One Sentence Review

The final special of Russell T Davies’ tenure producing Doctor Who is typical of his time on the show, excellent set up but rushed and unsatisfactory conclusion

Episode Synopsis

In the past on Gallifrey the leader of the Time Lords Rassilon receives news that The Doctor has “the moment” and he will use it to destroy both the Timelords and the Daleks that day. When one of the members of the council voices support for the Doctor Rassilon kills her with his gauntlet. One member of the council then informs him that The Master and The Doctor will survive the fall of Gallifrey and have a final confrontation on Earth and Rassilon thinks he can use this to save the Timelords.

On Earth the Doctor and Wilfred have been captured by The Master who receives an update from his “copies”. Wilf then receives a phonecall from Donna which shocks the Master as no one should be calling Wilf and he (The Master) believes everyone has changed. The Master then tracks Donna down but when it looks like she is about to be killed an energy wave is emitted from Donna knocking The Masters unconscious, as the Doctor had given her some protection but she then collapses as well. The Doctor then tries and fails to convince The Master to change his ways but fails.

On Gallifrey the Timelords debate the Masters insanity and Rassilon realises that the Master is hearing a rhythm of four, the heartbeat of a TimeLord. On Earth the Master decides to track the signal in his head, and orders Wilfred killed, but the Guard who is ordered to kill WIlf is actually one of the Vinvocci who proceeds to knock out the Master. The Aliens, Wilf and the Doctor then escape to the aliens ship via teleportation, which is then disabled to prevent The Master from following. The Doctor then disables the Vinvocci’s ship to stop the Master from finding and destroying them.

Later on the Master starts to track the signal, while on Gallifrey the council have just sent the signal, in order to make the link tangible Rassilon sends a diamond to Earth. When the Master finds the diamond he is shocked to discover it is a Whitepoint star which only comes from Gallifrey.

On the ship Wilf once again talks to the mystery woman, who tells Wilf that the Doctor must stand at arms or lose everything to the End of Time. Wilf then goes to see the Doctor and tries and fails to force him to accept his gun and tells him to use it to save his life. However after the Master informs them over an open frequency of what he found, the Doctor grabs Wilf’s gun and takes steps to reactivate the ship. On Gallifrey contact is made, and the Timelords vote to return to the world and invoke the Ultimate Sanction.

While Wilf initially thinks the Time Lord’s returning is good news, the Doctor informs him that this is not the case as the Time War changed them for the worse making them more dangerous than any of the Doctors enemies. The Doctor then uses the Vinvocci ship to return him to the mansion, but arrives too late as Rassilon and several members of the council have already arrived. When the Master informs the Timelords that he plans to turn all of them into himself, Rassilon uses his Gauntlet to turn the human race back to normal, The Doctor then informs the Master that Rassilon is bringing Gallifrey back and it appears in orbit next to Earth.

As the Vinvocci leave Earth, Wilf arrives in the mansion and helps a technician escape from the reactor controls trapping himself in the chamber. When the Master starts to think that the TimeLords return is a good thing, the Doctor informs him that the return of the TimeLords means the return of the Time War which not even they can survive.

Rassilon then announces he will bring about the End of Time and the ascension of the TimeLords into purely spiritual beings, and that the Master has no part in it being diseased. The Doctor then proceeds to point Wilfs gun at Rassilon, and then changes to the Master before switching back to Rassilon. As the Doctor agonises over who to shoot he sees the woman Wilf has been seeing behind Rassilon (she had objected to Rassilons plan) who nods at the Doctor. He then points his gun at the Master but tells him to get out of the way and shoots the machinery maintaining the link.

As Rassilon prepares to use his Gauntlet to kill the Doctor, the Master intervenes using his energy powers to combat Rassilon. Gallifrey, The Master and the Time Lords then disappear back into the Time War to be destroyed.

As the Doctor is amazed to still be alive, Wilf knocks four times on the door of the reactor control chamber, and the Doctor realises he may still die. As the Doctor exams the chamber he realises that the only way to save Wilf is to sacrifice himself, and the Doctor is angry realising he has no choice but to save Wilf and that it’s not fair. As Wilf tells the Doctor not to do it, the Doctor says it is his honour and frees Wilf causing him (the Doctor) to be exposed to a fatal dose of radiation. While the Doctor initially appears to be fine he is in the early stage of regeneration.

