feeling pessimistic

i saw The End of Time (part 1) last night and Sarah Jane's Wedding this morning.  What a horrible send off for David Tennant, more of the season 3 finale tripe that didn't work then but it's been amped up even worse.  i'm afraid that there's no fixing it, not like they can use the reset button yet again.  i am extremely upset with all the quarry running around filler, lack of Wilf, and of course Donna.  She hasn't recovered at all???  i thought better of her, i am even going to try to write a fanfic just so i can get over it.  i am really really confused:  they make it look like Wilf is a sleeper agent for someone from Gallifrey, but he almost got changed into the Master, and Donna doesn't get affected at all?  Watch, they'll try to explain it away with something that makes absolutely no sense.  As invested as i am in my Donna-is-a-Time-Lady theory, i don't think RTD will use it.  i rather have lost hope in the series and feel like Moffat is getting a raw deal.  Why is series five going to be called series one now?

ETA:  i watched the first part of Blackpool last night, too.  It's absolutely hilarious, completely irreverent and inappropriate.  The skinny git is never going to fill out if he keeps throwing perfectly good food (well, i must admit it was junk food) on the curb.  i also watched the Human Footprint this morning, which was okay i guess, totally does not take into account those of us who use cloth diapers, local grown food, organics, etc.  And since when are carbon dioxide and carbon horrible?  i actually was surprised how small a person's footprint is, i rather thought it would be worse with how much they go on about it, and personally i feel that i am below average for most of what they detailed, the meat possibly being the only exception.  i have yet to ever have lamb and probably eat far too many cows.

finally back home

We drove overnight, which was heinous per usual.  i am sore and stink and am sick again, either due to using sanitizer at the hospital when we went to see Grandad or allergies in LA or Yuma.  Last night after finally falling asleep i was starting to dream that i had read a fanfiction in which, in Donna's missing year, she had been pregnant and was having her baby in the first part of the End of Time.  i'll probably get to watch that sometime tonight (one can only hope).  In the meantime i'm mighty tempted to write a fanfiction of my own, but am not sure that i should do so while so sleep deprived.  i think the only person to get less sleep than me last night was my Dad because he was driving.  i was afraid to fall asleep because i didn't want to wake up to realize we were about to crash because he had fallen asleep.  i hate driving overnight.

the DOCTOR has a ring!

i just happened to be in the mood to progress in my classic Doctor Who viewing, started up "the Dead Planet," and just happened to notice:

The Doctor has a ring that looks an awful lot like Donna's!!!  He even wears it on the same finger and hand that Donna usually wears it on.  So this begs the question, is Donna's ring a coincidence?  Did she just happen to find it in the Wardrobe Room long after the first Doctor stopped wearing it?  Or does the ring have a deeper meaning, whether it could have been used with a Chameleon Arch or not?  It is, of course, very hard to tell, but the two rings seem to be two similar in my opinion for it to be purely coincidence.

Donna's Ring(s)

1. Runaway Bride - plain biodamp (not the same as in Journey's End)
   
2. Partners in Crime - no
3. Fires of Pomepeii - no
4. Planet of the Ood - she's wearing a band on the usual finger (right hand middle)... the biodamp ring again?
   
5. The Sontaran Stratagem - on left hand while she's flying the Tardis (the hand towards the camera), but it's not the same ring as in Journey's End
   
6. The Poison Sky - black ring again during "Back of the neck" on left hand finger
7. The Doctor's Daughter - First appearance!  It's on her right hand while using stethoscope.
8. The Unicorn and the Wasp - nope
9. Silence in the Library - yes
10. Forest of the Dead - flashes of it in some scenes i think, but no clear shot
11. Midnight - can only see one hand:  no
12. Turn Left -  no
13. The Stolen Earth - while at the Shadow Proclamation
14. Journey's End - still wearing it in the Tardis (particularly when the door is slammed on her)

So Donna is wearing the no ring whatsoever in 5-6 episodes, a simple band in "Runaway Bride" and "Planet of the Ood", a black plastic ring in "the Sontaran Strategem" and "the Poison Sky", and the Ring itself in 5-6 episodes, most notably while inadvertently creating the Doctor's clone.

