Day 789 - The Unicorn and the Wasp

A lot of people don't like this one but for me this is one of the highlights of this season. The Doctor meets Agatha Christie! How can you not like that??

I am a little obsessed with Agatha Christie at the moment having speeded through several Poirot stories and loved every one. Honestly if you've never read The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd then I implore you to give it a try. I read it in two days which for me is incredible as I'm a slow reader. I very much agree with the Doctor when he says it would be brilliant to meet Agatha Christie.

This is also one of the strongest episodes for Donna as she has some great comedy moments, my favourite one being when she somehow convinces herself that Noddy may actually exist.

Basically the Doctor and Donna join in a party at an old house where suddenly people start being murdured one by one pretty much in the style of one of Christie's own novels. Therefore everyone turns to her to help find the guilty culprit.

The revelation of the killer is very well played with it seeming that everyone is a suspect, even poor Donna and Agatha herself. 

Another fun thing about this episode is the hunt for the Agatha Christie book titles which are slipped into the script. I didn't pick up on this at first but it makes repeated viewings all the more interesting.

And if that wasn't exciting enough there's also the brilliant Christopher Benajmin playing a key role in the story. Christopher is best known to Doctor Who fans as playing the classic character of Henry Gordon Jago in the fourth Doctor story The Talons Of Weng Chiang. It's great to see him on telly again as I'm just enjoying the audio adventures of Jago and Litefoot which Big Finish are in the process are making. Anyway I'm going way off on a tangent now.

Yes so this episode is very good!

Day 788 - The Doctor's Daughter

So I'm going to focus on two key points of this episode.

The title is such a tease! Are we possibly going to meet the actual daughter of the Doctor? Is she Susan's mother?? Are we finally going to find out what happened to Susan??? Well...no. No we are not. Because she's not really the Doctor's daughter as such. She's grown from a sample of his DNA to help the humans wage their war against the Hath. Bit disappointing.

It at least gives the Doctor the chance to reflect about his own family. The Doctor's family has always been something of a secret. Obviously we know he had a granddaughter called Susan so he was obviously a father once too. In one episode he even mentions he had a brother...but this was not the Master as was a potential idea back in the third Doctor's era.

His reluctance to accept Jenny as his daughter seems a bit cold hearted at first until his discussion with Donna explains that the reason he is the way he is with her is that she is a reminder of everything he has lost. Donna's comment of "you talk all the time but you don't say anything" brilliantly sums up the mysterious nature of the Doctor.

The second thing I wanted to discuss was the casting of Jenny, the Doctor's daughter. She is played by Georgia Moffat who is the daughter of Peter Moffat, Peter Moffat being the real name of Peter Davison (the fifth Doctor!) so therefore she sort of really is the Doctor's daughter! Now add to this the fact that David Tennant went on to marry her and have a child!

So to sum up, that child has a mother who is also his sister and his dad and grandad are the same person! Timey-wimey, incesty-westy!

Days 786 to 787 - The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky.

"Stare into the face of death!" It's only a bloody Sontaran! Last on our screens way back in 1985 they finally make a grand reappearance to the series!

They're not the only ones back as Martha Jones is also back. To be fair she had only been gone a year and had cropped in Torchwood between then and now so her reappearance perhaps isn't as exciting. Although seeing her interactions with Donna are quite funny. The Doctor expects Martha to be a little put out that he has moved on with his life so quickly and got a new companion but actually she couldn't care less and keeps banging on about the handsome fiance she has. That gets a little annoying after a while but then I think I'm just a bitter and lonely man who is driven to distraction by other people's happiness....Anyway!..Moving on..

The Sontarans are busy with their scheme of pumping *sniggers* our atmosphere full of a terrible gas which not only kills people but makes the Earth a fully prepared breeding ground for the Sontarans clone themselves. I'm glad that in their return they have again become the short arses that they used to be. It makes them even more unique as a villain and the later ones from the old series seems to have forgotten this and just had any old person play them.

