In the first part of the final 2010 Doctor Who special, the Doctor races to Earth to confront the Master, only discover that he’s too late. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Doctor Who.
I know that I have Matt Smith to come after all of this, but this special really has an air of finality to it, as if these were the last Doctor Who specials the world would ever see. Which…ok, I don’t want to think about a world without Doctor Who right now, so I’ll just carry on. I’m pretty sure this is the first episode of the entire show with a narrator, and that added to the SRS BSNS atmosphere of it all, as if another character needed to tell us the story of the Doctor’s death. (It was kind of irritating at first, but only at first, because…well, I’ll get there.)
It was a pleasure to start this special off with the Ood, who might be my favorite alien species on Doctor Who. Thankfully, this also wasn’t a story about the Ood being used by someone else, but they’re still met with dread. They inform the Doctor that yes, the Master is indeed returning. (OMG JOHN SIMM OMG) But I was more creeped out by the idea that something else will emerge from the darkness, as they said, to bring about “the end of Time.†Wait, so something that’s not the Master? Worse than the Master??? What the hell?
Much like the two-parter that ended series four, a lot of familiar faces are brought back to the story. Besides the obvious one (OMG JOHN SIMM I LOVE YOU SO MUCH), we see Lucy Saxon and Wilfred Mott again. Lucy Saxon, who has apparently been imprisoned ever since she shot the Master, is a huge part in his resurrection. A cult dedicated to Harold Saxon (unaware that he is a Time Lord) uses genetic material from Lucy’s lips to bring him back. I’m….not really sure how that works? Hasn’t it been a long time since the Master kissed Lucy? Whatever, details aren’t always Doctor Who’s forte. It brings back the Master. THE MASTER IS BACK. And John Simm’s hair is so wonderful and look I may have a slight obsession with John Simm stop judging me
I don’t understand the failsafe at all. If it’s explained in part two, don’t tell me, but I don’t understand what it is that Lucy does to kill herself and everyone in the prison and permanently damage the Master. I did find it interesting that she ruined the Master’s plans twice now. BAMF, right? Sad she’s gone so early in the story, as I would like to see more of her.
A common theme throughout “The End of Time: Part I†is that the Doctor is simply too late. I mean that in a literal and figurative sense. He arrives at the prison simply too late to do anything about the resurrection of the Master, as he’s already gone when the TARDIS arrives. But during this story, I get the sense that the Doctor is late to change anything, really, as what is coming is absolutely inevitable. It’s a product of his action and a product of what the world has been building towards for many, many years. But still…if it’s not the Master, what is arriving that could end time?
The Doctor continues to trace the Master in an attempt to find him and crosses paths with Wilfred Mott, and more of the story begins to come together. I’ve suspected (only barely) that Wilfred means a lot more to the Doctor than we’ve been told, since he just keeps appearing in stories over and over again. We learn about the “nightmares†that people can’t remember, but I really don’t want to talk about the plot too much because LET US TALK ABOUT THE SCENE IN THE CAFÉ.
Holy god, I teared up. I don’t know if I can stand seeing the Doctor that broken, that scared, and that terrified. At the end of “The Waters of Mars,†I know that was the first time that I personally was terrified by the Doctor, and I feel like this is the polar opposite of that. We’ve seen the Doctor scared, but this is a mortal fear, something he doesn’t necessarily ever need to feel, and if he feels that he is truly about to die, then I believe him. I feel that Bernard Cribbins, who plays Wilfred, does a fantastic job playing off witnessing the Doctor’s fear, as there is a moment where you see that fear cross over on to his face as well. To Wilfred, there is no more fearless person to the Doctor, so seeing him so raw and frightened had to be mortifying to him.
And then Donna shows up outside. I honestly didn’t think we’d see her again, since she isn’t allowed to remember her time with the Doctor, so it made her appearance so much worse to me. I’m still ticked off at the ending this show gave her, so it just made me sad to see that she hadn’t really changed her personality, it just reminded me how much I truly enjoy her character. Ugh, Donna. :: cries ::
This scene also confirmed that the Doctor knew that Wilfred meant more to this story than I’d suspected before, and with that information, they part, as the Doctor heads off to confront the Master. I can’t imagine a better actor to play the master than John Simm, who highlights both the terrifying and the amusing aspects of that character. Here, though, suffering from the effects of the botched resurrection, Simm really soars as he gets to take those personality features from the last time we saw him to their extremes. He’s all the more frightening and silly this time around, a sort of heightened sense of the absurd permeating his actions. That comes to a fever pitch when the Doctor and the Master finally do confront each other. There are few things more chilling in this series than the image of the Master banging that large container, knocking four times, and seeing the Doctor realize his time is coming soon. But I was completely surprised when, just minutes after this, the Master literally shows the Doctor that the drumming in his head is real. I thought it was safe to assume that it was all in the Master’s head, but now I’m intrigued as to why it’s occurring at all.
The storyline of Joshua Naismith, introduced earlier, finally makes sense here, though, as Naismith’s forces abduct the Master. We’d seen Naismith and his team working on some sort of gate-like device, but Davies kept these earlier scenes shrouded in mystery. That gate, though, is not a method of passage to a place. I mean, it’s a gate, so it leads to somewhere, right? NOPE, NOT EVEN CLOSE. It’s an Immortality Gate. It gives eternal life. GREAT AND NOW THE MASTER IS NEAR IT.
I know I have a (quite long) second part to watch, but Naismith and his daughter seemed like nothing more than stereotypes of rich humans about to do something foolish. I’m willing to admit that they might be given some more depth and context in part two, but I was left NOT GIVING ONE FUCK about them.
And really, with what happens left, there’s no sense to caring about the Naismiths. The Doctor and Wilfred do arrive in time to discover that two aliens, part of the Vinvocci race, are working in disguise in order to retrieve the Immortality Gate, but I was surprised that it wasn’t really for a sinister reason. The gate heals beings and they just want to use it. Wilfred (good ol’ Wilfred!) asks a really obvious question that I failed to even consider: Why is the device so large?
It heals entire planets. IT HEALS ENTIRE PLANETS. HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK
But, like I said, the Doctor is simply too late. Because the Master breaks free and in a moment that is just as silly as it is terrifying, the Master uses the Immortality Gate to CLONE HIMSELF AND TURN EVERY HUMAN BEING INTO HIMSELF. Billions and billions of Masters. (I know it’s goofy, but the “Master†race is kind of brilliant.)
I can’t believe it. We see that hilarious side of the Master, through John Simm, but what is initially a pretty funny situation quickly becomes immensely disturbing. How the hell is the Doctor going to get out of this one? How is Donna going to survive remembering the Doctor???
But it doesn’t matter. Because the final scene of “The End of Time (Part One)†continues to blow my mind. I don’t know how it’s possible. It’s revealed that the narrator I found kind of irritating is not a narrator at all. It’s the Lord President of the Time Lords. The Time Lords. THE TIME LORDS ARE NOT DEAD. AND THEY ARE BRINGING BACK THE END OF TIME.
HOW IS THIS AT ALL POSSIBLE. HOW ARE THERE TIME LORDS. WHAT THE BLOODY FUCK IS GOING ON
THOUGHTS
- Hahahaha, the fake Obama is HILARIOUS. HILARIOUS. It’s so bad.
- Watching John Simm eat that entire chicken was…ridiculous. And not all too pleasant. And seriously, did Naismith’s people just have a whole chicken sitting around? What?
- Donna’s fiancé is pretty handsome. Just sayin’.
- Why do the Vinvocci aliens look like Bannakaffalatta so much?
- The TARDIS can be locked like a set of remote car keys. I laughed.
- “I’m going to die.†“Well, so am I one day.†“Don’t you dare!†“All right, I’ll try not to.â€
- “I thought it’d be cleaner.†“Cleaner??? I can take you back home right now!â€
- “Blimey, try to make an Ood laugh.â€
- Who on earth is the woman in the white suit? I don’t get it.
- HOW THE HELL ARE THERE TIME LORDS
When I watch this episode, I really feel like I'm Daffy Duck in "Duck Amuck", and RTD is Bugs Bunny at the end. "Ain't I a stinker?" Because he's got to be fucking with me here. With all of us. Just has to be. It's the only explanation for the sheer WTFery of this two-parter.
Well, that or some kind of illegal substance. Take your pick. Warning for snark right now, because I let loose on this thing. It's not some kind of automatic hatred for it because it's by RTD, either, lest that be assumed: a lot of it is frustration at the fact that this guy is so wildly inconsistent. He can come up with utterly brilliant episodes like Midnight, and then turn around and give us dreck like this. It's not even a case of a good writer turning out the occasional not-so-good thing, it is legitimate, genuine inconsistency and my frustration with that just drove me up the wall while watching this. It's worse than if it was just someone who sucked all the time that wrote it.
"It is said that in the final days of planet Earth, everyone had bad dreams." Really. This is the line you're going with to open the narration? You've got Timothy Fucking Dalton narrating your episode, and this is what you write for him? Really? "I am disappoint" doesn't seem to cover it. THAT VOICE DESERVES BETTER THINGS TO SAY, DAMMIT. A lot of the dialogue in these episodes is pretty cringeworthy, honestly. It hurts me. 🙁
I don't have the words for seeing the TARDIS in the stained glass window. I just don't. Well, aside from "enough already with this deification of Ten, RTD, he is not a saint or Jesus or whatever you want to call him". After Waters of Mars, this feels especially grating and hard to take. If it's a bad idea to applaud a Time Lord, it's an even worse one to WORSHIP ONE AND PUT THEM IN CHURCH WINDOWS.
Still, though – I thought to myself, that first time, "this can't be that bad, Wilf's here! And credited! Surely this will be awesome!' I was half-right: nothing can ruin Wilf's awesome, Bernard Cribbins owns this episode. But alas, he had no power to make it well-written.
"End of Time"? OOH WE'RE GOING TO THE END OF TIME? WE'RE VISITING THIS PLACE?
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… no? Really? We can't? We're just – aw. Okay. 🙁
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OMG ADORABLE OOD LOSING TRAIN OF THOUGHT
… I just want to hug an Ood, is that so wrong? 🙁 And Wilf. I want to give Wilf many hugs.
All right, let's take a moment or two to recap. There's a cult dedicated enough to a guy who was Prime Minister for a matter of days (if that, I'm being generous here) before being seen on international television assassinating the President of the United States and getting shot by his own wife to give their lives to revive him from the dead and Lucy somehow managed to get this potion of death brewed from prison in order to counteract their weird plan?
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"Christmas is cancelled"? What are you, the Sheriff of Nottingham?
A WILF SCENE! Sweet, blessed relief, like the first autumn rain after a long hot summer.
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<3 <3 <3 You are just bursting with win, Wilf. PLEASE HURRY AND COME BE MY HONORARY BRITISH GRANDPA. HURRY HURRY.
So… sometime in between the use of the Emigre Manuscript (I'll stop making video game references at some point, I swear) and now, the Master cleared time in his busy people-eating schedule to hit the salon for a quick dye job? For that matter, why is he eating people at all? Talk about a bad case of Came Back Wrong, to put it mildly. WTF. The Master in general is just endless WTF here. Jumping really high? Eating people like a Vashta Nerada (though strangely without damaging their clothes)? Using Force Lightning? The hell? I feel like he's become some kind of bizarro mashup of Final Fantasy characters + Hannibal Lecter + Palpatine = WHAT THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT. It seriously does not work for me.
Back to Wilf. You damn well better try not to, Wilf. ;_; Oh, I'm going all wibbly at that thought.
(cont)
That Wilf gif, omg so cute. I just want to hug Bernard Cribbins to death.
Wilf is really the saving grace here. BERNARD CRIBBINS 4EVER.
Chrono Trigger! I love you.
The End of Time.
We start off with the Doctor informing us that the bad turn he gave Elizabeth I was that he married her and then ran off on her.
This really put me off Ten. This is when he morphed from this appealingly arrogant guy to this impossibly arrogant douchebag. At the end of Waters of Mars you’d think the first he’d do is zip off to the Planet of the Ood, not go to Hawaii and bang Queen Elizabeth I. It’s just, WHAT? WHAAAAAAAT? So I wasn’t pleased.
Then the Ood just seemed really weird in that circle and all that chanting. It looked like some sort of tribal thing that just really rubbed me the wrong way and made me seriously want to side-eye Russell T. Davies.
But then! The Ring! The Master! Lucy Saxon! Poor Lucy Saxon. But she tried to save the world, so good on her. Kind of confused why it seemed like the Master’s cult all consisted of women (were there men? I can’t recall.) but it wasn’t really all that important.
Wilf! Wilf and his mobilized army of senior citizens! God, I cannot even tell you how much I love Bernard Cribbins for this role. But the whole scene in the café really started to make me cry. You can see that the Doctor has really destabilized after Donna left and he knows his “song is ending” and even though he can regenerate, he likes being who he is now. That made me really sad because I absolutely ADORE Tennant and I was determined to hate Matt Smith for no other reason than he wasn’t Tennant. But then, the Doctor has regenerated nine times that we know of and while he’s technically been a different man, he’s still himself.
