Finally...we come to it at last.
The end. . .of time.
Russell T. Davies saved the absolute best for last. Everything that his tenure on this show was, he poured into this final episode. Like Sauron poured all of his malice and hatred and will to dominate the free peoples of Middle-Earth into the One Ring of Power, so too did Russell craft this.
. . .which is why it's not going to surprise you in the least when I tell you, and I say this without any sense of bad faith or hyperbole: THIS IS THE WORST EPISODE OF THE ENTIRE RUSSELL T. DAVIES ERA. PERIOD.
I'd rehash that joke from my Partners in Crime review, but we've already seen that. We know the score, and the score is that Russell T. Davies is awful. While the man showed himself to be capable with the occasional gem like Midnight, he spent the better part of five years choosing not to do any of that and focusing on...well, you've seen my reviews, you know what the man is about.
Well, the sooner we get this started, the soon we can get it over with: here's The End of Time, which was broadcast in two parts (the first on December 25th, 2009 and the second on January 1st, 2010), but I'm going to cover them both here. Buckle up, kids, it's about to get loud up in here!
The End of Time begins its first part with narration by Timothy Dalton over Christmas in London, speaking of how the final days of planet Earth were marked by everyone having bad dreams. However, everyone forgot them...except for one, a returning Wilfred Mott. Wilfred has visions of the Master, cackling with laughter, before he goes to a church and finds a stained glass window with a peculiar little blue box in its design.
He is greeted by a Woman in White, who tells him of the history of the window - how the legend speaks of a man known as "the Sainted Physician" slew a demon here. When Wilf makes the remark that it's quite the coincidence, given the parallels to the Doctor...the Woman says that there's no such thing as coincidence …and that the Sainted Physician may return. When Wilf joyfully remarks that that would make his Christmas, he finds that the woman has disappeared...and the Master's laughter echoes through his mind as he lead into the opening credits.
There are a few problems that pop up in just this opening scene, but I won't get to them now.
The TARDIS lands on Ood Sphere, where the Doctor in a lei and cowboy hat is greeted by Ood Sigma, who tells him he should not have delayed. The Doctor rattles off a bunch of things he's apparently done since The Waters of Mars, including deflowering Queen Elizabeth I...which may explain why she was a little bit nettled with him last time they met.
. . .or does it? More on that much, much later.
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| "Will fangirls use this out of context for annoying fanvids?" "Bet." "Bitchin'." |
The Doctor joins with the Ood, finding out that their species has been accelerated far beyond what they should have been within a century. They show the Doctor the dream with the Master, the Doctor rather stupidly proclaiming that the Master is dead. He sees visions of other people...Wilf, a man and a woman, and the forgotten Lucy Saxon...but he doesn't know how things are connected, and neither do the Ood. The Doctor shows the Ood some stock footage from The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords, seeing as the Ood may have psychic abilities on par with Gods but can't be bothered to pay their television license. However, the Doctor must have nipped off to the loo in the last few minutes of the latter episode, as the Ood show him the stock footage of the ring being taken out of the Master's funeral pyre.
Here we get the implication of something I talked about briefly in my Last of the Time Lords review - namely, did Lucy shoot the Master because of her own actions or was she hypnotized? The way the Doctor describes the events makes it seem as though it was of her own volition. Some things we're about to see, however, make me stick to my theory that she was hypnotized at least to some degree. Also, as I said there, she's acting completely different in this episode from how she was in those two, which doesn't help matters.
While the Doctor panics from the Ood's repeated insistence that he shouldn't have delayed and goes to stop the Master before chaos erupts...and ignores the fact that he has a time machine...on Earth, Lucy is brought out of her cell by the "Cult of Harold Saxon", who plan to bring the Master back using...magic.
Yes, they try to say it's some Gallifreyan writing on books that the Master left, but they swipe a Kleenex over Lucy's mouth to steal the "genetic imprint" of the Master and then toss it into a pot that creates some kind of blue vortex that drains the life force of the cultists and brings back the Master. John Simms goes full ham, repeating a mantra of "NEVER DYING! NEVER DYING! NEVER DYING!" and cackling like a madman.
Oh, and he hears the drums...louder than ever before. Because we didn't enjoy 86% of his dialogue having been about the goddamn drums before...
Also, somehow, Lucy has managed to...somehow...get someone to get a hold of the books that the Master wrote to somehow learn how to read Gallifreyan and somehow create a Master anti-resurrection potion. She throws it into the vortex as the Master, being the skilled hypnotist that he is and could easily stop her right then and there with no issue...just screams "NOOOOOOOO!" right before the entire room explodes.
Okay, first...how?
Second...no, really how?!
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| "I call this meeting of the Evil League of Evil to order!" |
The world of Doctor Who is completely batshit insane as we have discussed in these reviews many, many, many times. However, magic is always something that kind of gets debunked or goes for the Isaac Clarke explanation of "science we don't understand yet", like with the Carrionites. I don't doubt that the Master would have a contingency plan in the event of his death...but I highly doubt it would be something like this.
And this is a man who once wore a disguise for no other reason than he was bored.
You have to remember, the Master and death are like oil and water to begin with. This is the guy who spent the whole of the 1980's regularly getting into situations where he had no possible conceivable way of escape...and then showing up a few episodes later laughing off the idea that he could ever be destroyed. As Diamanda Hagan put it, there was no reason to do this, and I agree...especially doing it in this way where it's literally just plot convenience science.
