April 18: The End of Time Part One

And so here we are at last, at the end of David Tennant's time as the Doctor -- as well as Russell T Davies' time as Doctor Who's showrunner.  This is, strictly speaking, the 2009 Christmas special, but while Christmas is a part of this, The End of Time Part One has a lot more to do than worry about Christmas.

It starts oddly, though; we get some portentous (some might say pretentious) narration about the "final days of planet Earth", but then it's a complete change of pace with some frankly appalling jokey material regarding the Doctor.  The TARDIS remote-locking fob (complete with car locking noise) is bad enough, but we also get some nonsense about the Doctor marrying Elizabeth I and her having to change her nickname.²¹¹  And it also seems strange that the Ood are suddenly this race with the power to transcend time in order to call the Doctor to them.  (Mind, even the Doctor thinks this is strange, but the explanation is only half-formed; hopefully they'll elaborate in the second half.)

There's also a worrying amount of technobabble going on; the Master's resurrection seems strange enough, with its secret disciples of Harold Saxon and a counter organization designed to stop them, but then this somehow leads to the Master turning into a super-powered madman who can fly like Iron Man, leap like Superman, and shoot electricity from his hands like the Emperor from Return of the Jedi -- there are some passing references to how "[y]our resurrection went wrong.  That energy.  Your body's ripped open.  Now you're killing yourself," but that's about it.  Combined with the utterly mad cliffhanger of the Master turning everyone into himself, you start to worry that maybe it's Russell T Davies who's lost his mind.

The Doctor welcomes Wilf aboard the TARDIS. (The End of
Time Part One) ©BBC

But where this episode comes up trumps is in the character moments.  The Master flying around is bizarre, but the Master talking to the Doctor, making him hear the constant drumming in his head...that's a great moment.  And even after everything, the Doctor still would rather help the Master than fight him.  "Let him go!" the Doctor yells as Joshua Naismith's men capture the Master.  Plus we get the welcome return of Wilf, and just about every moment with him is special, from him rounding up the senior citizens to help him find the Doctor (which leads to the great moment where Minnie the Menace (played by the legendary June Whitfield) grabs the Doctor's butt, much to his surprise) to having conversations with the Doctor about death and Donna.  That particular scene, in the cafe, is astonishing; we've never seen the Doctor quite so vulnerable before, as he opens up to Wilf about his impending death:

DOCTOR: I'm going to die.
WILF: Well, so am I, one day.
DOCTOR: Don't you dare.
WILF: All right, I'll try not to.
DOCTOR: But I was told.  He will knock four times.  That was the prophecy.  Knock four times, and then...
WILF: Yeah, but I thought, when I saw you before, you said your people could change, like, your whole body.
DOCTOR: I can still die.  If I'm killed before regeneration, then I'm dead.  Even then, even if I change, it feels like dying.  Everything I am dies.  Some new man goes sauntering away, and I'm dead.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The End of Time part 1)

It's an amazing piece of acting from both David Tennant and Bernard Cribbins, as the Doctor starts to lose it at the thought of dying, while Wilf just wants to desperately to help the most amazing man he's ever met.  It's a very powerful scene and one of Tennant's best-ever scenes as the Doctor.  But he also gets other great moments, such as dealing distractedly with Wilf's first look inside the TARDIS after Wilf barges in ("You can't come with me," the Doctor says.  "You're not leaving me with her," Wilf replies, indicating Sylvia.  "Fair enough," the Doctor replies, as he lets Wilf in) or offhandedly deactivating the Vinvocci's "Shimmer" camouflage without even looking.

These are the sorts of things that make this episode, by and large, worth watching.  It may be incredibly daft/poorly thought-out (delete according to preference) at times, but there's such an unwavering conviction at work, that they absolutely know what they're doing and they're not going to let anyone stop them, that's it's hard not to be swept up in everything.  The actors make this work, and the direction and script both trust that we'll be willing to come along for the ride.  And at this point we are.

(But what a cliffhanger!  The Time Lords (led by James Bond!  All right, Timothy Dalton -- but still!) are coming back!)







²¹¹ Fortunately, Steven Moffat will subsequently explain this one away in "The Day of the Doctor".