ETA:  Donna is not wearing an engagement ring in "the Runaway Bride"!  She isn't wearing a ring until the Doctor gives her the biodamp ring.  She is wearing a ring in the previews for "The End of Time" which is very different than the grey/black one from "Journey's End."

The Runaway Bride "With this ring I do thee biodamp."	The Planet of the Ood The biodamp ring again?
The Sontaran Strategem The ring Donna wore when she piloted the Tardis.	Journey's End The ring Donna wore during the metacrisis.
The End of Time preview Not the same ring!

At this point, i'm exhausted and grasping at straws. Some people seem to think that Donna becoming a Time Lord would cheapen her experience and growth; i know that erasing her memory cheapens her experience and negates her growth. i'm just trying to find a silver lining in all of this!

in show Doctor Who predictions

Runaway Bride
"Such a sweet couple." (Empress of the Racnoss)

Fires of Pompeii
"Son of Gallifrey" clearly, and yet Lucius stumbles over "daughter of...London."  I believe that he is speaking of Rose when he says "She is returning."

ETA:  Midnight
Donna tells the Doctor (on the phone) "It's a date... well it's not, but you know what I mean."  Her least emphatic denial that they are a couple to date.

Turn Left
The fortune teller acts like the Doctor and Donna are a couple... Donna doesn't deny it.
ETA:  i just found out that the woman who plays the Fortune Teller was Chantho in Utopia!

Doctor Who, Donna, "End of Time," and series five theories

Last night my sister and i were asked to watch some kids during the choir's Christmas performance.  One of the father's thanked us for watching them, and i admitted to having none of my own, which led to him joking that i must watch kids so i won't want any of my own.  The opposite is actually the case, i do not like to babysit (despite the fact that i have a lot of experience doing so, as i'm the oldest of seven children) because it makes me want to have children even more acutely.  Well, because my sister Katie and i are totally obsessed about the fate of both Doctors, Rose, and Donna at the moment, this got our creative juices flowing.

One of the things that I hate the most about the fact that Donna got the mind wipe ending that she did is that we got to know so very little about her.  Martha hogged about a third of the season from her, which really irritates me (as you well know).  So what do we know about Donna?

1. She works as a temp (Super!Temp) and cannot (or will not) keep a steady job.
2. She likes to travel.
3. When we first met Donna, she was ignorant of all the alien activity that had been going on (attacks of the Slitheen, Daleks, Cybermen, etc.)... almost as if there was a part of her brain that was purposefully shutting out knowledge about aliens... which is, of course, where she ends up again at the end of series four.
   
4. In the beginning, Donna seems rather obtuse and slow, but meeting the Doctor seemed to unlock her brain.  After turning the Doctor down on his offer to make her his Companion, she spent a lot of time searching for him, having regret her choice.  She felt as if something was missing in her life and he was the answer.
5. Though outwardly very vocal and indignant, Donna is not very confident about her own worth despite the fact that the more Donna traveled with the Doctor, the smarter and more exceptional she became.
6. Donna has an almost illogical repulsion for the Doctor and all things alien at times ("You're not mating with me, sunshine!", "Martian", "Space man", etc.).  Because of this she does not even want to consider him as anything more than a friend ("We're not married", "So, so, not married."  "No, never").
7. Donna really wants to get married (She was throwing herself at Lance in "The Runaway Bride" and in "Turn Left" Sylvia claims that she only wants to work at H.C. Clements in order to find a husband).
8. Donna really wants to have kids (When she is "saved" in the library she and her husband immediately have twins:  when Miss Evangelista tells her that her children aren't real, she becomes very upset and terrified that her children are going to disappear).
9. Donna's mother is blonde and her father looked like he was as well.  I guess it's possible that she could still have red hair with blond parents, but it isn't very likely.
   
