Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

"You're going to be in Torchwood love."

Seconds out. Round two! The second and final part of our end of season, last ever*, podcast commentary comeback has just been unleashed, it's time for Last of the Time Lords

Topics up for discussion include: Mr La Di Da Russell T Davies, response times of the pensioner abuse hotline, bespoke Toclafane furniture, Thal Hollyoaks, Martha's Target Novelisation Rendition Tour of the World, Boe's Hos and Homos and the death of subtlety.

It's available from all the usual places... Comments, as ever, welcome on this thread.

*the management reserves the right to make all sorts of promises that they might never ever keep, especially if Torchwood series 2 is as good as series 1.

Reichenbach Balls

Fandom is advised to stay away from Outpost Gallifrey, also known as the OG. Fanboys are warned that fandom is now entering meltdown. Fandom is closed. I repeat, fandom is closed...

Just who the hell is sending that message at the beginning of Last of the Time Lords, anyway? Is it a Spiridon Travel Agent's answer phone? A Rough Planet Guide to Backwater Civilizations billboard? Magrathean spam? What?

Sorry, let me back up a bit. Nothing can be gained from me listing all the stuff didn't like about this episode - we'll be here all day and I'm a week late already. No, I'll save my vitriol for the upcoming "so bad we had to reform" Tachyon TV commentary podcast. Instead, I'm going to pop  a handful of Prozac as I attempt to focus exclusively on the stuff I genuinely liked about the season finale. In the paragraph after that I will attempt to wax lyrical about some of the stuff I can just about tolerate. (Keith Topping translation: I am a sarcastic twat).

Is it a Spiridon Tourist Board answer phone? Magrathean spam? What?

Right, I pretty much loved every single scene between the Doctor and the Master. It's hard to believe that only a few weeks ago I was cheering for plucky Sam Tyler as he struggled to free himself from a coma, and now here I am booing and hissing John Simm as he effortlessly turns in one of the most deliciously hammy, yet genuinely sinister, Doctor Who-villain performances in years. And I just lapped it up. Simm's range is simply stunning and the bit where he snarls viciously during the 'We've all gone a bit Blackpool!' Scissor Sisters debacle allows me to forgive him just about anything. My admiration for Simm increases with each and every viewing and no matter how depressed I get with this episode as a whole, he'll always be there to cheer me up with his multi-layered madness.

I especially enjoyed the Master's decision to spite the Doctor by holding back life, and I felt a twinge of fanboy angst when the Doctor cradled his nemesis in his arms after all those years of bickering. Lovely bit of fanwank, that. I just didn't like the way we got there. Nice orgasm, terrible hand job. How much better would it have been if the Doctor had been responsible for the Master's mortal wound (if only by accident), and it all happened, alone, on that windswept cliff-top, without a room full of people standing around like a bunch of lemons, gawking at them. How much better would it have been if the Master had dropped silently into the waters below, leaving it up to our imaginations as to whether he regenerated or not, instead of that Saturday Matinée afterthought, apparently shoehorned in to placate future (yes, future!) production teams, and a reference of Return of the F***ing Jedi!

Damn, and I was doing so well. I've also committed the cardinal sin of suggesting a better way of doing things without a BAFTA to back me up. Slash my fanboy wrists.

as far as Russell T. Davies is concerned "hard science" is a value judgment...

But I just can't help it. There are dozens of brilliant moments peppered throughout this episode, it's just the overall journey that feels so bewilderingly incoherent. For example I just can't shake this feeling that the Master was originally going to shrink the Doctor (it is his goddamn modus operandi after all) and Dobby-Doc was the unfortunate result of RTD trying to tie the whole season together via the Lazarus experiment. Sure, the effect is incredibly impressive for a British television show but there is something spectacularly wrong about the whole thing that I can't get my head around. And while I enjoyed the Master's sadomasochistic relationship with his "pet", and I do appreciate the fact that the Master needed to see the Doctor subjugated in order to complete himself, I don't buy his bizarre gamble that turning his screwdriver up to 11 wouldn't kill his adversary before the game was up. And it looks, well, weird. Last week I was accusing RTD of turning Doctor Who into Harry Potter and now this. I've racked my brains to come up with a better reason for this sense of innate wrongness - Doctor Who is a programme that regularly presents us with impossible things - but the best I can come up with is is this: the Doctor spends most of the episode as a walnut on legs. Will that do?

Something else that I simply can't get over is the second coming of the Doctor. Tinkerbell. Jesus. Manga. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Superman. It's like flicking through a Forbidden Planet shopping catalogue. In the 1970s we had Buddhism rammed down our throats, this time it's magical syrup laced with cheese and pop culture riffs. Bidmead must have been spitting digestives because as far as Russell T. Davies is concerned "hard science" is just a value judgment. It's a terrible moment, and whenever my step-daughter gives me that "rolled eyes" look I know we're knee-deep in Timelash territory. There is an explanation for it, I think - something about a telepathic circuit - but I'm too far to busy slamming my head into a cushion for it to register properly, and things rapidly start to unravel for me from this point on.

Maybe exploding black hole converters are harder to market as a Character Options range...

Thankfully, the Prozac has starting to kick now, so here's more stuff that I liked: Martha's family being kept as bait in the Master's garage (sorry, spaceship) with Jack chained up like a kipper. It would have been even funnier if the Master wasted away the hours killing him over and over again. I also don't have a problem with the fact that the Toclafane were the Utopia refugees all along. They kind of had to be, I suppose, so I was prepared for the "twist" (although Davros did throw me for a second). The "twist" also gives Simm one of the best lines of the entire series when he describes humanity as the worst monsters of them all, and there is a lovely sense of insane irony about the whole thing.

I don't even mind the whacking great 'let's turn back time!' re-set button. After all it's been done before (canonically!) and I had a great re-set dream myself a few weeks ago, but please, before you go and whack said button, for god's sake make it mean something! Sure, Japan bites the bullet off-screen and there's a squat in London that looks a bit put-upon, but if you are going to erase all the so-called damage, then at least show us some of it first! Let's set off a couple of black hole converters for starters. Launch some ships. Wipe out Swansea. Perhaps all the money went on Dobby? Maybe exploding black hole converters are harder to market as a Character Options range. Last year we got swarms of Cybermen and Daleks going at it, this year we have six BILLION phantasm balls heading back to defend the Paradox Machine whereas Jack only takes on THREE of them. With a gun. Off-screen.

Wipe out Swansea.

Martha's departure is one of the most boring in the series' history. Turlough comes pretty close, and Leela's exit made about as much sense, but this break-up was pure Hollyoaks. Let me get this straight: she decides to stop traveling through time and space because the Doctor won't snog her, even though she's putting out and everything. Is that it? How emancipating is that?

