1. I love the way they introduced the baddies from the old show without making it "Hey! Lookahere! It's Baddies from the Old Show!"
2. I want a kitten.
3. I never minded Rose. I always liked her. But I never luuuuuurved her. And I think I'm falling in luuuuuuuurve with Martha, because she's so damned smart. I've heard people say they fell so hard for Rose because they identified with how she was at 19--restless, waiting for something to happen, etc. Well, maybe that's why I identify with Martha. Not that I'm that brilliant, just that every time I have a question about how things work, or why things are, Martha asks it. She has an intellectual curiosity that I don't think Rose had, and that I identify with.
4. "Abide With Me" is a very nice hymn for them to end with, given the context. "Old Rugged Cross," on the other hand, made me hit the "mute" button.
5. And I finally figured out the problem I have with "The Face of Boe": He looks like my Great-Uncle George.

But I thought the Doctor didn't like cats. I thought he said that once you see a nun cat it ruins it or something like that in Fear Her.

The only things that really bugged me about this episode are: 1) the idea of a woman giving birth to a litter of kittens, and 2) the apparent fact that the Senate did its legislating in the nude, or New New Earth has some biodegradable clothing line I'm not aware of.

I agree with you, D.C. I find the Martha character to be a breath of fresh air and a challenge for the Doctor. She just doesn't take a quip from the Doctor as an answer. She makes him talk and explain things to her, so that she can understand what's happen during their travels and what he's feeling.

I really like Martha. Who was the good-looking dude that was in the scenes with Martha? I know I've seen him in other British tv shows, I just can't remember his name. - Thanks to IMDB. The actor's name is Travis Oliver and he's in Footballers Wive$: Extra Time as Oliver Ryan.

DIW - The litter of kittens freaked me out as well. Ewwwww.

Heh, I never thought of that while I was watching. Yeah, they were all just skeletons, weren't they? And, so, they had enough time to seal the city below, but not enough time to tell them what was going on? Or, why couldn't the cat-nun come on and tell them? And, I'm confused, the Face of Boe had enough energy to run the motorway for 24 years, but not enough to open the roof?

And, lastly, that guy was all kinds of ridiculously hot.

Yes, but kittens are a completely different matter. ;)

I enjoyed it a good deal, but my enthusiasm was jacked up because I had actually convinced Mr. kouredios to sit down and watch it for me. He laughed out loud at the first cat face he saw, but he stayed relatively engaged. Until the end, at which point he snarked that Futurama made the "New New York" joke a long time ago. "Doctor Who's a helluva lot older than Futurama" I argue. Of course, I've only started watching with new Who, so I don't know if they made the joke first or not. :)

Of course, he was super excited to see (hear, really) Ardal O'Hanlon. He's a big Father Ted fan.

I was really happy to see Martha refuse to get back on the TARDIS until the Doctor answered her questions. Thatta girl!

Wow, I still hate this episode. I especially hate it when I have to watch it with advertisements for SciFi's more usual terrible fare. There are good moments, like the use of the Macra D.C. has already mentioned, as well as the cute mama speaking kittens. I especially liked the Doctor's initial description of Gallifrey, coupled with that obvious desire to just pretend for a little while it still exists. I like that Martha made him sit down and tell her the truth. I rather liked Brannigan and his wife.

However, I can't get passed the premise. I just can't accept that people would just accept years of driving with this vague hope, and that it takes the Doctor about two minutes to solve the vast problem of the sealed under city when the Face of Boe and Hame have been struggling with it for 24 years. I also hate the young couple who think that a mild apology will atone for imprisoning a complete stranger with them for six bloody years. I'm a bit annoyed with Martha being given some dialogue almost identical to Roses in "End of the World". Yes, the sentiments are natural, but there should be a different way of expressing them. I hate that only two episodes after meeting the Doctor that Martha has this absolute faith in the Doctor. I also hated the Doctor's over the top shouting. I know it's a trait of his, but that doesn't stop me from hating it. I also hate anything that sets the Doctor up as a messianic figure as I am sick to the back teeth of the Doctor as Lonely God/Angel. I just want him to be a hero, confound it, mad and a bit magnificent, as Brannigan says. I also thought the mood patch thing was ill conceived and pretty awkwardly managed as well. Maybe if I could manage to accept the premise for more than five seconds without saying this is completely ridiculous and stupid, I wouldn't have such a huge hate for the episode. Not even cute kittens can make me like it.

DeadIrishWriter,

Once you're read Cordwainer Smith, the idea of a woman having kittens isn't bad at all. Actually, I wonder if the writer of Gridlock ever read about Smith's C'mell? I find it rather charming. Strange, but charming. A baby is a baby.

