Sunday 31 January 2010

Friday 1 January 2010

The End of Time Part 2

In continuation from Part One, the Time Lord Council discuss a final strategy to survive the Time War and escape the Time Lock that Gallifrey and the entire Time War is trapped in, knowing that the same day the Doctor will find the opportunity to destroy both the Time Lords and the Daleks ("The Sound of Drums"). The President, violently refusing to concede defeat in the war, discovers both the Doctor and The Master remain outside the Time Lock, and devises a scheme to allow the Time Lords to link to the Master. They achieve this via a mental imprint retroactively placed inside the Master as a child — his "sound of drums" and the cause of his insanity since childhood — , and through a Gallifreyian diamond sent to Earth in the present day as an implicit signal to the Master, and to act as an anchor outside of the Time Lock.
In the present, the Doctor and Wilf are saved from the Master by the Vinvocci. The Master discovers the diamond and tells the Doctor, who immediately realises that the Time Lords are returning. Armed with Wilf's pistol, The Doctor returns to Earth, rejecting the opportunity of a kamikaze attack on the Gate to prevent the return and instead jumping from the ship; too late however as the Council of Time Lords have already arrived. Their intention is to end time itself and ascend to another plane of consciousness; presumably killing everything else throughout time in the process. The Master intends to use the Immortality Gate to seize control of the council as he had humanity. However his bragging gives the Time Lord President opportunity to counter the effects before he can act, returning humanity to normal but also beginning the materialisation of Gallifrey near Earth, threatening to knock the planet out of its orbit. The Doctor is left with the choice of shooting The Master, breaking the link and returning the Time Lords to their end, or killing the President to take control of the Time Lords. Instead, The Doctor uses the gun to shatter the diamond being used to maintain the link, breaking it and and prompting the President to try and kill the Doctor. The Master, having realised his plan has failed and that he had been used by the Time Lords, intervenes and attacks the President in an act of revenge. The Time Lords, and Gallifrey, are pushed back through the gateway to the last day of the Time War. The fate of the Master is unclear.
The Doctor enjoys only a brief moment's relief before he hears four knocks, the sound which will precede his death. He turns around to find Wilfred still trapped in a chamber connected to a nuclear device which will soon go critical; only by self-sacrifice can he be freed. The Doctor hesitates, and rants and rages in pure despair, but concludes he may have lived too long; he releases Wilfred, and suffers a massive dose of radiation poisoning.
Although he survives initially, the effects on the Doctor's body show that his regeneration has started. He takes Wilfred home and brief scenes show him helping his major past companions in turn before he fully regenerates. As he collapses just short of the TARDIS, Ood Sigma appears and says the entire Universe would sing him to his sleep. Pushed on by this, the Doctor reaches the TARDIS, which he sets in motion. The Doctor completes his regeneration in an explosive manner, as the TARDIS windows shatter and the console room bursts into flames as he changes. With the TARDIS falling apart around him, the Eleventh Doctor quickly inspects his new body. Gleefully, he clings to the console of the TARDIS as it plummets back to Earth.