Previously: Dalek takeover of the Earth, but the gang’s all here.
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Journey’s End
Marines: We ended last episode thinking a lot of people might die: Sarah Jane was facing Daleks, the Torchwood team was facing Daleks and the Doctor started to regenerate. After a DOO WEE OOH (K: Officially the most epic cast list of EVER), we join the Doctor as he shoots his regeneration ejaculation into the canister with his hand in it. Rose, Jack and Donna look at the Doctor like WTF.
Sarah Jane is saved by the sudden appearance of Mickey Smith (!!) and Jackie Tyler (!!), who are both carrying big guns and make quick work of the Dalek. Mickey and Sarah greet each other. Jackie introduces herself and asks where Rose is.
K: I genuinely screamed at my television the first time I watched this episode because OH MY GOD MICKEY!!! AND JACKIE!!!!!!
Mari: Gwen and Ianto are shooting away at the Daleks, but once they are out of ammo, they notice something strange: all of the bullets are frozen and stopped in midair. The Dalek isn’t moving either.
Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that he used the regeneration energy to heal himself, but once that was done, he didn’t need to change. Instead, he basically channeled the energy into his nifty (and convenient!) hand capsule. The Doctor reminds Rose of that hand he lost in a fight against the Sycorax. Rose tentatively approaches the Doctor and asks if it’s still him. He confirms and she smiles. They hug each other, finally. Donna turns to Captain Jack and tells him he can hug her. He laughs but Donna is dead ass.
K: The reunion hug between Rose and the Doctor BREAKS ME EVERY TIME. Millions of feels. And when she buries her nose in his shoulder? EXCUSE ME WHILE I CRY FOREVER.
Mari: Torchwood. Ianto figures out that they are trapped in a time bubble. Nothing can get in, but that also means they can’t get out.
A bunch of Daleks have the TARDIS surrounded. The Supreme Dalek tells the other Daleks to bring the TARDIS aboard. They grab the TARDIS in some sort of circular prison-transporation-ring. It zaps the TARDIS of power and carries it up into the air.
Mickey, Jackie and Sarah Jane watch this happen. Mickey explains that he can’t use his dimension hopper thing because it needs to recharge between jumps. So, Sarah Jane comes up with an alternative idea for following the TARDIS. She stands up from her hiding place and surrenders to the Daleks. Mickey thinks this is bonkers, but Jackie says that if the Daleks have the Doctor, they also have Rose. Mickey kisses his gun goodbye and he and Jackie surrender.
Martha is strapping her teleporter back on, now that Jack explained how to use it. Her mom is worried about her getting back out there but Martha passionately explains that she is a member of UNIT and she has the Osterhagen Key, so she needs to do her part. She gives her mom a teary goodbye and disappears.
A title screen tells us we are heading to Germany, 60 miles outside Nuremberg. Martha lands in a forest and see Daleks flying by.
K: I don’t know why it’s so funny, but the Daleks speaking German CRACKS ME UP.
Mari: Space. Captain Jack says there is a massive ship in the center of the planets called The Crucible. Donna wants to know what the Dalek plan is. The Doctor doesn’t know, but thinks Rose might since she’s coming from a parallel world that is running ahead of theirs. Rose says it’s the darkness. The stars started to go out in her universe.
Rose explains that they were working on a time machine, a dimension canon. She gets all shy about saying that it was all for coming back. The Doctor smiles that toothy, gorgeous smile at her and it’s a sweet little moment of flirtation.
Mari: I think she just looks older and thinner in her face, which makes her teeth look bigger.
The dimension canon started to work and all the dimensions started collapsing. Donna remembers that Rose mentioned something about her in the future and Rose explains that the dimension cannon could measure timelines. They all seemed to converge on Donna, much to Donna’s surprise and disbelief.
The TARDIS starts beeping because we’ve arrived on the Dalek ship. The Doctor explains that they have to go out there or else the Daleks are coming in. Rose thought nothing could get past the TARDIS doors, but in the past, they’ve been dealing with wimpy, scavenger Daleks. This is a full-fledged Dalek empire, used to dealing with TARDISes. They have to go out.
The Doctor’s voice fades a bit as we pan to Donna, the sound of her heartbeat taking the forefront. She’s staring into middle distance, her eyes filling with tears as the Doctor asks if they are all in this together. He notices her and brings her attention back. The Doctor apologizes about the situation, but they don’t have a choice. Donna says she knows, but her face is still frightened as ever.
K: FEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS.
