Where do I even start? This is like reviewing “An Unearthly Child,” or both “The Day of the Doctor” and “The Time of the Doctor” at the same time. To downplay what “The End of Time” is, it is Russell T Davies’ magnum opus. Yes, I do mean that this is downplaying it. It was a double-bill over Christmas and New Years 2009-10. It does something we’ve not seen in Doctor Who since “The Five Doctors” of 1983; it brings back the Time-Lord High Council to TV for the first time since “Remembrance of the Daleks” (?), and it is the first sight of Gallifreyians other than the Doctor and the Master in New-Who.

Of course, that’s if you’re ignoring the extended universe bits such as Big Finish, with episode 11 of the monthly series from August 2000 featuring Romanadvoratrelundar as Lord President (I believe in her first term). Was that just to take a dig at Davies’ extended MCU-like comments? Maybe. Nevertheless, “The End of Time” is one of those large world-altering episodes, one that basically says: Let’s ride the nuke into the ground waving a ten-gallon hat in the air while shouting “Yee-haw!” Again, I am asking myself where to start; Do I do it with Wilf finally getting his adventure?

How about that fact Lucy is back, and there is that slightly crap looking summoning spell by white women who actually think they are witches. Ok, being serious for a minute, I quite like Lucy because there is never really much said about her, other than she was once married to the Prime Minister. Well, that was before she shot him because he was a mental, which is why she’s in prison. There’s also the cult of mentals that followed this “Master” as if he was a cult leader. Either way, they blew up this prison Lucy was being held in, which caused a bit of a stir.

Ok, enough being coy about it, because there is no out-doing Davies’ work drawing the reveals out. Donna’s fuzzy memory is, of course, playing a role in the episode because it is the 10th Doctor cavalcade of good and bad memories. It is a walk down depression road in some cases. All in a vain attempt to have Donna not remember, as Wilf puts it, “all those wonderful things you both did.” This is the reason I love Wilfred, alongside being played by the forever fantastic and brilliant Bernard Cribbins. He’s just an old man that enjoys adventure and space, all the while wanting to see both his daughter and granddaughter happy and healthy.

Even with a gun, threatening to kill a man (well, Time-Lord), I still love him. If there is only a Time-Lord Victorious standing at the front of the show, I don’t mind having good ol’ Wilfred Mott to look up to. He might have a gun, but he’s never killed a man, even during his service. He’s just a good man, and that’s all you need when there is nothing but evil on the horizon.

Anyway, we’ll get back to Wilf and his pervert octogenarian friends in a minute. Time-Lord Victorious, even with the context of the story following “The Waters of Mars,” is something I just don’t like. Adelaide was right about leaving her and her crew on Mars, sometimes you can’t save everyone. That is what this Doctor wanted to be, the ultimate savior that protects everyone and thing. Try as you may, you just can’t do that no matter who or what you are, and in his final story, he’s exactly that. Loud, loutish, “I can do whatever I want,” claiming himself the sole proprietor and manager of both time and space, and defending it all himself. Take this grandstanding away and I might hold Tennant in higher regard as the Doctor, but he’s exactly that.

I love the Ood, and the elder played by Brian Cox (the good one) is brilliant. I know in the extended media such as the New Series books there are meant to be some more Ood-based mysteries, but you can never beat a good ol’ episode with Cthulhu’s baby cousins. Playing a very slight role overall, they are wonderfully soothsaying in their now infinite wisdom. They predict that Sam Tyler would get up from that car accident, Wilfred can see Sam Tyler when he closes his eyes, and Lucy Saxon is stuck in prison and it isn’t Wentworth.

See, the problem I have with Lucy’s imprisonment and the summoning spell by the cult of Saxon is simple, it just doesn’t sit well. It is overacted, overly trite in all those fantasy ways magic is often showcased, and generally, the writing isn’t there. It feels like a quick scene knocked out on the Friday night before heading down to the pub for a couple of pints, only for Monday to come twice as quickly for shooting to begin. Early CGI and half-naked (and part ghostly) John Simm can’t save a scene that feels like it was never given energy in the first place.

Comparatively, to skip right past June Whitfield’s brilliant Minnie the menace, the Doctor and Wilf’s conversation in that café is given everything. Even the bit leading up to that, the mini-bus filled with pensioners all collectively bundling their resources to find the Doctor is brilliant. Not just in the writing or the acting, everything is thrown at those scenes with emotion, energy, and passion. It just makes the fluffy fantasy spell casting a bit crap if you’re actually trying to look at it with a slightly critical eye.

Though if we’re looking at scenes and portions with critical eyes, the Master’s “I’m hungry” bit is like he’s Maureen Lipman in “The Idiot’s Lantern.” If we use the terms from wrestling of heal (evil), face (good), and tweener (a bit of both) as analogies, the last time we saw the Master he was meant to be a heal. However, because of his fantastic performance in the Series 3 finale, he’s brought back to play a tweener that is both overly charismatic and mustache-twirlingly evil. Right, now for the pitch-forks to be raised: I don’t entirely love John Simm playing the role right down the middle like this. There is just something that isn’t quite right.

Not that the first meeting of the minds is all that great either. It played out like a one-sided take on that scene in Harry Potter where noseless-Mcgee and the bespectacled wonder play a game of tug of war. It is great spectacle for a movie, but has very little function. It is what comes after the energy beam, explosions, and fire that really do something. It is not just for the plot, but it is something that shows character. The Doctor laying on the ground after being shot with the Master’s life force; The Master on the floor next to him on his hands and knees, frantically and almost conspiracy-theorist like driven mad by the sound of four beats. One unable to hear it, the other desperate for another to understand his pain. That is the Master I like.

