The End of Time (Doctor Who)

Part One

The Doctor learns from an Ood, a psychic alien, that his nemesis the Master (John Simm) will shortly return, heralding "the end of time itself". On present day Earth, a cult loyal to the Master attempt to resurrect him; the Master's ex-wife, Lucy Saxon (Alexandra Moen), sabotages the ceremony, however, and the Master is brought back suffering from constant hunger but also having gained incredible strength and speed along with energy projection from his constantly expending energy. The Doctor attempts to trace the Master, on Christmas Eve, and encounters his old friend Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins), to whom the Doctor explains a prophecy that he is to die soon. The Doctor tracks the Master to wastelands outside London. The Doctor discovers that the sound is not a symptom of the Master's insanity but something implanted in him from outside. But before the Doctor can learn more, the Master is abducted by troops and placed in the custody of billionaire Joshua Naismith (David Harewood).

Mott is repeatedly warned by an apparitional woman in white (Bloom) to arm himself to protect the Doctor before joining him in the TARDIS. They travel to the Naismith estate where they discover Naismith is in possession of an alien "Immortality Gate" and has enlisted the Master to fix its programming. Aliens of the Vinvocci species reveal themselves and attempt to explain that the device is a simple medical device from their homeworld, but are unsuccessful. The Master ultimately uses the device to replace all of humankind with his DNA, creating a 'Master Race' where everyone looks and thinks like the Master; exceptions to this are Mott, who is shielded from its effects, and Mott's granddaughter Donna Noble (Tate), a former companion of the Doctor who acquired Time Lord biological traits in an earlier adventure. The Master and his doppelgangers taunt the Doctor, who can only look on in horror.

Far across the Universe, the episode's narrator (Timothy Dalton) remarks that the Master's removal of humanity is only the beginning of far greater events; the narrator is revealed to be the Lord President of the Time Lords—the Doctor and Master's species—who addresses a vast chamber full of other Time Lords, and announces that it is "the day the Time Lords returned. For Gallifrey! For victory! For the end of Time itself!"

Part Two

The Doctor and Wilfred are rescued from the Master by the Vinvocci, taking refuge on their orbiting ship. Meanwhile, the Time Lord President receives a prophecy about the future after the Time War, to which declares that he "... will not die... a billion years of Time Lord history... I will not let this perish" and so schemes to use the Master to one day escape. They are able to put a signal in the young Master's head as a small child, creating the drum beat he has heard all his life. When the Master clones himself billions of times, the Time Lord President also sends a "whitepoint star" from their home planet Gallifrey to the Master in the present day to strengthen the connection between present-day Earth and Gallifrey, which presently is "timelocked" in the middle of a Time War, shortly before its destruction, a fate which it is otherwise unable to escape. Gallifrey materialises above Earth, and all the other horrors of the Time War are likely to follow. The Doctor, armed with Wilfred's gun, breaks into the room from above by jumping from the Vinvocci ship, but vacillates over whether to kill the Master or the President in order to sever the link. He catches sight of and recognises the woman in white from earlier, and she silently communicates with her eyes. He spots the whitepoint star and shoots it instead. As the Time Lords are drawn back into the Time Lock, the President—whom the Doctor names, at the last minute, as Rassilon—attempts to kill the Doctor but the Master intervenes, sacrificing himself in an act of revenge against Rassilon for the endless drum beat he placed in his head. In a flash of light, the Time Lords, the Master, and Gallifrey all disappear. Taking a moment to realise his victory, the Doctor hears four knocks, the sound which he has been told will precede his death. He finds Wilfred, having returned to help the Doctor, still trapped in the Gate's isolation chamber that will be flooded with radiation due to the Master's modifications; only the self-sacrifice of another will free him. The Doctor releases Wilfred, collapsing in agony as he receives a massive dose of radiation. Although he survives initially as his body absorbs the radiation, the healing of the Doctor's wounds shows his regeneration process has begun, which means he will soon change appearance and personality.

