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BBC Last of the Time Lords |
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| Story No. | 201 | 
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| Production Code | Series Three Episode Thirteen | |
| Dates | June 30 2007 |
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With David Tennant,
Freema Agyeman, John Barrowman Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Colin Teague Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner. |
| Synopsis: The Toclafane are in control and Earth is going to be turned into a new centre of power. Only one person stands in the way: Martha Jones. |
The Last of a Fan's patience... by Steve Cassidy 27/11/07
"We can't get across London at night, it's full of wild dogs. We'll get eaten alive."I'd have liked to have seen that in The Last of the Time Lords. It would be better then what we got. I'd have quite liked to see Martha and Doctor Milligan race across the capital with slavering, man-eating hounds on their tail. We might have actually got a bit of tension, a bit of believable action - but instead we get a mess. Easily the worst of the season and possibly one of the worst Who's ever written. I say written because the production design, direction, music, acting is all top notch but there are so many presses of the big red reset button that the adventure keeps on self destructing. The shark jumping keeps going on and on until your belief in the programme aches all over from the kicking it has just received.
I've reached the stage now that whenever I see the decals 'By Russell T Davies' on screen I lower my expectations so dramatically that they hit the centre of the earth (and meet Russell's little baby spiders). I don't want flawless storytelling; granted, the Old Series was pretty shaky in that, but I don't want to be embarassed watching the story. When Russell writes well he writes brilliantly - The End of the World, Tooth and Claw, Utopia and Smith and Jones were all terrific adventures. But when he doesn't... I don't need to say more. RTD always seems to use ever-growing scale as a substitute for a new plot. The end of each season of New Who has been effectively the same; the only real distinction is that the number of invaders involved has gone up a scale. "We've gone 5 billion years into the future a few times. We need a new story? Okay, we'll go a few trillion into the future. That's different, right?" No, it's just altering the parameters, it's not a different story at all.
When, oh when, is RTD going to get over this obsession with scale?. It can't be a deadly virus, it has to be a deadly virus that kills a world in seven minutes. It can't be an alien invasion, it has to be an alien invasion that sees six billion maltesers fall out of the sky and wipe out the population, leaving the survivors to live in holes and slave camps. The resolution, though, was predictable in the extreme: not only is he content to betray what drama he creates with a massive reset switch, RTD even flashes that reset switch in our faces the week before as if to dare us to suggest that there might be another way to get him out of the corner he's in as a writer. Like I said at the start, when you scale it up to the point where a deus ex machina turn-back-time scene is your only option, then you've scaled it up too far.
It's not all bad; as I mentioned before, the SFX are pretty impressive (the prosthetics for the head inside the Toclafane is wonderful). Martha is the only one of the regulars who is well used; Tennant is barely there and Barrowman is kinkily chained up for most of the adventure. Theres alot of religious imagery in Martha's actions. I'm sure Davies meant it to be "uplifting" and "life-affirming" but for a programme that has always been about rationality and dispelling superstition, it is curiously jarring.
My thoughts on John Simms' Saxon are covered in my review of The Sound of Drums, but are borne out here in a very strange scene. Martha is hiding with the slaves/oppressed when Saxon and his entourage track her down and arrive in a darkened street. The music turns moody and the cavalcade is accompanied by armed men and buzzing Toclafane. Eveything is fine until Simm steps out of the car and delivers the line "I can SEEEE YOU!!" in a high camp way. Any tension just evaporates into thin air.
And having gone so overboard on setting up a situation of rock-bottom bleakness, RTD had nowhere to go, and Saxon's war plans, presumbly meant to be a focus of tension, were merely a case of "so what?" So here's the real paradox. How come the bigger, the more expansive, the more epic the stories become, the smaller the programme gets?
And what the f*ck were the Sea Devils doing in the Time War, or did I mishear that bit? Riding their Myrkas into battle?
