April 19: The End of Time Part Two

The High Council of the Time Lords deliberate on the last day of
the Time War on how to save themselves. (The End of Time
Part Two) ©BBC

In some ways this is a story that threatens to tear itself apart.  Russell T Davies is consciously crafting an epic story to send the tenth Doctor out on, but he's throwing in so many elements that it's hard to see the line connecting everything.  We get a planet full of Masters, a technobabble-y plan to bring the Time Lords back from the end of the Time War, a bizarre nuclear monitoring station set-up, a spaceship dodging missiles, and lots of death-defying stunts in between.  Any one of these would have probably been enough, but we get them all instead, and so the story threatens to collapse under the weight of it all.

More worryingly, things that look like they might actually have some bit of logic turn out not to.  You might think, for instance, that the Master has turned the entire planet into himself so that he could use everyone to help figure out more about the drumming sound.  He does do this, but it occurs to him after the fact, while talking to the Doctor -- it's not the actual reason for his plan.  That, in fact, seems to be something of a mystery; maybe he did it just because he could?  (There's a hint that he was trying to stabilize his body -- "The Gate wasn't enough.  Your body is still dying," the Doctor says -- but that's all it remains, a hint.)  And while there's a certain sense of perverse justice in learning that it was the future Time Lords who drove the Master mad all those years ago, just so that Rassilon and the High Council could try and escape from the Time War and destroy everything, it's another thing that you just have to accept (that the High Council could put the drumming in the Master's head in the first place, or that they could get a fancy diamond out of the Time War, despite the fact that it's apparently "time locked" and nothing can get in or out).  Then there are lesser problems, like how we're repeatedly told that if Donna remembers her time with the Doctor her mind will burn, but when she finally does it just knocks her (and everyone around her) out, with seemingly no other ill effects.  (Let's quietly draw a veil over the question of how the Doctor could survive the jump from the Vinvocci spaceship when a similar fall killed his fourth incarnation.)

Where this story succeeds, however, is in the character moments.  Part one had a number of them, and this episode has just as many.  You can rest assured that any scene Bernard Cribbins is in will be amazing to watch -- he's so good an actor that you don't realize how much he's working during a scene; it just feels like he's providing the most natural reactions in the world.  And so when matched with someone like David Tennant, it becomes mesmerizing to watch them both -- the scene aboard the Vinvocci ship, where Wilf tries to give the Doctor the gun and he repeatedly refuses, is fantastic, as both of them display the full range of emotions buried just beneath the surface.  It's not just them, though; when Tennant and John Simm get the chance to play a quieter scene together, they're just as good, as the Doctor asks the Master to come with him, while the Master just wants the drumming to stop.  And even the final confrontation at the end, with a desperate wounded Doctor squaring off against both the Master and the Time Lords, is worth watching because of the actors involved: Timothy Dalton is every inch the proud Time Lord, seemingly driven mad by the Time War but unable or unwilling to realize it, while the Doctor is determined to stop the Time Lords.  "You weren't there in the final days of the War," the Doctor tells the Master.  "You never saw what was born.  But if the time lock's broken, then everything's coming through.  Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres.  The War turned into hell."  The Doctor seems torn about who to attack, until he sees one of the women with Rassilon -- the one that keeps appearing to Wilf²¹² -- and that helps him decide to send them all "back to hell", with the aid of the Master at the last moment.  It's a big moment, with the Master redeeming himself as he sends himself back with the other Time Lords.

David Tennant regenerates into Matt Smith. (The End of
Time Part Two) ©BBC

So there are lots of action sequences, thrown in seemingly without too much thought, to give the tenth Doctor his send-off.  But it's ultimately the small moments that make this work, with perhaps none so small as the tenth Doctor's final fate.  All the stuff he experienced, and it's ultimately just the act of Wilf saving someone in the nuclear station thing that dooms the Doctor.  These moments are heartbreaking, not just because the tenth Doctor rages against the universe when he realizes what that "Planet of the Dead" prophecy was really about, but because Wilf understands what it will mean for the Doctor to save him and he begs him not to: "Look, just leave me. ... No really, just leave me.  I'm an old man, Doctor.  I've had my time."  It's the anguish on Bernard Cribbins' face, as he sees he's dooming the Doctor, that really cuts to the quick -- and while the Doctor is initially mad, his true personality reasserts itself: "Wilfred, it's my honour [to save you].  Better be quick," he adds.

