the end of time (SPOILERS)

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1/1/10 “The End of Time”

The story never ends. –Ood Sigma

I have to admit I liked this better than “Waters of Mars”—though to be the be-all, end-all event that it claimed to be, it would have had to top “Utopia,” which it didn’t, in my opinion. I think, with rare exceptions, RTD is at his best when he’s being concise: writing over two (or more) episodes tends to dilute his character-driven and narrative power. I guess we won’t get to observe more on this theme (at least not in the near future), as the Vast Toffee will next wow us!

As hinted by RTD, the opening scenes were dark and quite divorced from the scene with the idiotic Doctor saying aloha to Ood Sigma. The “Narrator,” who we quickly learned was the President of Gallifrey (a Rassillon if not the Rassillon), told us that the people of Earth all “had bad dreams.” Somehow this struck me as a very Lord of the Rings-type thing to say! But, being human, they forgot their nightmares in the light of day. At the same time, a troubled Wilf walked into a church. A character in a Doctor Who story walking into a church in a reverent manner?! Okay, I’m being facetious. The “legend of the blue box” was intriguing—I loved the notion of the TARDIS being reproduced in a (presumably) medieval stained glass window. Certainly the “sainted physician” story was there to introduce the Mysterious Time Lady figure and give us an idea of how crucial to events Wilf would prove. However, I wish they’d either scrapped it altogether or developed it—it didn’t really seem to make much difference to any of the rest of the story!

As I noted, yes, I found the scene with the Doctor arriving on the Planet of the Ood stooopid. Once the Doctor calmed down (though I liked the idea of him “naming a galaxy Alison”—though why didn’t he do all of the stuff he does at the end of this story in this prelude?), Ood Sigma brought him to some mystical Ood. As they chanted, I thought, “Man, too many people are returning!” Still, you can see the Christmas-y theme: Ood Sigma seems to be playing the part of Marley and the other Ood the Spirits for the Doctor’s Scrooge. “The king is in his countinghouse.” There’s some exposition about the end of the Master, in case you didn’t watch that bit. Aaaaand the hand model is revealed to be . . . a prison warden! So much for our theories about the Rani, grumble.

And speaking of disappointment, the resurrection of the Master scene was a waste of time. It didn’t make any sense and cheapened Lucy Saxon’s mystery. Lucy being held in a sort of Chicago-esque prison and forced to participate in a ritualized revivification of the Master was tough enough to believe. How they did it made no sense at all (I realize, of course, that the credulity of ever bringing the Master back is tentative—yet this was on par with the way the TV Movie’s Master was executed by the Daleks and then turned into goop!). Why this particular group of Macbeth-like witches wanted to do it (“the secret books of Saxon”??) is even murkier. But resurrect him they did, apparently causing Lucy’s death (in a rather Raiders of the Lost Ark-like scene)—her contribution was to retard his regeneration but I wasn’t clear how. (Was it by causing him to be skeletal and therefore hungry all the time?)

I’ve written that something was like V for Vendetta, but I can’t remember what! At Mr Naismith’s mansion, something sinister is going on which he has prepared as a present for his daughter: it’s a hint of Torchwood: Children of Earth plus “The Lazarus Experiment.” David Harewood is wasted as the character is never given much chance to develop and merely leaves the audience reeling, trying to take in all these characters as well as the Doctor and Wilf worriedly puttering around. (I noticed at one point there was a van that said Sparrow Lane on it . . . I thought this might turn out to be significant later, something to do with Sally Sparrow, but as far as I could tell it wasn’t.)

Like most other people, I found the hungry, homeless, emo Master quite entertaining. (He summons the Doctor with a very obvious four knocks on an oil drum.) There was perhaps a hint of “Survival” in seeing the Time Lord reduced to his most animal instincts. However, I thought more of Wolf from The 10th Kingdom: “I am sooooooo hungry!” could easily become: “Bacon sizzling away on an iron frying pan! Baste it! Roast it! Toast it! Nibble it! Chew it! Bite right through it! Wobble it! Gobble it! Wrap it ‘round a couple of chickens and I am ravenous!” As for the Master’s acquired powers—as Jamie put it, we’re not quite sure when or how he started being able to shoot fireballs from his hands or take giant leaps through the air (a couple of times I had to control my laughter as it really reminded me of a video game). However, his stalking and eating homeless people in “wastelands of London” (wherever they may be!)[1] was genuinely chilling and Master-like: somehow the pulling back to see the skeletal remains of the vendors made me think of some of the 1970s Master stories—and it was quite scary. Then the Master gets kidnapped by Naismith. What? Why?

