Doctor Who: The End of Time

"In all my travelling throughout the universe I have battled against evil, against power mad conspirators. I should have stayed here. The oldest civilization: decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core! Power mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen; they're still in the nursery compared to us! Ten million years of absolute power, that's what it takes to be really corrupt!" - the Sixth Doctor, The Trial of a Time Lord, November 1986

The End of Time is the final two-part story featuring David Tennant as the Doctor, before his regeneration into Matt Smith. Joining the Tenth Doctor on his climactic adventure is Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott. The story also features the return of the Doctor's arch-nemesis the Master, portrayed by John Simm, star of the gritty crime drama Life on Mars.

The last time we saw the Master, he had been fatally shot by his abused wife Lucy Saxon. To spite the Doctor, the Master deliberately kept himself from regenerating, and died permanently. His corpse was then cremated by the Doctor. But, surprise, he's back! Well, considering all the other times the Master died a spectacular, and seemingly final, death, maybe his latest return isn't such a big shock.

On this occasion, though, the Master's resurrection does not go quite as planned. He returns as a ravenous energy vampire able to shoot lightening from his hands. Somehow or another, the Master has also acquired bleached blonde hair. Oh, yes, and now he's completely bonkers, even more so than he's ever been in the past.

In any case, the Doctor, who had previously been forewarned in Planet of the Dead that his current incarnation is ending soon, is faced with the possibility that it is the revived Master who will "knock four times."

The relationship between the Doctor and the Master has always been complicated and dysfunctional. They are fellow Time Lords, attended university together on their home world Gallifrey, and at one time were even close friends. But then something occurred to sour that friendship, and they became bitter enemies.

When we first saw the Master on television in 1971's Terror of the Autons, portrayed by Roger Delgado, he was already an infamous criminal. He lead a succession of alien menaces to attack the Earth, where the Doctor, then played by Jon Pertwee, was temporarily exiled. On the surface, the Master's goal seemed to be one of conquest. But underneath it all you got the impression that he was causing all of this death & destruction primarily to annoy the Doctor.

The second story to feature the Master, The Mind of Evil, had the renegade Time Lord utilizing an alien mind parasite that could psychically kill people by manifesting their greatest fears. When the parasite is accidentally turned on the Master himself, the results are illuminating: it seems that the Master's worst nightmare is of the Doctor laughing scornfully at him.

Indeed, in the next story, The Claws of Axos when at one point the Doctor briefly appears to agree to work with the Master, the later is pleasantly surprised. Following that, in Conony in Space, the Master is seeking to control the Doomsday Weapon, a device capable of destroying entire planets. The Master wants to blackmail the universe into obeying him. And, when the Doctor finally catches up with his enemy, the Master, instead of attempting to kill his old foe, offers to divide control of the universe between the two of them. The Doctor rejects this offer, telling his former friend that he wants to explore the universe, not rule it. The Master appears deeply hurt by this rejection.

So, even from the start, it was obvious that there was a lot going on beneath the surface when it came to the relationship between Doctor and the Master.

By the time David Tennant was playing the Doctor, it appeared that he and the Master were the only two surviving Time Lords, the rest of their race having perished in the great Time War against the Daleks. By this point, the Doctor was desperate to mend the shattered friendship he once had with the Master. Unfortunately, the Master had always been depicted as something of a sociopath, charming and cultured on the outside, casually homicidal on the inside. And by this point, when he regenerated into the incarnation portrayed by John Simm, he was barking mad, totally unwilling to listen to the Doctor's entreaties.

One scene in The End of Time sees the two once more face to face. Again the Doctor is pleading with the Master to end his latest scheme of conquest and accept his help. For once, we see the Master hint at regret and sadness at how twisted their friendship has become, as well as a resigned conviction that things can never bee the way they once were. Tennant and Simm play this scene absolutely marvelously.

A few writers over the years have attempted to examine what led the Master to become the cold, ruthless monster that he is. David A. McIntee's novel The Dark Path and Joseph Lidster's Big Finish audio play Master each had their own ideas. Russell T. Davies also took a stab at it in the revived television series. We learned that the future Master, at the young age of eight, looked into the time vortex as part of a Time Lord rite of initiation. The experience apparently drove him mad over time, and in the back of his mind he heard the incessant, unrelenting sound of drums pounding. Davies wisely stopped short of categorically stating this was the cause of the Master's insanity, suggesting it is only a theory on the Doctor's part.

Davies returns to the pounding of the in the Master's psyche in The End of Time, and we learn the horrible origin of the mental noise that has plagued him throughout much of his life.

