Doctor Who - "The Last of the Time Lords"

[iainjclark]

Say what?

The Doctor turns into Dobby. This is the thing I can't get past. He turns into Dobby. Or Gollum. Or possibly Yoda. This is the moment in which the episode goes from being silly yet intriguing to just plain silly.

In fact there's an awful lot of silly here. The opening bucks expectations of a big red reset button by leaping one year forward and thrusting us into the kind of a post-apocalyptic nightmare world that hitherto has been confined to parallel universes. This, plus casting Martha Jones as the saviour of the world, caused me to seriously question whether the finale might, in fact, be a work of genius. Following it up immediately with a song and dance routine is perhaps a sign that the thin line between genius and madness has been crossed. Turning the Doctor into Dobby is the final straw.

Then there's all the other things that don't make sense. The ToklaphaneToclafane being the Utopian humans, only childlike, insane, and reduced to just their heads is, well, it makes no sense. The Doctor being brought back by a kind of evangelical psychic faith healing, well, it operates entirely on the level of the symbolic and makes not a lick of sense. That Dobby!Doctor is the subject of it doesn't help, nor does the Doctor doing a silly flying routine. Lastly, Jack being the Face of Boe: well, it makes some sense but not a huge amount. I mean, I know he has a big head but this is ridiculous.

And then of course comes the big red reset button. Thankfully it turns out that the paradox machine isn't the reset button. It's the absence of the paradox machine, causing reality to snap back into place. This is not in itself a bad idea, but it still amounts to the same thing, and that's a big red button with the word "Reset" written above it.

There are however some worthwhile elements. The characterisation of Martha as a kind of John the Baptist to the Doctor's Christ works well, and the reactions of her family to the overall crisis feel psychologically real. I like the idea of humanity saving itself and the juxtaposition of all that's bad about humanity in the Toklaphane and all that's good about it in the remnants of humanity standing tall. Yes, it's cheesy, but it hits the level it's aiming for. Maybe I'm just numb but I think John Simm's performance has also settled down quite a bit this week, and despite remaining over-the-top he's a little more threatening. His relationship with the Doctor remains well drawn and the most successful aspect of the whole multi-part tale.

The scene in which the Master refuses to regenerate is interesting. I don't quite buy it since I would have said that he would have opted to survive and turn the tables, but it does give Tennant some nice (if predictable) emotional notes to play. Then the Master gets to be Darth Vader on a funeral pyre, and then he gets to be Ming the Merciless and cackle while the camera focuses on his sinister ring. (No snarking at the back). Is that the hand of his bonkers wife picking up the ring at the end? And if so... huh? But it clearly leaves the door open for the character's return, and also opens the possibility that this was his secret plan to survive all along, and she's part of it. As for the wife she's pretty one dimensional but they do at least allow her to have some vague motivation for being pyschologically wounded.

The epilogue is nice. As called by coalescent Martha opts to leave, which does feel like the right choice for the character. It remains to be seen whether he'll also be right about her returning in the Christmas special, or after. I could certainly see them coming back together on more equal terms. And Jack opts to leave, which is just mad unless he's genuinely pining for a group of sociopathic sex addicts. Maybe he just daren't leave them alone in case they destroy the planet in a fit of pique.

And finally, we get another bizarre cliffhanger for the Christmas Special, which seems like a decent lead in for...something. Being the Christmas Special that "something" will undoubtedly be a comedy romp with snow. Or at least a large iceberg.

And so another season comes to an end. I feel, overall, that it's been the most consistent season to date and definitely Tennant's most consistent performance. It has certainly showcased a great deal of mediocrity and no small amount of silliness, but also three stellar episodes and a generally more 'Who'-ish feel than the second season. Is that damning with faint praise, or just accepting the show for what it is and mostly enjoying the hell out of it?

Comments

[fba.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it have been *so* much better if The Master had been played by someone with even a little bit of gravitas? Having watched 'The Infinite Quest' today Anthony Head is top of my list of missed opportunities.

Martha Jones == Awesome though. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen the last of her (or Jack in Who for that matter) but I doubt it will be at Christmas.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

If only he'd carried on being Derek Jacobi. And if only the aged Doctor had looked more like the Master 'The Deadly Assassin' and less like Dobby. The episode's flaws would have been far less apparent.

[fba.livejournal.com]

Jacobi was great - he went from Troughtonish avuncularity to pure Master-malevolence in a heartbeart while Simm appeared to be doing a bad impression of the worst ticks and twitches of Ecclestone/Tennent :/

[icundell.livejournal.com]

Troughtonish avuncularity

Being old enough to remember Troughton's Doctor (and to cry with impotent rage at how much of his work was lost), "avuncularity" is the least interesting of his traits.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

It was real curate's egg, wasn't it? I loved the final scenes between the Doctor and the Master, loved Martha, and the whole concept of what she did.