Also, Donna getting married?!?! Is she still half-Time Lord? Will she have quarter Time Lord babies?!? HOW WILL THIS WORK?!?!
The Doctor and the Master in the garbage yard. Oh gracious, gave me chills when he hit that oil drum (drum!!!!) four times. Heart in mouth, Mark, heart in mouth. So vicious. But not a big fan of Sith Lightening Powers. That seemed, I don’t know, cheap? But for the Doctor to heart the drums, to marvel at the new idea that maybe the Master wasn’t crazy… its nuts.
Naismith. Look this guy and his daughter are idiots. Just idiots. So that’s all I’ll say about them. The Vinvocci are OK. I didn’t have any feelings for them other than them humanoid cacti and distant genetic relatives of Bannakaffalata.
But the MASTER RACE?!?! (LOLOLOL I C WAT U DID THAR RUSTY) Hilarious! Amazing!! Shocking!!! John Simm really looks better in that pink dress than the girl did, I tell you what though. And then!!! GALLIFREY!!! WHAAAAAAAT
Yeah, then it was fists in mouths for a week until End of Time Part 2.
Also, I failed to address that this special is proof that James Bond is a Time Lord BECAUSE LOOK TIMOTHY DALTON IS CLEARLY THEIR LEADER. AND HE SPITS A LOT.
Oh god yes. Timothy Dalton. He is awesome here
The cult of Saxon is indeed all women, something I just picked up on this rewatch and added to the list of many things that leave me speechless/puzzled/possiblyenraged? in this episode.
Sometimes I feel like I should be insulted by it but then I get distracted by Bernard Cribbins.
He's a lovely man.
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He is an absolute pleasure.
At least the whole Elizabeth-hunting-him-down thing is sort of resolved?
I always felt like that whole Queen Elizabeth thing happened because he was trying to forget about what he had done. He was trying to distract himself from his impending death. It doesn't make it all right, but it makes him seem more himself. I never saw him as a douchebag… I just saw him as being terrified of what was coming and trying to not think about it.
I thought the same thing. I thought the whole Queen Elizabeth, and other various stops was a way to distract himself from what he knows is coming (death/”end of his song”).
I’m sorry but this episode
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The Master got resurrected by some kind of cult ritual?
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WILF! Wilf, his friends and the Silver Cloak!
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The Master now eats people!?! And jumps into the air!?! ‘Dinner Tiiiiime!’
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Wilf in the cafe talking with the Doctor is just
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The Master can shoot lasers from his hands now too!!!
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Who is that woman and why does Wilf need a gun?
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THE MASTER RACE!!!!!
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DONNA’s HEAD!!!!! “This was the day the Time Lords returned.”
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YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!
Beautiful gifspam is beautiful. <3
seriously unendingly beautiful
oh my god I love that seven gif. it's joining my ace gif in the "find a use for this every day" pile.
MIIIIIIIIIIIIISHA! I'm sorry, were you saying something?
MISHA!
<img src="http://i52.tinypic.com/2lntk0m.gif" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"> Mmmm, Misha. I mean, Doctor Who, yes that's what we're talking about, Doctor Who.
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…wait, what's Doctor Who again?
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I'm sorry what were we saying?
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Wait, we were saying something?
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Wait, we were saying something?
Casanova gif is win!
I don't know if I can write a response today, but if I can't, can I just say your gifs are perfect and you have encapsulated my feelings exactly. Just picture me as Simon doing that for the entirety of this episode, and you'll be about right.
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I love this gifspam.
You are seriously amazing at gifspams!
Can I just reply to this beautiful gifspam with some incredulous gifs of my own? OK! 😀
Oh this episode…
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In summary…
Force lightning, cannibalism, and crazy cults?
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LOL, IDK. SOMEHOW IT ENCAPSULATES HOW I FEEL!
GIF SPAMS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME!
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I'm one of those weird people who actually kind of likes this episode, but that comment? IS SO MUCH WIN.
Best gifspam maybe in ever. Also I almost typed "giftspam" which sort of sums up how I feel nicely.
There's something I deeply want to reference WRT Ten's bit on regenerating, and it explains why I'm pretty unmoved, but I just can't, because it'd spoil something on Mark's list. Won't even say what it is, or if it's a Reads or Watches project. Just… argh.
Donna. Oh, Donna. Sigh.
… um, add Gollum to that mashup list up there, because Simm's delivery of his food monologue reminds me a bit too much of Gollum ranting about the precious. NASTY TRICKSY DOCTORS! WE HATES THEM, PRECIOUS! WE NEEDS FOOD, WE ARE SO HUUUUUUUUNGRY! THEY WANT TO STEAL IT FROM US!
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Speaking of which, I'd like one of Donna's margaritas right now, even if she did make them wrong. Mmmm, margaritas. Or possibly a screwdriver. HI-YO!
"Did you keep the receipt?" CHRIST, WHO THE FUCK SAYS THAT TO THEIR DAUGHTER ABOUT A CHRISTMAS PRESENT? JUDGING YOU AS ALWAYS, SYLVIA.
Still trying to work out what the Naismiths' deal was. Not having much luck of it so far. Why do they want immortality? Just cause? I am still baffled by them. What is the point of these two? I really honestly just do not get what the intent here was. Plus they are super creepy and give off incestual vibes that really squick me. I haven't felt my skin crawl like this since the shaving scene in Eegah.
Can we not with the gross eating scenes? Look, I get the point already. Stop. THIS IS BAD FOOD PORN. I SENTENCE YOU TO THE CONE OF SHAME FOR A MONTH JUST FOR THIS.
OKAY FINE, POINTS FOR THE SKELETOR REFERENCE. XD
Congratulations on finding a pun that makes even me cringe, RTD. That is no small feat, considering that I'm usually the one tormenting people with my puns.
Lord President of the Time Lords: *spits in their general direction*
Guest Commentator Mike Nelson: Eugh. Say it, don't spray it.
Guest Commentator Crow T Robot: Need a tissue there, Mr. Dalton?
Guest Commentator Tom Servo: You're gonna rust your magic glove like that.
CHRIST, WHO THE FUCK SAYS THAT TO THEIR DAUGHTER ABOUT A CHRISTMAS PRESENT?
Everyone in my family. I've just started taping the gift receipt to the gift.
lmfao my mom tends to go the incredibly fake "ohh… that's nice" and subtly looks for the receipt. my sister is the only one that flat out asks.
That is really messed up. 🙁
<3 <3 <3. That is all.
Ugh, seriously. Every time I forget this I forget that the Naismiths are father and daughter and not creepy lovers.
…..great. Now I won't be able to watch that episode without being seriously creeped out.
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I want to hug an Ood too. I bet they give good hugs.
"… I just want to hug an Ood, is that so wrong?"
If it's wrong I don't wanna be right. Hugs and possibly run my fingers through their tentacles…kay it's going to the creepy place now.
It was a while ago so I may be misremembering but I'm pretty sure I thought the Naismiths were a couple until the "…for my DAUGHTER" part when I first watched this.
""Christmas is cancelled"? What are you, the Sheriff of Nottingham?"
He wishes. Sheriff of Nottingham (well the Alan Rickman one) > EVERYONE.
I thought they were a couple too. There were some seriously weird vibes coming from them, and I am someone that is not bothered at all when watching the Doctor's Daughter by the knowledge of DT and GM's relationship offset.
Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham is the best ever!
Apparently the Doctor and the Master can't meet up without one of them turning into Gollum. The Master was so Gollum-y about meat that I half expected him to say "give it to us raw and wriggling!"
"You keep nasty chips!"
I think I've had too much sugar today or something, because I just burst out laughing at the thought of the Master saying this and can't seem to stop. XD
"Rose loved chips!"
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ALWAYS relevant.
Never stop.
Indeed!
NEVER CHANGE!
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I love you SO FREAKING MUCH.
I was just wondering if you'd find a way to include this meme, I shouldn't have doubted. You are wonderful!
TY (and everyone else in this comment thread)! The funny thing is, when I first posted the Gollum chips quote, I didn't even think about "Rose Loved Drugs." What is wrong with me?
I love you. <3
RTD is wildly inconsistent, I agree. I look at this and think "Wait, this is the guy who also gave us Midnight and Children of Earth?"
I am coming to the conclusion that RTD is a good writer ONLY when he has no budget. When he has a budget, he spends it on explosions and CGI of a Dalek army and everything else gets lost in the epic. ):
Yeah…I think you're right. When he has to work with low money, he has no choice but to focus on the characters, which is the stuff he does best.
In a recent interview RTD said he might leave scifi because he's ran out of ideas on how to bring about the end of the world.
A big criticism of RTD's finales were typically that he felt this need to always up the scale and the grandness and went more for quantity over quality. I think RTD just has really weird views on what scifi is or should be that when he doesn't have some message or idea he's exploring, he just creates big jumbly messes that really don't make any sense.
Your whole comment is absolutely spot on. Especially the MST3K references.
Can I just say that that picture of the Master flying with lightning shooting out of his hands REALLY REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING I CAN'T TALK ABOUT HERE? I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
I love these two comments, in their entirety.
And…
I feel like he's become some kind of bizarro mashup of Final Fantasy characters + Hannibal Lecter + Palpatine = WHAT THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
There's something I deeply want to reference WRT Ten's bit on regenerating, and it explains why I'm pretty unmoved, but I just can't, because it'd spoil something on Mark's list. Won't even say what it is, or if it's a Reads or Watches project. Just… argh.
Post it in the spoilery section of the forum! I really want to know what it is now!
I have a thread up already in one of the Reads/Watches Spoiler sections. Enter… if you DARE!
OH I SEE! I totally missed that the first time I read it.
Yeah, pretty much all of this. This is one of those time where I like to pretend in my head that something that should have ended 2/3 of the way through actually did. The specials should've ended at the Waters of Mars. I enjoy pretending that The End of Time doesn't exist.
(Why comment about this _now_? Just barely saw it for the first time.)
Oh. THANK. _YOU_!!!!!!!
I've never posted here before and probably never will again, but you said nearly EVERYTHING THAT BUGS ME ABOUT THIS ONE. AND ALSO RTD'S WRITING. I SWEAR I'LL STOP TYPING IN ALL CAPS SOON. The Master was _cartoonish_ here! He was already like that in "Last of the Time Lords" with his prancing about that made even Emperor Flipping _Cartagia_ from Babylon 5 (a villian that I actually ENJOY) look subtle and sane, but here?
All the odd superpower things he does are just so out of NOWHERE. Suddenly he's Superman mixed with Magneto and Emperor Palpatine the HELL? Oh, and the eating. The ironic thing is, this is actually an example of something I normally LIKE!–situations where somebody who's Different from others around them starts suffering exotically, or, suffering in a normal way for exotic reasons. A good-guy vampire going crazy from lack of human blood, an alien being cold on a summer day 'cos he's from a hot planet…that kind of thing.
A Time Lord who just regenerated into an unstable body and is ravenously hungry would normally be a _great_ example of this…so the fact that this repulsed me took some _doing_. (Whereas when Barry Allen does exactly the same thing on the 1990 "Flash" live-action show with WAY cheesier effects, it somehow mixes goofy with concern about him to = awesome.)
Anyway. So much for Metacrisis on Infinite Earths, to the main point: The Doctor. First of all, YES YES YES THANK YOU A THOUSAND TIMES _YES_ for every. Single. Thing you said about the stupid deification and worship of the Doctor. By the end of Season 3 alone I felt like I was being proselytised to worse than I ever have before, and I used to hang out on a messageboard with a bunch of Evangelical Christians!
And THEN…the Doctor…started _believing_ his own hype.
That was when he lost me. Forever. Tennant's _performance_ is fine and yes, if I must admit it, he's a cute guy physically but the Doctor. Is NOT. _God_. He used to actively FIGHT against the idea of people thinking he was one! Look up "The Myth Makers", for one. A silly Hartnell serial with not the world's best writing, but at the beginning, when some Greeks see the TARDIS "descend from the heavens" and assume he must be Zeus, he VEHEMENTLY protests and sets them right freaking straight _right now_. He is NOT a god, got it? _Never_ a god.
The way the Doctor treated the Family of Blood when _they were going to die soon anyway_ was hellish enough. Straight up Hans Christian Andersen shit, here (check out 'The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf", it's the first thing I thought of at the end of that two-parter). But what was possibly even MORE terrifying than _what_ he did…was his absolute lack of HESITATION at doing it. Or guilt. Or anything.
And then here–wot? WOT?!!! He stomps out of the TARDIS happily and _rudely_ announcing that he banged Queen Elizabeth?!! WHAT? Just, _what_?!! That's not the Doctor! That's not even…who IS this person?! I can understand being upset that you're about to die, but this was like some newly-rich pimp BRAT! Waving his platinum car in your face and constantly name-dropping about his cars and designer Paris suits. WHAT THE FUCK.