The follow-up sequence, with the Doctor seeing all his previous companions as his "reward" before he regenerates, feels an awful lot like the end of "Journey's End", and thus in some ways is like the Russell T Davies' equivalent of the Doctor seeing all his companions' faces swirl around him as he regenerates in the 1980s stories.  But even here we get some lovely surprises, such as seeing the great-granddaughter of Nurse Redfern from "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood", Verity Newman.²¹³  "Was she happy, in the end?" the Doctor asks. "Yes.  Yes, she was," Verity replies.  "Were you?" she asks, but the Doctor doesn't answer.  And the scene with Rose at the very end is clever and understated, which is exactly what they needed.  (It's still the scenes with Bernard Cribbins that make me tear up a bit, though.  God bless that man.)  Nevertheless, this closing sequence does exactly what it's meant to, hitting the right notes as the Doctor dies.

The End of Time is therefore an incredibly uneven production; there's so much going on that just seems to be happening without good reason that you can see why some people hate this story (and make no mistake: some people hate this story).  But because the character interactions are so good, and because that air of supreme confidence fills every corner of the screen, it's easy to give in and go along with this, and to enjoy it for what it is: the final epic storyline for a Doctor (and showrunner) who has often delighted in epic storylines.  It may, in fact, be almost the prototypical Russell T Davies Who story, with all the virtues and faults on display in equal amounts.  You might be one of the people who hates this: fair enough.  I personally rather love it.

And so we say goodbye to the tenth Doctor, the most human incarnation of them all, with humanity's greatest traits and its worst ones existing side-by-side in David Tennant's portrayal.  It's slightly ironic that we're reminded here of "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood", which went out of its way to show us that the Doctor is emphatically not human, because there's nothing quite so human as what we see here, as even at the very end he tries to hold on to his life (as opposed to other Doctors -- like, say, Jon Pertwee -- who approached their death with more dignity).  "I don't want to go," he cries, before the regenerative energy that he's been holding back finally overwhelms him as it explodes outward, damaging the TARDIS in the process.  (At least, that seems to be what's happening.)  David Tennant has not only consistently shown us how good he is as the Doctor, but he's also managed to get better and better with each series -- such that he's rarely in better form on the show than in this final story.  I have to admit, when watching these stories the first time I was often unconvinced by Tennant.  "This doesn't really feel like the Doctor," I thought to myself.  I can now wholeheartedly admit that I was wrong; Tennant is emphatically the Doctor, the Doctor that's most like us.  He certainly leaves huge shoes to fill, both in terms of performance and in the public consciousness -- it's an awful lot like Tom Baker finally leaving the show in the latter regard.

He's not the only one leaving with big shoes to fill.  Russell T Davies did what many at the time said was impossible; he not only brought the series back, but he made it a mainstay of British television again and captured a whole new audience.  He did so by doing what the best producers of the show have always done: making it for a family audience, rather than a niche demographic.  He wasn't a perfect producer by any means, but his knack for knowing what works for that larger audience was on target more often than it wasn't.  Even if all he had done was bring it back, that would be probably be enough -- the fact that he made it a tremendous success worldwide is proof of how good he was at updating the format while keeping the core of the show the same.

But now it's time for Steven Moffat to take over with a new lead actor, and if the final moments of The End of Time are any indication, we should be in for a good time with Matt Smith...








²¹² No, you're not supposed to know who this mystery woman is.  Theories range from the Doctor's mother to his wife to his daughter (aka Susan's mother) to Susan herself to Romana to someone unknown, but we intentionally never find out for certain who she is.  Unless Steven Moffat wants to tell us in a future story, we'll likely never know -- and it's probably better that way.
²¹³ I see what they did there.