And I've expressed my issues with John Simms last week, so I won't go into them here. I will elaborate on them later in the review.
What I will go into, however, is the final episode of Series 3 - Last of the Time Lords.
We pick up right where we left off in The Sound of Drums, after a short recap, of course. The Doctor's aged, Jack is a laser screwdriver cushion for the Master, the Toclafane are raining hell down on humanity, and Martha declares her intentions to return.
A...news broadcast?...of some kind is transmitted among the intergalactic community, telling all to avoid the planet of Sol 3, which is going into terminal extinction. Who exactly is this? Is it the Shadow Proclamation? The Time Agency? We don't know and it never comes up again. I'm also only assuming it's the intergalactic community that gets this message, regardless of who is sending it. Never mind that such a message would bring so many different species running to Earth rather than trying to stay away from it (the Sontarans à la The Sontaran Experiment or the Nestene Consciousness à la Spearhead from Space or Terror of the Autons). A world on the brink of extinction is ripe for shenanigans.
Sure, you could say that the Master's takeover has seen that become impossible or that he actively fights off and defeats such forces, but c'mon. Given his reputation, however, I can't imagine anyone who ever heard of him taking over something would not come looking to stick a particularly large boot up his ass if nothing else. So, going forward, I have to assume that the message means nothing and that no one in the universe is aware of what's happening on Earth, particularly with something Martha says later.
Speaking of what's happening on Earth, a boat comes to the shore in the night carrying one Martha Jones. She's met by...Lucifer! Not the crossover I was expecting, but well done there, Russell! Great foresight!
I'm only kidding, of course. It is Tom Ellis, the actor who would later play Lucifer, playing Tom Milligan. He's a doctor, and a member of the Resistance against the Master. He speaks of the legend of Martha Jones, that only she can kill the Master stone dead. She does not confirm or deny this, merely asking him to drive to their destination: she's on a mission.
We also do get the confirmation that it has been one year to the day since the Master's takeover. Up on the Valiant, the Master is celebrating day 365 of his massive takeover. Lucy looks to be in a bit of a state, the Doctor has been forced into a tent with a dog bowl, and Martha's family is forced to be the Master's serving staff.
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| Gold star to Tennant for not breaking down into laughter here. Mostly from realizing he's in Last of the Time Lords. |
After an annoying scene of the Master wheeling the Doctor around while mouthing the words to "I Can't Decide", he brings the Doctor up to a window. He's annoyed when the Doctor gives no reaction to the Toclafane, demands to know what the Doctor whispered to Martha.
When the Doctor tells the Master that he has only one thing to say to him, the Master denies him the chance. The Doctor has also worked out who the Toclafane really are and, as the Master said, it broke his hearts.
Jack and Martha's family, meanwhile, hatch a plan, signalling one another as they go about their duties.
Martha and Tom find a statue of the Master (which Martha mentioning he's even carved himself into Mount Rushmore!) and a field of missiles. Martha also weirdly mentions that there's a thousand civilizations all around the Earth that all have no idea about what's going on...which lends credence to my theory that the opening scene with the message is some sort of elaborate fever dream Russell was having at the time he was writing this episode.
Some Toclafane show up and Tom presents his pass to avoid getting a President Not-Bush pulled on him. After they leave, Tom asks why Martha wasn't seen by them, and she reveals the TARDIS key that created the perception filter on her. When Tom asks why he could see her, she says it's because he wanted to.
...which really makes no sense. Why would the Toclafane not want to see her? They've been hunting her down for an entire year, they'd probably want to see her more than literally anyone. It really would have made more sense if she said that she wanted him to see her, rather than the other way around as that would at least imply some degree of control over the perception filter.
Up on the Valiant, the Doctor/Jones family/Jack plan goes into action. A healthy bit of misdirection and hijinks culminate in the Doctor getting a hold of the Master's laser screwdriver...that he can't use because the controls are isomorphic, meaning that they only work for the Master. Never mind them somehow believing that Ten would ever actually shoot the Master, even if the plan did work.
For the record, I'm pretty sure every previous incarnation of the Doctor besides maybe Five would have happily and repeatedly shot the Master in the face to stop this insanity and the episode would be about 3/4th shorter. As it stands, we have this and the Master taunting the Doctor over the heights that he's fallen from.
Ironically, the Master hasn't even seen the Chibnall era yet...and the Master is ironically much better there than he is here.
Martha and Tom break into a lab to find Professor Docherty, who manages to reactivate a television to see a transmission from the Master. The Master turns the Doctor from someone in dodgy old age make up to (by speeding up the camera) a house elf from Harry Potter.
