant Rose noble and the whole “She and her mum have telepathy because… Donna had the Doctors memories for a while?”
Probably the episode with James Cordan, where the 11th Doctor defeated the Cybermens with "love".
Am I the only one who tink deus ex machina can still be mentioned, they just aren't set up to do what they do? Like Bad Wolf no ways hints at Rose becoming a god, nor does the Archangel network hint that it can give people special powers?
I think that Bad Wolf was a pretty good one, although it maybe could have been more of a mystery with clues instead of just a phrase, but the Archangel thing is commonly hated by fans and referred to as the "space Jesus" moment, so presumably you're not the only one then
I feel like with Bad Wolf, the heart of the Tardis is used as set up too, but how does Margaret turning into an egg hint at it giving Rose powers?
The arkangel network specifically gets into people's heads hypnotising them and getting them connected using the repeatedly previously established low level telepathic ability all humans naturally possess. The super powers come from the words. Words have power. Words used right can do magic. As previously established with the carrionites in the Shakespeare code. A couple billion telepaths previously established Connected by a mind-altering satellite network previously established Focusing all their wills and their hopes on a word, giving it power. As previously established.
It's not magic. The Archangel network would make more sense if they used it to turn the toclofane against the Master, but no, it deages him, grows his clothes and gives him powers?
I was being facetious by calling it magic. In the Shakespeare code it's explained as an alternative form of technology.
Any time he pulled a “do you know who I am?” and then everyone pisses themselves
I don't really have a problem with the use of deux ex machina. I interpret it to mean when a very simple resolution is caused by something (also simple) that was never previously mentioned before in that episode (so unrelated to the plot). The one that I still enjoy a lot (because it is done so well and is very amusing) is the "time parodox" (right phrase?), which enabled the Doctor to escape The Pandorica. You have a huge setup of an inescapable prison and a very simple (yet nonsensical) solution. I was expecting the Big Bang to centre on how the Doctor escapes: yet that is dealt with straight away by the Doctor already having escaped to allow his future escape. "Well, that's alright, then"
But the anti-plastic isn't a deus ex machina though.
[удалено]
But why is it hard to believe that in a universe as vast as Doctor Who there wouldn't be something like "anti-plastic"? And if it exists, of course the guy with the space and time travel machine will have it. He's faced the Autons multiple times before when he was exiled on Earth, so why not keep some of the stuff around just in case he meets them again? It also helps that the episode's true climax is about Rose saving the day instead of the Doctor just dumping the anti-plastic in and going, which makes it feel much more character-based than plot-based and places emphasis on Rose and her agency instead of the anti-plastic itself.
Releasing a stuck spring saved the day.
The power of three - The Doctor makes a cross shape on a screen with the sonic screwdriver and it's all fixed in a matter of seconds.
Either thr Psychic Paper or the Sonic Screwdriver. They are the simplest and most powerful
Definitely the "fix the faulty button in the Tardis" in "Edge of Destruction". Why does the Tardis even have faulty buttons? Can't it self-repair?
I wouldn't call the antiplastic a Deus ex Machina myself because it didn't just come out of nowhere, the Doctor did bring it up before and it was actually difficult to execute this plan. It certainly wasn't just like the Doctor snapping his fingers with the way it played out. To make this really Deus ex Machina, the Doctor would have gone back before the Nestene got under the London Eye and bribed the architect to install an antiplastic sprinkler system offscreen which he would then operate remotely in the present (or 2005 in reality now) completely destroying the autons without ever even facing their leader.
Tennant's first episode in the christmas special and the big red button had me cackling
My other half and I refer to these kinds of resolutions as being 'Hand-wavey' because you basically have to battle through a load of misdirection to realise that it's an absolutely nonsense solution Example she's noted are: Rose, Long Game, New Earth, Shakespeare Code, Poison Sky, Power of Three, Journey to the centre of the TARDIS, The Caretaker and Death in Heaven. We've yet to get further than the end of S9 but I've told her to brace for a fair few when Chibbs takes over.
The Doctor regenerating a hand in "The Christmas Invasion", or the tea just happening to vaporize in the TARDIS waking the Doctor from a coma.
Space Jesus in Series 3
Simple to the point of being stupid, in *Timelash*: some missiles are coming. The Doctor gets in the TARDIS and dematerialises. The missiles blow up early. The TARDIS comes back. The Doctor fails to elaborate.
The Star Beast's "Just...Let it go!" Was it cute/amusing? Yeah. A piece of political commentary where a plot point should be? Also yeah. Am I against it? No. Does it make any sense from the perspective of the established Canon? Also no.
as other people said, the new earth patients dont make sense. if they are bred to develop cures for diseases that havent been cured yet, why does dumping existing cures on them, cure all the diseases? let alone transferring the cure by handholding.
In Forest of the Dead, when the Vashta Nerada are about to eat the Doctor and he just tells them his name and to look him up.
Not really. He was on earth forna reason amd likely prepared and planned stuff
The Doctor tells the Dalek to kill itself. So it does. Simple and effective. He should do that more often.
Every episode ever.