Greetings, my fellow Torchworshippers and Doctor Wholigans. How I’ve missed you! So much so that even the promise of a secondary role for Captain Jack is enough excuse for us to recap the Doctor Who finale — all three parts. It’s been awhile since we groaned over Gwack or got jazzed over Janto, and I’ve been itchin’ for some bitchin’.

So, without further ado, let the snarking begin …

We open on one of those Asian-y, Fifth Element-ary future dystopias that art directors are so in love with.

The Doctor and Donna are wandering around some foreign marketplace haggling over merchandise, then stop to chug a few pints and laugh their heads off. In other words, they’ve taken time out from saving various planets and species to act like a couple of backpacking Europass students. Party next in Amsterdam, dudes! Trust me: Spacecakes + Van Goghs = Totally Trippy!

Donna walks off by herself, and now we can pretty much say “Bye-bye Doctor David.” Because this is that bit they do every series where they film two episodes at once, so David Tennant now has to go off to shoot “Midnight” while Donna carries the heavy dramatic weight for this one. I hate that.

Note to bigwig BBC executives: when people tune in to watch a show called “Doctor Who,” I think they’d maybe actually like to see the Doctor in it. Otherwise, it’s like that grim period on Laverne & Shirley where Shirley was suddenly absent because Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall despised each other.

Some Fortune Teller lady asks Donna if she wants her fortune read. One of the reasons I love Donna just a little bit is that even after all the crazy, mind-blowing stuff she’s seen with the Doctor, she’s still skeptical this woman can actually tell the future. Which is totally how I’d be in this situation, given how thickly this actress is laying on the “ancient Chinese secret” shtick.

But Fortune Teller Lady wins Donna over by saying that, since Donna has red hair, the reading is on the house. If anything, this should make Donna more skeptical. Any Fortune Teller worth her salt should know Donna’s hair hasn’t been naturally red since the mid-’90s.

Inside her shop, Fortune Teller Lady sits Donna down and promptly gropes her palm. She talks about how she can see there’s “a remarkable man” in Donna’s life. Eh, so far I’m not impressed. Who doesn’t have a “remarkable man” in their life? It could be anyone from a boyfriend to the Starbucks barista who doesn’t screw up your daily latte order.

Donna’s not impressed either. When the Fortune Teller asks how they met, Donna is all, “You’re supposed to tell me.” Good one! I once said the same thing when this alleged “Psychic” with a table on the sidewalk stopped me to ask me the time.

But the Fortune Teller says she sees the future, and now she wants to hear about Donna’s past. In my book, that makes her less a clairvoyant and more a run-of-the-mill shrink. But I guess Donna’s head needs some shrinking, given she proceeds to indulge this total stranger/likely charlatan, yammering on about when she was a temp at H.C. Clements.

As Donna talks, she experiences this quick flashback to boring moments in her temping life that leaves her sort of shell-shocked.

Meanwhile, we cut to alien P.O.V. camera angles of something scurrying up behind her in the Fortune Teller’s shop. The Fortune Teller Lady asks, pretty insistently, if there was some specific choice that led Donna to the temp job.

Donna remembers getting in the car with her mother and having an argument. Her mum wanted her to take a permanent position as a secretary for a friend of hers, one “Mr. Chowdry,” who ran a local photocopy shop. But Donna wanted the glamour of big-city life, even if it was only a temp job. Her mum proceeded to mock her, claiming that she rather pathetically was hoping to meet some rich executive who’d change her life, but those guys only use temps like her “for practice.” Ouch! That’s harsh.