Donna has an emotional heart to heart with her grandfather, Wilf. They wisely decide to keep the truth of Donna's adventures with the Doctor away from her mother which I think was a wise move as her mother isn't exactly pleased to see the Doctor after the disaster that was Donna's wedding just over a year ago.

UNIT also makes a full return to the series. They had been seen briefly before in stories like Aliens Of London and The Christmas Invasion but here they are back properly for the full two episodes. We even get a nice mention of the Brigadier and a joke about the UNIT dating controversy. Basically there was some continuity issues in the old series as to when the stories with UNIT in it were set. Therefore when the Doctor is remembering back to his days of working for the organisation he makes the comment "back in the 70s..or was it the 80s". Yay! I'm a fan and I'm being pandered to! I very much approve! However one thing I do NOT approve of is that UNIT no longer stands for the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce but Unified Intelligence Taskforce. Not sure why this is but I'm guessing it was some silly rule!

Day 785 - The Planet Of The Ood

Last time the Doctor met the Ood he was unable to save any of them as the planet they were on fell into the centre of a black hole. Here he realises the terrible truth behind their relationship with mankind.

In their previous story the Ood were introduced as beings who lived to serve others. That's all well and good, if that is really what they live for. In actual fact they are more slaves than humans. The "Persil ball" that they use as a communicator is obviously not something they are born with but the awful truth is that where the ball is attached is where the Oods' second brain should be. The humans have effectively been lobotomising them.

The stage is therefore set for a revolution as the Ood, with a little help from some humans involved with the "friends of the Ood" movement overthrow their human masters. 

The Ood live peacefully together because, as Donna brilliantly surmises, a creature who is born with its brain in its hand would have to trust everyone. The telepathic link which binds them allows them to sing to one another, which is quite euphoric in the scenes where their freedom is restored.

This is a fantastic episode but one thing that is slightly odd ( I said odd, not Ood, so difficult to get those two word mixed up that by autocorrect is going into overtime) is that this is one of the rare stories, especially in the new series, where the Doctor and his companion have pretty much no affect on what is happening around them. If the Doctor and Donna had never visited this world then it most likely would not have had any effect. The revolution would have still happened. I'm not criticising this. It's actually quite a refreshing way to tell a story, just having the Doctor and his companion as observers. But the weird thing is that at the end of the episode the lead Ood is thanking the Doctor and Donna for their help and telling them that their children will be singing of the "Doctor Donna" forever. But why? They didn't really do anything!!

There is also one moment in this final scene that when I first saw it, shocked me. The Ood asks the Doctor is he will stay and join in the song. The Doctor says he has to leave as he sort of has his own song, to which the Ood replies "I think your song must end soon". Yes it seems the seeds of David Tennants departure from the series have begun to be sown. And I'm a little sad as right now...well.....I don't want him to go....

Day 784 - The Fires Of Pompeii

Before Karen Gillan was Amy Pond, and before Peter Capaldi was the Doctor, they both starred in this fantastic episode.

When Peter Capaldi was announced as being the new face of the Doctor there were some grumblings from new fans that he couldn't be the Doctor as he'd already been in the series already. Well..let me put them straight by saying Colin Baker was in the series before he was the Doctor and if it didn't stop them casting him then then it shouldn't stop them now! And Capaldi shows here what a great actor he is. I've not long finished watching The Thick Of It where he plays the rather terrifying Malcolm Tucker and when I saw him in this it was like I was looking at a completely different man!

The premise of the episode is that the Doctor decides to show Donna ancient Rome but accidentally takes them back to Pompeii in the day before Vesuvius is due to erupt. Donna is all out for organising a town wide evacuation but the Doctor knows that this is one moment in time that is fixed and therefore he cannot save these people. Donna is far from happy with this and this creates a great deal of tension between the two throughout the episode.