I loved this episode; so much of it is music, and so much of it is all about (no particular, but very emotionally real) faith and connection between human souls. The Face of Boe was absolutely beautiful, and sad, and wonderful, and I'm so glad the Novice stayed with him.

I didn't mind the Christian hymns; one works with what one is raised in, or what one's society has out there as raw material, and those hymns - completely illogical as it might be to find them on New New York - resonated with this particular agnostic. And I don't mind illogic, because Doctor Who has always, for me, been about the logic behind and above the logic we see. This one made me cry unashamedly, and I'm glad.

Or, you know, whatever.

Ok, I really really hated the kittens. Right before they were revealed, I said to myself "I bet they show kittens". Of course, they did. It could've been all sorts of cool if they had actually thought about humanoid cats breeding with humans would make the offspring more human like than kittenish. Other than that, this episode had good moments and a few bad. The ultimate thing it taught me however was that people are stupid. Who drives for years at a time without going anywhere? Oh wait, the people in LA. j/k.

His name is Travis Oliver. You may remember him from Footballers' Wives, in which he did the nasty with a vacuum cleaner. (Oh, yes, I'm classy and couldn't be bothered looking for his other work.)

...fine. Here's his IMDB page.


Loved the episode, aside from the FoB, who I have no interest in, and Brannigan. And why exactly do a bunch of people who supposedly live in New York (or New New New New whatever) speak with British and Irish accents? Is it possible to dump in at least ONE American?

Word to both of you, jcin617 and lacorelli.

It was a great episode as long as you didn't think too much. Perhaps it's the American cynic in me, but I figure if that really happened, after about 5 hours, it would turn into chaos. People would figure out that the police were never coming. There'd be accidents, fights, people boarding each other's cars and stealing their shit, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Pretty much what you find each day at 5pm on the New Jersey Turnpike. I kid, I kid.

At the very least, I figured the episode would turn into that R.E.M. video "Everybody Hurts."

I mean, if you stayed in a sitting position for the better part of 15 years ('muscle stimulants' aside), wouldn't that damage something? Deep vein thrombosis, anyone?

I'd give it a bit more than five hours--after all, that's not so far off from standard commuting time for a bunch of fools around here--but otherwise....yeah. (Mind you, this is coming from somebody who completely gave up her car because commuting more than 20 minutes at a time seems excessive.)

Oh, but let's look at the shallow! Wasn't Ten action-hero cool jumping from car to car? A veritable Sundance Kid!

Wow. Three (well, four if you count the Runaway Bride) great episodes in a row. I'm a very happy Who here in Whoville right now (especially with all the happy singing of hymns after the grinch returned the christmas presents... I mean sky... wait.... confused....)

Okay, ignore the Grinch mockery, I loved this. The return of Novice Hame made me grin, the death of Bo made me sad (say it isn't so! Never mind, don't spoil me!). The kittens were hilarious. Loved the hop through the cars, revealing a woman bearing litters of kittens, a perfectly proper British gentleman, descendants of Oompa Loompas and Powder, and the best cat driver ever, all on one never-ending traffic jam. As someone who spent many years in Washington, D.C., I can very well believe that they could settle in and assume that, someday, they might travel another few feet toward their destination.

Nor does it bug me that Bo and Novice Hame never thought about opening the sky themselves. They could have been in panic mode when they plugged Bo into the systems to keep the under-city alive, doing what they could as quickly as they could simply to keep all those people from dying. Once he was plugged in, the drain on his energy could have been so high that he was not capable of much independent thought, and Hame (while dedicated and sweet) doesn't strike me as much of a brain.

And I'm not convinced that, even if they had thought about it, they'd know how to do it. Hame was freaked when the Doctor started rewiring everything, like she thought that changing the system would result in disaster -- but rewiring was required to get the sky open. And I've never got a really good handle on Bo. He's supposed to be wise, but does that really translate into technological know-how (considering he has no body to work technology with)? Or is he just, you know, some sort of zen master?

Am very happy also with the reveal on Gallifrey. It was a great image the Doctor painted; I could see it so clearly. Ah, the poor, lonely doctor...

I was okay with the episode, even when I knew the Daleks were coming next week, so I didn't spare the enthusiasm. Once I found out that the people in the cars didn't know that the world around them had died, I was okay with the concept. After all, real New Yorkers take mass transit in Manhattan.

The Macra...weren't they the bad guys in an old-school ep? Kinda awesome concept to have big-ass crabs picking cars off. Not as cool as the Crab People from South Park, though.



Looking at the tentacles/tendrils around his face, I'm thinking the Supreme Intelligence.



If I've learned anything from old and new DW, it's that the British accent is harder to kill than cockroaches. Perhaps the folks in New London speak with Brooklyn accents.