Also, yeah, they use "genetic imprint" as if that's supposed to be some kind of thing. Lipstick is not a genetic imprint.
Then, we get into Lucy's anti-resurrection potion...thirdly, how?! The level of contrivances that would have to be in place for any of that to be a thing is astronomical. She would have had to have managed to get someone to infiltrate the Master's cult, which she seemingly didn't know about until being dragged out of her cell by them, would have had to had that person get a hold of the Master's books that we see no evidence that she even knew existed, would have had to find someone to translate Gallifreyan or whatever language the books are written in, that person would have then likely had to find some way to concoct whatever potion the book described (and why would the Master have the means to stop his own resurrection?), then they would have had to have created said potion, then they would somehow have to smuggle it back into the area where the resurrection was going to take place, which Lucy seemed to not even know was possible until right before it happened.
I mean, I know this is Doctor Who, but c'mon!
Also, for the record...we are literally only fifteen minutes into this and I've complained about one minor point that has taken up almost the entire time of an average review.
I told you this was going to suck!
Anyway, getting back to the plot, the Doctor arrives after the explosion instead of showing up before it and putting a stop to all of this mess before it starts. The man and the young woman from the Ood vision are seen soon after, watching security footage from the explosion. They consider if "he" survived...and we do find out that they're a father and daughter, with the creepy incest-y overtones abounding. Stepping out, the father tells his staff that Christmas is cancelled and to "prepare the Gate" - a massive device that looks like it came out of a 1930's Universal horror flick.
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| Look at them. They're trying desperately to escape this dreck. |
In London, Wilf gets together with a bunch of senior citizens and conscripts them into looking for the Doctor. At a wasteland in the middle of nowhere, two men and a woman at a food truck talk about the Christmas address from President Obama, who is going to end the Recession...somehow? The two men head off and the Master arrives at the truck, looking like a vagrant and saying that he's "so hungry". While the two men are talking and eating burgers, the Master drops into the shot behind them and speed eats a burger much to their surprise.
They recognize him as the old Prime Minister...and the Master snaps, laughing and ranting and eventually giving us an x-ray of his being. The two men, understandably, run like hell and back to the food truck...finding the woman has been consumed literally down to the bones...the bodies somehow still standing despite...not having joints...and other things that help humans stay upright.
The Master then jumps the two men, presumably devouring them as well.
The Doctor shows up at the wasteland, the implication being that there's some distance between himself and the Master...which seems odd. The Master then beats an empty barrel...four times. This leads to the two meeting up, the Master showing off his track and field abilities and the Doctor running to catch up and once more attempting to help the genocidal maniac, which the Master mockingly refutes before escaping.
Afterwards, Wilf and the senior citizens immediately find the Doctor. With no effort. I mean, they mention doing things to find him, but...no.
We get some comedy moments of Senior Citizens wanting to feel up David Tennant before getting on with the actual plot - namely the Doctor and Wilf talking at a café. Wilf mentions a few of their old adventures, but tells him of the dreams he's been having. The Doctor though, has a simple question: "Who are you?". The way he sees it, people have waited centuries to find him, but Wilf managed it in just a few hours of searching. They keep meeting over and over again like something's still connecting them. He's right, of course.
It's Russell T. Davies.
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| David Tennant getting molested by an old woman. Merry Christmas, kids! |
The Doctor then tells Wilf that he's going to die, the prophecy he was told before...and we get now into basically the Tenth Doctor being torn completely apart as a character. I'll go ahead and forewarn you here - if you love the Tenth Doctor, just skip this episode. I'm serious. Just for from The Waters of Mars to The Eleventh Hour and invent a better reason in your head for why Ten regenerated. You'll thank me.
But no...this entire scene exists for the Tenth Doctor to mewl and whine and complain about his upcoming regeneration...as if he's actually going to die.
Which he isn't.
No Doctor before has acted like this for a regeneration, and no Doctor since has.
By the way, don't bother bringing up Twice Upon a Time with Twelve...I do have a specific reasoning for why that one worked while this didn't.
Spoiler warning: It's not the same thing.
To sum up the scene, the Doctor whines about regeneration like it's him actually dying even those that isn't how regeneration works and never has. He also mentions the "he will knock four times" thing...because Russell T. Davies.
Donna shows up, across the street, who Wilf apparently called there. The Doctor is outraged at this, mentioning that - as he did before - her mind will burn and she will die if she remembers him.
Remember this. It is going to hurt later.
Donna's also apparently getting married to a new man...who luckily isn't doing the horizontal mambo with a giant spider. The Doctor also very vaguely references the events of the last episode before heading off, leaving no answer to Wilf's question about whether or not having Donna back would make him better again...
Timothy Dalton speaks in voiceover of the various players on the board. The Master gnawing on a bone, the Doctor wandering through the wasteland, the rich father and daughter looking at their 1930's science gate, and finally Timothy Dalton himself...who shows up for no other reason than for us to see Timothy Dalton's head with some Prydonian robes on his shoulders.
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| Thank you for being utterly pointless in this episode, Mr. Dalton! |
The Doctor and the Master meet up again...and we partake in the most melodrama of all the drama that Russell T. Davies has ever written. Mostly because the Master is using Sith Lightning to completely destroy the scenery before he can gobble it up. He also seems to miss the first few shots on purpose as though that's going to stop the Doctor...and then shocks him as if that's going to stop the Doctor.
