Doctor Who: The End of Time, part 1...

[fajrdrako]

I watched "The End of Time, Part 1" with trepidation, because I didn't like the previous appearances of John Simm as the Master in Doctor Who, and quite hated "The Last of the Time Lords", and feared more of the same. (It's the only episode on the New Who I really disliked.) But I was up for this one, too, because we just don't get enough new Doctor Who these days.

So...

1. Favourite moment: when the Doctor broke down and wept in the cafe with Wilf. This is a Doctor at the end of his tether - no companions, no escape from himself. It's hard to see exactly what is the source of his stress, but it's clearly worn him to the breaking point. I like that.
   
   
2. I loved the Doctor's description of the regenerations - how it really was like a death for the personality that died. Since it's so obvious that Ten isn't Nine (or any of the others), this makes a lot more sense than the previous insistance that they'd be exactly the same man except in appearance. Nope. Thank you, Russell T Davies, for making that explicit.
   
   
3. I loved hearing Timothy Dalton's voice on the narration. I loved, totally loved, seeing him as a Time Lord, pontificating. More! More! Okay, I'd love to hear Dalton read the proverbial phone book, but still. Those costumed. That pomposity. That spittle. Wonderful.
   
   
4. I also loved the scene where the Master telepathically made the Doctor listen to the drumming in his head. I'm not sure I understood his insistence that it was real (or the Doctor's insistence that it wasn't) and I wondered if it was the double Gallifreyan heartbeat - two hearts heating - but no, that wasn't what Martha heard when she listened to the Doctor's heart with a stethoscope in "Smith and Jones". So I don't know. But that scene had a lot of oomph.
   
   
5. I loved Minnie the Menace, a moment of levity in an episode that was generally rather grim. The only other light bit was the alien couple
   
   
6. I didn't much like Lucy Saxon's role when we saw her before, but she was great here. Except I didn't understand what she did to the Master. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to make of it, but my conclusion (unless someone can explain it to me) was that we aren't supposed to understand it all yet, and we'll find out more in the second part.
   
   
7. I really liked Joshua Naismith and Abigail as villains (very attractive!) but I'm not sure what to make of them in terms of plot. The "Immortality Gate" reminded me of "The Lazarus Machine". This does not bode well for Joshua or Abigail.
   
   
8. Loved seeing Wilf, but Donna... So little of her. It was nice to see the Doctor react to her. More Donna, please! And setting her up to get her full memory back is a good thing.
   
   
9. Her fiancé was rather appealing.
   
   
10. The idea of Wilf as a Nexus of Coincidence or whatever the phrase was - I liked that. Very handy, for writing stories. Surround a character with implausibility and then make a plot point of it. Marvel Comics does that. Cool stuff, if you can pull it off.
    
    
11. Interesting that there were so much of a 'bad economic times' scenario going on. My impression in the UK this summer was that the UK is doing pretty well economically - better than us. Still, the Doctor Who world isn't quite like our world, and that might be one of the things that have... gone wrong.
    
    
12. They threw everything into this episode. Totally over the top. Bits of The Lord of the Rings (I liked those parts very much), buts of Stargate, bits of Star Wars, bits of Harry Potter with the Horcrux, bits of Iron Man, bits of Lovecraft, bits of - well, you name it. In another show, I would be groaning in shame and going to watch something else. In Doctor Who it makes me smile. I prefer the more rational and restrained episodes - if one can ever use the word "restrained" with this show - but this at least had a shameless exuberance that was rather fun.
    
    
13. Who was the woman who took the Master's ring at the end of "The Last of the Time Lords"? I didn't understand that. We'll see if I catch on next time I see it. Mind you, I thought there was a lot here that didn't make sense. Why single her out? Because she was interesting. Why did she remind me of Harriet Jones?
    
    
14. Good costuming throughout.
    
    
15. Good settings, too. Bits of diverse architecture. The civilized rooms (with green silk walls?), high tech, stately old buildings, buildings not yet constructed, wasteland and rubble, city streets, suburban houses. I'm not sure whether they make a pattern - at one point I found myself thinking about T.S. Eliot and commentaries on the fragmented nature of our culture, but then, I tend to daydream about that sort of thing.
    
    
16. Claire Bloom was the Woman in the television set? What's with that? I had a notion she might be from the Shadow Proclamation, but - well, who knows.
    
    
17. The Master. Gotta say something about him. Not sure what. I liked him infinitely more than last time we saw him (thank goodness) but I did eventually get annoyed with his laugh. William Blake said "You don't know what is enough until you know what is more than enough." This was not only more than enough, it was way more than enough. And the ending... I sort of file that away as "less said the better". Hope someone (like the Doctor) fixes this soon, or how is John Barrowman ever going to make an appearance, hmmm?
    
    Now, some of the Master's scenes worked for me on an emotional and visceral level, as only one scene ever did previously. (Referring to the John Simm Master only.) I loved the scenes with him in a straitjacket. I loved some of his body language, like when he was squatting and eating on the construction site at the beginning. I think it's mostly his script that doesn't do much for me - when he starts to talk, or, worse, laugh, I often start losing interest.
    
    
18. Loved the reference to Skeletor.
    
    
19. I see there are lots of names on the cast list on Wikipedia who haven't turned up yet - don't want to look too closely for fear of spoilers. So persumably not all the roles next episode will be played by John Simm and Bernard Cribbins. Good.
    
    
20. There was some amazing eyebrow work from David Tennant.
    
    
21. As cliffhanger endings go, this was a bit of an anticlimax - not much personal power to it, and really, it was a groaner, as many of the Master's shenanigans tend to be. But I'm eager for the next episode, not because of the Master, but because of the other Time Lords. Yes, yes! Bring 'em on!