Bye, Boe. Thanks for dropping the bombshell on the Doctor. Why you couldn't do that last time is beyond me. Guess being a big head means you always have to be dramatic.

Definitely. My favorite part was when he ran into the nude couple.

And that sequence is even more awesome when you consider that the DW crew basically had one car 'set' and they just redressed it a million different times. (I think.. it's been ages since I saw that particular Confidential episode.)

You are correct. "The Macra Terror" was a story in Two's first season.



Yeah, but Jack can do it. [/whiny voice]

i have mixed feelings about this episode (and the previews for the next). I don't want to see places we've already been, although I did enjoy the Face of Bo returning. I loved the basket of kittens (who doesn't love a basket of kittens?). I loved that the episode was able to just pull loneliness and hope and all sorts of emotions out of us..... but I didn't like that the premise seemed so weak. That everything was fixed by opening the ceiling (hello? killer giant crabs still hanging out down there!), and that it just didn't feel like the episode really went anywhere. And yet, I still feel that there was something really beautiful and moving about the episode as a whole. Something about the Doctor's hamming it up in his serious avoidance of his pain really made me hurt with him when he finally let the hurt come. Watching him choke back the tears that wouldn't come while discussing Gallifrey almost made me cry myself. I could never imagine living in this world completely alone, let alone living in the entire universe that way.

And then the preview. More Daleks? Really? Won't they EVER die?! And yet, I'm sure it will still be a fun episode. I love Ten. I really do.

That, at least, is explained by the kidnappers. They have some kind of exercise machine. But then one wonders how the old ladies or anyone who has been there from the start would know just how long they'd be there and how they would prepare. I think this is a great episode, but yes, thinking too hard about it sort of takes away from the effect.

I liked this episode a whole lot. The parts with the hymns were beautiful - so many people with nothing but each other and their faith that something more is out there. Heaven is above, Hell is below, and the Doctor and Martha are strangers. I loved that, when they both told the other people that they hardly know each other. And Martha, oh. Much as I love Ten, he's really wrapped up in himself most of the time. Gotta sit his ass down and make him be straight with you, that's the only way he'll do it.

Also, David Tennant + Kittens = Awwww!

The description of this episode the pops up when I hit the "info" button on my DVR reads thusly:



I suppose that could be a reasonable accurate description of the first five minutes, if by "sinister pharmacists" they mean cheery, happy-go-lucky, loveable street vendor drug dealers.

Also, of the three times the Doctor said "The Face Of Boe" in this episode, the first and last ones were both transcribed by the closed captioning as "Professor Boe".

And as long as I'm noting this sort of irrelevant crap, there was no episode title in the opening credits again. In these first four episodes (counting TRB), Sci-Fi channel seems to be following a consistent pattern of not including the title for every other episode. I'd like to see someone come up with an explanation as to what the hell *that's* about.

As for the actual episode that all of these little flubs were superimposed over, I'm sorry, but this was just utterly, fatally stupid. I can dig that it's supposed to be all symbolic & metaphorical & whatever, but when the actual literal story is so idiotic as to be insulting, I just can't get past that. You can walk from one end of the current version of Manhattan to the other in a day, easy, the idea that anyone would stay in their cars for more than two days, let alone 24 years, before abandoning their vehicle and just walking to New Brooklyn or wherever the hell they're trying to get to is just too idiotic.

At least there was some interesting stuff at the beginning & the end with the Doctor lying about Gallifrey & being found out. Interesting that in season one Nine had spontaneously explained to Rose about the Time War in her second episode, but with Martha Ten's trying to pretend it never happened. The part at the end where Martha puts her foot down & gets the Doctor to finally open up about Gallifrey & what happened, talk about it in a therapeutic, healing way, is easily my favorite scene of the episode (not that there's a huge list to choose from), and suggests that Martha may, indeed, be the companion that the Doctor really needs at the moment, even if she might not be exactly what he wants.

And, oh yeah, there's the bit with Professor Boe. Every time he shows up on this show all the characters seem to treat him with more respect and awe, but I've never really seen it myself. His solution of "saving" the people of the undercity by trapping them in a living hell of a traffic jam for 24 years when the Doctor solves the problem in two minutes by opening the damm sunroof strikes me as fairly inept. But whatever, in his dying words he has a message of profound significance & importance to the Doctor, something he's apparently waited his whole nearly endless life to tell him, and of course after all that it can't be a clear, unambiguous statement, it has to be an enigmatic riddle. He says that the Doctor & him are "both the last of our kinds", yet follows that up with "You Are Not Alone". Well, I suppose it's more helpful than keeping the sunroof closed and creating an endless traffic jam for 24 years. Sort of.

And a hologram named Sally Calypso kept the motorists trapped down there. I'm a sucker for cute little winks like that. Also notice the Doctor pulled out the arrow one of Queen Bess' boys shot into the TARDIS at the end of the last episode.

