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Warning: Spoilers and Fannish Nerdliness Below!

Below you will find fanboy squee, spoilers and more photos than usual for me. While some of you were out celebrating Pride, I was working. And then I was thinking about Doctor Who. Seriously, if you're not interested, don't scroll below the cut. And if you are interested, but haven't yet seen episode 12 for God's sake don't read past the cut!

Yes, folks, Doctor Who is winding up its fourth, revived season (or "series", as Ye Contemporary English would have it) and I am nearly as excited about this week's up-coming finale as I was after the penultimate episode of the second series, wherein The Doctor and Rose faced an invasion of Earth by not only five million Cybermen, but also four of the even-more deadly Daleks.

Dalek!

Dalek! Cyberman!
This time around there's no sign of the Cybermen, but the Daleks are back. In fact, it's Old Home Week as hasn't been seen on Doctor Who since the pretty damned disappointing epic, The Five Doctors, way back in 1983. There's only one Doctor, but there are three companions on offer (four, if one is inclined to include Captain Jack), former Prime Minister Harriet Jones, the Judoon and one surprise I won't mention, even though long-time fans will figure it out from the moment his claw appears in the shadows. Oh yeah, and a cameo by none other than Richard Dawkins! (No. Really. I'll prove it.)

Dawkins Does Who: "But it's an empirical fact. The planets didn't come to us, we came to them."
In other words, the episode had every reason to be an ungodly mess, like one of those multi-issue super-hero cross-overs that were all the rage a few years back (and maybe, still are).

Somehow though, writer Russell T. Davies has pulled off a minor miracle, balancing an enormous cast of fan-favourites with a witty, exciting script. The secondary players had their moments in the sun, almost all with an organic logic that worked with the plot. Despite the huge canvas and cast, nothing felt forced. Davies played with fannish expectations but never seemed to be pandering, even when he was.

And Jesus god! but he toyed with our expectations at the end like a virtuoso. I was on the verge of tears and then my jaw dropped wide.

And now we wait. The Daleks have stolen the entire Earth, moved it in both space and time; they've more or less conquered it. And the Doctor? Will he really regenerate or were those shots of his severed hand-in-a-jar (if you've read this far, you know what I'm talking about; if you don't, go watch the god damned things and stop wasting your time reading me waste mine!) a clue that David Tennant will be around for a while longer?

Really, all I can say is: Davies has set up one hell of a cliff-hanger. If he blows it, there are going to be a lot of very disappointed and possibly dangerous fans wanting to give him a stern talking to.

I can't wait for next Saturday. Whee!