Radio Free Tomorrow

The good news is that “The End of Time, Part 1″ is noticeably better than the first half of the Series 4 finale, “The Stolen Earth”. Of course, the problem is that “The Stolen Earth” was a steaming pile of cat feces, so improving on that standard is simply not very difficult.

The bad news is that, as fun as “The End of Time, Part 1″, it isn’t as good as it ought to be. Russel T. Davies has proven time and again (most recently, I’m told, with Torchwood: “Children of Earth”, which everybody seems to rave about), that he actually knows how to write in a non-clunky, non-fanwanky way. And yet, when it comes to Doctor Who finales, he continues to fall back on clunky, contrived, fanwanky writing.

That said, RTD does make good on something he was quoted as saying about this story. In an interview, RTD had said that this story was going to be “huge and epic, but also intimate.” When I first read that, I twitched, because it sounded like a salesman trying to convince us that his product is all things to all people, which never works out.

So I was pleased to discover that he actually succeeded at crafting a story that manages to be both things at the same time.

The epic side of things was, for good or ill, a given with this story. RTD doesn’t do subtle, low-key finales. I suppose television, in general, isn’t geared for them. The Classic Series never bothered much with “event” finales, but the landscape has changed a lot since then. Now, people sort-of expect it.

On the surface of it, the stakes are not as high as last time (“The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End”), when the fate of the entire universe was in the balance thanks to Davros’ mad scheme to unravel space-time but protect the Daleks. This time it appears to just be the fate of the Earth, and humankind, that’s at stake.

Except that one of the basic premises of Doctor Who, almost from its inception, is that humankind has a tremendous role to play in the events of the galaxy. The New Series has frequently played on that theme, showing us, for example, the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. So if humanity is destroyed, or its history seriously deflected in the present day, the fate of the whole galaxy sort of unravels.

(This wasn’t an issue with the Master’s previous scheme in “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords” because the whole thing was being propped up by a Paradox Machine, which allowed the Master’s conquest of our present-day to coincide in a universe where humanity survived until the end of the universe to become the Toclafane).

At any rate, this unraveling will, I expect, become the key-stone for the events foreshadowed at the end of the story, with the return of the Time Lords. But that’s way ahead of the game.

On the epic end of the scale, there are a few different things going on here:

• There’s the looming shadow of the Doctor’s impending death. As the Doctor himself points out later, even a regeneration entails a huge dislocation of personality that changes not just the character, but the tenor of the series.
• There’s the resurrection of The Master. This was handled in a way I suspect some fans may find a little strange, because it smacks of magic. This is one of hearkens back to a race introduced in the classic episode “The Brain of Morbius” known as the Sisters of Karn. The Karnites have an undefined relationship with the Time Lords, and one of the links involved an “elixir of life”.
• There’s the Immortality Gate. Leaving aside what the Master actually does with it, its intended abilities are quite grandiose.
• There’s what the Master actually does with it, pulling an Agent Smith in the real world and becoming…well, everybody on Earth.
• There’s the reveal, at the end, of the impending return of the Time Lords.

In the meantime, however, we get a few truly intimate moments:

• The Doctor and Wilf. I haven’t seen a lot of S4 yet, so I don’t have quite the attachment to Wilf that others seem to, but I will admit that he’s an interesting foil and companion for the Doctor. So much of the time, the Doctor travels with people who are, both physically and chronologically, younger than he is. But Wilf, for all that he’s apparently only lived a normal human life span, and therefore is chronologically much younger than the Doctor, is still an old man with an old man’s perspective. He’s a father and a grandfather, just as the Doctor is. Wilf’s conversation in the cafe with the Doctor smacks of two old friends getting together to catch up, albeit mostly on bad news, in a way that very few conversations between the Doctor and anyone else ever have. There are very few ways in which these two men could ever be “equals”, and yet they treat each other that way.
• The Doctor and the Master. One of the brilliant things RTD has done (and see, I don’t just smack him around–when he does good, I say so!) is highlight the personal relationship between these two men. The Master has always been one of the Doctor’s most interesting adversaries when the writers remember that bond, remember that, no matter how much they fight each other, disagree with each other, loathe what each one has done or will do in the future, they started out as close friends, almost family, and somehow have never quite been able to let go of each other.