The issue of whether history can or cannot be changed has been the subject of many an episode. In the first Doctor era it was explicitly stated that "you can't rewrite history! Not one line!" As such most early historical stories involved the Doctor and his companions trying to get back to the TARDIS without getting swept along in the events happening around them. It wasn't until The Time Meddler that we began to see that certain events could be changed. In the new series they try to satisfy both aspects by saying that time can be changed (these times are in flux) but some things are fixed and must always happen. The death of Pompeii is unfortunately one of these events.

The Doctor:- "That's how I see the universe. What is, what was, what could be, what must not. That's the burden of a Time Lord, and I'm the only one left"

It's unusual to see the Doctor running away and abandoning an entire town to destruction. It isn't until Donna tearfully begs for him to at least save someone that he returns to save just one family.

A promising start to Donna's journeys in the TARDIS!

Day 783 - Partners In Crime

How cute are these little guys?? Aliens don't always have to be threatening it seems.

This episode sees the return of Donna Noble! God I love Donna, I think she would have to be well up there with some of my all time favourite companions.

I remember when the announcement was made that Catherine Tate was going to be returning to Doctor Who in 2008 as Donna became a full time companion. I remember there being a fair amount of uproar about it in the fan community. Maybe it was the fear that stunt casting was returning to the show as in the days of Bonnie Langford as Mel (who I still like no matter what anyone else says). I'm pleased to say though that I welcomed the idea as I think Catherine Tate is brilliant. She is obviously fantastic at the comical scenes but she's also a great actress overall.

Here we see Donna is back to her dull life, regretting her decision not to travel with the Doctor when she was given the chance. Now she is on the hunt for him again by investigating any strange events that may be ocurring. This leads her to Adipose Industries who are releasing their new miracle pill that helps people lose weight. The Doctor is also investigating and for the first part of the episode we get loads of near misses as the two nearly meet each other.

When they do finally meet it's one of the funniest scenes in the entire history of the show. They are both spying on Ms Foster who is interrogating a reporter who has broken into the building. The Doctor is watching the scene from outside the building, hiding in a window washer lift. Donna is inside the building spying through the small window in the door. As they are watching the interrorgation they suddenly spot each other from the opposite sides of the room and we get a great moment where they are both desperately miming to each other about what is going on.

This episode also has some of the cutest aliens in the show's history in the form of the baby Adipose. They are made out of human fat which I guess is a little gross but the way they skip along joyfully is just so adorable. The pills being given out to people are creating the Adipose babies that then drop off people. This is the bit I don't understand. When Ms Foster is threatened she begins converting people fully so that they disintegrate into Adipose. But surely if the Doctor hadn't interfered then people would have just gradually lost weight with the birth if the Adipose. If properly regulated it would be a great plan. People easily lose weight and more Adipose are bred.

As well as meeting Donna again we also meet her family. Unfortunately the actor who had played her father in The Runaway Bride had sadly passed away so instead we have mum and grandad, grandad being played by the legendary Bernard Cribbens. The scenes he shares with Donna whilst they are both star gazing are quite touching. He is wondering what is wrong with her as she seems to be drifting through life and the Donna he used to know has gone. At the end of the episode when he sees her flying off in the TARDIS with the Doctor is just about one of the most uplifting moments ever.

Donna has started her adventures in time and space with her grandad cheering her on all the way. Lovely.

Oh and I nearly forgot. Before Donna steps aboard the TARDIS she shares a brief conversation with a blonde lady. As Donna runs off, the lady turns round and it's only Rose bloody Tyler!! The "bloody" was added for emphasis there. I doubt that that is her middle name. As Rose walks off she slowly fades away. What the hell is going on there?

Days 770 to 782 - Torchwood (Series 2)

 

So this is a turn up for the books. I don’t very often look at the amount of hits this blog is getting because I realise that it will be depressingly low, and that’s fine to be honest. This blog is mainly serving as proof of what I’m doing and to give a greater incentive for people to donate to MacMillan Cancer Support who may just be thinking “all he’s doing is watching television”. This blog is bloody hard work I can tell you! Anyway I’ve strayed from my point as is so often the case.

