The Parting of the Ways

Frankly I was disappointed. I've generally enjoyed the series, and my debates with my dad about the merits of this doctor with all of his previous incarnations, but this ending left me feeling strangely unfulfilled. There were just so many points that didn't seem to stack up. I have to admit that some may say I'm not a true who fan as I haven't seen Evil of the Daleks, which other reviewers have referred to, but I have been watching since the Tom Baker days and have watched most of the Pertwee stories, so I think I'm allowed to pass my comments. These comments are:

The opening of the Tardis with the truck - surely RTD could have found a better way to handle this - it just seemed so out of place with what else was going on. Also how come no-one approached Rose etc to ask them what they were doing - they were on a busy housing estate after all.

The materialisation of the Tardis over Rose and the Dalek - being able to do this would have been very useful in previous episodes. In the same scene what about the firing of the gun in the consol room to kill the Dalek - I may be wrong here, but I'm sure in a previous incarnation the Doctor says that guns will be useless in the Tardis as they are prevented from firing.

I feel that Rose being Bad Wolf is badly handled and not properly explained; just how did she leave all those messages for herself and why did she suddenly realise it was her? Having cleverly developed a theme throughout the series, which I admit I had missed until it was mentioned by the Doctor, I think RTD let us down badly on this one.

As for things not being properly explained I am still not sure I understand how the Daleks survived - how did a crippled Emperor Dalek managed to get the technology to initially take the refugees etc to his ship and then take over the space station?

I also think that the destruction of the Dalek fleet by Rose was a major cop out - its THE DOCTOR who should be saving the world, not his assistants, not matter how difficult the situation he is in. Afterall if she can get into the Tardis that easily why hasn't he done so in the past - it only used up one regeneration.

Talking of the regeneration I think this could have been handled a lot better - why did the power of the Vortex 'kill' the Doctor so quickly when Rose had managed to stay alive for as long as she did? Also what happened to the normal confusion/quirkiness/anger of the Doctor after regeneration, the best of which in my opinion is the Baker/Davison regeneration.

I think it would have been far better for the Doctor to have killed the Daleks (and himself) with his Delta Wave, and then been forced to regenerate because of this, afterall as he said there are colonies, and all the humans on earth had been killed by the Daleks anyway so what was the point in him not using his weapon? He didn't know that Rose would come along and save the day. (Or did he?)

I have enjoyed seeing Jack in the series - he has added a new element and I hope he returns in series 2, although I think the way of bringing him back to life was very disappointing - I'm think a better way would have been not to have killed him for some reason in the first place.

I would agree with many that unfortunately RTD has written the poorest stories of the series - my favourites have been The Unquiet Dead and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, but the continuity of the Bad Wolf references suggested that he had an idea of what he wanted the series to achieve, its just a shame that as I have stated above he handled the ending of it so badly.

Finally I think Christopher Ecclestone has done a good job as Dr Who, but is not a match in my opinion for the god who is Tom Baker (worship him, worship him!!). My brother has raved about David Tennant as an actor, so I'm willing to see how he goes, but hope that overall there is an improvement in the writing of the series, and a return to more cliff-hanger episodes.