Tag: The Master

Timestamp #301: Ascension of the Cybermen & The Timeless Children

Michael Falkner3 Comments

Doctor Who: Ascension of the Cybermen
Doctor Who: The Timeless Children
(2 episodes, s12e09-10, 2020)

Timestamp 301 Ascension Timeless Children

The story that broke so many fans.

Ascension of the Cybermen

In the depths of space, Ashad speaks of the Cybermen. The mechanical menace has finally been defeated after winning a billion battles, and after a reign of terror, the empire has fallen. But that which is dead can live again in the hands of a believer.

The adventure plays out in two stories: One follows our heroes on a refugee planet in the far future, and the other follows a mysterious man named Brendan in Ireland.

Brendan’s Tale—

In mid-twentieth century Ireland, a man named Patrick finds a baby in the middle of the road. He takes the baby home to his wife Meg, and together they report the incident to the Garda police. With no leads, they couple decides to take care of him until the parents are found. After a year, they adopt the boy and name him Brendan.

Brendan grows up, attends school, and learns to farm. He applies to join the Gardaí and is welcomed into the police force by the sergeant who met him as a baby. While on duty one day, Brendan chases a thief named Michael near a cliff. Michael pulls a revolver and forces Brendan toward the cliff. Brendan is shot and falls to his death, but by some miracle, he springs back to life.

Brendan attributes it to luck, but everyone else is confused and afraid. Nevertheless, Brendan is awarded with a commendation. Many years later, Brendan retires from the Gardaí and is faced by his father and his sergeant, both of whom have not aged. They take him to the back office where he is strapped into a chair and has his memory wiped while he screams.

The Refugees’ Tale—

The Doctor, Graham, Ryan, and Yaz follow Shelley‘s coordinates to a planet in the far future. The Doctor parks a half mile out and breaks the news of humanity’s near extinction at the hands of the Cybermen. They find the last remaining human settlement comprised of seven surviving humans. The travelers arrive just in time to help establish a defense against the arriving Cyberman fleet.

With the help of Feekat, Ravio, Ethan, Yedlarmi, Fuskle, and Bescot, Team TARDIS gets to work: Graham sets up a neural inhibitor system that can restore Cyberman emotions; Yaz builds a particle projector to attack the automatons with gold dust; and Ryan establishes a forcefield. Unfortunately, a swarm of Cyberdrone heads arrive and destroy the gadgets. They also kill Fuskle and an older woman.

The drones leave and the Doctor orders the survivors to escape in their ship. She tells her companions to join them since the TARDIS is too far away. She promises to find them after she holds off the invading force. As the humans escape, Ashad confronts the Doctor with two additional drones. The drones pursue the companions to the ship, and Ryan is left behind with Feekat and Ethan as the rickety craft takes off.

The Doctor prepares a grenade as Ethan distracts Ashad. Ashad calls Ethan’s bluff and kills Feekat, then tells Ethan to carry his message of the Cybermen’s power. The Doctor uses her grenade and runs with Ethan and Ryan to the nearby Cyberfighters. The group hotwires Ashad’s ship and rockets into space.

The refugees aboard the gravraft limp toward Ko Sharmus and a phenomenon known as the Boundary, which can teleport people to random locations in the universe. On the Cyberfighter, Ethan also sets course for Ko Sharmus. Ethan talks about his upbringing and lessons about destroying cyber tech. Ashad makes contact and threatens to destroy humanity, even if it costs him his imperfect life. He believes that he was chosen to resurrect the Cybermen, and the death of everything is harbored within him.

The gravraft’s systems fail, leaving the ship on emergency power. A series of collisions prompt Yaz to look outside and find a Cyberman graveyard. A ship sits dormant in the debris and Graham convinces the survivors to use their remaining power to board it. They succeed, but as the ship powers up around them, Ashad and his guards arrive in a Cyberfighter.

The Doctor’s craft arrives at Ko Shamus. The planet has a single temporary settlement, and Ko Shamus is the elderly man who maintains it. He is stunned to see living humans and explains that he helps survivors pass through the Boundary. He fled with a handful of others, but as the word spread, more survivors sought sanctuary.

Graham, Yaz, and the refugees explore the Cyberman war carrier. They reactivate it and decide to use the ship as a mobile settlement to rescue what’s left of humanity. Graham and Ravio explore the rest of the ship and discover millions of dormant, battle-ready drones of a new design. The pair runs from Ashad, returning to the control center as the team continues to Ko Shamus despite the threat. Meanwhile, Ashad begins the ascension with his new army.

The Doctor, Ryan, and Ethan investigate the Boundary. It manifests as a rippling sheet of purple energy. As the carrier approaches the planet, Yaz calls the Doctor and explains the situation. The awakened Cybermen rampage through the ship and the Doctor urges the humans to evacuate. Unfortunately, they are trapped.

Then the two stories come together as the Boundary clears.

Through the portal, the Doctor sees the Citadel of Gallifrey. The Master leaps through the Boundary and tells the Doctor that everything is about to change… forever.

The Timeless Children

The Master forces the Doctor to join him in Gallifrey. If she doesn’t, he will kill the humans. As she crosses the Boundary, the Cyberman carrier arrives at the planet. Once on Gallifrey, the Master gloats about burning Gallifery to the ground and then takes the Doctor on a tour of the ruins.

On the carrier, the humans hide in a storage area after Bescot is killed. Graham develops a plan to use Cyberman suits as disguises. The team sets to work removing the biological remains and disconnecting the neural nets. Meanwhile, Ko Sharmus shows Ryan and Ethan his limited weapons supply.

In the Citadel, the Master is notified that the Cybermen have reached the Boundary. He invites Ashad to join him on Gallifrey and to leave some Cybermen behind to destroy Ko Sharmus, Ethan, and Ryan.

Graham and Yaz take a moment to talk about what happens if they don’t survive. He is quite proud of her and impressed by her resolve. With a tear in her eye, she jokes that he’s not so bad either. As their team puts the plan into motion, Ashad is alerted to their presence. Ashad searches for the humans but cannot find them in their disguises, and he gives up when the ship enters the Boundary.

The Doctor questions why the Master would surrender Gallifrey to the Cybermen. He deflects, directing her to the Matrix instead. He is driven by an unbelievable truth that he discovered in Gallifrey’s history, and he traps the Doctor in a paralysis field so he can share that truth with her. He sends her deep into the Matrix with a promise that it will hurt.

The Master presents a history of Gallifrey. In the time before the Time Lords, the Shobogans were the native population of the planet. An explorer named Tecteun found a gateway on another planet, with an orphaned child at its base. Tecteun and the child explored the cosmos before returning to Gallifrey, where she ran experiments trying to determine where the child came from. One day, the child fell off a cliff, but instead of dying, the child regenerated.

This was the first time regeneration happened on Gallifrey.

On Ko Sharmus’s planet, the humans wage war on the Cybermen. Ryan takes out several with a basketball-shaped bomb, but the drones keep marching. Meanwhile, the carrier literally lands on the Citadel. Ashad meets with the Master and introduces the Death Particle, a device created by the Cyberium to wipe out all organic life. Ashad has purged the new Cybermen of organic components in preparation for his takeover of the universe, but the Master offers an alternative to fully robotic life. He accompanies Ashad while his consciousness remains with the Doctor.

The Doctor’s story continues as Tecteun experiments on the child, forcing the child to regenerate time and again. Finally, Tecteun cracks the mystery and injects herself with the solution. Tecteun regenerates. With this new technology, Time Lord civilization exploded with the Timeless Child at its core, limiting each individual to twelve regenerations.

The Doctor asks what happened to the Timeless Child. The Master tells her that she is that child.

Meanwhile, Ko Sharmus, Ethan, and Ryan continue their guerilla campaign. They take out several drones, but Ethan is eventually captured. He is almost executed, but Graham’s team destroys the execution squad. Ryan is surprised to see his friends.

Ashad and the Master arrive in the Cybermen storage bays. The Master uses his Tissue Compress Eliminator to kill Ashad and release the Cyberium. He absorbs the Cyberium and pockets Ashad to keep the Death Particle nearby.

The Doctor awakens on a vast green landscape. She struggles with the revelations but the Master promises his story is true. He continues the story with Tecteun and the child becoming part of a secret group called the Division. Despite the Time Lord philosophy of non-interference, the group intervenes in time when necessary. The vision flashes in parallel with Brendan’s story, then stops altogether because the files were redacted. It is impossible to tell how much was lost, but what remains was encoded with a perception filter that looks like Brendan’s story.

The Master wonders how many lives the Doctor has lived.

As the Doctor revives from her experience, the physical version of the Master reveals that he kept the corpses of every Time Lord he killed. He has combined the power of regeneration with the durability of the Cybermen.

He has created CyberMasters – festooned in Time Lord regalia and armed with the power of regeneration – and he leads them into a conquest of the universe. Meanwhile, the human survivors cross the Boundary and arrive on Gallifrey.

The Doctor’s mind swims in the Matrix’s redacted void when the Fugitive Doctor appears. The Thirteenth Doctor wonders about her life before their First, but the Fugitive Doctor tells her it doesn’t matter. They’ve never been limited by who they were before, and the Thirteenth Doctor has the power to stop the Master now. But first, she must harness the power of the Timeless Child to overload the Matrix. She unleashes the memories of the Doctor into the Matrix and blows out the paralysis field.

She comes to and finds her companions and the human survivors standing over her. The humans explain their plan to destroy the carrier, and the Doctor devises a plan to use the Death Particle to destroy the CyberMasters. The humans place explosive charges throughout the ship while Team TARDIS tracks down the Master. They find Ashad’s miniaturized form and the Death Particle, and the Doctor telepathically offers one last meeting with the Master in the Citadel.

Unfortunately, the bombs are activated early, so everyone has to run. The ship is destroyed as the Doctor ushers everyone into a TARDIS. She asks Ko Sharmus for a bomb – it only has a hand detonator – and explains her plan to unleash the Death Particle on Gallifrey. She sets the TARDIS for the twenty-first century and sends the humans to Earth.

The Doctor returns to the Matrix Chamber on her suicide mission. There she finds the Master and his CyberMasters. The Master goads her but the Doctor doesn’t fall for it. His revelations have strengthened her. She pulls out the bomb and mini-Ashad, but before she can pull the trigger, Ko Sharmus arrives. He sent the Cyberium into the past, and he takes the detonator as his penance for not hiding it well enough. As the Doctor runs for a TARDIS, the CyberMasters shoot Ko Sharmus and he detonates the Death Particle.

The new Cyber-Empire is dead.

The humans arrive on Earth and their TARDIS disguises itself as a house. The Doctor materializes on the refugee planet near her own TARDIS, and the TARDIS she used to get there disguises itself as a tree. Unfortunately for her, three Judoon materialize inside the TARDIS and arrest the Doctor, finally closing the cold case on the fugitive.

The Doctor is taken to a maximum security prison to serve a life sentence, and her companions have no idea if she survived.

It’s the most controversial story in modern Doctor Who history… and I like it just as much now as I did when it first aired.

I understand the complaints. Fans of most major sci-fi franchises don’t like to see things meddled with. From Star Trek to Doctor Who, the complaints remind me of the oft-memed scene from The Incredibles 2: “I don’t know that way. Why would they change math? Math is math. Math. Is. Math!”

But… here’s the reality check. Doctor Who has never been consistent with continuity, and there are several extensive parody lists on Reddit about how changes in the franchise have “ruined the show forever”. Yet, somehow, the franchise continues on even under periodic threat of cancellation (in various definitions of the word).

Of the complaints I have seen regarding the Timeless Child revelation:

  • “This change disrespects William Hartnell.” How? Show your work. Because his stories still exist (even in telesnap form) and are even being preserved in high-definition format. If anything disrespects the legacy of William Hartnell’s work on Doctor Who, it’s how “An Unearthly Child” won’t be available because of Stef Coburn’s efforts. Otherwise, Hartnell’s legacy as the First Doctor remains intact.
  • “This change removes the mystery from the Doctor.” If so, please explain the history of the pre-Hartnell incarnations. Because all I see is massive story potential for the Doctor’s time with the Division and the implications of whether or not the Time Lords deserve to come back at all. We already knew they were arrogant and self-righteous, but now we get some context behind the regeneration limit. I also look at the events of The Time of the Doctor and how the Time Lords view the Doctor with a different lens, especially after thirteen incarnations risked their lives to save Gallifrey from utter destruction. Those Time Lords either gave the Doctor another set of regenerations or unlocked the Timeless Child’s potential that they had previously tried to stifle, allowing the Doctor to be who they truly are. In the end, the mystery is still there, effectively fulfilling the so-called “Cartmel Masterplan.”
  • “The Morbius Doctors aren’t real.” To the contrary, it was Philip Hinchcliffe’s intention that they were previous incarnations. The dialogue is also pretty clear: “Back! Back to your beginning!” followed by the eight faces. What happens on the television screen is part of the official continuity unless retconned later, and showrunner intentions fall into that same category for me. Showrunners are in charge of the show’s legacy while they hold the reins. Fans don’t have that responsibility. Philip Hinchcliffe has even seemed amused that fans ignored the obvious in  Morbius but readily attached themselves to the regeneration limits a mere four stories later.
  • “The Timeless Child isn’t canon.” We’ve already covered that. Unless retconned later, what happens on the screen during the show is official continuity.

Boiling it down, fans just don’t like the change. While that’s their prerogative, it’s also a personal choice. I don’t agree with that choice, but I respect it. We all need to remember that fan opinion is not continuity.

That said, it’s not all puppy dogs and marshmallows for me. I do have issues with the revelation.

First, is it even true? The revelation is provided by the Master, the man who massacred his entire civilization and is known for lying. Even if he is telling the Doctor the truth, is it based on his own interpolation of redacted events? Even with the Doctor having lives before the First Doctor, could the Timeless Child be someone else? Say, Susan, for example?

Imagine that storytelling potential. Taking Susan away from Gallifrey to protect her and remove some leverage from the Time Lords. Especially considering that Chris Chibnall’s screenplay suggests that the Time Lords who join Tecteun at the dawn of their society could be Rassilon and Omega.

10:27:40 INT. GALLIFREYAN CORRIDOR – DAY

TECTEUN walking down a corridor — at the far end, two Gallifreyan figures (with the collars up) in silhouette. We can assume these might be Rassilon and Omega.

I’d buy that. It would be a stronger story, leave some room for future work, and make the Doctor a bit more vulnerable in the future. It also provides a dramatic reason for the Time Lords to return. Note that the script says “assume” and that these characters were not credited on screen, so we can’t verify that it’s true.

As far as what happened to the Time Lords? I don’t like it. It feels disgusting, which makes it work dramatically. The fact that I physically recoiled from seeing Cybermen that can regenerate tells me that the Master is a villain of the highest order. While Missy had a path to redemption during Series 10, I don’t think this incarnation has a path back. He’s a monster.

I had a similar feeling toward Tecteun and her experimentation on the Timeless Child. She literally killed several incarnations of the child to unlock the secrets of regeneration for her own selfish desires. Yuck.

I also don’t like how the Timeless Child revelation was handled from a writing and production standpoint. The entire sequence with the Doctor in the Matrix was handled in a “tell don’t show” manner. I think it would have been better for the Doctor to experience Brendan’s story in A Christmas Carol format, then have the Master fill in the blanks in a much shorter manner. Having Brendan’s story in Ascension of the Cybermen was more confusing and probably made viewers more defensive from the start. A little rebalancing between the two episodes would have worked wonders.

Otherwise, I liked the balance of action and drama in this pair of episodes. The Doctor doesn’t have all the answers and has to figure things out with us. The companions get a huge chunk of the spotlight, and everyone has to use their wits and smarts to save the day. And Yaz getting some dues was a great thing to see.

In terms of franchise lore, there wasn’t much in terms of callbacks aside from what has already been mentioned. The Timeless Children does have the most extensive use of archive footage in Doctor Who at the time of airing. It’s also the first time clips from William Hartnell’s and Patrick Troughton’s eras were shown in full color.

It also features the first on-screen female-to-male regeneration.

Finally, for something to chew on, this adventure fulfills several elements of the Series Nine Hybrid prophecy: A hybrid creature (the Master and the Cyberium) stood over the ruins of Gallifrey and unraveled the Web of Time (the Master hacked into the Matrix and revealed the Timeless Child secret), and broke a billion billion hearts to heal its own (the slaughter of the Time Lords).

Probably not Chibnall’s intent, but a nice parallel nonetheless.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #294: Spyfall

Michael Falkner7 Comments

Doctor Who: Spyfall
(2 episodes, s12e01-02, 2020)

Timestamp 294 Spyfall

Custard cream, shaken, not stirred.

Part One

In various locations worldwide – Ivory Coast, over the Pacific Ocean near Tokyo, and Moscow – operatives are attacked by strange creatures that emerge from the walls. Meanwhile, Team TARDIS is getting some much-needed downtime.

Ryan is spending time with his friend Tibo, Yaz is packing for her next trip, Graham visits the doctor for a checkup after a procedure four years prior, and the Doctor has her TARDIS on a garage car lift while she performs maintenance. All of them are interrupted by official-looking men in black suits.

While the team is driven to a mysterious location, a red beam shoots out of the GPS unit and vaporizes the driver. The car then starts acting on its own with an ominous message that everyone inside will die in five seconds. After trying to solve the problem with her sonic screwdriver, the Doctor eventually grabs the rearview mirror and reflects the killer beam back into the GPS. With the program stopped, the Doctor stops the car just before it falls off the roadway.

As the team recovers, a voice identifying as C convinces the Doctor to come to MI6 in London. The team arrives with the TARDIS at Vauxhall Cross and is met by C, who mistakes Graham for the Doctor because of the extensive files on the Time Lord. The Doctor quips that she’s had an upgrade and C tells her that he’s been authorized by every security agency around the world to ask for her help.

