Saturday 30 June 2007

Last of The Time Lords

A year after the appearance of the Toclafane, the human population is on the verge of extinction. After escaping from the Valiant, Martha Jones has been traveling across the Earth for a year, staying out of the Master's detection through use of the TARDIS key acting as a perception filter. She returns to England with help of a former doctor Thomas Milligan, and seeks Professor Docherty to help her capture a Toclafane.
Using data gathered when a Toclafane was hit by lightning, Professor Docherty is able to recreate the conditions, and the three are able to stun one of the beings. When they open it up, they discover that the Toclafane are humans from the year 100 trillion, who, having attempted to reach Utopia and finding nothing but darkness, became insane in their search to outlive the universe and cannibalised themselves to become the child-like bio-mechanical Toclafane, brought to the present through the Doctor's TARDIS and the Paradox Machine in order to avoid a temporal paradox. Armed with this information, Martha announces that she will face the Master, armed with a special gun created by Torchwood and UNIT that can stop a Time Lord's regeneration, giving her a way of defeating the Master. After Martha and Thomas leave, Professor Docherty, desperate for any information on her son, reports Martha's presence to the Master.
Martha and Thomas meet up with several other human groups hiding in shelters, and tells tales of her travels in the last year. The Master along with his men land and begin to round up the humans, seeking Martha and demanding she hand over the gun. After she does so, the Master destroys it, then attempts to kill her, but Thomas sacrifices himself to save her. The Master realises that killing Martha in front of the Doctor would be more satisfying, and brings her back to the Valiant. There, Martha learns that the Master has kept the aged Doctor as a pet and even further humiliating him by aging him further and putting him into a bird cage, while he has kept Jack in chains, killing him and forcing him to revive repeatedly. The Master reveals that he is moments away from launching Toclafane fleets from Earth to conquer the rest of the universe, and forces Martha to kneel in front of him. However, the fleet fails to launch at the end of the countdown, confusing the Master.
Martha reveals that she was not travelling on Earth to locate the fictional anti-regeneration gun, but instead to tell people of the Doctor and send their thoughts to the Doctor at the fleet's launch moment; with their emotions, the Doctor is able to use the Archangel network to collect the vast amount of psychic energy and use it to restore his body and ends the Master's control. As the Master cowers, the Doctor says the words that the Master was most afraid to hear: "I forgive you". As Martha, Jack and the others fight to keep the Toclafane from defending the Paradox Machine, the Master teleports himself and the Doctor to Earth using Jack's vortex manipulator and threatens to detonate the fleet and destroy Earth in the process, but the Doctor calls his bluff, reminding the Master that doing so will kill him – the one thing the Master is incapable of – and is able to make the Master surrender. The two return to the Valiant just as Jack and other soldiers destroy the Paradox Machine, causing time to rewind just before the rift opened; those on board the Valiant are still aware of the events of the last year.
As everyone recovers back on Earth, Francine Jones attempts to shoot the Master, but the Doctor is able to persuade her not to do so. However, they are caught off-guard when Lucy Saxon kills him herself. The Master, dying in the Doctor's arms, refuses to regenerate as to be a prisoner for the rest of his life. As the Doctor desperately pleads to the Master to stay alive, the Master gives his final words, "I win", and dies, sending the Doctor into an emotional turmoil. Later, the Doctor burns the Master's body on a pyre, but an unseen woman's hand later recovers his signet ring from the ashes.
The Doctor drops off Jack in Cardiff to rejoin his team, deactivating his vortex manipulator to prevent Jack from jumping around time and space. As Jack departs, he reflects on his immortality and what he might look like in a million years, and notes to the Doctor and Martha that in his youth on the Boeshane Peninsula, his good looks earned him the nickname "the Face of Boe". Martha takes her leave of the Doctor, opting to look after her family and finish her medical degree, recognising that while she loves the Doctor, he cannot return that; Martha however gives him a cell phone so they can stay in touch and travel again one day. As the Doctor pilots the TARDIS away, now with his severed hand aboard, it is struck by a large force and the bow of a ship called the Titanic bursts through a wall of the control room, leaving the Doctor perplexed how that could occur.