Mari: The Daleks are on high alert. The Doctor turns back to his friends and tells them that it’s been good, everything they did together. He tells them each individually that they were brilliant. They steel themselves and out they go.
Except Donna. She hesitates at the door of the TARDIS as we hear her heartbeat again. But maybe it isn’t her heartbeat? She looks confused for a moment and looks back at the TARDIS console. The Doctor calls for her, telling her she isn’t any safer in there. Before she can come out, though, the TARDIS door slams shut. Donna bangs on the door and asks the Doctor what he did. He didn’t do anything, so he asks the Daleks what they did. They didn’t do anything either, and are now highly suspicious. They send the TARDIS down a chute of doom, Donna trapped inside.
The Doctor, Rose and Jack all take turns demanding that the Daleks bring the TARDIS back and let Donna go, but obviously these are Daleks so that’s a big no from them. We watch as the TARDIS flies into a fiery ball of bad news. The glass busts and parts of the console burst into flames. Donna yells and stumbles around, having no place to hide from the madness. The Daleks pull up a little screen so the Doctor can watch real time as the TARDIS (and Donna) are consumed.
Donna is choking and having a hard time breathing but suddenly she hears something. She looks to her right and there is the Doctor’s zombie hand in a canister. She reaches for it and the regeneration ejaculation seeps from the hand and busts the canister open, surrounding Donna.
The hand starts moving by itself and from it grows a whole new Tenth Doctor.
Mari: Or mine, let’s be honest.
The Doctor and Co. all watch on Dalek TV as the TARDIS appears to be consumed, but we see Nakey Doctor actually vworp vworp it away. The Daleks give the Doctor a long-winded, Dalek version of “u mad?” Jack turns suddenly and starts shooting at the Supreme Dalek and he gets quickly exterminated. We know he’s okay, but Rose doesn’t. She kneels by his body until the Doctor grabs her and tells her there is nothing they can do. Supreme Dalek tells other Daleks to escort Rose and the Doctor to Davros. The Doctor looks back and Jack gives him a little wink.
TARDIS, Nakey Doctor is now dressed so I guess I’ll call him… Doctor New. So creative am I. (K: He’ll forever be Ten!Too to me, because fandom demands it. But Doctor New is pretty damned great) (M: I do what I want, fandom.) He tells Donna they have to be quiet because no one knows they are there. He’s running about, rambling and Donna says this is insane. Do Time Lords just go around growing themselves out of chopped off bits? The Doctor says no. He is unique. All that regeneration energy went into his hand and when Donna touched it, he basically grew out of her.
Doctor New is shocked because he kind of sounds like Donna. He starts freaking at the prospect of having some piece of her when he realizes that in this body, he only has one heart. Donna says, “like a human,” which he finds disgusting. She “oi!”s at him again and he ois back and then shushes her. They are supposed to be being quiet. New Doctor concludes that he is part human, part Time Lord, something he describes as “wizard.”
K: I love this so much. It’s a delightful throwback to Turn Left:
Mari: Donna asks why her, though? Doctor New tells her she’s special, and she quickly denies it. Doctor New says of course she is, but then he sees it: she really doesn’t believe she is. She has all that sass and all that attitude, yelling at the world, afraid they aren’t listening to her because why would they? Donna somberly asks Doctor New to stop, but he can’t as he realizes that all along, they were leading to this moment. Donna appeared on the TARDIS and then found him again during the Adipose invasion. The Doctor met Donna’s grandfather and she parked her car right where the TARDIS landed. Something has been bringing them together all along. Donna finds this, the whole concept of destiny, hard to believe. Doctor New says the pattern isn’t complete yet and the strands are all still drawing together.
Germany. Martha reaches some sort of fortress. There is a old woman there and they speak in German to each other for a bit before switching to English. Martha asks about the soldiers that were supposed to be guarding the fortress. Old Lady says they all went home to die, unlike Martha who is here now. Martha says she has a job to do.
Inside the fortress, Martha finds a secret door that requires her hand print for entrance. The Old Woman follows her and says creepy things about London in the old days. The whole speech finishes with Old Woman pulling a gun on Martha, saying that she can’t let her use the Osterhagen Key. Martha tells her to shoot, then, because she has to do it. The Old Woman can’t.
The Daleks throw Jack into an incinerator, but a moment later he comes out, completely unharmed.
Martha is in a little bunker now. She presses a small button on her console and asks if anyone is on the other line.
Sarah Jane, Jackie and Mickey are being marched onto The Crucible as prisoners.
