I, too, felt that the shift forward in time pretty much guaranteed the reset button. To a certain extent, I feel that the episode managed to justify itself in this respect, in that the future it paints is so horrible that we're relieved when it is rolled back, but this is just another way of saying that the writers are manipulative on top of being cowardly.
As for Martha. I really want to like Martha. In episodes like this, when she comes out from the Doctor's shadow, I think I can almost get there, and then the writers start bashing me on the head. The whole business with Martha becoming a mythical figure is a classic example of the way this season's tell-don't-show attitude towards the character. It costs the writers nothing to tell us that Martha has spent a year traveling the globe, making her way through killing fields and labor camps, but the person they offer up as the survivor of these journeys is all but identical to the person we met in "Smith and Jones". Yes, Martha is awesome, but she was awesome when we first met her, and in exactly the same way - this episode just finds a more bombastic way to say so.
Her leaving the Doctor is a positive step, but I don't see where the show can go from this point. When the two of them inevitably get back together, probably at the beginning of the fourth season, is anything going to be different?
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zvi and
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Date: 2007-07-01 09:31 pm (UTC)As for Martha. I really want to like Martha. In episodes like this, when she comes out from the Doctor's shadow, I think I can almost get there, and then the writers start bashing me on the head. The whole business with Martha becoming a mythical figure is a classic example of the way this season's tell-don't-show attitude towards the character. It costs the writers nothing to tell us that Martha has spent a year traveling the globe, making her way through killing fields and labor camps, but the person they offer up as the survivor of these journeys is all but identical to the person we met in "Smith and Jones". Yes, Martha is awesome, but she was awesome when we first met her, and in exactly the same way - this episode just finds a more bombastic way to say so.
Her leaving the Doctor is a positive step, but I don't see where the show can go from this point. When the two of them inevitably get back together, probably at the beginning of the fourth season, is anything going to be different?