Admittedly, the second part is true, the Doctor falling to his feet and the Master speaking of their childhood and how they've come so, so far. The Doctor attempts to help the Master once more and the Master gives him a gift...a telepathic connection into his brain to hear the Drums.
Again, the Drums that weren't in his head at any point before Utopia, but whatever.
Oh, and before that, the Doctor tries to warn the Master about how it is returning...which the Master hams his way out of listening to leading up to the telepathy bit.
This time, though, the Doctor can hear it. It's real. The Doctor, however, doesn't know what it is...
The Master, in a glorious bit of ham, uses his lightning hands to propel himself across the wasteland...and then proceeds to be taken down by Seal Team Six.
. . .it's actually a strike team sent in by the rich father and daughter, but it's just as good.
Also, they take out the Doctor but don't take him with them or try to kill him and finish the job because. . .?
Like, seriously, no witnesses?
What I presume is the next day, Wilf is opening a gift from Donna - a book by a man named Joshua Naismith, the rich father. When he asks her why she bought him it, Donna gets a distant look in her eyes and says she can't quite remember...
Elsewhere, Joshua Naismith has the Master tied to a chair and we also get the name of his daughter...Abigail.
Which the episode says means bringer of joy...which more accurately translates to bringer of FATHER'S joy, depending on which language it originates from.
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
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| "Will fangirls use-" "We already did this joke!" |
Donna, her mother, and Donna's husband to be see and hear none of this, by the way.
Wilf heads upstairs and retrieves his old service revolver from a trunk under his bed. The Doctor apparently bungs a rock at his window to get his attention, and Wilf comes out to find the man by the TARDIS. Despite the danger to Donna, the Doctor has parked the TARDIS there and demands to know what it is that keeps Wilf connected to him and this entire thing. Wilf struggles, but then shows the Doctor Joshua's book. The Doctor realizes her subconscious is still fighting for her previous life even now...and then Sylvia comes out and ruins the moment.
The Doctor and Wilf leave in the TARDIS to Sylvia's absolute frustration...and Donna comes out to find her mother apparently shouting at thin air. The Doctor starts to track Naismith through...science?
Back at the plot, Naismith gives a pat explanation for how he got the gate, the Master toys with the idea of eating the man, and the Master then speed eats a roast chicken.
. . .no, I don't know why so much time is being given to this. It's really rather stupid.
We get the exposition about the two buttons that keep the Gate from going nuclear or...something. If you don't see the clear "this is gonna be important later" flags, then you need to get your eyes checked. Basically, Naismith wants the gate for immortality...because sure.
The Master then...hears? Smells? Tastes?...the TARDIS landing and agrees to work for Joshua, which really should raise more red flags.
The Doctor puts the TARDIS a second out of sync with the rest of the universe and he and Wilf go poking around for clues. They find two aliens who are from the race that created the gate and the Doctor deactivates their human disguises, which means they work for him...because...reasons? He tries to figure out what the Master is doing as the Master is doing it...ignoring the fact that he's got two aliens there who are from the race that made the gate.
They do eventually explain - it's a medical device, but it doesn't heal individuals...it heals worlds, transmitting one genetic template across an entire population.
The Master, meanwhile, is put into a straitjacket by Naismith's men, Joshua insisting that everything he's done will be checked and double-checked before anyone uses it...because he's an idiot. Why would you let him work on it at all if you weren't going to trust that it does what he says it does?
Also, President Obama is apparently doing a broadcast across the world to get them out of the then-recession. How this will work is left up to your imagination, but never mind. The Doctor rushes into the room and tries to get them to turn the Gate off. The Master hops into it after tearing off the straitjacket...and all the humans start to see the Master's laughing face in their minds, including Wilf. The Doctor puts him into the radiation cabinet and fiddles with the dials to save Wilf.
Wilf gets a call from Donna...Sylvia and her fiancé are acting strangely. Another one of Wilf's friend calls, telling him people everywhere are acting strangely, all seeing the Master's face. Finally, with his own words, the Master's plan becomes clear...every single human on Earth, with the exception of Wilf, becomes...the Master.
The rise of the Master Race.
. . .I hope whoever Russell conned out of money in a bet that he could put that into dialogue and not involve the Nazis is satisfied with themselves.
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| Time doesn't crack because of Rassilon, John Simms just figured out how to chew the entire universe worth of scenery. |
For some reason, despite never having met the Master, Donna starts having flashbacks over the last series of various things she saw...Wilf loudly telling the Doctor what's happening.
Also, yes, everyone in the world is John Simms. I'll go ahead and say that the logistics of this alone scares the absolute hell out of me, and it should scare you, too.
The Doctor stares on in shock while the six billion Masters get their laughter in. As we pull away from the Earth, Timothy Dalton narrates that this was going to be not only the end of the human race, not only the last days of Planet Earth, but...this would be the day The Time Lords returned!
For Gallifrey!
For Victory!
For The End of Time itself!
. . .as we see a group of Time Lords having met, Rassilon leading them in that chant and not yet investing in a good spit guard.
. . .and that's how we end Part 1. Jesus Christ on whole wheat toast, that was a long one!
. . .anyway, here's Part 2. It begins (after the Previously On segment) completely disconnected from literally everything we've just seen...because it's on Gallifrey at the height of the Time War. The mighty dome as seen in The Sound of Drums when the Doctor spoke of the power and majesty of the Time Lord race is looking in a really, really bad state with dozens of Dalek saucers having been downed around it.
The Daleks aren't attacking the dome now because...
. . .uh...
