Wow. Can't believe we took two years to get to it. Just over it, actually. The final piece of the puzzle in answering the question - What if the Doctor had never met Rose Tyler? As we have seen, history has taken a different path through Series 1-4 in this universe, all because the Doctor took a different path instead of the one he did in the basement on Henrik's. From changing the big bad of Series 1 to one that actually made sense to no less than three different versions of Martha running around to the Master being...well, as they would be later in the timeline.
Last time, the Doctor, "Estra", and Donna went off into time and space once more without a Doctor's Daughter to be found. Will Series 4 continue to have a bunch of curveballs thrown at us? Let's take a peek!
As I said last time, we begin this time with The Unicorn and the Wasp. This episode can go pretty much as it had as broadcast with no real issue. Having the mind of Estra there to assist with things would help immensely, and they'd wrap things up without too much incident. While the episode itself is a bit of foreshadowing as to what happens to Donna, Estra asks the Doctor if Agatha Christie will ever remember what she lost. He seems to answer this off-handedly, but as soon as Estra looks away...the Doctor is clearly worried.
Silence in the Library comes next and things go pretty well up until River realizes who "Estra" really is...and has a mini-freak out. In one of the few scenes amid the chaos, River gives a warning to Donna: do not trust Estra. Before she can elaborate though, the latter events of the episode happen - including both Donna and Estra being dropped into the Library's mainframe...which begins to degrade faster as it tries to process a Time Lord brain in its already bad state, which will speed up CAL's eventual meltdown.
Forest of the Dead shows that, while Donna acclimates well, Estra doesn't. Estra starts getting flashes of memory of her previous lives (stock footage from previous episodes galore here) and, despite Doctor Moon's repeated attempts to correct her, it's ultimately futile as she's already worked out what he really is and what this place is. Dealing with that severe trauma, Estra fights to escape the computer core and is assisted by Miss Evangelista and Donna who eventually comes around. With Estra's technical know-how, she's able to do some reprogramming on Doctor Moon in order to assist the people in the Library...after a bit of convincing from Donna and Miss Evangelista.
However, CAL breaks down further and the Doctor (and then River) has to step in and save the day.
After the incident, Estra appears to be perfectly alright and holds no real memories of what she re-learned within the computer core...but before the Doctor has his big "one last run" moment, we hear that she can hear the laughter of her previous selves echoing in her mind...
Midnight is a jewel of an episode and I really don't think Eccleston being in the spot of the Doctor would change all that much. It's already a masterpiece as is.
Turn Left is where we get the first major change. Rather than going alone with the fortune teller, Donna finds herself tailed by Estra...who is sensing that something is very off. When the Time Beetle attaches itself to Donna, Estra grabs onto her in an attempt to stop it. She's too late.
The episode can pretty much go as planned, but there are two major differences. The first is, being that she's dead, there is no Rose. Instead, Martha is the one who appears to Donna at points. Martha is filling pretty much the same role that Rose had in that episode, though she's looking significantly more worn and weary after her time in the Void. How did she get out? How is she jumping through time? Well, she appears to have a wristband that is made out of Dalekanium as well as the metal from the Cyberman suits - clearly she or someone she's working with have been hard at work with the tech.
There's a second big change - Estra being audible in Donna's thoughts. Not at first, and not particularly loud, but she would be trying to guide her down the paths that would lead to fixing the timeline and getting back to the Doctor. However, Estra becomes more difficult in the final half, when Martha's warning about Donna's death comes along and - as the Doctor mentions in the main timeline - suicide is not a tactic that the Master operates by.
Donna does break free, releasing her and Estra in the real world. The Fortuneteller is, again, afraid of Donna and departs just before the Doctor arrives. It seems that neither Donna nor Estra can completely remember the alternative world, though Donna does remember Martha's last words to her before she 'died': they're coming.
We do not have a melodramatic scene of the Doctor rushing out to find "Bad Wolf" written on everything, for reasons I already went into in my Turn Left review, so let's just move on to The Stolen Earth.
The Stolen Earth begins with the Earth being stolen, as you do. The Doctor, Donna, and Estra go to the Shadow Proclamation and do all the assorted hijinks to get to the Earth within the Medusa Cascade. Here, we get the return of a bunch of different companions - Jack, Adeola, Mickey and Sarah Jane Smith in particular as well as a few returning ones (such as...y'know...the Brigadier, who would sure as Hell be involved in a cataclysmic event such as this) in a variety of roles.
The Doctor arrives, avoids being shot by a Dalek, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger as the Daleks capture the TARDIS and hoist it up to the Crucible.
Journey's End goes much like the rest, with the Doctor, Jack, and now a returned Martha facing Davros and Dalek Caan while Adeola makes her way to the Osterhagen control station. Before that, we do get an explanation from Martha as to how she escaped the Void - using Dalek and Cyberman tech after several of their attempts to use it. For some reason, it worked for her...and that seems to be a good enough explanation for the Doctor and company.