 

Yes, so the hit ratings of each blog entry have been displayed to me and strangely my blog entries for Torchwood have received about 5 times as many hits as my entries about Doctor Who! This makes me feel a little bad as I really didn’t put much effort into writing those entries about Torchwood season one and therefore I better pull my finger out and make a better job with season two!

 

First of all I’m pleased to say that this season was so much better than the first. The Torchwood team have actually become a likable group of people. Owen in particular was a complete arsehole in the first season! Gwen was a fairly unpleasant character too with all the sleeping around she did behind her boyfriend’s back.

 

There just seems so much more fun in this season compared to the last. Ianto is reduced to pretty much spouting one liners though. I mean they’re funny but maybe they should have been shared around amongst the cast a bit as it gets a little tiring after a while.

 

The first episode deals with the reintroduction of Captain Jack to his team after the events of The Last Of The Time Lords. Unfortunately for Jack, he is the only Torchwood member who has any knowledge of these events so the rest of the team are pretty annoyed that he abandoned them to go running off with the Doctor. It’s in this episode that we also meet another Time Agent in the form of Captain John, who is one of Jack's many exes and is up to no good in Cardiff in order to get Jacks attention. He's a fairly unlikable character and it's a pretty rubbish start to the series.

Episode 2 is where the series really starts to get good. Aliens have been on Earth for a while, learning all about us, disguised as every day people. Even they don't know that they are aliens until the time comes for them to activate. The story focuses on one poor woman's struggle to deny her alien nature and maintain her humanity. I really liked this one.

 

One thing I really liked about this series is that Gwen's long suffering boyfriend, Rhys, finds out about Torchwood and from here on he almost becomes part of the team. I loved this because he's a funny character and I always felt sorry for him due to Gwen having to mislead him all the time as to what her job entails. It also means that we can have the fantastic episode where Gwen and Rhys finally get married, despite the fact that Gwen has been impregnated by an alien and another alien is on the way to rip the baby out of her in one of the most violent births since..well..Alien, I guess.

 

Martha Jones pays a visit to the Torchwood team as we now find out she has begun to work for UNIT. I thought Martha was originally planned to become a full time member of the team and I think that that would have worked quite well. It's nice that Jack has someone else to confide in about his various adventures with the Doctor.

 

In the three episode run that Martha stars in we also have another fairly big running theme. Owen gets shot and killed. He is soon resurrected temporarily and from here on he is pretty much a zombie. He is alive and dead at the same time. Unable to heal any injuries but also able to pass through heat detectors due to being dead. These three episodes are all pretty good as Owen has to come to terms with the fact that he is now dead and cannot eat, drink or have sex ever again! Poor guy.

 

For me one of the most upsetting pieces of television I have ever seen is the episode in this series called Adrift. Here we find out that not only does the rift dump aliens in Cardiff, it can also take people. A woman called Nikki, loses her son Jonah to the rift. She doesn't know that this is what has happened though and we hear her heartbreaking story develop throughout the episode. She records any television events where there are crowd and then reviews all the crowd footage one frame at a time in the hope of finding her son.

 

The worst thing about this episode is that it really doesn't have a happy ending. Gwen discovers that people have been falling victim to the rift for years and Jack has been secretly covering it up. Some of these people eventually come back from where they have been transported to, but they come back scarred and pretty much broken. These people are housed on a remote island. Gwen finds Jonah and despite the fact that he has only been missing for 7 months, from his point of view he has missing for decades and was transported to a planet on fire. At first he seems fairly okay if a little withdrawn.

 

Gwen tells Nikki that she has found her son, and pretty much comes clean about the whole space/time rift that is running through Cardiff. Nikki eventually believes her and goes to visit her son. Unfortunately she visits during one of his bad periods. It turns out Jonah looked into the heart of a dying star and what he saw had driven him insane. As such he spends about 15 hours a day just screaming. And it's bloody horrible to see. Nikki is understandably completely distraught at seeing what has happened to her son and tells Gwen that she should never have revealed the truth to her. It was better to live in hope.