The Doctor and Rose are before Davros and he puts them into little illuminated cells, surrounded by an invisible field. (K: Oh, BBC. Bless your crappy props budget.) Davros wants to have a chat with the Doctor, but he’s not here for any trips down memory lane. The Doctor wants to talk about what’s going on right now, especially since he’s figured out that Davros is something of a prisoner.
Davros turns his attention to Rose and the Doctor immediately tells him to LEAVE HER ALONE. Davros says he can do whatever he wants to Rose, so she asks why is isn’t dead already then. Davros says that it has been foretold that she would be here and no one will go against the fortune-telling of Dalek Caan. Another spot light turns on and we see Dalek Caan, all squicky looking and weird. He is saying weird things like, “so cold and dark. Fire is coming. The endless flames.” Rose asks what the icky thing is and the Doctor reminds her that they met before. Caan is the last of the Cult of Skaaro, but he flew into the time war unprotected. Davros says Caan saw time, giving him his new creepy fortune telling powers! Speaking of, Caan says that he has foreseen the Doctor here and now, as a witness to the end of everything.
The Doctor gets angry and starts yelling at Caan, which pleases Davros greatly. Davros tells the Doctor to show Rose the man who butchered so many. Oooof. Davros says part of Caan’s prediction is that the Doctor will show his true colors. Caan pipes up to say the Doctor will reveal his soul. HIS SOUL IS BEAUTIFUL, YOU SHUT UP CAAN.
Anyway, Davros says the time is now because they are about to test something called The Reality Bomb.
The prisoners are marched into a room where the Reality Bomb is going to be tested. One of the prisoners trips and falls and while the Daleks are distracted by yelling at her to get up right now, Sarah Jane finds a door and sonics it open. She calls to Mickey, who sneaks in behind her, but Jackie is busy helping the fallen prisoner. She misses her chance to escape and the Reality Bomb is charging up.
K: It’s a good thing this completely terrifying species of aliens has such bad eyesight that they can’t spot two people sneaking away and gesturing emphatically at a third…
Mari: They do only have that weird single eye piece.
Davros pulls up another handy screen for the Doctor to watch the Reality Bomb.
In the TARDIS, Donna and Doctor New get bounced around. Doctor New looks at his console and notices something happening with the planets.
The Doctor watches the screen and quickly realizes what’s happening (“that’s Z-neutrino energy, flattened by the alignment of the planets into a single string“) and it’s bad news. He yells at Davros to definitely not do this thing.
Doctor New keeps watching his console and comes to the same Z-neutrino energy conclusion, though he’s a little calmer about it.
The Reality Bomb is all charged up and Jackie is still trapped. Suddenly, though, Mickey’s dimension hopper starts beeping because it’s recharged. Mickey runs to the window, where Jackie can see him and holds up the hopper so she understands. Jackie takes her own dimension hopper out of her pocket, apologizes to Fallen Prisoner, and gets the heck out of the way of the Reality Bomb. The remaining prisoners slowly turn to yellow dust.
Donna asks Doctor New what just happened.
Rose asks the Doctor what just happened.
Davros answers us all: Electrical energy, Miss Tyler. Every atom in existence is bound by an electrical field. The Reality bomb cancels it out. Structure falls apart. The plan is to use the Reality Bomb to wipe out the whole universe and reality itself. That sounds like a majorly stupid plan, but OKAY DALEKS. Whatever you say.
K: Seriously, this plan is ridiculous. “We spent a lot of time trying to make Daleks the only species in existence but that doesn’t seem to be going so great so LET’S JUST DESTROY EVERYTHING.” Uh, okay?
Mari: Supreme Dalek calls everyone to prepare for the detonation that will leave the Daleks as the only life form ever.
On Earth, Sylvia happily watches the Daleks fly away but Wilf knows we still have 35 minutes of episode left, so this isn’t over.
On the Crucible, Jack rolls out of a grate into the room where Sarah Jane, Jackie and Mickey are. Jack says he was following signs of life and who does he find? Mickey Mouse. Mickey calls him Captain Cheesecake in return and they hug, perhaps for a little too long for Mickey’s taste. (K: I love this reunion. So great. So in character for both of them.) Jack says hello to Sarah Jane as well, who wastes no time because impending doom and all that. She’s got a little piece of convenience in her pocket: a Warp Star, given to her by a soothsayer for the end of times. Mickey asks what it is and Jack explains that it’s an explosion waiting to happen.