After dropping Wilfred back home, the Doctor visits past companions and acquaintances; Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) and Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke) who have married and are working as freelance alien hunters, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and her son Luke Smith (Tommy Knight), and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). He also visits Verity Newman (Jessica Hynes), the granddaughter of Joan Redfern who the Doctor had previously met in "Human Nature". He then travels forward in time to Donna's wedding where he gives Wilfred and Sylvia Noble (Donna's mother) a lottery ticket that he had bought for Donna with money borrowed from her deceased father.

Finally, the Doctor visits Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), on New Year's Day 2005, three months before she meets him as the Ninth Doctor and tells her she will have "a really great year". As the Doctor makes his way back to the TARDIS, he collapses in pain as the effects of the radiation finally begin to take hold. The Ood sing "Vale Decem" (Goodbye Ten) in chorus as the Doctor summons the last of his strength and makes his way back to the TARDIS and goes into orbit over the Earth. In his final moments the Doctor exclaims "I don't want to go" before his body erupts with an explosive surge of regenerative energy that sets the TARDIS console room ablaze. With his regeneration complete, the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) inspects his new body before realising he is crashing. He screams "Geronimo!" as the TARDIS hurtles back to Earth.

Continuity

At the start of "Part One" the Doctor explains his delay to Ood Sigma. Among his various adventures, he mentions having married "Good Queen Bess" and refers to her nickname, 'The Virgin Queen'. At the end of "The Shakespeare Code" Queen Elizabeth appears infuriated at seeing The Doctor, calling him her sworn enemy; he does not recall meeting her and presumes he will meet her in his future, which eventually happens in "The Day of the Doctor".

One of the two dissident Time Lords, described as "The Woman" in the credits, visits Wilfred on several occasions, appearing and disappearing in unexplained ways. When she lowers her arms to stare at the Tenth Doctor he appears to recognise her, but when later asked by Wilfred about her identity, the Doctor evades the question. British newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail identified the character as the Doctor's mother as early as April 2009. Russell T. Davies wrote in an email to the author of The Writers Tale, "I like leaving it open, because then you can imagine what you want. I think the fans will say it's Romana. Or even the Rani. Some might say that it's Susan's mother, I suppose. But of course it's meant to be the Doctor's mother."

The Doctor at one point addresses the Lord President as "Rassilon", the name of the founder of Time Lord society from the classic series, although the character is only identified in the credits as "The Narrator" in part one and "Lord President" in part two. In the accompanying episode of Doctor Who Confidential, Russell T Davies stated that the character's name was indeed Rassilon.

Verity Newman is played by Jessica Hynes, the same actress who played Joan Redfern, who is Verity's grandmother, in the episodes "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood". The name "Verity Newman" is based on Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman and the show's first producer, Verity Lambert. Professor John Smith averred that his parents were Verity and Sydney. A pocket watch featured prominently in the plot of both Hynes's original episodes, and a pocket watch is featured on the cover of Newman's book.

When the Doctor visits Captain Jack Harkness in the alien bar, the song playing in the background ("My Angel Put the Devil in Me") was sung by Tallulah in the episode Daleks in Manhattan.

After regenerating, the Eleventh Doctor is disappointed that he is "still not ginger", referring to the Tenth Doctor's comment "Aw, I wanted to be ginger... I've never been ginger!" in "The Christmas Invasion". This line was a source of complaint for some viewers, leading the BBC to issue a statement clarifying its intent.

Writing

Davies described the story as "huge and epic, but also intimate." Davies had been planning the story for some time, indicating that it continued the trend of series finales being progressively more dramatic:

I knew I'd write David's last episode one day, so I've had this tucked away. You do think: 'How can the stakes get bigger?' And they do. They really do. I don't mean just in terms of spectacle, but in terms of how personal it gets for him.