Intelligence officers worldwide have been attacked. Their DNA has been rewritten, leaving the body as a shell to hold whatever remains. C offers the team some briefcases of spy equipment and a dossier on Daniel Barton, the founder of VOR, a modern technology company that is more powerful than most nations. The Doctor asks for C’s best man, someone named O, but C has fired him because UNIT and Torchwood can handle things.

Unfortunately, those organizations are no longer viable options, so the Doctor sends a voicemail to O to get his location. She receives a fish image in reply, and soon after, C is killed by a sniper. Aliens begin phasing through the walls and the team runs for the TARDIS.

The Doctor uses the steganography of the fish picture to track the agent to the Australian Outback. They escape just in time as one of the beings was phasing into the TARDIS, something that the Doctor didn’t know was possible. The Doctor decides to send Yaz and Ryan to VOR while she and Graham meet with O.

Yaz and Ryan head to San Francisco while posing as journalists to meet with Daniel Barton. Yaz uses a bioscanner and Ryan duplicates Barton’s badge with his spy equipment. The interview is cut short by a phone call, but Barton invites them to his birthday party tomorrow to get a better profile of him. Yaz is concerned because the bioscanner shows that Barton is only 97% human.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Graham are met by O and agents Seesay and Browning. Inside the house, they discuss the situation and O’s history of chasing alien incursions, but O is cautious because the threat will likely follow her. Later that night, the movement sensors start tripping. Luminescent figures attack the two agents and surround the house, and O’s security field takes out all of them but one. The last one enters the house and is trapped by a glass cage. When it speaks to the Doctor, it says that it is from far beyond her understanding. It’s also ready to take over the universe.

Yaz and Ryan use Barton’s security credentials to access his office. As Yaz copies his laptop drive, Barton returns, forcing the amateur spies to hide. He tells two glowing figures to show themselves and then discusses a project before Barton leaves. As Ryan and Yaz get ready to leave, another glowing figure attacks Yaz and makes her disappear. Ryan is left with no option but to run.

Yaz wakes up alone in an alien landscape filled with giant stalks. As the Doctor and Ryan interact with the glowing creatures, Yaz is surrounded by white light and transported to the glass cage at O’s house. As Ryan calls the Doctor, she gathers the team. The next morning, Ryan comforts Yaz while O discusses Graham’s knowledge of the Doctor. The Doctor finds alien code in Barton’s system files that reveals the intruders’ locations around the world. O recommends taking their concerns directly to Barton at his birthday party.

Joined by O, the team takes the TARDIS to Barton’s home. They don dinner jackets and hack the guest list, but when they go inside, Barton receives the footage from Yaz and Ryan’s sneaking about. The Doctor confronts Barton, but Barton denies everything before leaving in a car. The Doctor, Graham, and Yaz pursue on motorcycles with Ryan and O as passengers. Barton shoots at them and escapes to his private jet, but the group hides in the hangar with the plan to jump onboard.

O claims that he was never a good runner, but the Doctor calls his bluff. The O that she knows was a champion sprinter. Once they board the plane, O reveals that he has been the spymaster all along.

Or rather, the spy… Master.

The Doctor’s old friend and enemy took O’s form – killed him on his first day at MI6 and shrunk him – and has been controlling Barton and the aliens. His house is his TARDIS, Barton has vanished, and a sonic-proof bomb counts down in the cockpit.

The Master summons two of the aliens as the bomb explodes. The plane plummets to the ground and the Doctor tells her that everything she knows is a lie. The aliens teleport him away, taking the Doctor with them in a surprise move, and leave the companions to die.

Part Two

The Doctor wakes up in the alien dimension and tries not to panic. On the plane, the companions are panicking, but Ryan discovers several plaques with his name on them under the seats. He follows them to a guide titled “How to Land a Plane Without a Cockpit” and shows it to the others. They find a video guide produced by the Doctor that leads to an app on Ryan’s phone that allows them to steer the plane to safety.

The Doctor finds a woman dressed in early 19th-century clothes named Ada. Ada believes that she’s dreaming while paralyzed in the real world, and she’s been here many times before. She mentions a name – Kasaavin – and one of the beings appears. Ada offers to take the Doctor with her, and they grasp hands and vanish.

In his TARDIS, the Master calls Barton about the success of their plan. Barton is notified that his damaged plane is about to land. The Master promises to find the Doctor while Barton takes care of the companions.

The Doctor and Ava arrive at a science convention in London, 1834. The Doctor vows to find her companions and then attempts to explain herself to Ava. They are interrupted by the Master as he blusters into the convention and starts shrinking people with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. The Doctor reveals herself and the Master forces her to kneel before him. He reveals that he knows almost nothing about the creatures except general interests and a name: Kasaavin.

The Master offers news from home, but Ada shoots him in the arm with a steam machine gun. The two women escape.

The companions decide to follow Barton to his next engagement in London, but Barton uses their phones and profiles to make them public enemies. Ryan destroys their phones and they run.

The Doctor and Ada meet up with a colleague, the polymath Charles Babbage with his difference engine, and the Doctor realizes that her friend is the future computer scientist Ada Lovelace. Babbage has a statue called the Silver Lady that has projected the Kasaavin to Ada since she was young. The plan is to place spies throughout Earth’s history. The Doctor uses her sonic screwdriver on the statue to summon a Kasaavin. The Doctor plans to use it to return to the 21st century, but Ada grabs her hand at the last moment and tags along for the ride.

The companions take refuge in an abandoned construction site as they plan their next moves. They also discuss the Doctor and what they know about her. When the Kasaavin appear, the companions use what remains of their spy gadgets to defend themselves.

The Doctor and Ada appear in Paris, 1943, in the middle of a bombing raid. They hide with another woman as the Master arrives in a German army uniform. The woman – Noor Unayat Khan, the first female radio operator to be placed behind enemy lines – hides the Doctor and Ada under the floorboards while the Master and his troops search her residence. Ada’s presence is what dragged the Doctor to this time and place. What lies ahead is an enormous task.

In the modern day, Barton and the Silver Lady stand before an older woman tied to a chair. She’s Barton’s mother and he wanted to see her on “the last day.” The statue activates and the Kasaavin surround her as she screams. Elsewhere, Yaz uses a phone box to call home. The call is tracked by VOR, but that was the plan all along. Holding the VOR agents at bay with a laser shoe, the companions steal their phones and escape in their car. Unfortunately, they later discover Barton’s dead mother and a message that they’re too late to stop his plan.

The Doctor uses Noor’s telegraph to tap out a four-beat code. It signals the Master and the two Time Lords make telepathic contact. They promise to meet up alone at the Eiffel Tower. The Master reveals that he’s using a perception filter to fool the Nazis before admitting to hijacking the agency car and killing C. He didn’t bring the Kasaavin to Earth, but rather suggested a different plan for the spies on Earth. That plan is to eliminate the human race and then dispose of the Kasaavin.

The Master also claims to have visited Gallifrey in its little bubble universe. It has been burned to the ground.

The Nazis arrive, having been tipped off about the Master acting as a double agent by Noor. The Doctor jams the perception filter and leaves as the soldiers turn on him. The Doctor joins Ada and Noor at the Master’s TARDIS, armed with the understanding that the Kasaavin have been tracking people who worked in the development of computer science.

Back to the modern day, Barton delivers a speech thanking the public for giving him all of their information. He sends a text – “Humanity is over. You have three minutes to prepare.” – and explains that humans will make perfect hard drives. The Silver Lady summons the Kasaavin as Barton prepares to wipe humanity’s DNA for use as data storage.

The companions arrive but are unable to stop the Silver Lady. The Master also arrives, angry at having to live for 77 years on Earth. Surprisingly, the Silver Lady stops and Barton runs into hiding. The Doctor enters the room with Ada and Noor, revealing that she knew that Barton would use the statue so she re-engineered it to shut down at a mass Kasaavin gathering. She plays the Master’s plan – in his own words – to double-cross them, and the Kasaavin swarm the Master. He screams as he is teleported away.

The Doctor promises to explain everything and returns Noor and Ada to their proper times after wiping herself from their memories. She also plants the instructions for Ryan to pilot the plane. Finally, the Doctor travels to Gallifrey.

The Capitol has been destroyed. As the city burns, a geo-activated holographic message from the Master is triggered. He reveals that he razed the planet, furious that the whole existence of their species was built on the lie of the Timeless Child. The words spark an image in the Doctor’s mind of a young girl standing by a tower. It’s a vision hidden in all Gallifreyans, but the Master refuses to make it easy for the Doctor.

Days later, the companions have visited five planets with the Doctor. They demand to know about her, so she opens up about her home, why she travels, and her relationship with the Master. Yaz asks if they can visit Gallifrey, but the Doctor replies, “Another time.”

This entire story is an obvious parody and homage to the spy genre, specifically the James Bond franchise. From the single-letter pseudonyms and the hyperbolic gadgets to the names with double meanings – Agents Seesay and Browning are obviously nods to the “See Something, Say Something” (SeeSay) mantra that evolved after September 11, 2001 and the Browning Arms Company, the latter of which ties back to Nazis with Hanns Johst’s propaganda play Schlageter – this story is packed with references. It even includes some deus ex machina hand-waving conveniences to get our heroes out of jams.

For that alone, I loved it. But then we get Sacha Dawan as the Master. The performance is amazing on its own, but the demeanor shift when he drops his disguise is perhaps the most brilliant part. He turns on a dime from sane and reasonable to off-his-rocker batshit crazy. The return of the Master is why this story in particular is dedicated to Terrance Dicks, the script editor for the character’s debut in Terror of the Autons. Terrance Dicks was one of Doctor Who‘s most prolific writers, from novels and episode novelizations, and was the editor for the Troughton and Pertwee eras. He died on August 29, 2019.

Specifically, Spyfall nods to a few James Bond properties: The title comes from 2012’s Skyfall; the themes of gambling and aristocracy hail from the 1953 novel Casino Royale; the plane sequence can point back to 1964’s Goldfinger; and the car sequence is derived from Live and Let Die from 1973.

This adventure marks a departure from the impenetrable TARDIS that we’re used to, showcasing the first time that a villain has been able to physically break through the TARDIS doors. We’ve seen other things do the same, most recently in Kerblam!, and no explanation was provided. It just… happened.

I was also not happy with the mind-wipe for the historical figures. Sure, I get why it was necessary to preserve history, but it still didn’t sit well. Those two downer items and the usual rapid ending aside, I really enjoyed this adventure. The writing was a bit more engaging and the overall production was fun.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Orphan 55

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #281: World Enough and Time & The Doctor Falls

Michael Falkner6 Comments

Doctor Who: World Enough and Time
Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls
(2 episodes, s10e11-12, 2017)

Timestamp 281 World Enough and Time Doctor Falls

Powerful, surprising, and heartbreaking: A Doctor Who triple threat.

World Enough and Time

Upon a snowy landscape, the Doctor stumbles from the TARDIS and repeats the word “no” as he begins to regenerate. He falls to his knees as the energy overtakes him…

…and we flash back to a long cylindrical spaceship hovering at the edge of a black hole’s event horizon. The TARDIS materializes in the control room at the closest point to the phenomenon and Missy emerges. She describes herself as “Doctor Who” and introduces her companions. As alarms sound, we find out that this is a test of Missy’s resolve to be good. The Doctor watches from the TARDIS as Missy, Bill, and Nardole work through the puzzle and make contact with a blue-skinned humanoid named Jorj.

Jorj arrives at the control room with a gun and demands to know which of them is human. As three lifts race toward the control room, the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS and Bill admits to being human. Jorj declares that she is why the lifts are coming and shoots Bill, mortally wounding her. Figures with bandaged faces emerge from the lifts and take Bill, claiming they will fix her but will not return. The Doctor decides to trust them and leaves a psychic message for Bill to wait for him when she wakes.

Before the trip, Bill had disagreed with the Doctor about the rehabilitation test. The Doctor wanted Missy to be good, but Bill didn’t know if it was possible. They later had a discussion about the Doctor, the Master, and Time Lords and their flexible approaches to gender. Bill confided that Missy scared her, and the Doctor told Bill that he would do his best to not let her die.

This pressure now weighs on the Doctor. He let his companion die on his watch.

The Doctor tries to scan the lift with his sonic screwdriver, and when Jorj threatens him, he warns Jorj not to make him angry. The Doctor is borderline furious. Nardole finds thousands of life signs in the lower levels of the ship, leading the Doctor to understand that the different levels of the ship are moving at different times due to relativity.

On one of those lower levels, Bill wakes up in a medical facility with a cybernetic heart in her chest. She gets the message from the Doctor and meets a caretaker named Mr. Razor. She also hears a cybernetic voice calling out in pain. She finds the patient as screens show the time differential between Floor 0000 and Floor 1056. She can’t stop the voice from chanting “pain” over and over, and a nurse merely mutes the voice instead of tending to the pain. Bill finds that the others are also chanting about their pain but their voices are also muted.

Mr. Razor finds Bill and takes her to his room for tea. He explains that they are curing the people in the surgical  (conversion theater) suites and that she was saved from death with her new “shiny” cybernetic heart. She’s been on this level for months and passes the time watching the live feed of Level 0000. The Doctor literally takes a week to raise his eyebrow. Bill eventually recovers enough to work as a cleaner as she continues to wait. Meanwhile, the Doctor uses Venusian aikido to knock out Jorj and make his way to Bill.

Bill also cannot leave the hospital. Her heart will supposedly cease to function and the patients will raise the alarm. Mr. Razor explains that the people are being converted to survive Operation Exodus, a necessity since the human lifespan cannot survive the trip back to the top of the ship. Mr. Razor takes Bill outside one day, and sure enough, after a brief walk, her heart begins to fail.

The years pass and Bill continues to wait. She watches as the Doctor, Missy, and Nardole board a lift. They cannot take the TARDIS because the black hole with mess with navigation. Mr. Razor tricks Bill into one of the conversion theaters and condemns her to a full conversion. After all, people usually scream when they find out the real reason for surgery. They fit her for a headpiece that will inhibit emotion.

When the Doctor, Missy, and Nardole arrive on the bottom floor, Missy is left to explore the ship’s computer history. She soon meets Mr. Razor who is enamored with her and seems to know who she is. On separate paths, the travelers learn the truth: The ship’s origin was Mondas, the twin planet of Earth, and the conversions are the genesis of the Cybermen.

More shocking, Mr. Razor reveals that he is Missy’s predecessor, the Saxon Master. With that revelation in mind, Missy reverts to her cruel nature.

Even more shocking, this trip has turned upside down. The Cyberman standing before the Doctor is Bill Potts, and the former companion cries beneath the mask as she tells the Doctor that she waited for him.

The Doctor Falls

On Floor 0507, farmers and families face off against the scarecrows – the prototype Cybermen from Floor 1056 – shooting them at night and restraining them on wooden crosses by the light of day. One of those days, the relative peace is broken when a shuttle crashes through the ground near a girl named Alit. From the wreckage emerges a Cyberman carrying the unconscious form of the Doctor.

We flash back to the Doctor restrained to a wheelchair on the roof of the hospital on 1056. He was subdued by Missy and the Master, dancing and flirting as they discuss the Doctor’s deaths and how many regenerations he has left to spend. Notably, Missy cannot remember what happened that forced her regeneration. The Doctor ponders what happened in the Master’s life since he vanished while blasting Rassilon with his life energy.

Upon returning to Gallifrey, the Time Lords showed their gratitude for the Master’s help in preventing Rassilon from executing the Ultimate Sanction by restoring his body and kicking him off the planet. The Master stole a TARDIS and landed on the Mondasian colony ship where he lived like a king and killed at his leisure. When the colonist overthrew him and he attempted to run, he found that his TARDIS was burned out from being too close to the event horizon.

While they gloat, the Masters are shocked to find that the Cybermen are advancing on them. When the Masters attacked the Doctor, he was able to change the coding for humanity to read two hearts instead of one. With the Cybermen marching to convert the Time Lords, Missy knocks the Master unconscious and rescues the Doctor. She frees the Doctor and he calls for Nardole, who has successfully stolen a shuttle.

As the Masters and the Doctor try to board the shuttle, a Cyberman attacks the Doctor with an electrical shock. Bill kills the Cyberman but the Masters take over the shuttle as the Doctor falls. Bill stops the craft from taking off and ensures that the Doctor boards the shuttle.

That same shuttle has since crashed into 0507, leaving the entire group stranded. Two weeks pass as the Doctor recovers and Nardole prepares the families for war. Bill has been resigned to the barn since she frightens the children, and while she believes that she is still human, everyone else sees her as a Cyberman. Alit comes to her side with a mirror and Bill is shocked to see her true self. When the Doctor arrives, he rewards Alit for being kind to Bill. They have a brief discussion about Cybermen and what she’s become, Bill’s anger and grief boil over as she accidentally destroys the barn’s door.

The Doctor is amazed by Bill’s resiliency against the Cyberman programming. When Bill sheds a tear because everyone is afraid of her, he wipes it away and notes that she shouldn’t be able to cry. They meet with the Master, who mocks Bill and tells the Doctor about a plan that he and Missy have been working on. As they all walk across the farmland, the Doctor limps and stifles regeneration energy in his hand, revealing that his electrocution was fatal. When Bill worries about him and her future, he tells her that “where there’s tears, there’s hope.”

They reach the forest where the Master and Missy theorize that they’re out of temporal sync so they can’t retain their memories of these events. Missy reveals that the forest around them is a holographic wall disguising the lifts. Missy calls for one, not remembering that it is coming from the bottom floor and not empty. The lift reveals an evolved Cyberman, and despite killing it, the trio of Time Lords knows that the Cybermen now know where they are.

They cannot run because time is running faster on the lower levels. The Cyberman invasion would easily catch up to them. They have no choice but to fight as the Cybermen begin punching through the various floors. Nardole uses the fuel piping on Floor 0508 as weaponry and the Doctor finds a service duct that can be used to evacuate the children. Meanwhile, the Masters discuss running for their TARDIS on the bottom floor. After all, Missy once (now) threatened her former self into carrying a spare dematerialization circuit.