If the Doctor wanted to do something crazy right before he died, he'd…I dunno, go pick up Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, and Einstein all at the same time and end up drunkenly singing songs about particle physics in some cabaret, not…THIS!
One. MINUTE. In and it's lost me. But I'm in for the long haul…
(continued)
(er, that was supposed to be: "waving his platinum CARD in your face". Although the ridiculous excess of a solid-gold Cadillac _would_ fit JerkDoctor's attitude at the beginning of this story, too…)
I'm really surprised that Mark himself didn't say it, so I will: The resurrection of the Master by creepy black-clad people who "never stopped believing", using a sample from _the person who killed him_: VOLDEMORT GETTING BROUGHT BACK BY HARRY POTTER'S BLOOD IN THE GRAVEYARD BY DEATH-EATERS AT THE END OF GOBLET OF FIRE OR FUCKING _WHAT_?, Y/Y?!
And then…the "Master" race…no. Just NO no no no _no_ that was the dumbest looking thing I've ever seen in my LIFE any and all chance of my getting sucked into the story and taking it seriously went _completely_ out the airlock with that. All I could think of was that episode of "Superfriends"–yes, Superfriends–where some kind of machine makes all males on Earth turn into Bizzarro Superman and all females turn into Cheetah, and how THAT was more dignified than this!
My hovercraft of disbelief is normally quite a sturdy vehicle, but this just torpedoed it straight out of the _sky_.
And all of this is a shame, 'cos there IS stuff to like in this one. I agree with you _completely_ about RTD: He is _the_ most inconsistent writer I've ever seen. When he's on, he can be BRILLIANT! But when he's off, he's off–and this was _off_. But Wilf continued to be THE most awesome thing ever, the Time Lords–IN THEIR _ORIGINAL CHEESY OUTFITS, WITH THOSE _COLLARS_ OMG I could not stop _squeaking_ at the screen in disbelief–GOOD disbelief, this time–all the Companions, for their brief appeances, were awesome and/or badass (Commando Martha! With Kung-Fu grip! Don't ever change, babe), some parts of the atmosphere were beautiful or affecting…
But the _real_ crime, is that this is a _regeneration story_. It's supposed to be a gripping, heart-wrenching Big Event…and I was COMPLETELY unable to take it seriously. I didn't feel sad for Ten, I didn't even feel that much "Fine. LEAVE then. Go already. Don't let the door bang your arse on the way out", I just felt…_ridicule_. I could _not_ stop rolling my eyes.
RTD was so determined that this be THE biggest, most impressive and Important of all regeneration stories, 'cos it was _his_ Doctor and his last story…that he went too far. He went SO far it went straight _through_ epic., through even Narm and all the way out into Just Plain Ridiculous, and it just. Didn't. Work.
Let this be a lesson to _all_ writers: Even in campy universes…limits DO exist.
For a reason.
…Notorious
This is it, we’re finally down to my favorite two-parter of all time. I cannot say enough about this episode! Everyone having nightmares about the Master, creepy. Wilf, awesome as usual! And the Ood, with the eerie predictions. The Master returning, and more terrifying than ever, if that is even possible. Poor Lucy ïŒ
And Donna! My heart keeps breaking for her and the Doctor, especially when he and Wilf are in the café and he sees her and how sad he looks! My girlfriend was in the room and she was all, “this is going to make me cry and I don’t even know who these people are.” Why I’m dating someone who doesn’t watch Doctor Who is another story entirely.
Fast forward to the Master is everyone and everyone is him, and I just had to laugh so hard at seeing him in dresses and jumping up and down with insane glee, giving himself the thumbs up all over the place. BRILLIANT.
And the end! OMG, TIME LORDS? WTF! I cannot wait to watch part 2 tonight!!
In other news, I dreamed about Weeping Angels last night and some of them looked like babies and the only way to kill them was to smash them with hammers. It was very disturbing :/
John Simm looks so good in dresses, I can't even.
He has good shoulders for it.
I think probably a million slash writers died of glee when this first aired.
Also, reading through the comments, am I the only person that loves this episode? Maybe I just enjoy all the WTF??
This is one of my favourites too 🙂
I pretty much love it as well. I don't have the energy to engage in much of the discussion at the moment – and I do understand people's reasons for not liking it, those just don't bother me enough or at all.
In general, every single episode of Doctor Who is pretty much equally loved by the general public, with only Love and Monstersdipping to average on its first showing (it doesn't rate any lower than the others in repeats, though). Even if you take people who make the effort to post their opinions on the internet as somehow more discerning then every episode has defenders as well as detractors.
None of this invalidates anyone's opinion, of course, but if you have feelings of love then you definitely aren't alone and you're almost certainly not in the minority.
I love this two-parter as well. I honestly didn't know that there was so much hate for this until I really started getting into the DW fandom.
I'm in the "WTF?!" camp, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its moments. Like the scene in the diner OMFG ALL THE TEARS.
Don't want to go into too much depth so I'll keep schtum till Mark's caught Part 2 – but I really want to agree with you on the "favourite two-parter of all time."
I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to commit to that – Human Nature, Silence in the Library and a couple in the next series give it a run for its money. But my favourite FINALE, certainly. By miles. Wonderful. Such a brilliant two-parter. The jewel in RTD's crown.
I'm really glad you like this episode! It's a bit cheesy and a bit confusing at times but I still personally think it's wonderful.
I don't want to say much because I tend to watch part one and two at once so I don't want to risk saying something about part two. Instead I'll just say: I DO NOT JUDGE YOU AT ALL AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH AN OBSESSION WITH JOHN SIMM. LET US LOOK AT HIM AND DAVID BEING FABULOUS TOGETHER.
<img src="http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kt3xmvxbuM1qzez2qo1_500.jpg">
Where was this taken?!?!? WHO is the Man U fan?! I don't even want to know, I don't want to ruin my opinion of either of them.
I have no idea and I have no idea. All I know is that they're both very attractive.
John Simm is from the North West, so probs him
you are amazing, that was so my first train of thought.
that being said, Nine gets serious props for being ~my doctor~ despite ecclestone's unfathomable, unreasonable, unacceptable, undying support of the-club-that-must-not-be-named.
/biased rant over.
This is a completely shameless response. Unngg…I… so….attractive…
I love this episode too! Go us!
I think the supernatural elements are what Doctor Who has always had, especially because the Doctor is basically just a wizard. We now have a good and a bad wizard, and/or a good and bad superhero. I love it and think it's amazing.
Which, again, supports the theory that harry potter wizards are timelords. they have time travel technology, tents that are bigger on the inside, perception filters basically, and wands are really just advanced sonic screwdrivers.
…Now I really wish I could remember where to find the self insert fic written by "Ten" about Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
lol I FOUND IT.
Chicken Soup for the Dark Wizard's Soul
the "comments" at the end are pretty much what make it.
Note that it contains spoilers for Part Two.
Nothing will *ever* convince me that the Doctor didn't write that exact fic. EVER.
NEVER STOP BEING MY FIC HERO.
This photo….I can't articulate further….
<img src="http://i56.tinypic.com/25eyxw8.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic">
I love them both, but their necks weird me out. I'm sorry. 🙁
I loled. Kind of hard.
GOD. THESE MEN. IT'S JUST. I CAN'T EVEN. SO AWESOME. AND HOT. AND JUST…
/dies.
SOMEBODY FEED THEM A CHEESEBURGER FOR GOD'S SAKE. THEY ARE TOO THIN!
lolz.
I'll be in my bunk.
I see what you did there.
Ten trying to amuse the Ood at the beginning is just kind of sad to me. I mean, they're Ood and it's not like they care, and it's just like Ten is trying so desperately to be amusing and trying to capture his earlier persona that it's actually kind of a painful scene to watch.
Now, I've talked about how bad I think this episode is on the spoiler board in the past, but it bears repeating: it's so bad it's actually kind of unbelievable and mesmerizing. I remember watching this the first time when it aired, and thinking, this can't be real, can it? This is actually an episode of Doctor Who? Just, what? What? I also think the pacing for this episode is so off. BASICALLY I ONLY HAVE NEGATIVE THINGS TO SAY SO MOVE ALONG IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ IT.
I guess the Master coming back is interesting, but the scene in which he does so is just shit. And why do people want to bring back the murderous former Prime Minister? It just doesn't make sense. Or they know he's the Master, but then that makes even less sense for them to want him back.
And then he gets a random skeleton effect? And then he eats people? And jumps high? And shoots lightning? I am sorry, but I really hated this stuff
Oh god, and then the fake Obama stuff. How completely anvilicious was all that? And I'm totally fine with fiction being commentary for politics, but I really wish RTD hadn't explicitly used Obama by name in the episode, complete with real audio. I mean, I think fictional Prime Ministers means there should be fictional presidents as well. And maybe this was a British thing or something (I'm doubting it, though), but I'm from the U.S. and I really don't remember anything coming even close to people believing Obama was going to give everyone an "instant and radical solution to the world-wide depression." So I don't really get why was this even chosen to criticize in the first place – it comes across like a straw man to me. Additionally, this show was airing through the Bush administration. I mean, out of all of current US politics, that's what you criticize?
And jfc that "Master race" line. Just, headdesk.
I wrote a pretty long comment for the Midnight review, because I was seriously impressed at RTD's writing in that episode, and there was so much good to be said about it. This episode? I have no idea what happened.
Wilf is one of the few redeeming things about the episode for me. And I don't even like him as much as most people seem to. Also, Wilf just reminds me of Donna and that makes me sad. And then we actually get Donna, and seeing her so unaware is worse than not having her at all.
Okay, the green aliens are actually redeeming to me. And the Time Lord cliffhanger was pretty cool (though I dislike the visible spittle).
And maybe this was a British thing or something (I'm doubting it, though), but I'm from the U.S. and I really don't remember anything coming even close to people believing Obama was going to give everyone an "instant and radical solution to the world-wide depression."
Yeah, I was kind if surprised that they mentioned a real-world politician, and rolled my eyes about it. And the only time I've seen people mention the magical economic fix is to ridicule (imaginary) people who thought that Obama was sunshine and unicorns. A big ole eye-roll for that.
From what people are posting, it seems like this is an unpopular episode in the fandom? I don't know, I've only seen it once and I've seen nothing that follows, so I sort of just enjoyed the wild ride.
And jfc that "Master race" line. Just, headdesk.
awww, my poor FAVORITE LINE EVER. XD
I'm biased and almost never like puns (unless they're really clever). Apparently I have no soul.
puns are incredibly stupid and most of my friends hate them too, so yana. I personally think they're just about the funniest thing in the world. For some background information, this is probably my favorite bit of any webcomic ever:
<img src="http://www.mitchclem.com/nothingnice/comics/20050223.gif">
An an example of my sense of humor: a punny chemistry joke with "alkaline" would maybe amuse me. But I like science/math jokes.
Here's a favorite of mine:
What's an anagram of Banach–Tarski? Banach–Tarski Banach–Tarski.
Basically, I like whatever the opposite of "lowest-common-denominator" humor is. (And why xkcd is my favorite webcomic)
"What's an anagram of Banach–Tarski? Banach–Tarski Banach–Tarski. "
I took me a while, but then I lol'd.
You might appreciate this, then:
<img src="http://i51.tinypic.com/2j2agls.png">
This comic, it's fucking brilliant.
Oh man, why haven't I seen this comic before? How flippin' fantastic is that?!
WHOA RELEVANT
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
That's all I got.
ahaha omg. I <3 Alkaline Trio and this is just omgahaha 😀 heh
Really random but I miss that webcomic something fierce…
*goes and scrolls through archive*
I'm partial to this one:
<img src="http://www.mitchclem.com/nothingnice/comics/20050914.gif">
hahaaaa that's my favorit nn2s every. i tend to sing that at my friends.
So, you'd be Casey in this situation?
Casey: There are puns?
Dana: Yes.
Casey: Puns.
Dana: Bad ones.
Casey: Is there such a thing as a good one?
Dana: (brightly) No!
<img src="http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/1561/sndangleeful.gif">
I normally love puns to a ridiculous degree, but I don't like this one either.
THIS to your comment, particularly the Obama stuff. It seems to have absolutely no bearing on the episode and just feels ridiculously out of place and pointless.
But… but… the Master doesn't shoot lightning. It's clearly just static electricity buildup. Get him some Downy and he'll be fine.
<img src="http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9559/masterstatic.gif">
It must be hell for him shopping in Marks & Sparks.
Yep. I went there.
And I, for one, am glad you did.
And I thought I was the only person on planet Earth who hated this episode. Wilf and his pensioner friends are adorabibble, though, and that little biddy squeazing the Doctor's bum made me laugh so hard!
Well, okay. Here's some stuff.
They have a fake Prime Minister and a fictional president BUT when Saxon is elected they show clips of real stars/political figures having something good to say about Saxon. As though they exist in the real world.
The fictional president is VERY OBVIOUSLY a caricature of Bush. But in that role he had to speak, so they had to use the fictional one.
