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Last of the Time Lords: Difference between revisions

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"Last of the Time Lords" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC Oneon30 June 2007,^[1] and is the thirteenth and final episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series.

Synopsis

One year has passed since the events of "The Sound of Drums". The Earth has been conquered and its population enslaved, the Doctor is the Master's prisoner, and the warships of a new Time Lord Empire rise from the ashes. The fate of the world is in Martha Jones' hands.

Plot

Martha returns to England having travelled the world for a year. During this time she has seen Japan destroyed, the people of South Africa burned alive and many populations destroyed. The human race are on the the verge of extinction. Martha herself has become a heroic figure and a figure of hope against the Master. She meets Thomas Milligan, a doctor-turned-freedom fighter who is to lead her to a professor, Professor Docherty. Upon meeting her, Martha claims that she has been looking for a gun, developed by Torchwood and UNIT, that is able to kill a Time Lord and then prevent the ensuing regeneration. Unfortunately the four chemicals needed for the gun have been scattered around the world, in Budapest, Beijing and San Diego, and she is travelling to North London to retrieve the final part.

Meanwhile in the Valiant, the Master is keeping the aged Doctor in a tent as prisoner, Martha's family as his servants, Captain Jack Harkness in chains and it is hinted that the Master is abusing his wife, Lucy Saxon. He then shows the Doctor in a wheelchair the world he has created and place of the new Time Lord Empire. Still, in spite of the situation, the Doctor says he has "only one thing to say". The Master doesn't want to hear it. The Master wants to find Martha, who he discovers is back in England. To flush her out, he sends out a transmission, which Martha sees at Professor Docherty's lab, in which he uses his laser screwdriver to age the Doctor further to 900 years.

The Master is tipped off about Martha's arrival by the Professor, and manages to capture her at her hiding place in Bexley and takes her back to the Valiant. Here she sees the Doctor, Jack, who has been held prisoner and her family. Meanwhile the Master and the Toclafane have had many thousands of missiles built and are preparing to attack other planets. The Toclafane are revealed to be the last humans who went to Utopia. Once they reached Utopia they found it was not so perfect but dark and cold. The Master, who was only able to travel between 2008 and 100 trillion, went to Utopia and saw the humans' fate. He changed them into the Toclafane, similar to the creation of the Daleks, and made himself their leader. They came back to 2008 so that they could kill the current humans for fun. This would not normally be possible due to the creation of a temporal paradox; however, the TARDIS's function as a Paradox Machine allows this.

Back on the Valiant, Martha Jones tells the Master what she has really been doing. She had travelled the world in order to tell people her story and also gave them an instruction. At the activation of the missiles, people around the world will say one word - Doctor. The Doctor, having accessed the Archangel network through his mind, is able to absorb the power. He gains temporary access to a large amount of psychic energy, reverses the aging effects of the Master's laser screwdriver, and is able to deflect gunshots and move things with his mind. As the Doctor advances, the Master cowers and the Doctor says the words he was afraid to hear: "I forgive you." Meanwhile Captain Jack, having been freed, runs to destroy the Paradox Machine. He is successful and the timeline is reversed.

The Earth is restored back to before the creation of the paradox, just after the President is killed and just before the Toclafane arrive, No one on Earth is aware of the event, except those on the Valiant; the Doctor explains that they remember because they were at the eye of the storm. The Toclafane are stuck at the end of the universe. The Master, now defenseless, is handcuffed and stood before the Doctor. The Doctor announces that, since the Master is a Time Lord, he is the Doctor's responsibility and will be imprisoned on the TARDIS. However, Saxon's wife shoots the Master, who refuses to regenerate despite the Doctor's pleas and reminder that they are the last of the Time Lords. The Master then says, "I win", referring to the Doctor's now inevitable loneliness. He then dies in the Doctor's arms, leaving him distraught.

The Doctor is later shown to have cremated the Master's body on a pyre. After he leaves, a mysterious female hand is seen taking the Master's ring from the burnt out pyre, while we hear the sound of the Master laughing. In Cardiff, Jack tells Martha and the Doctor he will be staying there to look after his "team". He also reveals that as a child he was known as the Face of Boe, to which the Doctor and Martha react with surprise and disbelief. Martha tells the Doctor she is staying at home to look after her family and to finally become a true doctor. She gives him her phone so they can keep in touch. Leaving in the TARDIS, the Doctor begins to relax in the console room chair until the room is shaken with great force, and the bow of a ship smashes through the TARDIS wall. The Doctor discovers a life preserver which reads "Titanic", leaving him confused.

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Martha Jones — Freema Agyeman
• Captain Jack Harkness — John Barrowman
• The Master — John Simm
• Lucy Saxon — Alexandra Moen
• Francine Jones — Adjoa Andoh
• Clive Jones — Trevor Laird
• Tish Jones — Gugu Mbatha-Raw^[2]
• Thomas Milligan — Tom Ellis^[2]
• Professor Docherty — Ellie Haddington^[2]
• Lad — Tom Golding^[2][3]
• Woman — Natasha Alexander^[2]

Continuity

• Jack states that in his home era, he became a "poster boy" for his home, the Boeshane peninsula, and thus acquired the nickname "the Face of Boe".
• The Master makes reference to The Sea Devils and The Claws of Axos. The Doctor also makes references to the Axons.
• The idea of faith as a psychic power was previously used in the The Curse of Fenric.
• The Master's laser screwdriver is said to be isomorphically controlled, an attribute previously assigned to the Doctor's TARDIS in Pyramids of Mars.
• Clips from "Smith and Jones", "Utopia" and "The Sound of Drums" are used in this episode.
• Martha mentions that she once met William Shakespeare ("The Shakespeare Code").
• When the Master is shot by Lucy Saxon he says, "It's always the women," referring to when he was shot by Chantho in "Utopia".
• The Titanic smashes through the walls of the TARDIS at the end of this episode. In "Rose", Clive, a conspiracy theorist, shows Rose a photograph of the Ninth Doctor with "the Daniels family of Southampton", on the eve of their scheduled voyage on the Titanic. For an unspecified reason, they canceled their trip and survived. In "The End of the World", the Ninth Doctor also mentions that he "was once on a ship, they said that was unsinkable. Ended up clinging to the side of an iceberg. Wasn't half cold."

Production and publicity

• "Last of the Time Lords" was a subtitle proposed at one stage for a film version of Doctor Who that was in development from 1987to1994.^[4]
• This episode was planned to be broadcast live to the crowds attending Pride LondoninTrafalgar Square via a giant screen. However, a technical glitch due to the bad weather prevented the broadcasting of the episode. Freema Agyeman and John Barrowman also attended.^[5]
• In order to keep the episode's details secret, access to preview copies of this episode was restricted.^[6] There was a similar moratorium on copies of "Doomsday" the previous year.^[7]
• The episode was allocated a 50-minute timeslot for its initial broadcast,^[8] as with "Daleks in Manhattan" previously, and 55-minute timeslots for the BBC Three repeats.^[9][10] According to Russell T. DaviesinDoctor Who Magazine 384, this is because it ran over-length but they did not wish to lose the material. The official run time from freemaagyeman.com for the episode is almost 52 minutes. The final episode of The Trial of a Time Lord was also extended by five minutes in 1986.
• Reggie Yates is credited as playing Leo Jones; however, the character Leo only appears in this episode as background (in the scene in Martha's family's home, through a window)
• In the audio commentary, Graeme Harper filled in for directing because Colin Teague was injured.

References

Wikiquote has quotations related to Tenth Doctor.