As night falls, the first wave of Cybermen appears. Nardole tricks them into believing that a single apple can destroy them all. When the Masters decide to leave, the Doctor delivers an emotional and passionate speech on why he helps people. It’s not easy and doesn’t always work, but it’s the right and kind thing to do. The Master ridicules the Doctor and continues on, but Missy is somewhat moved. She agrees that being the Doctor’s friend was what she always wanted, but she goes with her predecessor anyway. Within minutes, the two Masters arrive at the lift where the younger tricks the elder by fatally stabbing him and leaving just enough time to reach his TARDIS before regenerating. Unfortunately, the Master fires his laser screwdriver at Missy and mortally wounds her.

By all appearances, Missy dies. Her last intention was to return to the Doctor’s side.

The next wave of Cybermen arrives and Nardole’s tricks force them to retreat and develop a new plan. The Doctor downloads the plans for the floor into his sonic screwdriver and sends Nardole to escort the children to the service ducts. The Doctor convinces Nardole to leave despite the latter’s protests. After all, the Doctor is treating this like a suicide mission and Nardole owes him too much. The Doctor convinces Nardole that this will be penance for his crimes from before the Doctor rescued him. Bill stands beside the Doctor and Nardole admits that he’ll never be able to find the words for their sacrifice.

Now alone on Floor 0507, the Doctor and Bill prepare for a last stand by saying their farewells. They move to opposite sides of the floor and engage the Cybermen. The Doctor cites his numerous victories over them – Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14, Marinus, Voga, Canary Wharf, and the Moon – before falling to several laser blasts. He nearly regenerates, but holds it back as he ignites the piping below the floor and engulfs the forest in fiery destruction. The Cybermen are destroyed.

As Nardole and his charges reach Floor 0502, he holds out hope that Bill and the Doctor will return. Alit convinces him to move on and focus on living with them instead.

Amongst the wasteland that is Floor 0507, Bill finds the wounded Doctor. She’s barely functioning, but her personality is nearly restored, and she mourns over the Time Lord’s body. She is surprised to find Heather emerging from a nearby puddle and learns that she’s real through a passionate kiss. Heather changed Bill into a being like her, and together they take the Doctor’s body back to the TARDIS. Heather sets the controls for a new location and offers Bill the choice to return to her old life or live a new one at her side as she travels the universe.

Bill chooses the latter, shedding a tear over her friend and telling him that “where there’s tears, there’s hope.” The two women depart as the TARDIS flies on and the Doctor heals, dreaming of Bill, Nardole, Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Captain Jack, Donna Noble, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, Sarah Jane, Amy Pond, Clara Oswald, and River Song as they each call his name. The last voice is Missy’s, one which awakens the Doctor as he mutters some words of his former lives. He yells that he can’t keep being someone else and suppresses his regeneration as the TARDIS lands.

The Doctor is defiant, telling the TARDIS that he would listen to the lesson it’s trying to teach him, and steps into an arctic landscape. He screams into the snow and stifles his regeneration, pledging not to change as he hears a voice that echoes his concerns. When he demands to know who the other person is, he’s surprised to find the Doctor in the snowstorm. The original, you might say.

He finds the First Doctor.

Before this point, the televised history of the Cybermen was pretty simple: There were the Mondasian Cybermen from this universe and the Cybus Cybermen from Pete’s World. This pair of episodes complicate the evolution by introducing various origins for the Cybermen of this universe.

After Mondas was ejected from Earth’s orbit, the Mondasians were split into two groups based on the desire to fully embrace cyber conversion. The so-called Faction left Mondas to find their destiny in The Wheel in Space,  The Invasion, and The War Games (with a cameo in Carnival of Monsters and brief nods in Dalek and Death in Heaven). The remaining Mondans would evolve into Cybermen in this episode – and in the audio drama Spare Parts and the comics The World Shapers and The Cybermen, if you count those – before proceeding to The Tenth Planet. It’s worth noting that the Cybermen in The Tenth Planet arrived with their rogue planet, so these Cybermen might not be those Cybermen.

Apparently, every other version of the Cybermen evolved independently and on parallel trajectories across time and space. At least, that’s how the story goes as of right now since Doctor Who‘s continuity is perpetually fluid.

As if that wasn’t enough, we get a quasi-confirmation that “Doctor Who” is a legitimate variation of the Doctor’s name. These days, fans will point to all sorts of sources to justify the character’s moniker of “The Doctor,” but there are several sources that also make “Doctor Who” just as legitimate: The computer WOTAN repeatedly called for “Doctor Who” in The War Machines; The Second Doctor used the alias “Doktor von Wer” – literally, “Doctor [of] Who” – in The Highlanders; The Second Doctor signed a note as “Dr W” in The Underwater Menace; Bessie’s license plate was WHO 1 and WHO 7; and Miss Hawthorne referred to him as “the great wizard Qui Quae Quod” – literally “Who Who Who” in Latin – in The Dæmons.

What about the show’s credits, you might ask. The character was credited as “Doctor Who” from An Unearthly Child all the way through Logopolis, spanning 18 seasons of stories. Starting with Castrovalva and the Fifth Doctor’s run, the character was credited as “The Doctor” through the TV movie (which also credited the Seventh Doctor as “The Old Doctor”). The name changed again to “Doctor Who” for the Ninth Doctor‘s run before returning to “The Doctor” in The Christmas Invasion. Rose also featured a website entitled “Doctor Who?”.

All that to say that either name is legitimate, really. Sure, Missy lies… a lot… but her lies always have a kernel of truth within. In recent years, the title has referred more to an ethos and mission statement rather than an actual name.

Considering the stories at hand, the horror film feeling of these episodes is amazing. The first half is edge-of-your-seat tension mixed with copious amounts of body horror, and the second half blunts the body horror for more battlefield tension. The tension follows the lighting, leading to more empathic storytelling in daylight and ratcheting tension during the night. The Doctor’s impassioned speech is truly a last-stand Hail Mary pass, and it serves up more tension before the final battle. The moment that truly sent shivers down my spine was “pain, pain, pain,” cueing the audience to just how monstrous the Mondasians were.

Another shocker was the identity of Mr. Razor, but this is only because I didn’t the “coming soon” teaser at the end of The Eaters of Light when this series was in first-run. If I had known that John Simm was returning, I probably would have seen right through the Mr. Razor disguise. Since I didn’t know at the time, it blew me away back in 2017.

As someone who earned a degree in physics, I love when science fiction shows play around with the subject and can explain it to the home audience. Gravitational time dilation is a real phenomenon related to special relativity that has been observed on Earth. Scientists placed identical atomic clocks at different altitudes (which relates to the pull of gravity) and noted significant differences in time between them. In this case, “significant” is on the order of nanoseconds, but imagine scaling that up beyond the fragile envelope of our atmosphere to a really long spaceship parked longitudinally on the event horizon of a black hole. That difference in gravity is pretty big.

I did have a question about fridging the black woman in this story – a terrible trio of tropes! – but Bill doesn’t really die and she’s not put in peril by the villain simply as a means to motivate the hero, so I dismissed the idea.

The video of Level 0000 looks like a paused classic black-and-white episode of the show. It added to the feeling of tension and was a nice callback to the era that this story and its cliffhanger were meant to evoke.

The two Masters working side-by-side in this story was pure joy. Notably, this is the first televised story to feature multiple Masters. It was also the third finale of the three in Capaldi’s run to feature the Cybermen.

In the end, I’m left in awe of the Twelfth Doctor’s resolve and strength. He survived all of that and still had the fortitude to hold back one of the character’s most primal forces, setting the stage for Peter Capaldi’s swan song in the next adventure.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #278: Extremis, The Pyramid at the End of the World, & The Lie of the Land

Michael Falkner3 Comments

Doctor Who: Extremis
Doctor Who: The Pyramid at the End of the World
Doctor Who: The Lie of the Land
(3 episodes, s10e06-08, 2017)

Timestamp 278 Monk Trilogy

All shall love and despair.

Extremis

A long time ago, the Doctor confers with an executioner named Rafando about a method for destroying a Time Lord. After the execution is completed – a process that stops both hearts, all three brain stems, and the ability to regenerate – the body will be placed in a quantum fold chamber for a millennium to prevent “relapses“. The process also requires that a Time Lord be the one to pull the lever.

The prisoner slated for execution is Missy. The Doctor has been selected to kill her. Missy begs for her life, promising to do anything in return.

In the present day, the Doctor confides in Missy about his blindness through the vault door. His discussion is cut short by an email, sent via the sonic sunglasses that he uses to get around, with the subject line of Extremis. Always curious, the Doctor opens the message.

The Doctor stands in a darkened lecture hall as fifteen men enter. They claim to be from the Vatican, and a cardinal named Angelo asks for the Doctor’s help after a series of suicides. The Pope descends the stairs and personally asks the Doctor for help. In his office, the Doctor is given a parchment that reads Veritas – literally, and not subtly, truth – but the resulting text is in a language lost to time. A later translation contains a secret that drives the reader to suicide. All of the bodies have been recovered except for one.

The Pope asks the Doctor to read Veritas to help. Because he has lives to spare?

Bill brings a girlfriend named Penny to Moira’s home, but the romantic interlude is interrupted by the TARDIS and the Pope. Penny runs out in fear as Bill chastises the Doctor for dropping the Pope and his assembly in her bedroom. As Nardole briefs Bill on the task, Cardinal Angelo offers a friendly ear for the Doctor.

Back at Missy’s execution, Nardole arrives dressed as a monk with orders from River Song to stay the execution. After the conference, Missy begs for mercy with tears in her eyes.

In the present, the TARDIS materializes in Vatican City. Nardole confers with the Doctor about the secret of his blindness before the Pope bids farewell. Cardinal Angelo shows the travelers to the Haereticum, a labyrinthine library that reminds Bill of a fictional wizarding school. Angelo leads the group to the heart of the library where a bright light shines through a portal with a man inside.

The portal vanishes and Angelo checks the security while the travelers proceed to the cage where Veritas is kept. Angelo is soon abducted by a mysterious claw-like hand. A priest scares the group and reveals that he sent the email before running off. While the Doctor investigates the Veritas, the mysterious priest commits suicide. When Bill and Nardole investigate the body, they find another mysterious portal and take a look.

I realize that I said mysterious a lot. This whole story is full of it.

As the Doctor begins scanning Veritas with a device that will temporarily fix his eyesight, he is approached by a mysterious peculiar figure.

Back at the execution, the Doctor pulls the lever and activates the machine. He promises to guard Missy’s corpse for one thousand years.

In modern day, Bill and Nardole emerge from a closet into a Pentagon operations center. They climb back through the portal into a strange hub. They walk through another portal to CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and meet a scientist.

The Doctor finishes his work and tries to read the book as the mysterious curious figure with a zombie-like face locks him to the chair. The figure takes Veritas but the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to turn off the lights and escape with a laptop containing a translation. He later tries to read the screen but is interrupted by more of the figures and his failing eyesight. He runs off and finds another portal.

At CERN, the scientist leads Bill and Nardole to the cafeteria where a five-minute countdown has started. The countdown is leading to a mass suicide explosion. The scientist explains that the explosion will release them from this world, a world that doesn’t truly exist. He tests Bill and Nardole by having them pick a series of random numbers. When each choice matches exactly, they both run and dive through the portal at the last second.

Bill and Nardole find a trail of blood in the hub as Nardole realizes that each portal leads to a holographic simulation. He soon realizes that they are also part of the simulation and he steps outside of the projectors, thereby vanishing. Bill follows the blood trail to the White House and finds the Doctor and the President of the United States in the Oval Office. They both have read the Veritas and the President has committed suicide. The Doctor explains that a demon is trying to conquer the world but has created a “shadow world” to practice. This simulation assesses the abilities of the human race throughout history. The key to understanding that one is in the program is a string of numbers, the same ones that Bill and Nardole recited.

Once a simulant understands their role in the program, they escape back to reality by ending their program.

With that, Bill disappears, leaving one of the mysterious strange figures behind. It tells him that they have killed many times before, but the Doctor replies that they have fallen into their own trap because the simulation is too good. Since he is linked to the sonic sunglasses, they are a recording of the last few hours. Before he vanishes, the Doctor emails the recording to the Doctor in the real world.

The Extremis email was that recording. The Doctor finishes watching it and then calls Bill. He tells her to call Penny and ask her on a date.

In the last flashback to Missy’s execution, the Doctor reveals that he sabotaged the machine to knock her out instead of killing her. The Doctor scares the executioners away by asking them to look up his list of fatalities, then he and Nardole load Missy into the vault.

Outside of that vault, the Doctor asks Missy through the door how he can save his friends when he is blind.

The Pyramid at the End of the World

Following the Doctor’s recommendation, Bill takes Penny back to her home. During the date and walk home, Bill relays her experience in the alien computer simulation. Once they reach Bill’s home, the United Nations Secretary-General arrives and demands that Bill take them to the President. Bill denies knowing the President of the United States – she wouldn’t have voted for the “orange” man anyway – but the Secretary-General clarifies his request. Because the world is in danger, he’s looking for the President of the World.

He’s looking for the Doctor.

The Secretary-General takes Bill to an airplane while explaining their interest in a 5,000-year-old pyramid in Turmezistan. It’s a fascinating site because the pyramid literally appeared overnight. Meanwhile, the Doctor meditates with his guitar while he monologues about how each person’s death is predestined and each step takes them closer to the event. To punctuate it, a woman named Erica breaks her reading glasses as she leaves home, suggesting that a minor event can lead to a series of larger ones.

The Doctor is surprised to find that his TARDIS has been hijacked by the secretary-general’s plane. His university office apparently has much larger windows now as well. As the Secretary-General explains what he needs, Erica delivers coffee to her lab partner at Agrofuel Research Operations. The lab partner, Douglas, is hung over, but since Erica can’t see without her glasses, she asks him to mix the next stage of their experiment. As they work, the mysterious aliens Monks watch through a lab camera.

The travelers arrive and meet United States Army Colonel Babbit – a man who is out of uniform since he’s wearing the rank insignia of a four-star general – before investigating the pyramid. The structure opens for the Doctor and he is greeted by a Monk. After a brief interaction, the Monk retreats and everyone’s clocks around the world are set to 23:57:00.

Three minutes to midnight. Three minutes left on the Doomsday Clock.

Sure enough, Douglas miskeys a value in the experiment. Not recognizing the mistake, the scientists leave for lunch and let the computer take control.

The Doctor assembles Ilya Svyatoslavovich (the leader of the Russian military in Turmezistan), Xiaolian (the leader of the Chinese military in Turmezistan), General-Colonel Babbit, the Secretary-General, Bill, and Nardole in the UN base. They discuss the reasons for the Monks’ arrival, settling on the relative weakness of humanity at this time. Despite his companions’ objections, the Doctor recommends a coordinated attack to demonstrate strength.

The Doomsday Clock advances to 23:58:00. Nardole and Bill become concerned for the Doctor.

Bill later asks the Doctor what’s bothering him, but he says that fear rules him to the extent that he cannot even reveal what scares him. As they speak, the pyramid emits a bright orange beam into the sky that consumes the bomber en route to the pyramid. The crew are replaced by Monks and the plane is gently deposited on the desert floor. Several members of the coalition military emerge from the pyramid as a Russian submarine lands in the desert. The Monks have stopped all of the attacks against them, but they are ready to talk now.

The world leaders join the Doctor and his companions in the pyramid. The Doctor tells Bill that traps provide a chance to learn about their enemies. The assembly meets with a Monk who explains that the chain of events is in progress that will destroy the planet at humanity’s hands. They witness the Monks working on the simulation from the outside, weaving strands in a tapestry. The Monk shows the group a vision of the future, then offers to help humanity survive, but to do so will enslave the human race.

The Doomsday Clock advances to 23:59:00.

The Monks must be wanted and loved because ruling through fear is inefficient. With the vision of the future in his mind, the Secretary-General consents to help, but since his consent was based on fear, he is immediately destroyed. The rest of the group leaves the pyramid.

At Agrofuel, the experiment goes awry. Erica and Douglas begin analyzing the problem, but Douglas breaches containment in the process. In Turmezistan, the world leaders consider their position and decide on peace. But since they are not the source of the end of the world, the Doomsday Clock doesn’t budge. Sure enough, the experiment at Agrofuel is the source and creates a deadly microorganism. The world leaders come to the same conclusion, and the Doctor responds by placing every top secret document online so that they can all start searching. Meanwhile, Douglas collapses from exposure to the virus and immediately decomposes into a puddle of goo.

General-Colonel Babbit wants to negotiate terms with the Monks, but the Doctor suggests that the price is way too high. Bill agrees with them because she sees no other choice, and the military leaders decide to surrender. As they leave, the Doctor almost reveals his secret to Bill but then decides on a different course of action.

Leaving Bill to watch the military leaders, the Doctor and Nardole use a list of biochemical labs on the UNIT watchlist to narrow the possible targets. They turn all of the CCTV cameras off, and when the Monks restore the feed, the Doctor takes the TARDIS to Agrofuel. The Doctor asks Nardole to monitor him from the TARDIS but Nardole has already been exposed. Meanwhile, the Doctor briefs Bill and the military leaders on the situation.

The Doomsday Clock advances to 23:59:40.

Since the lab’s filtration system has been compromised, the Doctor decides to incinerate the microorganisms. While he works, the military leaders are killed since their consent is based on strategy, not love. The Monks offer the deal to Bill since she is the representative of the Doctor. She must truly want their help in light of the consequences.

The Doctor sets the incendiary device and the Doomsday Clock begins to reverse. As the Monks panic, Bill leaves the pyramid. Unfortunately, since the lab is locked down, the airlock is secured by a combination lock. Since the Doctor is blind, he cannot see the numbers and therefore is trapped with the bomb.

