Well, according to the posters on Doctor Who Forum, that was a load of rubbish.

Couldn’t disagree more.  Absolutely cracking finale.  RTD’s finale’s have always been very hit-or-miss with me.  I loved Doomsday (although Rose’s departure dragged a bit - and any weight it had has now been shot to pieces anyway), hated the “Super-Rose” ending in Parting of the Ways, and similarly hated the “Super-Doctor” ending in Last of the Time Lords, which then only got worse as it descended into “guess which movie we lifted this bit from”.

So I was slightly worried after the superb Stolen Earth, that I was going to be left dissappointed.   However, I didn’t have to worry.

Right from the start, after the country tearing itself apart for a week over James Nesbitt/Robert Carlyle etc being the new Doctor, instead we get the Doctor redirecting the regeneration energy into his hand and saying “Right.  Where were we?”  An incredibly funny anti-climax after all the palava that had me laughing out loud.

And this finale was just filled with great moments.  Jack and Mickey meeting up again.  The reference to the warp star from SJA.  DoctorBlue and Donna shouting “Oi!” at each other, Davros recognising Sarah Jane, K9’s cameo, DoctorDonna, everyone flying the TARDIS as it tows Earth home.  And so many more.

I’ve mentioned before that this finale was feeling like a swan-song to RTD’s era (despite the upcoming specials), and I still feel that way.  It was a beatiful ending.  Full of fun, and tragedy.

Talking of tragedy, Donna’s exit was very well done.   Incredibly painful to watch and heart-breaking.  She’s been the best companion out of the entire 4 seasons without doubt (oh, how I’ve changed my tune) so it was incredibly sad that she was the one who suffered the “everlasting death” Caan spoke of.  Bernard Cribbins was fantastic as usual, and I must’ve had something in my eye during his speech about watching for the Doctor.

Without doubt, this has been the strongest series yet of Doctor Who.  Every episode was a winner for me that I’d happily go back and re-watch now, and its the first series I can say that about.

Aside from all the Secret Invasion, this week also brought the latest issue of Batman RIP.

I’ve always been a fan of the Bat-books, however due to budget concerns, I tend to avoid picking them up.   I prefer to simply trade-buy arcs that looked interesting.

However, all the hype about Batman RIP got to me, and so I thought I’d pick it up.  It started off promisingly, with Bruce’s secret being revealed to his latest girlfriend, while the shadowy Black Glove plots his downfall.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on, regarding the Waynes, and how Bruce’s vision of them may be rose-tinted.  There’s certainly a lot of deconstruction of Bruce’s character going on, with major hints that the trauma of his parents death affected him far more deeply than he realised.

Its all pretty interesting stuff, however this latest issue was just weird.  And not in a good way.  It certainly takes Bruce to a low point.  Following the activation of some sub-concious, post-hypnotic command, Bruce seems to have lost his memory, and is a down-and-out while the Black Glove takes over the Batcave and takes Alfred prisoner.  Nightwing is captured and imprisoned in Arkham (interesting, since this has been rumoured to be Bruce’s fate) and Robins on the run from a group of attackers.

The problem is that the post-hypnotic stuff seems a bit vague, and isn’t really making sense at this point.  And the ending of the issue was just really odd.   I’ve got a lot of faith in Morrison though, so I’m hoping it all makes sense as the story goes on.  I’m not convinced the integration of silver-age parts of the mythos is working as well as it does with Superman however.

Well, its been a busy couple of weeks, with a tonne of Secret Invasion stuff.

First up was Mighty Avengers, which filled in some of the backstory as to how and when Hank Pym was replaced. To be honest, this was the first MA issue I felt was a bit missable, although I can see how knowing when he was replaced was important to the rest of the story. The new serum he gives to Janet at the end of the issue is probably going to be significant later on though.

The issue did play into this week’s Avengers Initiative well though, which further filled in some of the gaps with Hank-Skrull’s backstory. I loved the running gag with the Skrull using his superskrull powers to escape various near-death situations and then having to explain it away with “I shrank really small”. The standout part of the book though was 3-D Man. Formerly Triathalon, I remember him being a character I didn’t care about back in the Busiek run. Although here he came across really well, when he discovers that he has the ability to detect Skrulls and finds an infiltrator on his new team.

This paid off well against the other plot thread, with good-guy Skrull Crusader realising that Hank Pym is a Skrull infiltrator, but then also realising he’s left it too long to reveal he’s a Skrull himself once the Invasion begins. Great title. I really need to pick up the trades of this series.

New Avengers followed suit with filling in the backstory. This time it was Spider-Woman and her replacement by the Skrull Queen. This one definitely ticked the boxes for me. Nice art, and we get a good look at how deeply involved in events in the MU the Skrulls have been. We also have them specifically single out the mutant population as a significant threat, which leads into House of M. I’m not going to be too surprised if we find out the Skrulls managed to influence Wanda into her “No more mutants” moment, as we now know that was a big win to the Skrull plans.