OK, so now let’s go back to where I began this article, with the quality of the writing. Once again, we have a situation that feels like it’s being thrown together in a terrible rush. This time, at least, it feels a little less contrived, but it’s still happening too quickly. It doesn’t just feel breathless and exciting. It feels like RTD wants to get us past some of the plot points before we can look at them in the remotest detail and realize they barely hold together.

For example, while there are several reasons I can think of why the Doctor might accidentally land outside the prison too late to stop the Master’s resurrection, the story implies that he never had a chance, that events in the 42d Century are somehow locked to events in the 21st. Now, Doctor Who has often used this sort of plot device when it’s convenient, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense here.

Then there’s the resurrection itself, which as I say smacks a little too much of magic the way it was handled. As an Old School fan, I can accept that magic, or magic-like things, sometimes happen in the Doctor Who universe. Sometimes they’ll be candidates for Clarke’s Law; sometimes they’ll just be left unexplained. The classic series abounds with examples, including the aforementioned Sisterhood of Karn, and later no less a personage than Morgaine le Fay.

But the modern series has largely avoided magic per se, so it feels a bit jarring. It feels like Davies had a moment of, “Oh, shit, it’s time to actually bring the Master back…how do I actually do it? Um…um…gah! I know! Potions! Kids today love potions!”

Um…yeah.

Then there’s the bizarre insertion of President Obama. I don’t even really want to talk about it. It was just absurd in every possible way.

Once the Master’s resurrected, though, things settle down a bit and follow slightly more logically. Explaining the Master’s condition goes by a little fast (one rapid-fire sentence from the Doctor) but really, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the resurrection went wrong, and the Master is more desperate than ever.

Exactly how Naismith knew anything at all about the Master, let alone knew he was back and where to find him, is a bit of a mystery that it would have been nice to get at least a little back-story on. Obviously lots of powerful people must have known Harold Saxon. Also obviously, Harold Saxon had a cadre of supporters, at least some of whom formed, essentially, a cult behind the scenes and knew something of whom and what they were serving. This is not the first time The Master has successfully pulled together such a group (Classic Series: “The Daemons”, is a clear example). I can believe there was a leak somewhere and a man like Naismith has enough ears in enough places that he picked up a whisper and followed it.

And then, we have the final reveal: that The Narrator (which is how Timothy Dalton is credited) is actually a Time Lord. In fact, if you watch the two-minute clip the BBC aired of Part 2, you find out that he’s Lord President of the Council, and was at the end of the Time War. This has the potential to be really huge…and therefore has the potential to be hugely botched. Somehow, this weekend, RTD needs both to give us a glimpse at the Time War and its cataclysmic ending, and at the same time come up with convincing reason why the Master’s actions allow the Time Lords to return.

I always thought the Time War was a great plot device for bringing the series back. It allowed a whole bunch of old baggage to simply be set aside for a while, and set new fans and old on equal footing, since everything the old fans know about the Doctor’s home and background was essentially a moot point.

I also always knew it wouldn’t last forever. At some point, someone would feel compelled to bring the Time Lords back. When I heard RTD was leaving the series in favor of Stephen Moffat, I was already convinced that the Time Lords would either be brought back just before RTD left (which is what’s happening) or not long after SM took over, simply so that SM would not feel saddled with one of RTD’s persistent themes, “the lonely god”.

So I really wasn’t surprised at all. But I was, I will admit, stirred. Despite the slight cheesyness of the speech the President gives to the assemblage of Time Lords at the end, I still got chills from the whole sequence. So we’ll call that one a win for RTD, but make it clear that he’s on notice that he still has one spectacular rabbit to liberate from the hat he’s built, here.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode quite a bit. But I still wish the actual writing-craft had been a lot more polished.