He tells Bill about this problem and she decides to save his life by asking for help. She asks the Monks to restore the Doctor’s sight by consenting to their rule. Her consent is pure. The Doctor can see again. He spins the numbers and leaves the lab just in time.

As the fires rage, Bill asks the Doctor to get her planet back.

The Lie of the Land

As the Monks take control of humanity, they cultivate the lie that they have always been by humanity’s side. Their propaganda is spread by television broadcast messages delivered by the Doctor. Any dissension is punished by imprisonment and execution.

It’s only been a few months since the Doomsday Clock event at the pyramid but it feels like an eternity.

Bill prepares two mugs and concentrates, apparently summoning another woman to sit across from her. This woman is her mother. Bill reveals that she can’t remember escaping from the pyramid but she can see how the people of Earth have been brainwashed. Every day is harder than the last as the memories threaten to invade, but Bill believes that the Doctor will come back and save the world.

Her monologue is interrupted by Nardole, and after verifying that he is real, she welcomes him. Nardole recovered from the microorganism after six weeks and has done some research. He has traced the broadcasts to their source, a prison ship that is regularly resupplied by small boat. The captain of the supply boat hates the Monks since his son has been imprisoned for possession of comic books.

Nardole also points out that the Monks have altered the perception of human history for a good reason: However bad a situation is, if people think that’s how it has always been, they’ll accept it.

Nardole and Bill access the prison ship and are almost caught immediately, but an appearance by a Monk distracts the guards. They sneak into the bowels of the ship and find the Doctor in a room surrounded by speeches. The Doctor calls for help and the room fills with guards. He places a call to the Monks and then explains that human society is regressing, but Bill argues in favor of free will. They argue philosophy and Bill’s actions with the Monks and his eyesight. Bill tries to use a coded message regarding their trip to the Thames, but the Doctor deflects.

Bill finally breaks, talking about her personal rebellion while waiting for the Doctor’s return, and eventually pulls a gun on the Doctor. Seeing him as the enemy, she shoots him several times. The Doctor stands and appears to regenerate, then reveals the entire thing as a ruse. From sneaking on board to Bill shooting the Doctor (with blank ammunition), the last six months have been a plan by the Doctor. He even de-programmed his own personal guards.

Now he needs an ally nearly as smart as himself. So, the Doctor drives the prison ship to the mainland. They return to the university to find the Monks in wait, so they head to the vault and open it, finally revealing Missy inside. Bill is astounded to see who she thinks is just a woman, but the Doctor reveals her true form.

Missy tries to haggle over her role in the process, then works through the mystery of the Monks with the Doctor. The Doctor eventually comes to the conclusion that they use Bill as a linchpin through a psychic link. To keep themselves in power, the statues around the world act as transmitters to boost the signal. The link would be passed down genetically through millennia, so Missy suggests killing the linchpin and ending the chain.

Bill, obviously, has problems with that proposal.

Of course, Missy’s plan requires ages since the memory of the Monks would fade over time, so the Doctor and Bill offer a counterproposal at resistance headquarters. They decide to break into the Cathedral, the place where the Monks power their transmission, and replace Bill’s brainwaves with his own. Through reconnaissance, they determine that there are only a few Monks on the planet, but the transmissions make people believe that the Monks are everywhere all at once.

Using headphones playing a recording of their mission objectives, the resistance members infiltrate the Cathedral. Two of them are killed and one is turned when his tape player is damaged, but the turncoat is dispatched by Nardole. The team reaches the broadcasting chamber – Fake News Central, the eye of the storm – and finds a Monk wired into the antenna and sending the message. The Doctor attempts to override the transmission but the Monk is too powerful. The Doctor is knocked out.

When the Doctor comes to, Bill has tied him up to a pillar. She says her goodbyes and thanks the Doctor before walking to the antenna. The Doctor breaks free just as Bill places her hands on the Monk’s head. The Monk’s power overwhelms her and starts overwriting her memories, but the one that they cannot touch is that of Bill’s mother.

The Doctor sees this and persuades Bill to fill her mind with images of her mother. The pure, uncorrupted, irresistible image is broadcast to the world and overrides the control signal. The people of Earth are free and the Monks leave the planet in their Cathedral.

Sometime in the future, at the university, Bill and the Doctor muse about how humanity doesn’t even remember the Monks or what they did. The Doctor leaves Bill to her studies and sits with Missy as the prisoner expresses remorse for all of the people whom she has killed.

I mused about it in the slug line, but this story reminds me of Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings. When the elder elf is tempted by the One Ring, she compares herself to various forces of nature and declares that people would love her, fear her, and despair ever having liberty under her rule as a Dark Queen. Her subjects would love their slavery.

Galadriel passes her test by rejecting that vision of the future, but Bill takes an alternate path by accepting the Monks to save the world and her friend.

Episode by episode, this trilogy experiences several ups and downs. I found Extremis to be equal parts confusing and clever, especially how the flashbacks to (re)introduce Missy betrayed the main story’s existence as a virtual reality simulation. It’s a fascinating setup that slowly unravels as plot points don’t quite line up. The whole “practice invasion” scenario is quite reminiscent of The Android Invasion.

The Pyramid at the End of the World starts with a decent mystery surrounding the titular pyramid, but the intrigue is drowned by the snail’s pace of the story. The cardinal sin behind this second part is boredom, broken in parts by gallows humor (as scientists with hangovers create a pathogen that can destroy the world) and the absurdity behind the apparent inability to check United States Army rank insignia when the internet literally sits at the world’s fingertips. The story also returns to the fictional Turmezistan, which I called out not that long ago for Orientalism.

In better news, the Doctor gets his eyesight back, but The Lie of the Land makes me wonder why it was even a plot point at all when he can regenerate at any time. All I can think is that it doesn’t count unless the Time Lord starts healing, like the Eleventh Doctor giving up a small bit of energy to River Song. This episode moves a little better than Pyramid, but it still takes forever to establish a brainwashed world that won’t be remembered. The final solution is touching, but the idea that the world chooses to forget the whole earth-shattering experience is a bit much to swallow. The entire world was under their control for months and people across the globe were subject to horrors during that time.

Of course, the sonic screwdriver was easily fixed before this whole trilogy started. That should have been a clue about consequences and how long they last.

Rating: 2/5 – “Mm? What’s that, my boy?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Empress of Mars

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #264: The Magician’s Apprentice & The Witch’s Familiar

Michael Falkner6 Comments

Doctor Who: The Magician’s Apprentice
Doctor Who: The Witch’s Familiar
(2 episodes, s09e01-02, 2015)

Timestamp 264 Magicians Apprentice Witchs Familiar

Courting death with Daleks.

Prologue

The Doctor arrives at Karn and discusses the nature of friends and enemies with Ohila, the leader of the Sisterhood. The Doctor has an invitation to meet with an unnamed individual, an adversary who he has known for a long time.

He eventually gives Ohila a confession dial with the vague instruction that she knows who to give it to. He then suggests that he’ll go meditate somewhere.

The Doctor’s Meditation

The Doctor’s next stop is a castle in Essex, 1138. There he meditates, periodically interrupted by a man named Bors who has pledged his life to the Time Lord for removing a splinter. The Doctor muses about his future task with Bors but first decides that the denizens of the castle need a well for proper water.

The Doctor ends up burning time by engineering a well and various extensions to the castle. Bors eventually calls him on his procrastination. The Doctor concedes that Bors is not the idiot he originally thought him to be.

Four days later, the Doctor enters his final meditation but stalls because he can’t face the man he’s destined to face. Bors stands his ground, demanding an answer or he will not leave the room, intending to force the Doctor to tell him his story. The Time Lord states that he recently let someone down. He found a battlefield, and although he had come across many before, this one would be his last.

Speaking of that battlefield, the sound of gunfire and shouts of soldiers penetrate the mist of a world far away.

The Magician’s Apprentice

On that misty battlefield, soldiers with bows and arrows run from laser-wielding airplanes. A single child runs into the mist as soldiers give chase. The boy admits that he is lost but has no idea that he ran into a minefield. In particular, the ground is littered with handmines, one of which has grabbed a soldier and pulled him beneath the ground. As more hands – each sporting an eye – pop up, the boy yells for help.

His request is answered by a man who tosses a sonic screwdriver onto the ground at the boy’s feet. The boy picks it up and spots the Doctor. The sonic screwdriver has opened an acoustic corridor between the two and the Doctor tells the boy that he has one chance in a thousand to survive. When asked his name, the Doctor is shocked to hear it.

The boy’s name is Davros.

Elsewhen, an envoy of Davros arrives at the Maldovarium. His name is Colony Sarff and he is looking for the Doctor, but no one will tell him. He next travels to the Shadow Proclamation, but the Shadow Architect also refuses to reveal the location. Finally, Sarff travels to Karn and tells Ohila that Davros is dying and is anticipating his final meeting with the Time Lord. He leaves a message with Ohila for the Doctor, unaware that his target is hiding in the rocks behind him.

Colony Sarff returns to Davros. The creator of the Daleks is weakened but cradles the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. He suggests that if Sarff cannot find the Doctor, then he must target the Doctor’s friends.

At Coal Hill School, Clara Oswald is teaching a lesson on Jane Austen when she notices that an airplane is frozen in the sky above. It appears to be a worldwide phenomenon, and UNIT reaches out to Clara, forcing the woman to leave school and rendezvous with Kate Stewart at headquarters. Clara deduces that the thousands of planes suspended in mid-air are not an invasion because they are a spectacle. At that moment, a message is sent to UNIT via the dedicated channel for the Doctor.

The messenger is Missy, she’s responsible for the planes, and she requests a meeting with Clara. The meeting goes forward, complete with UNIT snipers, and Missy demonstrates her ability to suspend the planes through a simple Time Lord trick. She reveals the confession dial – the last will and testament of a Time Lord – and explains that she cannot find the Doctor either. Since it was given to Missy, Clara literally cannot touch it.

Clara wonders if Missy has turned good, and the Time Lady responds by vaporizing UNIT agents. She only cares about her best friend being in danger, and Clara demands that Missy make her believe it. Missy releases the planes, then muses about where the Doctor would go while facing his demise. Clara knows that his chosen place is Earth, and based on the amount of noise he likes to make, she narrows it down to a party. Missy uses a vortex manipulator to travel with Clara to the Doctor’s location…

…where the Doctor enters a one-on-one battle riding a tank and shredding an electric guitar.

After all, Bors wanted an axe fight.

The Doctor’s jokes fall flat, but his rendition of Pretty Woman when he spots Missy and Clara makes the crowd cheer. The Doctor celebrates the good he’s done and the anachronisms he has introduced before admitting that he has to leave tonight. He introduces Clara and uncharacteristically hugs her. Missy joins the party as Bors falls to the ground. A snake slithers back to Colony Sarff, who has followed Clara and Missy to the Doctor’s side. Sarff reveals his serpentine form but the Doctor forces him to back down. No one will die this night.

The Doctor demands to know what his archenemy wants – much to Missy’s chagrin – and Sarff replies that Davros remembers with a toss of the sonic screwdriver at the Doctor’s feet. Missy is amused at the Doctor’s shame and Clara wonders what he did.

It turns out that the Doctor abandoned Davros in the handmine field.

The Doctor attempts to say goodbye and travel with Sarff, but Clara and Missy compel Sarff to take them as well (against the Doctor’s wishes). After they leave, Bors locates the TARDIS and reveals himself as a Dalek spy, signaling his find to Dalek High Command.

En route, the Doctor tells Clara about Davros’s history. They arrive at a space hospital and are escorted to a cell. Sarff eventually retrieves the Doctor, but Clara confronts him about knowing that Missy was alive and able to receive the confession dial. Missy reveals that she and the Doctor knew about the local gravity, particularly how it is natural rather than artificially generated. Missy decides to open the airlock to test the theory.

The Doctor is escorted to Davros’s side. They talk about their conflicts and how they were fueled by a single disagreement: Was Davros right to create the Daleks or was his lack of compassion wrong? He plays recordings of their previous meetings and the Doctor’s struggles with morality.

Missy and Clara step through the airlock only to find that they are on a planet. The planet is initially hidden but is soon revealed to be Skaro, the planet of the Daleks, and the women are taken before the Supreme Dalek. A large weapon is pointed at the TARDIS, which the Daleks procured, and Missy tries to reason with them. She tells them that they can use it to go anywhere and kill anyone, and she offers to pilot it for them. The Supreme Dalek is unimpressed and orders her extermination. Missy is seemingly vaporized in the blast.

The Doctor pleads with Davros to spare Clara but Davros reveals that he doesn’t control the Daleks. The Daleks wait for Clara to run, and when she does, they exterminate her in the same way that they did Missy. Davros demands that the Doctor declare compassion wrong as the Daleks open fire on the TARDIS, supposedly destroying it.

Back on the battlefield, a young Davros pleads with the Doctor to help him. The Doctor appears behind him, claiming to be from the future, and proclaims that he’s come from the future to save his friend in the only way he can. He raises a severed Dalek gunstick and points it at Davros with a word: “Exterminate!”

The Witch’s Familiar

Clara awakens upside down dangling from a rope. She and Missy are on the outskirts of the Dalek city and Missy is musing about the time when the Doctor faced 40 assassin robots without his TARDIS. Clara determines how the Doctor escaped from the assassins and links it to Missy’s survival.

Missy frees Clara as they discuss the Doctor’s current predicament. Together, they decide to help him.

Inside the city, the Doctor searches the infirmary and comes up with a Dalek gunstick. He threatens Davros with it and then demands that he leave the chair. The Daleks respond as Davros calls for help, and as the chair approaches the room where the Daleks have been congregating, the Doctor is revealed in the chair. When the Daleks attempt to exterminate the Doctor, they fail due to the chair’s shielding which was installed due to Davros’s paranoia.

As Missy and Clara try to enter the city through the sewers, the Doctor continues his standoff with the Daleks. The relationship between the women is contentious, and Clara is disgusted to learn that the sewer is actually a Dalek graveyard, constructed from decaying members of their race. Daleks, after all, are too stubborn to die of old age so they just waste away. They listen as the Doctor rants about Clara, demanding to know if she is truly dead. The Doctor is soon overcome by Sarff’s serpents.

Missy uses Clara to trip an intruder alert, then uses her as bait to trap and kill a Dalek. Missy uses a brooch made from dark star alloy to breach the Dalek’s shell, after which the dying Daleks flood the shell and destroy the Dalek from within. Missy then tells Clara to climb into the dalekanium shell.

The Doctor awakens in the infirmary with Davros back in his chair. The Doctor finds out that Davros is playing vampire, leeching life force from the Daleks to stay alive. This is because Davros is taking advantage of the Daleks’ respect for the one who gave them life. The cables making all of this possible also contain Colony Sarff.

Davros offers the same power to the Doctor but the Time Lord refuses. He explains that he came back to Davros not because of shame but rather compassion. Davros scoffs at this notion before asking about Gallifrey. He also returns the confession dial and the Doctor’s sunglasses, the latter of which the Doctor seems to prize more.

Missy connects Clara to the Dalek shell’s telepathic circuits and then seals her inside. Clara finds out the hard way that Daleks have no sense of individuality, fire their guns through emotion, and translate positive emotions into negative ones. They then return to the upper levels with Missy as Clara’s prisoner.

The Doctor pushes Davros’s buttons by revealing that Gallifrey has been saved. He and Davros also discuss the return of Skaro, which was made so by both Davros and the Daleks longing for a home. Davros claims that he is happy for the Doctor and the restoration of Gallifrey, asking to see the Doctor up close with his own eyes to advise the protection of the Time Lords. After all, he failed to save the Kaleds and questions if he is a good man.

Since the Doctor doubted the fact that Davros was dying, they both share a laugh about the Time Lord being a terrible doctor. Davros expresses a desire to see the sun once more with his own eyes.

As Missy and Clara return to the Supreme Dalek, Missy declares that she wants to see Davros and offers Clara in exchange for a means to control the Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor expresses sympathy for Davros by channeling part of his own regeneration energy into the life support system. Davros laughs as he begins to siphon more and more of it, regaining his strength and feeding it to the Daleks.

The regeneration energy forces the shutdown of the Supreme Dalek and its associates, forcing Missy to panic and go in search of the Doctor. Meanwhile, Davros asks if the Doctor truly fled Gallifrey because of a prophecy about a “hybrid creature” built from two great warrior races that overshadowed both. Davros assumes that this hybrid is part Dalek and part Time Lord.

The energy transfer is interrupted as Missy enters the room and blasts the cabling with a gunstick. Sarff is destroyed but the Daleks are awakened. The Doctor retrieves his confession dial and begins a countdown that ends with the city quaking around them. He knew what Davros wanted, understanding that the regeneration energy would be transmitted to every Dalek on Skaro, including the ones in the sewers.

As the Doctor runs he is confronted by Clara in the Dalek shell. Missy attempts to convince the Doctor that the Dalek before them killed Clara, pushing him to shoot this one in retaliation. He stops when the Dalek asks for mercy, then instructs Clara on how to open the casing. The Doctor tells Missy to run for her life as he frees Clara.

The Doctor and Clara end up before the Supreme Dalek as the city collapses. They stand on the spot where the TARDIS was destroyed, and the Doctor declares that the Hostile Action Displacement System only needs a buzz from the sonic to reassemble the time capsule. When Clara points out that the Doctor no longer has a sonic screwdriver, he reveals that his sunglasses are now wearable technology. The TARDIS reassembles and the duo escapes.

Missy is cornered by the Daleks but her fate is left for another day as the Doctor and Clara watch the city collapse from a safe distance. The Doctor wonders how the concept of mercy got into the Dalek DNA, then rushes off with his gunstick. He travels back to the moment where he left child Davros and uses the gunstick to eliminate the handmines. Davros asks if he is an enemy Thal but the Doctor tells him that it doesn’t matter so long as they have mercy. The Doctor then returns the boy home.