Martha had (and still has) great potential as a companion but from Gridlock on - and Cornell notwithstanding - no one seemed to know what to do with her, and as a result her gap year was utterly implausible. Did anyone buy the fact that she'd walked across the entire planet as Dobby's ministry on earth? It just felt a bit Rose-lite to me. How disappointing must it have been when she finally turned up at a huge resistance meeting in a kitchen somewhere and she dropped the bombshell that she was there to tell them a fairy story. And  don't tell me that the Master didn't know!? The whole planet is under his control, he's got a traitor in every garage and it still hasn't got back to him that Martha is turning up on people's doorsteps with a ridiculous story about a countdown that hasn't even been announced yet - and people not only believe this shit, they actually tell each other stories about it! Sorry, I just don't buy it.

And then, in lieu of anything reflective or poignant, the Titanic rams into the TARDIS. My only conscious thought during that final moment of grandstanding insanity was this: "Oh well, could be worse - it could have been Catharine Tate again..."

PS - the drugs don't work.

The Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Last of the Time Lords: in an early draft of the script the Doctor's three words to the Master were, "You bleedin' muppet!"

Vote Result: Last of the Time Lords

Smashing all records yet again, blah blah, more votes than ever, blah... 1394 votes cast, the results are in for the final blog poll for Last of the Time Lords:

• 46%: Excellent, End of the World Stuff
• 11%: Not Good, End of my Tether Stuff
• 43%: Really Shoddy Total Let Down

So, in a first, more people thought it bad than good, and up until early yesterday Really Shoddy was winning by a country mile.

Summary of all blog votes (we only started them with Daleks in Manhattan):

Episode                       For  Against  Total
-------                  -------- -------- ------
Daleks in Manhattan       95(79%)  25(21%)    120
Evolution of the Daleks  123(55%) 102(45%)    225
The Lazarus Experiment   276(87%)  41(13%)    317
42                       218(73%)  79(27%)    297
Human Nature             367(94%)  22(06%)    389          
The Family of Blood      419(95%)  21(05%)    440
Blink                    556(97%)  18(03%)    574
Utopia                   681(94%)  44(06%)    725
The Sound of Drums       684(84%) 129(16%)    813
Last of the Time Lords   639(46%) 755(54%)   1396

It's people! Toclafane is people!

...and "The Last of the Time Lords" is pants!  After way too much work I've coughed up my first-ever review of pretty much anything.  It's way too long and is complete with gratuitous pop-culture references.  It also summarizes most of the episode, so lucky readers won't have to watch it.  I hope you enjoy.

Prologue:
After a brief warning that the "Earth is closed" and "is now entering terminal extinction (Aside: Since when, exactly, was Earth open?  What, prey tell, is "terminal extinction"?  Isn't that redundant?  Who exactly is warning who to keep away?) we get to see Martha wash up on a beach a year after the events of "The Sound of Drums".  She's met by one of the locals, who mentions a retch-inducing mystical story about how Martha is "the only person who can kill the Master."  And, as this episode is about 37% recycled material, we get the first of many flashbacks as Martha pines, again, for the Doctor.

Act I: The Empty Threat/The Master Dances
We then get a song-and-dance number with the Master dancing to some horrible pop song as if possessed by Ginger Rogers, spitting up coffee and ringing a big pantomime bell and pushing the Doctor about in a wheelchair.  (I looked it up...he's right, it is track three.  I've never hoid of them, but apparently it's by some American band called The Scissor Sisters, and they're big in the UK.  No one across the pond, however, has heard of them.)  This is also the scene where we get to see that Martha's kin have become domestic servants and the Doctor lives in a tent.

The centrepiece of this portion of the program is a complicated jailbreak scheme.  At precisely three o'clock, Jack, who's trussed up down in the engine room for some reason, uses his super-human strength and "bursts his bonds" like a present day Thundarr the Barbarian.  (See This Link...it's pretty much the same story as "The Last of the Time Lords".)  Alarms go off.  Sparks fly.  Francine hands the Master's coat to Tish.  Tish hands it to the Doctor.  The Doctor takes the Master's screwdriver from the pocket and points it at him.

That's it?  That's the best the Doctor could come up with?  He's one of the two smartest beings on the planet Earth, and after a year of plotting this is his secret scheme?  Distract the Master and take his weapon?  And the Master out-thought him anyway by making his laser pointer only work when he's the one wielding it.

We then get gratuitous Axon and Sea Devils references.  It's this little game we play with RTD.  He throws us these little bones, and then spits in our collective eye.

Act II: Cackhanded Exposition
Martha and the doctor-with-a-small-"d" (Tom Milligan, apparently...had to go back and re-watch to remember it, since he was kinda forgettable) meet up with Professor Docherty just in time to watch her cursing at her telly, much as we were through most of the episode.  The Master has announced plans to broadcast a transmission, apparently all a clever scheme to send a thoroughly confused message to Martha Jones.  What could possibly make him think Martha is even watching, I can't imagine.  He's just lucky the professor got the TV to work.

The Master proceeds to use his new laser pointer to "suspend the doctor's capacity to regenerate" for the viewing audience.  (Who knew that a laser screwdriver could do that?  Can it open doors, too?  If you thought the doctor's arbitrary uses for the sonic screwdriver were a bit much....)  The doctor then flails about in stop-motion to techno music for several seconds before emerging as one of these: (Does this make sense?  No.)

Martha and company go sphere-fishing using the Toclafane equivalent of kryptonite (Benjamin Franklin dubbed it "electricity").  After a short intermission for the irritating Jones family to bicker about who gets to kill the Master ("I'll kill him." "No, I will!" "No, me!") and a flashback to the Master staring into a toilet and hearing drums (maybe he was watching "The Last of the Time Lords"), the professor cracks open the silver basketball to reveal that the Toclafane are actually just Davros-in-a-cup.  ("Oh, this is the best Davros in a cup ever. This guy is unbelievable. He ran the old Cup 'o Davros guy out of business. People come from all over to eat this."...with apologies to Navin R. Johnson.)  Then, in a twist that was more telegraphed than Morse code, it turns out that Davros-in-a-cup is actually one of the humans from Utopia!  (We get more flashbacks!  They're getting closer!)  This, of course, is no surprise to anyone who was paying the remotest attention, even those of us who wanted desperately for it to be something more interesting.

