Previously: We were scared and bored on Mars.
—
The End of Time, Part 1
Kirsti: We open in space. We zoom past the Moon to Earth. A narrator tells us that in the last days of planet Earth, everyone had bad dreams. Except that everyone forgot because people are dumb. Well, one person remembered. We zoom in on Wilf(!!!!!!), watching happily as a Salvation Army band plays Christmas carols. He hears a maniacal laugh in his head, and shakes himself.
He wanders into a church nearby where the choir are rehearsing and stares up at the stained glass window behind the altar.
Marines: That first shot of him is framed thusly:
#significant
K: And heartbreaking.
The zoomy cameraman earns his pay cheque by zooming in on a little blue box in one corner of the window.
A woman in a white suit (I did a double take at first because she looks a little like Harriet Jones, Prime Minister (RIP)) informs him that it’s called the Legend of the Blue Box and that back in the 1300s, there was a convent on the site of the church. A demon fell from the sky, followed by a man in a blue box, known as “the sainted physician“. He saved them all and then vanished. Wilf thinks it’s a coincidence, but she says that maybe he’s coming back. “Oh, that would make my Christmas,” Wilf says wistfully. Same, bro. The woman vanishes, the brass section of the orchestra boosts things up to fortissimo, the zoomy cameraman shows us the window again, and Wilf hears more maniacal laughter.
DOO WEE OOO!
After the credits, the TARDIS vworp vworps into existence on the planet of the Ood. The Doctor pops his head out the door, wearing a lei and a stetson to find Ood Sigma waiting for him. He fills Ood Sigma in on all the things he’s been doing, which includes getting married to Elizabeth I, whose “nickname is no longer“. This is totally a throwaway line, but it makes me deeply uncomfortable (her nickname, for those not in the know, was The Virgin Queen). (M: I gave a great big, “STOP IT.”)
Ood Sigma is all “Cool story, bro. Totally not why I called you here.” It’s been a hundred years since Donna (*sob*) and the Doctor saved them from slavery, and in that time they’ve built a massive city AND worked out how to contact him. The Doctor says worridly that it’s way too fast, and that something is accelerating Ood development. Ood Sigma tells him that every night, they have bad dreams.
Cut to an Ood elder, chanting over an incense burner. He chants that “it is returning, and he is returning, and they are returning.” Ood Sigma and the Doctor join the circle, and the Ood show the Doctor the maniacally laughing guy Wilf saw earlier. It’s the Master. The Doctor is all “BUT HE’S DEAD??”. (M: Not even if you see him die and the body burn, my man.) The Ood tell him that there’s more. They show him Wilf, and he asks if Wilf and Donna (*sob*) are okay.
The Ood show him a black guy and his daughter, dressed in fancy clothes and having their photos taken by the media. The Doctor has no idea who they are. I know him from The Night Manager, but that probably doesn’t help The Doctor much. (M: He’s Martian Manhunter on Supergirl, another show we are kind of still recapping…) Then they show him Lucy, the Master’s wife, locked in a prison cell. This mostly serves as a reason to flashback and info dump about who she is and the fact that the Master is definitely 100% dead.
The Ood are all “Yeah except that he’s not”. They show him that after he left the Master’s burning corpse, a woman turned up and took the Master’s signet ring, covered in Gallifreyan symbols. The Doctor’s all “THE FUCK.” But wait there’s more! The Elder says that their new ability to see through time can only indicate one thing: the end of time itself. The Doctor jumps up and runs back to the TARDIS.
We cut between the Doctor running and Lucy Saxon being taken out of her prison cell. The TARDIS flies backwards through time and space. Lucy is taken to a creepy ass room with a ceremonial altar-y thing in the middle. A blonde woman calling herself the Governor tells her that she’s done well to keep her silence and that her husband had planned for his death. “Tonight, Mrs Saxon, he returns!” she says. Lucy gasps in horror.
Cut to Wilf, staring out the window and hearing the Master’s laughter. On a TV in the background, the picture flickers and changes to the woman in white from the church. She watches him silently, then the TV resumes normal programming.
Back at the prison, a bunch of women pour gloopy liquids over the Master’s ring. The Governor orders her minions to take an impression of Lucy’s lips as a catalyst.
Mari: It’s weird. Like his DNA is hanging out on there since… when? And also Lucy was wearing lipstick in prison? IDK.