The Christmas specials constitute Davies' last script for Doctor Who and Julie Gardner's last job producing the series. It is also the last story in which Tennant appears until "The Day of the Doctor", the 50th anniversary special. In issue 407 of Doctor Who Magazine, Davies wrote about the night when he finished the script:

I've had these last pages ready in my head for months and months... It takes as long to write as it does to type. [...] So I keep rattling away until... The last words. Trouble is, last words don't really exist. In ten minutes time, I'll change my mind about Scene 25, and go back to write something different. Then I'll get up tomorrow and change all sorts of stuff, before sending it to the office. And then the proper rewrites start. [...] Even then, you keep writing; you keep writing; you think of lines people should have said for the rest of your life. Still, what the hell, let's allow a bit of ceremony. The last words. Maybe I should sit here for hours, deliberating over them. But I know exactly what they are. I type them out. Times like this, typewriters would be better. Typewriters are romantic. A little metal letter should fly. It should hit the paper, whack! Tiny particles of ink should puff and settle. But no, there's just a plastic keyboard. I press the key. The final letter is n. Then a full stop. And that's it. Save. Done. Good.

When asked about the emotional impact of writing his last Doctor Who script, he said, "I would have thought that when I handed in the last script I might have burst into tears or got drunk or partied with 20 naked men, but when these great moments happen you find that real life just carries on. The emotion goes into the scripts." Tennant and Julie Gardner separately said that they cried when they read the script.

The last three specials of 2009 are foreshadowed in the episode "Planet of the Dead", when the low-level psychic character Carmen gives the Doctor the prophecy, "You be careful, because your song is ending, sir. It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then... oh, but then... he will knock four times." This evokes memories of the Ood prophecy to the Doctor and Donna in "Planet of the Ood". Tennant explained the prophecy meant that the Doctor's "card [had become] marked" and the three specials would thus be darker—characterising "Planet of the Dead" as the "last time the Doctor gets to have any fun"—and that the subject of the prophecy was not the obvious answer:

David Tennant – Really, from this moment on, the Doctor's card is marked. Because when we come back in "The Waters of Mars", it's all become a little bit darker.
Julie Gardner – And as we know, David, he really does knock four times.
Tennant – Yeah, absolutely, and if you think you've figured out what that means, you're wrong!
Gardner – But when you do figure it out, it's a sad day.

Writing in his regular column in Doctor Who Magazine issue 416, Davies revealed that the original title for "Part One" of The End of Time was "The Final Days of Planet Earth", while "Part Two" was always referred to as "The End of Time". Due to the sheer scale of the story, however, it was decided that both instalments needed the same title, differentiated by part numbers, the first such instance since Survival.

Davies's script for the second episode finished with the Tenth Doctor's final line, "I don't want to go", followed by action text describing the regeneration and ending with the words, "And there he is. Blinking. Dazed. The New Man." He then sent the script to his successor Steven Moffat, who is responsible for all of the Eleventh Doctor's dialogue that follows. Moffat, as incoming executive producer, also assisted in the production of the final scene.

Recording

The first location recording for this story took place on Saturday, 21 March 2009 at a bookstore in Cardiff. Jessica Hynes was recorded signing a book titled A Journal of Impossible Things, by Verity Newman.

Recording also took place at Tredegar House in Newport, which had previously been used for the recording of the 2008 Christmas special "The Next Doctor". John Simm, who played the Master in the 2007 series finale episodes "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords", was spotted on location during the Tredegar House recording.

Recording that took place during the Easter Bank Holiday was widely covered by the British press: Catherine Tate recorded several scenes in the episode in Swansea, including one recorded in the Kardomah Café and another depicting her character getting a parking ticket. Other recording locations included Nant Fawr Road in Cyncoed, Cardiff — the previously regular location used for the Noble household – where recording on 12 April showed Cribbins wearing reindeer antlers and boarding a minibus. Recording took place in the following week on Victoria Road, Penarth, in an area which had been regularly used for a location for Sarah Jane Smith's neighbourhood in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith, and Tommy Knight, who played her son Luke, were recorded on location with David Tennant.

