The Doctor’s Companion Ep. 3 – Allons-y!
Monday, January 4th, 2010
A new year brings with it the tenth Doctor’s last hurrah, and Scott and Randy are thrilled to be talking about David Tennant’s final adventure. “The End of Time – Part Two” has aired and there’s a lot to chat about. So much so, that this is only the first half of Scott and Randy’s discussion of the episode. The Time Lords are back, but what are their planning? What is The Master’s end game? How will The Doctor stop them both from ending time itself? All of this and more in the newest episode of The Doctor’s Companion. And of course, BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!
Next Week: A song ends, but the story continues…
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Tagged under: Bernard Cribbins, David Tennant, Doctor Who, John Simm, Russell T. Davies, The End of Time, Timothy Dalton
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Great episode (though the fact its only a 1/2 episode was abit of a shock that i wasnt expecting)
I agreed with alot of what you said, I think you guys enjoyed the episode alittle more than I did though, I felt like it was good, but it was a let down compaired to every other season finale of the new series.
I had some notes, but they must not of been important because iv forgotten them all except that when the master goes to kill the doctor he says “kill him, i dont need him anymore, iv got a whole planet of timelords now” wich seems to me that he never intended to kill the doctor because he didnt want to be the alone either.
anywho looking foward to next weeks episode, other than the split (wich since the episode was so long I think its only fair) the format of the show works perfectly fine.
The Master has said in the past that a universe without the Doctor in it would scarcely be worth thinking about. He’s never wanted the Doctor dead. There’s definitely a connection between those two that was nicely played up in this two-parter.
Had Roger Delgado (the original Master) not suddenly died, they were planning to end his arc by having him sacrifice himself to save the Doctor, revealing in the process that they were two aspects of the same man. While I don’t think that latter part ever made it into the canon (and I’m kind of glad), it was neat that the Simm Master made a similar gesture here (though we don’t know what, exactly, happened to him afterward).
The episode was about 2 hours and 16 minutes long originally, so a split was pretty much necessary. It didn’t really take away much from the episode’s discussion though. The majority of the next episode discusses the regeneration process from both sides. Plus the preview for season 5.
As far as the episode itself goes, I wouldn’t rank it anywhere near the top of my favorites. But as the end of a Doctor’s run, I thought that was very well done. The story improved from part 1, IMO. But it was still weak enough in areas that it wasn’t great as a story. But as a goodbye, I thought it did a fantastic job.
Yeah, wasn’t a big fan of the main bulk of Part 2, it all seemed like filler for what was to come.
I kinda felt that way about part 1, but I really enjoyed part 2. All the weird elements that had been introduced before (the “Master race,” the return of the Time Lords, Wilf’s importance, the woman in white, and even the cactus aliens) were blended together much better than I feared they’d be.
My only real disappointment was in the rather strange treatment of Donna and her “condition” — so, actually, she doesn’t burn up and die, she just feels really bad, gives off a concussion blast, falls asleep and then is OK, but still without her memories of the Doctor? That kinda came out of nowhere.
Timothy Dalton’s character turning out to be Rassilon floored me, though I think they could have done considerably more with that than a single throwaway mention.
At first I was like, “Darnit, Russell, it’s a cute reference, but Rassilon’s been dead for ages.” Then it occurred to me that if they were willing and able to resurrect the Master to kill for them, of course they’d eventually bring back the first and greatest Time Lord to lead them. And the tension that’s always been there between Rassilon as honored founder of Time Lord society and Rassilon as guy so scary they sealed him in his own tomb and placed it in the attractively named “Death Zone” definitely played out well in Dalton’s portrayal.