Meanwhile Secret Invasion Fantastic 4 #2 continued the story of Ben and Johnny trapped in the Baxter building, which was transported to the Negative Zone by Lyja in Secret Invasion #1 (something I hope is dealt with properly in the main series, as its a big event which has currently been completely ignored in the main narrative). This was a cracking read, largely due to the witty internal dialogue from Johnny. We also see him start to get through to Lyja, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, as Franklin points out that their best bet to get home is via the super-powered prison from Civil War.

Finally I picked up the first issue of Front Line.

Carrying on the succes from the Civil War tie-in, this series aims to give us more of a street-level view of the action. Its a good start, with Ben Urich trapped in a hospital as the invasion hits, and various others trapped in Stark Tower, which goes into lockdown at the first sign of the Skrull virus. Although while I enjoyed the issue, picking up the full run will probably go against my desire to keep the tie-ins to a minimum, since I’m currently picking up 3 big events (although Batman RIP I’m just buying the main Batman book and my usual monthly fix of Tomasi’s Nightwing). Worth checking out though, its just that my budget won’t really stretch to it (I’m only really picking up the F4 tie-in because its only 3 issues long).

After last month’s slightly slower issue, issue 3 kicks things into high gear, with the Holy War itself being kicked off, and the space team all coming together to investigate what’s going on (leading to classic scene where the Weird suggests they all form a permanent group like the JLA, only to be ignored).

I’m still finding Captain Comet’s character in this to be a bit of a departure from how he was portrayed in Mystery in Space. There was was fairly typically heroic, whereas now he’s almost cowardly, relying on Tyrone to set him right. Its an understandable shift though. Next to the rest of the space characters, some of them are going to start looking quite generic without changes. Aside from his telepathy, there’d be a real danger of Captain Comet and Adam Strange being inter-changable. And the character shift has resulted in some amusing scenes (Comet realising that by going to Rann he’s actually jumped right into the middle of trouble, rather than avoiding it for example).

I also found a scene at the end interesting, from the point of view of my “Why has Adam’s revamp been retconned” rant. Adam Strange’s suit clearly has the ability to manifest the same hardlight weaponary that he got in his Planet Heist revamp. Since in Countdown to Adventure it was explicitly stated that Adam’s suit was his old one, we can only assume this suit is new, but with a deliberately retro look.

It still irks though that they ditched such a good revamp.

There’s a nice little aside aside with Animal Man admitting that he’s not told his wife that Kory’s there. That gave me a laugh.

On an unrelated note, this week’s DC Nation is hilarious. Especially in light of the recent “Didio must go!” online witchhunts.

One comic series I’ve been enjoying but not really talking about here is the current Huntress mini-series.

Owing a lot to Gregg Rucka’s Cry for Blood mini series, this series goes back to Helena’s origins once again, expanding on some of the ideas from that series.

Its been a great read so far. Whereas Cry for Blood also had a plot thread in the present day DCU, this series is completely focused on Helena’s origin as the Huntress, so there’s a lot of time donated to her dealings with the different crime families and the interactions between them.

The latest issue has also had Helena’s first meeting with Barbara Gordon, so I’m really interested to see how it spins Huntress’ first encounters with Batman and the like.

I’ve been really enjoying the creative team of Ivory Madison and Cliff Richards so I’ll definitely be keeping one eye open for any future mini-series from them.

Well, that was truely epic.

So much good stuff, and after last year’s “Daleks in Manhatten” misfire, its nice to see the Daleks being flippin scary again (a large part due to Elisabeth Sladen’s fantastic performance).

Great seeing the gang get back together (although the slow-motion run between the Doctor and Rose was veering dangerous close to cheese overload - thank God that Dalek was passing).  Billie Piper seems to have sorted out her performance since last week as well, and felt a lot more like this was the Rose of old turning up.

Killer cliffhanger as well.  Be interesting to see how it gets resolved.

That cover really doesn’t work as a thumbnail, does it?

Well, this week heralds the release of the second part of DC’s big summer event.  Of course, the way things are going, the main DC summer event is all the controversy surrounding this book and specifically the mis-handling of its build up.   However its well established now that Countdown sucked, so there’s little point going over it again.

Instead, to Final Crisis #2.  Final Crisis has been taking a bit of a kicking, due to its “slow burn” approach, versus Secret Invasion’s all-out summer grandslam spectacular with helicarriers falling from the sky.  However, when all’s said and done, based on the issues so far, and with no disrespect to the great job Bendis is doing on SI, I do think Final Crisis is going to be the better read.

Both first issues just ooze mystery and foreboding.  With this issue picking up Dan Turpin’s investigation into the missing children, which leads him to some horrific discoveries, and also the JLA and Green Lanterns’ investigation into Orion’s murder, which leads to pretty much the same horrific discovery, but also features Hal being framed for the murder, and some great craziness as to the nature of the murder weapon (which is honestly something that you’d only find in a Morrison book).