Donna and Estra remain in the TARDIS, Estra revealing to Donna that she remembers...everything. And the Doctor will be paying for it. However, for now, she has to do some work. Missy captures Donna in a trance and erases the memory of her confession as well as some of her regeneration energy passing into Donna, causing her eyes to glow that same golden hue.
The two arrive at the worst possible moment and Donna is electrocuted by Davros as in the original timeline...which results in her becoming "EstraDonna", as the Ood had predicted earlier in the Season. With the minds of three Time Lords, they are able to defeat the thread and end things...although Estra takes the spot of the Meta-Crisis Doctor in killing off the Daleks. She also kills Davros for good measure, although we know enough of Davros to know that all fatal laser blasts cause him is mild redness and irritation at best.
Missy reveals to the Doctor that she knows everything and that he will pay for what he did, teleporting away with the Vortex Manipulator she pinched from Jack when he wasn't paying attention. The Doctor gets everyone to safety as the Crucible explodes and goodbyes are shared. We get some good moments here - such as The Jones family being reunited with Martha and they and the Torchwood team sitting down to a big dinner. While the Doctor and Donna are invited, they can't stay and politely bow out.
Donna, her head still swimming with all that's in the Master's head, begs the Doctor to kill her so that she doesn't become like the Master. She asks him to do the same thing to her that he did to Missy, which he agrees to...though he ends up locking away all of Donna's memories of him - even going back so far as The Runaway Bride.
He takes her back to Sylvia and Wilf, and then mournfully leaves.
The Next Doctor begins not with the Doctor walking out into a snowy Christmas Eve, but instead with him searching the universe for any sign of Missy. Tracking on some extraterrestrial technology, he heads to 1851 London and gets caught up in the events of the episode. He shows some clear distaste for Jackson Lake until he realizes the man isn't a future incarnation of his, where he then tries to make amends rather than give a half-hearted "oh, no, you were totally the Doctor!".
Miss Hartigan gets taken out in a similar manner to the episode, and the Doctor realizes that Martha's jumping through the dimensional barriers between the Void and the "real world" has left more than a few holes that he will probably have to close up in the future. He also learns that Hartigan had the Cybermen brought to her by a woman - Missy - thanks to one of the Cyberman infostamps. Missy leaves a cheeky recorded message for the Doctor, promising that she'll see him very, very soon.
Planet of the Dead is next, and the Doctor is tracking the wormhole because it's giving off the same energy signature as the dimensional barriers. The same beats play out through the episode, though less stupidly. The sting rays aren't native to the Doctor's universe, he notes, but the planet that they're on is...which leads him to believe that someone moved the wormhole to link between the Earth and the desert planet. He theorizes that it was Missy, but doesn't know how she could have gotten that kind of power that only the Time Lords really had.
Also, there are no fly people. Just their ship wreckage.
The Waters of Mars goes next. This time, the Doctor's mental break comes from the realization that Missy is out there and that he has lost so much and he's determined not to lose anymore. Riding high on saving Adelaide, he claims his intention is to use the Matrix connection he has to glean all the secrets that the Time Lords left behind and bring Missy in before she can do any more harm...which, in Adelaide's eyes, makes him no better than Missy or the Master would be. He refutes this.
Of course, Time itself has other plans and Brooke commits suicide as in the original altered timeline. The timeline is preserved and the Doctor realizes that he's gone too far and that he has to stop. Ood Sigma appears in the snow, the Doctor not taking the time to whine and complain and instead makes his way to Ood-Sphere once more.
The End of Time reveals that not Wilfred Mott but Mickey Smith is the one on Earth who remembers having the bad dreams - these of Missy's laughter and a massive orange planet coming to crash down upon the Earth, enveloped in an energy wave. There is, however, no woman in white.
The Doctor gets his warning from the Ood and travels back to Earth, arriving not to the aftermath of the Master's resurrection...but to the estate of one Joshua Naismith. Little does he know that Mickey Smith is also breaking into that place at this very moment, investigating as he and Sarah Jane are wont to do. When the two meet up, Mickey mentions that she's investigating something up in Aberdeen (which explains her absence and serves as a funny running joke). Naismith ends up capturing the two, and we get the reveal that Missy is puppetmastering him (there is no creepy incest overtones daughter in this version) in order to get a hold of the technologies that Naismith has procured.
The Doctor attempts to apologize to Missy, trying to make amends and insisting that he just wanted to help his old friend. Missy, however, rebuffs him and insists that he's still a murderer who annihilated her entire race, but that she's going to set things right! She's even used Naismith's resources to develop a psychic emitter to shore up the minds of humanity...which explains the bad dreams that everyone had been having of the Master.
There. You see that, Russell? That was all you needed to do. I gave you a freebie there.
The Time Lords do not make a link to the past as the drums don't exist in this version of events. Instead, Missy uses the tech to spoil the Doctor's "one second out of sync" trick and reveals the TARDIS, hooking it into the technology there as well. With it, she sends out a signal. The Doctor and company manage an escape to the Vinvocci ship, and the Doctor and Mickey discuss how things have been since the time of Journey's End.
