MAGIC ROUNDABOUTS

As much as I now firmly believe that RTD's hand should have been forcibly removed from the throttle long before this hot mess of a fiinale for the Tenth Doctor, I do think he deserves his props for certain things that came up during his reign. One of these was his attention to detail in making sure certain plot threads were tied off before the end of his run.

One of these was addressing the fact that Dr. Martha Jones resembled a woman who worked for Torchwood in the "Army Of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" two-parter. Invoking the "identical cousin" trope that's firmly established in Toobworld, we found out that Martha and Odeola were related.

Simlarly, in "The Stolen Earth"/"The Journey Home" two-part finale of last year, we found out that Gwen Cooper belonged to the same family tree as Gwyneth, the Cardiff maid from 1869. The strong echo of genetic material is also a common theme in Toobworld.

Then there was the introduction of the alien invaders known as the Sycorax. The name appeared to be just another appropriation of an established word, as we saw so often in 'Star Trek' which had "Vulcan", "Romulus", "Charon", etc. But then with "The Shakespeare Code", the Doctor mentioned the Sycorax in front of the Bard, who decided to steal it for himself to use (as he would do in "The Tempest").

From that same episode, we found out that Queen Elizabeth I was royally bleeped off at the Doctor, but even he didn't know why as it had not happened in his own personal timeline yet. But we've finally found out - at some point between the end of "The Waters Of Mars" and the beginning of "The End Of Time", the Doctor ended up getting married to "Good Queen Bess" and took away the veracity of her nickname.....

And so it goes....