On the other side of the spectrum we have Wilf finding the Doctor with his OAP friends aka the Gray Cloak operation—again, I wish they’d been developed or left out. Minnie the Menace could have been a rounder, more appealing character (rather than just the woman who goosed David Tennant!)—for a long time I thought “The End of Time” was going to be an adaptation of the Gary Russell book Beautiful Chaos. Certainly when I saw Wilf and the Doctor being filmed in the Kardomah in Swansea over the May Bank Holiday weekend last year, I could tell that a serious discussion between the two characters was going on within the confines of the café (at Christmastime, clearly, by the décor). I also had been told Catherine Tate had been filmed outside, leading me to believe she had a peripheral role (ie, she and the Doctor didn’t meet) which again suggested Beautiful Chaos to me (go read it, by the way). So certainly “The End of Time” peaked early for me when I saw the scene I was expecting and looking forward to, though it had nothing to do with the Gary Russell book.

For many, this was the most touching scene of the story, and for me it was clearly the highlight of the first part. When RTD uses his delicacy of touch like this, and Bernard Cribbins and David Tennant play off each other in such a way, you get a winner! “We keep on meeting, Wilf,” the Doctor says ominously. The Doctor’s fear and frustration with his impending regeneration (so different from the Fourth Doctor’s attitude!) sounds suspiciously like sour grapes from David Tennant (if he had them): “some new man comes sauntering in . . .” Meanwhile Wilf fills us in on the Noble-Temple (er, Temple-Noble) marriage[2]. Unfortunately their impending matrimony will be plagued with debts if Wilf is to be believed. “She’s so sad but she can’t remember why. . . . She’s making do.” This is a topic I would have liked to have seen explored more, actually! I suppose, in a way, Donna’s malaise relates to all human kind’s malaise—after all, didn’t the Narrator say everyone was having bad dreams but forgetting them, but still tinged with menace in the waking world? Perhaps that’s commenting on all of us in the realm of reality: sad, but we don’t know why. We want to be touched by something as extraordinary as the Doctor but we can’t, we aren’t, we live our mundane lives. Perhaps that’s why we’re watching the show in the first place!

After this, Wilf becomes a proper companion as he jumps into the TARDIS—“I thought it would be cleaner”—and I am happy because Tennant dons the brown suit to die in, which I like much better than the blue anyway. (So sue me, I’m shallow.) The rabid Master scares the schnikey out of Naismith—“you taste great!”—and the more fool him, to think he can manipulate the Master instead of the other way around. The scientists, meanwhile, who have been working on Naismith’s Stargate thingee are revealed to be Vinvotchee—more Meglos or Majenta Pryce? The Master reveals his most outrageous (and characteristically egotistical) fiendish plot yet: to use the nanobot technology of the Gate to change every human on Earth into duplicates of himself! I had to grin at the audacity of this and the horror it created in the viewers, the Doctor, Wilf, Donna, and the Vinvotchee (the only ones left on Earth not turned into mini-Masters). In particular one has to sympathize deeply with John Simm who played all of these parts in a variety of ridiculous outfits—especially the Chiswick scenes.

As if this wasn’t enough, the Time Lords next come in and it’s a moment of fanwank bliss (at least, I would imagine!) for anyone who was dazzled by the Gallifrey presented in “The Sound of Drums.” I was dazzled, anyway! Their president is played by Timothy Dalton (a curious casting choice!) but I was more concerned—to the point of mild obsession!—with the “children” standing in the background covering their faces. I thought for a brief moment it was the child Master and the child Doctor covering their eyes from staring into the Untempered Schism.

The beginning of the second part opened with the startling image of the Citadel of Gallifrey on fire as it crashed into Earth—sadly the first fifteen minutes of this had me fidgeting restlessly—so much exposition and me being aware that time was running out! The décor of this version of Gallifrey reminded me more of Star Wars The Phantom Menace than “The Deadly Assassin”—nevertheless, the same color scheme, it seems to me, was observed. Presumably due to lack of budget, though, the Time Lord High Council was taking place in a vacuum with only a few Councillors on hand (though I suppose that’s explained away with it being the darkest hour of the Time War).