This was a rocking adventure full of intrigue and suspense that played with so many elements of the Daleks, from the opening moments with the handmines – a beautiful extension of the body horror that has accompanied the Daleks in the revival era – to the continuation of what happens to the hateful pepperpots as they enter their twilight years.

The Dalek congregation on Skaro included a wide swath of models from the show’s history, including the original silver and blues (seen from The Daleks to The Space Museum), the second version of the silver and blues (seen from The Space Museum to The War Games), the Emperor Dalek’s personal guard from The Evil of the Daleks, the grey and blacks (seen from Day of the Daleks to Remembrance of the Daleks), the Special Weapons Dalek from Remembrance of the Daleks, a Dalek Sec model (seen from Army of Ghosts to Evolution of the Daleks), the Supreme Dalek version from The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, and (finally) the bronze standard that we’ve seen since Dalek.

Of course, Davros plays a long game with his latest gambit, introducing the concept of mixing Time Lord biology with one of the Doctor’s enemies. This was apparently first introduced in the comics, particularly a spoof strip called Regeneration of a Dalek. Davros also gives us glances back at his history in Doctor Who with footage from Genesis of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, and The Stolen Earth. Davros also had a flashback of his own with a gun to his head, à la Resurrection of the Daleks. (Missy also gave us a few glances at previous faces with the First and Fourth Doctors in her flashback story.)

The use of regeneration energy here brings up some questions – the Doctor previously offered it to River Song in The Angels Take Manhattan, an act that may have either returned what she gave him in Let’s Kill Hitler or expended what little he had left in the tank before The Time of the Doctor – but we have no idea how many regenerations the Twelfth Doctor is starting with (or if he even has a limit at this point). We don’t know how many lives he may have lost in this story.

The regeneration plot is where this story stumbles for me. Once again, we get the Steven Moffat trope of the Doctor holding a magic piece of information to play, and I find it implausible that he would know that Davros would try to steal regeneration energy or that he would know that someone would break Davros’s grasp on him.

Another interesting point to consider in light of future events in the series is Missy’s statement about her friendship with the Doctor. She refers to the Cloister Wars, the Doctor stealing the moon and the President’s wife, and the Doctor being a little girl, but adds the caveat that one of those was a lie. That caveat (as well as regeneration energy for enemies) will be fun to look upon in a few seasons.

This story again puts that Doctor on the precipice of destroying all the Daleks, an opportunity he has held and rejected multiple times (Genesis of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, The Parting of the Ways,  and The Day of the Doctor). We also get some connective tissue linking the Doctor’s famous moment in Genesis of the Daleks with the start of the Last Great Time War.

Perhaps one of the greatest elements in this story answers the question of what happens to Daleks in old age. The Fourth Doctor came across Dalek mutants that had been liquified (Destiny of the Daleks) and the Cult of Skaro had abandoned their non-viable mutant embryos to die in the New York City sewers (Daleks in Manhattan), but I don’t think that I have ever considered Daleks in their twilight years. It makes sense that they are too stubborn and too angry to die, allowing themselves to decay away instead of surrendering to death.

A few last Dalek notes: The design of the Dalek city and the sliding doors pays homage to the set The Daleks; Missy’s offer to teach the Daleks how to fly the TARDIS harkens back to the First Doctor bargaining for Susan’s life in The Daleks; Davros’s views on compassion echo the Daleks in Victory of the Daleks; and heroes inside Dalek casings played parts in both The Daleks and The Space Museum.

The tension surrounding Clara in the Dalek casing, especially with Missy’s mean trick at the end, was fantastic.

Missy’s mysterious resurrection calls back to the classic series, specifically, the “Tremas” Master (introduced in The Keeper of Traken) who escaped certain death with no explanation for his return (Castrovalva, Planet of Fire, and Survival). It’s almost like Skaro’s new lease on life in light of its destruction in Remembrance of the Daleks and the return in the TV movie and Asylum of the Daleks.

This story credits the creators of the Kahler, Skullions, Hath, Blowfish, Ood, and Sycorax. These aliens were all present when Colony Sarff was searching for the Doctor, and all of them have previously appeared in Doctor Who proper except for the Skullions, who originated in The Sarah Jane Adventures.

UNIT provides a fun travelogue of the Doctor’s adventures, including San Martino, Troy, multiple visits to New York City, and three possible versions of Atlantis.

Finally, this is the first purely historical story since 1982’s Black Orchid.

It’s a welcome return featuring two of the Doctor’s greatest enemies, a lot of wealth from deep mythology, and a ton of fun adventure. It’s also a great start to the new series.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Under the Lake and Doctor Who: Before the Flood

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #262: Dark Water & Death in Heaven

Michael Falkner9 Comments

Doctor Who: Dark Water
Doctor Who: Death in Heaven
(2 episodes, s08e11-12, 2014)

Timestamp 262 Dark Water Death in Heaven

A long-lost friend returns.

Dark Water

Clara is ready to confess her travels with the Doctor to Danny. She’s left Post-It notes around to remind her of everything she wants to say, but she starts with “I love you.” She continues with how he’s the last person she’ll ever say that to, but the line goes silent.

A woman picks up the line and tearfully apologizes.

Danny Pink was hit by a car. He died in the accident.

Clara mourns. She’s numb from the experience. She’s visited by her grandmother, but consolation does nothing. She claims that Danny was ordinary and boring, though she obviously doesn’t believe it. She claims that the universe owes her better. So she calls the Doctor.

The Doctor picks her up and she asks him to take her to an active volcano. While she asks, she gathers all seven of the TARDIS keys and hits the Doctor with a sleep patch before navigating the TARDIS to a volcano. She remembered when the Doctor explained what could destroy a TARDIS key and systematically throws them in the lava while demanding that the Doctor fixes Danny’s death.

The Doctor refuses to create the paradox, and after Clara throws the final key into the lava, the enormity of what she has done hits her. The Doctor asks her to look at her hand, revealing that he reversed the patch in order to see how far she would go. The pair are still in the console room. The Doctor gathers the keys as Clara asks about the state of their friendship. He suggests that she should go to Hell, and when she takes that as the end of their relationship, he clarifies that he meant it literally. He’s going to take them to the afterlife to find Danny and bring him home. Almost every culture in the universe has a concept of the afterlife. The Doctor sees the extremity of her desire to see Danny and, despite his fury at her betrayal, he agrees to do everything he can. The generosity of forgiveness is overwhelming.

He wires Clara into the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits and she pilots the craft to Danny. Meanwhile, Danny wakes up in the Nethersphere. Seb offers him a cup of coffee as Danny realizes that he is dead.

The TARDIS takes Clara and the Doctor to the 3W Institute. The place is dark and filled with tanks of water. Each tank contains a skeleton seated in a chair, placed in tombs after death. They are eventually greeted by Missy who pretends to be a Mobile Intelligence Systems Interface as she kisses the Doctor. The Doctor is displeased. The Doctor is also mildly surprised when Missy takes his hand and presses it to her chest to feel her heart.

The subtext in this meeting is amazing. It’s also foreshadowing that is easy to miss if the viewer isn’t paying attention.

Missy calls for Doctor Chang. Chang continues the tour as Missy smirks and the skeletons look on. Meanwhile, in the Nethersphere, Seb introduces the afterlife to Danny while asking if he has ever killed anyone. This is due to Danny’s time in the army which forces him to relive the “bad day” when he killed a child. This child has apparently requested to meet Danny and appears before him. The kid runs away when Danny tries to reach out.

Chang takes the Doctor and Clara to learn about Dark Water. Only organic matter can be seen through the substance, and each skeleton is encased in a protective shell. (More foreshadowing!) The Doctor poses as a government inspector and interrogates Chang.

Together in separate places, Danny, the Doctor, and Clara learn that 3W’s founder, Dr. Skarosa, found telepathic communications from the dead in white radio noise. The dead are conscious and aware of everything happening to their bodies. Danny feels cold because his body is being stored in a cold place while his soul is in the Nethersphere.

While the Doctor mocks this idea, Chang establishes a connection between Danny and Clara. The Doctor tells her to ask questions to which only Danny would know the answer.

Meanwhile, Missy activates the tanks. The skeletons all stand.

Chang takes the Doctor to investigate the skeletons. Missy reveals that she was pretending to be an android and then kills Chang. The Doctor is shocked as the tanks drain to reveal an army of Cybermen, and he’s more shocked to see the Nethersphere floating in the air near him and Missy.

The Nethersphere is a Matrix data slice, a Gallifreyan hard drive, and it holds the minds of the dead while they are transferred into upgraded bodies. Missy reveals that she is a Time Lord – Time Lady, please – who the Doctor left for dead. The Doctor runs out of the building, which is really St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Clara is unconvinced that she’s talking to Danny, and he tells her that she needs to move on. That she cannot find him where he is now. He forces her to disconnect the call, and Seb offers him a chance to delete himself to avoid feeling the immense sorrow of leaving Clara behind.

In 3W, Clara looks behind her to see a Cyberman in a tank. She tries to run, but the door is locked. Outside, the tanks all open and the Cybermen march. The Doctor tries to scare the onlookers away, but Missy only mocks him. The Doctor demands to know who she is, and she tells him that she’s Missy. Short for Mistress.

She couldn’t keep calling herself the Master, after all.

In the Nethersphere, Danny almost presses the delete button. Then he sees the kid he killed in the screen’s reflection.

Death in Heaven

Clara takes refuge behind a desk until a Cyberman finds her. To save her own life, she poses as the Doctor. Outside the cathedral, the Doctor is astounded to see the people of London posing with the Cyberman as if they were a carnival attraction. When Kate Stewart and Osgood show up, the bystanders are revealed as UNIT operatives. They take Missy into custody, but the Cybermen open up the cathedral dome and the cyborg army lifts off into the sky.

The same repeats around the world, leaving one Cyberman per major metropolitan area. Each of those Cybermen explodes and pollinates the air. Inside the Nethersphere, Danny and the kid look on as the lights start going out and the dead are transplanted into new bodies. The Doctor is unable to get the answers he needs when both he and Missy are shot with tranquilizer darts and taken away. Before the Doctor succumbs, he tells Osgood to focus on the graveyards.

Sure enough, that is where the new cyber-storms empty their rain, eventually flooding cemeteries and funeral homes with the contaminated water. In no time at all, the dead rise in upgraded Cyberman bodies. One of them is Danny Pink, who was previously laying in rest at the Chaplet Funeral Home.

The Doctor is awakened as the TARDIS is loaded into a UNIT plane. Kate has yet to find Clara, and explains that his cooperation is to be ensured since UNIT assumes that he won’t automatically do so. The Doctor has also been elected as the President of Earth, much to his chagrin.

Clara is still within St. John’s Cathedral and trying to negotiate with three Cybermen. They don’t buy her ruse, but it doesn’t need to last long since a single Cyberman approaches from behind. That unit concurs that Clara is an incredible liar, knocks her out, then destroys the three Cybermen holding her hostage.

Missy wakes up to see the Doctor hovering over her, asking why she’s still alive. Her presence is due to the Doctor saving Gallifrey, and Missy seems to know where Gallifrey is located. She refuses to tell the Doctor, and their discussion leads Osgood to deduce that Missy is the Master. As the Doctor is summoned to the conference room, Osgood tells him that the storm clouds have expanded to cover the landmasses. The Doctor offers her a spot as his companion, which pretty much seals her fate.

All around the world, the dead have risen as the new Cyberman army. Clara awakens in a graveyard as more start to rise, but these models wander aimlessly. On the UNIT plane, the Doctor realizes that the Cyber-pollen contains the data to convert the dead. The Cybermen are newborns, unable to attack since they haven’t yet linked to the Cyberiad.

Kate tells the Doctor that they were previously investigating 3W before getting a call from a Scottish woman. He presumes that the caller was Missy because the Master loves to show off his/her diabolical plans. Down in the cargo hold, Missy goads Osgood, revealing that she will kill the scientist soon. Missy distracts her with a countdown before displaying that she is free and vaporizing Osgood. Soon after, she summons the Cybermen to attack the plane. The Doctor returns to the cargo hold to find Missy.

In the graveyard, Clara confronts the Cyberman who saved her. After she refuses to admit where the Doctor is, the Cyberman removes its faceplate to reveal Danny Pink’s face. Danny asks for help, begging to have his emotion inhibitor turned on to eliminate his grief.

Missy admits that she’s been traveling up and down his timeline, salvaging the people who died saving him. When the TARDIS phone rings, she further reveals that she was the woman who gave the Doctor’s phone number to Clara. She was also the person who placed the newspaper ad in Deep Breath. When he picks up the phone, he hears Clara on the other end. She tells him about Danny’s fate and tells him to home in on her phone. He’ll either show up or he won’t, but Clara is set on helping Danny.

When Kate comes below, Missy blows out the hull before transmatting back to the Nethersphere, sending Kate into free fall. The Doctor plummets after Kate, falling into the TARDIS on the way. When Seb celebrates, Missy vaporizes him.

The TARDIS materializes in the graveyard and the Doctor warns Clara that if she removes Danny’s emotions, Danny will kill her. Danny denies it, but the Doctor tells him that pain is a gift. Without the capacity for pain, we can’t feel the hurt we inflict. The catch is that Danny cannot tell the Doctor what the plan is unless the emotions are removed.

The Doctor is left in a quandary. Clara relieves him of that by taking the sonic screwdriver and activating the inhibitor. Before she does, she says goodbye and apologizes to Danny for not being better. Danny reveals the plan to kill off humanity and resurrect the dead as Cybermen, thus eliminating the human race.

Missy transmats into the graveyard and offers to take away Clara’s pain by killing her. The Doctor swats the device away and Clara picks it up before returning to Danny. Missy activates the army with her bracelet, then offers command of the forces to the Doctor. With this army, the Doctor would have the final say in every great battle in the history of the universe. He can even save the people suffering in the Dalek camps. The universe would be at peace forever.

The Doctor rejects the notion, but Missy tells him that she needs her friend back. The Doctor ponders again if he is a good man but then has an epiphany. He declares that he is not a good man, nor a bad man, nor a hero, nor a president, nor an officer, as Danny had described him. He is an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver, passing through, helping out, learning. He has companions and knows that love is a promise, not an emotion.

This is why Danny won’t hurt Clara.

The Doctor passes the bracelet to Danny. The new commander of the Cyberman army orders all of the drones to lift off worldwide, destroying themselves in the clouds to burn away the threat.

Missy – the Master – is defeated. She recites the galactic coordinates of Gallifrey, claiming that the planet returned to its normal place. Clara considers killing Missy but relents at the Doctor’s bequest. The Doctor then tells Missy that she won before turning the device on her, but a blue blast comes from behind, seemingly disintegrating her.

The Doctor looks behind to see a single Cyberman. It gestures to Kate’s prone but alive form on the ground nearby. She was saved by this Cyberman, who in the Earth’s darkest hour still served the side of right. The Doctor offers the Brigadier a salute before he flies away.

Two weeks later, Clara is awakened by Danny’s voice. The bracelet that Missy used offers the chance to bring one person from the Nethersphere to the living world. Danny uses it to restore the kid he killed, asking Clara to find his parents and send him home. Later on, the Doctor finds Clara in a coffee shop and spots the bracelet. He wrongly assumes that Danny returned home, and further assumes that Clara will no longer be traveling with him. He also tells her that he found Gallifrey…

…except he didn’t. Space at those coordinates was empty. Missy lied, and the Doctor wept in rage and sorrow.

The Doctor tells Clara that he plans to go home, eager to reform Gallifrey into a good place. Clara continues the lie about Danny’s return and offers to say goodbye with a hug. The Doctor agrees, remarking that he doesn’t trust hugs because they are a way to hide your face.

The Doctor departs with a thank you from Clara. Traveling with him made her feel special, and he returns the thanks for the same reason. Clara walks away and doesn’t look back.

Later, the Doctor is brooding alone in his TARDIS when he hears someone knocking at the door. From behind the door, presumably in deep space, a voice says that the story cannot end like this because neither Clara nor the Doctor is okay. The voice belongs to Santa Claus, and in a swirl of snowflakes, he asks a puzzled Doctor what the Time Lord wants for Christmas.

Let’s take care of the elephant in the room. The first sin of this story is a typical sci-fi trope: They killed the only black main character.

The second sin: They fridged him.

Danny Pink’s death was an effort by Missy to engage Clara and the Doctor in her master plot. I cannot praise this story without first acknowledging how it played into two major tropes that exploit minorities, both of which Steven Moffat should have avoided in this story’s development. It also highlights the rather unhealthy relationship between the Doctor and Clara, particularly in the need for sneaking around and manipulating each other to get something done. Clara’s relationship with the Eleventh Doctor was far more healthy, and that one was based on his obsession with her.

A big mythological step from this story is the Missy revelation. While the show has previously acknowledged the concept of Time Lords changing genders – the examples are all from the revival era, specifically The End of Time, The Doctor’s Wife, and The Night of the Doctor – this firmly establishes it with the regeneration of the Master (who we haven’t seen since The End of Time, which aired four years prior to this set). Notably, the term “Time Lady” has not been used in a revival-era televised story before this point. It was previously used in City of Death in reference to Romana.

The same holds for the term Prydonian, one of the most powerful chapters (think colleges or houses) on Gallifrey. It was introduced in The Deadly Assassin and explored in the novels.

Not counting the big gaps between Survival, the TV movie, and the 2005 revival, this hiatus for the Master is on par with the breaks between Frontier in Space, The Deadly Assassin, and The Keeper of Traken. The Master’s plan is diabolical – the planet Earth has no shortage of corpses given a worldwide death rate of 1.8 people per second – but also really, really squicky. It’s no wonder that the BBC had to release a statement defending the story’s points after receiving complaints from viewers.

Part of that unease comes from the “cameo” by the Brigadier at the end. I’ll defend the Master’s plan and I get what Steven Moffat was going for, but personally, the Cyber-Master was a step too far. Sure, Missy could travel through time and space to secure the Brig’s consciousness at the moment of his death, but why would she open that weakness in her own plan? It doesn’t make sense.

