I've never been really sure how I feel about Doctor and Rose together. Plot wise it doesn't make much sense, they are completely different species, and it's been pointed out previously to them multiple times how they couldn't ever grow old together. But Tennant and Piper have good chemistry, so I enjoy it for that.

The Cult of Skaro, in its prime, is one of those concepts that merits its own episode. War-gaming as the enemy as a way to find tactics to beat them. Alas, even now I'm getting flashbacks/flashforwards to the dodgy prosthetic makeup to come.

I was a bit late on replying here, busy week.

I enjoyed this final episode with Rose, and it is a nice send off to her time with the Doctor. She gets to declare her love, she gets to stand up to the Daleks, and she saves the world with the doctor.

On the battle between the Cybermen and the Daleks, I enjoyed the pairing. On one hand we have an enemy that is emotionless and perfectly rational, and another whose entire philosophy is one of hatred to others. One minor complaint I have is a battle between metal beasts doesn't offer very much in the way of voice or physical acting, so it doesn't feel as energetic to watch. Getting good dialogue is important, and we had some of that. I enjoyed that the cybermen managed to trick the Daleks into identifiying themselves through wordplay. Cyber!Yvonne gave me an interesting insight, she retains much of her identity post upgrade, I think this implies she was an emotionless psycopath to begin with. It fits her character well.

In the quieter moments at Torchwood there is a lot of good acting, body movements, between the human characters. It felt very human in the face of battle. Not so much the scenes with the wider public though, cybermen wandering through empty streets, they felt a little incongruous. I noticed that Doctor was pushing Pete to join up with Jackie, which felt a little contradictory against his whole "they're not the same person" schtick in the parallel earth episode earlier in the season, but the final resolution of the family getting together again is very sweet.

I did initially think that Jake & Mickey's resistance didn't do a very good job, but I forgot about the plot point of people debating whether they were alive. Political debate leading to inaction feels pretty spot on.

Despite enjoying the run-around chaos thus far, the climax of the episode annoys me. Those damned levers, which we already know can be controlled digitally, end up causing Rose's "death". The doctor's eagerness to send rose away, feels out of character given we've seen him grow to love Rose. Even if there was a threat of her getting dragged in, the fact that a couple of magnets could save her from the void does kind of imply he could have moved her, and anyone else who wanted to stay, far away from the tower (in the tardis, for example) and they would have been fine.

Maybe I missed something in the article, but what is the title even talking about? What's the "winning formula" it mentions? What's being rewritten?

This was a really good finale. It was well paced, the stakes for the crew felt strong, and it was a great timey wimey time travel sci fi story.

Regarding the stakes, one of my criticisms of prequels was that, as fans, the future is fixed, but here it felt a lot more tense. Even though we know scotty doesn't die, I was half expecting one of the Uhuras to have to sacrifice themselves to save the other, which felt a substantial risk, and it really helped sell the episode.

CRG did great acting here, and did justice to "the same character but at different points in their life" - the confidence in future!uhura stood out.

I was very confused about the black hole / white hole's scale - I was suprised at the final act when they're basically right up against it, and the holes turn out to be roughly the same size as the enterprise itself. I think it could have been established a little better at the beginning, but that's a minor annoyance.

The midwife aliens are the same being as DS9 prophets, I guess, they spoke to Uhura in song because they would know she can interpret that, where they knew to speak to bajorans in poetry and scripture.

I liked the little preview of future!enterprise's looks, especially seeing a few background characters from different species.

Overall, great finale to an okay season. I hope the final season has loads of episodes just like this one.

That AI was clearly trained on stolen property - the angry guy is obviously meant to be Dan from "Dan Vs".

The “ghosts” are a neat concept, but sort of a bad fit for Cybermen, since they’re the one villain that have a very distinct way of moving, and the ghosts aren’t like that.

I wonder if at some point during the plot's development the "ghosts" were meant to have whatever was left of the alt-universe people post-conversion reaching out. There's a lot more they could have done with the ghosts here.

It's a decent start to the finale. Rose's monologue at the start is okay, but it's a bit of a reverse rug pull, given she never actually "dies", unless I am misremembering something. At the start there's a bunch of TV spots, which are cringey to watch, but pretty spot on for british daytime TV. I guess they would have been social media spots now. The ghosts as a whole are a nice "monster of the week" idea, but they're not really used much beyond a setup for cybermen. It's a very RTD thing to include people getting used to them because of the desire to want to hold on to loved ones. I enjoyed Jackie in this. Her explaining the ghosts to the Doctor, her whole back-and-forth about knowing more than he does. I do think 10 was a bit mean to her, probably still feeling that slap a few years ago.