Martha gets transmissions from two other Osterhagen stations, meaning they can do whatever cryptic thing they are meant to do. Although UNIT protocol says they only need 3 stations reporting, Martha says she’s answering to a higher authority and there is one more thing the Doctor would do.
K: I stop to have a minor flail of excitement over the fact that the three UNIT reps are all people of colour wheeeee.
Mari: TARDIS. Doctor New has a plan of his own: all those Daleks are made from Davros’s genes, so if he can lock onto it using his future-science-magic-doohickey, he can destroy them all.
Back on the Crucible, they start receiving a transmission from Earth from Martha. She meant the last thing the Doctor would do is give the villains one more chance and it’s so true, it hurts. The Daleks patch Martha through to the Doctor, as apparently this is all part of their predictions. Martha explains that the Osterhagen key will detonate a bunch of nuclear weapons under the Earth, ripping it to shreds. It was meant as a last recourse if human suffering ever got to be too great. The Doctor thinks that’s a TERRIBLE plan (K: AGREED), but Martha tells him the stakes are even higher now: the Daleks need 27 planets and she can effectively take one out. Rose is impressed. Martha asks who she is and when Rose introduces herself, Martha has to pause for a moment in her threatening to literally destroy the world to marvel at the fact that the Doctor found her again. I mean… poor Martha had to hear enough about Rose.
A second internal transmission starts and this time it’s Jack with Mickey, Jackie and Sarah Jane. They’ve got the Warp Star plugged into the Crucible mainframe. If they detonate it, the whole ship goes up. (K: I love Rose’s reaction to this: “Oh my God, that… That’s my MUM.“) The Doctor asks where the heck they got a Warp Start from and Sarah Jane says it’s hers. Davros recognizes Sarah Jane and she remembers him. (#classicWhothangs)
Davros is highly entertained by this because everything is coming together. The Doctor hangs his head dejectedly as Caan crazies that this is the soul and heart of the Doctor revealed. The man who abhors violence and never carries a gun forms weapons out of people. These are the Children of Time, thinking they are helping the Doctor and promising murder and great destruction. Davros made the Daleks, but the Doctor made this. Their dedication to the Doctor was evident when the first human sacrificed herself to open the Subwave Network. The Doctor looks at Rose and she tells him it was Harriet Jones.
Davros keeps digging the knife in as he asks how many people have died in the Doctor’s name? The Strings of Sadness start up in earnest as we get a flash of a bunch of people who died for the Doctor: Jabe, the Controller, Lynda, Sir Robert, Mrs. Moore, Mr. Skinner, Ursula, Bridget, the Face of Boe, Chantho, Astrid, Luke Rattigan, Jenny (at least he thinks…), River Song, and the Hostess.
K: His face during these flashbacks breaks my heart into a million pieces.
Mari: The Doctor is shaking by the time Davros villain gloats that this is his final victory: showing the Doctor himself.
Supreme Dalek is over villain speeches so he shouts some things that cause all the companions to be zapped to the prison room along with Rose and the Doctor. Davros tells them all to kneel and surrender. Davros says this is perfect because now they can all be witnesses. He gets really worked up about mass murder as he yells for the Supreme Dalek to detonate the Reality Bomb.
We get a sequence of planets aligning and the bomb charging and Davros laughing like a maniac. The Doctor yells (with spittle!) for him to stop right now. Davros yells that nothing and no one can stop him now! We jump to the TARDIS and Doctor New taking it up to maximum power. Much to the surprise of everyone, the TARDIS materializes on the Crucible. It’s all salvation and happy times, until Doctor New runs straight for Davros with his weapon and promptly gets shot with electricity out of Davros’s finger, because why was his plan just running straight for Davros? Donna comes running out, grabs the weapon (while announcing, “I’ve got it!”), but she doesn’t know what to do with it. She gets zapped with some electricity too.
Supreme Dalek counts us down to detonation, but Donna stands up and helps herself to a Dalek console. She pushes a lot of buttons and explains (“closing all Z-neutrino relay loops using an internalised synchronous back-feed reversal loop. That button there.“), much to the astonishment of everyone. The bomb shuts off. Davros and the other Daleks try to shoot her, but she shuts down all their weapons. The Doctor asks WTH. Doctor New says she’s part Time Lord, part human. It was a two way transmission when she touched his regenerating hand. The Doctor calls her Doctor Donna, which is what the Ood were saying all along. Donna deactivates the holding cells and tells Doctor and Doctor New to come help her.
K: MY FEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS. I mean, I love that Donna FINALLY sees her worth and gets to be Queen BAMF. But OW MY FEELS.
