Jules,

Yeah, that sequence with all the companions flying the TARDIS was extremely squeetastic. And the fantastic music! It's apparently all Murray Gold's work, who composes the incidental music on the show, and this particular piece is the full-orchestra, full-chorus version of the gorgeous music we heard at the end of "Planet of Ood".

ita, I'm not sure about the fan-service re. Rose's ending. They were going for bittersweet, and I think they've succeeded. Mind you, I've never liked Ten/Rose relationship in S2 very much (they struck me as too smug and kind of juvenile together, and I didn't care for the conventional romantic angle they were pushing with these two), but I'm much more intrigued by the notion of human!Ten/Rose, because of all the things that are sad and broken about that relationship. She ends up with someone who looks and acts exactly like the Doctor she loves, without being quite him. Because the Doctor she loved was the Doctor travelling the time and space in TARDIS. So what if he has the memories and the mannerisms? He's without that which defines him, and will always be less to her eyes because of that. And it's even sadder for him. To have Doctor's memories, the lifetime of his extraordinary experiences in his head, but stuck in one place and time -- it's a tragedy; a certain death, I think. Rose's love may be enough to compensate for that, but somehow, I can't imagine it being an entirely happy relationship. While it may have made the shippers squee, it's the undercurrent of pathos that predominates the scene. It was an unusual and interesting resolution, I thought. I might be (for the first time ever) interested in reading some Ten/Rose fic now.

Vonnie, regarding your response to ita, I found the whole Rose choosing/accepting the Ten that she got to be... odd, unsatisfactory, hurtful. That even though she kissed the human Ten, she still ran after the Time Lord Ten, and that's got to sting. And then, yeah, the human Ten having to be, well, human. Sure, she had joked about morgages and jobs on The Impossible Planet, but there is going to be an integral part missing from human Ten.

Still, as much as this return of Rose has lessened her in my eyes, I really wished that it had been human Ten that had grabbed Rose and kissed her, although I find it endlessly fascinating that Time Lord Ten refused to say "I love you". Like, was it because he wanted his human self to say and win Rose over, or did he really, as a true Time Lord, find it an unnecessary articulation? That it should be understood. I'm thinking the former. And I'm still liking the human Ten better, and that makes me sad that he's stuck with Rose, because this new Rose I do not like. Loved the old Rose, but the new one is like Chiana in the Peacekeeper Wars, and totally out of touch with the character.

So does this mean that David Tennant is the 10th AND 11th Doctor.

More on Rose, and her insistence that the Doctor shouldn't change bodies, and I find that incredibly shallow. If she loves him, she should love him in any form, right? I mean, I know that regeneration brings along some personality changes, but if she really loves him, she'd understand that and that would be part of what she loves about him. Grrr, don't want to be spending this much time ranting about Rose and validating the psychology behind how her character has been written.

serial DW 4x13

Also I *am* glad that Donna's specialness turned out to be of the timey-wimey variety, and not the mitichlorian variety. But, I have to rewatch, but did they ever address who was manipulating her into place so that she would be there in the right place at the right time?

also, I'm just so incredibly bummed out right now... he just looked so lonely in the rain. And where the hell was Jenny? I totally expected her to crop up somehow that wasn't a flashback.

Torque, no, because he didn't actually regenerate.

Julie, I also found Rose's insistence on the Doctor's not changing a little weird, especially because (or maybe even though?) she'd already been through it. It's probably hard to get used to.

Also, Julie, I think it was Dalek Caan who was manipulating things in order to fulfill the future he had seen.

And, Torque, I know! So sad. Even with all these wonderful people, he remains a lonely god.

DW 4x13:

Julie, it was Dalek Caan, although he says it would all have happened anyway.

thanks, ita!

DW 4x13 Tennant playing Tate was hysterical!

The whole "Lonely God" thing makes me alternatively fangirly-swoony and irritated and wanting to bop him on the head, depending on the mood I'm in. I LOVED Latimer's description of the Doctor in Family of Blood. "He's like fire and ice and rage... he burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe." It's a bit OTT but it's also grand and shiver-inducing and awesome. I do love it when he's being alien. But then, occasionally the Lonely God thing translates him into being all emo, and then I roll my eyes a lot.

Re. Rose and Ten: I think the Doctor not saying "I love you" is more of an inability to do so than a refusal. Much as he cares for his companions, he feels incapable of sharing himself enough with anyone to say those words and mean them the way those words are meant in human-to-human interactions -- be that because of his age, the vastness of his experience and the relative ephemerality of his relationships with the human companions, or the damage to his heart(s) he incurred in the wake of the Time War. So Rose accepts human!Ten because he is able to say those words back to her, finally, but even after she kisses him, she keeps looking back to the original Doctor. It's pretty messed-up. I kind of dig it.