Given that they really didn't drama the hell out of it my money is on a NONE OF IT HAPPENED bait-and-switch along the lines of last season.
[...]
Given his enthusiasm for the gig I have a hard time imagining a scenario where he'd want to leave. It's kind of too late to dodge typecasting, I think, and if he really minded that I don't think he would have stuck it out for three seasons already. And hell, don't I remember something about him being contracted for the little movie thingies next year? I figured he'd be on for at least that long.
Plus, while I can't pull up the quote, I'm almost certain he said he wanted to keep people guessing as to how long he was staying on. I also recall him being quoted as saying he wanted to do more eps than Pertwee, but the first Google result for that is my favorite always-hilariously-wrong fan site, so it's best to ignore it.
...But all right, fair. While I stand by my citation of Baker and McCoy dying rather abruptly, I'll switch the "possible, but not likely" call from not-regenerating to regenerating.
Plus there's Ham's observation about "the threefold man" -- I didn't catch that line the first time, though I've gone back and watched the scene again. Yeah, an appearance by two other incarnations of the Doctor would seem likely. (I still like my "bring in the Shalka Doctor" idea, but it ranks south of "Donna is a Time Lady" and just north of "Donna is the Master" in terms of likelihood IMO.)
Though for all I like Tennant, I prefer the sudden, unexpected deaths to the big dramatic ones. A new Doctor next week would make for a better story than a dodge.
With some wackiness in between. Hell, we already had the whole deus-ex-global-cellphone bit again, and it ain't getting any less fucking stupid.
I'd say mildly less. It had nowhere to go but up.
On one hand, I almost like seeing RTD going out on such a shit note. He did a great job of revitalizing the thing back, well, in the first season.
Yeah, but even that was so hit-or-miss. Pretty much everything after the Nestenes and before the Dalek could have been dumped. After that, I'd say Father's Day, the Moffat twosie (of course), and the half of The Parting of the Ways that Rose wasn't in were pretty good. Basically the rest were Eccleston propping up a bunch of mediocrity.
Anyway, Daleks are nice. Shame this was so sketchy in every other way.
I thought the Dalek bits were good enough to redeem the rest. That and the soft bigotry of low expectations -- bear in mind I was expecting the red Dalek to open up and turn out to be Harriet Jones. The mere fact that that didn't happen meant the episode was about a million times better than I expected.
Which is one more reason I now believe that was a fake plot point deliberately "leaked" to the tabloids. But the fact that it was entirely believable says a lot.
And that there's actually enough spinoff media already that it feels like the more awkward bits of going home for Christmas and running into family you don't exactly hate, but haven't cared enough to keep up with for the last year. I don't know or care what Torchwood and Sarah Jane have been up to, and while I have a lingering fondness for them I neither want to hear an in depth explanation (actually watch those shows) or deal with the superficial "How're things?" "Eh, okay."
OTOH, as the universe gets bigger it gets silly to ignore the supporting cast. One of the laughable things about the first episode of Justice League Unlimited where they did the pan across the 100 or so superheroes in the Watchtower was the sense of, "Okay, where the fuck were all these guys at the end of LAST season when the world was being invaded by Thanagarians?" (There was a throwaway line in a later episode to the effect that they'd all been out fighting in some capacity, but still.)
That said, they were handled much better in the previous episode, where they didn't even show up and Rose just explained how they all died trying to do the Doctor's job.
But I can understand why they're there. Sky full of alien planets, Jack's going to drop what he's doing to check it out; soon as he finds out it's Daleks he's going to go looking for the Doctor.
Sarah Jane is less of a plot necessity, but she's the only other character at this point who knows who the fuck Davros is, and two OH SHII~s are better than one. (That said, while reaction shots are necessary to remind the audience that Daleks are scary, they're a lot less necessary for a guy with an exposed ribcage and organs.)
The problem isn't so much that they're there as that RTD seems much less interested in the why than the how. It's not "Why are they here, what's their motivation?", it's "How can we fit them into the story because THIS IS MY LAST ARC AND IT HAS TO BE BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER DONE BEFORE!" Their supporting casts stuck out even more (though I grant the "someone sent the rest of Torchwood on a wild goose chase, that's why they're not here" plot couldn't really be used again).
As for what's been happening on the shows, yeah, I've never caught Sarah Jane so I had to hit up Wikipedia to find out when the hell she had a kid (he's adopted) and what was up with Mr. Smith (he's an alien intelligence who is apparently yet another literal deus ex machina). I'd read about the Torchwood finale previously and knew that they'd killed off half the cast.
I think the whole "kitchen sink" business is best summed up with Gwen calling her husband. We've got the leading lady of a supporting character's spinoff appearing as a supporting character and calling a supporting character from her show (not seen). How many characters I don't care about can be worked into this flow chart? Well, then there's the bit where the Daleks come in and Dull and Annoying and Welsh promise that they will sell their lives dearly, just like those other two characters who I don't care died.
That said...that's all pretty much what I expected. And I expected the Daleks to be as lame as they were last time. And for one of them to be Harriet Jones.
So you can see how this episode exceeded my expectations.