...okay, sure. Glad we could waste some of the budget on that.
Seriously, what?!
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| "Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, the Overmind?" |
Docherty mentions the satellites of the Archangel network, saying that they're being used to telepathically keep people scared. Martha says she came to the Professor because of a Toclafane sphere being brought down in South Africa and she wants to replicate it. Docherty mentions legends she heard that Martha walked the Earth in order to build a weapon.
They then proceed with an elaborate plot to capture a Toclafane and shock it into submission.
We get another scene on the Valiant, now with the Doctor in a bird cage. The Jones and Jack, now imprisoned, all resolve to kill the Master. The Master explains to the Doctor his plan to destroy a galaxy and create a new Gallifrey, mentioning the drums again.
Back at the plot, Docherty manages to crack open a Toclafane and finds a human head in it. It recognizes Martha, telling her that she helped them to fly and saying that "The skies are made of diamonds", which triggers a flashback to Utopia and Cree telling her the same thing. The Toclafane mentions that they share each other's memories...which opens up a few holes. Namely one: why? Namely two: if that's the case, then shouldn't every single Toclafane on Earth be going to their location after knowing that one of them got taken out?
Also, way to take out the horror element by not having it be the actual Cree. I know scary things are scary, Russell, but you can do better than this. And you will. Unfortunately it'll be next Series, very late in that Series, and not in this one.
But yes, the Toclafane are the humans that were sent to Utopia. Utopia, where the Master apparently chopped them up into bits and put them into balls that were stuffed full of razor blades and disintegrator weapons. The Master apparently took Lucy to the end of the universe to see it all, explaining her strange nihilistic attitude...but her tone and behavior kind of makes me think more toward the hypnotism theory. As I mentioned last time with her conversation with Vivian Rook, it is likely that Lucy is under some form of hypnotism from the Master, but seems to be actively fighting against it.
Maybe.
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| "You don't need to follow me! You don't need to follow anybody!" |
Either way, Martha works everything out - the Master used the TARDIS to travel between the present day of 2007 and the year 100 trillion. The Toclafane being brought back in time should cancel them out, since killing their ancestors should destroy them, and that's where the Paradox Machine comes into play. Of course, that doesn't explain why scores of them didn't disappear when they killed people or the Master killed people before the Paradox Machine happened, but never mind, we're close enough to done with this crap.
As the Master said earlier, he plans for an empire that will last 100 trillion years. Back at the lab, Tom asks the Toclafane why they're doing this - it replies with an insane cackle, "[because] it's fun!" and gets a bullet in its head for the trouble. Afterwards, Docherty demands that Martha come out with the real reason for her wandering around the Earth. She pulls a series of vials in different colors and a gun, telling them a story about how UNIT and Torchwood created a weapon that could kill a Time Lord and keep them from regenerating, meaning they permanently die.
Martha and Tom leave to get through the mean streets of London - looking like something out of Escape from New York - and get to a house of refugees. They ask Martha if she can really kill the Master, and she elects to do so. Docherty, meanwhile, contacts the Master with information about Martha Jones...
Martha, meanwhile, tells the people of London that her story isn't the one people should be telling. Rather like a prophet, going into the ever-so-subtle (by Russell's standards, anyway) theme of faith that has been prevalent through all of Series 3, she tells them that the story they need to be telling is one of the Doctor, the man who has saved their lives thousands of times and they've never even known. The Master, however, has shown up and demands Martha's surrender - threatening the civilians.
The Master destroys Martha's bag, carrying the gun, with his laser screwdriver. He plans to kill her, but Tom interrupts and gets lasered for his trouble. The Master is amused and, having a change of heart, decides that the Doctor should be present to watch Martha die. She's brought back to the flight deck of the Valiant, her family, Jack, and the Doctor in attendance as the Master prepares for the Earth's final march to war with 200,000 ships ready to burn across the universe. Three minutes remain before the end of the world as they know it. The Master prepares to execute Martha...and mentions to the Doctor that he's had companions that could absorb the Time Vortex.
I was going to go on a long tirade about how the Master could have the remotest fucking clue about who Rose is...but then I remembered that he, as Yana, was actually present for the conversation that the Doctor and Jack had about those events as they were what triggered his memories of being the Master and eventually led him to opening the watch. So...nice way to insulate yourself from my very sane and justified rage, Russell.
This excuse will literally only work this once.
Regardless, the Master feels so confident in his position that he begins to monologue...and Martha begins laughing. She laughs at him, in particular, for believing the story about the gun in four parts that could instantly and permanently kill a Time Lord. The Doctor didn't ask her to kill, just speak. Martha gave everyone she spoke to an instruction, to focus on a single word at the exact time of the countdown.