The caricature of Bush was pretty negative, especially with his comment about taking over because the British Prime Minister was an ass. So in this one we have a completely turned around view of the US. I think it portrays the way the world has changed since the end of S4 ESPECIALLY to those of us that didn't wait that long between episodes. Now we get that the world has changed and a decent amount of time has passed.
No, it wasn't necessary to use Obama specifically, but what are the alternatives? What's meant here is that there was a big change in the world/governing of the US while we were gone from Doctor Who and it needs portrayed. Would it be preferable that they choose another black man to imitate Obama like they did for Bush? Would that be just as disrespectful to the US as the first time? Maybe at this point the BBC decided they'd prefer not to possibly alienate the people from the US who are watching. (I mean, with BBC America showing the Doctor Who episodes at exactly the same time now, it seems like they are trying to get us to watch more actively these days.)
No, I never thought Obama was going to Cure All, though I do know he was a symbol of hope for a lot of people. I can accept in the weird skewed alternate universe that the Doctor exists in Obama might say something like that, considering the fact that everyone has just been attacked by Daleks and other aliens have been showing their ugly faces. (And when do the events of Children of Earth happen? Are we still reeling from that in this universe?)
Alright, I'll bite. The Obama stuff is more commentary about people reacting to him rather than the guy himself. So it comes off a criticism of Americans and other people who like/follow Obama, rather than criticism of one specific politician as in S3.
So, your line here: "Maybe at this point the BBC decided they'd prefer not to possibly alienate the people from the US who are watching."
I'm from the U.S. and this ep was way more jarring and insulting to me on the political front than the stuff in S3, because I can read it as meant to be criticism about me, an American and an Obama voter. The S3 characterization of fake!Bush was about Bush, not American politics itself. And frankly, the PM was the Master, so it wasn't that negative a portrayal of a fake US president when the guy he's calling an ass deserves way harsher words than that.
But in this ep, it's about people thinking Obama is going to come up with an instant fix to the global economy. Like I said, strawman.
". Would it be preferable that they choose another black man to imitate Obama like they did for Bush?"
I say leave it out all together. What we got certainly didn't help the plot/ep imo.
I always saw the portrayal of Bush as negative because The Master is supposed to be extremely likable and everyone is brainwashed into loving him. Perhaps the president wasn't brainwashed, but he is still extremely pushy and condescending. I think that portraying the PM as someone extremely well liked by all of the world (including Sharon Osbourne!) except for the US president is a comment on our (admittedly somewhat accurate) ignorance about the world.
You found Obama's portrayal insulting, whereas I found it hopeful. It's cheesy, and very farfetched, but I found it hopeful that there might be a world where a world leader could say/do that. I also know that RTD is not beyond the cheese whereas he rarely presents positive happy roles as a criticism of something.
Also, I hope you don't think I responded just to aggravate you. That's sort of what I get from the 'I'll bite' comment. I really don't mean to do that, I just have some widely differing opinions than a lot of the Mark Watchers and if I can form a coherent argument as to why (which sometimes I really really can't despite how much I disagree) I feel like should share it.
Sorry, I didn't at all mean to imply I was aggravated! I liked your comment, and it was well thought-out, so it required some thought and effort on my part to respond to it, unlike say just a gif or a joke (and I was debating whether to take the time to respond or not since I really should be studying, hence the "I'll bite").
I'm glad people like this episode, and that you found the Obama stuff positive. I love discussion and seeing people with different takes on the same matter. So I am glad you shared, and I appreciate your comments.
Okay. Yea, I saw 'I'll bite' as me baiting you into arguing back in a negative way. But I'm glad that wasn't the case, nrgle for different interpretations in tones of printed text.
And also 😀 on the compliment and telling me my comment was well thought out. Thanks for that.
Now, I've talked about how bad I think this episode is on the spoiler board in the past, but it bears repeating: it's so bad it's actually kind of unbelievable and mesmerizing
HAHAHA that was exactly my reaction. I remember getting psyched up for this episode, reading interviews with RTD saying he was pulling out all the stops, and then seeing it and being completely flabbergasted. What the actual fuck is this shit supposed to be?
Yeah, I… really think the only way I'd watch it again is if I had some booze handy, or a Rifftrax was made. Or a bunch of us got together to make an iRiff somehow. It is so, so, so bad.
This episode is good, but so very silly. I mean, that ressurection thing? Come on.
Omg, I’m so excited you’re finally here. I won’t say anything else but yay!
Ok, I guess I will say something else. I know a lot of people don’t love this episode like I do, but I can forgive the cheesy skull effects and resurrection scene and everything else because this two-parter, imo, has some of Tennant’s, Simm’s, and Cribbens’ best acting in the whole series. And great music. That is all.
IAWTC!
Well it seems that the Tardis Wiki article has it together…
TRIVIA TOMORROW EVERYBODY! SOWWY!
I kind of get the impression with this that RTD came up with the 'Master Race' pun and was just like, 'TROLOLOLOL I CAN TOTALLY BUILD AN ENTIRE TWO-PART SERIAL AROUND THIS TROLOLOLO.'
Also, WILF!!! <3 -That's all.
I bet you that's exactly what happened. He's brilliant like that. XD
Haha I hadn't read your comment before I posted almost exactly the same thing. Seriously, RTD. Seriously.
The End of Time Part One is just one big WTF to me. The Master is resurrected seemingly through magic (there probably was some scientific reasoning, but really?) by the Cult of Saxon. There is a cult that worships a short-lived Prime Minister who killed the American president. Hmm. IDK, maybe there was a lasting effect from the Archangel network, but that seems pretty implausible to me. So now the Master’s jumping fifty feet in the sky, shooting energy bolts from his hands, and eating people. And now he’s turned everyone in the world into the Master Race. Mmmkay.
The Doctor ran off for a year or so, named a galaxy Allison, and married Queen Elizabeth. Come on Doctor, stop being such an irresponsible douche and help the Ood! I know you don’t want to “die,” but this is pushing it. It’s completely in character for Ten to be scared of regeneration, but it really bugs me. None of the other Doctors ever treated it like that. For all we know he may have just been putting on a brave face, but really I just think it’s Ten’s arrogance and humanity that is making him see regeneration as death.
The Naismiths… awkward. Anyone else getting an incesty vibe from them? Overall, they did seem stereotypical and pointless.
Really, the only bright spots are Wilf and the Vinvocci. Wilf, as always, can make me cry and laugh and just smile dorkily. I love the Vinvocci, as much as they’re just goofy comedy relief aliens. That’s Nina from “Being Human!” /fangirls
Also:
<img src="http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhn7nzcUuE1qbsvmoo1_500.jpg"/>
I thought they were married at first, and her calling him "daddy" was just one of those creepy/sappy nicknames. But when I found out he was her actual daddy? Weirded out forever.
SUCH an incest vibe oh my god.
Ten’s arrogance and humanity that is making him see regeneration as death.
This is precisely why I love Ten. Because all humans are afraid of death, it is a HUGE part of who we are and what we do. What are you if you aren't afraid of death? A crazy super soldier? A zombie? There are many horror movies based on people or monsters who are no longer afraid of dying.
Obviously, as seen in Turn Left, the Doctor can die completely and without regeneration. But we know that won't happen on this show. So here we can fear death legitimately with the Doctor because we know full well that he can always and at any time regenerate. I think regeneration should be like a death. It is, from the way he describes it. Nine went into his regeneration with the bravest face possible, but I still saw fear in his eyes. Ten is more human than Nine and has more good friends and chooses to share this fear with Wilf.
I know you don’t want to “die,” but this is pushing it. It’s completely in character for Ten to be scared of regeneration, but it really bugs me.
I feel you here :/
Wilf going "Dear god, she's a cactus!" just killed me in this episode.
I'm not at home again so no login, but a quick post about The Mind Robber before I read the review and the comments. When you watch it, Mark, you'll encounter references to a character called The Master. It's useful to know in advance that this isn't the same Master. For people watching at the time, there was no special significance in that name, since the Time Lord Master hadn't been introduced at that point.
It's one time where some advance knowledge is actually less of a distraction.
Oooh, thanks for the heads up!
No worries. I was watching it over the weekend and imagining how confusing it would be without that information*.
Everything else you should be able to pick up as you go along, there's even some background info about the companions in the mix.
*edit: in Inspector Morse there's often a character who's the master of an Oxford college and they're usually referred to just as "The Master" – it's fun to imagine it as a weird Doctor Who crossover.
Oh- thanks. Yeah, that probably would have been confusing.
Yes, good point!
It's a bird, it's a plane! No, it's the reserected Voldemort Master!
RTD, you are better than that. So much WTF going on, I don't know what to complain about more. They used DNA from Lucy's lips to bring the master back, hasn't she washed her face in the last few years?
At least Wilf is back,and Bernard Cribbs gets an opening credit.
Also, The Doctor got Married! To Elizabeth I, her nickname is no longer . . . oh. Ten, you dog.
I love Wilf. I love Wilf so much that I want him to be my Grandpa. I would take him tea and biscuits every single day and I would try not to let his face break my heart. BECAUSE HIS FACE BREAKS MY HEART.
John Simm. UNF.
In conclusion, this is the best episode of all time ever. Hmm. I feel like I've said that before.
JOHN SIMM. UNF.
U-N-F
Sometimes I think about finding John Simm and David Tennant and locking them in the creepy basement we have to be my love slaves.
And then I remember thhat that's MORALLY WRONG, and I satisfy myself with obsessive google image searched.
Um, well you can't do that because they're already locked in MY basement. I let them up at meal times and I make David give me a massage while John cooks me boat loads of bacon. And then we watch Top Gear and have a glass of wine. And then back down they go until I have need of them again.
Have you seen The Devil's Whore? It's a pretty awesome mini-series set during the English Civil War starring John Simm as Edward Sexby. My friend's file of it was labeled "sexbysimm"…Yeah. 😀
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HEY MARK.
I have mixed feelings about this storyline, most of which I'll have to hold back until tomorrow. So jumbled thoughts that may not make sense:
WILF I LOVE YOU, PLEASE STOP BEING SAD. The scene in the cafe is heartbreaking (for Wilf, Ten's attitude bugs me). The brief moment where he looks like he's about to reach over and hug Ten is just…I'LL HUG YOU WILF! The "I thought it'd be cleaner." makes me rofl every time and reminds me of Donna's "You could turn the heat up" from Partners in Crime. The Mott-Noble family are not impressed by your fancy ship Doctor.
"Why do the Vinvocci aliens look like Bannakaffalatta so much?"
I think it was implied they were a related species and that the gate belonged to a third one (Hipocci). I love the Vinvocci, especially Addams, she's so grumpy and snarky. I'm biased though, I love Sinead Keenan from Being Human (Oh god yesterday's Being Human). Got to love Ten's pronounciation of Shimmer as well, "SHIMMAH!"
I always get slightly distracted during the final scenes by the amount of spit coming out of Timothy Dalton. I immediately flash to that episode of Friends with Gary Oldman: "You know you're been spitting on me?" "That's what real actors DO!"
SINEAD KEENAN. I was watching the episode last night like, "YOU BEST LEAVE MY NINA ALONE." I was very ragey there for a while.
Oh God, last night's Being Human. ALL THE TEARS IN THE WORLD.
MARK WATCHES BEING HUMAN ANYONE????
Last night's…. ALL THE TEARS FOREVER AND EVER </3
LAST NIGHT'S BEING HUMAN = I CRIED ALL THE TEARS AND THEN I FOUND MORE TEARS AND CRIED ALL OF THEM TOO.
I know what you mean about an "air of finality." It's why this is my first time watching "The End of Time" (oh man, it's great to finally have context for the press room full of Masters applause gif). So, um, yeah THERE ARE MORE TIME LORDS. Yeah right, the Doctor's not alone! I had no idea. It's nice to be surprised for once!
I loved Wilf and the silver cloak. And John Simm bouncing all over the place is amazing and silly. Why is his cult all ladies? Besides the obvious reason. I agree that the Naismiths are sort of just stand-in characters to move the story, but I don't really mind because I really enjoyed watching. This episode went by surprisingly fast. I'm really excited to see how this ends!
Oh, I figure it's also time to share this:
<img src="http://i52.tinypic.com/2qbc5c3.jpg">
Heh. And there'll be a sequel to that one tomorrow:)
I totally changed my profile pic to the master's btw.
I do that whenever i need a giggle.
This never fails to make me laugh like a loon.
Hahahaha!! I totally just looked it up, and you can join that fb group!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=23193112…
oh man TOTALLY JOINING. XD
I love these so much- its the details like the adds that really get me.
And we'll totally need the post the ones for other characters, won't we?
god I know. like the ads. I wanna join harknesslovin.com
Oh god, the friend that is the puppet from Life on Mars! I can't! THIS IS AMAZING!