RTD decides at this point that what the episode needs is several more minutes of the aforementioned cackhanded exposition.  After an entire year of keeping the Doctor and Jack and the Joneses in the conference room of Captain Scarlet's Cloud City, The Master decides he needs to have a lengthy bit of expository dialogue, coincidentally paralleling the discussion the Martha and the professor are having at the exact same moment somewhere in the UK.  (This might have seemed almost clever if it hadn't seemed so goddamned contrived...an entire year cooped up with his prisoners and he never bothers to tell this story until just then?)

The master says, "I took Lucy to Utopia...I took her to see the stars."  (What stars?  "Just the dark, and the cold", as per the Toclafane.)

Lucy proceeds to slur the following, as if she's unused to having teeth: "Trillions of years into the future, to the end of the universe.  Dying.  Everything dying.  The whole of creation was falling apart, and I thought 'there's no point, no point to anything.  Not ever.'"

Despite her apparent shock and horror at the Toclafane being Utopians, Martha reveals that she "sorta worked it out" earlier, and we get another flashback to show us how.

The master says: "You should have seen it Doctor.  Furnaces...burning!  The last of humanity screaming at the dark."  (What else are furnaces for?) 

We then get a ridiculous explanation for the Toclafane themselves:  "They cannibalized themselves, regressing into children.  It didn't work.  The universe was collapsing around them."  What?  I know the first thing I'd do when facing the inevitable heat-death of the universe would be to have my face transplanted to a knife-wielding "Borg-in-a-ball".  That'd be the obvious solution.  And I'm not sure what "regressing into children" means, but it sounds like something that could get you on a sexual-predator registry in several municipalities.  Either way, it makes no sense.

And they kill "because it's fun!"  In the words of the Master: "The human race...greatest monsters of them all!"  Bah.  Please.  Almost as much of an old sci-fi chestnut as the cliché that humans beings are particularly resilient (or "indomitable", if you prefer) as a species.

This was perhaps the longest twelve minutes of television ever, until...

Act III: Jesus ex Machina!
After Martha tells Tom and the professor that she has a secret UNIT/Torchwood Macguffin with parts from San Diego, Beijing, Budapest and London, Martha and Tom hole up in a house full of starving labourers.  The professor promptly betrays this ridiculous story to the Master, but more on that later.

Martha promptly begins to prosyletize like some filthy Jesus monkey.  In fact, much of the language is lifted right from one of the scripts a feeble-minded missionary.  "My name isn't important.  There's someone else.  The man who sent me out there.  The man who told me to walk the earth."  "I've seen him.  I know him.  I love him."  It's enough to give one the dry heaves.  If I wanted to hear this sort of crap I'd stop killing the slackjawed Mormons who come to my door and burying them in the basement.

Oh, and she walked across "the radiation pits of Europe."  That doesn't sound healthy.

Then the Master shows up and, to the strains of something Kraftwerky, threatens to kill everyone unless she gives up...so she does, and at the last second the Master decides to bring her up to Satellite Five the Valiant to kill her in front of the Doctor.

Back in the conference room, the Master announces an arbitrary three minute countdown to his warships launching ("to align the black hole converters.")  The Toclafane, panto villains to the last, start chanting "We will fly and blaze and slice!  We will fly and blaze and slice!", while the Master speechifies and prepares to shoot Martha.

Here Martha interrupts his story by laughing, and prepares to reveal the Deus Ex Machina we've all been waiting for.  When asked what's so funny she says, "A gun in four parts...scattered across the world.  I mean...come on...did you really believe that?"  It was all a red herring.

(I'm glad Martha up and admits that the MacGuffin scattered across the earth was utterly ridiculous.  Not only is that sort of cliché so tired I couldn't wake it if I put four million volts through it, but it's also just stupid.  Even the military mind (not exactly the brightest bulb in the marquee of life) wouldn't decide to put the different parts of a weapon so far apart that no one could conceivably ever use it.  So why did this little plot work?  I cringed and rolled my eyes at it...so why didn't the Master?)

So here's the real plan: Martha knew all along that she knew Professor Docherty would betray her (flashback to earlier in this episode) and told her about the gun so she would get her to the Valiant at "the right time."  In a massive game of "Telephone", Martha has spent the last year walking the Earth spreading the gospel of Jesus The Doctor.  (The flashbacks, incidentally, are almost upon us...this time we're flashing back to something that happened about five and a half minutes earlier.)  She also told them all to think "Doctor" at the exact same time.  So everyone ("The whole human race...all of them...every single person on earth...") thought "Doctor" and this was somehow amplified by the Archangel network's telepathic field.

What happens next was, of course, utter bollocks.  The Doctor became a glowing magical Christ figure, the bird cage he was in disappeared, he changed from a tarsier back into an old David Tennant and then a young David Tennant (which would have been far more entertaining to see wedged into that cage).  Video monitors in the conference room, for some inexplicable reason, show large crowds of humans gathered in public places chanting "Doctor" without getting slaughtered by the Toclafane.  The Doctor then hovers in the air, still glowing, with his arms out in a Jesus-pose.  Also like Jesus, the Doctor is now immune to lasers and has telekinetic powers.

(This is the sort of ridiculous plot contrivance that annoys the hell out of me on more levels than I can relate.  I'll try, however.

First of all, it's the timing.  Apparently the time everyone was thinking "Doctor" was exactly the same time that the Master was planning to launch his missiles.  How exactly this happened is beyond me.  It would seem to be an amazing coincidence.  The Doctor apparently set this clever plan in motion over a year earlier (though he also wasn't sure it would work, or he wouldn't have tried that thing back in Act I), but no rationale is given as to why he would know the timing (to the second, apparently) that the Master would finish his countdown.

That's not the only thing that comes together like too much clockwork.  Martha happened to show up back in the UK just in time for the big event.  She also contrived to get caught so she could be on the Valiant "at the right time".  Not only was the timing of her return to the conference room too perfect to be believable, but why did she even need to be there anyway?  She could just as easily have had everyone on the planet think "Doctor" without her being there.  This doesn't even touch on the logistical problems of getting "the whole human race" to do anything at the same time.  They must have synchronized their watches.

The whole thing is just a laughable Deus ex Machina where the "magic words" of everyone thinking "Doctor" suddenly gives him the power to become the young David Tennant again and deflect laser beams and float in the air as a magical being and get resurrected by the power of everyone's faith.  (Good thing they didn't all accidentally think "The light of Shadmock's hollow moon doth shine on to a point in space betwixt Dravidian Shores and Linear 5930167.02, and strikes the fulsome grove of Rexel 4.  Co-radiating crystal activate!").  This sort of thing is woefully "Harry Potter" and seems out-of-place in a program purporting some level of science-fictionness (just as it was in "The Shakespeare Code".)  It's just not how words actually work.  In fact, I'd have to describe it as just silly.