Mickey asks the Doctor what he intends to do when he catches up with Missy, the Doctor says he doesn't know. He mentions The Waters of Mars and how he nearly went off the deep end. He isn't sure if he'll kill Missy or try to rehabilitate her, if he even capable of doing either, anymore. Mickey notes that the Doctor has changed a lot from the man who once thought nothing of killing the Slitheen in Cardiff. We get an analysis of the things that Sarah Jane told the Doctor back in this universe's School Reunion, and how the Doctor has tried to apply them with...mixed success, all things considered.
Mickey also asks about Donna, but the Doctor doesn't dwell on it for long. The wound is still too fresh for him.
Missy hacks the intercomm to tell the Doctor about her plans for the white-point star and the Doctor goes into Defcon 1 mode. Cut the end of the episode but, rather than flying the ship over the Naismith mansion and then jumping from it...he gets them to park and goes in, Mickey going with him. The portal to Gallifrey has already started to open, out in space. It has become wide enough for the planet itself to come through, which provides the vision seen earlier as Mickey realizes that Gallifrey is crashing down toward the Earth and Missy is laughing in gleeful victory.
She attempts to teleport away and leave the Earth to its fate, but Mickey punches her out before she can do so.
The Doctor works to reverse the portal, but the machinery has gone non-responsive due to the arrival of another party - the Lord President, Rassilon. With his gauntlet, Rassilon has taken control of the wormhole and is going to initiate the Final Sanction - bringing about the End of Time itself! Again, Missy isn't about suicide and tries to put the Tissue Compression Eliminator to use on him...and Rassilon reserves the effect, seemingly shrinking Missy down and killing her outright.
. . .so, reset the clock. The Master is totally, really dead. For real.
However, her attack and distraction has given the Doctor time to repair the machinery, cutting Rassilon out and starting to reverse the portal. Rassilon attempts to strike him down, but the Doctor has put up a forcefield strong enough to block his attacks. The Doctor asks about the holes in the dimensions, asking Rassilon why he would do that and risk the fabric of reality itself. Rassilon claims to have no knowledge of it, trying to bargain his way out of being returned to the Time War and his own destruction. The Doctor reverses the portal completely, Gallifrey returns to its place in the Time War and Rassilon releases enough lightning to break through the forcefield and electrocute the Doctor far beyond the injuries he's suffered before. His hearts actually both stop for a bit, but it's already too late for the Time Lord Living God.
Rassilon is pulled back into the portal, as is the miniaturized and seemingly dead Missy and finally the white-point star gets pulled back in to snap the link and close it all up. Mickey, having been holding on for deal life while much of the room got pulled into the portal, finally drops free and goes to assist the Doctor. His jumper has been singed terribly and he clearly has suffered some terrible burns from the electricity, his body glowing gold. However, he regains consciousness and holds it back for a bit.
He isn't done with this face just yet.
The Doctor returns Mickey to his home, the same flat he once shared with Shareen Costello. The Doctor says that this is going to be the last time he'll ever see Mickey, and that he wants to thank him. While this isn't the longest life he's had by far, he learned a lot and can, perhaps, truly be the Doctor again. However, he tells Mickey that he does have one last gift for him. There is a ring at the door, the Doctor suggesting that Mickey go answer it. As he does, we hear the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing. When he opens the door, he finds...Shareen Costello, not possessed by a Dalek as she was the last time she saw him.
The two embrace, Shareen explaining that the Doctor came and saved her, putting her consciousness into an android after the Delta Wave had killed her and Fenric's host body. While it's not perfect, it's definitely something, and Mickey is happy to have her back, thanking the Doctor...and looking sad that he'll never see the man again.
Quite literally, in fact.
Onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor sets the coordinates and watches his hands glowing. The last four years of television for him have been full of blood and death, but in the end he was able to save a world instead of destroying one. He hopes, perhaps, that he'll have a better chance in his next life. As the regeneration starts to overcome him, his last words to himself are the hope that his new life will be "fantastic" - notably the first time that the Ninth Doctor in this timeline says it without sarcasm in his voice.
There is a maelstrom of light and color, flames bursting from the Doctor's body. When the energy fades, he's a new man. Literally...
. . .and that's where we're going to end things. This is the end of What If...the Doctor never met Rose Tyler? Does the Doctor crash into the garden of a young woman named Amelia Pond? Does he go on to romance River Song and save the universe from the evil of the Pandorica?
I dunno.
What about the wormholes? Why did Martha's device she took from the Daleks and the Cybermen suddenly start working? If Missy or Rassilon weren't responsible for the wormholes, then who was?
I dunno (Or do I? Ooooh!)
Maybe all of that will be covered in a future What If. I think, though, the Russell T. Davies era is pretty much covered here. As much as I did not care for her in the least and thinks that she's without hyperbole the worst companion to ever blight the series - yes, I can admit that Rose Tyler did make the Doctor better.
. . .and then almost immediately worse.
This story, however, is done...and as this is the first What If...? I've ever done. A complete glance into a glass darkly, finally finished. Next time, we'll be heading away from the Doctor Who multiverse that I have created...and back into Star Wars. Yep, it's time to see the thirteenth part of the answer to the question What if Mace Windu had survived his fight with Palpatine?!
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