K: Super weird. Let’s just chalk the whole thing up as contrivance and move rapidly along, shall we?
The lipstick covered napkin gets dropped into the bowl with the rest. A column of white light shoots out of the bowl and sucks the life out of everyone but Lucy and one prison guard behind her. A naked John Simm appears in the centre of the column and starts gloating. In the TARDIS, the Doctor gets panic face.
Naked John Simm gloats some more. Lucy stands and informs him that his minions have been preparing for his return, but she has too. She’s made some contrivance potion. Look, I’m sure it’s something from deep and dark within Classic Who lore, but let’s be real: it’s contrivance potion. She hurls it at him and he explodes into blue flames. The Doctor rushes out of the TARDIS only to find the prison in exploded ruins.
Cut to Rich Black Guy’s house. I really desperately want some of these characters to ACTUALLY BE INTRODUCED so I can stop coming up with terrible nicknames for them. Anywho. He watches a video of the prison burning and spots a silhouette running across in front of the flames. His daughter gets all Veruca Salt about it, and he tells her “You just leave it to Daddy“, which…is a pretty creep-tastic statement, given that she’s like 18.
He walks into a domed room and tells everyone there that Christmas is cancelled and to prepare the gate. A bunch of scientists in lab coats punch buttons and type furiously and a Very Bad Idea archway lights up. One of the scientists is Nina from Being Human and I really must rewatch that show because Russell Tovey and Aiden Turner are DELIGHTFUL.
Chez Noble. Wilf, sporting reindeer antlers, calls out that he’s going to the pub for a Christmas tipple. He’s picked up by a bus full of senior citizens. As they drive, he tells them all to be on the look out for a guy in a brown or blue suit and a long brown coat with “Modern sort of hair, all sticky-uppy“. Best description ever. He tells them to keep an eye out for the TARDIS too, and they establish that between them and all the old people they can contact, they’ve got the whole of London covered. Bless.
Mari: A bus full of old people to go Doctor hunting with? I’d go.
K: Same.
Outside an abandoned warehouse, a charity burger van is doing its charity burger thing. The woman running the van informs her down-on-their-luck patrons that President Obama has promised to end the recession, and that everything will be hunky dory again. COME BACK, BARACK. THE WHOLE PLANET MISSES YOU. (M: This is too soon. It will always be too soon.)
The pair get their burgers and wander off. A man in a black hoodie approaches, and the woman running the van asks what he’d like. “Everything…” he says. He flips his hood off, and it’s The Master, who’s clearly been raiding Spike’s hair supplies because he’s now a platinum blond. He says creepily that he’s OMG SO HUNGRY and the woman running the van gets a case of Extreme WTF face. He creepy laughs some more.
The previous two customers – an older white guy and a young black chap – have wandered off to eat their burgers and discuss President Obama’s plan to save the economy. The Master appears behind them and shoves his whole burger in his face in two seconds flat. The young guy jokingly points out that he looks like Harold Saxon, and the Master starts rambling about how the Doctor will be able to smell him and he needs to cover the stink. They’re all “….okay, BYE” and start to leave.
The Master yells at them to look at him and in a piece of truly terrible special effects work, there’s a flash and suddenly you can see his slightly blue glowing skeleton under his skin.
Mari: Terrifying, but not for the reasons you’d expect.
K: Indeed.
Tommo and Ginger make a run for it, heading for the charity burger van. But they stop in horror when they get there and find two skeletons staring back at them. The Master yells “DINNER TIME!” at the top of his lungs and super bounces across to them. It’s utterly ridiculous. (M: Why would they make a character super bounce when they know they don’t have the budget for anything?) Tommo and Ginger scream.
Sometime later, the Doctor turns up. He sniffs the air. Nearby, the Master does the same. Then he picks up a crowbar and starts pounding on a 44 gallon drum, four beats at a time. The Doctor runs in the direction of the sound, then chases after The Master when he runs off. The Master laughs creepily and his skeleton flashes again. The Doctor wants to help because the Master is burning up his life force, but the Master bounces away.
Wilf and the other old folks turn up, all proud that their old people phone tree did the trick. Wilf salutes the Doctor, and the Doctor returns it with a grin. One saucy old lady named Minnie insists that they take a photo with the super hot Doctor and pats his butt while the photo is being taken.
