The End of Time

This Story: Series 4b, Story 14. Production Code 4.17
Overall: Story 203, Episodes 761-762
Airdate: 25 Dec 2009 & 1 Jan 2010
Written by Russell T Davies & Phil Ford
Directed by Graeme Harper

Notes

• The fourth and fifth specials which spanned the gap between David Tenant’s last full series, and Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor.
• The first one was a Christmas Special, and the second one was a New Year’s Special.  It was the last New Year’s Special until Jodie Whittaker’s era.
• The final (regular) episode for David Tennant, who regenerates at the end of the story.
• The last episode in the Russell T Davies regime (until 2023), as he left the show at this point.

Links

[ Wikipedia | Tardis Data Core | SPS Historium | US DVD | UK DVD | US Blu-Ray | UK Blu-Ray ]

Text

Given I was a bit wordier than usual, I couldn’t embed all of the text from Twitter here, as Twitter doesn’t show extra text on embeds, so I’ll include all my text here:

Part 1:

Tennant’s last story. I’m going to use Twitter Blue a bit, as I want to write a little more for this. There’s a few things that I really REALLY like in this story. First – Bernard Cribbins FTW! Cribbins is the official companion to the 10th Doctor in this final story, and it’s glorious. I can’t say enough good about Cribbins.

But he’s just the start. They had f’in Timothy Dalton in the story. He plays Rassilon, and man was he awesome, but he’s more in Part 2 (tomorrow)!

It also brings back John Simm as the Master in a really convoluted way (given his death in the last story, I’m not surprised). I rather liked his insanity here, but most did not.

Speaking of not liking this, the guys at RadioFreeSkaro hate this story, and I don’t understand why. This story is so much fun. My only real problem with it comes in Pt 2, and it’s just one scene in particular.

There’s a great scene from a technical standpoint that shows the Doctor running from the Tardis console, out the door and into another scene. That was never done before in that way. I adored that, even if it wasn’t a true single shot. It had great effect.

Wilf’s little “old people group” searching out to find the Doctor is so much fun. Especially Minnie, who was like an old cheeky version of Wilf. Would have been funny had Wilf carried on to put him together with Minnie. :)

There’s a great scene with Wilf and the Doctor sitting in a cafe with some great dialogue about how the Doctor himself views regeneration. Emotional stuff with one of my favorite actors for this kind of thing – good ol Bernard Cribbins.

There’s a plot with the Master taking control of a device that is supposed to help people by changing DNA, but of course the Master uses it to change the DNA of every human on earth into his own, basically creating a planet of 6 billion “Masters”. Must have been quite the chore for John Simm to film.

Dalton’s eventual appearance on screen in character at the end was fucking epic as shit, and really made me annoyed that I had to wait a week to see Part 2. I was ready to go right then! Superb cliffhanger.

Part 2:

Regeneration episode! This has Timothy Dalton all over it, and he’s glorious. I wish he was in more than just this one story. We also have a whole lot of Bernard Cribbins which makes me happy. Resolution to the “knock four times” was unexpected. The only thing I didn’t like in this story is the Doctor jumping out of a plane (no parachute) and landing where he wants to be and not dying when he regenerated in Logopolis from a fraction of the height? Donna not dying I felt was a bit of a cheat from where she was before story wise. We get a “about to die” tour of 10 before he regenerates visiting old companions/friends. Does seem to stretch things out a bit but overall I liked the way 10’s era ends.