Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Perhaps he's a Slytheen.

What did you think of the end of the season, Ed, by the way?

Abigail: Eek! The Slytheen -- the lamest alien seen on "Doctor Who" since Alpha Centuarri, that badly done multi-armed character from the Peladon Pertwee stories. (Yup, now you know how much of this stuff I saw as a kid.)

Okay, to answer your question...

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...with the exception of that terrible deus ex machina, I fucking loved it. I was both sad to see the end of CE, who more than proved his mettle and left the show too soon. The Daleks were not only scary again, but my heart dropped when I saw those armies of Daleks drifting through space. I think the Bad Wolf story arc was damned silly and too many secrets were revealed about the TARDIS. All in all though, we really haven't seen that kind of excitement since "The Caves of Androzani." And I look forward to seeing where they're going with this, Captain Jack included.

You know, I've heard the deus ex machina reaction in several places and I just don't see it. The whole point of a DEM, the thing that makes it so unsatisfying, is that we don't know what makes the god decide to descend to earth and meddle in mortal affairs. Here, we know what made the god appear, and who, and why, and they are all human reasons and motivations.

Unlike you, I am most emphatically not a DW fan from way back, but I enjoyed this season immensely. I do think the writers sacrificed good plotting for good characterization (which is not necessarily a bad choice, although I don't think it's asking too much to hope for both), and all too often their endings were weak - too easy or just technobabble. The season's end didn't strike me that way - in fact, it justified several choices earlier in the season that I wasn't too crazy about (it retroactively justified the existence of episode 11, for example, in which Rose learns about the existence of the heart of the TARDIS).