One thought, one word, with the fifteen satellites of the Archangel network binding the minds of the human race together: "Doctor".
The Doctor begins to glow, explaining that he's had an entire year to align himself with the matrices of Archangel. Jack, Martha, the Jones, and even Lucy join the human race in thinking the same word: "Doctor", the one thing that the Master cannot control being their thoughts.
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| "He's not the Messiah! He's completely full of shit!" |
If I'm making this seem epic, I'm really not trying to. Sure, the Murray Gold score is telling me this is really cool (and maybe, on some level, it kind of is), but Russell has literally turned the Doctor into Psychic Jesus. Sure, Time Lords have always been a bit telepathic, but this is that on super crack to the point where the Doctor manages to de-age himself (somehow) and use telekinesis to disarm the Master of his laser screwdriver.
He lands to by the Master, crumbling and protesting every second, and tells him the one thing he had to say to him: "I forgive you."
...fucking what, though?
Yeah, not doing anything to ruin the Jesus comparison here, Russell. I mean, seriously? The Master in just these two episodes alone has completely enslaved the Earth, killed one-tenth of the human population (not counting the literal thousands of others in the year that followed), and cannibalized the last, desperate survivors of humanity into his own personal army.
Forgiveness is not even close to what this guy needs to be given right now, unless the definition of forgiveness is "emptying an entire clip of bullets into his face".
Again, he's got a new regeneration cycle and has eleven lives, Doctor. Even if he does manage to regenerate, you'll still have him on the ropes long enough to imprison. And we'll have Michelle Gomez a few series early, which would definitely be an improvement. But no, the Master goes into sore loser mode, having the Toclafane charge after the Paradox Machine to protect it and transporting himself and the Doctor to Earth's surface for a tussle in a quarry - because it's not Doctor Who without a quarry.
Jack leads a squad to the Paradox Machine to destroy it. The squad dies. Jack predictably does as well, but we know that he and Death are no longer on speaking terms, so it's fine.
The Master plans to use the black hole converter in each ship to destroy the Earth, but the Doctor manages to talk him down: killing himself is the one thing the Master can never do.
Those of you who have seen Time Enough and World are free to laugh your head off. Those of you that aren't will be once we get there in a few Series.
Jack manages to get on board the TARDIS and destroys the Paradox Machine because...guns? I have no idea, honestly, but he manages it. You'd think as an American I'd be okay with this...but no, I'm just really confused. However, it works and brings us that much closer to the end of this mess, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.
The Toclafane disappear just as the Doctor and the Master get teleported back onto the Valiant. Time resets, everything going back to how it was in 2007 - with no one not onboard the Valiant any wiser as to what happened, going back to the exact moment after President Not-Bush was shot. The Master gets captured and Francine takes the logical approach of getting a gun and being all too ready to shoot the Master in his face until he has no face.
The Doctor manages to talk her down, resolving to keep the Master locked up in the TARDIS for all eternity. Lucy, however, takes the initiative and puts a bullet through the Master...while having a strange, glazed look in her eye. The Master lies there, dying, and seemingly refuses to regenerate out of spite to the Doctor. Though the Doctor begs him to regenerate, not wanting to be the last of the Time Lords once again, the Master's last words are him asking if the drumming will finally stop.
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| "Will fan girls use this out of context for totally annoying videos?" "Bet." "Bitchin'." |
So, reset the clock. The Master is definitely totally really dead for real with no possibility that he'll ever come back. Really for real, he's so dead.
The Doctor rips off Return of the Jedi by burning the Master's body in a funeral pyre. Later, we see a woman's hand picking up a ring that has the Lazarus logo on it from the embers while the Master laughs because ripping off the ending to Flash Gordon.
As I said, he's definitely totally really dead for real this time.
Really.
Martha meets up with Docherty of this timeline, bringing her flowers and saying she doesn't blame her...much to Docherty's confusion.
At Cardiff, the Doctor, Martha, and Jack reflect on what's just happened. The Doctor extends an offer to travel with him again, but Jack refuses - he has responsibilities here in Cardiff. However, the Doctor deactivates Jack's vortex manipulator while telling him that there's really nothing he can do about Jack's immortality despite the fact that he is actually aging. Jack relates a small story of his childhood, the first one of his home (the Boeshane Peninsula) to ever be signed up for the Time Agency - the Face of Boe, they called him...which surprises both the Doctor and Martha.
We'll get back to that.
