10.49: The End of Time, Part One
In which nothing happens, ominously.
Broadcast: December 2009
Watched: October 2021
“I’m really kind of busy you know.” Are you, though.
Remarkably little happens, portentously. There’s the title obviously (the production team changed it from The Last Days of Planet Earth because they all just laughed at it), but also the opening voiceover, the bad dreams, the mysterious woman telling a story of the legend of the blue box (which sounds weirdly like the plot to Paul Magrs’ A Sting In The Tale, which came out three weeks before this episode, but the timings mean it can’t be surely?). Wilf has a speech in which he basically says he’s sad there hasn’t been any Doctor Who on this year.
Then we get the Tennant/Ood scene which is so smug that either it’s an attempt to set up his critical character flaw or a deliberate attempt to make you want him dead. The way the Ood have turned into sort of wise old gods just so they can do some exposition is never really explained. Hilarious that one of them is played by Brian Cox, mind. Logan Roy is an Ood.
And then the Doctor races off to Earth where... nothing happens. The set up goes on *forever*. The first half hour is explicitly about moving everyone into position – it even comes with an end of episode montage, ending in the reveal of Daltry’s face, after a speech in which he admits the episode so far has been about moving people into position – but that means ages of the Doctor mooching around obsessing over his “death”, the Master very slowly being brought back from the dead (why does he have partisans, exactly?), Wilf missing Donna...
There’s the business with the old people searching for the Doctor, which is a fun idea annoyingly executed (one of the old geezers looks distractingly like Mike Yates). There’s the scene in the cafe, which is brilliantly acted, but does mean more watching David Tennant be sad rather than actually do anything heroic. The bit where the Master is eating homeless people in a junkyard (”Dinner time!”) is a bit gross and weird. Between that, and Obama’s big speech, this feels like the first post-recession story. There is a good bit in the look the Master gives the Doctor in response to “please let me help”.
It’s really only in the final act that it kicks into gear: the cactus people, major guest characters, don’t appear as themselves until something like the last 15 minutes. The last few minutes are fantastic – we’ve already got a double cliffhanger (Donna in trouble, the Master turning the entire human race into himself just to annoy the Doctor), then it pulls back to reveal the Time Lords are on their way too. That bit’s great.
But it takes so long to get there, and at 12 years’ distance, with all that internal mythology long ago now, it just feels like the RTD era disappearing up itself. I know you don’t want to go plot heavy at Christmas, but really, this is taking the piss.
Oh well, other things.
The Doctor lists some missing adventures. They include Day of the Doctor, which won’t be made for another four years, but not Dreamland. Funny that.
“Even if you change it feels like dying” – Tennant is the only Doctor ever to express this isn’t he? I know it’s really about the end of the RTD era but that feels like a weird retcon of how regeneration works. Or maybe the 10th Doctor is just the whiniest. [Hey, they’re coming back to this, though! Cool.]
Lucy Saxon is played as a simple victim of the Master’s corruption. Since, in Sound of Drums she was cheering along, this feels like a retcon, and possibly a sort of soft misogyny?
There’s a good bit of direction, with a cut from Naismith’s book to the man himself in the exact same pose. He and his daughter feel weirdly small, which since they’re the third tier of villains in this story makes sense, but we don’t know that yet, so it just feels off.
The mechanics of the time stuff – Ood saying events are happening now, thousands of years ago, that may wipe out this present – is migraine inducing.
Talking of which, has Rassilon changed history? Is the four beats thing meant to be just this Master? This story does give the Master powers that none of the others do.
The wasteland bit is nicked from Rise... The final twist from The Doctor Dances.
The Noble’s TV looks really, really old.
Having someone cover their face pretending to be Obama is still hilarious.
Oh for a Christmas episode where there isn’t blossom on the trees. (I’ve ruined it for my daughter by always pointing out deciduous trees in leaf).