Totally Frakked: "Doctor Who" And The Power Of Love
Doctor Who
Title: "Last Of The Timelords"
First Aired (US): 10/05/07
Given how many seasons (or, for the British, series) of "Doctor Who" there have been, it must be spectacularly difficult to come up with new epic conflicts for season finales. Still, they manage to turn in a pretty spectacular spectacle this time, and we can forgive them a few little hiccups along the way. In the end, of course, The Doctor is triumphant, and he only has to get a wee bit schmaltzy to get there.
We pick up one year after the last episode; Martha Jones is returning to England, having been wandering the earth like Caine from "Kung Fu." She meets up with a freedom-fighting hottie named Thomas who leads her to Professor Docherty, a crotchety older woman who has the skills to find out exactly what makes those little flying metal balls tick. They set to work ensnaring one, and pop it open to discover that there's a creepy, awful head living inside. Apparently the Toclafane are the remnants of the humans from the end of the galaxy, they went to Utopia and got turned into scary metal things. Then, The Master, who could only use the TARDIS to travel from modern earth to the end of the galaxy after The Doctor fused the coordinates, followed along behind and gathered them up. Doesn't sound very Utopian to me.
The Toclafane, as Professor Docherty points out, shouldn't be able to come to the past and destroy humanity if they're humanity's future, but hey, remember that fancy paradox machine that The Master built? It turns out that its job is to let the Toclafane do exactly that.
Meanwhile, back on The Valiant, The Master is keeping the aged Doctor in a cage, Jack in chains and the Jones family as his servants. He's got a huge fleet of rockets and flying metal balls that he's about to send out to kill anything they come near, so he's on top of the world figuratively as well as literally. When he discovers that Martha is back in England, he sends out a broadcast to taunt her, displaying The Doctor and forcing him to age his full 900 years, which turns him into a foot-tall wizened little monkey thing that he puts in a bird cage. This is how we know that I would be a super-villain if I had the capacity, because I want a tiny little Yoda-doctor-monkey-thing of my very own.
Martha tells Thomas and Professor Docherty that she's been wandering the earth collecting a four-part weapon, which is inexplicably kept in four corners of the world, which is the only thing that can kill a Timelord and prevent him from regenerating. She has three parts, and the fourth is in London. If this seems a little far-fetched, even for Doctor Who, you're not wrong. Martha and Thomas leave the Professor, and head to a holding area for human slaves where Martha tells the tale of The Doctor and her travels.
The Master, enjoying the human touch like any good super-villain, comes down to earth to find Martha himself. This is made easier by the fact that he's got Professor Docherty's son, and she spills the beans the instant Martha and Thomas leave. Martha gives herself up rather than risk the lives of the humans she's with; Thomas tries, fairly stupidly, to defend her, but gets dead for his troubles. Goodbye, cute freedom fighter.
The Master destroys the gun and brings Martha back to The Valiant to kill her in front of The Doctor, presumably while petting his Persian cat and revealing his master plan. Unfortunately for The Master, Martha and The Doctor have other plans. Just as the launch countdown for his rockets is starting to come to its end, Martha reveals that the "four-part gun" thing was just a ruse to get her onto The Valiant. The real weapon is that she's been traveling the earth, telling everyone she meets to watch the countdown and, when the timer hits zero, focus all their attention on The Doctor. Which of course, is translated by the Archangel network that The Master uses as a telepathic focus device.
So, humanity focuses their healing white light, or whatever, on The Doctor, and he returns to his former glory - suit included - and floats up in a glowing nimbus of wuv. Yes, The Master is defeated by the Care Bear Stare. Weak. "Doctor Who" has always been a very "rah-rah humanity!" kind of show, but this is pretty schmoopy even for them. The Doctor tells The Master that he's forgiven, and The Master repays him by using Jack's vortex manipulator to beam them both to Earth... to, uh, show off his spaceships. It doesn't make a lot of sense really, and The Doctor swiftly talks him out of the vortex manipulator and brings them back to The Valiant, but not before Jack Harkness manages to get to the TARDIS and destroy the paradox machine. With the machine destroyed, the paradox rewinds, and the previous year never happened. For some reason, this involves a lot of wind.
Back on board The Valiant, The Master is put in handcuffs and informed that he's grounded for the rest of eternity. The Doctor won't kill him, of course, but he will keep in the TARDIS for all time. At this point, the mentally abused and unstable wife of the fictional Mr. Saxon pops up from where she's been floating around in the back of the episode and shoots The Master. Normally this would be no problem for a Timelord, but The Master refuses to regenerate, laughing at The Doctor as he dies. His last words, fittingly, are "I win."
There are a few nice touches to end the season, after The Master is burned on a funeral pyre, a woman's hand is shown stealing his ring from the ashes. Maybe he did regenerate after all. When Martha and The Doctor drop off Jack, he mentions in passing that he's worried about how he'll age, after all he used to be a poster boy back when he lived on the Boeshane Peninsula. Yep, "the face of Boe," that's what they called him. In the end, Martha says goodbye to her beloved Doctor. She loves him and he loves Rose, and she's smart enough to know that it's nothing but heartbreak to stick with him. Goodbye Martha, we'll miss you too.
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