On a shallow note, I think I turned a little more gay when Martha grabbed that gun (even if it was a fake). Quite fierce that Martha Jones.

The reason why they couldn't do that was specifically addressed. The pollution was killer -- only a minute out in it, and the Doctor had to take a breath of pure oxygen to recover. How then are these masses of people supposed to walk anywhere? Where are they supposed to go, with all of the exits closed? They'd all die.

KITTENS~!!

(Now that that squeeing is out of the way...)

I will admit, it's still a clunky episode. But man, Tennant can DO quiet. I still love that ending scene there. And I kinda like the "What kind of Kool-Aid are they drinking?!" look he has during the first hymn scene.

And now we know the origin of his brown coat.

Did I mention KITTENS~!!? :-D

I liked the kittens. I'm a little slow to get things sometimes ("I get jokes." - Homer Simpson), so when Brannigan and Valerie introduced the 'family', my immediate reaction was, "Awww, look at those kittens. They must have a pet mama cat on board." <looks at Brannigan> <pause> "Oh..." <pause> "Ohhhh.." Then I laughed.

This is one of those episodes where the more you think about it, the less it makes sense. But I have to give the actors credit for really selling it the best they could, the look of absolute terror when the Doctor starts asking questions made it clear they knew something was horribly wrong, just couldn't face it.

When it comes to the kittens, I loved them, and I shall have to watch this again, because I just realized, folks are talking about them saying "mama" and my aging ears absolutely did *not* catch that. Little pieces of happy absurdity like that just make my day, and they are so very Who.

And I think these are some kind of super-kittens/babies to be saying "Mama" at two months....

Did Martha get kidnapped by Jordin Sparks and Blake Lewis??

First of all, the couple in the opening made me roar with laughter..yeah, I know, they got eaten..so before then. My husband was looking at me like "wth?" but when I paused it and said 'Imagine them with a pitchfork between them!" he understood. Sadly, I cannot for the life of me remember the name of that painting, but still it set the tone for me.
The kittens were adorable! The black and white one looked just like my daughter's cat, Courage, so we had to pause there too. Other than the cuteness factor, though, I have to say I found that to be a bit *ahem* lame. However, my favorite way to watch Doctor Who is with my logic circuits shut down, so I ignored the voice that was mocking the kitten-babies. *logicvoice: wouldn't they be more humanoid? me: ooooh, kitties!! looky, Courage!!* So, I got over it.
I didn't mind that the Face of Boe and Hame didn't think to open the doors though. At first, they were trying to protect the people below from the virus, and they didn't really say how long it had been since the virus died. It could have been fairly recently. Now, however, the logic circuits are coming back on and ..*cuts wire*..no, I WILL enjoy this.
I love, love, love Ten and Martha. But mostly Ten--without Rose.
So, is there another Time Lord? Romana? the Master? Wouldn't it be great if it were Susan? I mean, she would be a Time Lord, wouldn't she?
I nearly teared up at the end when the Doctor started talking about Gallifrey. It was so touching, and, I hope, healing. That is what he really needed. So far, I love this season more than S1 and S2 put together, although I have to say when they did the previews and I saw Daleks, I groaned. I hate Daleks.
Wait...what? We do? I must not have heard that. Someone please tell me?

American Gothic. :) Seriously. My aunt gave me a t-shirt with a goth couple and a pitchfork and the caption "American Goth."

The married women -- does anyone here recognize the thinner of the two? The driver? I'm watching the repeat and it's really bugging me that I've seen her before, but I don't know where.

And I love the captain cat joking that he had to call them sisters because he was an old-fashioned cat. :D

ETA:


"Janis Joplin gave me that coat!"

Must. have. more. kittens!

Ahem. Excuse me. Sorry. Anyway. I definitely see the cracks in this episode, and the problems a lot of people are having with it--it seems that people would get frustrated and angry way before that point and revolt, or abandon their cars--or at least just end up living in pharmacy city or something instead. I can't imagine having enough faith to keep driving for that long. On the other hand, faith does seem to be a huge part of their lives--the first people to die in the teaser were very religious, and the hymns seem to draw everyone in. Were they religious before the death of the Senate or did the shutting down of the world and the beginning of the never-ending motorway force them to depend so much on their faith?

Despite all that, I really liked a lot of aspects of this episode--I love the Face of Boe, and his revelation and the Doctor's reaction to it is great. He can't bring himself to believe there could possibly be any truth to it, no matter how much he'd like there to be, and it's just so sad. And poor Martha, with her "You've got me!" (I know that's not the line, paraphrasing for intent) She's trying so hard. It's not that he doesn't like you, it's just that really, he's just not talking about you. Really. And the Doctor has no tact.