And, the worst things, most likely, are the obvious hamfisted references to Christianity.  The Master even describes it as "faith and prayer".  "Religious Fiction" may be redundant, but in "Science Fiction" it's best to avoid that sort of twaddle, and this comes across too much as trying to ram Christianity down our collective throat.)

Continuing the Christian theme, the Doctor flutters over to the Master, who screams "no!" and cowers in abject fear, and then the Doctor says "I forgive you."

Then the Toclafane go to protect the Genesis Device Paradox Machine while the Doctor and the Master have a little time-out on some hillside in Wales.  The Master threatens to black-hole-convert the entire planet back to the stone age, but the Doctor knows he won't do it because he loves life so much.

Meanwhile, Magic Jack, being indestructible, goes and kills the few Toclafane left guarding the Genesis Device Paradox Machine.  (Remember when he used to die for a few minutes each time, about two episodes ago?)  He then proceeds to shoot a machine gun at the Genesis Device Paradox Machine (...of which, in "The Sound of Drums", the Doctor said "touch the wrong bit, blow up the solar system."  Apparently shooting it is okay.)

The Doctor screams "Everyone get down!  Time is reversing!"  (You don't want to be standing when time reverses, apparently.)  Six billion Toclafane disappear.  A bunch of wind blows paper around.

And apparently it's 8:02AM again the day the paradox machine kicked in.  Everything's back as it was before, except apparently no one is watching the first contact with the Toclafane on the telly.  Somehow time DIDN'T reverse in the conference room, as the Master's still slumped on the steps, there's still a gun on the floor, and all the important characters can remember what they went through for the last year.  The four Toclafane that were there before the whole thing are nowhere to be seen, as with the television crew.  Fortunately for everyone, the Amerikan president is still dead.

As far as everyone else on the earth is concerned, they saw on the telly that four Toclafane materialized, whined for the master, and killed the president.  The Prime Minister of Great Britain acted a bit the buffoon, captured some bloke called "The Doctor", shot some guy with a laser pen, turned the Doctor into Margaret Thatcher, called them all "earthlings" and told them the world was ending.  Then none of the rest of it happened.

What keeps it all from happening over again?  Idunno.

After the big not-quite-reset button, the Doctor talks Francine out of killing the Master, but Lucy, with the same vacuous stare she's had the whole episode, shoots him.  While the weepy Doctor cradles him in his arms he refuses to regenerate (they can do that?) and declares victory.  (A lot like the U.S. did in Vietnam).  Makes you wonder why he didn't blow up the planet when he had the chance, four minutes earlier.  The Doctor reminds him about "The Claws of Axos" and "The Frontier in Space", and the Master up and dies.

Epilogue:
When Jack is offered the chance to go back and travel with the Doctor, he passes up the chance so he can go back to those losers at Torchwood.  He was probably just upset that he didn't get to do much of anything during "The Sound of Drums" and "The Last of the Time Lords"...after all, being immortal and having a time machine at his disposal, it's not like he couldn't just come back later and join those incompetent nymphomaniacs later.  Pity...in his few episodes of season one he was a lot of fun.

Then we get the Jack is the "Face of Boe" joke.  Of course, Jack was standing right next to Martha and the Doctor in "Utopia" when Martha was discussing the Face of Boe's dying words, but he didn't say anything about it then.  Can't possibly be true.  If it was intended to be true, it was 1) more crappy self-contradictory writing  2) just ridiculous.  Besides, the Face of Boe dies; Jack doesn't.

Then what...let's see...Martha prank calls Doctor Milligan.  Martha breaks up with the doctor, then walks back in to explain it in a very teen-drama sort of way, before promising she'll return in season four (hopefully without her family).  The red-fingernailed hand of Gollum picks a ring out of the ashes of the Master's pyre and says "My precious!".  And the Titanic runs into the TARDIS to set us up the Christmas bomb.

FIN.

In short form: "The Last of the Time Lords" was contrived, carelessly plotted, and suffered from an insultingly implausible resolution.  And Murray Gold's score was generally overbearing.  And way too much of the episode was just Boe-ring.

Other random things about "The Last of the Time Lords":

1. Lucy spends the entire episode sleepwalking.  She stumbles through the episode like a mildly retarded zombie.  When she kisses the Master (or shoots him) she just stares ahead blankly and seems like she's about to wander away.  Her only line was that stilted speech.  And she wasn't a particularly engaging zombie either...the dance number at the beginning was no "Thriller", and the Master just tosses her about like a rag doll while they dance.  She's constantly leaning on things and looking like she's about to drool.  It's not that she's quite expressionless...it's more that she doesn't seem to be reacting to her environment very much, and she keeps moving likes she's a mannequin being posed.
           The only reasonable explanation I can fanwank for this is that she's been more or less brain-wiped in preparation for the Master to take over her body.  Hell, maybe he was already in it, or controlling her wit' his telepathy.  So, either the portrayal was a conscious decision on the part of the director, or Alexandra Moen is an even-more-wooden actress than I thought.
2. The Master's conference table has a special "Toclafane perch" in the middle...apparently they get tired from all that hovering.
3. If the TARDIS could only go betwixt Earth in 2008 and that one planet full of the "Futurekind" 100 trillion years later, how did the Master get from there to Utopia, where the last humans were becoming something out of a bad anime movie?
4. It's just creepy that Martha showed up and handed flowers to the professor and said "Just to say, I don't blame you."  I know I'd be creeped out by random strangers doing that.
5. The master may have built a paradox machine, but I'm not sure there was any paradox.  The professor explained the paradox as "If you're the future of the human race and you've come back to murder your ancestors...you shouldn't exist."  However, the Toclafane didn't come back in time in order to kill all the humans.  They came back in time "to build a grand new empire, lasting one hundred trillion years."  That's plenty of time for even a handful of humans to repopulate six billion of these flying monkeys.
6. There was a lot of talk on Behind the Sofa and elsewhere about how Martha was supposed to develop a relationship with the Doctor or she'd just seem like an afterthought in comparison to Rose.  After a whole season of no character development beyond pining after the doctor and then leaving him, she does indeed.  A pity, because the actress did a fine job.  Hopefully this is the last of the doctor's romantic involvements, at least until Romanadvoratrelundar returns from her sojourn in E-space...

MasterMindg

Due to this being my first review and thus getting delayed by having to sort out a typepad account, most of my intended rambling has already been said. So this will be short and to the point.