It’s also notable that this is not the first time that the Cybermen have converted the dead. We saw the practice before in The Pandorica Opens. (Spoilers: We’ll also see it again in a few years within the franchise.)

The return of the Cybermen marks another point in the Steven Moffat trend of ending a series with the menace. To this point, every penultimate episode of every series under his reign as executive producer – The Pandorica Opens, Closing Time, and Nightmare in Silver – has featured the Cybermen. This was one of the best features in that list, especially with the visual callback to The Invasion and the iconic march near St. Paul’s Cathedral. This story also calls back to a similar awakening from The Tomb of the Cybermen.

The return of UNIT in the second half really throws a wrinkle in the story. It’s nice to see Kate and Osgood again, though Osgood’s death was meaningless. The story pretty much threw her away for shock value, continuing a revival-era tradition of killing potential companions after being invited to travel. You know, like Lynda Moss, Madame de Pompadour, Astrid Peth, Jenny, Rita, and Clara Oswin Oswald.

The plot point of making the Doctor into the President of Earth – some sort of UNIT contingency plan for a worldwide catastrophe – seemingly comes from thin air and really drags on the story’s tempo. It only serves to set the stage for a less than exciting dive-into-the-free-falling-TARDIS moment as the presidential jetliner is torn apart. It further boggles the mind that the Doctor did not even try to save Kate, leaving her fate (ahem) up in the air until the deus ex machina Cyber-Brig revelation.

Otherwise, the Cyber-Danny elements provide a good exercise in exploring the meaning of Doctor Who, and close the loop on the good man/bad man theme that has served as the backbone for this series. It’s evident that this was the moment that Steve Moffat wanted in this story, leaving the rest of the spectacle to meander to this point.

The story continues to meander right up to the credits, providing a meaningful moment as the Doctor fails to find Gallifrey but another exercise in toxic relationships as the Doctor and Clara say their prevaricating farewells.

But, hey, at least we got Missy playing Mary Poppins. Because Mary Poppins is a Time Lord, y’all.

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Last Christmas

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #209: The End of Time

Michael Falkner24 Comments

Doctor Who: The End of Time
(Christmas Special, 2009)
(New Year Special, 2010)

“It is said that in the final days of planet Earth, everyone had bad dreams…” Everyone forgot these terrible dreams, except one man.

London is gearing up for Christmas, and Wilfred Mott is no exception. However, when he sees flashes of the Master laughing maniacally, he seeks the sanctuary of a nearby church. In the stained glass, he spots an image of the TARDIS. A mysterious woman tells him that it’s called the mystery of the blue box, driven by a sainted physician who smote a demon and vanished. She muses that he may be coming back, but when Wilf tells her that it would make his Christmas, she vanishes.

And the Master laughs.

The TARDIS materializes on the Ood Sphere, a full century after the Doctor and Donna freed the Ood. The Doctor struts into the snowy landscape in a tropical get-up, trying to get a laugh from Ood Sigma with a remote car lock on the time capsule. It doesn’t work. Neither does the Doctor’s boasting that he named a galaxy Alison, saw the Phosphorous Carousel of the Great Magellan Gestalt, and married Queen Elizabeth I.

The Doctor is troubled by the rapid nature of the Ood evolution. The Ood are troubled as well, though their burden is bad dreams of a return. The Doctor joins their vision and sees the laughing Master. The Doctor protests since the Master is dead, sharing his memories of The Year That Never Was, but is troubled as he sees visions of Wilf, Lucy Saxon, and a mysterious couple.

He recounts the tale of the Master’s demise and funeral, but the Ood note how he missed a woman picking up the Master’s ring. There’s also a shadow falling over creation. The end of time is coming.

The Doctor runs for the TARDIS. Lucy Saxon is set free from her jail cell in Christmas Eve. As the Doctor flies the TARDIS apart, Lucy is introduced to Miss Trefusis, the woman who retrieved the ring, and a group of fanatical disciples of the Master. The ring is placed into a vessel among potions and the biological signature from Lucy’s lips. The disciples surrender their life energy as the Master rematerializes in a burst of energy. The drumbeat echoes in his head as he muses to Lucy, but Lucy stymies his plans by throwing a potion of her own into the mix.

The prison explodes.

The Doctor arrives a day too late.

But someone survived the inferno, and that unknown couple celebrates. They are Joshua Naismith and his daughter Abigail, and they give orders to prepare the gate.

Meanwhile, Wilf joins a group of friends for drinks, but ends up giving them informational packets to keep an eye our for the Doctor. When they question him, he reminds them of their bad dreams and that the Doctor can help them.

In a junkyard, two men pick up meals from a food truck. A third man in a hoodie arrives and reveals himself as the Master. He devours a hamburger with the other two men, and after he’s identified as Harold Saxon, he chases them back to the food truck while phasing in and out. The food truck has been destroyed, and the two men are consumed next.

The Doctor stands over the junkyard, which the Master senses. The Master begins pounding a drumbeat on a steel drum. The Doctor runs to find him but arrives just in time to watch the manic Time Lord jump away with superhuman power. The Doctor pleads with him, asking to help him before he burns up his lifeforce, but the Master disappears.

Wilf arrives right away with his Silver Cloak network, and the Doctor is beside himself as they fawn over him. The Doctor returns to town with Wilf and they sit down over tea. The Doctor wonders why they keep meeting, musing about the prophecy of his own death. Even upon regeneration, he says, each incarnation dies as the next carries on.

They spot Donna, and while the Doctor reinforces that she can never remember him, he’s pleased that she’s moved on. She’s engaged to Shaun Temple, but Wilf knows that she knows that something is missing in her life.

Wilf asks about his companions and the Doctor tells him that he’s traveling alone. Sadly, he notes, without a companion he’s made some bad choices. The Doctor starts crying, burdened by the guilt of his recent actions which also devastates Wilf. He asks if Donna could make him smile again, but by now she is gone. The Doctor moves on as fate places all of the players on the field.

The Doctor finds the Master. The Master generates some kind of electrical blasts and pours energy into the Doctor, forcing the Time Lord to the ground. The Doctor realizes that the Master’s body has been torn wide open, enabling him to weaponize his life force at the expense of his own time. It’s a resurrection gone wrong and the Master is insane.

The Master remembers back to their childhood, where they would play on pastures of red grass, stretching across the slopes of Mount Perdition. The Doctor talks of the prophecy and the Master of his drumbeat. The Master shares the sound with the Doctor, forcing the Doctor to recoil in fear. The Master rockets away and the Doctor gives chase. The Master stops and asks what is calling him. Then a helicopter arrives, shoots at the Doctor, and abducts the Master. The Doctor is left unconscious in the junkyard.

Christmas arrives. Donna has given Wilf a copy of Naismith’s book, Fighting the Future, which troubles Wilf. Donna has no idea why she picked it out. It just felt right. Shaun arrives and Wilf tries to watch the Queen’s address, but it is preempted by a message that only he can see. The mysterious woman warns that, even though he fought in the war and never took a life, he will need to take up arms. He should also not warn the Doctor of this.

He goes to his bedroom and retrieves his service revolver. He looks up as the Doctor tosses a rock at his window, and goes out to talk to him. The Doctor is trying to connect the dots and finally does when Wilf shows him Naismith’s book. When Donna comes calling, the Doctor and Wilf take off in the TARDIS, leaving Sylvia yelling at the wind and Donna amused.

It’s Wilf’s first trip in the TARDIS. He thought it would be cleaner.

Meanwhile, the Naismiths celebrate the arrival of the Master. Wrapped in a straitjacket, the Time Lord is introduced to the Immortality Gate, which Naismith found after the fall of Torchwood. The gate’s power supply includes two booths connected to a nuclear device so that it has to be manned all the time. Naismith wants immortality for his daughter, who is aware of the disciples of Saxon.

Naismith has moles in his staff. Two of his scientists, Addams and Rossiter, are undercover Vinvocci disguised as humans. They want to take the gate for themselves.

The Doctor and Wilf arrive, and the Doctor pushes the TARDIS one second out of sync to hide it. They sneak into the Naismith complex and find the Vinvocci as the Master repairs the gate and brings it online. As the Master is restrained, the Doctor questions what is going on.

The Vinvocci are a salvage team and the gate is a medical device that repairs entire planets using a genetic template. They are also not the Zocci and take offense to being compared to cacti. With this knowledge, the Doctor rushes upstairs as the Master jumps into the gate. The Master’s genetic template is transmitted across the planet into every human being.

The Doctor and Wilf jump into the control booths. The radiation shielding protects Wilf from the transmission, leaving the Doctor free to work. Meanwhile, the planet is panicking.

Everyone begins transforming into the Master and Donna has witnessed it since she’s immune due to the metacrisis. Unfortunately, she’s begun to remember all of it as the Master celebrates the rise of the Master race.

And that unknown narrator who has been chronicling the story? He’s happy, because the return of the Time Lords and Gallifrey is at hand. He’s also the current Lord President.

In Doctor Who fashion, this story is taking place in two distinct temporal zones. On the last day of the Time War, the High Council tells the Lord President that the Doctor still has the Moment. Once he uses it, Gallifrey will fall as the Daleks are destroyed. One adviser suggests that it might be for the best since billions are dying and being resurrected over and over, but the President vaporizes her for the suggestion.

He will not surrender.

He learns that the Doctor and the Master will survive the Time War and will end up on Earth, so the President sets his sights there.

On Earth, the Doctor and Wilf are restrained as the Master checks in with himself around the world. The Master is surprised as Donna calls, demanding to know why she hasn’t changed. Wilf warns her to run as the Master pursues, but when Donna is cornered, the Doctor-Donna power is unleashed. The Masters and Donna all collapse.

The Master ungags the Doctor. The Doctor offers to let the Master travel with him, but the Master is concerned about the drumbeat in his head. Wilf asks about it, and the Master shares the story of how he was forced to look into the Untempered Schism. That was when it began.

The Lord President learns of this story at the same time, correlating the rhythm of four with the heartbeat of a Time Lord.

The Doctor realizes that the Master is still dying even with the Gate’s influence, but the Master is otherwise obsessed. The drumbeat is now amplified billions of times and coming from the end of time. The prophecy concerns him.

When the Master order Wilf to be executed, the guard turns out to be Rossiter. The Master is knocked unconscious and Wilf and the Doctor are rescued by Rossiter, Addams, and a teleport to the orbiting Vinvocci ship.

Once freed from his restraints, the Doctor rushes to save them from a planet of missiles aimed toward the skies. Oh, and a starstruck Wilf who has never been to space.

The Doctor’s solution? He turns the entire ship off by destroying the ship’s systems. It has stranded them in orbit, but Wilf has faith in the Doctor. As the Doctor begins to rebuild the ship’s systems, the mysterious woman appears to Wilf again and orders him to give his gun to the Doctor.

As the Masters listen for the drumbeats – which are now revealed to have been planted by the Lord President at the end of the Time War – the High Council sends a White-Point Star through the link. The size of a diamond, it is small enough to break the temporal lock, and when it lands in London with a giant crater, the Master laughs hysterically.

Wilf talks with the Doctor as the Time Lord works on the ship. He recounts his memories of the war and learns that the Doctor is 906 years old. He supposes that the Doctor sees humans as insects, but the Doctor admits that he really sees them as giants. The Doctor refuses the gun, but tells Wilf that he would be proud to be his son.

The Doctor wonders if Time Lords live too long, but realizes that killing the Master would only mean that he starts down that dark path. While he’s made some bad choices and taken lives, he won’t kill the Master to save himself, even if Wilf pleads with him.

The Master sends an open broadcast to the Doctor, revealing the existence of the White-Point Star. The Doctor realizes with fear that the Time Lords are returning, and he takes the gun and rushes to the control room.

On Earth, the Master uses the White-Point Star to establish a link and open a pathway. Contact is made, and the High Council chooses life over the fall of Gallifrey.

Wilf is confused. He thought that the Time Lords were wise and peaceful, but that’s how the Doctor chooses to remember them. In reality, the horrors of the Time War had changed them, irrevocably corrupting them and making them far more dangerous than any of his enemies.

The Doctor restores power to the ship and takes control. With an old Earth saying, a word of great power and wisdom and consolation to soul in times of need, he drives the ship toward the planet: “Allons-y!”

Using the ship’s salvage lasers, Wilf and Rossiter destroy the planet’s missiles as the ship races to England. When they arrive, the Doctor dives from the ship, falling through the glass dome into the chamber below at the President’s feet in a battered mess.

That’s right. The Time Lords have arrived.

The President greets the renegades as “Lord Doctor” and “Lord Master”, noting the paradox of having been saved by Gallifrey’s most infamous child. When the Master tries to change the Time Lords into himself, the President reverses the effect worldwide and demands that humanity kneel before him.

Then Gallifrey materializes in Earth’s orbit, bearing down on the planet and causing it to quake. Shaun goes in search of Donna as everyone panics in the street. Wilf finds his way to the surface and enters the Gate’s control chamber.

The Master is excited that the Time Lords have returned, but the Doctor reminds him that he wasn’t there in the final days. All of the other horrors born in the last days of the Time War, which he had sealed away in the Time Lock, would also be released. The Daleks would be joined by the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, and the Could’ve Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. Hell has come to Earth, and the Time Lords, who had planned to deal with these horrors with the Ultimate Sanction – an ascension above the physical form while creation tears itself apart – would be enacted here.

All of this chaos was happening at the same time as Dalek Caan breaking through the time lock to rescue Davros. Apparently, while it was primarily a battle between the Daleks and the Time Lords, the Time War engulfed the entire universe in both space and time.

The Doctor draws Wilf’s gun on the President, then on the Master. Both are the ends of the link, but the Doctor cannot kill either. Finally, he spots the mysterious woman in the President’s retinue. She was one of the two advisers who disagreed with the President and was forced to hide her face like a Weeping Angel. Her tear-streaked gaze focuses on the White-Point Star, and when the Doctor shoots it, Gallifrey returns to its rightful place on the last day of the Time War.

The President, now revealed as Rassilon, threatens to take the Doctor with him, but the Master unleashes his energy in fury. Rassilon falls to his knees as Gallifrey, the Time Lords, and the Master vanish.

The planet and her people are safe once again, and the Doctor is certain that he’s dodged the prophecy.

But someone knocks four times.

Wilf is still in the control booth, and the only way out is if someone replaces him and takes the brunt of the nuclear blast of 500,000 rads as the energy source goes into overload. Wilf offers to sacrifice himself, but the Doctor cannot allow that. Even in his anger because he could do so much more!

The Doctor pushes his own darkness aside because he knows the right answer and enters the booth. Wilf is saved as the energy pours into the Doctor. The Time Lord collapses in pain, and once the energy release is complete, the Doctor exits the now dead booth.

Wilf thinks that the Doctor made it out okay, but the Doctor shows him the injuries from his skydive. His regeneration has begun. The Tenth Doctor is dying.

All Wilf can offer is a hug.

Shaun and Sylvia tend to Donna as the Doctor drops Wilf at the house. The whine of the TARDIS awakens her, and she seems to be no worse for wear. The Doctor promises that he’ll see Wilf one more time, but he has a reward to find.

Here we find the Tenth Doctor seeking redemption for the dark things he’s done since losing Donna.

First, he saves Martha and Mickey from a Sontaran sniper. It turns out that they’re married now. To each other.

Next, he saves Luke Smith from being struck by a car. With a glance, he says farewell to Sarah Jane. She knows what’s coming next.

Next up? An intergalactic bar where he introduces a despondent Captain Jack Harkness to Midshipman Alonso Frame. You know what happens next.

After that, he buys a book from Verity Newman. Her great-grandmother was Joan Redfern, the woman who fell in love with John Smith. He asks if Joan was happy in the end. She was. Silently, so was he.

He returns to Wilf at Donna’s successful wedding. He offers a winning lottery ticket bought with a pound from Sylvia’s late husband. Once they cash it in, all of the family’s financial troubles will be history. The Doctor leaves with a final look at Wilfred, the man whose life he saved at the expense of his own. Wilfred cries, realizing that he’ll never see the Doctor again. It’s one salute that the Doctor doesn’t mind.

Finally, we come to New Years Day 2005. From the shadows, he talks to Rose Tyler at the Powell Estate, promising her that she’s going to have a really great year. When she meets the Ninth Doctor in a few months, she certainly will.

With that, he struggles back to the TARDIS, guided by Ood Sigma. Sigma tells him that the universe will sing him to sleep, and while this song is ending, the story never ends. The Doctor musters his strength as the Ood sing “Vale Decem” in chorus.

He enters the TARDIS, discards his coat, and looks upon his glowing hand as the TARDIS reaches orbit. He laments, “I don’t want to go,” and then erupts in violent regeneration energy.

The explosion rips through the TARDIS, toppling the coral supports, tearing apart the console, and blowing out the windows.

“Geronimoooooooooooo!”

You know, I actually feel sorry for the Master. When Professor Yana regenerated into this version of the Master, I was pleased. Professor Yana was a little crazed due to his identity crisis but also a whole lotta evil. The Harold Saxon Master was diabolical and slightly insane due to the constant drumbeat in his head. When the Master was defeated and killed by Lucy Saxon, I thought it was a good ending for the character, even with the knowledge that the Master never dies.

This resurrection gone wrong takes the character in an entirely wrong direction. I can understand the increased mania, since we’ve seen regenerations gone wrong before, and I loved the dynamic of the Doctor trying to save the Master from self-destruction, but the flight and speed superpowers were way over the top. It shifts a nefarious nemesis into a parody, and thankfully the powers were limited.

What’s really intriguing is the Gallifery connection. We know Rassilon, from his origins as a founder of Time Lord civilization to the manifestation of his quest for power in The Five Doctors, and we know just how aloof and disdainful the Time Lords are in general. So, it really makes sense that they would willingly torture one of their own to save their civilization.