. . .anyway, Rassilon calls together a meeting of the High Council in a darkened room, where an elderly woman scratches out Gallifreyan nonsense on pieces of paper. She's apparently some kind of seer...which is really, really confusing that a race that literally has mastered time travel (seriously, it's in their name) needs a fortune teller...and she has predicted that Gallifrey falls and the Time Lords will die today. When one of the High Council suggests letting it end, Rassilon disentegrates her with an admittedly pretty badass Infinity Gauntlet, loudly declaring his intention to not die this day.
Thus, we have the anti-Thanos…I'm kidding, he's actually way worse.
This also doesn't fit Rassilon's characterization as seen...literally anywhere else in the franchise, but that's a problem for another day. At any rate, the prophecy apparently tells that two Time Lords who will survive the final battle - Magnus and the Meddling Monk! Actually, no, it's the Doctor and the Master as you no doubt already figured out if you were paying attention. Their final battle will take place on Earth, Rassilon decides to put that final battle to use...
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| "I love the power glove...it's so bad." |
The Master has the Doctor trapped up into a stretcher of some kind as well as Wilf tied up. It is here we see that everyone on Earth is indeed the Master...and this kind of brings up some confusion. How exactly does this work? The Master is apparently the Master through all versions of him, as they all act and behave like the John Simms Master with seemingly no real difference...and they're just...there. They all defer to the original Master for some reason, when - given the overall deviousness of the Master - you'd think they'd all be jockeying for power over all the other Masters. They could be a hive mind, but we have nothing that even suggests that and some things later that outright deny that that is the case.
It's odd and it's really something that Russell didn't think out very well, probably because it didn't serve the story he wanted to tell. . .not that he's in any way a stranger to changing characters to fit his stories as we've seen.
The Master taunts the Doctor, Wilf putting up a fuss. When the Master sarcastically calls Wilf the Doctor's dad, Wilf retorts that he'd be proud if he was the Doctor's father. Then...the phone starts ringing. When the Master demands to know who it is, picking it up and finding a panicked and hysterical Donna on the other end of the line, Wilf has to explain the Meta-Crisis incident, which causes the Master to roll his eyes and send his...clones? Drones? I have no idea...minions, he sends his minions to get Donna. As they approach, Donna sees more stock footage from Series 4 while Wilf insists she not think about it...and then, Donna explodes!
. . .just kidding. She actually lets out a gigantic bust of energy that knocks out all the Masters as well as herself.
While Wilf thinks that Donna's dead, the Doctor is smirking. He wouldn't leave his best friend without a defense mechanism, after all...
. . .we'll get back to this.
The Master tries to get the TARDIS from the Doctor, but the Doctor is...somehow...still only interested in trying to reform the Master.
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| "I need your clothes, boots, and your motorcycle..." |
As we talked about in The Last of the Time Lords...the Doctor's morality is horrifically screwed in a way that makes Batman look sane. Sure, we do get a rehabilitation of the Master later...something which comes with it's own issues, but we'll get there when we get there...but it's ultimately all for naught anyway.
Regardless, even outside the context of this, the Master has taken over the world twice now, has killed God only knows how many people...and is currently at that moment holding the entire human race hostage while prepping them into his own army.
And the Doctor still won't lift a finger if that finger involves killing him to solve the problem.
After what I presume is Russell trying to get us to feel some sympathy for the Master...which doesn't work for the reasons I've already gone into...the Master has some flashbacks to footage of the baby master from The Sound of Drums staring into the Untempered Schism. We get the confirmation that it was, in fact, the drums he heard.
. . .which is why he never mentioned it at any point between 1971 and 2007, but whatever.
Back on Gallifrey, we learn the origin of the drums - the four beats being the heartbeat of a Time Lord - which Rassilon and the High Council send back in time to the Master as a child. Now, I absolutely believe that the Time Lords can do this...I just don't see why, as I didn't in Series 3, why this is just coming up now.
Back on Earth, the Master comes up with the plan of focusing the minds of the billions of people he has grafted himself over to figure out where the drums are. The Master is also apparently still dying from his failed resurrection. However, the Master remembers the Doctor's prophecy and thinks that he is responsible for what is to come...
When the Doctor doesn't give the TARDIS, the Master orders one of his guards to try and kill Wilf...unfortunately, the Master hasn't noticed that the guard is one inch too tall to be the Master. Said guard then knocks the Master out and reveals himself to be one of the cactus people...who help the Doctor and Wilf escape, although the Doctor has to be wheeled out as there are too many buckles and straps to remove.
One of the other Masters sounds the alarm after apparently not knowing that the original was knocked out...so the hive mind theory is out.
They get into the basement and the female cactus alien teleports them all away at the last second and onto a ship. Wilf marvels at being in space properly, seeing the majesty of the Earth from orbit. Once let out of the chair, the Doctor points out that the Master has every single missile on Earth ready to fire, and they have the idea that they should probably move the ship out of range.
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| Yeah, I'm getting bored of this...so I'm gonna show screenshots from better episodes. Here's Ressurection of the Daleks. |
The Masters scan for the ship, but the Doctor cuts the power to save them from detection...somehow. So, the Doctor gets saved by the cactus people and then he renders their ship immobile. In space. With a hostile alien intelligence armed to the teeth and looking for them.
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen!
The Masters do have the smart idea of destroying the teleport at their end, though, so that the Doctor can't just teleport back to Earth all willy-nilly. Despite the cacti being rather angry about wrecking their ship, Wilf tries to remain positive...and the Doctor's blank stare ruins the good mood entirely.