Saturday 23 June 2007

The Sound of Drums

The Doctor, Martha, and Jack manage to escape from Futurekind in the year 100 trillion through Jack's repaired Vortex Manipulator, finding themselves in London. They quickly learn that the Master has taken on the persona of "Mr. Harold Saxon", the current Prime Minister, using his Archangel phone network to subliminally influence the population into voting for him while masking his presence from the Doctor. The three narrowly avoid a bomb placed in Martha's flat, and the arrest of Martha's family, before the Master contacts them to gloat about his seeming victory.
The Doctor learns that the Master was resurrected by the Time Lords to fight in the Time War to be the perfect warrior, but instead the Master fled to the end of the universe and made himself human when defeat seemed inevitable. The Master reveals that the three are now England's most wanted criminals and has stripped them of any help, including sending Jack's Torchwood team on a wild goose chase to the Himalayas. Hiding in an abandoned building, the Doctor uses parts of Martha's laptop and the TARDIS keys to create a perception filter so they can move about unnoticed. He explains some of the Master's past: that as a child, the Master looked into the Time Vortex, and was likely driven mad as a result. They come to discover that the Master, as Saxon, is planning to reveal Earth's first contact the next day with an alien race known as the "Toclafane", (in truth, the name 'Toclafane' refers to the Gallifreyan equivalent of the "bogeyman",) and the Doctor insists they must be present.
As the appointed time of first contact nears, United States President-Elect Winters arrives in England and places the operation in the hands of UNIT, transferring the meeting aboard the flying aircraft carrier, the Valiant; the Master accepts this change, as it suits his purposes, and along with his wife Lucy and the rest of Martha's family, board the vessel. The Doctor, Martha, and Jack teleport aboard with Jack's vortex manipulator, discovering the Doctor's TARDIS has been "cannibalised" by the Master to create a Paradox Machine which is building up power to be activated at the appointed time of first contact.
As the three make their way to the bridge, the Doctor tells them to try to get their perception filter around the Master to reveal who he really is to humanity and stop his plan. As they enter the bridge unnoticed, the first four Toclafane, floating metal spheres, appear on the bridge and demand to see the Master; the Master delightedly reveals himself and orders the Toclafane to kill Winters. The Master then reveals that he is well aware of the Doctor's presence in the room by using his laser screwdriver upon the group, temporarily killing Jack while aging the Doctor by 100 years through the use of LazLabs genetic manipulation technology using biological data from the Doctor's severed hand that the Master had stolen. Jack gives Martha his vortex manipulator and tells Martha to get off the Valiant, as there is no way they can defeat the Master.
The Master brings Martha's family into the bridge as the Paradox Machine nears activation, and taunts the aged Doctor about the nature of the Toclafane and his victory. The Paradox Machine activates as the Master tells the people of Earth that it's the "end of the world" and plays the song "Voodoo Child". A massive rift opens above the Valiant, and six billion Toclafane descend from it. The Master orders the Toclafane to "remove one tenth" of the Earth's population. As Martha tends to the aged Doctor, he whispers into Martha's ear. Martha, unable to save the Doctor, Jack, or her family, promises she will return, and uses Jack's vortex manipulator to teleport off the Valiant to find safety on Earth; she then flees into the distance as the Toclafane wreak havoc on humanity. The Master himself gloats about the fall of the human race and forces the Doctor to look upon his "new dominion as Master of All."

