Ben

For the most part it did seem like we were watching a bunch of scenes taken from different scripts then shuffled together with James Bond adding some narration to try and stitch them together. It was a like a clip show of the full thing.

But part of me just loves seeing actors enjoy themselves so John Simms saved it for me.

I love John Simm, but he can’t work miracles.

Yes. I do. And clearly very many others. What a strange and pointless question.

The “closed loop” of the Time War that can be breached mad, lone Dalek, the “One will die” prophesy that wasn’t and the faux regeneration.
The specials have also suffered;
The Next Doctor was a nice idea but didn’t seem to go anywhere (and why exactly were the physically strong and tireless cybermen using workhouse children for manual labour?).
Planet of the Dead wasn’t too bad (apart from the clumsy foreboding at the end given by a bizarrely psychic elderly lady).
Waters of Mars again seemed sloppy; the story didn’t go anywhere for ages and then the Doctor suddenly goes stupid, breaking the laws of time (however logical they are) just because there is nobody around to castigate him for it. Er, what?
I remember hearing RTD say that one of his script editors (Gary Russell) had pointed out that Mars has no atmosphere so you wouldn’t get burning rocket wreckage, but RTD over-ruled him because that was the effect he wanted. You know things are bad when simple logic is thrown out in favour of showmanship.

The End of Time (part 1) was neither as bad as you seemed to think (does anyone really care about camoes from the likes of June Whitfield or the fact that The Master states his grass was red?), but equally it was as full of plot holes and typical RTD nonsense as some of the worst recent stories.
More to the point, you can’t tell where RTD has been stupid and not made the plot in any way make sense (such as the narrator or the strangely non-scientific Master Resurrection Ceremony), or where due to sloppy writing he just hasn’t made it clear what is going on (such as the fact that at the start of the episode we are supposed to know that the Doctor’s moment of fear (“Is this how I die?” at the end of Waters of Mars was actually a real premonition of his own death or that the appearance of the Ood was a sign for him to travel to the Oodsphere to find out exactly how badly he had screwed up and what was going to happen next; hence his attempts delay the inevitable by going on holiday and messing around.
The appearance of this Regeneration machine seems equally sloppy, unless someone (The Master or the Time Lords) have manipulated things in the background to have it appear there at that time.
Generally it just seems that the plot devices are clumsy rather than clever.

I don’t think David Tennant is past it though – I think he is making the best of his final stories however dodgy the scripts might be. The real fly in the ointment of Doctor Who at the moment is RTD himself and sad though I am to say it, the sooner Stephen Moffat takes over the better.

I also agree that Bernard Cribbins is both a fantastic actor and (as Buzzcocks proved), razor-sharp as a comic wit.

Logic can be so dull at times, I prefer to operate on a mixture of illogic and stupidity.

Also, do we know what effect that Moffat’s tenure with Doctor Who will have? Will it just be that he’ll be writing most of the episodes, or will he be directing all of them (and possibly modifying episodes written by other writers)? I’m assuming that if Moffat’s written a few episodes for the last few series, then that means that RTD will be writing some guest episodes?

@Dr. Nerfball:

I’d say less Emperor, more Cole McGrath from Infamous, he with the electric hands.

Man, that last sentance really did make no sense, poor grammar probably didnt help matters though.

But anyway! I came here to say I enjoyed that lil’ sparring match up there with Walker and Campbell, good banter that. Going now!