This incarnation of torchwood is a nice side effect of the doctor's meddling centuries ago, a kind of butterfly effect, and it feels a bit more impactful across this series than a random phrase like "bad wolf". Torchwood here gives everyone psychic training, and I love it, a proper approach to operational security - See a problem, immediately call it in. Which makes the pointless digitally controlled Levers in the room literally signposted as "LEVER ROOM ->" all the more annoying. But seeing the doctor and co wandering around Torchwood and all the banter therein is fun. I like the idea of a void ship being a way to reintroduce Daleks even if it's a bit out of nowhere, and the doctor's metaphor illustrated by the cracking glass was some nice sci-fi theory.

There's a lot of continuity stuff in this episode. I noticed Rose and the Tardis were parked up next to a sarcophagus, a nice reference to a past adventure. When the cybermen appear they cut through plastic, again a nice reference to classic doctor who stories. I had forgotten completely that Freema Agyeman was in this episode, that was a pleasant surprise.

Random back of the envelope maths fact: The energy coming through the rift is stated at "5TW" I guess about an hour, give or take, for a "shift". Given e=mc^2 that gives a mass passing through the rift of around only 200 grams. Which seems like not a lot for a bunch of invading cybermen.

I don't have much to say on this one. It was alright. Nice to see La'an make some forward progress in her own issues. When I saw the flat planet going through space I thought for a brief moment we were going to get a Discworld parody/crossover. I didn't mind this diversion so much, given that it was grounded in some kind of reality, and continued the story we had already started much earlier in the series. I do think everyone should have caught imposter pike much earlier on.

This is an odd episode. It's another one that seems to want to mix humour in - with an opening joke about lowercase d-doctors, references to the cat nuns, and the "right angle parking" of the tardis bit. But it also goes into some dark topics - missing children, abusive parental relationships, loneliness. But none of it really comes together. The acting doesn't help - the kid actor is pretty bad, even by kid actor standards, and the dialogue on the TV news sequences is awkward. I'm also at a loss of what the story is even about - the aliens spend an eternal childhood in space, so they makeup their own imaginary worlds, which doesn't at all mesh with the SCP-085 plotline. The sequence with the doctor racing with the olympic flame is maximum cheese, and would be a great ending if it had been a "fun" episode all along instead of trying to also be serious. The ending feels pointlessly enigmatic, as if to telegraph "oh but travelling with the doctor is always a risk", but that was the whole point of the previous episode too so the writers are repeating themselves a bit.

Random note: It's supposed to be in summer for the olympics, but at times you can actually see their cold breath because they filmed in winter. They had doctor and rose comment on how cold things are to try and cover for this.

Maybe she was an undercover romulan, sent to report if enterprise go too close to finding the cloaked ship, and now that Reeger is likely no longer a threat, and enterprise probably isn't going to want to follow up, her job's done so she's off.

M'Benga covering for Kirk is really good, I like that the setup for this was laid a couple of episodes ago. Kirk fighting on behalf of the crew to keep them from doing war crimes - it shows the level of camaraderie this crew has, which admiral reeger likely never experienced, and helps continue to cement Kirk as a member of the enterprise.

I really enjoyed this one. The core moral dilemma of orders versus morals, captured in a strong A story and a decent B story. Genuine character growth, and an out for M'Benga that made sense, was in character, and felt justified. The direction was really nice, it captured the tense nature of the episode. The treknobabble for the A plot was pretty decent, and in the B plot I enjoyed the cave set - it felt used and full, not bare like they sometimes do. I really enjoyed the acting here - the Andorian leader gave me a hint of cardassian in his analytical takedown of humans, and the badmiral was really enjoyable from his upbeat arrival to steady decline into madness. The two Kirks getting along really well was enjoyable, and the synchronised walk and talk at the end was a nice way to wrap up the episode.

From this season's approach, I'm guessing this episode drawing from old war films, in particular I am getting flavours of submarine hunts, chasing after wakes, and handling big questions of WMDs, the sanity of the chain of command. This is exactly the way I like those references embedded, allowing the trek to shine through, rather than the gimmick taking over.

My only immediate quibble in this episode was when Uhura went Rambo in the caves, it did feel like the Andorians went down a little easy, but I wasn't that bothered by it. A'Sha leaving is fine, I guess, she didn't feel very present throughout the season anyway.

Please, more of this type of episode.