Saturday 16 June 2007

Utopia

The TARDIS lands in Cardiff to refuel from the Rift. The Doctor states that this will only take twenty seconds (in contrast to his previous visit), noting that the Rift has been active recently. Captain Jack Harkness races towards the TARDIS, grabbing onto it as it dematerialises, causing it to hurtle out of control to the end of the Universe.
After landing in the year 100 trillion on the planet Malcassairo, Jack confronts the Doctor about abandoning him on Satellite 5, and asks about Rose Tyler. Jack reveals that he returned to Earth using a vortex manipulator, but was stranded in the 19th century; therefore, he went to wait at the Cardiff Rift, knowing the Doctor would eventually come back. Exploring, they find a dead city and encounter the Futurekind, cannibalistic humanoids who are hunting a human. The human is attempting to reach a transport to "Utopia", the last hope of the human race.
At the transport site, the TARDIS crew meet the elderly Professor Yana and his insectoid assistant Chantho, who are desperate for help. The spacecraft to Utopia can't launch due to problems with its experimental engine system. Despite the unfamiliar technology, the Doctor solves the scientific problems, and Jack makes final preparations in a heavily irradiated room. As Jack does this, he and the Doctor discuss Jack's inability to die, saying that his resurrection is why the Doctor abandoned him on Satellite 5. The rocket finally takes off for Utopia, leaving the Doctor, Yana, Chantho, Martha, and Jack behind.
A separate plot shows that Yana has been hearing a constant drumbeat inside his head — a condition he reports having had all his life, with the drums getting louder of late. Words such as "regeneration" and "TARDIS" — elements of Time Lord lore — exacerbate the problem. When Martha expresses concern over the Professor's uneasiness, he reveals a long-standing concern with time, and shows Martha a broken fob watch he's had since obtaining it as a child, identical in design to John Smith's watch in "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood". Concerned about the implications, Martha rushes to inform the Doctor.
When the Doctor hears about Yana's timepiece, a flashback sequence inter-cut with the letters of the Professor's name makes clear that "Yana" is an acronym of "You are not alone", the Face of Boe's last words to the Doctor. At the same time, Yana opens the watch, releasing his Time Lord essence. Frantic and horrified, the Doctor races towards Yana's laboratory but is hindered as the Professor closes the doors and allows the Futurekind to enter the base. Yana reveals his true identity to Chantho: he is the Master. He electrocutes her, but Chantho manages to shoot him before dying.
The Doctor arrives in Yana's laboratory just as the Master enters the Doctor's TARDIS, taking the severed hand (which Jack recovered after the events of "The Christmas Invasion" and had carried ever since) with him. He then deadlock seals the TARDIS doors, preventing the Doctor from opening it. Dying from Chantho's shot, the Master regenerates into a younger body, whose voice Martha recognises. After taunting and berating the Doctor, he leaves in the TARDIS, stranding the three time travellers in the distant future, with the Futurekind about to break through the door.

Saturday 9 June 2007

Blink

In 2007, Sally Sparrow enters the dilapidated house, Wester Drumlins, to look for subjects to photograph but instead finds eerie angel-like statues, a Yale key hanging from one of their hands, and messages from "the Doctor" behind the peeling wallpaper addressed to her, warning her of the "Weeping Angels". Sally returns the next day with her friend Kathy Nightingale to explore further; Kathy disappears as at the same time a young man claiming to be Kathy's grandson delivers a letter to Sally. The letter from Kathy explains, just moments ago from Sally's perspective, Kathy suddenly found herself in the 1920s in Hull, settling down with a husband and leading a peaceful life, and requests Sally to let her closest relative, her brother Larry, know of her disappearance.
Sally visits Larry at a DVD rental store, and finds that he has documented a series of "easter eggs" across seventeen unrelated DVDs, each with the same man calling himself "The Doctor" having half of a conversation with the viewer. Larry gives Sally a list of the DVDs as she leaves for the police station. There, she meets Detective Inspector Billy Shipton, who explains that there have been several disappearances at the Drumlins, and shows her an impound lot containing vehicles abandoned near the Drumlins, including a locked fake police box. Sally leaves, but remembers the key she found, and returns to find Billy has disappeared. She immediately receives a call from a much older Billy at the hospital and visits him. Billy explains after she left he found himself facing the Angels who were trying to retrieve the police box. Billy then suddenly found himself in 1969 and met the Doctor, who asked him to relay a message to Sally decades later; Billy subsequently married and started a video production house and was responsible for putting the easter eggs on the DVDs. Before Billy dies, he tells Sally the Doctor's message to her: to look at the list of DVDs. Sally discovers that the list is her own DVD collection, and realises the easter egg is meant for her.
Sally and Larry return to the Drumlins with a portable DVD player, and watch the entirety of the easter egg. Sally discovers she can converse with the Doctor as, in the past, he possesses a complete version of the transcript that is currently being compiled in the present by Larry as he watches. The Doctor explains that he and Martha Jones were transported to the past by the Weeping Angels, beings that feed off the potential time energy of others. The Angels are "quantum locked", allowing them to move incredibly fast when unobserved but cannot move when watched, and thus warning Sally not to blink when they are around. The Doctor tells them they are seeking his TARDIS to acquire its potential power which could be catastrophic. When the Doctor comes to the end of the transcript, Sally realises Larry has stopped writing it due to the presence of an Angel in the room, and the two quickly escape to the basement. There, they discover the Angels have brought the TARDIS, and Sally and Larry take shelter inside it as the Angels surround them. Inside they learn that the DVD can be used to activate the TARDIS; upon doing so the TARDIS dematerialises, leaving the two of them behind. However, with the TARDIS gone, the Angels have been tricked into observing themselves, permanently frozen as statues staring at each other.
A year later, Sally and Larry have become romantically involved opening a DVD and book store together, though Sally's insistence on keeping a folder of the events for the Doctor worries Larry. As Larry steps out for an errand, Sally sees the Doctor and Martha hurriedly leave a taxi in front of the shop, carrying a bow and quiver of arrows, and goes to meet them. When they do not recognise her, she realises that they have yet to experience the events that sent them to the past, and hands over her folder of information, warning the Doctor he may need it in his future and completing the ontological paradox. The Doctor and Sally say their goodbyes as Larry returns, surprised to see the man from the easter egg. Sally and Larry return to the shop hand in hand. The episode ends with a repeat of the Doctor's warning to Sally, this time directed at the viewer, overlaid with flashes of famous bronze and stone statues.

