We've seen Jack Harkness, Time Agent and pansexual badass, contend for five parts of utter mayhem in a timeline where time itself is unraveling around him. I've collected all the story fragments here for any future reading pleasure. I was going to do an entire recap of the previous five parts of the episode, but I think if you're in this by now then you have a good grasp of what has been going on. If not...well, you have the link.
Last time, however...
Rassilon and the rest of the Time Lords had arrived on Earth through the Time Lock. As the universe is falling apart not only there, but everywhere, he has managed to take down the Master and remove from him the infection of the Wolf (seemingly destroying it in the process). The clone of Rose Tyler kept by the Master/Wolf has started gaining flashes of memory after fighting the Daleks, a memory of a life she never led. So how will the Doctor and Jack get out of this one? Let's check it out!
Rassilon repeats his instruction that the Doctor order the human race to bow before the Time Lords, and the Doctor refuses. Rassilon then attempts to turn Jack into stone as in The Five Doctors, but finds himself thrown back with a tremendous force. Jack's status as a fixed point in time, a little fact, was not something that Rassilon was prepared for.
With Rassilon thrown for a loop, the Doctor and Jack try to make a retreat to the TARDIS, the Doctor dragging along the Master with them. They manage to escape with literally nanoseconds to spare, Rassilon immediately ordering that they be tracked down in wherever in time and space that they've gone.
However, they haven't gone far. Seeing as the TARDIS is stuck with only a limited range it can travel, and so he opted for one of the lower levels of the Valiant. It's the last place Rassilon would think to look, he reasons, and he's right.
Up top, still fuming, Rassilon orders his guard to destroy the Cybermen and Daleks on Earth as well as any other resistance. He orders the creation of "chrono-stabilizers" from the Valiant's engines, which will allow them to further stabilize the timeline. He does not notice, but the "corpse" of the Wolf has disappeared.
Jack berates the Master and is prepared to kill him for what he's done, but the Doctor insists that he be kept alive as he's the only Time Lord left still on their side. Between the pair of them, the Doctor reasons, they can figure out a way to stop Rassilon. The Clone of Rose ends up finding the TARDIS and getting in, telling the trio about Rassilon utilizing the White-Point Star as an energy converter for the chrono-stabilizers. Soon, the plan becomes clear - they have to reverse the polarity.
The Doctor coins the term "total time resonance cascade" and he and the Master both theorize that the explosion that has that name might be enough to repair the errors in time. It also runs the risk of erasing from time anyone who is too close to it when it explodes, so they will literally be lighting a fuse and running away as fast as they can.
It also means they only have one chance to do this because, if they fail, Rassilon will not give them a second especially if he realizes what they're doing. The Doctor uses the same trick from The Sound of Drums where he makes some TARDIS keys turn into their own mini perception filters and gives one to the Master, Jack, and Crose.
Meanwhile, the Cult of Skaro have their Dalek army massed in the ruins of Canary Wharf. Rather than go out and face the Time Lords, they are attempting to expand the range of their Void Ship to cover the entire building so that they might return to the Void. Unfortunately, in this, they do not succeed. The Time Lords intervene, sealing the building and banishing it and its occupants outside of time and space like they did the War Lords during The War Games.
Only a single Dalek, Dalek Caan, is able to escape the mayhem and makes a beeline for the Valiant.
Back on the Valiant, the Doctor and company use ear pieces to communicate and sneak about the ship to get to each of the chrono-stabilizers, which are being grafted onto the already existing engines of the ship. Through various antics, they manage to set explosives to each one, which will (the Doctor hopes) be enough to do what they require. The Master, however, fiddles with his device and - through mesmeric influence - has Crose do the same. He's clearly up to something.
It is as they are attempting to get back to the TARDIS that they all are stopped by the Gallifreyan Royal Guard. Yes, it seems that Rassilon was able to see through the Perception Filters and allowed them to go through with their plan. He orders the explosives found to be phased out of time, and declares that he's going to kill both the Doctor and the Master before either can cause any more trouble.
It is then that Dalek Caan bursts through on a suicide mission, taking down several of the Time Lords in quick succession and then rounding on Rassilon. Rassilon fights him off, damaging Caan and then using his power to force the Dalek's emergency temporal shift to activate, declaring that he hopes he ends up in a supernova.
However, when Rassilon turns his attention back to the others, the Master is laughing. When Rassilon demands to know why, the Master explains.
Apparently, the additions to the engines - at the very least his and the one used by Crose - were purely cosmetic and the Master really accessed the software of the engines. This is punctuated by the two engines cutting out, leaving the Valiant barely able to keep in the air. In the chaos, the Master attempts to go after the White-Point Star (his real goal the entire time) and reverse the link to send the Time Lords back. Rassilon shoots him in the back for his trouble, hitting him directly in one of his hearts and then the other with a second shot.
In a scene mirroring Last of the Time Lords, the Doctor holds the Master as he dies. Instead of refusing to regenerate, his last act is telling the Doctor that he's sorry. Rassilon mocks the Doctor's loss, but the Doctor is beyond grief now and knows what needs to be done. He tells Rassilon that while the Master had his own plan, the Doctor anticipated it. Now his energy converter has become an energy receiver, with the White-Point Star taking in artron energy.
Rassilon rants and raves angrily, but he's failed to notice an important background event, namely Crose falling to the ground as though in pain. Jack has rushed to her side, trying to help her up and urging her to tell him what's happening.
