(737) Last of the Timelords

I am surprised at how quickly this twenty-ninth series has gone. Whereas the previous series seemed to drag at times, this series has been a huge improvement.

The Master’s little dance bit isn’t something that we would have seen Anthony Ainley do or Roger Delgado doing that. I think that it’s something that make the Master seem more made crazier. I hadn’t realised how good John Simm is in this episode. When he’s on screen I am enjoying the episode and when he isn’t on screen then I find myself wishing he was on screen. The thing about this Master is that his plan is like his plans of old. It’s so convoluted that its almost boring but unlike his plans of old, it doesn’t get stopped at the last minute by the Master.

The encounter that the Doctor the Master have on Earth is a short, snappy but very impressive bit and to be honest all the scenes between the two of them are very good.

I thought that the Master being shot was a bit of a mistake. It would have been good if he had managed to escape like he always did. The Master refusing to regenerate (didn’t know it was an option) seems to indicate a very firm end to his character although there is always the potential for a get out clause when a mysterious hand picks up the Master’s ring.

The make up to make Tennant look old works quite well at first. It’s not quite as good as the make up he had in The Family of Blood buts it’s still good. However when the Doctor is made even older then the effect looks very poor. He looks like he has come from one of the Harry Potter films.

One of the episodes successes is that it manages to show the destruction of the world by people talking about how countries have fallen.

One of the biggest clunkers in Doctor Who history is when Captain Jack seems to insist that he is the Face of Boe. It just doesn’t work and is a little bit silly. Even back in 2007 I thought that it was a bit of a misstep.

Martha does a lot of driving the narrative in this episode. She is the one that has been on the journey around the world and has played an interesting game of double bluff because we were made to believe that she has spent the last year looking for bits of a gun. Her speech about the Doctor is a nice one because it basically tells people that the Doctor is the hero, not her. It’s weird to think that for most of the episode, the Doctor and Martha don’t meet. It’s not until the end that they are in the same scene together. It’s frustrating that Freema Agyeman leaves at the end of this episode because she has been a breath of fresh air after the rather staleness of Billie Piper.

The goodbye scene between the Doctor and Martha was really well done. It was an exit that made sense and worked and is one of the stronger exits for a companion.

Like Doomsday, this episode has a cliffhanger for the Christmas Special and this time it’s more epic. The Titanic somehow manages to crash into the TARDIS leading to a WHAT from Tennant like he did in Doomsday. This has been a better episode than I thought. In my mind I had previously thought there was far more sentimental nonsense but actually it was all in proportion. The story with the Master ended at the right time and the departures of both Captain Jack and Martha were given the right amount of time.

Last of the Timelords is a good end to the season which has been consistently strong. I think that the next series (and Christmas special) is where the Tennant era goes downhill a bit. But maybe things might be different.