But the execution of the Doctor being reduced to Dollum, and being restored by telepathy, the prancing and gurning of the Master, the dreadfuldreadful music... well, I'd quite like to poke at RTD with blunt objects until he cries and promises to let Paul Cornell and Stephen Moffat write every episode next season.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten the music. *Sob*

Oddly it's the standalone episodes that are stronger than what you might call the "arc" episodes these days. I think that's mainly because RTD, for all his good points, writes the show's big events in a much too cartoony way.

[fba.livejournal.com]

I still don't know why RTD felt the need to put any kind of 'arc' in the show. Either do a 13 part story or do standalones - trying to do anything else just ends up a mess.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Yeah - there's some very strong ideas, as well as some might-be-OK-depends-on-how-they're-done ideas, but mostly they're then executed in broad cartoonish strokes, rather than being done with any aim at subtlety. And of course, any emotional impact runs the risk of being lost entirely. *humph*

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Yes there are decent ideas and some good twists in these last three episodes, but the whole thing is so OTT that it only rarely feels grounded in real emotion, in a few key scenes, which end up floating like islands of normalcy in a sea of absurdity. It's not enough to tie everything together. Compare to the Paul Cornell two-parter which felt consistently real, even when things occasionally became over the top.

[fba.livejournal.com]

'd quite like to poke at RTD with blunt objects until he cries and promises to let Paul Cornell and Stephen Moffat write every episode next season.

Quite.

Unfortunately we have:

RTD: Four episodes + Christmas
Steven Mofat: Two episodes
Helen Raynor (Daleks In Manhatten/Evolution of the Daleks): Two episodes
Gareth Roberts (Shakespeare), Tom McRae (Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel), Stephen Greenhorn (Lazurus Experiment), James Moran (Severance) and Keith Temple (Heartbeat/Byker Grove/Casualty) have one each.

I'm looking forward to the Moffat two parter (rumours of Classic Cybermen rather than Parallel ones) and I like Gareth Robert's episodes for Who and SJA. The rest has the potential to be incredibly meh...

I suspect S4 may be the last of RTD's tenure as producer though - hopefully Moffat can be persuaded to take over as show runner and principal writer.

[fba.livejournal.com]

the prancing and gurning of the Master,

It isn't just that, they've characterised him as a sexual sadist - which I'm really uncomfortable with. The Master traditionally was only interested in power - he didn't care enough about anyone or anything else to act in the way he has been portrayed by RTD/Simm.

[ajp.livejournal.com]

The 900-year-old Doctor was, as you say, just plain ridiculous. There are lots of ways to do that, without it being quite so silly - and that did somewhat undermine the evil of the Master's action in inflicting it on the Doctor.

Special Ops Martha, one year on, was as you say an interesting way to start off the episode. Like you, it gave me hope for something great to come... False hope, sadly.

The "song and dance" routine - I actually (almost) liked. It was a nice take on the insanity of the Master - and in keeping with the (new) Master. That's not to say that Roger Delgado could have pulled it off though... But it did fit with Simms' manic energy.

I'll be fair to the episode and suggest that whole thing about the Toklaphane made very little sense (rather than no sense). It's a labyrinthine plan - but I can see that they would be somewhat loyal to the Master - and as such they could act as his shock-troops. The fact that he needed a paradox to do it (and the fact that there was no explanation for how the Master got to Utopia - or waited for the surviving humans to "change" - didn't help it's case).

In terms of Martha's "plan" - and the Doctor's ascension : it was, just about the most unsubtle, clunking metaphor seen in a television drama, well, ever. The power of ideas over weapons, the pen is mightier than the sword. The power of individuals and liberty over an authoritarian regime, peaceful protest triumphing over the machines of war... Okay, we get it already... Yeesh. Talk about laying it on with a trowel.

The fact that there would be a reset button was pretty much confirmed to me, by the fact that the episode as set one year later. If there's one thing that this show cannot do (and I think there is only one thing) it's destroy the earth "now". So this was always going to happen. This particular "reset" was, frankly, no worse (and no better) than anything else they could have pulled out - so given the inevitability I can let it pass.

As for Jack being the face of Boe. Oh, please. Whilst it's very slightly clever - it doesn't really make too much sense - and it hamstrings "Torchwood". They are now completely incapable of writing anything which puts Jack into any jeopardy - as we know he's not going to "die" (or cease being invulnerable).

As for the Master refusing to regenerate - well, as you say, that makes no sense - unless it was all a part of his plan. The Master of old, would certainly have been plotting and scheming the Doctor's downfall - and by restricting the Doctor's activity (whilst supervising the Master), he could force him into choices where his inaction would cause "bad things" to happen... A potentially nice idea. As would be, the idea (for a few episodes at least) of an evil companion.