“Oh my lord, she’s a cactus!” I love Wilf, he’s great. I’ve said it time and time again, even in the eye of out and out disaster, he’s just looking for that adventure. Even the Vinvoccis and the constant threat of death, there is just something about happily plodding on with life because it is an adventure, no matter how big or small. Not to mention when he’s locked in a shielded glass cage with a nuclear bolt, pulling out a gun and putting it to his head while his phone is ringing. He makes it heartwarmingly funny as he mumbles concern. Bernard Cribbins is perfection as we know it, and I love him for it.

Anyway, back to a Time-Lord playing god; “I create you in my image,” and all that malarky. The alien tech-thing I don’t care about is a nice plot device, but also is nothing special. It just allows the sociopathic megalomaniac to take the presidency from that Black guy, I think his name was Obama or something (never heard of him), and make the president white again and oddly blond-ish. That would never happen in real life. Anyway, yeah… that whole “Master-race” business was a bit strange and still is. I’m done with the thinly veiled joke about the 45th President. The actual line in the show is, “but now, there is no human race. Only the Master-race.”

Oh, and Gallifrey is back because Rassilion is now played by Timothy Dalton, he’s brought back the Time-Lord high council, and the citadel is in tatters. You know, how Gallifrey is 90% of the time in New-Who. This is why the episode is big, along with the returns, and climatic resolution to the 10th Doctor. This is where time gets a bit “wibbly-wobbly” aside from the reference back to marrying the Virgin Queen, a name she can’t have anymore, which will come up in three series from now. Everything on Gallifrey happens before the 9th Doctor and before “The Day of the Doctor.” Yes, this is bending time over like it was a Zygon pretending to be good Queen Bess and making sure the nickname isn’t true.

The point is, this is still Gallifrey and the Time-Lord high council and powers that be have never been too kind to the Doctor. We just have to look at the 2nd Doctor’s regeneration for that, forced upon for his crimes of temporal erasure to pick a new face because they were going to trigger a regeneration. That worked out well when the CIA (No, the other one) took him and made him the hired gun. He was flung to earth in his new body as the 3rd Doctor, and worked for U.N.I.T. To return to the point: They don’t like that bloke that stole a T.A.R.D.I.S. and doesn’t conform to their rules of noninterventionism. i.e. Don’t do what you did on Mars.

It would also be nice not to have Donna be the most spectacular thing in the universe. That was always a bit of a problem with Davies: Rose, Donna, and Jenny were all oddly spectacular. Now with “Meta-crisis” Donna, she can blast away all of the Master’s minions, which are himself almost several billion times over. It is fine, just fine. I don’t like it, but there are things I dislike more than some of Donna’s story. It is also one of those that you start to understand better as you age, but all the same, it lands flat if you are young and naïve.

There are two scenes that are next to perfection themselves, one on the Vinvocci ship and the other with the nuclear bolt. The former is a moment of an old man and a young man (he’s only 906 at this point, I think) having a labored discussion on who is a bigger coward, and I love it. Neither wants to hold Wilfred’s gun, but one of them has to. Each show emotional strain: Wilfred of being in space, the view he’s always wanted, and the Doctor knowing his days are numbered and must fight one last time. Such a beautiful scene.

The latter involves this brilliant moment of an old man that tried to the bloke that was trapped in the nuclear bolt-thing learning he’s stuck. Stuck in a glass cage about to be flooded with 500,000 rads, “Just leave me, I’m an old man […] just leave me.” Have I said how much I love Wilfred? Selfless, cowardice, and wonderful, everything the Doctor should have been in the last episode. Only redeeming himself by giving up this incarnation of himself, triggering his regeneration.

Doing only has he does, he spends those last hours or days creeping through the lives of those he’s touched. Saving Micky and Martha Smith, saving Luke before giving Sarah Jane one last wave of goodbye, asking Joan’s granddaughter Verity Newman (a cross of creator Sydney Newman and producer Verity Lambert’s names), and finally, back to Donna’s wedding. He gives good ol’ Wilf one last goodbye and hands over Donna’s wedding present, the produce of a single quid from some bloke called “Jeffrey Noble.” All before going back to chat up some 19-year-old blonde on a council estate, telling her that 2005 is going to be a brilliant year for her.

All of this comes after the massive conflict between either shooting Rassilion or the Master. Kill your best friend and you get something you want, kill the other and you save all of space and time. That’s the problem, the ultimate coward doesn’t want to kill either, but wants both. The problem is, I could never provide a criticism great enough for or against the scene or how it is done; It is a fine piece that only improves years later when you understand what happens to Gallifrey. What happens in the episode is a bit red reset button being hit (with a bullet) and the Master using up all he can to stop his best friend from being killed for it.

It is one of the most impactful episodes on New-Who, period. A clear reset point for all the good and bad, handing not only a new showrunner the reigns, but a new Doctor as well. I would be stupid to say “burn it all, it is wrong. It is horrible, let’s hang Moffat by a collection of paperclips that lay on his desk (probably).” No, that would be stupid. Though I will say, next time we’ll be talking about how I didn’t like Matt Smith initially because I was upset David Tennant left the show. Shocking, isn’t it? I kicked up more of a stink about Eccleston leaving after a marvelous first series, and now I don’t care about Tennant.

Geronimo!

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Doctor Who "The End of Time"

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• I love Wilfred, I'd be proud if he were my dad.
• 10th Doctor redeems himself in some way.
• The raxacoricofallapatorians and others in the bar with Jack.
• Timothy Dalton is great, even if Rassilion is awful.

Cons

• There is just some fantastical crap.