Mari: Donna sends the Daleks spinning around and out of control. The Doctor asks what Donna’s even doing and her answer impresses him. He asks Doctor New why they never though of that and Donna beams that she’s got that human half he is lacking. That gut instinct that comes hand in hand with Planet Earth. She can come up with ideas they never could dream of. She tells them it’s time to send all the planets home.
K: It really does.
Mari: Rose wants to know what’s going on so Donna gives the Cliff Notes version: the Doctor poured all his regeneration energy into the hand, she touched the hand, Doctor New grew out of that and that fed back into Donna. The Doctor part of her stayed dormant, though, until it got jostled by the shock delivered by Davros. And she got the best part of the Doctor: his mind.
K: Doctor New gets definite Eyebrows of Innuendo during the little pause between “best part of the Doctor” and “his mind.”
Mari: I wouldn’t put it past him to be thinking, “well, she did see Time Lord peen…”
Rose can’t believe there are 3 of them and Jack says they don’t want to know what he’s thinking right now.
Davros asks why Caan didn’t foresee this and the Doctor thinks he did. Something has been manipulating the timelines and bringing Donna to the right place. Caan said it was always going to happen; he just helped. Davros can’t believe Caan betrayed the Daleks, but Caan saw the Daleks and all they did throughout space and time and he decided no more.
The Supreme Dalek flies down to the vault and gets a shot that destroys the mainframe the Doctors are working on before Jack kills him. There is only one planet left to send back home, but the Doctor says they can use the TARDIS to do it.
Caan says that the prophecy must still be completed. He has seen the end of everything Dalek, and the Doctor must make it happen. Doctor New says that Caan is right. With or without the Reality Bomb, this Dalek empire is too big to survive. Donna tells Doctor New to wait for the Doctor. Doctor New says he IS the Doctor. He pulls some switches that cause all of the Daleks to self-destruct.
K: Doctor New’s rage comes from his humanity – Time Lords are above it all, and know that humans can be awful to each other and to others. Doctor New proves it.
Mari: The Doctor runs out of the TARDIS and asks Doctor New what he’s done. We watch many Daleks exploding, including the ones at Torchwood. The Doctor tells everyone to get on the TARDIS. They all run in and he’s the last one at the door. He yells at Davros to come, as he can still be saved (K: Oh, Doctor. Still trying to save your enemies…). Davros tells him never to forget that he did this. He is the Destroyer of Worlds. Caan, for good measure, adds in one last prophecy: one will still die. The Doctor runs in the TARDIS and seeing them all there, despite the craziness and slap-dashedness of this episode, really does tug at my heart.
Sarah Jane says the Earth is still in the wrong place and the Doctor replies that he’s working on it. He calls Torchewood and Gwen Cooper answers. He asks her if he’s maybe from an old Cardiff family and she confirms that she is. (Eve Myles played Gwen in The Unquiet Dead.) (K: Obligatory moment of silence for Nine and his big dumb ears…) Rose and the Doctor share a moment of recognition before the Doctor continues to try and save the Earth. He asks Torchwood to open up the rift manipulator and send the power to him so he can use it as a tow.
The Doctor asks Sarah Jane what her son’s name is. She says it’s Luke and the computer is Mr. Smith. The Doctor calls them next and Luke asks if his mum is there. Sarah Jane laughs with relief at the sound of his voice. The Doctor asks Mr. Smith to lift power and loop it around the TARDIS. The computer says it will need the TARDIS base codes, which is bad news because it will take too much time. Sarah Jane gets an idea and calls out for K-9, who materializes next to Luke. K-9 transfers the necessary base codes.
K: Man, they’re just bringing back all the old favourites in this episode!
Mari: On the TARDIS, the Doctor directs everyone to stand just so (except for Jackie, which is RUDE). He says the TARDIS is always banging about because it was meant to be flown by multiple people. With all of them, they can safely and steadily fly the Earth home.
K: It gives me a lot of feelings that the TARDIS is meant to be flown by a whole crowd of people and yet the Doctor always ends up alone.
Mari: Everyone on Earth holds on for dear life and the crew flies her home. When she’s back in place, we watch everyone on the TARDIS, clap, laugh and hug.
The TARDIS lands in a park. The Doctor is dropping Sarah Jane home. She tells him that he acts like just a lonely man, but he’s got the biggest family on Earth (K: OW). They hug and she says she’s got to run. Her son is only 14 and it’s a long story. The Doctor looks at her fondly, sadly, as she hurries away.