Later, the old people bus drops Wilf and the Doctor back in town. They head to a cafe to catch up over tea. Wilf starts talking about his nightmares, but the Doctor’s all “YO HOW THE FUCK DID YOU FIND ME SO FAST”. Wilf basically shrugs, and the Doctor says there’s clearly something still connecting them. After lapsing into silence, the Doctor says that he’s going to die. Wilf’s all “Um. Me too, some day?”. “Don’t you dare...” the Doctor says tearfully. Wilf says with a smirk that he’ll try not to.
Then he laughs as he watches Donna berating a parking warden and says that she hasn’t changed. A guy who looks oddly like Mickey Smith joins her, and Wilf says they’re engaged. The Doctor asks if Donna’s happy and Wilf says that she is but that sometimes she gets this look, “like she’s so sad but she can’t remember why.” The Doctor tears up again. Same, bro.
Wilf asks him how he is. The Doctor says he’s travelling alone, that he thought it would be better, that he’s done some things that went horribly wrong. He breaks down, and I JUST HAVE A BRANCH IN MY EYE, OKAY??? Wilf says he needs people around him, namely Donna. The Doctor nods sadly. They watch as she drives away, then the Doctor walks away. I stop recapping to search for a box of tissues.
Mari: Truly a tear-blessed scene. The death feels and the Donna feels and the companion-less Doctor feels and… it was lovely and well-acted.
K: YUP.
We pan over London as the narrator – who, I should add, is Timothy Dalton (whose voice I would recognise ANYWHERE thanks to too many summer TV James Bond marathons and the utterly terrible 1983 BBC version of Jane Eyre, which I had to sit through TWICE in high school) (M: I voluntarily watched that version like 3 weeks ago okay don’t judge me.) – informs us that so it came to pass that the players took their final places and that dawn could only bring one thing: the final day. We cut to Timothy Dalton (who looks like he’s wearing an ornate brocade curtain) in time for him to say “THE FINAL DAY” in a very dramatic fashion, so I’m glad I just bothered to establish that the narrator is Timothy Dalton.
Meanwhile, back in a garbage dump, the Doctor has found the Master. The Doctor walks towards his BFFrenemy, and the Master shoots lightning bolts from his hands, causing a wall of fire to appear behind the Doctor. Look, if there’s one thing that Tennant’s era consistently included, it’s his hair trembling with emotion while he walked stoically away from a wall of flames, so it’s nice to have that one last time (George Washington’s coming hooooome).
The Master rubs his hands together, then shoots a massive lightning bolt at the Doctor, who stands and absorbs it all before collapsing. The Master catches him, then lets him drop to the ground as he reminisces about Gallifrey. The Doctor says that his resurrection went wrong and asks how many people he’s killed. “I am SO hungry,” the Master says.
The Master gets stuck in a loop about food (same, dude) (M: #relatable), and the Doctor asks him for help stopping the end of time. The Master says that the noise in his head, the four beats over and over, hurts. That it’s stronger than before. He’s astonished that the Doctor can’t hear it. He mindmelds with the Doctor, who’s astonished to hear the noise because there’s never been anything there before but the Master’s insanity. The Master is thrilled that it’s real, and flies off into the night.
The Doctor chases after him. The Master gloats that he was never mad, and demands to know what’s been calling him all these years. Just then, a bright light appears above him. It’s a helicopter. Masked men drug him and drag him up into the helicopter while the Doctor gets shot when he tries to help. This episode is really very traumatic.
Christmas morning at Chez Noble. Wilf opens a book by Rich Black Guy, which thankfully informs us that his name is Joshua Naismith. Donna declares it margarita time. She tells Wilf to cheer up because he’s being a grump, and he’s all “Why the hell did you get me this book?”, which establishes for us that Joshua Naismith is a Trump level asshat. Donna says dreamily she just saw it in the shop and thought he needed it. It’s clearly meant to be Capital S Significant.
Cut to Joshua Naismith, who’s got the Master tied to a Hannibal Lecter style chair. Veruca Naismith bounces with excitement because the Master is just the man they need. The Master looks like he wants to eat their faces off.
