Doctor Who – The End of Time

WARNING SPOILERS. And thus it came to pass that the Doctor shall pass on the reigns to someone new. That he shalt regenerate and some other bible style verse language to create the metaphor. But in terms of this place and time, David Tennant – the tenth man to officially take up the mantle of The Doctor – is now moving on. Capturing the youth and the nation, Tennant managed to create a new science-fiction hero whilst capturing the original essence of The Doctor. So how does his last ever story, the last penned by Russell T. Davies, fare up?

Well out of the two parts of the story, the second part is the stronger. The first is a varied case of good and bad creative decisions lapsed with some ongoing problems the show has had. The kid show aspect sometimes goes a little too far (the ‘Obama’ appearance) and the spinning heads, whilst the Master’s reappearance is a little too 1980’s perhaps.

But as the story continues, The Doctor finds himself crossing paths with Donna Noble’s grandfather, Wilfred Mott, and then it gets more interesting. The scenes between the two of them when they reflect on their lives is great, especially in a small cafe when the Doctor reflects on his travels and how he feels about his death. In fact, the character arc here is strong throughout as The Doctor’s selfish nature is really played up amongst his guilt. His reaction to Wilf’s act of self sacrifice is an amazing scene, leading to the knocking four times which leads to The Doctor having to finally make the ultimate sacrifice and not leaving someone else to weigh upon his guilt.

This contrasts with The Master delivering his greatest threat – changing all humans to himself and robbing the Doctor of the people and the planet he seems quite fond of. Considering he is quite mad, it’s a diabolic scheme that works quite well at bringing an antagonistic force for the Doctor to accomplish.

This also leads to the return of the Timelords, which while majestic is quite brushed over when you think about it. Their power and manipulation is shown via the ease in which the Master-Race is reverted back; and also why The Doctor locked the Time Lords into the ‘time lock’. But then The Doctor’s given some choices and they’ve gone again. It’s probably to stop them overpowering the series, keeping things a little more simple, but it would’ve been nice to at least see a bit more of them.

Then you have the good closing moments. The Doctor revisits his companions (including the descendant of the woman he loved when he was human in that awesome two-part story in series three) before finally regenerating. His last words, “I don’t wanna go,” are a great choice – and they conflict the Ninth’s final words as he seemed chuffed to regenerate.

THEN we get Matt Smith’s first minute, and he captures things perfectly – setting up a new catchphrase whilst also hinting to him nailing the quirks of his personality, leaving a sense of excitement that was actually apparent throughout all of it. Because you knew the Doctor was going to die, there’s a sense of ‘is this it?’ that ran throughout, including the apparent change in the radiation room thingy. It all builds up the anticipation when finally he regenerates.

Bad points? Well there’s a lot of unanswered questions, the Jack-revisit is a little hokey, Martha/Mickey’s nuptial revelation is a little naff and the head spins were stupid. As mentioned the Time-Lords appearance was a little anti-climatic but in terms of a send off it was a loving tribute to Ten whilst giving a nice hook for the new era in the show.

GERONIMO!