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The End of Time, Part One & The End of Time, Part Two

Writer: Russell T. Davies | Director: Euros Lyn

UK Broadcast Date: 25th December 2009 & 1st January 2010

101-1 101-2 101-3
101-4 101-5 101-6

Synopsis

Suffering from flashbacks of his nightmare the night before, Wilf visits a church. Once inside he notices a stained glass window scene. A woman appears behind him and tells him that it depicts the "Legend of the Blue Box" before mysteriously disappearing again. Wilf decides that he must find the Doctor.

Summoned by the Ood, the Doctor lands on the Ood Sphere one hundred years after his previous visit and is amazed at the Ood's rapid evolution. The Ood too are having nightmares, which they share with the Doctor. A sense of foreboding fills the Doctor as he sees the Master, Wilf and Donna flash before his eyes.

As soon as the vision is finished, the Doctor rushes back to Earth knowing that the end of time is coming. But is the Master's rebirth just one small part of the event he must prevent?

"For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!"

Memorable Quotes

Narrator: It is said that in the final days of Planet Earth everyone had bad dreams.

Ood: The darkness heralds only one thing – the end of time itself.

Master: They’re not going to think like me, they're going to become me.

Doctor: Worst. Rescue. Ever!

Doctor: The link is broken. Back into the Time War, Rassilon; back to hell.

Eleventh Doctor: Hair - I'm a girl! No, no, I'm not a girl!

Review

I thought Part One was a mixed bag. The opening scene in which Wilf visits a Church is very well played by Bernard Cribbins. Wilf is given few lines and mainly expresses his worries and hope at the Doctor's return through his expressions. It's a well written scene that shows that Russell T. Davies is capable of writing dialogue-light emotional scenes well. Regrettably, this has been a rarity during Russell's period at the helm. He has instead focused on very vocal emotion.

The other well-written scenes in the opening episode were the Doctor's meeting with the Ood and the scene in the Café where Wilf pleaded with him to restore Donna's memory. Both were emotive scenes that showed the Doctor's character well.

Unfortunately, the episode had several flaws. Uppermost of which was the Doctor’s relationship with the Master. The Doctor acted a mother desperate to prevent her wayward son ending up in jail – the staple of many a BBC Three documentary series. It was an odd relationship that prevented the Doctor from taking any meaningful action to prevent "the end of time" during the episode.

Although both the re-emergence of the Time Lords and the Master's new-found superpowers annoyed me on first viewing, they didn't so much on the second, so I will reserve judgement on them until after Part Two...

I thought Part Twowas another mixed bag of an episode. My main complaint was the amount of redundancy. Donna's inclusion was redundant because she only had one short scene before the Tenth Doctor's goodbye tour. One could also argue that, because the Time Lords only managed to come to Earth for a stand-off with the Doctor, they were also largely redundant.

Of course, what could be considered the biggest waste of time was the Tenth Doctor's goodbye tour. My preference would have been for the Doctor to regenerate in the Radiation vault. However, if by saying goodbye to Rose, Martha, Jack et. al, they are left firmly in the past by the new production team, then I have no issues with it. I give credit to Russell T. Davies for allowing the Doctor to see Rose before their first meeting because it avoided a similar ending to that of Doomsday.

Finally: the regeneration scene itself. The TARDIS's near total destruction is the first on-screen nod to a completely new HD-friendly TARDIS interior, so it'll be interesting to see how the new Doctor rebuilds the TARDIS. Some fans are dismayed that the style of regeneration was exactly like the previous one, but I'm not overly fussed because there is not an endless amount of regeneration styles that can be adopted.

Overall, The End of Time is OK. Had the Time Lords' involvement in the story been better developed then it could have been the first of two climaxes. I felt that the story was merely a means to an end to accommodate the end of the Tenth Doctor.

Doctor Who returns in the Spring with a new Doctor. I can't wait!

Reviewer: Dan Ludlow