I haven't touched the sharkjumping that happened in the latter stages of this adventure (incorporating ideas from Harry Potter, Superman the Movie, Return of the Jedi and Flash Gordon) because, well, I can't be arsed. I don't really enjoy giving an adventure a hard time and I wonder if what I want from NuWho is different from what an audience wants. There have been some crackers this season - Human Nature/Family of Blood, Shakespeare Code, Blink, Utopia and Smith and Jones. Even The Lazurus Experiment and 42 were enjoyable. Series 3 has been a step up in quality compared with Series 2. But the horse stumbled at the final furlong. The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords has been the worst season finale we have had. I've got friends who defend RTD to the hilt. But they were knocked to the canvas by this one.
Here's to series 4 and better times!
Time's Cramp(ion) by David Blyth 12/2/08
LOTTL seems to be the most hated finale out of RTD's tenure on Doctor Who. This isn't just a case of the people who have never given RTD a fair nod, this is from people divided over RTD, who praise and criticise him in equal measure. People who love everything he does hates this.
Last of the Time Lords is more the victim of bad timing, and too many endings with the same resolution; only the last two finales couldn't exactly boast "the public were built up and made insignifcant".
In Parting of the Ways, the public rise, and die, to defend the Earth against the Daleks. In Army of Ghosts, the public are dupes who make full advantage of the Cybermen's "Ghost" stratagem with celebration, paying the price when the Cybermen and Daleks emerge.
In LOTTL, the human race make another mistake, but when Saxon takes command, Martha begins her "legend", the human race show exactly what the Doctor's always boasting they do... they rise and fight to defend themselves. They are shown to take a stand, they help Martha reach Saxon at the cost of their own lives.
We ARE the public, they are an extension of us, who would love to help the Doctor, be a companion, save our planet, save our country, which half of us would back out of in the blink of an eye if it happened.
When the public are made to forget their contributions, are we supposed to take that as "you don't matter, you benefited us"?.
It may not address it on a direct level, but the sublety of that idea is what fuels a lot of the hatred for this episode.
It's not fair to the human race; then again, all three episodes of this story have reflected that we are supposedly "doomed" to become a delusional, childish, selfish and depraved race of machines who forsake our humanity to enslave our own history out of joy for the wrongs we dealt our ancestors. Do humans have an ego problem?
A "Time cramp" such as this should not be seen as a bankrupt idea, but as a way of pushing forth DW's greatest strength: consequence. The Doctor only discovers later any decision he has produces consequence. You didn't see it here, you might read about it later; you might see it later, it depends on writers who choose to think deeper... and writers who will remember what happened.
As for the Doctor whispering to Martha about "the countdown" and its specific time and day, the Doctor could have started tapping into the Psychic Network as soon as Saxon started playing Voodoo Child, thinking ahead of his enemy quite literally. How'd he do it? "Faaar mooore than just another time looooooord." Scenes shouldn't be deleted when, in hindsight, they could explain much more.
Of course, Whovians dont need things explained. We watch Doctor Who to enjoy it, but, more importantly, to also think if prompted. The Psychic Network isn't a plot-hole, it's part of an obvious jigsaw puzzle that, once solved, makes this story the more enjoyable.
On to the performances, dynamic as usual. Freema's character is strengthened as a messenger; too bad her medical background couldn't have been used more effectivly, making her a "healer" as well as someone spreading the message. The inclusion of her supporting cast, the "relatable" human race, had their moments too, as they had to to make us care so much about their place by the episode's conclusion.
My minor nitpick is the cliff confrontation between The Doctor and Saxon. What was... that? I think about every fan assumed this was going to be the season's surprise cliffhanger, a surprise "final stand", Reinbeich Falls revisited, Tennant regeneration perhaps?
But, instead, it was more or less this:
The Doctor: Gimme that!
But, prior to that, was that scene gorgeous! Murray Gold's excellent cliffhanger music blaring in the background, the Toclafane missiles preparing to launch, the universe about to be sliced and diced... would LOTTL be as critically spat on if it had been a cliffhanger and we got a full-length Chirstmas Special where Saxon falls, Gallifrey is restored, and we have a gap year on THAT note?