The Doctor returns Wilf home just after Donna recovers from her ordeal, and tells Wilf he will see him one more time. The Doctor then briefly visits numerous people he has encountered during this incarnation, helping them out in various ways. He then returns to see Wilf on Donna’s wedding day, and gives Wilf an envelope to give to Donna as a wedding present which contains a lottery ticket, which Wilf and Sylvia realise will be a jackpot winner. The Doctor then departs and goes to see Rose before he met her for the first time. While the Doctor tries to stay hidden Rose notices and speaks him after he struggles with the pain of his regeneration, he uses the opportunity to tell Rose she will have a great year.

After Rose departs the Doctor starts to struggle back to the Tardis and again sees Ood Sigma who tells the Doctor that the Universe will sing him to his sleep and while this song is ending the story never ends. Just after he returns to the Tardis and departs, The Doctor says he doesn’t want to go and is engulfed with regeneration energy, damaging the Tardis in the process. As the new Doctor rediscovers himself in the manicness of post regeneration he realises that the Tardis is going to crash on Earth.

Thoughts and Analysis

As with the first part of the episode, I have mixed feelings about The End of Time Part 2, while on the one hand I found most of the episode to be enjoyable to watch, I felt the conclusion was rushed and that the Doctor’s farewell tour contrived and an indulgence. Again like the first part this episode does summarise the best and worst of Russell T Davies time producing Doctor Who since the build up to the climax is superb, but the conclusion is contrived with more than a touch of Deus ex Machina. This is highlighted in 2 main ways in this episode, the first is in solving the problem of the Master turning everyone on Earth into himself and the second is with the return of the Time Lords and the conclusion to this part of the episode.

Taking the Master issue first, when The Doctor told Wilf that if the Master died everyone on Earth would return to normal I groaned inside since its even less realistic than everyone being turned into the Master in the first place. To put it simply if you make a copy of a CD, the copy of the CD doesn’t turn blank if the original CD (the template) is destroyed and I dont see why the Alien technology should have worked any differently, especially as this implies that if used for it’s original purpose of healing a world if anything happens to the template material the healing is cancelled. The ultimate solution was not any better though as it was resolved by Rassilon flicking his Gauntlet and felt like even more of a cop out, at least in the foreshadowed Master’s death solution, you would have the Doctor agonising over whether or not to kill the Master before finding another solution.

The return of the Time-Lords I also felt was a cop out since it lasted about 5 minutes and once again as with The Daleks at the end of Season 4 was an overly clean ending with everything going back to the status quo (regeneration aside) at the end of the episode, I would have once liked an incomplete victory (Time Lords and Gallifrey survive but Earth Saved). There are also the issues of what did happen to the Master at the end of the episode and who was the woman?, my impression was that the Master either died (due to his botched resurrection) or was sent back to the TIme War with the rest of the Time Lords but this was not made clear.

As for the Woman, no answer was made in the episode or is likely to be forthcoming from RTD though it is possible Steven Moffat could choose to revisit it in his episodes. My personal impression was that she was meant to be either a former companion of the Doctor such as Romana, or a family member killed in the Timewar. Another question though has to be how could she get past the Time Lock on the Time War to speak to Wilf as the only reason I can think of that the drum signal could get to The Master was that it was already existing so could get past the Timelock.

My penultimate gripe has to be is how stupid is Rassilon?, you have this really powerful Gauntlet that can kill a Timelord in seconds and someone who has thwarted your plans in the past (The Doctor) and is trying to thwart them now has his back turned to you and you dont use the opportunity to kill him?! Sorry Rassilon for being so monumentally stupid (or arrogant) you deserve to die.

My final gripe is RTD self indulgent farewell tour, in the past we have seen that a regeneration normally occurs a few minutes after the injury that caused it occurs, yet this time around, The Doctor apparently has time to visit not 1 not 2 not 3 not 4 not 5 but 6 (if I have counted right) people or groups of people that this incarnation has had some significant interaction with, if he was going to do that he should have briefly left Wilf got in the Tardis then come back AFTER his farewell tour (he does have a time machine) and sacrificed himself, doing it the over way around felt contrived.

So as you can tell I was not overly impressed with the plot resolution or some of the dangling threads and initially because of this hated the episode. On second viewing though as I knew how bad the ending was it did not bother me that much and I was able to just sit back and enjoy the episode which was a fun action packed romp, the plot may be weak and full of internal inconsistencies but it is enjoyable which is often the most important thing.

That being said I am glad RTD has handed over the reigns of Doctor Who and I hope that Steven Moffat takes the best elements of RTD tenure and reduced the cleanness of endings in season finale’s and the Deus ex Machina that have been hallmarks of RTD reign. As for the new Doctor, it is too early too tell as the manicness Matt Smith showed in his introduction can easily be put down to the Doctor having just regenerated. I for one am looking forward to seeing what this new partnership means for Doctor Who

Episode Rating

6/10