However, I think we can presume that we have not seen the last of the Master. He's simply too valuable a character to kill-off so easily. Exactly what we saw at the end (someone picking up his ring) I am not sure - but it was certainly an interesting moment. The Master will return.

Jack choosing to leave is entirely silly - but also entirely necessary if they plan on making any more Torchwood... He motivation doesn't really make sense - but as a way of writing him back out of the show - a line about "duty" is as good as anything else they could have come up with. Let us just hope that they Torchwood writers have been watching carefully this season - and have learnt from the excellent example of several of the episodes. As a concept I really like the idea of Torchwood - but it's execution last year, really was rubbish.

As for the Christmas special: well, they've done okay in the past - so we'll have to wait and see.

In terms of the season as a whole - I think that without question it's been the best of the three. As you say, there were three simply stunning episodes, and several more which were a long way from being bad (I really liked the idea of the NY episodes - even if the eventual execution was less than perfect).

In short. More please.

[icundell.livejournal.com]

Gosh, where to begin.

The Master's utter, utter humiliation of The Doctor showing his total lack of grasp of human love: to Martha it just meant "He's still alive". She'd been carrying out the plan without knowing that for a year. But, hey ho, let's get distracted by an imagining of what an alien mught look like when forced to age without regeneration.

The Master's refusal to regenerate was essentially the same motivation as the Dalek in Dalek: He was taking his ball home because the other boys wouldn't play to his rules. (I got the impression his pyre was back at the end of time, so unlikely to be his Mrs taking the ring. I wondered if another Galliferyan was at large).

The reset button that wasn't: The. President. Is. Still. Dead. That's a biggee.

**The persistent scuttlebut has been that the producers felt Martha wasn't working out as well as hoped. I am hoping that this is just observers misinterpreting then ending, since she has made me forget all about Rose**

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

imagining of what an alien might look like when forced to age without regeneration

The thing is that the imagining is so bathetic that it's very hard to ignore: it severely undermines what might otherwise have been an extremely effective demonstration of the Master's dominance and the Doctor's powerlessness. Martha's reaction still works really well, but it's hard to weep tears for the Doctor when he's turned into a little wizened CGI creature with big dewy eyes who sits in a Tweety Pie bird cage. You can't criticise it as not what he'd actually look like, but you can criticise it because it fails dramatically.

I can rationalise the Master's refusal to regenerate - it is after all a means of "winning" over the Doctor for certain values of winning. It still seems a little odd for a character who clung grimly, horrifically to life well past his initial set of regenerations and who is enough of a megalomaniac to assume he'd always emerge on top given enough time. However it can be argued to make sense in context. (And of course the final shot of the ring may imply that he's cheated death after all, which is a get out clause should one be needed.)

The President having been murdered is in theory a non-reset, especially as I think the murder took place on worldwide TV at the behest of the British Prime Minister. It doesn't stop it from being a big reset in every other way, but I agree that it may still have ramifications. Bear in mind though that this is a show which rebuilt Downing Street in a throwaway line and whose depiction of international politics is somewhat broad--but I suppose Harriet Jones's ousting did pave the way for the Master storyline so that's an example of follow-through.

[icundell.livejournal.com]

The Master's refusal doesn't need rationalising: it was practically spelled out. He was going to be in a situation where he would be the pathetic one in a Tweety Pie cage. That it would be metaphorical, to him, makes no odds: he's done the real thing and a metaphor is much worse.

RTD has many faults as a writer, but the way he uses visual high concept (or crudely unsubtle, if you prefer) to downplay the consideration of the image: self-image dichotomy (which is pretty much his recurring theme - see also Casanova) is not one of them.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

I, too, felt that the shift forward in time pretty much guaranteed the reset button. To a certain extent, I feel that the episode managed to justify itself in this respect, in that the future it paints is so horrible that we're relieved when it is rolled back, but this is just another way of saying that the writers are manipulative on top of being cowardly.

As for Martha. I really want to like Martha. In episodes like this, when she comes out from the Doctor's shadow, I think I can almost get there, and then the writers start bashing me on the head. The whole business with Martha becoming a mythical figure is a classic example of the way this season's tell-don't-show attitude towards the character. It costs the writers nothing to tell us that Martha has spent a year traveling the globe, making her way through killing fields and labor camps, but the person they offer up as the survivor of these journeys is all but identical to the person we met in "Smith and Jones". Yes, Martha is awesome, but she was awesome when we first met her, and in exactly the same way - this episode just finds a more bombastic way to say so.

Her leaving the Doctor is a positive step, but I don't see where the show can go from this point. When the two of them inevitably get back together, probably at the beginning of the fourth season, is anything going to be different?

[icundell.livejournal.com]

. As called by coalescent Martha opts to leave, which does feel like the right choice for the character. It remains to be seen whether he'll also be right about her returning in the Christmas special, or after.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/02/who_companion/

So, which girl do we think they'll get Freema snogging?