I'm trying to convince myself to re-watch this episode, for pretty much the same reasons that I've only seen the previous special once–while I defintely think it's a perfectly fine episode (good, even, aside from the few "lol wut" moments you pointed out) it's just SO HARD to watch. In the previous episode, it was difficult to watch The Time Lord Victorious a second time; here it's difficult for me to see Ten so scared. So I've only seen it the once, when it originally aired, despite really liking it. I HAVE TOO MANY ~*FEELINGS*~ ABOUT THIS SHOW.
Wilf continues to be one of the best characters in the show's entire history.
AND YES, SO HARD TO SEE DONNA HERE. *will never get over what the show did to her*
I'm not a big fan of this episode, but I am happy to see Donna. I love DT's acting when he sees her outside the cafe.
When I first watched this, I was shocked to find out that the Naismiths are father and daughter. That wasn't the vibe I was getting from them at all.
I hate Skeletor!Master.
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Finally! Proof that James Bond is a Time Lord.
The ending. OMG "The Master Race" is so bad.
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And ugh. I hate the whole QE1 thing so much.
Also! I do like seeing the all male credits.
I do love John Simm waving to himself and giving himself high-fives and whatnot, though. He's hilarious.
I wonder how long it took for them to film him separately for all those people?
If you really want to know… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly82Fv-Sq3o
Finally! Proof that James Bond is a Time Lord.
He keeps regenerating!
I don't even know what's going on in this episode, between the Harold Saxon cult and the Master with his newfound ability to jump really high and turn into Skeletor and the fake Obama.
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<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_3lVOb8wvDlE/TX1bPsqhvjI/AAAAAAAABkk/7TpvdRDWm-8/nomegusta.gif">
What I do know is I LOVE WILFRED MOTT AND HE SHOULD BE IN EVERY EPISODE. The Silver Cloak? The reindeer antlers on Christmas? Holy fuck, I love Wilf.
I also love John Simm, even if the Master's storyline MAKES NO SENSE.
<img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lf25b55yvL1qb84lwo1_500.gif">
Because come on, this shit is great.
YAY! The "Room Fulla Masters Applauding" gif is no longer spoilery!
(I know it's been posted in the MRHP comments, but I've been wary of posting it since he started "Doctor Who")
I don't know about you, Mark, but I keep a whole roast chicken on hand at all times. It's only polite.
I actually have a roast chicken in my house 99% of the time because my dog is incredibly spoiled and won't eat dog food. So the Master would absolutely be in luck if he came to mine!
since its set at Christmas is a roast turkey really that strange?
Agreed. I mean, rich people like the Naismith's, its not too silly to think that had some turkeys cooking for Christmas dinner.
Watching that scene seriously made me hungry. Also, I thought it was a whole turkey. Isn't it a turkey?
I want some turkey.
OMG Ten deflowered the "Virgin Queen!"
Seriously though that scene in the cafe with Wilf was amazing, apart from one bit that made me go wtf:
"Some new man goes sauntering away…and I'm dead."
WHAT? SHUT UP. You've done this ten times already, get a grip. You're the Doctor, no matter what you look like.
Yes! I would love that scene if it weren't for that bit.
Saaaaaame here.
WHAT? SHUT UP. You've done this ten times already, get a grip. You're the Doctor, no matter what you look like.
God, that gave me SO MUCH RAEG. I was like 'Hey Ten, here's the world's smallest violin playing for you'. *rolls eyes* This was about the time I started to want the regeneration to just be over with. I loved Ten, but damn, if he wasn't annoying at the end.
So much this. I mean, seriously, he's going to go all golden-sparkly-energy-thing for a minute, and then he might be ginger! I was already annoyed with him, but the whole whining about regeneration thing had me doing a little dance for 11's arrival.
Two thoughts
1- "LET US TALK ABOUT THE SCENE IN THE CAFÉ" Glad you did, because it's my favorite little scene in 44 years of television. The moment there was raw, alive, and I choked back an out-of-nowhere sob so hard it hurt my throat. BAMF doesn't only apply to characters, it applies to FEARLESS actors as well. Here there were two.
2- I work in a large American corporation filled with nerds. I refer to it as "the Nerdery" and after this episode aired, the vast majority of my co-workers changed their FB pics to John Simm. I am a walking example of job satisfaction.
I so want to work there.
That is beautiful.
That is beyond adorable.
Is your corporation hiring? I can do pretty much anything. Customs classification, HTSUS codes, filing, cleaning, standing around holding potted plants up…
Wilf and the Ood are the only reason I haven't purged this episode from my mind. Violently. All my sympathies go to Wilf. You don't get any, Ten. You seem to be a good enough job feeling sorry for yourself as it is.
Ah, the End of Time. So many feelings on this episode. Not many good ones.
-We get a narrator? A narrator’s never good. And I kept thinking I recognised that voice…
-WIIIIIIILF! I’VE MISSED YOU! Shopping in front of Dior, I see (I notice the most random things). I appreciate your view on churches but who is the creepy lady talking to you?
-JOHN SIMM IN THE CREDITS? FANGIRLING TO NTH DEGREE! But why are you even here???
-Doctor, sunglasses do not work for you. But you got married? And are you referring to “The Virgin Queen” nickname? I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION! Also, you are ridiculous with your remote controlled TARDIS!
-Lucy. This was a waste of potential, RTD! You could have used her in a much better way. The whole cult of Saxon was just ludicrous beyond belief ( I facepalmed so much during that scene). I CANNOT. A RING? A BOOK OF ‘SAXON’? Is he the new Jesus? A MAGIC POTION (this isn’t Snape’s class, RTD!)? LUCY’S LIPSTICK? And then she kills him again? Seriously, was there even a point in bringing her back? Only good thing about that scene was her screaming “Till death do us part, Harry!” You go, girl!
-WILF AND THE PENSIONERS’ MYSTERY CLUB WERE THE BEST PARTS OF THE EPISODE! I love your investigative skills, Wilf “…modern hair, all sticky-uppy…”
-John Simm, I love you, bleach blond hair, insanity, rabid eating et all.
-Minnie the Pensioner is awesome. Made me laugh quite a bit.
-Mysterious connection with Wilf? Oh noes…
-The scene in the café. I was not prepared. I teared up when Ten started speaking about ‘a new man sauntering away and I’m dead’. And then…DONNA! I couldn’t handle it at all. I missed you so much! And when they mentioned a wedding I was kinda hoping Lee (From ‘Forest of The Dead’) had somehow managed to find her 🙁 And then the Doctor breaking down about what he’s done and how he’s all alone…Urgh, Doctor Who is not supposed to make me cry!
-TIMOTHY DALTON! I knew I recognised my least favourite James Bond (my granddad raised me on Sean Connery, of course)! But why? And what on earth are you wearing?
-On a less serious note: whatever else this episode might be, I was left feeling I’d just watched the greatest Doctor/Master slash fanvid ever made. Trying to impress each other with the blue lightning stuff, the Master rushing for a cuddle, the sweet trip down memory lane, listening to the DRUMS TOGETHER! Get a ROOM, already…
-Orange Margheritas? Oh, DoctorDonna. And still helping any way you can. I can’t take it!
-Also, WTF at everyone constantly mentioning Obama. Let’s be real, why would anyone in Britain be so anxious to listen to the American President’s speech on Christmas Day? Even if he was “solving the recession”. I don’t know why this annoyed me so much but it did. It felt forced in the context of the episode.
-Wilf is a Companion! Yay! And I see you being unimpressed by the TARDIS!
-Naismith, the random evil ambitious humans. The Immortality Gate. The green Vinvocci scientists-or cacti, as Wilf put it (though, NINA! From BEING HUMAN! STILL CRYING BECAUSE OF THE FINALE!). Urgh, I just didn’t care. I really, really didn’t care. GIVE ME SOMETHING TO CARE ABOUT IN THE LAST EPISODES, RTD!
– Oh, god, the Master Race. THE MASTER RACE. Of all the bad puns in the world. Of all the ridiculous storylines.
…
HOLY @#$%^%$#$%^&s$%^yhbvfde$%^&^%$%tfdwe$%^%$ THE TIME LORDS? GALIFREY? THE END OF TIME? WHAT? What? What?
<img src="http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m129/bedma/fcg.gif" border="0" alt="life on mars Pictures, Images and Photos"/>
Dalton is actually one of my favorite Bonds. Both of his movies just feel incredibly solid, and show him as being good at both the humorous and serious aspects of the 007 character.
I actually like Dalton's portrayal! Like I said though I was raised on 007 by my grandfather who did not like him one bit! So, it's kind of stuck, I guess-though I haven't watched his films for a long time, maybe I'll change my mind 🙂
I definitely WTFed at the Lucy Lipstick bit. The transfer of some ~Mysterious Long-Lasting Unexplained DNA Imprint~ I can almost accept, but not Lucy leaving a full-on lipstick kiss on that napkin. People are providing this prisoner with deadly Master-killing potions AND luscious lipstick? Just how wealthy, resourceful, and SILLY are her family members?
Maybe she's born with it… maybe it's some mysterious long-lasting unexplained DNA imprint.
I can't explain why I love this episode so much. Because whenever I attempt to explain how awesome it is to anybody, I make it sound ridiculous. From now on, I'm just going to stick with…David Tennant and John Simm are in it. I think that alone is reason enough.
Well, it is a pretty ridiculous episode. But I love it anyway?
Oh god that poster! rofl
This is going to be a lot more disjointed than usual because well… I forgot that the US goes on Daylight Savings Time before the UK goes on British Summer Time, so the time difference isn’t the same. And I spent most of my afternoon in the British Library, so now I’m kind of scrambling to watch EoT and say something about it.
First things first. TEN IS A WOO GIRL.
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ANYWAY. I love the way this episode opens with the Tardis in the stained glass. And who IS that lady in white? So ~mysterious. And then she later shows up in Wilf’s TV? WHY IS SHE TELLING YOU TO KEEP THINGS FROM THE DOCTOR. THIS SEEMS SUPER SHADY TO ME, WILF.
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I LOVE Wilf as a companion for this story. In New Who, 90% of the companions were good looking younger women, which is fine and all, but I love that RTD branched out a bit and gave us Donna (who is in her 30s, I’m assuming since Catherine Tate was 39 when she was filming series 4, I think), Adelaide, and Wilf as companions. It’s nice to see people from different places in life interacting with the Doctor. Also, it was lovely seeing Dona again. Shawn seems like a good guy. I think she can really be happy with him. He seems like the kind of guy who can encourage Donna in her own innate awesomeness.
Plus that scene where Wilf gets all of his awesome old friends to search for the Doctor is MAGICAL. ~The Silver Cloak~ OMG. It is one of my favorite scenes, including that bit when Minnie the Menace grabs Ten’s ass. Also, the way that Wilf describes Ten's hair is fabulous.
Wilf: Modern sort of hair. All sticky uppy.
The other brilliant scene in this episode is the conversation between Wilf and the Doctor in the coffee shop.
The Doctor: I'm going to die.
Wilfred Mott: Well, so am I one day.
The Doctor: Don't you dare!
Wilfred Mott: Alright, I'll try not to.
Awww… <3 THE DOCTOR AND WILF. FRIENDS FOREVER.
The Doctor: Even if I change it still feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away… and I'm dead.
Yeah, I know that the Doctor is the Doctor. But at the same time, he’s not. He might have the same memories, but he will have a different personality. He'll be a different person.
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Wilfred Mott: Have you got anyone?
The Doctor: No. Traveling alone. I thought it was better, I thought… but I did some things, they went wrong… I need
[breaks down]
Wilfred Mott: Oh my word.
The Doctor: [pulls himself together] Merry Christmas.
Wilfred Mott: Yeah, and you.
The Doctor thought it would be better to travel alone so that he wouldn’t get his heart broken again, but Ten needs someone. It isn’t good for him to be alone. David Tennant absolutely breaks my heart in that scene. His acting is spot on there. Not over the top, but enough to really make you feel for his pain and how much he’s lost. I HATE YOU DAVID TENNANT AND RUSSEL T DAVIES FOR MAKING ME CRY. STOP IT.
A ha! Look that moment with the ring from the end of series 3 has proven to be significant. Dun dun duuuun. Although to be honest, the “science” behind Lucy being able to resurrect the Master because he imprinted on her or whatever is completely nonsensical. And resurrected!Master is completely insane in that special RTD brand of crack. Like, I cannot stop lolling at that scene in the junk yard where he’s like zooming around a shooting lightning bolts out of his hands. Although I do LOVE the reveal that the four drumbeats that the Master hears is the heart beats of the two hearts of a Time Lord.
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AND THE BIT WHERE HE TURNS EVERYONE INTO COPIES OF HIMSELF? AMAZING. ENDLESS LULZ. OH UNCLE RUSTY. YOU NEVER FAIL TO BRING THE AWESOME RIDICULOUS. THE MASTER RACE. OIC WHAT YOU DID THERE.
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Oh look! It’s Nina! (and no spoilers for Being Human, other to say that last night’s finale broke my brain and my heart.)
AND FINALLY. OMGWTFBBQ TIME LORDS?!?!?! You were not fucking prepared for that, Mark, were you?
