Companions: Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith, Captain Jack Harkness, Donna Noble, Martha Jones, Wilfred Mott
The Tenth Doctor and RTD era winds down with five specials that range from disposable to essential.
The Review
Here’s the scores for the stories:
The Waters of Mars: 10/10
The End of Time: 9/10
The Next Doctor: 8/10
Planet of the Dead: 8/10
The Tenth Doctor’s final four stories start off with The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead, which are good stories but really nothing special. The drama really gets ratcheted up with an all-time classic in The Waters of Mars, and concludes in a too-long story saved by emotional sensational performances. These specials are really unique because they give a glimpse of what the Doctor is like without a companion, and serves to re-affirm that as long as there is the Doctor, he needs a companion to keep him grounded. For David Tennant, spiky hair and all, he absolutely went out on top with a series of unforgettable performances.
8.75/10 The Tenth Doctor and RTD era goes out exhibiting the best of the era with some of its flaws
Story 202, Episodes 755-756, Doctor Who 2009 Christmas Special & 2010 New Year’s Special
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
Companions: Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble, Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith, Captain Jack Harkness, Martha Jones
In a monumental story closing the Tenth Doctor era, the RTD era, and the 2000s on Doctor Who, the Doctor affirms who he is.
The Review
The ‘Master Race’ is really an obviously clever bit of wordplay
There are a lot of parts of The End of Time that are silly and ridiculous, but as the story builds and builds it keeps getting better and better held together by two perfect performances from David Tennant and Bernard Cribbins. The worst stuff comes right away, the weird Harold Saxon cult that brings the Master back to life, but also his wife was part of an anti-Saxon secret group that leaves his body half-formed. He then proceeds to rant and rave about meat and literally eats people, jumping a million miles in the air and firing off ridiculous lasers. I feel so sorry John Simm had to do all this ridiculous stuff. It’s an hour long, but not much actually really happens in part one, but it feels all so orchestrally drummed up that we can’t help but be intrigued. The best moment comes when Wilf and the Doctor talk in the cafe, with the Doctor saying regeneration feels like death and Wilf making another pitch to the Doctor to restore Donna’s memories somehow. The Master using the Immortality Gate to turn every human on Earth into him is completely silly but actually works because of how hilarious it is to see John Simm dressed as all those different people. It gets better, but part one is a whole lot of build-up to the reveal that our mysterious narrator is a Time Lord, and the Time Lords are coming back, a reveal that comes out of absolutely nowhere but certainly hooks you!
Wilfred Mott, the Tenth Doctor’s final companion
In part two, I wish there was more interaction between the Doctor and Master, because their one conversation where the Doctor tries to convince the Master to travel the universe with him is so good. Thankfully the Capaldi era would give us all the Doctor/Master interplay we could ever ask for. Timothy Dalton as Rassilon is perfect for the role, he is imposing and is the perfect embodiment of the ugliness that had become the Time Lords. This story attempts to provide more justification that the Doctor had no choice to kill the Time Lords, and successfully shows how awful they are. Of course, the Doctor will find another way later, but for the concept of this story it works. The Time Lords implant the Master’s brain with the infamous sound of drums all just so they can try and pull Gallifrey back out of the Time War and onto Earth, Boxing Day 2009. For being nearly two and a half hours, the story is actually surprising light on plot, and could’ve been easily condensed. Still, it keeps us hooked with all the quiet intimate conversations. Several happen between Wilf and a mysterious woman only he can see revealed to be a Time Lord, one of two who voted against Rassilon. When the Doctor sees her, it’s clear, be it his mother, daughter, whomever, she’s one of the Doctor’s family. Some people have complained about this character, but I like how it expanded our knowledge of the Doctor while preserving the mystery.
Rassilon was the last card RTD had to play, and he played it
So with all this story’s problems, how can it be so good? It’s because David Tennant is fully embodying the final form of the Tenth Doctor, as all the charisma and arrogance is revealed to cover up the fear that he will slip back into being who he was before, the man who killed the Time Lords. With the Doctor’s stance on guns well known, him using Wilf’s old pistol and pointing it at the Master or Rassilon is dramatically effective. Tennant alone can’t save this story, Bernard Cribbins does, and even elevates it to great status. Cribbins had always been adorably charming as the bumbling but brave grandfather to Donna, but now in a brilliant turn he plays the Tenth Doctor’s final companion. Wilf’s character was an accident, from a brief role as a newspaper salesman in Voyage of the Damned to becoming the last companion of the Doctor’s most popular incarnation. When Bernard Cribbins bursts into tears as he and the Doctor sit on the Vinvocci spaceship, telling the Doctor he doesn’t want him to die, it’s hard not to well up with emotion. When Wilf is shooting missiles using an asteroid laser, it’s hard not to smile. This story exemplifies why I love this show because what it does is so unique, it has the biggest more adrenaline-filled crises and still dives right down to relatable characters that we care about.