The Visionary reminded me of a Hopi kachina design I saw once, and also for one split-second I thought she had evolved (or devolved?) from Dalek Caan—it was the same kind of insane cackling prophecies! “This is only the furthest edge of the Time War but at the center, millions die.” I was impressed that this entire episode managed to leave most of the mystery and canonicity of the Time War untouched so that it can be detailed—or not—later. I like the mystery and leaving it that way. Rather abruptly, the President disposed of his dissenting voice—“thank you for your opinion”—by vaporizing her with his resurrection glove (at least we assume—though Jamie wondered whether it might be the Hand of Omega!). As their solution the Time Lords naturally turn to “two children of Gallifrey,” “the enmity of ages.” Rather wearily that turns their attention to Earth (again).

Meanwhile on Earth everyone has been Master-ified (including a national army in Beijing, interestingly). Donna is having to deal with this and is having a “metacrisis.” Frankly, I don’t know what the point of her storyline is at all—she’s put briefly in peril and then taken out of it again. The Doctor, as ever, tries to persuade the Master away from his evil deeds. “You don’t need to own the universe.” The Master is hoping to use the amplification of his multiple selves to pinpoint the source of the never-ending drums in his head. “I don’t know what I’d be without that noise.” Then the Doctor/Master slashers go crazy as they are given plenty of material for their fan fic. :-/ Wilf is bewildered, the Doctor smug once he and Wilf are able to escape with the help of the Vinvotchee. “God bless the cactuses!” cries Wilf as they are teleported (or whatever the term is) onto their space ship (which looks kind of like Serenity to my untrained eye). “Cacti!” There’s a barely amusing scene of the Doctor being tossed down the stairs in a gurney (a nod to the scenes of Patrick Troughton in the wheelchair in “The Two Doctors”?).

As the Master’s (Masters’?) plan takes him to the source of the drumming, in narrative terms the Time Lords are just coming up with the idea of implanting the sound in his head from childhood. The Glorious Revolution does a better job of explaining time paradox than this (or I) do, but basically, this happened because it had to happen. (Strangely enough that was the line of logic I was pursuing at the end of “Parting of the Ways” to explain a) Bad Wolf; b) the love between the Doctor and Rose.) In the downtime Wilf is again approached by the Mysterious Time Lady who tells him to arm himself “old soldier.” “He never carries guns,” he says of the Doctor. When Wilf talks to the Doctor, he comes up with the single most disturbing line of the story: “Do you think he [the Master] changed them in their graves?” The scene that follows goes on a bit long, IMHO, and most of the ground was already covered in the scene in the Kardomah. “I’m older than you,” the Doctor says, giving his age (to our consternation) as 906. There’s an odd line about the Doctor wishing Wilf was his dad. I enjoy the sentiment, but it makes about as much sense as the Tenth Doctor telling the Fifth Doctor “you were my Doctor!” Nevertheless, Wilf is taking the part of devil’s advocate and pleads with the Doctor to “kill him first.” The Doctor refuses—“I’ve taken lives, manipulated people into taking their own.” “Don’t you dare put his life before theirs!”

The Master has tried to destroy the Vinvotchee ship (and the Doctor—“we don’t need him”) with missiles. This gives us probably the best sequence of this episode: Wilf in a X-Wing-type fighter—delightful. Once he finds out that the source of the Master’s drumming is the Time Lords who are on their way (impossibly or no), the Doctor, in “Voyage of the Damned” mode, doesn’t plan on stopping the ship’s downward velocity into the Naismith mansion. In the end the Doctor spares his allies but jumps into a glass ceiling and falls at the feet of the Master and the Time Lord. The President greets them, “Lord Doctor, Lord Master” (which just sounds naff). The Master gets possessive over his “work” and then has the audacity to expect to turn every Time Lord into himself! Sounds very Delgado somehow! Rassillon (for it is he, apparently) enacts a good fix and returns all the humans to their normal selves. “I get the credit [for bringing the Time Lords back]!” the Master snarls. Gallifrey the planet is about to submerge the Earth, and understandably frightened people try to escape. Wilf demonstrates selfless heroism that is on par with anything the Doctor’s ever done (and it’s another case of don’t show a radiation chamber you aren’t going to use). “My kind of world!” the Master cries crazily. “The final sanction—free of time.” “Take me with you!” the Master begs. “You are diseased—a disease of your own making.”