I love that the Doctor describes Gallifrey at the beginning and the end--that he recognized what he was doing by lying to Martha and that she convinced him to tell her the truth. It seems like he's shut down--that he was so hurt by opening up to Rose and then losing her that he put up even more of a facade, and that's why he lied to Martha. I like that losing Martha briefly made him realize that he did care about her, that she was important to him too and that he could care about someone else. (or at least that's what it seemed like to me, in that he ended up telling her very personal information)

Thank you so much, LostLenore *omg! I love your name!* It has been making me crazy(er?) and I couldn't even think of how to put it in the search engine.
Janis Joplin? Really..okay..off to watch again! I apparently missed too much.

I'm not sure that was accidental. These early episodes with Martha clearly parallel the early episodes with Rose (Rose's first two trips were to the far future end of Old Earth where she encountered the Face Of Boe followed by a trip to the past to meet English Literary Legend Charles Dickens and deal with supernatural-seeming zombie/ghost aliens, Martha's first two trips are to the past to meet English Literary Legend William Shakespeare and deal with supernatural-seeming witch aliens followed by a trip to the far future New Earth where she encounters the Face Of Boe), but I think it's interesting that although they both have nearly identical dialog about how they don't even know this man, Nine earns Rose's trust by voluntarily giving up his big secret while Martha has to pry it out of Ten.


Word. Tennant was doing so well up to now, I was really hoping he'd looked over his performances from S2, realized the Shouty! thing wasn't working, and decided to nip it in the bud. But this little relapse aside, I maintain that overall Tennant is much better this season.



I feel weird even saying this, but that part almost kinda made sense to me. I can imagine how they might come out looking just like kittens at first (especially if she gave birth to a whole litter), but would gradually take on more human characteristics as they got older.




Well.., if it's anything like old New York, all the real natives know better than to try to actually drive anywhere, they all take the subway and leave the roads to the damm tourists.




Ah, Powder! I knew that guy was reminding me of something! And you didn't mention the nudist couple, the charming Little Old Lady Lesbian Grandma couple, and of course the inexplicable "American Gothic" couple in the teaser (couldn't *they* at least have had American accents?)



Well, I suppose you could say that was kinda the point, in a way.



Yeah, I had the exact opposite reaction. People's shared belief & unquestioning faith keeping them all trapped & believing a lie, preventing them from venturing out of their little boxes and seeking the truth, discovering the disaster that happened up above, the danger that is long since passed, and the reality that they're all wasting their entire lives trapped down there for no reason. If any *one* of them had ever gotten out to find out what the hell was going on rather than just blindly accept Sally Calypso's promises and turn to each other to sing hymms & reinforce their self-delusions whenever they suffered a crisis of faith, they would have all been out of there years ago.

...And no, I'm not an atheist.



If they could get on the freeway, they could get off. Pull over to the side and break into a building or jump over a wall, get off the on ramp, EVERYONE TURN OFF YOUR DAMM ENGINES SINCE YOUR NOT GOING ANYWHERE ANYWAY and wait a week for the air to clear (and the Macra to die from lack of pollution, if I understand correctly). I was probably being generous when I said two days before, but people would all be doing this en masse after two days at the outside most. And also, BTW, people would stop getting *on* the damm freeway once they saw the cars were not moving after a couple of days.

Yeah I have to go further and say that you can't think AT ALL to enjoy this ep for more than five minutes. The only part I liked was DT's expression when he finally tells the truth about Gallifrey and Martha. HATED the plot, hated the premise, hated the idiot kidnappers. Were we supposed to think they were goofily endearing? Because I certainly think they failed if they were supposed to be. I think they were going for "look the cat in the interspecies marriage is too hung up to accept the lesbian couple. Isn't that HILARIOUS?" but I thought that failed too. I think the only other thing I liked was the cat nun. Was that the same actress who played her the last time? But the stuff mentioned above esp the PREPONDERANCE of Brit accents in NNY, and the fact that nobody is stupid enough to spend years to drive 10 miles just killed this ep. BTW how the HELL did he drug dealers still have a stash 24 years into the ride that never ends? What use does money have in that situation and where the hell did they get money to pay for the drugs? No cops for 24 years and they don't murder each other for supplies on a regular basis? I would have given the system we saw 2 days tops before it became a looting survival of the fittest fest. And you have fuel to run cars but no energy to open the doors? And if they hadn' been running the cars for 24 years there wouldn't have been all that deadly gas to keep people in thier cars and to hide the Macra. Sorry I have suspended disbelief a lot for Who but this was just bad. It is also in my opinion a retread of one of the worst old school Who. Can't remember the title but McCoy (7) is stuck in a housing complex where little old ladies throw people to some creature in thier living room so the creature gets them stuff and nobody has left the building in decades. Just as dumb.