“I don’t want to go”
At the end, the Master punishes the Time Lords and chooses to save the Doctor as Gallifrey returns to the Time War. The Doctor thinks he’s survived, but here’s those four knocks: Wilf, trapped inside a vault about to flood him with radiation because he saved a scientist out of kindness. The moment is the perfect completion to the Tenth Doctor’s character arc, he whines, he throws a tantrum about all the things that were left for him to do, but there was never a doubt. It didn’t matter that Wilf was old, that the Doctor might die, or never regenerate again, saving Wilf was the right thing to do. RTD gives us one last look at the characters from his wonderful era of 2000s Who, each better than the last. The Doctor gives Donna and Wilf a winning lottery ticket purchased with money from Donna’s late father, and Wilf gives one last salute. Smartly, we visit Rose as we remember her from Series 1, young and ready for so much adventure. As the Ood sing, the Doctor staggers to the TARDIS, and with a line that is effective but I do think was a little too brutal the Doctor says he doesn’t want to go. There, the Tenth Doctor dies a hero, who saved the world, but died saving just one man. The End of Time is too long, maybe too clunky, but at its core is the brilliant end to a brilliant era. David Tennant will be missed. Oh, and that is Matt Smith making a dramatic debut. GERONIMO!
The End of Time isn’t perfect, but it is everything we could’ve wanted from the Tenth Doctor’s final story.
9/10 Come on, no one finishes this story and isn’t affected
Story 201, Episode 754, Doctor Who 2009 Fall Special
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
In one of the greatest stories ever, the Doctor finally goes too far.
The Review
Adelaide Brooke is told her fate
The arrogance has always been there with the Tenth Doctor, winking as he explains how he’s saving the day, being braggadocios and charismatic. It’s what made the Tenth Doctor such a sensation, but we could all tell there was darkness still lurking. Finally, it bursts forth. The Waters of Mars is an hour long but it never feels like it, with it positively bursting with energy. Immediately after the credits sequence, we learn the plot, the Doctor is here on Bowie Base One, on Mars…on the day the crew all mysteriously die. Immediately the Doctor tries to leave, realizing this is a fixed point in time. Adelaide Brooke and her crew are going to die, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Then, the infection starts in the bio-dome. Three crew members are suddenly controlled by the Flood, a virulent parasite that lives in water and can generate it through fission. As the crew scrambles to save the day, the Doctor really wants to leave, but he can’t. How often has the Tenth Doctor been criticized for seemingly to just love being in danger? Here, it’s a fixed point, but he cannot resist still learning the unknown truth of what happened to Bowie Base One. Eventually, Adelaide forces him to tell her she activates Action 5 and the crew dies. She lets the Doctor leave, still tries to save her crew, but one by one they start falling to the Flood.
The Flood are a very creepy and nigh-unbeatable foe
Already, this is an incredible episode, but then it becomes legendary. The entire past four years of the Tenth Doctor were building to this, as he trudges away on the surface of Mars, hearing the crew members die. Then we hear all the times the Doctor said the Time Lords had died, and with only Adelaide and two crew members left, the Doctor strides back into Bowie Base One. Adelaide knows she has to die so her granddaughter leads humanity into the stars, and so do we. Normally, the Doctor saving the day against the odds is the part of the show we cheer and smile at, here we look on with increasing horror. Fighting time, the Flood, Adelaide, the Doctor uses that robot Gadget to speed to the TARDIS and materialize it around the crew just as the base explodes. The Doctor returns them to England, where we finally see the Tenth Doctor’s worst self revealed at last. Finally feeling like he is truly the Doctor again after the Time War, the Doctor is smarmy, smug, and arrogant. Oh he’s saved ‘little people’ he says, but Adelaide is a big fish and he still saved her. The Time Lord Victorious. Then, the final note, Adelaide walks into her home, and kills herself. Suddenly, time hits the Doctor like a ton of bricks. He couldn’t win, he couldn’t defeat time. No one man should have the power over time, and Adelaide had to kill herself to prove it. The Waters of Mars is gripping, shocking, horrifying, and essential. There’s not another Doctor Who story like it.
The Waters of Mars shakes the Doctor, and the viewers, to their very cores. In the landmark stories that define the Doctor, Story 201 will never be forgotten.
Story 200, Episode 753, Doctor Who 2009 Easter Special
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
In Doctor Who‘s 200th story, we get a beautifully shot on-location tale that is disposable fun.
The Review
The swarm!
