Kevin: there with Lord Foul, the Land (and eventually all the Earth) about to be overrun and destroyed.
the Doctor: there with the emperor of the Daleks, Earth (and later the rest of the universe) about to be overrun and destroyed
Kevin: Lord Foul dares him to enact the Ritual of Desecration (which would kill everyone in the Land)
the Doctor: the Dalek emperor dares him to use the [insert technobabble] weapon (which would kill everyone on Earth).
Kevin: sends the Haruchai, others away to safety, not telling them his intentions. He knows people outside the Land will survive
the Doctor: there's colonies out there...humans will survive, rebuild. Sends Rose away in the TARDIS, not telling her his intentions.
Kevin: goes for it! Lots of people die, but Lord Foul is "dead" for a long long time.
the Doctor: wimps out! He won't do it! Disaster would ensue...except Rose saves them in a deus ex TARDIS. AGGGH! She does the equivalent of breaking the Arch of Time, something I doubt even Kevin Landwaster would do! (And even the Doctor refused to go that far...or wouldn't he have done it before to save his own world?)
This is where I hate the writers of the new Who. There's no serious long term consequences as far as we can see for this breaking of the Arch of Time. The Doctor regenerates. Woo. Nothing happens to Rose. Nothing bad happens to the universe. If SRD had been writing, I bet that victory would have COST. And they'd pay and pay and pay...ha ha ha!
This episode also made me think better of Kevin. Like the Doctor, he suffered from this idea that it was up to him to save or damn the world (but that's common in stories like these), and the pressure was making him insane. So what if he despaired? I'm thinking now he made the right decision. All life, all beauty did not pass utterly from the Earth. He successfully set back the Despiser for many generations. No mortal can defeat evil forever.
The Doctor should have done it! He betrayed the sacrifices of Captain Jack and all those others who gave their lives to give him time. Everyone was doomed. It's not as if the Doctor hasn't killed before. Then he could have angsted about it for awhile, just like
Kevin's ghost. Oh well. Maybe he did it once before, and that's why his planet is gone and all his people dead. But if that was the case, they could have shown a little of that.
In summary: the Doctor vs Covenant, who would win?