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I want their headdresses so bad, they are so badass.
"(and no spoilers for Being Human, other to say that last night’s finale broke my brain and my heart.)"
Ugh I know. I understand WHY it happened but I'm still sad.
I agree so much with this. A general hooray for the positive review, and specifically:-
>The Doctor: Even if I change it still feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away… and I'm dead.
>Yeah, I know that the Doctor is the Doctor. But at the same time, he’s not. He might have the same memories, but he will have a different personality. He'll be a different person.
This. So much this.
And that's all I'll say, as I don't want to get into premature discussion about regeneration.
The Doctor: Even if I change it still feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away… and I'm dead.
Yeah, I know that the Doctor is the Doctor. But at the same time, he’s not. He might have the same memories, but he will have a different personality. He'll be a different person.
ILU FOREVER FOR SAYING THIS! Since I finished the Fifth Doctor's episodes (like, a month ago – SO MUCH SADNESS), I finally started on the Sixth Doctor over the weekend – HOLY CRAP, COULD THE DOCTOR BE ANYMORE DIFFERENT THAN BETWEEN THOSE TWO INCARNATIONS??? I know the Doctor is the Doctor no matter what – but… good grief.
(And I will stop right there because there will be plenty of time for regeneration discussion later. I just had to get that out.)
Reasons I like this episode:
1. Wilf and all of his friends. SERIOUSLY. HOW IS THERE NOT A SPINOFF SERIES INVOLVING WILF AND HIS BAND OF ELDERLY CRIME FIGHTERS. MAKE. IT. HAPPEN.
2. The scene in the cafe. DT is such a brilliant actor omg
3. John Simm hamming it up in all of those ridiculous outfits. Also, just being able to see John Simm for an hour because omg is that man sexy
4. Everyone in Britain apparently being in love with Obama and him saving the whole world WHY IS THIS NOT TRUE
Reasons I don't like this episode:
1. Pretty much everything else. RTD STOP TRYING TO OUT CRAZY YOURSELF OKAY. SHEESH.
Dear Universe,
Now that the idea of a spinoff featuring Wilfred Mott and his band of elderly crime fighters (naturally, the show should be called The Silver Cloak) has been put out in you, please make sure this happens.
Lots of love,
Nancy
Seconded.
brb, adding it to my list of spin offs that I need to have a very serious chat with Rusty about next time I see him. (I live in a fantasy world clearly)
I would watch. I would watch so much.
I will watch it! 🙂
The Silver Cloak is one of my favorite things about this episode. The Doctor has an octogenarian fan club!
I did love how Simmtastic this episode was. Almost as Simmtastic as The Devil's Whore.
I would totally watch a show starring Wilf and his friends. It would be EPIC.
This special is just… ugh, it's so WEIRD and really, REALLY badly paced, as I recall. I remember watching this all excited because "woah this is it, this is gonna be the end, what will happen, it's gonna be epic" and then I saw this and was just like "WTF. WHAT WHAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING." I don't know, this episode is clearly trying to be all serious and 'shit just got real' but… it's so silly at the same time I can't help but laugh. A planet of Masters? Really? Really? Sorry, not that scared, it's just weird.
It has good parts to it, but god it's kind of a jumbled mess.
Also, Doctor Who, exactly why did you always use fake American presidents and then throw Obama in? I just…what? That… kinda suggests that the president the Master killed last time was Bush? Which is beyond bizarre.
The last president was Winters… there was either no George W Bush or he was a one-termer. In a (fictional) universe that's apparently had the Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher and Blair (per "Aliens of London", "Tooth and Claw", and "Rise of the Cybermen") premierships in the UK, alongside the fictional premierships of Jeremy (presumably 70's LibDem leader Jeremy Thorpe) and an unnamed female PM pre-Thatcher (per "The Green Death" and "Terror of the Zygons", respectively), it's not surprising to find fictional presidents (like Winters) coexisting with real presidents like Obama.
Recently rewatched this and good LORD it's bad. Just flat out terrible.
Wilf is just about the ONLY redeeming thing in this episode and thank god he's in it as it gives Tennant a moment to show us how good he can be when given decent material to work with. Other than that…
* Potions of life? Potions of Death? Really? Would it kill ya to give it a five second technobabble explanation rather than heading off into Potter territory?
* The Master using up his life energy… neat idea, Simm going so far Over The Top it both deserves the capital letters and gives him permanent residence next to Brian Blessed. Sorry, BRIAN BLESSED! And what does the Master do with this new found power? Umm, kill a couple of hobo's and manage to miss the Doctor several times until he's daft enough to get within point blank range. Oy.
* The Neismiths are the worst characters RTD's come up with. Seriously, they are there as exposition faries and nothing else. How, exactly, did they manage to work out that the Master was running from a random exploding prison, f'instance? And why do they think he can help them? Or WOULD help them considering they know damn well he was responsible for everything leading up to the Paradox machine being turned on in Sound of Drums?
* The Silver Cloak is a nice idea but just doesn't fit in this story. It torpedoes the drama with very poor comedy right when we need to be caught up with the Doctor's panic.
* Donna. Oh god… why why why did RTD have to revisit her? Learn your sodding lesson with Rose and leave those who've had endings to their stories well enough alone!
* More Emo Ten! Hoo-Ray! No, wait, the other thing… NooooooooooOOOOOOooooooooooo! There we go.
I'll stop there, need to… not say any more for fear of spoilers actually. At least Stolen Earth was a good fun romp, this just meanders about in search of a plot to hang all the different elements on. You can sorta tell that RTD was under huge pressure when writing this and I'm sad to say it really shows.
Exactly. I wish RTD would realize that less is more.
He does… but I swear, it seems to only apply when he doesn't have any money to work in effects. Midnight (the bottle episode of S4) was fantastic. Most of Torchwood manages to take mundane or silly plots and make them compelling, and Children of Earth was a fantastic piece of writing. I think there's a few other Who episodes he pulls off. But every time he goes for epic it's all explosions and Daleks and the Master shooting lightning beams out of his hands and the character depth gets completely tossed to the wayside. ):
Honestly, the reason that this episode makes me rage so hard is the fact that the guy who wrote Midnight wrote this too. He can do better, I've seen him do better.
You can sorta tell that RTD was under huge pressure when writing this and I'm sad to say it really shows.
Which is so unfortunate, considering how long RTD knew how he would end this. Before I saw it, I thought he had just come up with it when he announced that he was leaving, but with the Master's ring, that probably means he was thinking about this throughout Donna's season AND the year with the specials. This should have been so much more coherent. I feel like he wanted to go out with as big of a bang as he could and give Tennant the most fantastic ending he could think of and wound up throwing too much into an episode to make it work.
The plot to this is an incoherent mess but I don’t even care somehow it just works for me. I have no idea why, must be because Wilf is in it. Also, has to be said David Tennant is a fucking amazingly talented actor he somehow just makes this work.
On an unrelated note if you like Murray Gold's the Doctor's theme, this girl on tumblr wrote lyrics to it and has it on her page. Check it out she has a really beautiful voice
http://dustyteeth.tumblr.com/post/3840857504/dont…
One of my favorite bits of The End of Time is imagining John Simm flouncing about the set in all those costumes. I just imagine him going on about how preety he looks in a sundress or whatever. It amuses me.
Wow, I never knew these episodes were so controversial! I've gotta say though I'm firmly in the LOVE camp! (come join us 😉 )
This episode is just so different and strange and exciting with a constant feeling of unease. Plus the return of Wilf is always worth celebrating.
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Hm. And thinking more about what you said about Donna and whether her personality had changed or not, I don't think that she really needed to. To me, what was important about seeing Donna again was seeing the change in the way that Sylvia and Donna interacted. It just seemed a lot less hostile, and if Sylvia has changed in the way she relates to her daughter, then I think that's a great sign for Donna's future because it was Sylvia's lack of faith in Donna that really caused Donna to feel so inferior.
That is a point. With Sylvia being less harsh and brash, it might allow Donna to be less defensive- she has no need to scream at the world. Of course, I still think she'll need a bit more than that to completely bring her self-confidence up, but hopefully her life on Earth will let her do that.
Sylvia did seem to treat Donna better in this episode.
Here's my big big question, which I don't think it will be spoiler-y to anyone, myself included, to answer, but which at the same time is largely rhetorical.
So basically, the best mindbendy bit of this episode is WHOAAAAAA TIMELORDS HOW ARE YOU NOT DEAD WHAT IS GOING ON.
So I am thinking and thinking and thinking. We've heard a lot of the Doctor (mostly Ten) reminiscing, or storytelling, or remembering about the Timelords, talking to his companions about his past. So here is my question.
Has he ever actually said they were dead? Or was his word choice different but we had no reason to notice…like did he say they were "gone forever" or something? Hmm? I honestly don't remember.
Apart from that. The acting in this episode. Oh, the acting. I love Ten and I love Wilf. It is so heartbreaking to see someone scared when there's nothing you can do. And I believed every minute of it. AOFHIRGJDJFALDSJFLSDJ so good and so sad.
I think the information we got was that Skaro burned, and it was possibly implied that Gallifrey might have burned as well.
We definitely heard that "the entire Time War was Time-Locked, no one can get in or out." This isn't very clear but I guess it means those places and events are sealed somehow and unable to be accessed or altered– I took this to be why the Doctor doesn't just, say, time-travel back to some point in Gallifrey's history when the Time War wasn't happening. The whole planet is, I think, behind the Time Lock, and apparently that's where the Time Lords were, since only the Doctor and the Master were ever really involved in the gallivanting-around-the-universe business.
He has said the Time Lords are dead. Off the top of my head, in The Sound of Drums:
Master: And the Time Lords?
Doctor: Dead. And the Daleks. Sort of.
In The Doctor's Daughter:
Doctor: The day they died a part of me died with them.
Ah I do remember those, especially the Doctor's Daughter. Well, I am even more curious to see what on earth what is going on now!
Love it! I'd completely forgotten about this meme…
I feel bad for John Simm it must have been a terrible couple of days for him dressing up in all those clothes and giving the same manic grin all the time. On the bright side he does look rather nice in a dress, needed a shave though.
OK enough misery time for some fun.
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OMG THAT IS A THING OF BEAUTY. XD
There is an mvid on youtube that is so relevant to this.
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As an otaku, I love this.
SAILOR GALLIFREY!
OMG THE AWESOME. I CAN'T TAKE IT. ILU JOHN SIMM (and whoever did this, and you for posting it) <3 <3 <3 <3
I only had one thought at the end of this episode…
OMG TIMOTHY DALTON. JAMES BOND IS A TIME LORD. BRB LAUGHING FOREVER. ^^
Lord, Time Lord.
Actually it kind of makes sense…James Bond always has the same name, but his appearance changes as time goes by…
If I could, I would upvote this comment many, many times.
This has always been my theory 🙂
Wilfred is the only redeeming feature of this two-parter.
I bet Wilf swigs from a bottle of win regularly.
😉
Less SRS THOUGHTS…
You didn't like the Narrator at first? I loved his intro at the beginning of the episode. "It is said that in the final days of planet Earth everyone had bad dreams." Great opening line. And his description of Christmas did sound like how an alien observer might describe it. Little clue there.
My explanation of how Lucy Saxon was used in the resurrection is that she carries some sort of Time Lord Artron energy because of her time spent with the Master. Sort of like the "void stuff" which doesn't go away no matter how many times you've taken a bath since you last crossed universes.
Around the time of the election, there were so many "Obama is a Time Lord" and "Obama for Eleven!" macros flying about Doctor Who fandom, what happens in this episode was sort of inevitable XD
The Doctor mentions that similarity in the episode, and the Vinvocci explain that Bannakaffalatta was a Zocci, "completely different", according to them.
Tennant, Cribbins and Simm were incredible in this episode. Am I'm pleased that Donna came as a surprise for you!
Terry Pratchett, writer of the Discworld series, has been quoted as saying Doctor Who is not science fiction, at least for people who know what science fiction is. Watching these episodes, I'm inclined to agree. Everything from the narration to the talk of prophecies and legends to a freaking cauldron says that Doctor Who at this point is drawing more from Medieval-style fantasy than Science Fiction. Which would all be well and good if it didn't inconsistently wallpaper a bunch of technobable over it and try to call itself the former. I've said before that the prophecy stuff and the legend stuff bugs me, so this episode was pushing my bad buttons right off the bat.
My personal taste aside, I contend that a lot of things here just don't make sense. The Master, the method of his revival, his weird sith powers– What? What?? WHAT??? The chase scene through the docks/dump just doesn't have a purpose. I don't know. They're just running around and… what. Sizing up one another? IDEK. I imagine RTD turned in the script, and then someone went, "Wait, wait wait. Where's the running? My God man, this is Doctor Who! You're contractually obligated to have at least one scene with someone running! There aren't even any corridors!" To which RTD added this scene. The corridors were just too much to be arsed with, he had to draw the line somewhere.