Her reply? "Just a Wolf..."
And the two other engines explode...
The Valiant is in free-fall with all of its engines gone. Large gashes in time have opened up and the Doctor declares to Jack that they need to get back to the TARDIS, now. With the Master dead and Rassilon and the Bad Wolf fighting, they do so. The Doctor snatches the White-Point Star from its case along the way (it burning his hand), which only further complicates matters as time is unraveling quickly. They watch as both Rassilon and the Bad Wolf are encompassed in a bright light and vanish completely.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor pilots it around the Valiant, keeping up with it and opening up the engines to capture all the energy from the "total time resonance cascade". Jack points out that the explosion will probably destroy them both as well as the TARDIS. The Doctor agrees that it will probably destroy him or the TARDIS or both, but likely not Jack given his nature. In any case, the Doctor says it doesn't really matter: he's going to die anyway so it's better that he die trying to save the universe one last time than allow this to continue. He quickly tethers the White-Point Star into the TARDIS controls to help with the energy influx.
The Doctor flies them to Scotland, over the ruins of a very familiar house...and promptly kicks Jack out of the TARDIS. As Jack crashes toward the Earth, he is witness to the TARDIS crashing into the ruins of the house...and then a massive explosion blinds him to everything.
When Jack finally awakens, he's in the same field in the dead of night...and the Torchwood House is nowhere to be found. Using his vortex manipulator, Jack determines that he's in 1540 AD. He remembers the historical records he looked through before and realizes that this is the year when the Wolf first came to Earth in a meteorite.
When he sees one coming down, he knows what to do. Coming to the valley near the Glen of St. Catherine, Jack pulls out his trusty revolver and prepares to kill the creature. Heavily wounded, it found Jack there instead of the monks as in the proper timeline. Jack kills it just before the monks arrive and, when asked what it was, he tells them, "A bad wolf".
Jack uses his vortex manipulator, hoping that his attempt to change time hasn't failed. But finds that it's burnt out thanks to an overload of artron radiation. Resigned to a life waiting for the present, Jack lives on through the time between 1540 and 2007 - making sure to avoid running into himself. He watches the world develop over the almost 470 years and a couple of things change in the timeline.
First, and probably most importantly, Torchwood does not exist. Jack uses some his foreknowledge of certain events to see that events that the Torchwood Team dealt with during the first season of their show get dealt with, as well as basing himself out of Cardiff after 1869 to keep an eye on the Rift. Jack is witness to several events of the 20th century as they occurred at that time - such as the invasion of the Earth by Cybermen and multiple instances of a Doctor "John Smith" working with UNIT to prevent various disasters as seen in the Pertwee and Tom Baker eras.
Jack is able to research, when the internet finally exists again, into the Doctor and maybe we even get a little reference with Clive somewhere as Jack learns about the other Doctors, the one that he knows (the Ninth) as well as others such as a spiky-haired one in a trenchcoat and the one he met in the alternate timeline, the Eleventh. However, Jack isn't certain whether this means the Doctor survived the reset of the timeline or if this is an entirely new Doctor. Either way, he'll be keeping an eye out for him.
He looks up Gwen, finding her to still be a constable with the Cardiff police and happily married to Rhys as well as having their daughter Anwen and a younger son Barry Geraint. Ianto is working logistics at a software company in Cardiff. With them both leading happy lives, Jack decides to let them be, although he does meet them both for some heartwarming moments where they probably think he's completely mental, rather like Martha going around at the end of The Last of the Time Lords.
Jack attempts to locate the Doctor, but is unsuccessful. He resigns himself to hoping that the Doctor did somehow survive and exists again in this timeline. Leaving a cafe in Cardiff, he stops as he's almost certain he heard the sound of the TARDIS materializing, but soon sees that it was just the wind...or was it?
That is where we leave Jack, but the story isn't quite over yet.
Somewhere along the Scottish coast, Dalek Caan emerges from the time vortex and creates a massive impact crater. A fisherman comes along to investigate and witnesses a black, inky substance leaking out from the Dalek's plates. He touches it, the ooze absorbing into his body and causing him to wrench back in fear. His eyes become the exact shame shade of...the Wolf's.
Yes, the Wolf has managed to survive the change in timeline. It possesses the fisherman, and then looked down upon Dalek Caan. It claimed that it managed to survive thanks to bonding with Caan and using his paradox shielding to escape the reset, having snuck into the Dalek's casing during his attack on Rassilon.
Caan declares that he will exterminate him, but the Wolf attempts to appeal to it. They are both too weak for a fight, Caan's casing inoperative and the Wolf not at full power seeing as they are under a new moon upon a beach. The Wolf insists there's someone far, far more important that is an enemy to both him and Caan who the Wolf can smell even now - Captain Jack Harkness.
A wounded Caan considers this and then asks the Wolf to state its proposition to him, earning him a...wolfish grin...
...and I'm afraid that that's the end. Is this a cliffhanger that's going to lead into something else? Possibly, but I doubt it, at least for it happening any time soon.
Even so, it will be under a different name entirely if it does happen. For now, though, this story is down.
Did you like where it went? Did you not? Let me know in the comments below. Next time, we'll have another glimpse into a world without Rose Tyler, with Series 3 of "What if...the Doctor never met Rose Tyler?" seeing the airing of its first part. See you then!
Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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