Theories on the woman in white, aka the one of the two dissenting Time Ladies whose face we saw? There seems to be behind-the-scenes evidence that she’s supposed to be the Doctor’s mother, but they left it completely up in the air in the episode itself. When Wilf asked who she was, the Doctor looked meaningfully at Donna in her wedding dress. Could mean she was the Doctor’s wife. Others have theorized that she is somehow future-Donna, who is presumably still part Time Lord. I naturally favor the theory that she’s a new incarnation of an older character, like Susan (the Doctor’s granddaughter and first traveling companion) or Romana (the apprentice assigned to the Doctor during the Key to Time saga, and supposedly the Lady President of Gallifrey at the beginning of the Time War). My husband convincingly argues, though, that those two would have opposed Rassilon more forcefully than by merely casting dissenting votes and then Assuming the Position of Shame at his command.
WTF was up with that anyway? I get that Rassilon said “They will stand in shame, like the Weeping Angels of old,” but did they literally have to? Old Time Lord voting custom? Something Rassilon could enforce because he’s got the disintegration-gauntlet-thing? A ploy to trick Rassilon into thinking them defeated until the one could show her face to the Doctor?
Yeah I recently started watching the older episodes of DW, and I was wondering what happend to susan, its funny to think of tennant once being that old man with a young grandaughter to take care of.
You do find out what happened to Susan, though I will not spoil it since you are watching the old episodes. She was the first companion to leave the TARDIS. Onscreen, she never made it back to Gallifrey (except when briefly summoned along with all the then-Doctors and a smattering of their companions during “The Five Doctors”), but since the post-Time War Doctor believes his entire family dead, she may well have gotten dragged in at some point.
It is also said in “An Unearthly Child” that she was born in the 43rd Century.
That’s in the unaired version, which strongly implies that the Doctor and Susan are humans from the future rather than aliens. Obviously that was not followed up on later.
Deadstop wrote:”That’s in the unaired version, which strongly implies that the Doctor and Susan are humans from the future rather than aliens. Obviously that was not followed up on later.”
Interestingly, there was a throwaway line in the animated DW “Dreamland”:
Cassie: Did you mean what you said back there; you’re not human?
Doctor: Weell, Human, Timlord; it’s all just an accident of dimensional geography, when you get down to it.
I liked part 2 of End of Time better than the first part, but it was still plagued by an incoherent overall plot. The story barely makes any sense, but the episode is saved by brilliant performances all around. Yet again, Bernard Cribbins almost stole the show from Tennant a couple times. Wilf is just so much fun to watch. However, Tennant was at the very top of his game throughout and had several brilliant moments himself. I especially liked the rescue at the beginning…it was hilarious.
BTW, comment upon listening to the episode: We were actually told that the Doctor personally ended the Time War back in “Dalek,” the sixth episode of Eccleston’s run. When he tells the disbelieving Dalek that the entire Dalek fleet was destroyed, he says “I watched it happen. I MADE it happen.” When asked about the Time Lords, he says “They burned with you.”
What we did not know until this episode is that the destruction of the Time Lords was not just a tragic side effect of the only way the Doctor could wipe out the Daleks, but something that he did on purpose to stop his people from wrecking the universe.
Yet another comment: “How old the Hartnell body was when the Doctor first regenerated” is an interesting question. Here’s a link to an analysis from the Doctor Who Wiki:
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doctor%27s_age
Short version: The first time he explicitly mentions his age, it’s as the Second Doctor, and he’s roughly 450. He could therefore have lived nearly half his life in his first incarnation. (One calculation suggests that he was 236 at the time he fled Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS.)
Oddly, the Seventh Doctor once gave his age as 953, while the Tenth Doctor claims to be 906. He has been known to lie about his age, though. The Ninth Doctor at one point refers to “900 years of phone box travel,” so his true age may be the 906 plus the 236 lived on Gallifrey, for a total of 1,142.
In any case, that means 450-700 years have passed for the Doctor since his adventure in the Tomb of the Cybermen as the Second Doctor. Even though we only see the TV incarnations live for a handful of years each, most if not all have gaps during which they could have had decades or centuries of offscreen adventures. Even the Ninth Doctor could have gotten up to all sorts of things (such as his participation in the historical events of which Clive had photos) in between his encounters with Rose in the first episode of the new series.