 

Another running story throughout this season is the whereabouts of Jack's long lost brother, Grey. Grey was taken from his home planet when just a child by a group of vicious aliens. Jack was placed in charge of his brother but when trying to escape he accidentally let go of his brothers hand and they have been separated ever since. Grey finds Jack on Earth but is pretty annoyed at what he sees as a betrayal from his brother and is therefore out for revenge. It is during this episode that the Torchwood team suffers two heartbreaking losses. Owen is trapped inside a nuclear reactor and Toshiko is shot by Grey. Throughout this season I was hoping that these two would get together, Toshiko's unrequited love for Owen finally recognised. For them to die together (sort of, they are talking over the communications devices) is terrible and the series really ends on a downer. I will admit to getting a little teary I'm afraid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 769 - Voyage Of The Damned

                                

This one was pretty well timed really. It's just passed Christmas Day 2013 and it's time to watch the 2007 Christmas special.

I was very excited about this one when it was first broadcast as I've always been really interested in the Titanic. Therefore when I discovered that this wasn't the real Titanic but a space ship replica then I must admit to being a little disappointed. But then again I suppose showing a tragedy where approximately 1500 lost their lives may not exactly be festive viewing!

So as I've said the Doctor finds himself mingling amongst the many alien races who have come to experience the human tradition of Christmas in orbit around the Earth in a replica of one of the Earth's most famous ships. Not sure how much research was put in to deciding the name and style of the ship but the name Titanic wouldn't fill me with confidence. Then again I believe some wealthy Australian guy is at this very minute pouring money into a project to rebuild the famous liner so maybe people would be mad enough to sail on another Titanic.

The captain of the ship is none other than Geoffrey Palmer, making this his third appearance in Doctor Who! It's also his third death in Doctor Who as the Titanic is hit my some flaming balls of rock. This guy has the worst luck ever in Doctor Who. Please let him star in one more episode and have him survive to the closing credits! Don't feel to sorry for him though as it was his fault for purposefully steering the ship into the path of the rocks having been bribed to do so.

Last Christmas we had special guest Catherine Tate and this year it's Kylie Minogue turn to be the Doctor's temporary companion in what must have been the biggest celebrity to have appeared in the show since Hale and Pace guest starred in Survival! She's pretty good in the episode but it basically is stunt casting but I think you can forgive that for a Christmas special. Here she is playing a waitress on the Titanic, but one who dreams of properly getting out and exploring the stars. Sounds like a perfect companion. Unfortunately she tragically does not survive the events of the episode. Which is probably just as well as I can't really imagine a full series with Kylie Minogue as the companion. But then I probably thought the same with Billie Piper.

So basically the ship is hit by asteroids and then it's only a matter of time before it falls to Earth and destroys all life on the planet. It's the Poesidon Adventure in space more than it is the Titanic really.

As if things weren't bad enough the robot servants of the ship have been programmed to kill everyone on board. These robots (known as Hosts) are pretty creepy looking with their blank expressions. I remember when they were first sighted everyone got really excited that the Axons were coming back as they look very similar. But I'm afraid that wasn't to be.

I enjoyed how they play up the fact that something terrible always happens in London every Christmas. In this episode the city has been pretty much abandoned as people fear another alien invasion. And guess where the crashing Titanic is aimed for??

We don't meet the true villain of the story till right near the end. He is Max Capricorn and the former owner of the company who made the ship. He's annoyed at being kicked out so plans to crash the ship into the Earth and get the rest of the board thrown into jail for mass murder. I quite like that. It's nice to have a villain whose motives aren't world domination etc.  Here it is pure and simply spiteful revenge. Also I'm sure there has to be some kind of anagram including the word Axon in Max Capricorn's name which further drove the fans mad in the prelude to the episode. Seriously, why haven't the Axons come back yet??

Overall I enjoyed this episode but not as much as I'd hoped. I used to really like it but for some reason it does not seem to have aged well. The effects are great and the part where the ship nearly crashes into Buckingham Palace is exciting, with the Queen waving and wishing the Doctor a happy Christmas (yeah that's a little cheesy). I'm not sure why I didn't really enjoy it this time. I think I was in post Christmas blues, plus I had a terrible cold and was therefore generally feeling miserable. Which is a shame because this is the last Doctor Who that I will be watching for a while as it's now time for season 2 of Torchwood!