Well, yeah, there was a lot of disbelief to suspend here, but I still mostly enjoyed the ep. I *loved* the Doctor's descriptions of Gallifrey, and his denial there at the beginning.

The cat couple? Fine, up until the kittens. They were cute, but... ew. Also, I completely didn't notice them saying anything but the usual kitteny mew. Huh.

Loved the Doctor jumping through the levels of cars, and loved that he was so determined to rescue Martha, as the Doctor always should be about his Companion(s).

Glad to see Hame back - I liked her. I too wish that there had been more actual evidence of the Face of Boe's coolness, but yeah, maybe most of his energy being used to power the city kept him from being able to be on top of his game. Unfortunately, I was spoiled for his message, but I still loved the Doctor's expression when he heard it. Wow.

The scene at the end? Did not see that coming right until he kept going after giving the End of the World "There was a war and we lost" speech. Amazing that he opened up to Martha like that. And awww, I wanna go to Gallifrey now. Poor Doctor.

Well from what I understand, Susan *didn't* seem to be a Time Lord when she was on the show, she was the first Doctor's granddaughter who became a fugitive with him before she ever went to the "University" to get her degree in Time Lording. But this means she might actually satisfy both parts of Boe's, uh..., revelation? (or maybe "prophecy", as much as anything else), namely, that the Doctor is "the last of his kind" (Time Lords), yet "he is not alone".



It's interesting that you say this, there's really no evidence of this in the episode itself. The only thing that would suggest this is that they're dressed like Mennonites, but that's only because they're intentionally made up to look like the couple in American Gothic (whoops, sorry, I meant this one). That picture is often interpreted as religious, with the building behind them assumed to be a church, but in fact it's just a farm house, and they're dressed like typical late 19th/early 20th century farmers. ...Who were typically pretty God fearing, it's true, but as I said, nothing in either the original painting or the episode's teaser is explicitly religious.



OK, if we want to get serious about the accent thing, this ep. takes place many, many millions or billions of years in the future, long after the original Earth was blown up (as sen in EOTW), so "English" would have long become extinct or evolved into something totally unrecognizable, which means the "English" we're hearing is actually the Magic Translation provided by the TARDIS, and of course when the TARDIS translates something to English, it always gives it a British accent because everything about the TARDIS, including its language circuits, was designed by the BBC.

But you want Noo Yawk accents? Fuhgettaboudit, just stay tuned.

Well, despite the fact that I missed some dialogue near the beginning because some of my housemates were feeling happy and expansive in the TV room, I did manage to get most of it, and I liked it. I realize now (I almost always only realize *afterwards* with shows that I like this much) that there are, indeed, huge plot holes, but I still like it.

Loved Ten's action-hero jumping from car to car, and the accompanying scenes and people he met. Loved his wistful, deeply grieving descriptions of Gallifrey to Martha in the beginning and especially the end of the episode. I really wish we hadn't panned away from his reminiscing, in fact. And I didn't know that the Macra were from a classic ep, but that's very cool. The Face of Boe was cool, too, and it was nice to see Novice Hame again. I wonder what she'll do with the rest of her life. As for the Face of Boe's message, I agree with monkeypants' thoughts: The play of emotions across the Doctor's face there was very telling - there didn't seem to be more than a glimmer of hope or belief mixed in with the shock and sadness.

I hadn't heard the line about the brown coat, either. Hee.

The giving-birth-to-kittens thing was... odd. Cute kittens, though, of course. Also, I both liked and didn't like that so much dialogue from "End of the World" was used again with Martha instead of Rose. But especially the "There was a war and we lost" line worked very well. Very effective.

Obviously the city used to have American accents (on another planet, five billion years in the future, just because) -- HoloSally proves it. Clearly the smog gives you an accent from the British Isles as compensation for making you a zombie. Either that or Torchwood made sure only the British colonized space, leaving the TV/news/weather to the Americans.

Sigh. They actually tried to address the worst holes, but it didn't really work. The entire overcity was completely killed and the undercity and motorway were sealed off to save it; so all police forces/emergency services, including motorway patrol, were exclusively up in the overcity? (Or the undercity's police/emergency services were completely isolated from the overcity/motorway services?) I mean, it's not like you can even say they would have rushed to respond to the overcity emergency -- it's a virus wiping the city (world) out in the course of, what, seven hours, and the undercity got locked down. Just weird. And apparently everyone in the undercity lives on, conducting commerce among themselves and motorway lay-by customers (such as our kidnappers) without ever mentioning how odd the entire world now is? And the smog has made the drivers so stupid they don't notice how easy it is to walk to the shops and perhaps they could just keep walking around up on the surface? Sure, the motorway may be the only way to get between the different buroughs or whatnot, but after a year, give up! Lemming/sheep metaphors stretch only so far.