Great content, poor execution I feel sums it up. The Doctor knowing the Master's penchant for countdowns, fine. Martha coming up with the fake four-part gun plan (I'm assuming the Doctor didn't have time to tell her all of that), fine although somewhat convoluted for Martha's purpose of simply getting captured. The Doctor tapping into the psychic network, fine. The hidden plan between the Doctor and Martha's family, fine. All of the factual plot points made sense. So why did the story feel so "bleh"?

Overkill. Six billion Toclafane - why so many? A lower number would have been more believable and they could have still patrolled the entire planet thanks to them being able to fly. The psychic energy restoring the Doctor's regenerative capabilities was acceptable, but I was hoping at the start of that sequence that the cage would end up breaking or someone would have to let him out. The Doctor going all Marty Hopkirk on us was daft. Why did the guards change sides at the end? Those close enough to the destruction of the Paradox Machine (TM) being able to remember the year that never happened I can accept, but not the effective disappearance of everyone who was on-board at the start of that year, and the lack of the President's body. I'm hoping that will have repercussions, but I'm not going to hold my breath. The "Ming the Merciless" death scene (sorry Star Wars fans - you can point at the Emperor's death scene all you want, but Flash Gordon came out before episode 6). Finally, the biggest let down of all, the nonchalant way Person A was revealed to be also Person B. That reveal, and how they go from one to the other, could have made a great two-parter. As could the story of how one of Person B's earlier scenes is possible given what we know about Person A.

It's quite hard avoiding spoilers and still making sense, isn't it?

Anyway, Last of the Time Lords was like taking perfectly sensible ingredients and then just shoving them all in a blender with neither rhyme nor reason.

That said, I did like the Master. He came across as more psychotic than normal, but then he's never been stuck in a fob watch / human body for thirty-odd years (give or take) before. The screaming scene was silly, but that's the fault of the writer. His choice of music was far better in this than in The Sound of Drums. The big grin and thumbs-up sign in the boardroom was spot on for the Master, in my opinion. Laughing my head off as several people got gassed to death does make me wonder about my own sanity, however.

Apologies for the 'stream of consciousness' approach but I didn't want to repeat too much on what everyone else has said. My reviews will get better in the future. I hope.

The Tachyon TV Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Last of the Time Lords: The President's original death scene was going to be the Master pushing him out of an airlock, thus explaining the lack of a body after time reversed. However, this was changed when it was realised that this may lead to too many "The President's been sucked off" jokes coming from Jack.

2007, Fits the 11th, 12th, 13th: Third time IS the charmed, isn't it?

Yeah, ok, this was a bit of shit in places, I'll admit it.

But I'll staunchly stand by it.  I will.  In ALL THREE PARTS.

Year One, we had people muttering Bad Wolf under their breaths, in helicopter microphones, on posters no one was looking at, and in German on a falling bomb.  Yeah, we're going to read it there, right before we blow up. 

Year Two, we had the Torchwood death star, the Torchwood Coming Soon (sponsored by Queen Victoria), some space miners working for the Torchwood archives, and some very polite people applauding for the Doctor.

Year Three, we're given Saxon to chew on. But, I really feel, Saxon was a mislead.  Like the big announcement that John Simm was the Master, then having Derek Jakobi saying the iconic "I am the Master!", very nearly stealing Simm's thunder before he starts charging around the TARDIS, channelling a strange mix of Mark Hammill and Jack Nicholson, sans facepaint, but just as dangerously lunatic. But I'll get back to him.

Saxon was the biggest joke played on us this year.  We were so focussed on Saxon as a meme, when it was all right there in that video camera moment of John Simm smiling, almost looking like a photograph, before his head turns and his smile turns chilly.  I knew who and what Saxon was all about right there. Our REAL meme for this year, and one that few people seemed to have noticed (hell, I didn't notice it until just after I'd finished watching TLOTTL).

Russell.  I see what you were aiming for.  You very nearly got there.  Thank you for trying, seriously.  Each year I feel you're getting better and stronger with this, and please don't take this the same way, but write two less episodes next year.  Give Cornell or Moffat one more.  They deserve it.  Let lovely Helen write one more, granted hers were the weak spots this year, but I think she can do much much better if she's not given such a shopping list (ahem).

With that out of the way..

OH LOOK THE MASTER MADE HIM A CUTE LITTLE SUIT!! That had me in giggles.  I loved it. It's just the sort of thing a lunatic would do if he had a "grow your own Yoda" kit.

I mentioned themes.  I plan to explain that.  Out of every episode, there are a couple of themes that carry on through the rest of the episode to the end.

> Smith & Jones - Look it's Martha!
> The Shakespeare Code - Power of words
> Gridlock - The Face of Boe, You are not alone
> Daleks in Manhattan - I lose everything.. 
> Evolution of the Daleks - ..while they keep coming back
> The Lazarus Experiment - Age controlling technology.
> 42 - Sinister woman with Martha's mum.
> Human Nature - Chameleon Arch, Fob watch
> The Family of Blood - The price of being human, the Doctor's dark side
> Blink - This was just a nice break before the finale.
> Utopia - Professor Yana, the humans of the future, Utopia
> The Sound of Drums - The drums, Gallifrey, the Master, Toclafane, Lucy Saxon, Cloudbase/SHIELD Helicarrier/The Valiant, the Time Lords and much more

All leading into Last of the Time Lords. But wait, how'd we get here first?  Let's get stuck in:

So, three weeks ago, in one of the best opening scenes I've ever seen, we have Captain Jack doing drama!run towards the TARDIS at a speed I think I could muster barefoot on gravel, the Doctor looking suitably dodgy, and Martha being suitably disney-faced as she figures out yet another weird occurance in the world is the Doctor's fault. Queue iconic scene of Jack clinging to the TARDIS like Peter Parker's forgotten his outfit, triggering reams and reams of arguments that can be settled with two words: HAIR GEL. 

So. Futurekind.  I feel a little bit uncomfortable, but if I don't dwell on it, I can see it.  Slightly vampiric, hostile, savage humanoids.  That's not much of a stretch.  My favorite bit though, is hearing how humans have evolved through sentient gas clouds, downloads(!), and other forms before returning to humanoid bodies.  I'm sure these are at least more efficient than ours, considering I didn't see much in the way of food rations or toilets, and that one guy was outrunning, for quite some distance, the futurekind, so I'm guessing these physical forms are a bit more evolved than ours as well.

Chanto, by the way, is the hottest looking insect I've ever seen.  Yes please, with a can of Raid on the side. 