On Earth, night has fallen...apparently all over the Earth in that very Michael Bay way...and the Masters all listen for the sound of drums...which should all just be coming from their heads, but apparently it's a signal being transmitted from somewhere even though that really doesn't make any sense...they should basically hear it as coming from their own heads. However, because it's a Russell T. Davies script, it works...
One of the High Council mentions to Rassilon that, even with a connection to the Master, they need something to make the connection physical so that they can return. Rassilon pulls a diamond from his scepter and somehow throwing it into the projection of Earth over the table...sees it falling to the Earth as a shooting star. The Masters mobilize, going to retrieve it. Somehow, said diamond is in perfect condition and didn't burn away to ash in the Earth's atmosphere.
I admittedly don't know much about that, but I imagine there must be some kind of Time Lord science involved or the Masters would be finding a gigantic pile of ash if anything left over seeing as most meteorites and the like don't have enough mass to survive so much as entering the Earth's atmosphere without turning into what is essentially dust.
Back on the cacti ship, Wilf runs into the Woman in White again. She tells Wilf that things are coming to an end. Wilf does tell her that he did bring his gun, even showing it to her, and she tells him that the Doctor will have to take up arms or he will lose himself and the whole world to the End of Time. When Wilf asks who she is, she claims to be someone who was lost...so very long ago. When Wilf looks back to her again, she's vanished. Again.
Who the hell is she? Tuxedo Mask?
As the Doctor fixes the heating, he and Wilf have a conversation. There's some good bits here as Wilf talks about dawn over England and that his wife's buried down there and laments never being able to see her again...and some bad bits like the implication that the Master even changed people's corpses in their graves, which makes that the second-most offensive thing the Master's ever done to the dead of the Earth, but we'll get to that later.
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| Here's one from Pyramids of Mars. |
The Doctor gets in a "humanity is amazing" line or two...and then we get to the Doctor being more of a gigantic hypocrite. Wilf attempts to give the Doctor the gun and the Doctor refuses despite repeated attempts and the Doctor goes on to moralize left and right about how it's wrong and will lead him down the same part the Master took.
It won't.
The Doctor also does bring up that Wilf had that weapon in the Mansion and didn't use it...which is another good point. It's also not like the Doctor is a stranger to letting others do his dirty work, as we've seen before and will again.
But, no...the Doctor refuses to kill. The Doctor is a coward, and not in the way like he was when he was Ten. He is, literally, putting the Master before the entire human race.
I feel bad for Wilf in this scene, because he's seeing the Doctor die...I don't feel bad for the Doctor in this scene because he's a cowardly moron.
The Master somehow hacks the intercom despite not knowing where the ship is and tells the Doctor about a diamond that fell to Earth - a White-Point Star, something that the Doctor immediately reacts poorly to, because he realizes that a White-Point Star only comes from one planet: Gallifrey. Despite literally everything the Doctor has said about the Time Lords from Rose onward, the Doctor thinks this is a very, very bad thing...
. . .this leads to a retcon that I'm just going to spoil now: the Time Lord High Council, led by Rassilon, have all gone universally homicidal.
The Doctor, in a dramatic moment, takes up Wilf's gun.
On Earth, the Master has somehow configured the Immortality Gate to be an actual gateway and is preparing for the return of the Time Lords, declaring "Come home!"
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| Revelation of the Daleks |
Back on the ship, the Doctor reactivates the cacti ship, apparently having been able to do that the entire time. The Doctor gives one big "Allons-y!" and we get a scene of the cacti ship doing a Death Star trench run as Wilf and the male Cacti shoot down missiles trying to hit the ship...because sure. Despite having the entire NATO missile grid, the Master only sends sixteen...because that's all they had the budget for.
. . .I'm joking, but it's Doctor Who. That's likely the explanation.
They make it all the way back to the Naismith Mansion and the Time Lords start returning, two of their number having been forced to stand as Weeping Angels for voting against Rassilon. The Doctor, being the dramatic sort, leaps out of the ship and onto the marble...falling way higher than he did in Logopolis and onto grass to boot. Basically, the Doctor should be regenerating now...but again, that wasn't the story that Russell T. Davies wanted to tell.
So instead of breaking every bone in his body, the Doctor manages to not only keep a hold of his gun and struggles to stand...but is conscious. And not dead. As Rassilon begins to monologue, Wilf demands that the cacti land so he can get off. The Master reveals his plan to use the Gate to put himself into every single Time Lord just as he did as the human race. Rassilon looks temporarily amused...and then uses his gauntlet to cancel out the effect, turning all the humans back to normal.
Rassilon commands the human race to fall to their knees before him. The Master tries to weasel his way out of it, and the Doctor chastises him for not listening to the prophecy: something is returning, not someone.
Gallifrey materializes over Earth...and starts to crash down into it like this was Majora's Mask.
The people on Donna's street panic in that natural disaster movie fashion and Sylvia actually prays to the Doctor in a hilarious throwback to the faith theme of Series 3...
The cacti leave because they want no more to do with this fuckery (and I don't blame them).
Wilf gets into the radiation booth because he has a place to be.
The Doctor is quick to tell the Master that, with the Time Lock broken, everything is coming back - the Time Lords, the Daleks, and a bunch of things that sound really scary but that they don't have the budget to show. Basically, the Time War bad, yo. While the Master thinks this is great, the Doctor and Rassilon reveal what the High Council was planning to do - initiate "The Final Sanction", a rip in time and space that would rip apart...reality. Rassilon plans to survive this by becoming a creature of pure consciousness alone.