10. Donna always wears a certain black ring on her right hand (i have yet to rewatch all of the episodes from series four to confirm this, but i remember noticing the ring right away as it's fairly large and doesn't really seem to match Donna's style imo:  in fact, it rather reminds me of a beetle).
11. The Tardis is what pulls Donna to the Doctor upon their first meeting.  The Tardis also locks Donna in during "Journey's End."  During said episode Donna was inexplicably hearing heartbeats inside the Tardis.
    

i'm sure there are even more things we know about Donna, but these are the most important to my current point. "Journey's End" bothered me on several levels, for the first thing the Doctor left Rose behind.  I did not feel that the Doctor Clone was very probable, in fact i thought that it was more likely that the regeneration energy would leave Donna pregnant or cause her to regenerate.  Both those things being said, Davies decided to make a Doctor Clone, who is, theoretically speaking, more like Doctor 9 than Doctor 10 (even though he looks like Doctor 10), so the Clone should be happy with Rose and she should be happy with him.  On the other hand, now that Doctor 10 has chosen to leave Rose behind for good, there is never another chance for him to go back to Rose:  that door is closed, and she has a Clone for a consolation prize (which i suppose is a nice prize, seeing how she will now be able to marry and grow old with the man she loves).  This is incredibly sad for the Doctor, but leaves him open to finally pursue other relationships should he so choose (i cannot believe that i'm saying this, but two years was a very long time to still be hanging on to Rose, after all, and i'm sorry if i sound a little bit jaded about it, but the Doctor hasn't exactly been trying to get back to Rose, has he?).

So, back to Donna.  I am 90% sure that TPTB are not going to leave her knocked up with the Doctor's baby (incidentally, i find it rather odd that he seems to have no interest in trying to propagate the Gallifreyan species, which is odd since he is so sure that he is the last Time Lord:  i feel like he should be trying to [re]build a better Time Lord society, but this also has to do with my obsession about babies lol).  Where does this leave us?  We have several factors here that seem to have conveniently come together in order to indicate that Donna is a Time Lady.  For instance, she turns out to be even smarter than the Doctor and seems to know how to fix the Chameleon Circuit on the Tardis (like anyone wants that to be done at this point!), an object that as far as we know she's never even seen before... but this, of course, surreptitiously points us towards the Chameleon Arch idea.  Just why does Donna seem to be more than we originally thought?  There are numerous people that are prophesying about her and declaring that she is the most important woman in the universe.  Donna came back to Doctor Who immediately after the Master left.  In "Journey's End," she was hearing heartbeats, just as Yana was hearing the drums in "Utopia."  So could Donna be a Time Lady?  Could it be that the reason we know so little about Amy Pond and there were rumors that she is an alien is because she is a regenerated Donna? The new Companion is even ginger! So i am hope hope hoping that Donna isn't gone, that she's just going to be continuing in a new form in series five, and that Doctor 11 and she will be guarding Earth and righting the Last Great Time War as equals (assuming that the theory that Matt Smith is actually going to be Doctor 9, and his adventures will be set during the Time War, is not true: this would make Chris Doctor 10 and David Doctor 11! which means David could come back later if he so chooses. Yeah, my hopes aren't too high, but i also don't think anyone will be forgetting the incredible Mr. Tennant any time soon... he is far too popular for that, and one must realize that he hasn't had the opportunity to do any conventions yet and get exposed to his screaming fans in that way; after all, it knocked the socks off of everyone who was on Star Trek).

Which now begs the question:  if Donna is a Time Lady, has she (her real persona) been on the show before?  Well, we already know that the Rani will be returning (her name means She is singing / Queen, incidentally) and that Donna hates Christmas ("The Runaway Bride"). Donna's hatred for the "alien" could be seen as an interesting twist to Rani's hatred of humans. Could Rani be the person who picked up the Master's ring? Of course, it has been reported that Gillian Anderson is going to play her, so that kind of rules the Donna is Rani theory out (even if it did kind of fit and would be totally be mind blowing for her to suddenly be an enemy, not that i want that to happen).