 

Day N/A - Time Crash

A multi-Doctor story for a new generation!

I had to think long and hard whether this episode counted as a proper day in my quest. I really wanted it to count as it's brilliant but really it is a mini episode and if I was to count this then there would be loads more mini episodes that also needed counting. My rule for these will be that I will still watch them when they come up but they will not get a day all to themselves.

So this is the Children In Need mini episode from 2007. Prior Children In Need episodes have been pretty poor (I'm looking squarely at you Dimensions In Time! *shudders*) but this is just fantastic. The tenth Doctor meets the fifth Doctor during a brief moment between the end of season 3 and the 2007 Christmas Special when their TARDISes collide. What the hell is the plural for TARDIS?... TARDI maybe?

Written by Steven Moffat, it's full of funny moments and nostalgic nods to the past. We get mentions of Nyssa, Tegan, Cybermen, the Mara and we even see the tenth Doctor rightfully taking the piss out of his former self for wearing a stick of celery on his lapel.

During the course of the episode the fifth Doctor has no idea who the tenth Doctor is until right near the end when the tenth Doctor saves the day by remembering what he saw himself do when he was the fifth Doctor...yes I'm going to have to say it, it's all very wibbly wobbly, timey wimey *sigh*.

What is also great about this episode is knowing that David Tennant was a massive Doctor Who fan when he was younger and that Peter Davison was the Doctor that he grew up watching. Therefore to now be in a multi-Doctor story with Davison must have been like a dream come true! This is also acknowledged when the Doctor's are parting at the end of the story. As the fifth Doctor fades away, the tenth Doctor tells him how he loved being that incarnation and that pretty much the "modern" Doctor came from his fifth incarnation when the Doctor was first played by a younger man.

Tenth Doctor: - "I loved being you. Back when I first started I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important, like you do when you're young.. and then I was you. And it was all dashing about and playing cricket and my voice going all squeaky when I shouted, I still do that, the voice thing, I got that from you. Oh and the trainers and (putting on his "brainy specs") snap!....because you know what Doctor?...you were my Doctor..

That bit gets me every time, because its the tenth Doctor talking to the fifth Doctor, but it's also David Tennant acknowledging his childhood hero.

And if things weren't bad enough, David Tennant even went on to marry Peter Davison's daughter, so now when you watch the scene he's actually taking to his father in law!

Days 759 to 768 - The Sarah Jane Adventures (Season One)

The first run for this excellent series. So basically we have Doctor Who for the family audience, Torchwood for adults and then SJA for he kids! Perfect! It is hard to believe that these three shows exist in the same universe sometimes though.

We rejoin Maria and Luke who are still getting to know the mysterious Sarah Jane and finding out more about her life fighting alien threats. Maria's annoying friend Kelsey has mercifully disappeared and in her place we are introduced to a new main character of the series, Clyde Langer. Clyde is an excellent addition to the team. He's the character who is initially sceptical of all the goings on and is therefore a good way to introduce new viewers to the show who may have missed the pilot episode.

One of the running themes throughout this series is family. This is explored in various ways such as Maria's relationship with her divorced parents and Sarah Jane's relationship with her new found son, Luke. Even the Slitheen, who are the enemy in the first story of the season, add to this theme with a really annoying child Slitheen. Luckily when this character returns for the finale of the season he is played by another child who is probably only about 60% as annoying.

This season also introduced one of the great villains to the Doctor Who pantheon of baddies, in the form of the Trickster. This villain will crop up in pretty much every Sarah Jane series from now but this isn't a criticism as I think he's fantastic. He's basically a bad guy who lives off the chaos he can cause. In this series means he erased Sarah Jane from history at just the right point in time so that she is not there to prevent an asteroid from colliding with the Earth. Now when I first saw this I thought it was a bit badly thought out as Sarah Jane had prevented many alien invasions so why not use them as a way of causing chaos but the thinking behind it is that the asteroid is just random bad luck and therefore the destruction of the Earth for no good reason whatsoever, pure chaos.

