matt fitton continually excels at giving us intriguing ideas and unique story structures that ultimately feel hollow asf. the framework is great but it's not in service of anything with substance. i'm. i'm really tired of his writing y'all.

also after 4 great episodes followed by 11 episodes of getting to do jack s**t, molly gets unceremoniously recasted and killed off... the squandered potential here is emblematic of dark eyes as a whole. it's not even that it leads to nothing, it's just that it doesn't lead to anything i can bring myself to care about. i know BF can do better than this – there's so many seeds of interesting things here!

here's hoping doom coalition etc delivers on the promise dark eyes as a whole gave then squandered: that of interesting storytelling.

I feel a bit deflated after finishing Dark Eyes 4. Dark Eyes 1 & 2 pointed towards something rather exciting that 3 & 4 ultimately did not deliver for me. I'm now in two minds as to whether I should press on with Doom Coalition or just skip to the frothy and more fun looking Stranded. There was plenty to like but no episode was an out and out classic (every set before now had classics). Overall I'd give DE4 6/10.

In this final part, given that their hand was forced and they needed to recast Molly, having a much older version narratively works, but she needed to have a whole episode to herself to bed the new actor in. Having her handle such an epic finale after having been introduced only the episode before makes the ending feel cheap. The rehabilitation planet as a Dalek cover story is an interesting conceit (even if these kinds of future spar/ care locations have been done in DW quite a bit now). The ending ends up being a lot of swelling music with no real heart.

what was the point in anya? honestly its so blatantly obvious now that dark eyes was only supposed to be a one-off series that they extended into the 4 part boxset format we know and love today. it was a good conclusion to this set but ultimately im really surprised at how the whole arc went down. molly's exit was sad but really well done and i kinda had my suspicions that would happen :(