On the night of 20–21 April, Cribbins recorded a Christmas scene on Wharton Street in Cardiff's city centre, with a large Christmas tree and brass band.

The science fiction website io9 published a photograph showing Tennant alongside Simm and Timothy Dalton, with Dalton dressed in Time Lord robes. Rumours of Dalton's involvement in the specials had previously appeared in British tabloids. On 26 July 2009, io9 published an interview with David Tennant in which he confirmed Dalton's involvement in the specials.

Due to the special effects used to simulate the violent nature of the Tenth Doctor's regeneration, the glass central pillar in the middle of the TARDIS console was damaged so badly it had to be rebuilt prior to the recording of the next series. It was made by Bristol Blue Glass based in Brislington.

Trailers, previews and idents

A teaser trailer, featuring Timothy Dalton's opening narration and brief shots of the main characters, was shown at Comic-Con 2009. A 'Next Time' trailer, consisting some of the Ood Elder's monologue with excerpts from various scenes in part one, was included at the end of "The Waters of Mars". In November 2009 a special preview of the opening moments on the Ood Sphere was shown on the Children in Need telethon. The pre-Christmas publicity trailer and promotional clips also showed a selection of scene excerpts from part one.

Following the broadcast of part one, a trailer for part two was released on the BBC Doctor Who website. The BBC also released the first two minutes (after the opening titles) of part two.

Additionally, the 2009 Christmas idents for BBC One featured David Tennant as the Doctor using the TARDIS as a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Though unrelated to the episode, it was used to introduce both parts of the story, with Tennant himself providing a voiceover introduction for Part Two. After Part Two was broadcast, the ident continued for the remainder of the day but no longer featured Tennant, since he was no longer the Doctor.

Concurrently with the recording of the story, a music video was produced, featuring the cast, extras, crew and CGI Adipose, all lip-synching and dancing to The Proclaimers' 1988 song, "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)". Tennant appeared with each pair of featured actors, as well as with the Proclaimers themselves.

Broadcast and reception

Overnight ratings placed Part One as the third most-watched programme of Christmas Day, behind EastEnders and The Royle Family with a provisional viewing figure of 10.0 million viewers. The episode achieved a 42.2% share of the total viewing audience, and an appreciation index score of 87, considered 'Excellent'.

Final consolidated ratings placed Part One as the third most watched program of Christmas Day, behind The Royle Family and EastEnders with a final figure of 11.57 million viewers. This is the highest timeshift that the show has received since its revival (the previous highest being 11.4 million for The Next Doctor in Christmas 2008). When simulcast HD figures are added to the BBC One transmission, Doctor Who actually comes out as the most watched show on Christmas Day with a total of 12.04 million viewers, narrowly ahead of The Royle Family and EastEnders.

Overnight ratings placed Part Two as the second most-watched programme of New Year's Day, behind EastEnders, with a provisional viewing figure of 10.4 million viewers (including 389,000 watching on BBC HD). The episode achieved a 35.5% share of the total viewing audience on an evening where an estimated 30 million viewers were watching TV in the UK. Official BARB ratings placed Part Two as the second most watched programme of the week behind EastEnders at 11.79 million viewers; however, when the simulcast figures on BBC HD are added, an additional 480,000 viewers bring the total figure to 12.27 million. When this figure is recognised, the program becomes the most watched of the week. This makes The End of Time only the third instance in which the show has achieved such an honour in its extensive history. Additionally, The End of Time received over 1.3 million requests on BBC's online iPlayer.

In a review of the first part of the story, Peter Robins of The Guardian states that Doctor Who was never going to stop for Christmas this year as "there are stories that need completing, fireworks to set up; the End of Time means No End of Plot." Robins notes that the first part had been "a rush" and questions whether any previous Who story managed to erase the entire human race before the end of the first episode or done it in such a comic and Christmas friendly way? But Robins concedes that when the story is done it is the quieter more emotional parts from the beginning of the episode that the viewer will remember. Robins also notes that Cribbins seems to be playing the same role that Tate did by "becoming the tragic hero while remaining the comic relief." Robins concludes by saying that the story did not need to be a Christmas story in the way previous ones have been.

