Doctor Who: The End of Time Part One – The Starstore Review
And so the final Doctor Who story to feature David Tennant in the TARDIS and Russell T Davies at the keyboard begins, and also welcomes back John Simm as the Master, Bernard Cribbins as Wilf and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble. With Doctor Who: The End of Time, we were promised a tale of epic proportions, so how does the first part of the story hold up? There is much to love about the episode, but there are also plenty of issues with it. Many of those issues can be explained by the simple fact that this is part one of two, but it doesn’t explain some very ham-fisted pacing.
As the start of Tennant’s final story, it feels remarkably low key, which may be down to the episode taking place in such a mundane setting, but there are a bunch of scenbes that are really very good. mainly these are scenes between the Doctor and the Master, which are handled really well. John Simm is a rather different Master to the cheeky maniac from series 3. Here he’s demented, much more murderous and, erm, has mad superpowers. Now the Master can fly, shoot lighting from his hands, and has a visible holographic skull whenever he lets rip with those odd powers. His resurrection is really, really cheesy, but it at least looks very pretty. In some scenes he is genuinely powerful, but in others he’s more like Gollum than an intergalactic super-genius.
My main issue with this episode is that it just feels like a trailer. There’s the repeated voice-overs from Timothy Dalton, which take you out of the action somewhat, and the somewhat disjointed order of events. This is something that has often been an issue with two-part stories, but here it’s really noticeable. It concerns me about just how much will have to be shoehorned into part 2 to tie up the loose ends and end the tenth Doctor’s life.
David Tennant actually comes off really well with the script, though. The character of the Doctor has had some interesting changes over the course of the Doctor Who specials, with him becoming more and more unpredictable and unhinged. One scene in particular that must be praised is the exchange between Wilf and the Doctor while sat in a cafe. There’s real pathos at work there when the two old timers are pondering their own deaths.
As an episode in its own right, it doesn’t work all that well, but I’m hoping that the conclusion will be much tighter in terms of pace, and much more epic, as we were promised. I think I’ve figured out how the Doctor will die, and I hope I’m wrong as it would be such a let-down. However, I’m really looking forward to seeing how THAT cliffhanger is expanded on. Part one on the whole is fun, if a bit dull, and the Master’s plan is ludicrous, but I’m looking forward to seeing how it all ends, and will be welcoming the new creative team and Matt Smith with open arms. It’s been a brilliant ride since Doctor Who returned to our TV screens, and as a fan of twenty years’ viewing of the show, I hope this era gets the send-off that it deserves.
Official Doctor Who merchandise from the BBC