It was a big leap in technology in story 200, Planet of the Dead marked Doctor Who finally transitioning to high definition after Torchwood was there three years earlier, and the occasion is marked with the bus in the story being called the 200. We even get a pre-stardom Daniel Kaluuya! After a London bus falls through a wormhole and lands on an endless desert planet, we are treated to some of the prettiest on-location shots in show history, the real life desert in the UAE just outside of Dubai. Throw in Michelle Ryan as the cat burglar extraordinaire Lady Christina (as close to Catwoman as Doctor Who will ever get) and the show has never looked better. After the bus driver gets roasted into bones by the wormhole, the Doctor and Christina have to figure out how to get the bus moving back into the wormhole. Unlike Midnight, with no obvious threat, everybody is much nicer to the Doctor. Outside of psychic Carmen who delivers the famous ‘he will knock four times’ prophecy the rest of the guest cast, even Kaluuya, don’t get too much to do. Instead we spend time with Christina being badass and gradually flirting with the Doctor, and Tennant and Ryan have a great dynamic together. Christina in this form couldn’t have lasted a full season, but neither could the original interpretation of Donna.
Can we stop with the overly socially inept zany professors thank you
We meet the Tritovores, who are basically humanoid flies who speak in clicking. Not the most original alien design but it is certainly an arresting one, and them not having lines allows for more Doctor and Christina time. Christina does get to put her thievery skills to the test Mission Impossible style to extract the anti-gravity clamps that fly the bus home. Less successful is the plot line with UNIT talking to the Doctor from London, where we meet UNIT scientist Malcolm woh is your stereotypical ditzy scientist who is over the moon that he is finally helping THE actual Doctor solve a problem. Osgood will later be a much better rendition of a UNIT scientist obsessed with the Doctor. It’s all a bit too silly. The concept of a planet-devouring swarm that inadvertently generates wormholes to move onto its next victim is a very cool idea, though I just realized: how do the wormholes always know to appear around planets? Could’ve used a technobabble line saying planetary gravity causes that or something. The real problem though is that this story still feels kind of disposable, I had forgotten half of it watching it for the first time in seven years. It’s a fun story, and doesn’t aim to be anything but, just the Doctor and notCatwoman cavorting around an actual desert facing alien stingrays. Not a classic for story 200, but a fine entry.
With a middling subplot, little story depth, it takes a gorgeous setting and a memorably unique performance from Michelle Ryan to make this one worth a rewatch.
8/10 The opening is literally a daring art heist, extremely not this show.
Lady Christina: a memorable could’ve been companion
Story 199, Episode 752, Doctor Who 2008 Christmas Special
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
The Doctor is without a companion, in a fun story that ultimately could’ve been so much more.
The Review
The Doctors
For really the first time, we saw the Doctor ‘behind the scenes’ so to speak, in-between companions, just flying about. He arrives on Christmas Eve in London in 1851, and quickly meets a guy who thinks he’s the Doctor played by David Morrissey. Seeing his interpretations of the Doctor legend are really funny he has a normal screwdriver that makes noise when you tap it, and the TARDIS is a big hot air balloon. He even has a companion, ‘Rosita’, clearly another Rose call-back. It turns out that he’s actually just a human, Jackson Lake, who is suffering a fugue state where he thinks he’s the Doctor. It’s an entertaining story, but instead of diving into what it means to be ‘the Doctor’, Tennant’s true Doctor quickly takes over as the lead hero role. The setting for this story is good fun as modern-day Christmas episodes apart from not feeling all that Christmas had been a bit worn out. It’s a nice change of pace. The point is that the Doctor still is feeling glum from Journey’s End, but here Jackson leads the citizens of London in cheering the Doctor and he agrees to spend Christmas with him. It all feels a bit too little too late, as we know it doesn’t really fix the Doctor.
I mean a giant steampunk Cyberman is pretty cool
The flip-side is this Christmas we get more Cybermen in the mix, and they are perfectly adequate but don’t do much. They are aided by the malevolent Mercy Hartigan who is getting revenge on all the rich people in the city not doing enough for the poor…or something? She’s mainly just a megalomaniac, and although Dervla Kirwan gives a very memorable evil performance there is not much reason why she is evil. Still, the visuals of the Cybermen walking through a snowstorm in a graveyard and the giant steampunk Cyber-king rising over Victorian London are plenty fun. There’s some stuff about Hartigan overriding the Cybermen with her exceptionally strong intellect, and the Doctor opening her eyes to the horror of who she’s become causing a big explosion destroying the Cybermen. Still, she is underdeveloped and sadly is not the iconic villain she could’ve been. Despite all this, it’s still a fun episode and has a high rewatch score, especially with there being few things that scream Christmas more than it snowing in Victorian London. It’s a good episode, but could’ve been great.
The Next Doctor is a fun comforting capper to Doctor Who‘s biggest year ever in 2008.
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 