The Doctor knew it, too. Throughout the classic era, the Doctor wore his displeasure on his sleeves. Whatever happened in the Time War – whatever mighty burden the Doctor carries in the aftermath – was powerful enough to change his anger into rose-colored nostalgia.

Shifting gear, Wilf is just too precious. He is the perfect embodiment of Doctor Who, from his wide-eyed wonder upon going to space (having dreamed about it since Partners in Crime) to his delicate balance of self-sacrifice, love, and understanding that darkness is necessary to balance the light. He claims that he’s lived his life to its natural conclusion, but he has so much more to give the world in his honesty and sincerity. One of my favorite character notes is that he was a veteran, but he never killed anyone in the war and sees that as a badge of honor.

I am really going to miss him.

His moment in the “final reward” farewell tour was touching. It was also a fitting ending to Donna’s story as she gained so much happiness after losing so much. I was also pleased with the emotion and scope of the farewell tour, from Sarah Jane and Captain Jack – that scene was also a farewell to Russell T. Davies as well, given all of the creature cameos in those short minutes – to Rose and even Mickey the Idiot. The nod to the franchise’s origins with Verity Newman was a very nice touch.

The scene with Martha and Mickey was pretty cool, but their marriage comes out of pretty much nowhere. Last we knew from The Last of the Time Lords, Reset, and The Sontaran Stratagem, Martha was engaged to Tom Milligan. You know, the pediatrician working in Africa who was a resistance leader in The Year That Never Was? But somewhere between The Sontaran Stratagem and The End of Time, she hot-swapped Tom for Mickey.

The final farewell with Rose was a perfect place to end the tour, promising her a fantastic year to come from the shadows. She obviously disregarded the whole meeting as one with a New Year’s drunk, but the promise is heartwarming.

Then we come to the part where Murray Gold hits it out of the park. “Vale Decem,” which premiered at the end of The Waters of Mars, is a near-perfect farewell for the Tenth Doctor. It combines the Doctor’s theme with a Latin love letter that literally says “Farewell Ten”, and since the Doctor’s theme is the base melody and the Doctor can hear the song, it can be assumed that the Doctor’s theme exists in the “real world” of the Doctor Who universe.

Finally, the regeneration. It is heartbreaking from both the in-universe and production aspects. The Tenth Doctor was the most popular incarnation of the character since the Fourth Doctor, greatly owed to each of them being an entry point for the franchise. You never forget your first Doctor, after all. But from production, the regeneration was the coda to an era of the show which heralded the resurrection of the franchise.

In the phoenix flames of rebirth, the title character destroys the console room (which was iconic for years) and ends the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who.

And, yeah, that regeneration makes a lot of sense. He’s been holding this process back for who knows how long. Effectively, he’s been dying the entire time. The explosive destruction should be expected.

The end result on this story? It is a fun adventure when the tempo picks up, but I remember the first time that I watched it. I had only seen the series from Rose forward, and with very little knowledge about the show’s history or the Time War, the story was confusing and convoluted. It made a lot more sense on this watch thanks to my detailed trip through Doctor Who, but I wonder how much I would have enjoyed this a decade ago if Russell T. Davies had addressed more about the Time War in the course of his run.

That mystery will continue for several seasons.

Based on the rules of the Timestamps Project, regeneration episodes get a +1 handicap since they tend to be a little rough. Without that bump, this story would have settled at a high 3 or low 4, primarily from the Super Master effect.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor Specials and Tenth Doctor Summary

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #193: Utopia & The Sound of Drums & Last of the Time Lords

Michael Falkner23 Comments

Doctor Who: Utopia
Doctor Who: The Sound of Drums
Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords
(3 episodes, s03e11-e13, 2007)

 

From the end of the universe to the end of the world.

 

Utopia

The TARDIS materializes on the Cardiff Rift in the modern day in order to refuel. They only expect to be there for twenty seconds, during which Martha and the Doctor discuss a little problem with the Slitheen on the Rift, and the Doctor almost avoids picking up an immortal hitch-hiker. Something propels the TARDIS to the year 100 trillion, at the very end of the universe, and Captain Jack Harkness is hanging on through time and space for the ride.

In that far future, a human hunt is underway by the Futurekind. Professor Yana and his assistant Chantho regret the event in motion, but they cannot spare the guards to save the lost soul. They are on a quest for a place called Utopia. When asked for a status report, Yana is unable to focus due to the sound of drums in his head.

They also detect a new arrival as the TARDIS touches down.

The Doctor is apprehensive – almost scared – since this place is farther than any Time Lord has gone before. (Remember that there was a rule among Time Lords that they shouldn’t travel beyond a certain time.) As they leave the TARDIS, they find Jack’s dead body. Luckily, he springs back to life. The Doctor dissuades Jack from hitting on Martha as they exchange tense pleasantries. Jack notes the Doctor’s new face and asks after Rose, relieved to know that she’s still alive.

As they explore, Jack shares his story with Martha as the Doctor criticizes his method of time travel. Jack used his vortex manipulator to bounce from the battle with the Daleks to Earth in 1869. From there, he waited for the Doctor to arrive, eventually settling on the Rift. Martha frets about being left behind like Jack was, but the Doctor focuses them back on their task. They have found a city (or hive) and the Doctor muses on the decline of the universe as it dies around them. They then spot the hunted human and rush to his aid.

Jack draws his revolver and fires warning shots into the air. The horde stops long enough for the travelers to set their sights on the Silo, a safe space for humanity. The Silo is also home to Yana’s lab, and he is excited to learn that a doctor (of everything) has arrived. As the humans in the Silo offer aid, the Doctor asks them to bring his TARDIS to the camp.

As they walk through the refugee camp, the Doctor praises the indomitable spirit of humanity. They also figure out (by almost falling to the bottom) that the Silo is a literal missile silo, home to a rocket to take people to Utopia.

Professor Yana finds the Doctor and puts him to work as a consultant, but the Time Lord doesn’t recognize any of it. Meanwhile, Martha finds out that Jack is carrying the Doctor’s discarded hand, prompting a discussion of the Doctor’s status as the last of the Time Lords. Chantho is also the last of her kind, and Martha is downright obsessed with the Doctor’s new hand.

She’s never seen him regenerate, so this is all new to her.

Yana introduces the Doctor to Utopia: A signal from the depths that calls to the last of the humans scattered across the night. The Doctor is intrigued but also concerned as the professor has another attack of the drums. He also recognizes that the rocket will not be able to fly, and with a wave of his sonic screwdriver the circuits are complete.

Humanity is ready to fly.

As the Futurekind watch from beyond the gates, the humans board the rocket. Martha talks briefly with the young child they met on their arrival, unaware of a Futurekind spy nearby. Meanwhile, the Doctor praises Yana’s work which he recognizes a system of “food and string and staples.” Yana reveals that he will be staying behind with Chantho, and the drums intensify as he sees the TARDIS on a nearby monitor.

As the Doctor uses the TARDIS to help make final launch preparations, he seems to recognize the professor’s symptoms. Meanwhile, Martha bonds with Chantho (who begins each sentence with “chan” and ends it with “tho”) before aiding the professor with monitoring a coupling room. The room is flooded with Stet radiation, but it also controls the gravity footprint on the ship.

While work proceeds in the coupling room, the Futurekind spy sabotages the system. As radiation rises, Jack jumpstarts the override by passing the current through himself. It kills him momentarily, but his resurrection proves useful as they need someone to go in and finish the work.

As Jack enters the flooded chamber, the Doctor reveals that he’s known about the immortality since the battle with the Daleks. Jack, a single person, is a fixed point in time. That’s something that should never happen. Rose’s power as the Bad Wolf gave him that gift. The Doctor asks him if he wants to die, and Jack says that he doesn’t know.

While Martha and Chantho monitor Jack’s progress, Yana’s internal drumbeat intensifies again as he learns about traveling in time and space. The discussion between the Doctor and Jack reverberates through Yana.

The Gallifrey theme (“This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home“) punctuates every step, but comes crashing to a stop as Yana produces a pocket watch. He’s had it since he was found as a child, and he’s never been able to open it.

Martha recognizes it. She goes to find the Doctor.

Jack finishes his work and the countdown commences. As they work, Martha tells the Doctor about the watch. The Doctor is shaken by this news because it means that he is not the last of his kind. But the perception filter is slipping. Familiar words and voices flit through Yana’s mind as the rocket lifts off, and he opens the watch.

Remember Boe’s last words: You are not alone. YANA.

Professor Yana is the Master.

He locks the Doctor’s team in the launch control room and opens the Silo to the Futurekind. The Doctor breaks out, but he’s too late to stop the Master from killing Chantho. The Master takes the disc regarding Utopia, puts the jar with the hand in the TARDIS, and disconnects the TARDIS from the laboratory. He takes a fatal gunshot from a mortally wounded Chantho before jumping into the capsule and locking the door.

The Doctor breaks into the lab and begs with him to let him in, but the Master takes the opportunity to regenerate. He taunts the Doctor with a voice that Martha recognizes, but despite the Doctor’s apology and attempt to stop him with the sonic screwdriver, the Master dematerializes with the TARDIS.

The travelers are stranded in the future and left to fight the invading Futurekind.

 

The Sound of Drums

The Doctor fixes the vortex manipulator and is able to jump the travelers to modern-day London. As Martha and Jack discuss how they’ll find the Master, they realize that they have arrived on the day after Election Day.

The Master has been elected Prime Minister, and his name is Harold Saxon.

On Saxon’s first day, he’s a little overwhelmed by the demands of the job, but he’s happy to have Martha’s sister Tish on his staff. His cabinet is dismayed by his odd behavior, particularly when he calls them all traitors.

He rewards their loyalty by killing them all with toxic gas.

Martha, Jack, and the Doctor retreat to Martha’s apartment to research Saxon. She’s stunned to realize that they’ve only been away for four days since she first met the Doctor, but the Master was able to use the TARDIS to change history for the duration of his campaign. All of it started after the downfall of Harriet Jones.

In a sense, the Doctor paved the way for the Master’s ascendancy.

Meanwhile, Vivien Rook of the Sunday Mirror tries to convince Lucy Saxon, Harold’s wife, that her husband is an imposter. She provides proof that his life is a forgery, starting only eighteen months before around the launch of the Archangel project. Lucy is faithful to her husband, however, and Rook ends up dead shortly thereafter by the hands of the Master’s death probes.

Lucy is beside herself that someone could put it all together, but Saxon reassures her that everything ends the next morning.

In Martha’s apartment, the Doctor reveals that he fused the TARDIS controls when the Master stole the capsule. It had no choice but to land eighteen months before their current location. The Doctor recognizes that Saxon’s campaign speeches were laced with the drumbeat, impregnating it in the minds of the electorate.

They watch as Saxon announces the arrival of the Toclafane, reassuring the viewers that this won’t be like the previous alien encounters – namely the destruction of Big Ben, the ghosts and Cybermen, and the Christmas Star – before cueing the Doctor that Martha’s apartment is boobytrapped (complete with a Magpie Electricals television set). They escape before it blows up, and Martha tries to warn her family that they are in danger. Saxon’s forces are faster, and her entire family is locked away while the travelers run.

The Master intercepts Martha’s call to her brother, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to talk with his friend and rival. The Doctor reveals the fate of Gallifrey. He also learns that the Master was resurrected by the Time Lords to fight in the Last Great Time War, but that he ran when the Dalek Emperor took the Cruciform and used a Chameleon Arch to become human.

The Master refuses the Doctor’s offer of help, showing the Doctor on television that he and his friends are now enemies of the state. He’s also dispatched Torchwood Three to the Himalayas on a wild goose chase. When he disconnects, the travelers have no choice but to run.

The Master is later contacted by one of the Toclafane – the spheres of death – demanding to know if the machine is ready. The Master says that it will be by the next morning, and despite the threat of the coming darkness from which the Toclafane must run, there’s nothing he can do to speed it up.

The Doctor, Martha, and Jack hide in an abandoned warehouse. While snacking on takeaway chips, they discuss the origins of the Master. The Doctor speaks highly of the known image of Gallifrey. At the age of eight, initiates are taken to look upon a gap in the fabric of reality known as the Untempered Schism, a window into the temporal vortex. It inspired the Doctor to run but it probably drove the Master mad.

Jack reveals that he works for Torchwood, but promises that he rebuilt it from the ashes of the old, corrupt regime. He downloads a video sent to Torchwood about the Archangel Network, a new phone service that the Master controls. The carrier wave is the sound of drums, whispering to the world to trust the Master. The Doctor devises perception filters for three TARDIS keys, one for each of them. He also reveals that Time Lords can detect other Time Lords, even through regenerations.

The team moves from the warehouse as Air Force One delivers President Arthur Winters to London. The President orders Saxon to cede control to UNIT and is dismayed by the Prime Minister’s childish antics. The President has arranged for first contact on the USS Valiant, a UNIT aircraft carrier. The travelers watch the goings-on from the side of the runway, and the Master is suspicious but overall unaware. Martha is upset to see her family paraded on the tarmac, and the Doctor reinforces that he wants to save the Master, not kill him. They use the vortex manipulator to travel to the Valiant, where they discover that it is an aircraft carrier in the sky.

As morning dawns, the Master prepares for the first contact meeting while eating jelly babies. The travelers find the TARDIS, but subdued lighting and the Cloister Bell alert the Doctor that something is wrong. It has been configured to be a paradox machine, set to go off at 8:02 AM.

But the Doctor has a plan.

They sneak into the meeting room, intent on putting a key around the Master’s neck and canceling his perception filter. The first contact begins, but the Toclafane specifically (by name) request to see the Master. Saxon reveals himself as the Master and assassinates the President. The Doctor is taken into custody before the Master kills Jack with a laser screwdriver.

The Master uses the Lazarus experiment and the Doctor’s genetic code (courtesy of the hand in a jar) to advance the Doctor a century in age. He then brings in Martha’s family for the main event.

A crack tears open in the sky above the carrier as six billion Toclafane emerge and start murdering humans without prejudice. Ten percent are killed immediately. Martha takes one last look at her friends and family before using the vortex manipulator to teleport away. She emerges on the planet below and runs into hiding, promising to return.

Until then, the Master has won.

So it came to pass that the human race fell and the Earth was no more. And I looked down upon my new dominion as Master of all. And I thought it good.

 

Last of the Time Lords

It’s been one year since the invasion of the Toclafane. The planet Earth has been quarantined as it enters its final extinction. Martha, still fighting the good fight, is traveling the world. She just returned home to find Professor Alison Docherty, and her liaison Tom Milligan believes the legend that she can save the world.

On the carrier Valiant, the Master is still riding high as lord of the planet. He treats the Doctor like a pet dog, Martha’s family like slaves, Jack an eternal prisoner, and his wife like an abused plaything. He also knows that the Doctor has worked out who the Toclafane are, and that the epiphany has broken his hearts.

The Doctor sends Francine a signal – the number three – which she passes along. Meanwhile, Martha and Tom come across a field of thousands of spaceships, ready to wage war with the universe. They are challenged by the Tocalafane, but Tom is a doctor and Martha still has her perception filter.

On the Valiant, the prisoners revolt at 3:00pm as planned. In the chaos, the Doctor gets ahold of the Master’s laser screwdriver but can’t operate it due to isomorphic controls keyed to the Master alone. Martha’s family is locked up, Jack is killed (again), and the Doctor is back to being taunted in a leather chair.

The taunting includes mentions of The Sea Devils, The Claws of Axos, and something about closing the rift at the Medusa Cascade.

Martha and Tom find Professor Docherty. She tunes into a broadcast from the Master during which he ages the Doctor through his entire lifespan regardless of regenerations. The now thousand-year-old form of the Doctor has withered into a being unable to fit his own clothes, but Martha finds hope in the fact that he still lives.

Docherty says that the Archangel Network is continuously broadcasting a fear signal to the planet, keeping the humans in line. Martha produces a disc with information about one Toclafane sphere that was destroyed in a lightning strike and using that data they experiment on a sphere.

The Master and Lucy visit the Doctor, contained in a birdcage suspended from the ceiling, and tell him that they will launch a fleet through a hole in the Braccatolian space. He will only stop when there is a new Gallifrey in the heavens, and that the Doctor should be proud. After all, he’s doing this for the Toclafane, which the Doctor loves very, very much.

The Toclafane that Martha experiments on is the orphan kid from the end of the universe. The whole race is built from the humans who were launched toward Utopia. The Master took Lucy there and discovered them, transformed into the spheres, regressing into children. There was no Utopia. Just death.

The TARDIS, the paradox machine, keeps the fabric of time in place while the Toclafane exist.

Docherty asks Martha if the legends are true. She shows them a gun developed by Torchwood and UNIT that supposedly halts regeneration and kills a Time Lord permanently. She needs one last chemical component, apparently housed at an old UNIT base. After Martha and Tom leave for a safehouse, Docherty transmits Martha’s location to the Master in exchange for information about the professor’s son.

As Martha tells the assembled survivors in the safehouse about the Doctor, the Master comes for Martha. He flushes her out by threatening the survivors around her. He destroys the anti-regeneration gun, kills Milligan when he defends her, and takes Martha back to the carrier to kill her in front of the Doctor.

At the moment of her execution, the moment when the fleet is due to launch, Martha starts to laugh. The gun was a ruse since the Doctor would never endorse her killing the Master. Instead, the weapon was the story of the Doctor. If the world thinks of one word at the same moment within the Archangel Network’s telepathic field, it would restore the world.

The word: “Doctor.”

The world turns against the Master and the Doctor is restored, having spent the year integrating himself into the network. The power of his restoration is so strong that the laser screwdriver is useless against him. The Doctor corners the Master and shatters his world with one phrase: “I forgive you.”

Which is better than the Master’s actual fear concerning the Doctor.