Back at Martha's family's home, it seems that Francine and the Doctor have come to peace with one another. They share a meaningful look before the Doctor returns to the restored TARDIS, now with his severed hand on board. Martha calls up Tom, seeing that he is actually still alive and then hangs up. When she gets inside once again, the Doctor tries to entice Martha with visions of the future and the past and the wonders of the universe. However, the Doctor comes around without Martha having to say a word - she needs to stay with her family after all they've been through. She does take the time to explain as much, and the Doctor says he understands.
The Doctor thanks her, even giving her a hug, and congratulates her on saving the world. Martha pecks him on the cheek and leaves, but then returns as she lays clear the fact that she has fallen in love with the Doctor but has come to realize that he won't ever love her and she isn't going to waste her time pining after him. She does, however, give him her superphone so she can still get a hold of him and promises that she'll see him again.
Martha Jones - the woman who walked across the Earth, the woman who proved that she does not actually need the Doctor to save the day or to have a complete existence, and the woman who did not need her faith in the Doctor to define her existence - walks away from the TARDIS.
Once more, the Doctor is pensive, setting the TARDIS off to explore the length and breadth of time and space...and suddenly the bow of the Titanic comes crashing through the wall of the TARDIS, with a promise that Doctor Who will return at Christmas with Voyage of the Damned.
And somehow, this is more ridiculous than Catherine Tate suddenly showing up in a wedding dress, for reasons we'll get into when I review Voyage of the Damned.
Obviously, due to this being a finale and a big character moment for many involved, there's a lot to unpack here. So we'll start off with the Doctor. Ten and Nine both have the general pacifist attitude that Russell T. Davies wrote into the character. The previous Doctors, barring Five seeing as he was of a more gentle disposition to his predecessors and especially than some of his successors (though ironically had the Doctor Who episode that had a higher body count than the Terminator films), were not above killing when they believed it to be necessary.
Even Five had a few moments, such as when he mercy killed a companion in Planet of Fire.
Ten's refusal to kill the Master, or allow the Master to be killed, in both this and The Sound of Drums (and later The End of Time, which is even more egregious on the Doctor's part) stems from them being the last two Time Lords in the universe. While his wanting to imprison the Master after the events does help somewhat, the fact is that the Doctor is putting his own needs above those of the whole of humanity is really rather scummy and unethical - particularly when it wasn't his world that the Master ransacked for an entire year.
The Doctor makes the usual argument to Francine that they have to be better than the Master. Frankly, until Francine corrupts a group of humans from the end of time, murders one-tenth of the human population, and terrorizes the rest with the power of enhanced telepathy, I'm pretty sure she's still better than the Master. Francine was well within her rights to pull that trigger until the gun goes "click".
And again, that's just getting into these episodes, not the rest of the character's run on the show. That really only makes it even worse, though.
And again again, this is all trumped by the fact that the Doctor knows that the Master is a Time Lord. A gun shot, which the Doctor himself has actually suffered, would not permanently kill him at any rate even if it did cause him to regenerate, probably not even were he shot in the head. The Doctor is putting his own loneliness above the people he's supposedly protecting. That's...honestly kind of evil and really doesn't paint him in a good light.
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| Alas, Russell could not end the Ship Wars here... |
I feel bad for the Doctor, don't misunderstand me, but he has witnessed the Master commit crimes that should be abhorrent to his sense of ethics just in this three-parter alone, to say nothing of the rest of him knowing him. Allowing him to live, Doctor, particularly when he shows no hint of regret or remorse and you know that he isn't going to change or get any better is the height of unethical behavior. Either way, it isn't the Doctor's choice to make. Francine Jones is a native of Earth and Earth is the planet that got royally screwed.
He's basically become Batman. The Doctor is Batman, except this is Earth rather than Gotham City and Batman no right to make decisions about things that happen in Gotham City despite him insisting that he does.
And yes, I'm familiar with Missy's arc in the later Capaldi era. I'll explain why that worked while this didn't when we get there.
Speaking of the telepathic terrorism I mentioned several paragraphs ago - the Psychic Jesus thing is just stupid. As I said before, Time Lords have always been slightly telepathic and had some mental abilities, some of which we've actually seen this Series such as in The Shakespeare Code. While it does fit in with the overall theme of faith, particularly Martha's faith in the Doctor that has come through a few times here and there in Series 3, I really wish they had gone more with the plan the Doctor had in The Sound of Drums of slipping the TARDIS key perception filter around the Master's neck and breaking his control. It would have roughly the same effect, but would have been far, far more subtle.
Then again, subtlety in the Russell T. Davies era is something that he's only ever heard about by reading a blurry xerox copy of a page of someone's diary where they made a vague reference to a dream their friend had had where they'd read the word in a dictionary written in Braille on the back of a unicorn.