Now Professor Yana.  There's a character.  This guy was so well written and acted, I'm actually tempted to write a bit of fiction in the style of "From the Journal of Professor Yana." You can imagine so much of a history and backstory, brilliant and absent-minded, and everything we loved about the first few Doctors, down to making machine wiring out of food rations.  Brilliant.  Making it even more painful when we all realized just who he was.  I'm wondering though, to HIS memory, he was found as an infant on the shores of the Silver Devastation, but how long ago REALLY was the Master put through the Chameleon Arch?  I'm seeing a big plan here with the Face of Boe, having prior knowledge of future events, assists the Master in Arching, and introduces him to a trusted friend in Chanto, they then work together for some time, as he ages naturally as a human until the events of Utopia. 

The opening of The Sound of Drums has caused some cries of foul from viewers, but I'm letting that one go.  We knew Jack had a teleporter.  We knew the Doctor had the sonic screwdriver, we knew there was a sense of urgency to de-arse that area. It was a good way out, and I honestly didn't see any other way.

As mentioned in other places, the bulk of The Sound of Drums was some serious amount of fanwank, but wow it was fun.  To paraphrase the Doctor, fifty-seven fanfic authors just punched the air.  I hear those were the exact same Time Lord collars from Deadly Assassin.  That dome was gorgeous, and the fact that the Time Lords have a door into the Temporal Vortex just sitting on a beach somewhere is wonderful. I like that there was a black Time Lord in canon as well.  Makes me a little giddy, considering how much I enjoyed Don Warrington's turn as Big Finish's Rassilon.

I'll tackle the issue of pop music now.  Those songs are starting to grow on me.  I don't know if it's the memory of Doctor Who that they bring up, but they're a catchy couple of songs.  It helps that they are actually played in-story (or, as we're all so fond of saying now, diagetically).  They strike me as the sort of songs that would be played by a raving lunatic. 

Anyone notice though, how much Lucy Saxon seems to have changed over this last year?  She seemed rather expressive in Drums, but come Last of, she was sort of...empty. You have to wonder what he's done to her in the last year, why she's stumbling around barely speaking like a zombie, hollow-eyed and limp-armed. The timing of her shooting was odd, too.  Just when it looked like Simm's Master would survive, just when it seemed he'd be stuck in the TARDIS with the Doctor, Lucy shoots him, completely blank-faced and emotionless. There's something more there.  We're going to come back to this moment again, probably sometime in season 4 or 5. Especially considering the red-nailed fingertips picking up the Master's ring. I'll go on record with these two words: Female Master. 

I'm probably the only one, and I'll proudly say it, I loved the Yoda!Doctor.  I thought the CGI was wonderful, and it was a great touch how it still just managed to look like David Tennant, who truly has an iconic face.  And no one need make fun of the outfit.  Yes, we know that he didn't shrink the suit, it was there on the floor with the Yoda!Doctor.  The Master, being the aforementioned lunatic, is the type of guy to wheel his archnemesis around the room in a wheelchair, singing in his ear to too-loud pop music before careening him into a wall, is just the type of guy who, after shrinking him into a talking Yoda doll, would tailor an outfit for him.  After all, a Universe with a super-aged nude Doctor doesn't bear thinking about. It's only common decency, people..

Whew.  I've put it off long enough.  THAT scene. That rising from the dead, christ on a quidditch stick, Jean Grey on disco ball finale. As far as my famous psuedo-scientific explanations go, I can rationalize it.  I won't completely excuse it, but I'm going to throw Russell a dirty look while I explain what happened, from MY point of view.

*ahem* An arts & crafts store exploded on the bridge of the Valiant.  No really, ok I'll be serious now. It's all the Master's fault for setting up a worldwide network of telepathic satellites.  Back in series 2, Reinette tells us that "A door once opened, can be walked through in either direction." Those satellites opened a door that, once opened to influence the people of the world to first Vote Saxon, and later Fear the Master, was walked through by the people of the world.  I'm assuming the advanced LazLabs technology was used to build the satellites as well (c'mon, big place like that? Sure they wouldn't focus all their technologies in one insane basket..).  The Doctor spent the last year tuning his own limited telepathic abilities to that of the Archangel satellites, in effect hacking the satellites so that they'd do what he told them to, once control was wrested away by the people of the Earth.

Now, having said that, it's complete bollocks, because even without mind control being an issue, there's no way you can get a group of people over 12 or so to agree on the same issue. Can't be done. Not even with a suspension of reality.

Special mention goes to two points.  John Simm's unconcious imitation of the Doctor, when he realizes it's all gone horribly wrong, saying "Stoppit!" and "NO NO NO NO NO!!" in the EXACT same tone as Tennant.  If nothing else did the trick, that conveyed that sense of mirroring the two of them.  Second is the death scene.  Wow.  For those few moments alone, I can excuse anything else, up to and including the potteristic resurrection.  Tennant had me bawling as his Doctor realized that he'd just gotten a piece of his people back, only to have it spitefully die in his arms as he begged it not to.  Ouch that hurt. I'm almost afraid to watch it again, lest the waterworks flow again.

Coming (not terribly) soon: The Titanic crashes into the TARDIS.  I'm hoping that somehow, considering there was no water in the TARDIS, no water on the hull of the Titanic, and the fact that it CRASHED INTO THE INTERIOR OF THE SHIP, which is located in another dimension of sorts, this is some odd version of the Titanic floating around in a similar dimension to the interior of the TARDIS.  Could be another TARDIS.  Or, could be an excuse to have a certain big-eared former Time Lord make a cameo.  Wouldn't that be fun? Oh, and NO MORE SANTA ROBOTS!!

The Tachyon TV Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Last of the Time Lords: Throughout the entire three-part finale of the 2007 series, the entire population of the viewing audience was thinking one word, over and over again.  Ironically David Tennant summed it up at the end of the final episode: WHAT?? WHAT? WHAT??!?!

I Can't Decide

I was only disappointed on two counts after watching Last of the Timelords:

The Doctor didn’t regenerate into Barney from Totally Doctor Who, or somebody else less smug.

There wasn’t a cameo by Kylie at the end of the episode.

After watching the episode twice, so far, I am still not too sure what I think about Last of the Timelords. I don’t think that it was a bad episode, nor do I believe that it was one of the best episodes of the series. It was just ok, much like the series finale of series 2. It certainly wasn’t as good as The Sound of Drums or even Utopia but it was enjoyable and was nothing like anything else on television.

Once again David Tennant was overshadowed in his own show, which is not a bad thing if you are still not that fond of his Doctor, but is it a good thing for the show itself. I mean he spent some of the episode sat in a wheelchair; some of the episode as the bastard son of Gollum and Dobby the House Elf and only really did anything in the last five minutes when he suddenly became a god like figure, because all of the human race was thinking about him. I mean how does that work exactly?