The Trickster can only use his powers by convincing another human to enter into a deal with him. In this case it is Sarah Jane's childhood friend, Andrea. Andrea died when she was younger by falling off a pier. It's at this point that the Trickster appears to her and tells her he can save her life if she will agree to swap places so that it is Sarah Jane that falls. I like the idea of the creature appearing at that moment before death, when we will all be scared and using that fear into tempting us to do something terrible.

During the course of this first season we also see Clyde's many failed attempts to turn Luke into someone "cool". Luke is still getting many normal human things wrong and in fact its some of these mistakes that cause some of the bad things to happen in the first couple of stories.

Overall I really loved watching this again. For the first time in a while I was really wanting to watch more than one episode each day. That's got to be a good sign.

Days 757 to 758 - The Sound Of Drums / The Last Of The Time Lords

So the season 3 finale sees the Doctor come face to face with a fellow Time Lord, although probably not the one he was hoping to see again, it's the Master!

The Doctor, Martha and Jack arrive back on Earth to discover that the Master has used his hypnotic ways to become Prime Minister of Great Britain. He's also married a woman called Lucy. There's just something weird about seeing the Master with a wife. I suppose technically the Eric Roberts incarnation had a wife temporarily before killing her and becoming all camp ("I always dress for the occasion" I mean what were they thinking!)

The Master's plan is to conquer the Earth by taking over it with the help of the desperate humans from the end of the universe as seen in the previous episode, who have now devolved into kind of mutant blob things who live in metal balls...yeah I don't really understand it either but just go with it. Future humans killing past humans should cause a paradox but fortunately the Master has the TARDIS which he is using as a paradox machine which can hold the instability in place. This paradox machine also acts as this years Duex Ex Machina when at the end of the story it can be destroyed and the last yeah of hell with the Master in control can be completely erased just like Superman spinning thr world backwards to turn back time. Yep the ending is utter garbage but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

There are some cool call backs to previous Master stories, such as the Master watching an episode of Tellytubies similar to how his Delgado incarnation enjoyed an episode of The Clangers in the 1970s story The Sea Devils. Speaking of The Sea Devils, they also get a mention! As well as the Axons! Why have the Axons never been brought back?? They would be really cool, I'm thinking it's only a matter of time.

We also have a great scene where the Doctor and the Master have a face off over a telephone conversation. This sort of mirrors the very first time they met in Terror Of The Autons which was over a phone line.

By the stories end, the Master's plans are defeated (obviously) and the Doctor claims he will take him into his own care in the TARDIS. That would have been a weird set up, but I guess no different to Turlough constantly trying to kill the fifth Doctor. Unfortunately we never get to see this as Lucy shoots the Master dead right in front of everyone and he dies in the Doctor's arms. This is one of the stand out moments really. Clearly the Master is a right pain in the ass but the Doctor is so desperate not to be the final Time Lord that he ends up pleading with the Master to regenerate, only for the Master to refuse and die.

So no one on Earth can remember the year under the Master's control apart from those at the eye of the storm which includes Martha and her increasingly dumb family. They finally realise that the Doctor is the good guy in all of this but having suffered through a year under the rule of a terrible dictator, Martha decides she can't leave them so decides to hand in her TARDIS key. Well she claims that's the reason but then she goes on to basically admit that she is love what the Doctor and knows that he will never feel the same so she is quitting whilst she is ahead. Good on you girl! I like Martha, and fortunately she's not gone completely yet!

So that was season 3. Some pretty bad stinkers in there (Daleks In Manhatten, 42) but also some absolute classics (Human Nature, Blink). The series ended with the cliffhanger of the Titanic crashing through the TARDIS but it will be quite a while until that is resolved as I have a whole series of The Sarah Jane Advenures to get through now!