Chez Noble. Donna’s fiance arrives with presents and Wilf settles down to watch the Queen’s speech. It took me a good 2 minutes to process this, because for me, the Queen’s speech is always on at like 11pm on Christmas night, not first thing in the morning. But then I remembered that timezones are a thing. I shouldn’t be allowed to recap stuff after midnight, you guys.
Mari: You are allowed to recap WHENEVER YOU WANT and no one is to say otherwise, thank you.
K: I shall bear that in mind.
Anyway, Wilf doesn’t see the Queen’s speech. He sees the woman in white, who informs him that events are moving faster than they thought. She says that he’s an old soldier, but that he was too late. The war passed him by and was won without him ever killing a man. “Don’t say that like it’s shameful!” Wilf says tearfully.
Wilf rushes upstairs to his bedroom and grabs his service revolver from a suitcase under his bed. Something hits his window and he peers outside to see the Doctor and the TARDIS outside in the street. He heads outside, the Doctor starts rambling about how he can still smell the Master but he’s too far away to locate. He says that Wilf is the only connection he can think of, and asks for help. Wilf tells him about Donna’s reaction to the book. The Doctor looks at the cover and realises it’s the same guy the Ood showed him. He suspects with a happy grin that Donna’s subconscious is still fighting for them.
Sylvia comes outside and is all “OH HELL NO” to the Doctor’s presence because, you know, it could kill her daughter. Donna calls out from inside, and the Doctor and Wilf rush off. Sylvia follows them to keep yelling. She orders Wilf to come back immediately, but he and the Doctor rush into the TARDIS and vworp vworp away. Sylvia is not well pleased.
TARDIS. Wilf stares around him, and the Doctor’s all “Yeah yeah, bigger on the inside”. But Wilf says that he thought it would be cleaner. (M: Bless.) The Doctor is all “EXCUSE YOU”. Wilf asks why they can’t just go back to yesterday and catch the Master, and the Doctor wibbles about not being able to cross his own timeline.
We cut back to the Naismiths, who are taking a straightjacket-clad Master to see the archway. He’s all “Ooooh!” and comments that it’s not from earth. Naismith is all “OH YEAH SO’S YOUR FACE”, which in this case is accurate. A dorky looking male scientist asks permission to go to the basement and check on something. Permission is granted, and he takes Nina with him.
Down in the basement, Male Scientist freaks about Naismith having brought in an expert because OMG HE’LL KNOW AND WHO THE HELL IS HE ANYWAY. Nina tells him that Harold Saxon used to be prime minister and then she pushes a button on her watch and turns into a cactus person. (File under: sentences that will only ever be written while recapping Doctor Who) (M: For “person randomly carrying a cactus” please see Twilight.) She says that seeing as they’re already hijacking the project, maybe they can use Harold Saxon as well.
Meanwhile, Naismith is filling the Master in on the arch. It was found in a spaceship at the foot of Mount Snowdon, moved to Torchwood, and then he acquired it when Torchwood collapsed. The gate came with its own power source – something called a nuclear bolt – that has to be manned 24/7. We’re treated to a shot of two glass cubicles, side by side. Once you’re in, the door is locked until someone goes into the other one and presses a button which locks their door and unlocks yours.
Naismith goes on to say that the gate regenerates things. Their test bunny was a woman who had burns on her arm from a childhood accident. The gate healed her. He hypothesises that with the Master’s help, they’ll be able to make the gate reach its full potential: granting immortality. He doesn’t want immortality for him, though. He wants it for his creepy ass daughter, Abigail. I’m just gonna keep calling her Veruca, because it seems more appropriate.
Cut to the TARDIS materialising in a stables. The Master sniffs the air (M: this sniffing thing is WEIRD.) (K: It gives me flashbacks to the final episode of Buffy: “Did anybody ever tell you the whole smelling people thing’s a little gross?“) and says that he’d better get to work. Wilf and the Doctor jump out, and the Doctor points the key at the TARDIS and somehow (contrivance) makes it one second out of sync with the present so that the Master can’t get his hands on it. They make their way to the basement, avoiding security patrols on the way.
Male Scientist looks on in shock as the Master taps away, sorting out the gate. Down in the basement, Nina reports via radio as various systems come online. The Doctor and Wilf pop around the corner, and the Doctor says “Don’t try calling security, or I’ll tell them you’re wearing a shimmer.” He repeats the word “shimmer” about 400 times in two seconds, and the way he enunciates it makes me a little twitchy. She’s all “the fuck is a shimmer?”. He sonics her and she turns into a cactus person again. Wilf is all “WHUT”.