Of course, what do i know, i haven't gotten that far in the original Doctor Who episodes yet. However, i think that the most likely candidate for Donna's identity is probably Romana, who was purportedly just as smart as the Doctor, driven, and a sometimes Companion to him. This is totally random, but the letters for "Donna" can be found in her full name, and her second incarnation was ginger as well.  i am much more likely to think that Donna is Romana than Christina (from "Planet of the Dead"). Another thing that's out there... where did Donna want to go first? Rome! (LOL yeah, way out of field and grasping at straws, i am) which is ironically how Karen Gillan came to be cast as the newest Companion.

So, this theory doesn't fit perfectly, and they probably didn't come up with the idea when originally casting Catherine Tate, but i definitely think that all signs point to this, even if she isn't Rani or Romana.  Incidentally, if Amy Pond is not Donna/Romana... (there are some letters for Donna in her name, too!), then my other guess is that she's a young River Song.  At any rate, i'm not willing to give up on Donna yet, and i am looking forward to watching the final specials more now that i have this new theory under my belt.  It's funny how i've suddenly become a Doctor/Donna shipper when i never would have considered it in the past, but if Donna is a Time Lady... then what's stopping the relationship?  Methinks they doth protest too much!  i might have to write a fanfic or two if The End of Time turns out to be a let down.

internalizing Silence in the Library through Water of Mars

i've watched the end of season four again since last time i posted, as well as watching all of the Doctor Who specials up to this point. i was rather surprised that the last time i watched Turn Left was more emotionally upsetting than the first time: i cried throughout the entire episode. i am very upset with the fact that Catherine Tate and David Tennant will no longer be on Doctor Who, so much so that, while i am incredibly excited to see where series five will go, in a way i do not want to keep watching the show at all. It's all so emotionally draining: i am a lot more emotionally invested in Doctor 10 than i ever thought i would be; i mean, the entire time i was watching Doctor 9, i knew Christopher Eccleston was leaving the show at the end of the series, and i loved him as the Doctor, and hated David as creepy Barty Crouch, Jr. i'm actually rather surprised how much David grew on me, in fact i'm very infatuated with him at the moment (who's Zach Quinto? David Anders? Shia LeBeouf? Never heard of them...), which is mostly just because i feel so bad for the Doctor, i'm sure. He's so infuriating and heart wrenching, all at the same time. So i'm wanting to watch more of the Doctor (have started watching the original series one, which i'm not enjoying too much yet, but Daleks are coming up soon) yet simultaneously dreading any Doctor that isn't Tennant. It's all so confusing. How do i get so emotional over someone who gives me papercuts every time i look at him (wish i could hug him, oh i'm so lame).

So... i'm feeling a little bit better about Doctor Clone being left behind with Rose (some fanfiction helped), though i think it's absolutely ridiculous but makes sense from a storytelling point of view (Rose and the Doctor together would probably kill the show, which begs the questions: what are they going to do about River Song? And when she says "new haircut", does she mean that he had regenerated? Because her Doctor seemed to be #10... how is that going to work???). i am furious about the way Donna/Tate were treated while they were on the show. i love Donna, maybe even more than Rose, but i don't know her very well because Martha was continuing to hog all her screen time. Katie and i were talking about this, how Martha was all "me, me, me" all the time, and didn't really change much (other than the fact that she became so militant), while Rose and Donna in comparison were very selfless and wanted to make sure they fulfilled the Doctor's needs (as well as have fun with him). The one line that i always come back to with Martha demonstrates her bitter jealousy perfectly: "Oh, she was blonde." There was absolutely none of that angst with Donna, who ironically gets to be the one woman (possibly in the universe) who doesn't want to see the Doctor naked... but got to.