As for the age of the doctor, The Second Doctor said he was around 450 years old. I think it was a mistake for the new series to be so specific about his age. They kind of limit themselves when it comes to adding stories between the aired episodes.
The Third Doctor said many thousand years, Fourth gave a range of 730 to 760, the Sixth was 900 years more or less, the Seventh 953., the Eighth 1012, The ninth said 900 years of Phone Box travel, which to me means he doesn’t count the years prior tho that. and of course the Tenth gave specific ages.
I don’t think you limit the in-between stories if you are listing your age as several hundred years old. That sort of leaves a lot of time for in-between stories. Also, if each Doctor has given his age, then that leaves me to believe that they don’t age like normal. Otherwise almost all of them would have seen their companions die of old age during their run.
Still, it seems bizarre and a bit off with the ages that you gave. So if they can’t handle it better than that, maybe they should just leave it vague.
While we all know that the various Who creative teams have never been big on their own continuity, I don’t think they’ve made as much of a mess of the Doctor’s age as you indicate.
It’s true that we see each incarnation live for only a few years’ worth of adventures on TV. However, most Doctors have at least one gap of companion-less time during which we don’t know what they were doing, and they could have had decades or centuries of offscreen adventures. That is generally presumed to be where we get most of the 500-or-so years the Doctor has lived through since his second incarnation first stated his age onscreen.
The only real age oddity with the Doctor is that he seems to have de-aged between the classic show (where the Seventh Doctor was 953) and the new one (where the Tenth Doctor died at age 906). However, there’s a fix even for that. Apparently someone has calculated (based on a throwaway line by the Fourth Doctor) that the First Doctor was 236 when he and Susan left Gallifrey in their stolen TARDIS. The Ninth Doctor, who repeatedly rounds his age to 900, also mentions “900 years of phone box travel,” which could mean he’s no longer counting his life on Gallifrey. If that’s true, and also holds for Ten, then in “The End of Time” the Doctor is actually 1,142 (236 + 906), which fits with the earlier ages given for the Seventh and Eighth Doctors.
The Companion-less time didn’t really hold true for the 9th Doctor, but then again, there doesn’t appear to have been a huge age difference between 9 and 10.
They can side step the issue a bit, being time travelers. For instance, Sarah Jane is still alive even though she came in during the 3rd Doctor’s run. However, that can be explained away since it’s likely that the Doctor apparently likes this vague chunk of Earth’s history, and he doesn’t run parallel to it. Ah….time travel.
Actually companionless time still kind of works with 9 because in Rose we have no way of knowing how much time has passed between each time Rose sees The Doctor. He could be going on numerous adventures in between his time with Rose in the first episode.
Time Travel is fun
when part 2 coming out , and next time can u let us know in the title that it only part 1 .
Byside that it can enjoyable , Here a topic idea Best bad guys on Dr.who.
the rest of the conversation takes place in episode 4 which will be out Monday. The show should always come out on Mondays.
Thank you , and I’m glad to see GSE hads a weekly podcast now. Keep up the good work
I haven’t had a chance to comment to you guys on the new show but I love it. It’s the first Doctor Who podcast I’ve picked up on and I really like our thoughts so far.
I’m still trying to process the whole last special but I will say this because no one else has:
The second Wilf knocked on the glass I started crying and the sobs did not let up for the last twenty minutes. Over indulgent final twenty mins? Oh yes, but did that matter? No.
Anyway, can’t wait to hear the rest of your discussion on that final twenty mins.
The final 20 minutes has about another entire hour of content, which is why we decided to split it up. I think we both had a great time recording these first few episodes. I’m looking forward to our upcoming topics, but I really wish we had some more episodes to cover. It was a ton of fun doing this one.