Basement. I have to admit, I typed “of Don’t Go In There” by default. But frankly, in this episode? Being in the basement seems like the sane choice because everyone upstairs is bonkers. (M: It was bound to happen; we found a basement to go in…!! I’m not sure I like this.) (K: Me neither.) Male Scientist appears and is all “Who the fuck are you?!”. The Doctor sonics him and it’s cactus time. The Doctor demands to know what the gate does.
Upstairs, Naismith assures the Master that he doesn’t trust him at all and that all his work will be double triple checked. The Master just smirks. Basement. Nina tells the Doctor that they’re a salvage team who picked up on the signal from the gate when the humans reactivated it. The Doctor’s all “Cool story, what’s it do?”. They inform him that it’s basically a hospital, that it mends things. On a global scale. Everybody at once. The Doctor starts running.
Upstairs, Naismith and Veruca get ready to watch President Obama’s address. Naismith says that the Master may want to watch it, because it’s proof that humans can fix their own shit. The Master just smirks. We cut to Washington where we watch the back of Barack Obama’s head (COME BACK WE MISS YOU) start his press conference.
The Doctor runs upstairs and starts yelling that they need to turn the gate off. The Master smirks some more. The Doctor yells that they can’t let the Master near the gate. The Master somehow manages to blast his straightjacket off with his lightning hands, then super jumps over to the gate. He stands in the wormhole, grinning. The Doctor shouts that they need to turn the gate off, but all the humans are distracted by visions of the Master, cackling away. On TV, we see that Totally Not Barack Obama (M: Rude.) is similarly affected.
The Doctor tries to switch it off, but LOL NOPE. “That’s because I locked it, idiot!” the Master says in the voice you use when your sibling wants to change the channel away from your favourite TV show. The Doctor and Wilf rush into the two control booths and fiddle with the settings. Then Wilf releases the lock on the Doctor’s door, sealing himself in.
“Fifty seconds and counting!” says the Master, gleefully. Down in the basement, the cactus people realise that the Master has extrapolated the gate’s power a bajillion times and has the template set to human. Womp. Wilf’s phone rings. It’s Donna, asking where he is because there’s something wrong with Sylvia and her fiance. She, on the other hand, is totally fine.
All over the world, people are seeing the Master’s face in their heads. The Doctor asks if it’s hypnotism, but LOL NOPE. The Master says that’s far too easy. “They’re not going to think like me. They’re gonna BECOME me!” he says. The countdown reaches zero. A blast of energy shoots out of the gate and surrounds the world. Everyone’s heads shake violently back and forth. Donna looks freaked.
The Doctor watches in horror as everyone turns into The Master. (M: What the fuuuuu….) (K: EXACTLY.) Donna, still on the phone to Wilf, starts to remember. First Davros, then the Empress of the Racnoss, the giant wasp, the Sontarans, the Ood, and all the other monsters of season 4. “Oh, my head!“she screams. Wilf demands to know what the fuck the Master has done. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you talking to me?” the Master replies. “Or to me?” says the version of the Master that used to be Naismith. The various other Masters in the room say the same thing, grinning creepily.
On TV, we see that Barack Obama is now the Master as well. The Master says that the human race was always the Doctor’s favourite, but now the human race doesn’t exist. There’s only “the Master race“. Excuse me while I headdesk because that is terrible and also wildly inappropriate given that everyone on the planet is now a blonde white man… The Doctor looks horrified. The Master cackles.
Mari: I’m also horrified and convinced that this is one of the worst villain plans of all time.
K: It really, really is.
Timothy Dalton returns to voiceover that this wasn’t just the day that humanity ceased to exist. No, no. We zoom through space as he says that it was also the day that the Time Lords returned. We cut to him very spittily informing a room full of Time Lords in ceremonial garb that they’re doing this for Gallifrey, victory, and the end of time itself.
Mari: Also, he spits a lot.
K: Like, A LOT. You’re lucky I couldn’t find a gif of it, because you’d need an umbrella.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Next time on Doctor Who: Goodbye, Ten. Goodbye. in S04 E18 – The End of Time, Part 2.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