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last, to compare the Doctor here to Hamlet. (And not just because David Tennant played him—I made the comparison with Tom Baker’s Doctor in light of “Genesis of the Daleks.”) He’s got a gun and he can’t decide whether to use it on the Master or the Time Lords. “He’s to blame, not me,” says the Master. “The link is inside my head!” As the Doctor tries to make his decision, one of the “children” peeks out from behind her hands. It’s the Mysterious Time Lady, variously ascribed to be the Doctor’s mother, Romana, Ace (I thought perhaps Donna someday in the future because of the red hair), crying. “Get out of the way,” the Doctor says to the Master. He shoots the Gate thingee which causes the Time Lords to get sucked back into the vortex or whatever. “Get out of the way,” the Master responds, using his thunderbolt powers to beat back Rassillon. Presumably he gets sucked into the vortex with them. I did actually quite like this bit—I suppose it was a little staged (what am I saying, of course it’s staged, it’s drama!) but overall it was a nice character back-and-forth.

I knew it was a fakeout! I screamed to myself when Wilf knocked four times on the glass of his radiation chamber. I know various people have complained that the performance here isn’t particularly Doctor-ish—he’s never reacted to regeneration this way before. Think of the resigned quality of the Fourth Doctor seeing the Watcher—he knew what was coming but he certainly didn’t rail about it like this. I suppose a different, more emotive Doctor will react differently. The last two regenerations have been an echo of Five into Six: namely, giving his life for a companion. Fake out #2 I think fooled us all, when the Doctor crumpled into a ball inside the radiation chamber, surely announcing his imminent regeneration (I began to cry, of course).

Perhaps the most controversial section of “The End of Time”—the “epilogue” of sorts. This all put me in mind of the end of Return of the King. Purists would have it that all those endings had to be included because they were all part of the book. Ordinary cinema-goers were twitching convulsively or had fallen asleep. I was in the spectrum somewhere in between—I think at the time I saw it (the Albuquerque midnight premiere, mind you) I was both very tired and also crying and not wanting it to end. In any case, all those sort of resolving of loose ends were necessary or weren’t—depending on your perspective. For most I reckon these resolving of loose ends weren’t necessary. I had fun with them, up to a point. Certainly RTD saw this as his swansong as did David Tennant, so in terms of packing away that universe it was perhaps in their best interests, as they saw it.

I was shocked but pleased by Martha and Mickey being married and fighting Sontarans together. Obviously like everyone else I wondered what had happened to Martha’s fiancé and what caused this abrupt course of events. My mind immediately went into fan fic writer mode to connect all the dots, but I suspect by the time I write my ideas down it will be too late and Torchwood series 4 will invalidate all my theories. The scene with Captain Jack (presumably post-“Children of Earth”) in the “Mos Eisley cantina” (personally I was thinking of Quark’s) was similarly unexpected. I think the accusation that RTD just wanted it in so he could reuse Russell Tovey may hold some water, but at the same time I won’t deny I cracked a smile. “Allons-y, Alonso,” indeed.

I think I started crying again when “Verity Newman” was signing her book, A Journal of Impossible Things. I won’t necessarily defend my actions. Clearly, the rational side of my brain dismissing all of this as self-indulgent and fan wanky was not communicating with the emotional part of my brain (sixteen years old) which was producing the tears. The Doctor then saw Donna’s wedding from afar and produced a winning lottery ticket to solve all their financial woes (I had a private grin to myself). Oh, and then I really started crying when the Doctor decided to do “1996” more or less. I can’t defend this, really—it just seemed to me that it was a nice way of bringing things full circle. It all started on the Powell Estate with the 2005 Christmas Special (a year before I saw it!) for the Tenth Doctor. “I bet you’re going to have a really great year.” Despite all the sap, I think Ood Sigma had a point: the story never ends for us fans. Surely all these years have proven that if nothing else?

The Doctor regenerates, alone, in the TARDIS, which I don’t think has happened before—he’s always had a companion by his side (except in the case of the Seventh Doctor who was in a hospital, and we don’t know how Eight regenerated). The screaming and explosions—well, that’s one way to go! I know new Doctors’ first lines rarely endear themselves to viewers, but it wasn’t the lines so much as the delivery that disappointed me. It seemed, forgive me, the same manic energy as the Tenth Doctor. Like most others, I’ll be happy to see Matt Smith tackle the role—provided he brings something new to it as all his predecessors have done. I was unclear how his hair made him suspect he was a girl??

As someone said to me, it will be difficult to judge how cut up we are about the depature of our Doctor of three-ish years, as it will take awhile to sink in that he’s really gone (what with the glut of David Tennant programs on TV recently, not that I’m complaining). I will miss him—I cried a lot I have to admit, but I was emotional for other reasons at the time. I also cried a lot during “Parting of the Ways”—so I think it will all be okay.