Maybe Mickey is the exception that proves the rule.

Borgseawolf is totally right-on with his/her comment. Doctor Who is one of the hugest television shows in England. In America, it’s almost impossible to conceive of a television show airing SATURDAY NIGHT getting 9.4 million viewers.

The reason: RTD has a massive PR machine in his pocket, and he’s being coached the whole way as to how to best manipulate the audience to watch his show. Of course you have to do that — that’s entertainment! This all of course led to the viewer response from women 18-39 (notoriously the hardest demographic to get) because of all that romantic blah blah, all the while maintaining the “family friendly” vibe of the show through emphasis on the Doctor’s pacifism and his reaction to the relatively benign concept of “death”, which in the show is treated as the WORST POSSIBLE THING even if the alternative is much more torturous (see: Donna). Death is scary and mysterious to children, so it seems that someone is whispering in RTD’s ear that anything but death can be an acceptable conclusion to a beloved character’s storyline. This ending with Donna, however, seems like it would be more confusing and scary than death; the Doctor wiped her memories against her consent and all the positive growth of Donna’s character was wiped out in a split second without any catharsis. Yeah, you avoided the PR-forbidden death scene, but Donna’s conclusion was so much more macabre. Martha had the most dignified end to her run, and the most pro-female (and I find this show to be incredibly sexist): She CHOSE to leave, and then she went on to be a powerful and successful professional, a “modern woman.” That’s the kind of thing you want to teach girls.

Frankly, I think all that PR-coaching is rather insulting to the audience because it is so overt. And if anything was a grievous compound insult, it was “Journey’s End”, which grotesquely exploited both the “anti-death” and “pro-romance” agendas of New Who. Those agendas could have been handled much more subtley, but we had it rammed down our throat, damn the plot continuity and character growth!

One redeeming thing about this finale is the lack of a universal reset button. I hope that in the episodes to come, the Doctor is going to have to deal with knowing he really has reached God Status with humans now. Maybe a right-wing fanatical Doctorist group will be terrorists? HOW TOPICAL! Heh.