Who has he become?

The last few nights, i have had insomnia. As a result, i have read a book, played some WoW (got a new bow in Pit of Saron), read some fanfiction (most of it very ill, as the stories that are good aren't really being updated lately), watched the first two episodes of Doctor Who ever, and finished season four of Doctor Who and watched three of the specials with David Tennant, the latest being "Waters of Mars."

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Read at your own risk!

Last night, i think, was the scariest thing i have ever seen, and not because of the infected humans, but because the Doctor breaks. This special is one of the few episodes in which the Doctor has no companion whatsoever: there are only the people that he meets for the first time within the time he is visiting. And the sad part is that he realizes that he has read about these people before and they are all going to die that very day. But they've taken him prisoner, as it were, and he is forced to watch the first of them succumb, and when they finally let him go it's all falling apart, and he's walking away, back to the TARDIS, back to safety... and he just breaks. He does the thing that has kept him separate from the Master, from all the bad guys, and decides that consequences be damned, but he's the last Time Lord and he is going to be the one to decide who lives, who dies, and where time changes.

As i said, it was the scariest thing i've ever seen, because he was going mad with the pain. So was i, in a way: TV, movies, books, always affect me hugely, i'm always crying, etc. i was sobbing and heartbroken as he walked away. In that moment i wanted to run and hide nearly as much as i wanted to be able to reach through the screen and touch him, hold him. i discovered something about the show that bothered me, that has struck me about Doctor Who as a whole: of all the lessons that he has learned, pain that he has felt, all the people he has lost and saved, he's never learned two things. 1 ~ He keeps coming back for more pain... which is incredibly sad, but not necessarily a bad characteristic.

2 ~ Death is not always a negative. In "Blink", the cop is ready to die, he's had a long full life with a woman that he loved, and the same seems to be true of Sally's friend Kathy. Ironically, the life that the Weeping Angels condemn them to turns out to be happier than the ones they lost. What really bothers me is that, in "Forest of the Dead", the Doctor condemns the woman he will eventually love to a nightmare... and then they portray River as being happy. He then does the same thing to the Captain in "Waters of Mars": because he saves her, she's forced to commit suicide to regain the nobility of her death. It might have been all right if he had taken her somewhere safe, somewhere across the universe, but no, he drops her on her doorstep.

i do not understand why the Doctor cannot understand that death is sometimes longed for, preferable to the pain, to the horrors one's selfishness could cause. i guess that it is because he has never had to experience death himself, because he is always watching people slip away while he is forced to regenerate, live forever. But why would River be happy with three fake children and no Doctor? Why would Rose be happy with a broken half-Doctor that has committed mass murder without a second thought? (Of course he's a git and still won't even tell Rose that he loves her, so good riddance in a way, of course it has to be said, you idiot!) Why would Donna be happy with her brain wiped and the switch reset to mundane? The entire point is that these women were utterly unhappy without the Doctor and were willing to sacrifice everything to be with him, even die.

This is why i dislike Matron Joan... no matter how much the Doctor has hurt you, how can she just turn her back on him? All because he was man enough to return to who he really was instead of being selfish enough to remain who a part of him desperately longs to be??? She did not love him enough. She did not understand that the reason everyone loves him is because he runs towards trouble and puts it back in its place. The reason everyone loves him is because he freely sacrifices of himself for the entire universe, despite the fact that the job is utterly thankless most of the time. People blame him for the trouble he puts down.

But of course, now the Doctor is broken, and slipping away from me forever. i am, of course, hugely curious as to what #11 will be like, but i rather got it in my head that he was going to turn out to be a past incarnation, that it would be the Doctor during the time war... between 8 & 9. i wanted to hold on to the possibility that we could someday get #10 back, after the Last Great Time War is explained. Now that the Doctor has snapped and has decided that he is the Lord of all Time alone... it would be very easy for TPTB to therefore make him try to fix the Last Great Time War, despite the fact that it was timelocked. That, of course, could be considered to be a noble endeavor, but if he refuses to travel with a companion because they only get hurt, because it therefore hurts him too much... who is there to hold him back??? i know 11 has a companion, but there are two more "hours" for 10 (it really comes to about an hour and a half of viewing time with the commercials omitted), and i'm wondering how the heck he's going to be fixed in that amount of time. Wilf has his work cut out.

