The Master (John Simm) is resurrected by a clique of, erm, prison wardens? One of whom took ownership of the ring (er, a horcrux?) The Master fortuitously endowed with his soul, essence, or whatever. A mumbo-jumbo ritual is performed by these acolytes, despite the fact none of them should have any memory of the Harold Saxon politician he posed as during season 3's finale (and certainly no desire to seem him revived), as time was reversed and his reign of terror expunged from history. For some other equally obscure reason, The Master's wife Lucy (Alexandra Moen) is required to put the finishing touch on the group's ritual (by kissing her lipstick onto cloth -- WTF?!), but The Master's lightshow return is cut short when Lucy sabotages the life-giving potion and consequently destroys the prison where the ceremony was being held. The Master is somehow the sole survivor and escapes the devastation regardless, and the only side-effects he suffers as a result of Lucy's disruption is a ravenous appetite, bleached blonde hair, a penchant for hoodies, and Jedi-like superpowers of "force lightning" and the ability to jump tall buildings in a single bound...The Doctor (David Tennant) is concurrently hurtling to Earth in his TARDIS after the wearisome Ood reveal just enough psychic blather about bad dreams, encroaching darkness, and a prophecy of "the end of time itself" to make it impossible for him not to. He arrives just in the nick of time, too, as The Master is busy turning burger van cooks into skeletons and eating junk food with his mouth open. Luckily, to avoid the need for a plot, it's revealed that Time Lords have the ability to smell each other's presence (a quirk that I don't remember being mentioned before, and will likely never be mentioned again), but The Doctor's distracted from fighting his arch-nemesis by the arrival of Wilf (Benard Cribbins), who has managed to track him down using a busload of elderly curtain-twitchers and a randy pensioner called Minnie (June Whitfield). There follows the episode's one good scene, as Wilf and The Doctor discuss their mortality together in a greasy spoon -- once again proving that Davies' skill lies in making small, intimate moments buzz through characterisation and dialogue, and whenever he overreaches his ambition... he flounders in a stew of half-baked ideas.
I haven't even mentioned enigmatic businessman/author Joshua Naismith (David Harewood), who is busily reconstructing an "Immortality Gate" so that his adult daughter Abigail (Tracy Ifeachor) can use it to never die (er, somehow), but needs The Master's expertise to finish his build. Of course, this so-called Immortality Gate actually has another purpose entirely, which The Master later exploits for himself -– justifying his Aryan hairdo by using his own body as a template to turn the entire human population into a "Master Race" of identical clones. Villains like him need a good pun to end on, see. There was also some guff about humans having dreams of a cackling Master which they promptly forget when they wake up -- although Wilf is the only one able to recall these nightmares, and is also being contacted by a strange old woman through his TV set. I'm assuming that Wilf's more than just an old amateur astronomer, and is perhaps of alien origin himself. Might he be a surviving Time Lord, perhaps positioned in a key role to guide The Doctor towards his destiny?Beyond the café scene, there wasn't much for David Tennant to sink his teeth into here -- it was all just running around, looking flustered and distressed. I'm hoping Part 2 will deliver the emotional meat that befits Tennant's swansong, as otherwise this special could be a genuine travesty. Likewise, John Simm's rascally portrayal of The Master grew tedious quickly, no matter how many special powers they endowed him with. It's kind of like giving Professor Moriarty a ray gun to blast Sherlock Holmes with -– does that take the drama to another level, or diminish it entirely? Need I ask? Simm's performance as The Master wasn't to everyone's taste when he was introduced back in season 3, but at least his first dastardly plan felt relatively plausible and premeditated, whereas everything that occurs in "The End Of Time" was fuelled by improvisation and coincidence -- the writer's hand clearly visible in how it struggled to suture together its disparate threads, before just screwing them up into a ball and restaging the mass duplication scene from Being John
Overall, while it remains very possible that Part 2 will retroactively improve certain elements of this opening gambit, "The End Of Time: Part One" was still a messy, meandering, overstuffed, often embarrassing mess. There was no poise, grace, intelligence or efficiency here, just a whole heap of odds and ends trying to find form -- even leaning on the amateurish need for a Narrator (Timothy Dalton, spitting) to lend things the veneer of gravitas. So much of it was incoherent that I was left trying to reconcile its faults in-between scenes myself -- like quite why Donna's (Catherine Tate) repressed memories came flooding back after seeing The Master; someone she's never actually met before! In the end I gave up. Maybe Timothy Dalton, the return of the Time Lords, and the death of the Tenth Doctor will stir some life into next week's conclusion.25 December 2009
BBC1/BBC HD, 6pm
written by: Russell T. Davies directed by: Euros Lyn starring: David Tennant (The Doctor), John Simm (The Master), Bernard Cribbins (Wilf), Timothy Dalton (The Narrator), Catherine Tate (Donna), Jacquieline King (Sylvia), June Whitfield (Minnie Hooper), Claire Bloom (The Woman), David Harewood (Joshua Naismith), Tracy Ifeachor (Tracy Naismith), Lawry Lewin (Rossiter), Sinead Keenan (Addams), Alexandra Moen (Lucy Saxon), Karl Collins (Shaun Temple), Teresa Banham (Governor), Barry Howard (Oliver Barnes), Sylvia Seymour (Miss Trefusis), Brid Brennan (The Visionary), Krystal Archer (Nerys), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells), Paul Kasey (Ood Sigma), Silas Carson (Ood Sigma, voice) & Brian Cox (Elder Ood)
