The Doctor, newly rejuvenated, shows the Master the power of the human race.
A year after the events of "The Sound of Drums", Earth has been
closed to all species and labelled as in "terminal extinction". Martha
returns to , having travelled the world since teleporting away from the Valiant at the moment of the Master's triumph. Her TARDIS key, still generating a ,
has kept her hidden all this time. She meets Thomas Milligan, a
doctor-turned-freedom-fighter, who can lead her to one Professor
Docherty. Martha herself has become a figure of hope against the
Master, rumoured to be the only one capable of killing him.
Meanwhile, on the , is keeping the aged Doctor in a 'dog-kennel' tent as his humiliated prisoner, Martha's family as his servants, and in chains.
is still his companion, but shows evidence of physical and emotional
abuse. The Master shows the Doctor the world he has created: the new
Time Lord Empire. Across the planet, warships are being built to wage
war on the rest of the universe. The Doctor has "only one thing to
say", but the Master doesn't want to hear it. After a failed attempt by
the Jones family, Jack, and the Doctor to gain control by stealing the
Master's ,
the Master sends out a transmission intended for Martha. Watching in
Docherty's lab, she sees the Master suspend the Doctor's capacity to
and age him by a further nine hundred years, shrinking him into a tiny,
frail creature. Instead of being dismayed, Martha draws hope from the
Doctor's continued survival.
Though the
have proven to be virtually invincible, Martha reveals that she
stumbled upon one that was struck by lightning, and with the data
gathered from the incident Docherty is able to replicate the required
conditions. Upon examining the sphere thus captured, they make a
horrifying discovery: the Toclafane contain the conscious remains of .
There was no Utopia, only more darkness, and with everything dying
around them the humans cannibalised and regressed themselves, becoming
the child-like Toclafane. The Master brought them back in time using
the TARDIS, which could only travel between Utopia and present-day
Earth. The contradiction of the Toclafane is made possible by the built by the Master. Martha is horrified when the Toclafane quotes young Creet that she met on , telling her that the Toclafane have
of the last of humanity. When questioned as to why it wishes to kill
its own ancestors, the Toclafane responds, "Because it's fun" followed
by maniacal laughter. Tom subsequently shoots it dead.
When Docherty asks if the rumours about Martha are true, Martha reveals a gun, developed by and , purportedly able to kill a Time Lord and prevent the ensuing .
Martha has retrieved three of the four chemicals needed for the gun
from their hiding places around the world, and has returned to to find the fourth. After Martha and Thomas depart for a shelter in to hide, Docherty (who is desperate for information regarding her missing son) reveals their whereabouts to the Master.
The Master thus comes to Earth's surface to capture Martha, killing Tom, destroying the special gun and taking her back to the Valiant.
He intends to execute her before the Doctor and her family, at the
moment his fleet is launched. As the clock counts down, Martha reveals
the real reason she travelled the globe. It wasn't for a fictional
anti-regeneration gun, or to fight back, but merely to talk. She told
everyone about the Doctor; specifically, she told everyone to think of
the Doctor at the same time the Master plans to launch his fleet.
Docherty's betrayal was expected, engineered by Martha so that she
would be brought on board the Valiant to rejoin the Doctor. Combined
with the Master's ,
which the Doctor has had an entire year to get in tune with, this has
the effect of charging the Doctor with the combined psychic energy of
the people of Earth. This enables the Doctor to restore his youthful
physiognomy and end the Master's control. As the Master cowers, the
Doctor says the words the Master was afraid to hear: "I forgive you."
With the Master out of the picture, Jack rounds up some soldiers to
destroy the paradox machine, but is delayed by the Toclafane. The
Master, using Jack's ,
teleports himself and the Doctor to Earth, threatening to detonate his
fleet and take the Earth with it. The Doctor knows that the Master
can't kill himself, and manages to teleport both himself and the Master
back to the Valiant just as Jack destroys the paradox machine,
rewinding time to just after the US President is killed and just before
the Toclafane arrive. All those on the Valiant remember the
events due to being at "the eye of the storm", but nobody else will
know of the Master's reign of terror in "the year that never happened".
