Last of the Time Lords

191c - Last of the Time Lords
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Companion Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones)
Production
Directed by	Colin Teague
Written by	Russell T. Davies
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	3.13
Series	Series 3
Running time	3 of 3 episodes, 52 mins
First broadcast	30 June 2007
Chronology
← Preceded by "The Sound of Drums" Followed by → "Voyage of the Damned"

"Last of the Time Lords" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 30 June 2007, and is the thirteenth and final episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series. It also sees the departure of Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones as the Doctor's companion.

Synopsis

One year after the events of "The Sound of Drums", the Master has conquered Earth and enslaved its population. He holds the Doctor prisoner, and prepares warships for a new Time Lord Empire. Now it is up to Martha Jones to carry out the Doctor's plan for saving the world.

Plot

File:Doctor archangel.jpg

The Doctor, newly rejuvenated, shows the Master the power of the human race.

Martha returns to England, having travelled the world for a year. Her TARDIS key, still generating a perception filter, has kept her hidden all this time. She has seen Japan destroyed, the people of South Africa burned alive, and worldwide destruction in general. She meets Thomas Milligan, a doctor-turned-freedom fighter who is to lead her to a Professor Docherty. Martha herself has become a figure of hope against the Master, rumoured to be the only one capable of killing him.

Meanwhile, on the Valiant, the Master is keeping the aged Doctor in a dog tent as his prisoner, Martha's family as his servants, and Captain Jack Harkness in chains. Lucy Saxon is still with him, but a bruise below her eye suggests abuse. He shows the Doctor the world he has created: the new Time Lord Empire. Across the world, warships are being built from every piece of scrap metal available to wage war on the rest of the universe. Still, in spite of the situation, the Doctor says he has "only one thing to say", but the Master doesn't want to hear it. After a failed attempt by the Jones family and the Doctor to gain control of the Master's Laser screwdriver, the Master sends out a transmission for Martha, having heard of her return. Watching in Docherty's lab, Martha sees the Master age the Doctor by 900 years, which shrinks him into a tiny, frail creature. All it does is give Martha hope, since the Doctor is still alive.

Though the Toclafane have proven to be virtually invincible, Martha stumbled upon one that was struck by lightning, and with the data gathered from that one, Docherty is able to replicate the accident. Upon examining the sphere, they make a horrifying discovery: the Toclafane are the humans from the year 100 trillion. There was no Utopia, only more darkness, and with everything dying around them the humans cannibalised themselves, becoming the child-like Toclafane. The Master brought them back in time using the TARDIS, which could only travel between Utopia and present-day Earth. The contradiction of the Toclafane killing their own ancestors is made possible by the paradox machine built by the Master, which is holding the universe together.

When Docherty asks if the rumours about Martha are true, Martha reveals a gun, developed by Torchwood and UNIT, purportedly able to kill a Time Lord and prevent the ensuing regeneration. Martha reports she has retrieved three of the four chemicals needed for the gun from their hiding places around the world, (in Budapest, Beijing and San Diego) and has returned to London to get the fourth. As Martha and Thomas depart for a shelter in Bexley to hide, Docherty reveals their whereabouts to the Master.

The Master captures Martha and takes her back to the Valiant. He intends to execute her at the moment his fleet is launched. As the clock counts down, Martha reveals the real reason she travelled the globe: it wasn't for a fictional anti-regeneration gun, or to fight back, but merely to talk. She told everyone about the Doctor; specifically, she told everyone to think of the Doctor at the same time the Master plans to launch his fleet. Combined with the Master's Archangel satellite network, which the Doctor has had an entire year to get in tune with, this has the effect of charging the Doctor with the combined psychic energy of the entire planet. With the energy, the Doctor is able to restore his original age and stop the Master's plan. As the Master cowers, the Doctor says the words the Master was afraid to hear: "I forgive you."

With the Master out of the picture, Jack rounds up some soldiers to destroy the paradox machine, but is delayed by the Toclafane protecting it. The Master, using Jack's vortex manipulator, teleports himself and the Doctor to Earth, threatening to detonate his fleet and take the Earth with it. The Doctor knows that the Master won't kill himself, and manages to teleport both himself and the Master back to the Valiant just as Jack destroys the paradox machine, rewinding time to just after the President is killed and just before the Toclafane arrive. Everyone on the Valiant remembers the events because they are at "the eye of the storm".