On the subject of the Gollum/Dobby version of the Doctor who else wished that he had remained like for the rest of the episode, and probably the entirety of the fourth series as well? Just me then.

The Doctor didn’t regenerate into Barney from Totally Doctor Who, or somebody else less smug.

It was good that they used the Master’s plan to defeat him, which was how it often went in the Pertwee era back when the Master was good but I am not sure if I am a fan of this pressing a reset button at the end of the story so that the events in the episode itself never actually happened like they did in the Star Trek Voyager two part story The Year of Hell. I mean in both cases that was the only thing that could have possibly happened to make everything all right at the end of the episode, so that the series could have carried on.

In Doctor Who’s case that is even more important as there are two spin-off series to think about as well. I mean where would that leave Torchwood and Sarah Jane if the Doctor hadn’t have reversed time? In the case of Torchwood some people might have wished that he hadn’t had, but really what else could they have done?

Won’t the Doctor start getting random calls from Martha’s friends asking her if she wants to go down the pub for a drink?

It was certainly different when they had a whole year gap between the first part and the second part of a two parter, surely the longest Doctor Who story ever, in terms of the duration of the story itself - ie a year and a couple of days - (on television that is) but did that really add anything to the story that it wouldn’t have had if they had just carried on when The Sound of Drums ended?

I actually think that the idea of a weapon that could kill a Time Lord stone dead was much more interesting and likely than the fact that Martha would travel the whole world just to tell people a story about the Doctor, a man she is in love with, who hadn’t ever, and probably never would, give her a second look. I mean, as if!

I don’t blame Martha for deciding to leave at the end of the episode. I would have done the same thing if I were her. I mean you travel the whole world and all the person you have done it all for has to say is thanks! The ungrateful bastard! It is obvious that we haven’t seen the last of her, as she gave him her mobile phone, but won’t the Doctor start getting random calls from Martha’s friends asking her if she wants to go down the pub for a drink, or from her mother or sister? Imagine that! I hope she gets a new phone and changes her number!

Freema shone in this episode and I hope that she appears in most of the episodes of the next series as she was been one of the strongest elements in this series and it was quite sad to see her leave at the end of the story, even though as far as her relationship with the Doctor has gone, leaving was the right thing to do at the moment in time.

John Simm was fantastic as the Master again and he has been the highlight of this two part story. He was like the Master was meant to be, just like the Doctor but madder and badder, the mirror universe Doctor as it were and was a great deal of fun in both of these episodes and also very, very creepy and evil. I don’t believe that this is the last we have seen of the Master.

Does that mean that all of the previous Master’s had the Doctor Who theme in their heads?

I don’t think that we will see John Simm reprising the role but the fact that we saw a woman’s hand (probably Lucy Saxon) picking up the Master’s ring from the ashes of the funeral pyre at the end of the episode and heard the Master laughing, shows that the Master’s story is far from over.

The ring is significant I think and that might be what brings the Master back into the series in the future. We probably haven’t seen the last of Lucy Saxon either. My girlfriend is convinced that there is a lot more than her that meets the eye. She pointed out that it was the Master who had hypnotised Lucy to shoot him if things worked out the way that they did and when you watch it she still seems to be under his spell when she shoots him, so we have definitely not seen the last of Lucy Saxon.

It makes more sense than Jack being the Doctor’s son, or his father, or his second cousin twice-removed.

That is one of the things that still puzzles me from this episode. Who is Lucy Saxon? Is she human or is she an alien who was working with the Master? She had very little to do in this episode and it looked as though the Master had been beating her up (spot the shiner she was sporting and the way she was moving throughout the episode), although that might have all been an act on her part. Perhaps her joining in with the chanting of the Doctor’s name was also part of her plan? Why did we never find out about the drumming. Still we don’t know why the Master had constant drumming in his head. Perhaps we will never know. Does that mean that all of the previous Master’s had the Doctor Who theme in their heads?

The biggest revelation in the episode seems to be that the Face of Boe is in fact Captain Jack in the future. I mean this sort of makes some sense to me, as it would explain why the Face called the Doctor an old friend, and how he knew that the Doctor was not the last of the time lords. He had also been pregnant, which was one of Jack’s first lines in Torchwood, so that also still works for me. Having said that the Face of Boe actually died in Gridlock but Jack apparently cannot die, so how does that fit? It was also said that the other boe creatures only lived shorter life spans and that nobody understood why the Face of Boe had lived for that long so if you take the boe creatures to be humans and Jack to be a human who has lived a lot longer that humans would normally do, that also makes sense. Still it makes more sense than Jack being the Doctor’s son, or his father, or his second cousin twice-removed.

Last of the Timelords was a roller coaster ride and I still don’t quite get it. I enjoyed it and it was definitely the best thing on telly that week but it wasn’t the best episode of this series. I think it will take a couple of more viewings before I can firmly say whether I thought the episode was bad or not. I certainly did not hate it.

Paradoxical Overnights...

OG is reporting overnight viewing figures of 8.0M, a 39.1% share. Top of the shop all round by some margin...

Last of the SCRIPTS GIVEN BY RUSSEL! PLEASE MAKE IT SO!

A short review this time. It was OK....UNTIL the resolution. It made me squirm, it was sooooo uncomfortable. Everyone thinking of "Doctor" at the same moment and the Doctor rising like a Phoenix but with a really uncomfortable underlining feeling that the Doctor is supposed to be Jesus (peace be upon him) for a few moments. That was bad! The finding of the ring was extremely contrived although it makes sense why whats-her-face would shot the Master. No this episode was shit! Started off good mainly because of Martha. There were times when I felt she was on-par with Ace: who is my fave so that is a huge compliment from me (until the moment it was explained she was going around the world talking about some bloke called the Doctor. Most people just take in the sites!). The resolution was awful and the fact that this episode sees one of the best companions go makes it even more crappy. Although I did have a feeling she would stay with her family.

Tough Love

I have just one thing to say to you, Russell. And you know what that is…

Last of the Time Lords

Oh, he’s a one is that Russell T Davies, isn’t he? Hug him or throttle him? Problem is that you often want to do both; and I frequently find myself wanting to do the two at the same time. How does a man who is responsible for rekindling my very childhood end up constantly causing my follicles to be strained to the limit as I clutch my hair in disbelief for all the wrong reasons? We have so much to be grateful to RTD for that I really don’t have to restate those reasons here. Which makes any damning indictment of any of his episodes all the more difficult - all the more painful - to do.