So many reasons why the story is hated, and yet... I don't care. LOTTL was, as with Utopia and TSOD, a convulted, yet delightful collection of ideas and sympathetic characters, drama, expansion on exisiting mythology and intensity. Good against evil, wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff. This is RTD emulating Moffat and Christopher H. Bidmed.
LOTTL is truly the soul, the mythology, the spirit, of any strong aspect of Doctor Who. Time cramps, the human race saved, forgotten heroes, a big freaking ship smashing into the TARDIS, and one day, I hope more people appreciate it like I did.
LOTTL is True Doctor Who, what's all this racket?
Thunderbolt and Lighting, Very Very Frightening by Anna Zinn 6/3/08
When I saw Human Nature, The Family of Blood and Blink, I thought Series 3 had reached its zenith.
These were what you might think of as ideal stories. They were like the TARDIS: the basic idea looked simple, but the inside was bigger than the outside. Nothing in these stories is quite what it seems, but everything fits together elegantly.
Some episodes are like this. They have a cool perfection which resembles the music of Mozart - at least, if his music had ever sent anyone diving behind a sofa.
And some episodes are like Last of the Time Lords.
It's the last of the three-parter which ended Season 3. Elegant, logical, perfect it's not. At best, it's a tour de force. At worst, a gallery of dodgy plotting. Not so much Mozart as Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
The one-year spoiler ban means I can't say much about the dodgier bits of Last of the Time Lords. It would be fun to try to decide which is the dodgiest. Could it be Harold Saxon's miraculous global organising ability? In a very short period, he accomplishes things which would make our current leaders bang their meaty fists with envy. How does he do it - through local authorities? Or does he persuade the Toclafane to cope with priorities and targets, though they appear to have a mental age of about eight? His scheme of world domination is horrific, but not believable. (Of course, that could be said of a lot of government plans.)
As far as other twists in the episode are concerned, one owes far too much to a certain classic story about the children of the world and fairies, and another possibly isn't so bad - at least, we were warned about it - but comes off with confusion in the detail.
Never mind. A review has to mention this kind of thing, but LTL almost flaunts it - and succeeds anyway.
One of the reviewers of Blink said that he wasn't sure it was an episode you could watch over and over, once you had solved the puzzle. (I've watched it several times - the sheer terror of the 'blink' sequences hasn't faded yet.) But LTL isn't watchable because of a puzzle. It's watchable because of the relationships between the characters - especially the Doctor and Harold Saxon and the Doctor and Martha.
The spoiler ban means that I can't say everything I would like to about Harold Saxon or John Simm's portrayal of him. He's evil, but never simple or obvious. He will remind you of every manipulative person you've ever known - just when he seems to be communicating, you hit the earth with a thump, realising that, for Saxon, everything is about himself, first last and always, and that you've fallen for it again. In one sequence he sings along with his music and tries to make his dysfunctional family of captives into a chorus line - they practise passive resistance, and he goes on undeterred. He radiates psychopathic energy and charm 24 hours a day, never tiring of making the other characters - and us - watch him.
David Tennant as the Doctor tries to ignore him loftily. For a while, he succeeds - but then the battle is joined again. Saxon's tactics range from the crude to the breathtaking and the outcome is the last thing we expect.
The Doctor's relationships with the other characters would bear more writing about, but until the ban is over, I'll just mention his relationship with Martha. Saxon's villainies are her opportunity and she proves herself so thoroughly that not a hair of her new Florence Nightingale hairdo ever falls out of place. But heroic effort often brings changes the hero never intended - and seeing her ride with them is one of the best things about this episode. Freema Agyeman's performance lives up to the scope of her character. Her part-time appearance in Season 4 seems advantageous to me - instead of knowing where we are with her, we have to be curious for three quarters of a year.
LTL is a triumph in spite of itself - too much thunderbolt and lightning, but it works.