#so it needs

[te-pu-si-ti]

I know I'm not special, but somehow they make it special and that, is very, special

[rowanthestrange]

Writing the alternate finale (and I’m still not promising anything until it’s posted), but I realised that I basically have nothing to guide me here, because I actually kind of hate nearly every finale Doctor Who has ever done.

Series One: Actually really like this one, only gripe is the kiss - look, I’m sorry, but all these years later and it’s still too much of an age-gap between actors for me not to be hurtled out of the moment going ‘nyeeeeh’ like Joey Wheeler.

Series Two: The sheer volume of ‘Feel damn you, feel’ is enough to force me to do the opposite, and is the start of RTD attempting to smother me with a pillow while the sound of ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’ plays tinnily in the background for the rest of Ten’s entire goddamn run.

Series Three: Yana - Good. Sound Of Drums - Great. And then you solved it all with Floaty Jesus Doctor. And more crying. The Last Of The Damn Whiners. 

Series Four: Towing the Earth home. No. The finale Chibnall liked so much that years later he’d use so many bits of it he’d be forced to lampshade that fact, and the finale Moffat hated so much he devised an entire companion’s arc just to show his fanfic of what should have happened to Donna Noble.

I don’t know if we’re counting the finale to the specials, but that you didn’t follow up with the Time Lord Victorious stuff and I only had five minutes of an actually fascinating Tenth Doctor that I didn’t want to slap in the face, kills me. You could have brought that character back for me right there with proof that all this had been leading up to a perfect storm of character flaws, but no. Eff you.

Series 5: Can’t even pinpoint why I don’t like this one, but I don’t. Logically it hits all the right buttons for me, and yet. Meh? More complicated than complex perhaps. Or maybe it’s just that you blew up the TARDIS and I was filled with a mix of both grief and ‘I know you’re going to have to fix it so just get on with it’.

Series 6: The only one where I don’t feel like I can even do a synopsis for it. Doctor dies and now don’t feed the pterodactyls in Hyde Park? Definitely more complicated than complex. Like the themes are built up to, but the actual realisation of those themes (world turns into Wonderland etc), eh, not so much. And once again, I know this has got to be fixed, so there’s no drama here.

(Is this my problem? Because I like Moffat’s specials and regeneration episodes and all of those have both drama and uncertainty and the payoff? I’m allergic to the stories where we know the problem has to be fixed, or we can’t continue?)

Series 7: Somehow doesn’t feel like a lot happens, but I’m not sure this even can count as a full finale because it’s to lead into Day Of The Doctor. It’s alright. I prefer River whenever she isn’t with the Doctor because then she becomes more deified and less fun. And I’m sorry, but the line was clearly supposed to be “Look at that. I’m the Impossible Girl after all”, because look mate, no-one got your souffle metaphor, and no-one got the fact that ‘the impossible girl’ was supposed to be a subversion because he self-fulfilling-prophecied the thing.

Series 8: Fine, but relentlessly depressing whenever there’s no Missy on screen. Whether that’s a deliberate choice to bond us with the character, I dunno, your mileage may vary. I hate how much is never explained - how are you uploading dead people’s consciousnesses? Why does this concept turn up no less than three times in your run but you don’t do anything to tie it together? Where’s Missy’s TARDIS? Who is the peppy pseudo-demon dude? And why don’t I see more of The Good Place cus no I don’t have to, but I want to see what she did.

Series 9: ...Good. The billion years thing was a bit much, because it makes such a huge scale my mind can no longer wrap around the concept and therefore ditches it and any further implications about it, but good.

Series 10: I’m traumatised. Like, I feel like that might have been a good finale, but I’ve never been able to watch it again, so how could I really say?

Series 11: *New Chibnall pulls off his mask to reveal he was Old Chibnall the entire time except this one had finally got around to watching Star Wars*