The pacing is all over the place. I've already said I love the scene between Wilf and the Doctor, but RTD absolutely halts all forward progression for it to take place. You can have them having this conversation like, while something else is going on, you know? Instead it's just like everything's disguised with urgency and then it's not, and they're just sitting and talking. And then BAM things are ago again.
Misc things:
Skeevy old Lady sexually assaulting the Doctor. Switch the genders on that, not so har-har now is it?
I generally think that one news lady, for all the annoyance the news briefs on this show cause me, has a pretty good neutral midwestern reporter accent. HOWEVER. "Bear-ack Obama," I don't know if it was her choice or the producers, but American accent overdone. We're not incapable of making the "ah" sound! I lol'd.
The head thing that everyone does is really creepy and used in a less silly manner totally would have me behind the sofa. As it turns everyone into the Master, it just goes stupid.
Why are the time lords in like the galactic senate?
Apparently I missed the scene of the Doctor running through the hall. MY BAD. Contractually obligated for two scenes, then?
Why are the time lords in like the galactic senate?
So the Master's new powers are force lightening then.
The Master, the method of his revival, his weird sith powers– What? What?? WHAT???
Fun fact: Originally the Master was going to reveal himself to be the Doctor's father. And that the DoctorDonna was actually the Doctor's sister. < /justajoke >
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"Doctor, I am your father. Search your feelings. You know it to be true."
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This might doublepost, but my comments seem to be disappearing.
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I used to love the fainting kittens, but now I know they both died because it's very hard for kittens to live with that disorder. 🙁
Oh dear, that is made of sadness. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Oh, that is no fun at all. 🙁 You just crushed my soul!
Yes. Maybe I can appreciate this episode more now that I know it is an epic Star wars crossover!
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It's like the S3 finale all over again.
I love seeing this posted. So much love for that scene <3
Obi-wan is my favorite of anything ever. The whole battle was so epic.
Did you read the novelization?
I did! I have talked about it with someone in this community before, was that you by chance? I love the novelization so much. Obi-wan <3
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Could've been me too, I know I brought it up once at the spoiler blog. Yay for Matthew Stover! <3
I think it was you 🙂
I think the three of us had a discussion about it on the spoiler blog! 😀
<3
Obi-wan!
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I knew it was with some awesome people, so I am not surprised that it was the two of you 🙂
My feelings exactly. 😀
Awww, so true! <3
I have to do the opposite, sadly. Mr. Plinkett has opened my eyes to the fact that the prequels are even more disappointing than Plinkett's son.
http://redlettermedia.com/
&Plinkett;
Lol, yeah the prequels were huge disappointments as films, but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the SW universe. I do actually like the whole political intrigue side-story and of course Obi-Wan, but overall… 😐 I might also have a rather sizable crush on Ewan McGregor so there is that.
I need that Barrowman *shakes fist* gif for Lucas. If only he had someone else write and direct them, and not CGI the shit out of them. They could have been so good!
Yeah, agreed. Like I said in our original novelization discussion, I wish Stover had written them. How amazing they'd be. 🙁
OH MY GOD WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FAAAAAAAAACE
When I watched this, I kinda felt like the Master did the whole thing just so he could make that pun. Really, that's something he would do.
Also, Timothy Dalton is fucking awesome. Seriously, that voice is just…yeah. If there is ever a British version of the Old Spice Guy, he needs Dalton's voice.
It has all been said by now, really. I'm sorry, but the whole resurrection and after effects and the whole Naysmith Business are really two big piles of rubbish imho and make most of the episode hard to stomach. But I do like Wilf (cafe scene!) and the Vinvocci. And then there is the double cliffhanger. EVERYBODY IS THE MASTER and THE TIME LORDS ARE RETURNING. Whow! I must admit, I like that bit.
Oh, and Mark, now that you may look at the cover: Buy it! http://www.thewriterstale.com/
i want that book so badly. they had one copy left at borders and i didn't have enough cash on me to get it. when i went back it was gone. i need to just get around to get it online. @_@
And just now I noticed that they have an "extract" of 103(!) pages behind the very link I gave you.
Meta is exactly what it is. Rusty, Tennant etc speaking through the Doctor. Like Mark notes there's such a sense of finality about it because it contains so many goodbyes.
Ten comes off so egotistical (possibly more then the Sixth Doctor!)
Love this pair of episodes and love where Ten goes emotionally. It makes me love him so much more. Love superpower Master because we have so much magic technology in this world that I think it's perfectly acceptable for there to be a supervillain. From my non-classic-Who-educated world, we keep finding out what Time Lords can potentially do– regenerate? Mind meld? Feel all of time and space moving all of the time? What's to say that when they get seriously screwed up physically they don't start phasing between alive/dead and shoot energy out of their hands? I think it's within the realm of possibility in this fantasy world.
I love Ten emotional and scared and I want to be there and hug him and I feel everything Wilf feels and I'm scared to death and wish I could do something but I can't.
I really think the only thing I didn't like was the Naismith storyline, but mostly because we didn't spend enough time with them to learn more about them than that they were Evil and Powerhungry. I imagine that RTD could have and should have come up with a better way to frame a secret organization studying the healing machine.
Loving this poster! LMAO!!!
I am so glad that RTD gave us a reason why Queen Elisabeth was so angry with the Doctor. I started thinking about it during The Planet of the Dead and I was worried we would never get to know.
Oh Hai Tuttle. I didn't know you were a Time Lord
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Though it does explain a lot.
PS: Not Prepared.
So not prepared.
That scene was freaking hilarious. XD I loved Dalton on Chuck.
I know, right? Tuttle and his cardigan. 🙂
Please don't make me think of this episode. Given the scale and significance, I don't want to think of the bad things because I just won't stop.
I just want to hold on to the good things like John Simm is back! Yay! And more Wilf! Hooray! And-
WHAT THE HELL DAVIES? A FUCKING CULT FROM ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOWHERE FOR NO GOOD FUCKING REASON DECIDES TO RESURRECT A FUCKING MANIACAL EX-PRIME MINISTER WITH FUCKING POTIONS AND MAGIC AND SHIT AND OH GOD THIS HAS TO BE THE BIGGEST DUEX EX MACHINA YOU'VE EVER SHAT OUT.
Okay I'm done.
WHAT UP, UNPREPARED?
I don't get why everyones complaining about the Master ressurection scene, I just assumed it was some sort of Time Lord science that the Master had taught to some trusted (insane) underlings in case he ever died. Sufficiently advanced science is basically magic to someone who doesn't know better after all. It's not like magic stuff isn't in the series at all in any case, the Doctors vulcan mind meld tricks and such.
There's way worse than that in the episode in any case, it feels like RTD maybe wrote the entire episode based around the Master Race pun/joke. Or he wrote loads of different scripts with diferent plot elements that ended up getting mixed together and then not making sense. The cactus people, the immortality seeking rich couple (with creepy incest undertones), the master coming back with super sayain powers, Wilf and Donna and its the Doctors last episode? Overstuffed to a ridiculous degree IMO.
I'd presume the Cult of Saxon members were all aboard the Valiant, and thus were formed in the Year that Wasn't, and remembered all of that. The saddest of nutjobs cna forms cults, no worries for the leader of the entire world! And I thought it seemed clear that the potions and stuff was just a ritualisation of advanced Time Lord science for the cults benefit. But hey, to each their own. 🙂
I think most things I would say about this episode have been said, but yeah, it's not great. It just doesn't make any sense, or is even that interesting to watch despite the apparant gravity of the situation. John Simm is great, but the character is ridiculous, from Horcrux Voldemaster resurrection, to the ridiculous eating and flying and skulling it's just…er…what?
Wilf is great, but the Silver Cloak annoy me. Tacked-on unfunny comic relief.
I do quite like the fact the Doctor is a douche to begin with though, rebelling against destiny, 'cos he can, and then he wakes up.
Also, TIMELORDS!!!
See you tomorrow, I'll have more to say
i only have two nice things to say:
1) the scene between wilf and the doctor was actually really great, and wilf in general is awesome.
2) john simm can get it.
These episodes are so intense and brilliant
I think people can be a bit harsh on this one. Sure there are some really silly scenes. That whole resurrection scene is so stupid. I think it's possibly just trying to fit something that could have used a bit longer into a short time gap which led to some stupid dialogue trying to explain it all in 2 minutes. Despite that though, it's still a christmas special and they're never that brilliant.
I suppose my standards are pretty low but all I look for in something is if it keeps me entertained and this episode did. OMG everyone's the Master, that's scary. Blonde is so not my colour (no offence blondies) 🙁
I was pretty impressed by the most recent Christmas special (but I won't say any more because spoilers.) You are right that they're generally more silly though.
Ahh, The End of Time Part One. I think this episode really sums up RTD's era, with an extra helping of CHEESE. I suppose there are a few salvageable scenes, most notably the cafe one where the brilliance of Tennant and Cribbins triumphs over the ridiculousness of the rest of the story. But I can't help feeling that, due to the absurdity throughout the majority of it, the Master himself may have penned this episode.
That aside, YOU ARE NOT
ALONEPREPARED.<img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_led2rlipLO1qdxbju.gif">
This isn't spoilery at all, just a side note, on the bus with the old people in it, the side of the bus read "Sparrow" and Willfred referred to one of the women near the front as "Sally".
Thought it was worth mentioning.
I've never spotted that. Great catch!
Ooh, if anyone needs something lighter to watch featuring the talents of Tennant, Cribbins, and Tate, then I think it's time to watch (or rewatch) the Never Mind the Buzzcocks' Doctor Who special!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
It's quite simply one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I've watched it countless times, to the point where I can recite what they say, but it makes me laugh every. single. time.
I… might have to rewatch it again.
Everyone should watch this. It is wonderful 🙂
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why did you link it I just watched it two days ago and NOW I HAVE TO WATCH IT AGAIN.
I love Mark Watches for showing me new and more and more awesome things!
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I love this so much.
Watching it again.
I am super curious for series 4 now.
Regarding the chicken. RTD wrote it thinking that Simm would pick up a drumstick and take occasional bites. Then it came to rehearsals (or possibly even filming) and Simm just WENT FOR IT. Everybody liked it so much that it stayed.
LOL. Fake Obama cracked me up.
I totally dressed as The Master from this ep for fictional character day at school. The only people who knew who I was supposed to be were David Tennant and Matt Smith. XD
I had a 'Vote Saxon' button and everything.
that is awesome XD
I think that the Naismith chick is just there as an excuse to get John Simm in a pink dress. Cause he works it.
Lol, first explanation of her/them I can get behind.
Ditto!
So…about the whole Master Race thing. It takes talent (mostly on Simm's part, I feel) to make something both hilarious and terrifying.
But, after a moment, you realise that its really horrible. Everyone has turned into the Master. The little kids in the park, the elderly….Sarah-Jane, Jack Harkness, Martha- everyone.
Including the pregnant mothers.
So what the hell happened to the fetuses?!?!
I've always wondered the same thing. And what about men and women who happened to be… in the middle of something?
Instant MASTERbation?
I've been holding onto that pun for a looong time 🙂
My household calls this round of specials the Victory Lap. One last romp for RTD and DT.
IMO they could easily have ended Tennant's run at the end of the fourth season. I would hate to lose Waters of Mars, but really? It wasn't necessary, and neither were the other specials. And then The End of Time Pt. 1 is aggressively bad – what a waste of John Simm and Timothy Dalton. 🙁
I'm not gonna say any more because I really hate to slam Doctor Who.
Now I'm happy that Mark has finished this episode, but if anyone spoils him about the next one I will find an Iron Maiden of Nuremberg to put you in, that is how serious I am about spoilers.
So for those who spoil:
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And for those about to spoil:
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HOW THE HELL ARE THERE TIME LORDS
EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT. What, it worked for the Daleks. Like fifty times.
(For the record, I haven't watched these episodes since they aired and have no memory of the actual explanation.)
(I know it’s goofy, but the “Master” race is kind of brilliant.)
Oh God how did I not get that until now.
My favourite part in the whole episode is right at the end. You can see everyone in the square at the bottom of the block of flats. One of the Masters takes off his hat and throws it into the air, then another Master picks it up, puts it on, AND DOES A LITTLE DANCE!! 😀
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBnGbFjlhM0&NR…
just putting this here. Spoiler free, though the comments might not be.
And Tennants first acting role! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzHnH9hVSiU&fe…
I at first thought, when I saw this episode, that the Narrator Guy was Christopher Lee or Ian McKellan because what other British actor has an awesome deep voice like that? But no, it's Timothy Dalton (aka James Bond). So yeah, epic fail on my part. Thankfully my actor knowledge got better.
Anyway, yes. That is James Bond being a Time Lord and thus validating a certain internet joke. 😛
Anyone else get a creepy vibe from Naismith and his daughter?
This is probably a weird thing to think but if the Master became EVERYONE on the planet, he must have "woken" up to some seriously awkward shit all across the globe.