The Master, now defenceless, is handcuffed and stands before the Doctor. The Doctor announces that, since the Master is a Time Lord, he is the Doctor's responsibility and will be imprisoned on the TARDIS. However, Lucy, with a glazed look, silently shoots the Master. Rather than be a prisoner for all eternity, the Master lets himself die, refusing to regenerate despite the Doctor's desperate pleas. Just before dying, the Master says, "I win", referring to the Doctor's now inevitable loneliness, then muses on the constant drumming in his head, wondering if it will finally stop. The Doctor then weeps for his lost adversary and fellow Time Lord. The Doctor cremates the Master's body on a pyre. However, after he leaves, a female hand wearing red nail polish is seen taking the Master's ring from the burnt out pyre, with malevolent laughter echoing in the background.

In Cardiff, Jack tells Martha and the Doctor he will be staying there to look after his "team". The Doctor disables Jack's vortex manipulator to keep him from jumping through time unsupervised . The Doctor then tells Jack there's nothing that can be done about his immortality: he'll never be able to die. When thinking about what he might look like millions of years from now, Jack mentions that he was the first person from the Boeshane Peninsula to join the Time Agency; there, his good looks earned him the nickname "the Face of Boe", to which the Doctor and Martha react with surprise and disbelief.

With the TARDIS repaired, the Doctor is ready to move on. Martha, however, has decided to stay so she can look after her family and finally become a true doctor. She gives him her phone so they can keep in touch. Leaving in the TARDIS, the Doctor begins to relax in the console room chair until the room is shaken with great force, and the bow of a ship smashes through the TARDIS' wall. Picking up a lifebelt, he finds "Titanic" written on it, to which he can only respond, "What?"

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Martha Jones — Freema Agyeman
• Jack Harkness — John Barrowman
• The Master — John Simm
• Lucy Saxon — Alexandra Moen
• Francine Jones — Adjoa Andoh
• Clive Jones — Trevor Laird
• Tish Jones — Gugu Mbatha-Raw
• Thomas Milligan — Tom Ellis
• Professor Docherty — Ellie Haddington
• Lad — Tom Golding
• Woman — Natasha Alexander
• Toclafane voices — Zoe Thorne, Gerard Logan, and Johnnie Lyne-Pirkis

Continuity

• Jack states that in his home era, he became a "poster boy" for his home, the Boeshane peninsula, and thus acquired the nickname "the Face of Boe". Russell T. Davies confirms in the podcast that goes along with the episode that Jack is indeed the Face of Boe.
• The Master makes reference to The Sea Devils and The Claws of Axos. The Doctor also makes references to the Axons.
• The Master's laser screwdriver is said to be isomorphically controlled, an attribute previously assigned to the Doctor's TARDIS in Pyramids of Mars.
• Clips from "Smith and Jones", "Utopia" and "The Sound of Drums" are used in this episode.
• Martha mentions that she once met William Shakespeare ("The Shakespeare Code").
• When the Master is shot by Lucy Saxon he says, "It's always the women." He was previously shot by Chantho in "Utopia".
• The Titanic smashes through the walls of the TARDIS at the end of this episode. In "Rose", Clive, a conspiracy theorist, shows Rose a photograph of the Ninth Doctor with "the Daniels family of Southampton", on the eve of their scheduled voyage on the Titanic. For an unspecified reason, they cancelled their trip and survived. In "The End of the World", the Ninth Doctor also mentions that he "was once on a ship, they said that was unsinkable. Ended up clinging to the side of an iceberg. Wasn't half cold."
• The Doctors hand from The Christmas Invasion and various Torchwood episodes, can be seen at the end of the episode in the TARDIS

Production and publicity

• "Last of the Time Lords" was a subtitle proposed at one stage for a film version of Doctor Who that was in development from 1987 to 1994.
• This episode was planned to be broadcast live to the crowds attending Pride London in Trafalgar Square via a giant screen. However, a technical glitch due to the bad weather prevented the broadcasting of the episode. Freema Agyeman and John Barrowman also attended.
• In order to keep the episode's details secret, access to preview copies of this episode was restricted. There was a similar moratorium on copies of "Doomsday" the previous year.
• The episode was allocated a 50-minute timeslot for its initial broadcast, as with "Daleks in Manhattan" previously, and 55-minute timeslots for the BBC Three repeats. According to Russell T. Davies in Doctor Who Magazine 384, this is because it ran over-length but they did not wish to lose the material. The official run time from freemaagyeman.com for the episode is almost 52 minutes. The final episode of The Trial of a Time Lord was also extended by five minutes in 1986.
• Reggie Yates is credited as playing Leo Jones; however, the character Leo only appears in this episode as background (in the scene in Martha's family's home, through a window). The audio commentary for the episode mentions that Leo was originally to appear in an earlier scene with Martha, but the actor was double-booked and the scene was rewritten.
• In the audio commentary, the producers reveal that Graeme Harper filled in to direct some scenes after director Colin Teague was injured.