Saturday 2 June 2007

The Family of Blood

The Family of Blood, in the form of the humans they have possessed, hold Martha and Joan Redfern captive at the village dance; demanding that John Smith—the Doctor's human form—make a choice about which of the two to save. As John tries to decide, Timothy Latimer, in possession of the Doctor's fob watch containing the Time Lord persona, briefly opens it up again (terrifying the Sister with an image of the Doctor at his most cruel and merciless), which is detected by the Family and momentarily distracts them, allowing John, Joan, Martha, and the other villagers to escape, collecting at the school. John helps to organise the school's defenses while Martha and Joan search for the fob watch.
The Family assault the school with an army of scarecrows, but the boys in the school are able to defend the first wave. When the Family attempts to show John that they have discovered his TARDIS, Joan, having seen the images of the TARDIS in John's "Journal of Impossible Things", realises that John is really the Doctor. As the Family continues to assault the school, John, Joan and Martha escape to the cottage of the little girl's family which the Family had possessed. Realising that the Doctor has left the school, the Family returns to their ship and begins an aerial bombardment of the village. As John and the others take shelter, Tim arrives and returns the watch to John, and both Martha and Joan implore John to use it to become the Doctor and save everyone. John is hesitant as using the watch is the same as committing suicide. Joan takes John aside and shares a series of images generated by the watch showing what their lives may have been like in the future, happily settling down, raising a family, and growing old together. Joan admits that she would love that future, but that the Doctor is needed now.
On the Family's ship, John is let aboard, fumbling about the strange interior and surrendering the watch as to stop the bombardment. When the Family opens the watch, they find it empty and realise that John has changed himself back into the Doctor. The Doctor warns the family that his early bumbling has purposely caused the ship to go into overload, and they all escape before it explodes. The Doctor then punishes the Family for their destruction, giving each of them a form of twisted immortality, such as being stuck at the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy or being trapped in every mirror in existence, when all the Doctor was trying to do was let them die out peacefully. The Doctor returns to Joan, offering her travel aboard the TARDIS but she cannot accept as she loved John but cannot come to love who the Doctor is. The Doctor gives her his Journal as she leaves. The Doctor and Martha say their goodbyes to Timothy, letting him keep the empty fob watch for himself.
A year later, as Timothy aids Hutchinson in World War I, his visions from opening the watch are able to save the two from being hit by a shell, and both survive the war. In Timothy's old age, he participates in Remembrance Sunday, and spots the Doctor and Martha from afar, both wearing artificial poppies. Timothy and the Doctor silently acknowledge each other as the service continues.