Good points about this episode:
The Master
WILF HOMG
The cafe scene which is TOTALLY GORGEOUS
Timothy Dalton
THE TIME LORDS (i don't even care, this was a HELL YES moment)
Murray Gold's music, which is pretty much a lot of the time, especially with the Time Lord reveal.
Bad things:
The Master's super powers, which I don't buy at all (the explanation "lol YOUR LIFE FORCE!!" doesn't really cut it). It came off as silly looking.
The Nasmiths. Yawn, don't even care about them.
The resurrection scene was stupid. Why would she still have that on her lips after all this time? Why did the ritual feel somehow like power rangers? And did she just throw a Potion of Life at him? What?
The episode itself feels very disjointed. Did anyone else find that random narration in the middle of the episode particularly jarring? It felt like RTD had two stories and wasn't sure how to get them into one, so he haphazardly sewed them together with that narration over the scenes of the players, and went "perfect, job done!"
Personally I like Part 2 of this special better than Part 1, but that is for another day.
Everything bad has been mentioned already. Therefore:
wilf wilf wilf wiillllffffff
I’m going to say right off that I like this episode. I don’t know why. There are lots of things in it that make me facepalm, but I just like it. I can’t help it. JUDGE ME IF YOU MUST. Now that we’ve got that out of the way…
Let’s talk about the Doctor as we see him at the beginning of this episode. The Doctor turning up on the Ood planet and being all wacky is simultaneously hilarious and deeply disturbing. He’s behaving in the sort of loony manner that he did earlier in his run, trying to make Ood Sigma laugh and being fixated on irrelevant things, such as being able to lock the TARDIS like a car. But here, it comes off as, frankly, disturbing. From anyone but the Doctor, the bit about marrying Queen Elizabeth would probably be funny. It’s funny coming from him if you don’t think about it, but the Doctor is something of a Chaste Hero archetype. As far as we know, he hasn’t gotten any in several hundred years, and not for lack of opportunities. The fact that he apparently went off and shagged the Virgin Queen is a pretty good indicator of the extent to which he’s lost it. He just doesn’t care anymore. It’s a lot subtler than the Time Lord Victorious thing, but it’s just as out of character and pretty much as disturbing, in terms of his state of mind.
I completely fail to understand why there’s a cult dedicated to bringing back a dead Prime Minister. The Master was PM for like, two days. The cult didn’t seem to know who he really was (other than calling him “the Master”) yet he’s got a cult. Why? It’s like there’s a cult somewhere in the US dedicated to bringing Gerald Ford back from the grave. If they’d developed that idea a bit more, it might have worked, but as it was, it was very WTF. Also, Master’s resurrection scene=corniest thing ever. It could have been awesome. It was not.
I’m willing to forgive a lot where DW is concerned, but the Master being X-Ray Man and divebombing people to eat them is just stupid. I’m fine with the force lightning in general though. I don’t know why he has it, but the fact that he’s suddenly behaving like Sith Lord is great and I won’t hear a word against it. However, I was terribly disappointed in the ending of the scene with the Doctor and the Master in the junkyard at night. It was a really good scene…until the Master started jumping around with Force lightning. STOP DOING THAT. And the Master eating the chicken just made me wonder how many people got put off their Christmas dinners by the Master’s table manners.
I have no idea what’s up with the Naismiths. I don’t understand who they are or what they are or why they are. Also, creepy incest vibes. Seriously, seriously creepy incest vibes.
And…judge me if you will, but I love the Master turning everyone into himself. It’s completely something the Master, with his completely out-of-control ego, insanity and genius, would do. The pun was inevitable, and I don’t think it’s meant to be taken seriously, given the way John Simm delivers the line. I mean, I like the whole thing, and my reaction to that terrible pun is still
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Sorry, but I really, really hate that voiceover. It’s melodramatic, corny and goddamn unnecessary. But the ending…suddenly, Time Lords! OMFGASDFGHJKL WHAT ARE THEY DOING HERE? That was a great cliffhanger. While I do think RTD is capable of better (well, of course he is, Midnight and Waters of Mars) but I have a certain amount of love for this two-parter.
Books of Saxon = Horcruxes
You know it's true.
You know what? This is the flawless finale, in my opinion.
I must've read so many deconstructions and analyses. I've seen the episode scrutinised in such microscopic detail it's unreal. But I've never for a second been able to agree with a sliver of anyone's criticism of it. I adore this story.
I'm not going to discuss part 2 yet, but part 1 is the perfect buildup.
The joyous bits are joyous, the exciting bits are exciting, the surprises are surprising, the heartbreaking bits are heartbreaking, the funny bits are funny, the creepy bits are creepy and the mad bits are utterly bonkers. Superb.
The real revelation here, though, is the Master. I loved him in The Sound of Drums, but even into Last of the Time Lords he was sort of concealing the madness, to an extent. Slick and authoritative. By this episode, though, he's absolutely psychotic. Dangerous. Feral, I think, is the perfect word. Unhinged and unpredictable. And the decay is perfect. All that energy, bursting out of him. Like a star dying. This is John Simm at his best. The Master at his best. Doctor Who at its best. Cracking.
Amazing episode.
Whether I enjoy or despise this episode while watching it seems to depend on the direction of the wind and the day of the week. I can't decide which camp I fall into. On the one hand, it is nearly as brain-meltingly stupid as Journey's End. On the other hand, there are a lot of great character moments and big dramatic spots that RTD does so well.
I generally split the difference and say that it contains bits and pieces of everything RTD ever did right or wrong.
The scene where the Vinvocci aliens explained the difference reminded me far too much of the
Fat Bastard character from the Austin Powers moviesAbzorbaloff's spiel about Clom and Raxacoricofallapatorius (I hate that the entire planet gets branded "Slitheen"), so I'm guessing that the Vinvocci and the Zocci are related in the same way.Other than that (and lulz at Wilf calling the Vinvocci woman a cactus), my only real reaction to this episode is:
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Scaring some fainting goats is totally on my bucket list.
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Surprise goat!
Excellent!
THE OOD THE OOD THE OOD. They are my favourite alien race, for sure and forever (from all old and new Who). They' re so …. evolved. So peaceful. So spooky.
Wilfred is one of my favourite characters in New Who. He is so grandfatherly, caring, and sincere. As someone who grew up without any grandfather/father figure, I am completely drawn to him. It breaks my heart when he is sad, and it makes me grin like a loon (yes, really) when he succeeds, or says something that is touching. I feel so bad for Donna when we see her again, but Wilfred's actions and his complete and utter devastation at seeing her like that? Oh, Wilfred!
The scenes that get me:
“I’m going to die.” “Well, so am I one day.” “Don’t you dare!” “All right, I’ll try not to.”
"You can't come with me." "Well, you're not leaving me with her." "Dad!" "Fair enough"
The only way to be prepared for the ending is if you have a crate of kleenex on hand when you watch.
It's not THAT sexy!
I don't have much to contribute other than John Simm must have had a BALL playing extra super-crazy Master shenanigans all over the place in End of Time. Though having watched the DW Confidential on the making of it, I bet it was also very tiring with all those wardrobe changes, etc…
I am still wondering who even wrote the Books of Saxon and when, why those women have any idea who he is since time was rewound, etc.
Plus, I have to LOL at the idea of Americans (and people in the UK!) all sitting around listening to the President speak on Christmas Day. As if that would ever happen. A speech would likely never be aired at that time, plus a lot of Americans don't even tune in for such speeches anyway.
Ha, you're right, I didn't even think about that. Pretty sure only those really into politics even watch/listen to the State of the Union. Christmas Day? No way. That'd be about as poor timing as trying to schedule a speech for Superbowl Sunday.
Nobody wrote them, they're Horcruxes. XD
No freak out about OMG TIMOTHY DALTON BOND PRESIDENT OF TIME LORDS? I loved that.
Also, random: watched this with my less nu!Who-familiar boyfriend. Not a great introductory episode. The end of Ten's arc aside, the opening scenes of the Master acting like a complete moron and cartoonishly devouring chickens and leaving only bleached skeletons in his wake was utterly ridiculous. And then…that Master race. Oh god, I had to apologize so hard for this episode x.x I was like "BUT BABE, SRSLY, MIDNIGHT WAS SO AWESOME I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS SHIT IS NO WAIT DON'T GO!"
Part two is worth it, but man the Master's whole resurrection was a big pile of lame.
So glad that you love the Master. The clones cracked me up – so cheeky!
First off, I like this one. It has problems, cetainly, but it has some excellent moments too. The café scene, obcviously, and the Doctor hearing the drums and, well, every single scene with Wilf.
I am utterly bemused by the number of people wondering why there is a cult for a British PM with such a brief tenure. I'm bemused because it hadn't occurred to me to look at it like that and, now that I've seen that many others do, the question still makes no sense to me. Not because I'm being inflammatory but because… well, you're all quite correct, there would never be such a cult for a mad PM. But – and this is how I understood it – he's the Master.
The Master has always been charsimatic, and frequently in Classic Who actually hypnotic. And they did know he was called 'the Master', so I just assume they're a bunch of people he bound more tightly under his sway. As time was only rewound up to the point where the Toclafane shot President Winters, he'd have still had the whole year of Saxon's rise to power to set up such a group.
So I always saw it a a cult the Master had made. A cult of the Master. His being PM was incidental.
I freely admit I didn't even notice the cult were all women. But then all the ones we saw were also staff in a women's prison. So who knows? (Although actually I'm fairly sure we have mixed sex prison staff in the UK).
The actual resurrection is firmly into the Science Fantasy and Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology territory, shading into Harry Potter. I think it's just one of those points where you have to shrug and just run with it. The same goes for the Master's new 'Skeletor' look and super-powers in consequence of coming back wrong.
Poor Lucy Saxon. Not only is she blown to bits along with the prison (and presumably hundreds of others whose crimes probably didn't warrant that) but her attempt to stop the Master gave him extra powers. That's an epic level of Fail. An epic level of fail in a skimpy top (thanks Matt).
I was delighted to see the Time Lords pop up at the end but I can't claim to have been wildly surprised – after all the Time War angst they seemed to me to be the obviou candidates for RTD to bring back for his big finale. And Timothy Dalton made for a Lord President with suitable presence and gravitas, given that he was barely on screen and mostly restricted to narration.
This special pretty much is RTD's Who in a nutshell. It;s bold and brash and makes almost no sense if you think about it but it's crammed with characters and focusses on the emotional journrey as much as anything else. It's not serious science fiction and half of it's written with an eye to what the seven year olds will be playing at in the school playgrounds the following week, but I think it's kinda fun.
Holy crap, yes. His whole wallowing-in-mortality thing was relatable because, well, who isn't a little scared of their existence ending? But really. It's the Doctor! Even when things aren't all smiles and sunshine, he makes things more okay somehow. Here, RTD's writing of the Doctor just rubs salt in the fans' collective wounds.
it seems all too Meta, like it's the writers and the fans and the actors talking
That's because it is Meta. And it sticks out like a sore thumb and I was so infuriated that someone had allowed it to stay.
The Master has to be that way to match the Doctor. He's always been the Doctor's dark mirror and the Tenth Doctor has become so broken that in order to match him textually, the Master's body is constantly dying and he's consuming people physically just in order to survive.
I know some people didn't like parts of EoT, particularly all the mumbo jumbo about the masters 'ressurection', but I took it the same way I took the "magic" at the end of series three. These are Time Lords, and while they can (sort of) pass as humans, they are NOT, and they are powerful beings. I assumed there was a scientific explanation for how the Master got a new body (I'm assuming he somehow kept life life force in the ring, like a fob watch), but the Master is SO dramatic… and humans are SO easily led astray by him… so why not make it seem like a magic ritual with him being conjured up? He probably took what was a fairly dull procedure on Gallifrey and make it look like hocus pocus, just for the Lolz.
I don't think it was DNA they got from Lucy, but some sort of time lord imprint that was a result of their marital union. Perhaps this leads to some time lord imprint in every one of her cells.
No matter to me… again I just figure this stuff, which looks "magical" to us, is what happens when the big boys play. The doctor *usually* does not throw his own power and abilities around, even though he probably could do all sorts of technological wonders (not to mention messing with fixed points). But that doesn't mean he doesn't have such abilities.
Oh, i forgot – the scene in the Cafe. I loved it. It's a perfect culmination of this particular incarnation's story. The doctors' ego is always strong, but combined with the intense unbridled emotion of this incarnation, we found out it could be destructive. And now he faces possible death, but what's worse for his ego– regeneration, which "feels like a death" even though it's not. He's changing personas, which Time Lords do regularly and on Gallifrey it wasn't considered all that big a deal (though it could have 'medical' side effects and some time lords had an easier time of it than others, who needed assistance to complete the process– I think of it like childbirth- most of the time it can be done without assistance, it's natural,but sometimes there are problems).
So even though he's 'always the same bloke' (as Steven Moffat said), he changed sometimes drastically- and what he fears is CHANGE before he's done with this one. That's ego. And really, after everything that happened to him post time war (both nine and ten), this is the only place he CAN end up with the losses he endured and the basic character defects he has.
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