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.

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