. . .to be fair, if anyone in Doctor Who could pull that off, it'd be Rassilon.
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| The Curse of Fenric. Okay, back to the actual episode... |
However, that's why the Doctor had to stop them by destroying Gallifrey. The Master once more tries to weasel his way into Rassilon's good graces...and the Doctor raises Wilf's gun to him. He does turn it on the Master, though...with the realization being that if the Master dies, the link is broken and Rassilon and the Time Lords go back into the Time War. The Master rightly calls the Doctor a coward for refusing to kill him. When the Doctor turns back to aim at Rassilon, he sees...the Woman in White, one of the two Time Lords who were forced to badly cosplay as Weeping Angels. The music cue and David Tennant's facial expression seems to indicate the Doctor recognizes her. She looks over his shoulder, and this somehow signals to him "shoot the diamond".
He does after telling the Master to get out of the way. This somehow causes an explosion.
I...I don't know anymore, and frankly I don't care.
Rassilon declares that the Doctor will die with him, while the Master steps in and uses Palpatine's Sith Lightning (after telling the Doctor to get out of the way) to deal some serious hurt on Rassilon, falling into the Time War with them...which is kind of amusing, considering the Simms Master said he ran away and hid as Professor Yana to avoid the Time War.
Oh, and the Master is now dying and in a situation that he cannot possibly in any way escape from and will most certainly meet his true, final end.
But the rupture seals and Gallifrey vanishes, a grateful human race happy and alive as we get a shot of the sun gloriously bathing the Earth in its light.
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| BULLSHIT! UNLIMITED BULLSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!! |
On the marble floor, amid the debris, the Doctor is almost gleefully laughing at the fact that he's still alive...
. . .and then come the four knocks.
Yes, Wilf in the radiation booth, needing to be let out with the press of a button. Despite all other methods he could try, anything the Doctor does will set off the booth and flood it with radiation, killing Wilf. The Doctor, having a time machine, decides not to go and get the one guy he knows is immortal...and instead ends up sacrificing his life to save Wilf.
. . .after berating Wilf for getting stuck in the booth and then whining and complaining and shrieking about how it's not fair and how Wilf isn't remotely important and that he could do so, so much more.
It makes more sense when you realize that this isn't the Doctor speaking, this is Russell T. Davies speaking. It doesn't invoke sympathy and, like the treating regeneration as death thing, makes the Doctor look like a loathesome, whiny child who needs a firm smack over the head.
Russell tries to salvage it by having the Doctor tell Wilf that "It's my honor"...but it really, really doesn't work after that monologue of "mememememememememememememe!".
The Ninth Doctor lamented that he, himself, would never take Rose to all the places that he wanted to take her to. When he died, though, he died with a smile and knew that the life he'd lived hadn't been a long one, but it had been a good one (a fantastic one, if you will), and he was eager for the next adventure.
Basically...the Doctor is an alien for whom regeneration is not only a common occurrence, it's a way of life. He's done it nine times before - eleven, actually, but we'll get to that later. It isn't dying, something he knows all too well. Ten's last speech, especially feels wrong for who the Doctor is and especially for the Tenth Doctor. The Tenth Doctor had a passion for life and adventure as well as that damned heroic streak that all the Doctors have about them somewhere, sometimes deep and sometimes not so deep. If anything, "death" of any sort should have been nothing more than the next big adventure.
I could see this speech working for the First Doctor, who hadn't gone through regeneration yet (we'll talk about The Timeless Child another day), or maybe even the Second Doctor (seeing as he was actually legitimately robbed of his life by the Time Lords).
But Ten? It doesn't make me feel sympathy or sadness, it makes me want him to get the Hell off of my television screen so that we can get on to Matt Smith's era already!
But, anyway...you'd think the episode is over now. The Doctor leaves Wilf, goes back to the TARDIS, and regenerates.
NOPE!
Because, you see...we have to get into the real meat of The End of Time - continuity porn!
Ignoring that we already had a two-parter only a few episodes ago that was almost literally nothing but continuity porn! But, to give Russell credit, that actually had to do with the plot in that case. This, though...this is pure and simple shamelessness on Russell's part.
The Doctor comes out of the radiation box, his face healing (the "reset" as we'll see in later regenerations) and he then goes on what my fellow reviewer Diamanda Hagan has referred to as "The David Tennant Farewell Parade of Death". I refer to it as...well...
. . .yeah, that.
The Doctor drops Wilf off and the sound of the TARDIS somehow wakes Donna from her coma and doesn't burn her mind or kill her. The Doctor and Wilf have a goodbye, though the Doctor says that he'll see him again one more time. He tells Wilf to keep looking for him and, when Wilf asks him where he's going, the Doctor cryptically replies "to get my reward".
In a junkyard, Martha Jones and Mickey Smith are being pursued by a Sontaran and they apparently went and got married. Why did Russell marry off two of the only principal African-descended cast members in Doctor Who? No idea. I like to think they bonded over their mutual hatred of Rose. The Doctor saves them from a Sontaran, and they seem happy to see him...but he stands looking forelorn and then leaves.
They also, apparently know that the Doctor is going to die...somehow.
No idea how. Apparently that is what was written, though.
