For the record (and a day late):
Nope, didn’t see that coming. The ending, that is – Davros had been telegraphed months ago. Not entirely sure I’m happy, since Tennant pretty much rocks, but there we go. I guess we’ll see what happens next week.
Also: damn, but this series needs a better script editor. My hunch is that Davies is a great producer, but I’m sorry, the show falls into the Battlestar Galactica trap of having lousily-uneven pacing and over-ambitious storylines. As a result, huge swathes of material have to be cut, and with all that goes any semblance of character continuity. The first half of this episode was insane. ‘Breakneck’ I can cope with, but this was plain broken. Yet amongst all the ‘Wait, she said what? Why?!’ moments, there was still time for not one but three ‘We know who you are’ reprise gags? Oh, come on.
I guess the hope is that the production machinery is sufficiently well-oiled that the series can more-or-less run itself (which in practice means that the production manager needs to be hard as nails). In that situation, the job Moffat is inheriting isn’t to mould and shape a franchise: all that heavy lifting has been done for him. It’s to shape a series.
The concern, then, is that Moffat has written some outstanding scripts… but how will he cope with a larger project? Jekyll was a good sign, but still, it’s a big step.
Fingers crossed. I never like the end of Who series, as the big cliffhanger/world-in-peril stuff doesn’t really fit the character or show in my book. So I guess I’ll grit my teeth through whatever happens next week, then… roll on 2010. Or something.