And the cars don't need more stocks or fuel ... because they are so closed-system that they use "self-regenerating fuel" and the like without even solar power input. Hello, perpetual motion machine and free energy!

FoB and Hame had to use all the power they could scrape (or bio-source from FoB, but Hame can't contribute a little treadmill or hamster-wheel action herself?) just to keep the undercity from falling into the sea, she said, so they can't find enough extra energy to open the entire motorway. So just open one exit already! (Or reconfigure the automated system to let people drive out the apparently still open on-ramps!)

Yeah, it just gets worse the more I try to think about it. Shame; for some reason, I felt like they were actually trying something new. Not that I can remotely explain what I thought that was. I think the show got restructured; if the bottom-feeders had actually locked the system down to have an infinite food supply, that would have fit a lot better, and I wonder if the basic plot was drastically revamped (for the poorer) to fit the FoB/Doctor interaction.

And the big secret we heard was coming last season was ... "you are not alone". That's either fatuous (you've still got your friends!) or unnecessarily vague (there are other surviving Time Lords but I won't phrase it that way!); neither is a great choice, even for an age-addled Boekinder. (Aside: Susan's status as Time Lady or mere Gallifreyan is unclear, I think. I've seen arguments for both.)

I'm presuming that interminable singalong was a Christian hymn? How ... nice for them, I suppose. Tennant's expression was entertaining, though. Speaking of music, I've generally been pleased with the music in the series, but that infernal alarm bell effect ... that's rubbing a styrofoam balloon right down a blackboard, that is. (Right after pregnant-honesty-kidnapper chick tells of the spooky stories of the fast lane, and the guy says the noises are just air vents, as Martha says to "look out there -- does it look like the air vents are working?" It was only the once here, but it was in about every other scene in one of the Rose season-enders and I was seriously moments away from kicking the TV to stop the tintinnabulation of those infernal bells.)

There were of course nice elements:
- The "American Gothic" couple in the open
- The Doctor's "lying" to Martha about his planet
- Kittens, and Tennant holding kittens
- Tennant in glasses, obviously
- "I've invented a new sport!"
- That he recognizes Hame, hugs her in delight, and then realizes she was actually one of the bad guys when they last met
- The rehabilitation of Hame, for that matter
- The Doctor's and Martha's mutual (separate) realizations they they don't know each other at all
- Hame asks fearfully what he's going to do to the systems; he exclaims "This!" and throws the lever; it fails, so we get a chuckle/nervous thrill has he cries "No, no no!"; and then they cut away. They also gave him only one iteration of "But you're the police!" in reaction to the hold message. The reduced mugging is a refreshing change. (Remember ||: "But we surrender!" :|| ?)
- Martha's worry at seeing the skeleton and sudden relief when the Doctor speaks from the other direction. She didn't know what the skeletons were about; that was actually a reasonable reaction.
- The Doctor's telling Martha that the FoB deserves credit for saving her.
- The Doctor's attempt to press FoB to live on
- The entire final sequence

He spent so long running away from his home, denying his home, and then suddenly it was gone. And finally he can not only grieve it but also admit his love for it. And Tennant can play that mixture so well.

Meanwhile, I am so over the Daleks at this point ....


ETA: "Martha" is not nearly so bellow-able a name as "Rose" was. That was just bad.


ETA2: Of course BlueOwl made much better points while I was typing.

But I just realized that we actually just saw a condensed reinterpretation of A Streetcar Named Desire. I mean, the Doctor has his "Steeelllllaaaaa!" moment yelling for Maaarrrrthaaaa ... Martha realizes that, why yes, now that the kidnappers mention it, they must just sit there and depend upon the kindness of strangers ....

I just listened to the BBC mp3 commentary. They address a lot of our issues, though you get the feeling that a lot of the answers didn't come until after the script was being shot and they said, "Now wait a minute!" For instance, did you know kitten/human hybrids begin to show humanoid characteristics at ten months? But, to quote David Tennant, "This is one of our more barmy episodes, isn't it?"

I did find their discussion about the faith of all the people in the cars. Atheist Russell T. Davies was talking about the optimism and hope their faith gave them, while Presbyterian David Tennant insisted on the other, "opiate of the masses" side. They also pointed out that Martha was soothed by the faith generated by the hymn at the same time the Doctor was moved to action to get the lemmings moving.

Almost forgot...floating cars? Totally reminded me of The Fifth Element. If I think longer about it, I start to imagine Chris Tucker's character as a companion, somebody who acts like the Doctor, only fifty times more ADD.