The Master, now defenceless, is handcuffed and stands 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 board the
TARDIS. Francine Jones is talked out of shooting the Master, but Lucy
Saxon, with a glazed expression, seizes a gun herself and shoots him.
Rather than be a prisoner for the rest of his lives, the Master lets
himself die, refusing to regenerate despite the Doctor's desperate
pleas. Just before dying in his opponent's arms, the Master muses on
the constant drumming in his head, wondering if it will finally stop,
and with a smile says, "I win", leaving the Doctor to weep for his lost
adversary and fellow Time Lord. The Doctor the Master's body on a .
However, after he leaves, a female hand wearing red nail polish is seen
taking the Master's ring from the burnt-out pyre, with malevolent
laughter echoing in the background.
In Cardiff, Jack decides to remain behind to look after his ,
"defending the Earth". The Doctor disables Jack's vortex manipulator to
keep him from jumping through time unsupervised. The Doctor then tells
Jack there's nothing that can be done about his immortality: it seems
likely he'll never be able to die — though he isn't sure about aging.
Thinking about what he might look like millions of years from now, Jack
confesses his vanity and recalls how, as the first person from the
Boeshane Peninsula to join the Time Agency, his good looks earned him
the nickname "the ".
With the TARDIS repaired, the Doctor is ready to move on. Martha,
however, has decided to stay so she can look after her family and
finally qualify as a medical doctor. She gives the Doctor her phone so
they can keep in touch and says she will see him again, but when
someone is in love and it's unrequited, they have to get out: "this is
me getting out". Leaving in the TARDIS, the Doctor begins to relax in
the console room chair — until the ship is suddenly shaken with great
force, and the bow of a ship smashes through the TARDIS' wall. Picking
up a , he finds "" written on it, to which he can only respond, "What?!"
[] Cast
— — — — — — — — Thomas Milligan — Professor Docherty — Lad — Woman — voices — Zoe Thorne, Gerard Logan, and Johnnie Lyne-Pirkis
[] Cast Notes
Reggie Yates is credited as playing Leo Jones; however, the
character Leo only appears in this episode as background. The audio
commentary for the episode mentions that Leo was originally scheduled
to appear, but Yates was double-booked.
[] Continuity
In the episode's commentary, writer called the implication of Jack's nickname ("the ")
"a theory" as to the Face of Boe's origins, prompting Executive
Producer Julie Gardner to urge him to "stop backpedaling" about the two
characters being the same. There was much laughter. Davies also
mentioned the addition of a line in "Gridlock" in which the Face of Boe
calls the Doctor "old friend", suggesting a strong connection between
him and the Doctor.The Master makes reference to the and the . The Doctor also makes references to the Axons and the .Earth is referred to as Sol 3, the third planet from the star , as it was in . Sol is the Latin name for the Sun, and is often used in science fiction.The Master's laser screwdriver is said to be isomorphically controlled, a property the Doctor attributed to the TARDIS in ; although other characters, such as , have operated the TARDIS.Clips from "", "" and "" are used in this episode.After receiving a great amount of psychic energy, and rejuvenating himself, the Doctor says the line: "", a frequently used catchphrase of his.Martha mentions that she once met ("").When the Master is shot by he says, "It's always the women." He was previously shot by in "Utopia".The Doctor's severed hand from "", "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and various episodes can be seen at the end of the episode inside the .At the end of the episode, the Doctor says "What?!" three times, after the crashed through the wall, which was his response to Donna at the end of "", when she appeared onboard the TARDIS.This does not appear to be the Doctor's first encounter with the Titanic. In "" the stated that he had been onboard an "unsinkable" ship and that he "ended up clinging to an iceberg". In "",
Clive shows Rose evidence that someone that looked like the Ninth
Doctor prevented a family from boarding the ship. The Doctor has also
been on the Titanic in novels (for example, the in the ), but the of the novels is in question.The hand seen picking up the Master's ring leaves open the
possibility of reintroducing the character at a later date, although
Russell T Davies stated in the podcast for this episode that this would
not occur in the 2008 series.