But that’s not gonna stop me…

And the worst thing is that it all starts so well. Opening one year later from the events of ‘The Sound of Drums’ not only avoids all the pitfalls of the cliff-hanger get-out (basically there isn’t one, shit’s happened and we’re just gonna have to deal with it) but it also shifts the viewer’s expectations a fraction; leaving them on the back foot and ready for the possibility of literally anything happening over the next fifty minutes. And hey, if it worked for the end of Battlestar Gallactica’s second season, then it sure as hell raises the stakes for our show too. So far, so bloody promising.

RTD - hug him or throttle him?

And the fact that our Martha Jones has become some kind of Che Guevara resistance figure, raised to the status of mythical deliverer from the shit sandwich that mankind has found itself in once again, doesn’t exactly hurt either. I still find it hard to understand what some fans have got against Freema Agyeman, apart from the heinous crime of her not being Billie Piper. Because her performances as Martha have been pretty much exemplary in my opinion. And the reduced domestic baggage hasn’t really been to her detriment either. So if anyone is still pining for the former Mrs Chris Evans after this display, then I’m afraid there’s no hope for you. Freema - and Martha - are the only cast-iron certainties to come out of this episode. And I very much hope that that sojourn back home isn’t extended much beyond the Christmas special.

Still on the good points - don’t worry, if you think this particular curmudgeonly piner for the ‘classic’ series has gone soft, then stay tuned - and we’ve even got a couple of brand new, well rounded characters introduced right at the death. On the one hand there’s Tom Milligan - brawn and brains for the Athena card generation - who makes a strong impression in his brief turn as Martha’s resistance contact. And on the other we’ve Professor Docherty (who similarly autistic viewers may remember as Don Brennan’s squeeze from Corrie about ten years back) who is so instantly dotty, cynical and likeable that it makes her inevitable betrayal of Martha and the human race actually matter for once. Who’da thunked that RTD could write such memorable parts in an episode when you could actually forgive him for producing sketchy caricature because - let’s face it - who gives a toss about real people when all the pyrotechnics are so good. We live in strange times indeed…

what have some fans have got against Freema Agyeman, apart from her not being Billie Piper?

And while my misgivings about John Simm’s performance as the Master as some kind of childish delinquent who’s been on the E numbers is well catalogued elsewhere, I’m happy (not to say surprised) to say that he’s never less than compelling to watch here. Even that opening scene of him gliding into the boardroom, before snogging his misses and playing his latest favourite pop tune had a heightened, macabre air that very much put in mind the classic Bette Davis flick Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Pushing the aged Doctor around in his wheelchair, the Master still needs the Doctor in his life to make his own miserable existence seem bearable; a universe without the Doctor, of course, being a concept scarce thinking about. And the moment when he reduces him to even more aged, even more Gollum proportions is about as unexpected a point in this show as I can currently think of. Have we ever seen the Doctor so forlorn, so humiliated by his arch nemesis? I honestly thought that the Beeb had finally pulled the ultimate coup and that this was Tennant’s last stand after all; making the ‘re’ word pass through my mind more than once.

Okay, it’s about here that things start to wobble. The revelation that the Toclafane are just advanced, cyborgised remnants of the future humans from ‘Utopia’ just had me going ‘Meh!’ (I still think a resurrected Time Lord society would have made more dramatic, not to mention emotional, sense). And while you can take all the Paradox Machine stuff with a pinch of salt - somehow the Master jury-rigs the TARDIS so that a race from the future can wipe out its ancestors without also wiping themselves out - it’s still far too resonant of the bullshit science ethic that this show (and RTD’s episodes in particular) rely on far, far too much. But I was still willing to suspend disbelief until the moment Martha revealed the Doctor’s secret plan. Gone was the slightly plausible McGuffin of her assembling a chemical bullet that not even a Time Lord could regenerate himself out of. And instead we’re left with some pseudo-religious twaddle about the Doctor resurrecting himself from the combined psychic network of a few million humans; utilising the Master’s Archangel satellites like Yuri Geller getting everyone to touch a picture of David Beckham’s foot so that it would heal before the 2002 World Cup. Forget about reaching for the tissues, I was left clutching for the nearest bucket.

Have we ever seen the Doctor so forlorn, so humiliated by his arch nemesis?

And from that point on things unravelled pretty fast. The Paradox Machine is destroyed by…bullets? The Doctor and the Master get to wrestle around on some Welsh hillside until everyone realises that particular subplot isn’t going anywhere. And the whole last year and a day gets conveniently reversed so that not only does everyone forget making an arse of themselves chanting ‘Doctor’ in the high street, but any drama is lost and any lessons forgotten as RTD presses the biggest reset button since the Eye of Harmony closed in the TV Movie. Jesus Russell, talk about clutching defeat from the jaws of victory, eh?

And even worse than that? The fact that after this we have one of the most affecting scenes in the whole history of the show being wasted on an episode which has gone tits up big time. For me it makes perfect sense that the Doctor forgives the Master despite all that he’s done; and the moment when the two former friends clutch each other like the family we always suspected they were would have left me wailing had I not still been shaking my head in disbelief. Tennant and Simm play it perfectly too; the Doctor willing to forgive anyone anything so that he can have a second chance with his own species; the Master finally realising that the only defeat that he can inflict on the Doctor is his own death. There really shouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house, but I couldn’t see for the vomit.

RTD presses the biggest reset button since the Eye of Harmony closed in the TV Movie

So where to now? With the Master seemingly despatched on Darth Vader’s funeral pyre (still, not exactly the first time he’s been burned to a crisp, is it?) and everyone bar Martha and co blissfully ignorant of the fact they spent a whole year under the rule of a megalomaniac, there’s just the usual end of season dotting of ‘I’s and crossing of ‘T’s. Not to mention the suggestion that the Face of Boe could be Captain Jack when all those talent shows have dried up and he’s reduced to extolling wisdom from the year Five Billion. Or something. Still, Martha’s farewell is nicely handled - not Goodbye just Au Revoir I suspect, despite all those tabloid stories - and while the Master faces a Ming the Merciless-style resurrection at the hands of a lady with red nail polish, the Doctor makes his way to a Christmas Day rendezvous with the most infamous ocean liner.  In an episode which is sure not to answer the following poser: how does the Titanic crash through the side of a trans-dimensional machine whose interior exists in another dimension to its exterior? Answers please on a postcard to BBC Wales…

Leaving me with just that one, final thing to say to Russell T Davies: ‘I forgive you’.

Next Time: My Hearts Will Go On, as Doctor Who gets all James Cameron and we board the doomed liner with Kylie in tow. Wonder if she gets to play the ‘Rose’ that Kate Winslett did..?

(The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Last of the Time Lords: DWAS plans for a psychic network of fans chanting ‘RTD Must Go!’ were denied by Andrew Beech yesterday)