That is to say, it does not exist.
Now we come to Martha, the star of the show. Like with Rose at the end of Series 2, this isn't the last story that Martha will ever be in, but it is pretty much the capstone of her character. Martha is not one of the most beloved companions just because she came in after Rose, and I don't think that's fair of the fan base to do. Martha, on her worst day, is better than Rose on her best.
When the hospital gets taken up by the Judoon in Smith and Jones, her first instinct is to check on her patients and see to it that they're safe, and then assess the situation. In Evolution of the Daleks, she regrets having the kill the Pig Men created by the Daleks, seeing them as human lives lost despite Lazlo insisting the Daleks had already killed them. Between The Sound of Drums and this episode, she walks the Earth at literal mortal risk to herself, just to spread word of the Doctor for a plan that she doesn't even know if it will work. When they crack open the Toclafane, she expresses horror upon realizing what they are and her part in helping them become that.
She cares heavily about her family, even looking back so far as Smith and Jones when she tries to mediate things between them in preparation for Leo's 21st birthday. She travels with the Doctor and sees the wonders of time and space, of the past and the future, and still chooses to remain with her family and care for them after everything that happened in the Year That Never Was. Hell, her first instinct in The Sound of Drums when she knew danger was afoot was to call them up to make sure they were either safe or to tell them to get into hiding. She also realized that the Doctor was not ever going to love her, and had the courage to walk away.
A far cry from the blonde sociopath who either snubbed or ignored both her boyfriend and her own mother because of being caught up in the wonder of it all and paying lip service to actually regretting any of it. Also, that whole she broke time into tiny, tiny little pieces thing and didn't get blamed for it.
Yep. It's been fifteen years and I still hate Father's Day with a passion rivaled only by Russell's passionate hatred of subtlety.
Martha Jones is my second-favorite main companion of the Russell T. Davies era and one of my favorites of the show in particular. It's ironic, because the companions actually got better over Russell's tenure. Martha is better than Rose, and Donna is better than Martha (yes, I went there). It's ironic and kind of the reverse of what we'll see in the Steven Moffat era, but we'll get to that much, much later.
Now does all of that mean I'd approve of a Doctor and Martha ship? Not so much, but we'll get into that in a few Series when I analyze the Doctor and romantic relationships. Or, perhaps, that will be a post all it's own. We'll see.
Then there's Jack, and I love Jack. There's really only one thing to talk about with Jack in this episode and that is - is he the Face of Boe or not? Russell T. Davies has given both a yes and a no on it, though others are more adamant one way or the other. So is he? I don't know, but it would explain how the Face of Boe had that specific warning to tell the Doctor and knew enough about it to be vague and thus not disrupt the timeline.
As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't really matter. It could all just be a hilarious cosmic coincidence. Or everything could have meaning and Jack is the Face of Boe. Who knows? Put up against everything else in this episode, it's really small potatoes.
Now we come, at last, to the Master. I've been hard on Simms and with good reason. A wacky, madcap (heh) villain can work very well and has been done several times. The problem is that Simms really doesn't command the same sort of range that Tennant does. As the Tenth Doctor, Tennant can be wild and scatter-brained and zany and it works because the Doctor is a character who is often wild and scatter-brained and zany. When you're playing a villain, it's hard to be able to do that and be menacing. Simms is trying to come across as a credible threat and, while there are moments where he starts skirting toward that, it ultimate just doesn't work. He's certainly better than the Eric Roberts incarnation of the Master, but that isn't exactly a Herculean feat.
He does get better in his other appearances, though. Particularly in Time Enough and World and The Doctor Falls, but both of those are a far cry from this.
Also to mention here is Lucy. I'll get into it more in The End of Time (considering her character does a complete 180 from these two episodes), but I honestly believe that she'd under some form of mental conditioning by the Master and managed to break it long enough to put a bullet in one of his hearts. While this isn't communicated at all by the episodes in question, the gap in time between Last of the Time Lords and The End of Time, with the Master being dead, would explain how Lucy was able to act more independently in the later case.
Of course, it could just be Russell's obsession with the Doctor's BS moralizing as we discussed earlier coming up needing an outlet to keep the plot going and I'm putting more thought into it than he did.
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| Yeah, I can't believe it either, Doc...this is really stupid. |
So that ends Series 3...sort of. See, there is one little bit of Series 3 still left to go, strictly speaking, a bridge between Martha leaving the TARDIS and the Titanic crashing into it. When next we return to MadCap's Couch and Doctor Who, it'll be time...for a Time Crash!
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