What were those hymns? I'm not a churchgoer...the significance wasn't over my head, but I couldn't sing along.

The Face of Boe! I was so happy to see him--but I wasn't prepared for it to end like that. That was wrenching. Do we know what made the glass crack? Other than his last gasp of energy?

Oh, the Doctor's face when Martha asks to go to his planet...that was heart-breaking.

Nice fake-out with Nurse Hame holding the gun at the beginning--although I've always heard that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it has to go off in the third.

Lovely bits--the American Gothic couple at the opening, the carspotter, "ever heard the word rebound?," Ardal O'Hanlon in cat makeup, the Doctor admitting he'd been showing off...

They got one tri-state area detail wrong, though--it should be the New New Jersey Turnpike, not the New New Jersey Expressway.

Do you think the Doctor kept telling Martha she only had one trip to whet her appetite to stay with him? Was he just being a big tease, so as not to have to admit he didn't want to be alone?

The lyrics to the first one were transcribed on the Closed Captioning, it's called Old Rugged Cross When I had the CC on and could kind of follow along it actually was kind of moving. The second hymm did not have the lyrics transcribed on CC, and apparently the rules at the BBC don't require that the titles/authors of songs used in the ep. be listed in the credits, so I don't know it, but someone may have mentioned it a ways back.



Ironically, that was the only time they used "Expressway", which is what they probably should have used every time they used the more English term "Motorway".


Whether he's doing it intentionally or (most likely) just has his own issues where he can't be honest with himself as to what he wants from her, he's definitely jerking her around and taking advantage of the crush he at some level probably knows she has on him. Last week we had him lying in bed with her, pushing her away by bringing up Rose & almost litteraly putting her between them, then reminding Martha that she's "just a novice" and that he'd be taking her home the next day, This week we have The Doctor stringing Martha along with a "well, just one *more* trip and that's definitely it!" move, but then deliberately making it a trip to the same place he'd taken Rose. Whether he's deliberately jerking her around or not, at this point Martha should really start to get a little fed up with this crap.

The way I look at this episode is pure symbol - not just kinda, sorta about symbols, not just kinda, sorta fantasy. It is dreamstuff. It makes no more structural sense than your average whiff of cloud, but it has the foundational strength of dreamtime reality. That's why I love it.

Stupid, I know, but I was actually rooting for the cat driver to be named Toonces.

That's a moot point, when she was on the show it hadn't even been revealed that the Doctor was a Time Lord, as far as the audience (and the writers) knew, he was human.

Just to repeat what we noticed on the first viewing in the uk, there was a poster on the wall of the car with the 2 japanese girls. The words on it translate as 'Bad Wolf'. I'm sure a lot of you knew that, but this episode does really reward rewatching.

Y'know...my biggest WTF is why that old granny couple had stayed in their car for 24 years? I would assume the pollution wasn't so bad in that tunnel when they started the trip, so why didn't they get out after a while and leave OR why didn't they get to their destination if they were one of the first to leave? Confusing to me.


Kittens in a basket as the offspring of a human/feline-humanoid couple - ewww. Seems to me they should look more human. Darn BBC budget cuts! j/k

Still, in all, I found the episode amusing, entertaining, and good viewing. I, like someone above said, could turn my logic circuits off for most of the show.

If I recall correctly, the last hymn is 'Abide with Me'. One of my favourites, but is guaranteed to set me off if sung at a funeral.

I liked this episode despite the plot holes, and it being a convoluted way to get to the "You are not alone" message. I loved, loved, loved Martha and her refusal to take Ten's brush offs once she realizes that she doesn't know him.

I believe all the other cars that the Doctor goes through refer to paintings, as well as the American Gothic couple at the start.

I didn't really find all that much suspension of belief that necessary. We already knew the population of this planet at this time was pretty lemminglike. Last time we were here, no one was questioning any of the amazing medical benefits they were benefitting from either. As for not leaving the motorway, they made it clear in several places that the people preferred being in their cars in a traffic jam to continuing to live in the undercity. The carjackers were positively giddy about being able to get out, regardless of how long it would take. They had no interest in getting off the motorway if it only meant they'd still be in the undercity. Life wasn't any better there.

I agree it's clunky, but their perspective is clearly very different from ours. The alternatives aren't any better. Their traffic jam isn't parallel to one of ours at all.

Well, I"m very relieved to hear the discontent with the bulk of this episode. I thought it was just me!

Where my discontent differs from the main, though, is in the last scene. I thought it was unnecessary to hear the Doctor tell Martha his story. We know the story he told her; we didn't need to be told again. I would have liked to have seen the Doctor pull up his seat next to Martha and begin talking, but not to have heard the dialogue. Just to see them talking, and observe their faces, as the hymn filled the soundtrack and the camera began its pan into the sky...