The Master rallies the Toclafane to protect the Paradox Machine, then teleports the two Time Lords to the planet below using Jack’s vortex manipulator. The Master threatens to detonate the Toclafane, each with a black hole converter capable of destroying the Earth.

Meanwhile, the humans on the Valiant defend the ship against the Toclafane assault. Just as Jack destroys the paradox device, the Doctor manages to teleport himself and the Master back to the Valiant. The previous year is reversed to the point just after the President of the United States was assassinated. Everyone on the Valiant will remember the year that never was, but the rest of the universe will not.

The Master is apprehended, but Francine threatens to kill him. The Doctor stops her and decides to keep the Master on the TARDIS. Unfortunately, the plan is destroyed when Lucy shoots the Master. He collapses in the Doctor’s arms, but faced with the prospect of being locked away forever in the TARDIS with the Doctor, he refuses to regenerate.

Once again, the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords. The drumming stops. The Master is dead.

The Doctor’s raw fury and sorrow resonate thanks to David Tennant’s wonderful acting talent.

Later, the Doctor cremates the Master’s remains, ensuring that no one can harvest the Time Lord’s DNA. Martha finds Docherty and forgives her, even though the professor has no idea what’s going on. Martha and Jack say their farewells – Jack loses his ability to use the vortex manipulator – and Jack inadvertently reveals his nickname from his home on the Boeshane Peninsula: The Face of Boe.

The looks of simultaneous shock and amusement on Martha’s and the Doctor’s faces are incredible.

The Doctor prepares to leave, complete with the hand in a jar. All that’s left is Martha Jones. Unfortunately for the Doctor, Martha takes her leave of the TARDIS. She can’t continue on with all those people left for her to care for. She gives the Doctor her phone number, reminding the Time Lord that she’s not second best, and finally reveals her unrequited feelings for him. She makes him promise to come running if she needs him, and steps out of the TARDIS one last time.

The Doctor dematerializes the TARDIS, alone once again, unaware that the Master’s signet ring has been taken by unknown forces. But the moment is broken when a ship crashes through the TARDIS walls.

Her name is Titanic.

 

This trilogy of episodes earns every bit of the high ratings, from the drama and the effects to the characters that bind the whole thing together. Oh, the look on Francine Jones’s face when she realized that she had been used this whole time to get to the Doctor and Martha.

In terms of the overall franchise, this is a return to classic form. This is the first three-part story since Survival (the last story of the classic era). If you count the Torchwood episodes, this is the first story with more than four parts since The Armageddon Factor (or Shada, had it been fully completed and aired).

We also get the first appearance in the revival era of the Doctor’s best friend and nemesis, the Master. The callbacks to the classic era are a welcome addition with lines from Roger Delgado (prominent through the Third Doctor’s era and last seen in Frontier in Space) and trademark laughter from Anthony Ainley (who took up the role in The Keeper of Traken and carried it all the way to Survival). It’s worth noting that Eric Roberts (the Master from the TV movie) gave his permission to include his voice, but Fox refused.

The Roger Delgado lines were doubled by Sir Derek Jacobi (Professor Yana), who previously appeared in Scream of the Shalka as an alternative version of the Master. After this performance and the 50th anniversary televised special, he also worked with Big Finish to tell the story of his Master during the Time War.

The Master’s heritage was also on display with John Simm’s costumes, from the black single-breasted suit, white shirt, and black tie ensemble (from Planet of Fire) to a Pertwee nod (black overcoat with red satin lining) and the trademark evil Time Lord black leather gloves. The young Master also wore an outift similar to the Time Lords in The War Games.

Doctor Who mythology also makes a couple of debuts here.

First, we get to see Gallifreyan children on screen. Sure, we’ve heard about time tots before – lest we forget the tales of röntgen-bricks in the nursery – but the youngest Gallifreyan we had ever seen was Susan, and she was 15 during An Unearthly Child.

We also get introduced to the concept that regenerations are far more controllable than we saw from Romana in Destiny of the Daleks. The Master bypasses the Doctor’s regenerations to artificially age him – this is certainly not a new trick for either the Doctor or the Master – and he also willingly halts the process after being shot by Lucy. We will see this crop up again in the future.

The Ninth Doctor’s dark line – “I win, how ’bout that?” – also echoes from beyond Dalek as the Master (supposedly) dies.

I previously mentioned the majestic Gallifrey theme, which can be found on YouTube, but Murray Gold was also on fire with the haunting “Martha’s Theme” and the purely energetic “All the Strange, Strange Creatures” throughout this story. The use of modern pop music (also as digetic music) was fun, including “Voodoo Child” by the Rogue Traders – “So here it comes/the sound of drums/Here come the drums here come the drums…” – and “I Can’t Decide” by the Scissor Sisters.

Basically pulling out all the stops, as they should for the last full-time adventure with Martha Jones, an exemplary hero and companion. She saved the day, and (in my eyes) is better than Rose Tyler ever was.

 

 

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

 

UP NEXT – Series Three Summary

 

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

 

 

Timestamp Special #9: The Curse of Fatal Death

Michael Falkner8 Comments

Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death
(4 episodes, 1999)

 

Five Doctors in twenty minutes: That must be a record.

Starting off with a little backstory, this was shown as part of the 1999 Comic Relief Red Nose Day telethon. This comedic special starred Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean, Blackadder) as the ninth incarnation of the Doctor, Richard E. Grant (Scream of the Shalka, Logan) as the “quite handsome” tenth incarnation, Jim Broadbent (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Paddington) as the slapstick shy eleventh incarnation, Hugh Grant (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill) as the (not “quite”) handsome twelfth incarnation, and Joanna Lumley (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Sapphire & Steel) as the thirteenth incarnation.

Alongside all those Doctors, we also had Jonathan Pryce (Tomorrow Never Dies, Brazil) as an over-the-top version of the Master and Julia Sawalha (Absolutely Fabulous, Chicken Run) as companion (in more ways than one) Emma, and the adventure was penned by Steven Moffat, who would go on to Coupling before coming back to Doctor Who.

Got all that? There may be a quiz later.

On to the story…

After a revival of the Fourth Doctor’s title sequence, we watch as The Master chases the Doctor through the temporal vortex, maniacally blustering about his evil plan to kill the Doctor and spoiling the important parts through his inability to operate a speakerphone. The Doctor and his companion Emma meet the Master on Tersurus – the planet was previously inhabited by a race that was peace-loving, shunned because they communicated by passing gas through precision modulation, and were self-exterminated after they discovered fire – and of course the Master traps them by arriving early. The Doctor and Emma trade traps with the Master, each party having arrived earlier than the other. Emma interrupts the roundabout party with a revelation: The Doctor has found love with Emma and plans to retire, get married, and settle into domestic bliss.

The Master is disgusted, and he travels back in time to convince the castle’s architect to install a trap door to the sewers. The Doctor turns the tables again by going back even further to place the trap door under the Master. Before they can leave, an aged Master arrives (after three centuries trying to escape the sewer) with Daleks to exact his vengeance. The Doctor traps the Master in the sewers twice more, and a chase commences with the Daleks and an even more aged Master.

The Daleks capture the travelers for the Master (now rejuvenated by superior and firm Dalek technology), who has promised them the means to conquer the universe. Of course, the Daleks plan to exterminate the Master, and the Doctor informs the Master of this double-cross in Tersuran. The Daleks figure it out anyway and shoot the Doctor, who then regenerates from his ninth body into his tenth.

After a brief memory refresher, the Daleks ask the Doctor to stop the overload that they started, but a few crossed wires results in another regeneration, exchanging the tenth incarnation for the eleventh. Another short circuit causes another regeneration, and a residual discharge forces another (which needs a little prompting from Emma, the Master, and the Daleks).

In a moment of foreshadowing, the Doctor’s new body is female.

Unfortunately, Emma is not keen on marrying the Doctor in her new form, but the Master and the Doctor spark something special and walk off into the end credits together.

 

This was certainly funny (in the British comedy tradition of sex and bodily function humor) but not particularly deep. Honestly, there’s no particular need for depth since it’s played for laughs to spur donations. That’s the whole drive of Comic Relief after all.

The element of the Doctor finding romance is still a key element, but it’s hard to tell if Steven Moffat and company are spoofing the idea or trying to further it in the franchise. The continual ramping up of the Doctor’s sexuality in this twenty-minute segment points to the joke, but we certainly know what he’ll think of the concept in years to come.

And even though this was a BBC-authorized television production bridging the gap between the TV movie and the 2005 revival, I certainly disagree with his notion that this could have been a legitimate continuation of the franchise.

 

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

 

Timestamp #160: Doctor Who (The Movie)

Michael Falkner42 Comments

Doctor Who: The Movie
(1996)

 

It’s a major turning point: The gateway between the classic era and the modern. But first, the Doctor must face Y2K.

The Master finally came to trial for his litany of crimes on the planet Skaro as part of a treaty between the Daleks and the Time Lords. Over cat eyes, we learn that the Master’s final request was for the Doctor to carry his remains back to Gallifrey for final disposition. The Doctor places the Master’s urn in a lockbox and secures it with a new sonic screwdriver before settling in with “In a Dream” on the gramaphone, The Time Machine in his hands, and a bowl of jelly babies. The control room is massive and gorgeous, and reflects the Seventh Doctor’s twilight years to a tee.

The Master breaks out of the urn and the lockbox, moving as a shadowy snake form to the TARDIS console and shorting it out, forcing the Doctor to make an emergency landing on Earth, San Francisco, New Years Eve, 1999. The TARDIS materializes in the middle of a gang fight, saving a young survivor in the process. Unfortunately, the Doctor (who didn’t use the scanners, I guess) steps into the fight and is shot. As Chang Lee calls for an ambulance, the Master escapes through the TARDIS lock.

The Doctor (on the record as John Smith) is rushed to the hospital, but modern medicine fails him. The x-ray accurately reflects his two hearts, and the bullet wounds are not particularly life-threatening (one in the shoulder, two in the leg), but the heart readings require a cardiac specialist. Enter: Grace Holloway.

The Doctor wakes up on the operating table to the sound of Madame Butterfly, pleading with Grace to stop the surgery and get him a beryllium atomic clock. The surgical team ups the anesthetic and proceeds, but human surgery on Time Lord physiology proves fatal. The Seventh Doctor dies on the operating table. Grace reviews the x-rays before informing Lee of the bad news, and Lee runs off with the Doctor’s personal effects.

We are treated to a double Time Lord resurrection: On the other side of the city, the Master has hitched a ride home with an ambulance driver named Bruce. As he snores away, preventing his wife from sleeping, Bruce is taken over and killed by the Master. Bruce’s wife is happy for the silence. At the hospital, the Doctor’s body is loaded into the morgue and regenerates in parallel with the 1931 version of Frankenstein. The Doctor bangs at the door and breaks out of the freezer, scaring the on-duty attendant. The Eighth Doctor finds a mirror (or thirteen… see what they did there?) in a broken room (seriously, what?) while humming Madame Butterfly. In shock, he screams and questions who he is.

As morning dawns, we find Grace Holloway in her office, the Doctor rifling through lockers for clothing (and discarding a replica of the Fourth Doctor’s scarf), and Lee trying to figure out what a sonic screwdriver does (as well as examining a yo-yo, the Doctor’s pocketwatch, and the TARDIS key). The Doctor finds a Wild Bill Hickok costume (intended for the New Years Eve costume party), discarding the gun belt and hat in the process. Meanwhile, the Master awakens (with glowing green eyes) and kills Bruce’s wife.

Pete, the morgue attendant, shows Grace what happened the night before. She walks right by the Doctor, who is still suffering from the effects of his regeneration, before meeting with the hospital administrator. The administrator tries to cover up the events of the botched surgery, and she quits her job as a result. As she’s leaving, the Doctor joins her in the elevator and follows her to her car. He begs her for help, pulling the abandoned cardiac probe from his chest as Grace drives him away.

The Master arrives at the hospital and demands to see the Doctor’s body, but finds out that the corpse is missing and that Lee has the Doctor’s possessions. Meanwhile, Grace and the Doctor arrive at her home to find that her boyfriend has left her (and taken her furniture). She examines the Doctor and his heartbeats as his memory fades back in. Grace is upset and confused by the whole affair, but the Doctor comforts her in his awkward way.

Lee finds his way to the TARDIS and steps inside, having one of the most amazing “bigger on the inside” moments. Unfortunately, he also finds the Master, who somehow entered before without the TARDIS key. The Master enthralls Lee and takes the Doctor’s things before demanding that Lee help him find the Time Lord. The Master tells Lee a false tale of how the Doctor stole his regenerations, offering the human gold dust and a tour of the TARDIS, including the Cloister Room. In the depths of the Cloister Room is the Eye of Harmony, the heart of the TARDIS, and Lee is able to open it with a little coercion. The Eye shows the Master and Lee the Doctor’s Seventh and Eighth incarnations, and the image of a human retina leads the Master to believe that the new Doctor is half-human.

That’s an important note to make: The Master makes the assumption that the Doctor is somehow half-human. While the Master – who has known the Doctor for a really, really long time – should presumably know better, the Doctor’s lineage is not a statement of fact. It is a wild assumption.

The Doctor finishes getting dressed (and finally removing his toe tag) as Grace examines his blood. They take a walk to clear their minds, jogging the Doctor’s memories of his own childhood. The joy of this incarnation is amazing. As the Eye of Harmony is opened, he remembers that he is the Doctor and kisses Grace, making this the first romantic moment for the Doctor in the franchise.

I’m okay with that. New face, new body, new Doctor.

With the Eye of Harmony open, the Doctor and the Master can share vision through the Eye. The Doctor closes his eyes and gives Grace the download on who he is. Lee also hears this, chipping away at the Master’s thrall. Grace runs away in shock and locks the Doctor out of her house. Despite the Doctor’s protests, Grace calls for an ambulance, but the Doctor shows her that the Eye of Harmony is tearing the planet apart by walking through a window without breaking it. The Master and Lee oblige her request by hijacking an ambulance and taking it to meet the doctor (and the Doctor).

The Doctor watches the news while they wait for the ambulance, learning that a local institute is unveiling a beryllium atomic clock, which is exactly what he needs to close the Eye. The doorbell rings, and it’s the Master calling. Grace has no idea, but the Doctor obviously recognizes the Master, and nevertheless, they all pile into the ambulance and hit the road. Eventually, the Doctor unmasks the Master and runs with Grace. They hijack a police motorcycle with jelly babies and race for the institute with the Master in pursuit.

Notably, the Doctor does use a gun once again, but it’s a distraction instead of a threat.

Lee knows a shortcut – of course he does – so they beat the Doctor and the doctor to the clock. They proceed inside and look for a way to the clock, passing the Doctor off as “Dr. Bowman” and meeting Professor Wagg, the inventor of the device. In the meantime, the Doctor explains more about himself, and distracts the professor with a joke about being half-human while swiping his badge. They take a piece of the clock, distract a guard with a jelly baby, and spot the Master before running. They race to the roof (understandably, the Doctor is afraid of heights) and use a fire hose to drop to the street before heading to the TARDIS.

They use a spare key to open the TARDIS, have a humorous moment with a police officer driving in and out of the time capsule, and go inside to install the clock component in the console. Unfortunately, the Eye has been open too long and the cosmos are in danger. The TARDIS also has no power. They attempt to jump-start the TARDIS, but Grace is enthralled by the Master as he arrives. She knocks the Doctor out and together, she and Lee take him to the Eye. The Master supervises as Grace places a device on the Doctor’s head to prop his eyes open. The Doctor pleads with Lee, and Lee refuses to open the Eye when the Doctor points out the Master’s lies. The Master kills Lee by snapping his neck, then enthralls Grace into opening the Eye.

Apparently, only a human’s eyes can open the Eye. Which is weird, but kind of plays into a theory of mine… more on that later.

The Eye’s light is focused on two points, designed in this case to channel the Doctor’s regenerative energy into the Master and extend the villain’s lifespan. The light of the Eye breaks Grace’s trance, and she runs to the console to reroute the power. At the very last second, Grace jump-starts the TARDIS and they travel into a temporal orbit. She releases the Doctor, but the Master throws her off the balcony and kills her. The two Time Lords fight over the eye, but the Doctor is triumphant and the Master falls into the Eye. The Doctor tries to rescue him, but the Master refuses and is (apparently) killed.

The Doctor places Lee and Grace on a balcony in the Cloister Room, and the energy of the Eye infuses with them, bringing them back to life courtesy of the TARDIS and its sentimentality. The Doctor shows them Gallifrey from a distance before returning midnight on January 1, 2000. Lee departs with the gold dust and a little advice after returning the Doctor’s stuff, and the Doctor offers Grace the opportunity to travel with him. Grace declines, and the Doctor departs for a new adventure.

 

This presentation is deeply flawed, but it does have a lot of things working for it. I love the theme music (even if they don’t credit Ron Grainer or Delia Derbyshire) and I do love the humor and Doctor/Grace banter. On the other hand, it is swimming in the cheesiness that defined televised American science fiction in the 1990s, and a lot of those elements fall flat in the spirit of Doctor Who. I mean, can we get that hospital a little more funding for the entire floor full of broken junk?

The story also has a fixation on people stealing people’s stuff. Was there a major trend of kleptomania in the mid-90s?

Paul McGann is simply a joy to watch, and his energy and joy shines in this story. It’s also interesting to watch the “half-human” controversy play out: The Master takes it seriously based on scant evidence, but the Doctor plays it as a joke. I have often wondered if Gallifreyans are some sort of evolved human being – it’s definitely possible given that the default appearance is always human, most medical exams show only the two hearts as a physical difference, and that whole Eye of Harmony key thing – but I don’t think that the Doctor is any more human than that. The evidence just doesn’t support it.

All in all, this story would fall into the average range, which is a shame since Paul McGann deserved so much better. Of course, this was also a regeneration story, so it gets a little boost per the rules of the Timestamps Project.

 

 

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

 

 

UP NEXT – Seventh Doctor Summary

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.