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| "We're free, Martha! There's no more Russell scripts! We're free!" |
The Doctor saves Sarah Jane's adopted son Luke from traffic, leaving with the same dismal, forelorn look as Sarah Jane cries...despite having known three, soon to be four separate incarnations of the Doctor by this point. It made sense in Planet of the Spiders when she wept over the Doctor's body. Now, not so much.
We then see Jack in a space bar where My Bad, Bad Angel (Put The Devil In Me) from Daleks in Manhattan plays and the Doctor slips Jack a piece of paper that lets him hit on Alonso from Voyage of the Damned, because even as he's infected by a radiation overdose, the Doctor is a bro and a wingman 'til death.
We then go to a book signing where a woman named Verity Newman (played by Jessica Hynes) has apparently published John Smith's Journal of Impossible Things as a book (yes, the one from Human Nature). He gets a copy, giving his name as "the Doctor", and Newman seems to realize who he is with a mixture of immediate awe...when you'd think her first reaction would be her thinking someone is making fun of her.
The Doctor asks if Joan Redfern was happy at the end of her life. She tells him that she was and then asks, "Were you?" The Doctor just smiles and leaves.
Wow. What a jerk!
We then get the only really good scene here that actually has a point - the final one with Donna and her family. It's Donna's wedding to her new husband and, as the festivities go on, Sylvia and Wilf leave upon seeing the TARDIS and the Doctor nearby. He gives them an envelope for Donna, telling them that he went back in time and borrowed some money from a lovely man named Geoffrey Noble - Donna's father. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but the actor who played Donna's father - Howard Attfield - passed away during the filming of Partners in Crime, which necessitated the last minute retcon of Bernard Cribbins bringing brought back in as Wilf.
This is admittedly a very lovely and subtle tribute to the man.
The Doctor then departs as Donna arrives to open the envelope and finds...a lottery ticket. She thinks it's cheap, but mentions that it's a triple rollover this week...which I presume means a lot of money, I don't know, I'm American. Just going with the context clues.
But the Doctor leaves, Wilf giving the man a final salute as he breaks down into tears...the last time the pair of them will ever see each other.
So...you think the pain can't get any worse?
Are you sure?
No, really, are you very sure?
Well, guess who is back for one more dying gasp?! THAT'S RIGHT! SAINT ROSE OF TYLER IS GOING TO BLESS US WITH HER PRESENCE ONE FINAL TIME!
. . .she and her mother are trudging through the snow outside the Powell Estate, bickering. At the end, though, they part amicably and wish each other a Happy New Year. The Doctor watches from a distance, getting rose's attention when he wrenches over in pain a bit. He sticks to the shadows, though he can still be clearly seen...so I'm not sure why he's bothering. He asks for the year, Rose telling him that it's January 1st, 2005.
He tells Rose that he thinks that she's going to have a really great year.
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| GO AWAY! GO AWAY! WE WERE HAVING A GOO-actually, nevermind. We're having a bad time here... |
But Rose leaves and Ood Sigma appears once more, referencing Hamlet as the Doctor makes his final dramatic stagger toward the TARDIS, nearly failing. He makes it and sets the TARDIS off into time and space once more. The music swells and the Doctor gives his final words said with a bunch of drama that is both unearned and undeserved.
"I don't want to go."
This, with the wellspring of maturity and sophistication that you've all come to know and expect from me in doing these reviews, manages to invoke four words of extreme power and wisdom and consolation to the soul in times of need:
"Fuck you, go away!"
The Doctor explodes into regeneration energy and this time takes a great deal of the TARDIS with him. The Tenth Doctor, for all his virtues and vices, all his faults and foibles, and all his...salt and pepper...is gone. In his place, a scrawny giraffe-man with a long face, a new nose that he's had worse, and a chin that could cut the very air itself. Marveling that he has legs, the Doctor realizes he's still got legs and then realizes that the TARDIS is crashing.
The Eleventh Doctor is alive...and what, you may ask, is one of his first words to close out the episode and the Russell T. Davies era?
GERONIMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
And that is the end of The End of Time.
What. A. Shitshow. What little I can actually praise is buried under mountains and mountains of Russell's usual and vibrant piles of moldy and well-trotted out carts full of steaming hot garbage at this point. Changing characters to fit his drama rather than attempting to make the drama fit for the characters as they are. We have things changed or completely ignored about the characters we've seen, everyone involved other than Wilf, who is ironically the only one who has any sort of consistency.
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| "I suddenly feel like I'm not being written by a moron..." |
Russell very clearly wanted to make the final story of his era an epic to never be matched, a threat so big that you could almost never top it or the solution to it. Instead, we got a man who had regenerated multiple times whining like a baby about "death", the Master being given Palpatine powers through a series of contrivances that still makes my brain hurt, Rassilon making a complete 180 on his character from literally every other appearance he's had in the franchise up to this point, and then filling the end of it with continuity porn that largely isn't worth it when he could just get on with it already.
The best part about the companion montage? Yeah, we find out in the Sarah Jane Adventures from Eleven that he not only went to them, but to every companion he had ever had.
. . .which makes me wonder how he saw Sara Kingdom. Or Adric. Or Kamelion. Or Peri Brown (though whether or not she's alive is a thought exercise I have no desire to partake in). Or Astrid. Or Adelaide Brooke.
. . .whatever. Friggin' time paradoxes are meaningless!
So the Doctor was so eager to not die that he held back a regeneration (something that we've never actually seen him be able to do up to this point - although the Master outright denied his in Last of the Time Lords, so what do I know?) just to go and see everyone he ever traveled with.