When did it happen that i became infatuated with a lanky boy ten years my senior? Chris was my first Doctor, i'm supposed to love him more, right? It feels like a betrayal to be so wrapped up in #10. The first Doctor is utterly foreign to me. On the other hand, i'm not sure i want to meet River's Doctor. i think i caught a glimpse of him last night, and it was utterly and completely wrong. i feel stupid to be so utterly bereft. Why do i keep getting sucked in? i'm tired of being so wrapped up in fictional characters' pain, i want to heal and i want to find my own companion... just one. i'm so tired of being single.

dang it

i've already gone through the Frozen Halls attunement process, finally updating my boots to the Muddied Boots of Brill (upgrade from Dawnwalkers, which were from Naxx), which makes me happy. However... i got an upgrade stolen from me by the new loot system, which will not let me roll on leather (Shaggy Wyrmleather Leggings are a definite upgrade from Valorous Cryptstalker Legguards), so they were automatically disenchanted. i guess that's more fair if no one actually needs them, however... i did need them. /sigh

WoW.com is hiring

i think i'm going to apply for the hunter columnist position. i'm nervous about it, though: i've never been paid for my writing, and even though i feel like i'm an aweseom hunter that doesn't mean other people necessarily agree with me.

Possibility as sung by Lykke Li in New Moon

i woke up with this song stuck in my head. i looked it up on the net, but none of the pages i found seemed to have the lyrics quite right. So i modified them to what i think they actually are. This song is awesome, they use it when Bella is sitting in her room, staring off into nothing, for the months without description that occur directly after Edward leaves and Sam finds Bella in the woods.

It's a possibility
It's a possibility
All that I had was all I'm gonn' get
mmMmmMmmMmMmmm

There's a possibility
There's a possibility
All I wanted is gone with your stare
All I wanted is gone with your stare

So tell me when you hear my heart stop
You're the only one who'd know
Tell me when you hear my silence
There's a possibility I wouldn't know

mmMmmMmmMmMmmm
mmMmmMmmMmMmmm
mmMmmMmmMmMmmm

Know that when you leave
Know that when you leave
By blood about me you'll walk like a thief
By blood about me I fall when you leave

So tell me when you hear my heart stop
You're the only one who'd know
Tell me when you hear my silence
There's a possibility I wouldn't know

So tell me when my sigh is over
You're the reason why I'm closed
Tell me when you hear me fallin'
There's a possibility it would show

mmMmmMmmMmMmmm
mmMmmMmmMmMmmm

By blood and by me I fall when you'll leave
By blood and by me i follow your lead

mmMmmMmmMmMmmm
mmMmmMmmMmMmmm
mmMmmMmmMmMmmm
mmMmmMmmMmMmmm

Luna Nueva

There were posters all over Barcelona, particularly on the metro. i finally saw it on Saturday. Let me just say that it was a huge relief because it was sooo much better than the Twilight movie was. i can hardly wait for Eclipse to come out now! We'll have to see how much longer i can wait to see it again, but right now i'm in the midst of finals (of course).

ETA: Yeah, the Remember Me preview was pretty awesome, and i'm not even a Pattinson fan. Gotta love having Claire from Lost, who's got the same dad as in October Sky.

the angels have the golden box!

Very recently i went on a cruise to Europe and Egypt. Inside the museum at Cairo was a King Tut exhibit. i was not allowed to take my camera inside the museum, regrettably, but thanks to the internet i was able to find images of Tut's Canopic Shrine, which greatly surprised us as Dr. Who fans.