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 departures of the Doctor's two companions, Martha Jones and Jack Harkness.

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 to carry out the Doctor's plan to save the world.

Plot

File:Doctor archangel.jpg

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

A year after the events of The Sound of Drums, Earth has been closed to all species and is in 'terminal extinction'. Martha returns to Britain, having travelled the world since teleporting away from the Valiant at the moment of the Master's triumph. Her TARDIS key, still generating a perception filter, has kept her hidden all this time. She meets Thomas Milligan, a doctor-turned-freedom fighter, who leads 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 tent as his prisoner, Martha's family as his servants, and Captain Jack Harkness in chains. Lucy Saxon is still his companion, though she now sports conspicuous bruises to her face. The Master shows the Doctor the world he has created: the new Time Lord Empire. Across the world, warships are being built to wage war on the rest of the universe. The Doctor 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 intended for Martha. Watching in Docherty's lab, she sees the Master age the Doctor by a further nine hundred years, shrinking him into a tiny, frail creature. Instead of being dismayed, Martha draws hope from the Doctor's continued survival.

Though the Toclafane have proved to be virtually invincible, Martha stumbled upon one that was struck by lightning, and with the data gathered from it Docherty is able to replicate the accident. Upon examining the sphere, they make a horrifying discovery: the Toclafane contain the conscious remains of 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.

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 has retrieved three of the four chemicals needed for the gun from their hiding places around the world - Budapest, Beijing and San Diego - and has returned to London to find the fourth. After Martha and Thomas depart for a shelter in Bexley to hide, Docherty (who is desperate for information regarding her missing son) 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 people of Earth. Docherty's betrayal was expected, engineered by Martha so that she would be brought on board the Valiant to rejoin the Doctor. Drawing on the telepathic energy of millions of souls, the Doctor is able to restore his original youth and foil 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. 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, seizes a gun and 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". He 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 decides to remain behind 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 medical doctor. She gives him her phone so they can keep in touch. Leaving in the TARDIS, the Doctor, now truly the last of the Time Lords, 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?"(like what he said before the runaway bride).

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 adds in the podcast that he views the connection as a potential theory., while Julie Gardner says that it is a fact.
• The Master makes reference to The Sea Devils and Axons. The Doctor also makes references to the Axons.
• Earth is referred to by its astronomical name Sol 3 (it is the the third planet from the star Sol), as it was in The Deadly Assassin.
• 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 Doctor's severed 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 local curfew 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 Yates was double-booked and the scene was re-written.
• In the audio commentary, the producers reveal that Graeme Harper filled in to direct some scenes after director Colin Teague was injured.