There's the mystery of the Woman in White. Wilf does actually ask at Donna's wedding who she was, though the Doctor doesn't answer him. While many have speculated who she could be, some theories include Susan or Romana, Russell has said she was intended to be the Doctor's mother, but even he didn't feel comfortable outright stating so within the episode. So who do I think she is?
A plot device Russell used for his quasi-philosophical poetic nonsense. I'm more interested in how she managed to manifest in any way on Earth while both A) a prisoner of Rassilon and B) trapped in the time-locked Gallifrey. Neither of those gets explained, which is part and parcel for Russell at this point, but still...
Moving on.
Actually, let's not move on and instead talk about another plot device: the dreams humanity was having concerning the Master...what was causing it? The Time Lords? No, they were tucked away in the Time War and had to work to make a link into the "present". The Master? No, he was dead. Not "dead", but actually dead. Was it because time was falling apart? Because the crisis hadn't happened yet and we saw no real evidence of that happening regardless? So who or what or why was it? At all? They never come back to it, and it contributes almost nothing to the story at all! I'm just going to use my usual method when something goes bad in Doctor Who: blame Rose Tyler.
. . .
. . .oh, right. She broke the counter back in Journey's End.
The Doctor comes off in this episode as a whiny coward as I established above, whether it's whining about death that he isn't going to experience to his absolutely pathetic moral compass when dealing with the Master. It is only when faced with the Earth actually within seconds being destroyed that he even considers killing the Master (something which Rassilon calls murder, and I call practicality), and even then he finds a third option because we can't very well have the Doctor murdering people outright, can we?
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| To give credit, Killgrave was never a coward. That's his only credit, but credit nonetheless. |
Just ignore The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Chase, The Daleks' Masterplan, The War Machines, The Five Doctors, The Power of the Daleks, The Moonbase, The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones, The Evil of the Daleks, The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ice Warriors, Fury from the Deep, The Wheel in Space, The Dominators, The Invasion, The Krotons, The Seeds of Death, Inferno, The Mind of Evil, Day of the Daleks, The Sea Devils, The Mutants, The Planet of the Daleks, The Green Death, Death to the Daleks, Monster of Peladon, Planet of the Spiders, Robot, The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen, Terror of the Zygons, Pyramids of Mars, The Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom, The Face of Evil, The Robots of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Horror of Fang Rock, The Invisible Enemy, The Image of Fendahl, Underworld, The Invasion of Time, The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Armageddon Factor, Destiny of the Daleks, Meglos, State of Decay, Four to Doomsday, The Visitation, Earthshock, Snakedance, Warriors from the Deep, Resurrection of the Daleks, Planet of Fire, The Twin Dilemma, Attack of the Cybermen, Vengeance on Varos, The Two Doctors, Revelation of the Daleks, Terror of the Vervoids, Paradise Towers, Remembrance of the Daleks, The Happiness Patrol, Silver Nemesis, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, Aliens of London/World War Three, The Long Game, Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, The Christmas Invasion, Tooth and Claw, School Reunion, Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel, The Idiot's Lantern, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, Love and Monsters, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, The Runaway Bride, Smith and Jones, Gridlock, Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks, The Lazarus Experiment, Blink, The Fires of Pompeii, The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, The Stolen Earth/Journey's End, The Next Doctor, and The Waters of Mars.
. . . and that's literally just counting episodes where the Doctor has either directly killed or has been complicit in the death of a sentient being up to this point. Thank you to Mike Kenwood of Kaldor City for an essay and analysis that goes into way, way more detail than I do here. He also includes the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors on that list as well, but I think that going from the First to the Tenth Doctor more than proves my point. The whole "the Doctor is a pacifist" thing just doesn't work, Russell. It just doesn't.
None of this, by the way, is getting into all the fighting he did during the Time War - which, no, I don't think was just limited to blowing up Gallifrey with the Moment as some seem to think, but we'll get into that more when we reach Day of the Doctor.
The Doctor has to kill on occasion when he feels it's necessary. This was understood in the original series (even to the point where critics called out the violence in the show), and seems to have this weird hiccup under Russell's pen before Moffat picks it up and remembers that little fact about the Doctor. I joked about Russell making the Doctor Psychic Jesus in Last of the Time Lords...but he's not Jesus. It's a big reason why I prefer Moffat's take on the Doctor, particularly the Eleventh. We'll be getting into that during his era...and all the good points and the problems that come with it.
My main point, if you're even still reading by now, is that the Doctor should be allowed to kill. Not as a first resort, of course, but when it becomes clear that there is no better option. In this case, The End of Time, there was not a better option. The Master had taken the entire world hostage (again), and the Doctor should have taken up Wilf's gun immediately and blown the man's head clean off of his shoulders to save the human race.
Alas, that didn't happen.
Alas, we got this.
This is the full excess of everything that the Russell T. Davies era was. Loud, annoying, and flashy but without any real substance to be found. It is a tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
David Tennant deserved better. We all deserved better.
Next time we come back to Doctor Who, we'll have a new Doctor and a new showrunner. The show will change, though not too much. Thankfully, though, the change that does happen will be for the better.
I'm gonna take a break from this for a while. This episode really took a lot out of me. But...like Frodo on Mount Doom after the Ring was cast into the fire...it's over.
It's done.
The Russell T. Davies era is done. I've survived it.
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| A good Doctor and a bad showrunner. Sorry your end wasn't better, Ten. |
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