Doctor Who: “The Last Time Lord”

Series 3 Finale!  Final Wrap of the Big Story Line and Resolution of Lots of Dangling Arcs (Martha, Jack) and Stuff Like That!  And …

… and …

…. kinda disappointing, actually.

More (with spoilers) below the cut …

This has been an excellent season for the new Doctor Who.  There have been some seriously good episodes, high drama, fine humor, lots of scariness, great imagination, etc.

So when I see “One Year Later” at the beginning of an episode, I worry.  That sort of a setup can be effective, but nine times out of ten, it’s a cop-out, a way to skip over a story that will take too long to tell, or involves some logistical difficulties it’s easier to gloss over with those three words, a chance to reboot the situation without having to explain it.  While in the real world, action isn’t really non-stop, on TV it probably, more or less, needs to be.

In this case, it’s one year after the Master (as Harold Saxon) has aged the Doctor, summoned his mysterious spherical friends, and taken over the world.  Martha Jones, who got away, has been walking the world and is now back in the UK.  Jack’s chained up in the air-carrier.  Martha’s family is working as staff on the same vehicle.  And the Master continues to taunt the Doctor over his plans to Take Over the Universe as a New Gallifrey.

Here are my problems as the episode unfolds:

1. Just too much stuff.  Too many dangling plots, ratcheted way up, that needed to be (for some reason) wrapped up this series, and this episode.  And that’s the point — aside from the immediate plot difficulties, and maybe the Martha thang, it didn’t have to be wrapped up in a big bow at the end.
2. Martha, Martha, Martha.  After having spent the whole series mysteriously mooning after the Doctor — yes, he’s brilliant and charismatic and all that, but, really, either it’s infatuation-at-first-sight for a bright independent woman. or just kinda sloppy writing — she abruptly realizes the situation she’s put herself into and cuts it off.  Huh?  Yes, I’m sure there is a basis for this in it being “one year later” and her having walked the world as the First Disciple of the Doctor and having plenty of time to think about it — but it still seemed to come out of left field. 
3. The big plot device to resolve the situation is something only marginally more sophisticated than, “If you want to save Tinker Bell, er, Dobbie, er, the Doctor, then clap your hands.”  It was, potentially, a clever idea, but it needed a bit more groundwork and it needed something a bit less … messianic in tone.  Which, to mix mythic metaphors, it was (an all-forgiving Doctor arising from the tomb in a glow of light).
4. This series as a whole was too self-contained.  All the “what’s going on here?” bits were solved within the context of things that had happened just this season — the pocket watch Jedi mind trick, the Utopia project, even the Mystery of Jack, etc. — and it felt … too small.  Too contained.  Yes, the Master referred to, in dialog, past stuff (from past plots of his to the previous Companion), but it still felt in the end like they were trying too hard to get all the pieces in place for a big reveal, and they just complicated matters too much.
5. The Mystery of Jack, by the way, was both a lot of fun — and way too early of a reveal.  Now we know.  Ho-hum.  I mean, really cool — but the reveal was way too abrupt, too quick, too pointless. 

The episode wasn’t without its fun.  The Master was quite nice, and some of the Master/Doctor relationship bits were well thought out and crafted.  Jack was his jolly self.  A lot of the ideas were there that could have made it great.  And the final scene was a nice hook for Series 4.

But the Doctor was, for most purposes, absent for the majority of the episode (heavily made-up or CGIed self notwithstanding).  There was a lot of action, and a lot bombastic music, but, for all that the episode had some tremendously traumatic bits, it didn’t emotionally ring true compared to other eps.  It was all all-or-nothing, huge action or huge drama, with little in-between.  In some ways it felt like a sequel to a vastly entertaining movie, where they identify the “good” parts of the first film and ratchet them up to 11. 

It wasn’t a bad episode, mind you.  But after a season with “Family of Blood” or “Blink” or even “Gridlock” and “Utopia,” it was … a bit of a let-down.

Here’s waiting for Series 4.