In the final days of the Time War, the Time Lords, corrupted by their immense powers, and driven to desperation by their cataclysmic conflict with the Daleks, decided to re-create reality itself and ascend to a higher plane of existence. Unfortunately, this would wipe out all other life in the universe. The Doctor, realizing how dangerous and ruthless his own people had become, somehow "time locked" the planet Gallifrey, trapping the Time Lords, and presumably leaving them to die in a final apocalyptic battle with the Daleks.

The Time Lords, though, refuse to simply give up. The Lord President of Gallifrey, portrayed by veteran actor Timothy Dalton, hatches a scheme to escape the time lock. The President learns that the Doctor and the Master are the only two Time Lords who will survive the war. And so the President orders a signal beamed back centuries through the time vortex, to be intercepted by a young Master during his initiation: the sound of drums. This signal, which helped drive the Master insane, is something the Time Lords can now fix onto and use to break Gallifrey out of the time lock, freeing the Time Lords to rewrite all of existence.

And so the Master, the grand manipulator who sought control over all reality, learns in The End of Time that he has been someone else's pawn all along.

Timothy Dalton excelled in the role of the ruthless Lord President. In the first episode of The End of Time, he is mostly an unseen narrator, ominously intoning the coming doom facing all of reality. It is in part two that the President steps onstage, a diabolical mixture of manipulation and desperation. Dalton's background as a Shakespearean actor serves him well in operatically portraying this power-mad monarch. Dalton has always been successful at imbuing the characters he plays with a dramatic gravity. I enjoyed his two underrated turns playing James Bond, where he brought a gritty realism to the character that had often been absent from the film franchise in the 1970s and 80s.

I'd like to see Dalton reprise his role on Doctor Who. After all, is this truly the final end of the Time Lords? Certainly the Daleks survived their all-but-certain demise during the Time War. So at some point down the road, the Time Lords, and their imperious Lord President, might very well return.

Besides, we still do not know the identity of the mysterious Time Lord woman who kept appearing in The End of Time to offer enigmatic advice to Wilf. I've read theories online that she could be the Doctor's mother. So there's a story waiting to be told.

The Doctor is accompanied throughout The End of Time by Wilfred Mott, aka Wilf, the grandfather of the Doctor's former companion Donna Noble. At the end of season four, when the Doctor was forced to erase all of Donna's memories of her travels in the TARDIS, Wilf promised he would remember the Doctor for her.

Tennant and Cribbins make a marvelous pair, and the interaction between the two is wonderful. Wilf is such a brilliant, likable character. He is obviously in way over his head traveling with the Doctor. But his unwavering love for his granddaughter has brought him to loyally want to safeguard the friend she no longer remembers, the Doctor, a man he himself has come to respect and admire.

There's a nice quiet scene with the Doctor and Wilf in a restaurant, as the Doctor tells of his forecasted regeneration. I think this is the first time the mental impact of the process on the Doctor has really been addressed. In a way, it is like dying. Though he survives and is still the Doctor, in many respects he is a different person afterwards, not just physically, but mentally. Something is lost. Near-eternal life, the ability to be reborn a dozen different times, is not without its cost.

Another poignant moment is in episode two, when the Doctor and Wilf are stuck on a damaged spaceship. Sitting there, discussing their pasts, you see the bond that has developed between the two, and the admiration each has for the other. It's a wonderful piece of writing by Russell T. Davies, probably one of the best in the entire two-part story.

Of course, in the end, the Doctor is forced to regenerate. And, as it turns out, he sacrifices his Tenth life not in some grand gesture to rescue all of existence, but rather to save the life of a single person. This is a fitting coda to Tennant's run as the Doctor. The previous story, The Waters of Mars, saw the Doctor reaching monumental heights of arrogance, nearly becoming an awesomely frightening god-like figure. The End of Time restores the Doctor to humility, as he avoids becoming like the Master or the Lord President. In a way, it is easy to be heroic and risk dying when the fate of the entire universe is at stake. But giving up your life to rescue an individual person is a truly selfless, heroic act.

The Doctor is able to hold off his transformation long enough to briefly pop in on a number of people he was close to in his current incarnation. It is a very bittersweet, nostalgic montage. And then, with an explosive burst of energy, the Doctor regenerates. Exit David Tennant, enter Matt Smith.

I am definitely going to miss Tennant. He was one of the best Doctors in the series' entire history. But he went out in style, in a truly moving & exciting story. The End of Time is probably one of the best finales any Doctor has ever gotten.