Its a real shame that this book is being overshadowed by the controversy surrounding it.  It promises to be something much deeper in scope than the big, Hollywood blockbuster style approaches of recent summer events, and the writing and art are both outstanding.   Sadly, at least when it comes to online forums, it seems that readers would rather go straight for the falling helicarriers, which is a great pity as I wasn’t even a fan of the fourth world stuff, and I can tell Grant Morrison’s doing something pretty special here.

I’ve been using my iPod Touch for a good few weeks now, and with the v2 software due out imminently, I thought it’d be interesting to put together a wishlist for what kind of things I’d like to see, that haven’t already been mentioned.

• Better home screen customisation.  Currently, while you can re-order items on the home screen, and add Safari links, you can’t add quick links to different types of audio, in the same way you can on the other iPods.  I tend to use Playlists, Podcasts and Audiobooks a lot, so it’d be nice to have buttons on the home screen for them, rather than navigating to them via the Music section.
• Podcast syncing.  I’ve noticed there seems to be a bug with podcast syncing, in that sometimes podcasts I’ve listened to, aren’t marked as such, and removed from the iPod on the next sync.  However its an intermittant problem.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, and I have to mark the podcasts as not new in iTunes manually.  It’d be nice to see this fixed.
• Podcast descriptions.   When first released neither the iPhone nor iPod Touch supported lyrics.  Apple added that functionality with the first software update, however they didn’t extend it to include podcast descriptions.  Viewing them is a feature I miss, as when I’m listening to Linux podcasts, its handy to be able to refer to the show notes to double-check the name of any interesting software they might be talking about.   Some podcasts have started copying their description to the lyrics section, but really it’d be good if Apple could just fix this properly.
• Radio Remote compatibility.  Everytime I’ve got to pull this iPod out just to skip to the next track, I tend to be worried that I’m painting a big “mug me!” sign above my head.  It’d be good if Apple could either tweak the software to allow the existing radio remote to work, or ship a new version with iPod Touch/iPhone compatibility.

Those are probably my top 4 niggles with any otherwise brilliant device.  They’re minor things, and these kinds of things are to be expected in the first generation of a new device, but I hope Apple addresses them.

Well, I’ve talked a bit about how exciting the “next time” trailer was, but what about the episode itself?

Borrowing from a sci-fi staple, time is altered so that Donna never met the Doctor, resulting in his death during his battle with the Racnoss.  Its downhill for Earth from there.

This was probably one of the strongest scripts RTD has delivered.  Its always fun seeing how alternate Earths might’ve turned out, safe in the knowledge that things will be back to normal at the end.  However, this was more haunting than that.  The scenes of London’s destruction after being hit by the Titanic were incredibly well done, and it was genuinely disturbing watching things go downhill, as Earth struggles to repel the various alien menaces without the Doctor’s help.  Its not long before we hear that both Martha and Sarah Jane (and Luke, Maria and Clyde.  Ouch) died at the hands of the Juudoon, and the Torchwood team sacrifice themselves to stop the Sontarans turning Earth into their new cloning world.

Of course, all eyes were on Billie Piper’s return as Rose, however she was by no means the star of this episode.  This was Donna’s chance to shine, and Catherine Tate stepped up to the mark admirably, blowing away all her nay-sayers (yes, that includes me.  I wasn’t pleased by the initial announcement either, but in my defense, I was still smarting from Martha leaving, and a pre-season 4 rewatch of the Runaway Bride completely changed my mind).   There’s no doubt in my mind that Donna has been the perfect 10th Doctor companion.  She plays off of Tennant’s Doctor perfectly in a way neither Rose (who I’ll always view as more suited to the 9th Doctor) nor Martha did.  Catherine Tate really seized this chance to show off her acting muscles, and you really felt Donna’s desperation as she thinks she’s realised she won’t die, only to have Rose tell her otherwise.

An absolutely cracking episode.  The killer cliffhanger was only the icing on the cake.  And we even got a nice reference to Sarah Jane Adventures when the Doctor identified the Time Beetle as one of the Trickster’s Brigade (a being who wiped Sarah Jane from history and had commented that it’d be a laugh to do the same to the Doctor).

All eyes are on the finale now.  There’s no doubt in my mind that for me, this has been the strongest season yet.  The finale’s got a lot to live up to, and with juggling all those different elements and characters, its either going to be the most awesome finale ever, or a complete disaster.    Personally, I’m hyped up for it and can’t wait till Saturday.

Well, the second trailer today is up for the Stolen Earth.

However, I’m not going to repost it here, as I know some of my friends will want to avoid spoilers, and this one contains a huge spoiler.

However, if you’re already fairly well spoiled, or don’t care, then click here.  Its a good ‘un.

Yeah, this blog’s probably going to be a bit Dr Who-crazy for the next 14 days or so…