Andrew Pettie of The Daily Telegraph states that his Doctor Who revelation came in the nick of time after previously thinking that the show was overrated. Pettie states that Davies raised the stakes as high as the laws of physics would allow. Commenting on Cribbins' performance, Pettie states that he cut a King Lear like figure and notes that the Master's plan was evil even by his standards. Pettie notes as the credits rolled his thoughts turned to the dramatic shortcomings of the show before realising that the "true brilliance of Doctor Who can only be felt if you’re experiencing it in the company of wide-eyed seven year-olds" a comment which he likens to Christmas itself.

Mark Lawson of The Guardian stated that the plot device of the Master repopulating the human race as himself "gave Simm the chance to wear a lot of different costumes and the special effects department to show some of the digital ingenuity which has helped the show's renaissance." However Lawson goes on to say that the plot was slightly unfortunate given that some newspapers complained of Tennant overload over the festive period (Tennant managed to make 75 appearances on the BBC over the festive period). Lawson also went on to praise Tennant for bringing a "proper tragic force" to the role and was again shown in this last story. But on a side note Lawson states that the script seemed to be modelled on Hamlet, a role which Tennant took on both on stage and on TV during 2009. Concluding after a tender meeting with Rose, Lawson states that "the final line Davies gave to Tennant was a suddenly regretful "I don't want to go!", and it is likely that, somewhere inside, both actor and writer feel a little like that."

In his review of Part Two published the day after transmission, Andrew Pettie of The Daily Telegraph awarded a rating of four stars out of five, summing up the episode as "a barnstorming hour of family entertainment." Despite expressing slight dissatisfaction with the plot, which he perceived as excessively complicated, Pettie admitted that the episode "charged forward with such apocalyptic brio it was hard to be unduly worried about what, precisely, was going on." Praising Tennant's final performance as the Doctor, he also commented on the "unnerving experience" of seeing the character so helpless in his final appearance, but ended his review on a note of optimism for the future of the series with a new lead actor: "[Matt] Smith's youth and lack of fame make his Doctor Who an exciting prospect."

International broadcast

The episodes were first shown in the United States on 26 December 2009 and 2 January 2010, on BBC America. The broadcast of part two on 2 January helped BBC America to earn its highest ever primetime rating. The two episodes also reached the top two positions on the US iTunes Store, where they were available to purchase for download by American users. Both episodes were first shown in Canada back-to-back on 2 January 2010, on Space. Prime Television New Zealand broadcast Part 1 on 7 February 2010 and Part 2 on 14 February 2010. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast Part 1 on 14 February 2010 and Part 2 on 21 February 2010.

DVD release

Both parts of The End of Time were released on DVD in the UK in January 2010 as a double pack with "The Waters of Mars". The specials were also released on the same day on DVD and Blu-ray in a collection entitled Doctor Who – The Complete Specials. The set includes "The Next Doctor", "Planet of the Dead", "The Waters of Mars" and The End of Time. In North America, The End of Time was released in February 2010 on DVD and Blu-ray, as a single release, and as part of a package of the final four David Tennant specials. The End of Time is also part of the special 50th Anniversary Regenerations DVD box set and book collection released on Monday 24 June 2013 and limited to 10,000 copies. This story was also released as part of the Doctor Who DVD Files in issue 56 on 23 February 2011. To celebrate 5 years to the date after its original broadcast, Watch aired both parts of the story on 1 January 2015.

The ten Christmas specials between "The Christmas Invasion" and "Last Christmas" inclusive were released in a boxset titled Doctor Who – The 10 Christmas Specials on 19 October 2015.

Soundtrack

Selected pieces of score from this two-part special, as composed by Murray Gold, were included in the specials soundtrack on 4 October 2010, released by Silva Screen Records.