On the TARDIS, Mickey tells Jackie he’s going to miss her most of all. She asks why, if the Doctor is taking them home. Mickey says that’s just the point as he hugs her. Aw, these two have come a long way.
Back outside, the Doctor sonics Jack’s teleport device so it won’t work anymore. Plus, he tells Martha to get rid of the Osterhagen key and save the world one more time. They all salute each other and as Jack walks away holding Martha’s hand, he tells her there may be something else she could be doing besides UNIT. Mickey comes running out and the Doctor asks him what he’s doing. He says his gran passed away in the alternate universe and there’s nothing there for him now. Certainly not Rose. He can start a new life. Off he goes, yelling out to Martha and Jack and joining them.
K: I love that Mickey – after years of being the tin dog and trailing around after Rose – is making his own choice.
Mari: Next stop is Bad Wolf Bay, back in the alternate universe that’s the Tyler’s new home. Jackie says she’ll have to call her husband to pick them up. They have a baby boy together now.
The walls between dimensions are closing again. Rose says that she spent all this time finding the Doctor and she’s not going back now. The Doctor says that she has to. They saved the universe, but at a cost and the cost is Doctor New. He committed genocide. He was born in battle full of blood and revenge, just like how the Doctor was when Rose first found him. (Past and future feels, y’all.) Rose helped him and now Rose can do the same for Doctor New. Rose cries softly as she says that Doctor New is not the Doctor. Donna says there’s more, though, and encourages Doctor New to explain it.
Doctor New says that he looks like and thinks like and has all the memories of the Doctor, but he’s only got one heart. He’ll never regenerate and he’ll grow old like a human. He’s only got one life and he can spend it with Rose, if she wants. Rose tentatively puts her hand over Doctor New’s single heart. The TARDIS hums and the Doctor says they have to go. Rose stops him because it still isn’t right. The Doctor insists that the Doctor New is him. (K: “He needs you. That’s very me.” OWWWW WHY.) Rose asks them to answer this for her then: the last time she was here on this beach, on the worst day of Whovians’s her life, what did he say to her?
K: I’m flat out sobbing by this point every time I watch this episode. The look on the Doctor’s face when he sees Doctor New saying the words that he can never say is heartbreaking. As is the look on Doctor New’s face when Rose breaks the kiss as the TARDIS vworp vworps away OH MY GOD WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO MEEEEEEE.
Mari: Donna lovingly strokes the TARDIS console and starts babbling about a planet they can visit where the mountains sway in the wind. The Doctor softly and cautiously asks how she knows that. She does because it’s in his brain and now that’s her brain. The Doctor asks her how that feels and she says it’s fine, but then she starts glitching.
K: There are very few moments in Tennant’s era when his face is completely devoid of emotion, a total blank slate. And the few times it does happen, it’s when something so awful he can’t process it is happening. It happens in Doomsday after Rose gets sucked into the void. And it happens here when he KNOWS what’s happening to Donna and wishes to God it wasn’t. In short: I’m a hysterical hot mess.
Mari: Donna doubles over with the amount of stuff just in her heard right now. The Doctor asks if Donna knows what’s happening and she does. There has never been a Time Lord metacrisis because there can’t be. Donna says she wants to stay. She says she was going to be with the Doctor forever, traveling on the TARDIS, the Doctor Donna. He says he knows. Donna starts to shake and cry as she really realizes that this means going back home. She begs him not to make her go back (K: WHYYYYY). He apologizes, tells her they had the best of times, and puts his hands on her temples. We get flashes of Donna’s greatest hits, until Donna collapses in the Doctor’s arms.
At the Noble residence, Wilf rushes to answer the door, expecting Donna. He looks out and sees the TARDIS. He looks down and there is the Doctor at the doorstep, Donna collapsed in his lap. He asks Wilf to help him.
We cut to Donna now in bed. In the living room, the Doctor explains that he had to wipe Donna’s memory of him and all their adventures away. The Time Lord consciousness would’ve killed her. That version of Donna Noble is dead and she can never be reminded of it again, or else she’ll burn up. Wilf says that Donna was better with him.
“I just want you to know there are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her. That there are people living in the light, and singing songs of Donna Noble, a thousand million light years away. They will never forget her, while she can never remember. And for one moment, one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe.”
K: I’m literally crying right now just from reading that line. Donna’s ending is the most heartbreaking, emotional, causes-me-physical-pain thing to ever happen in this show as far as I’m concerned.
Mari: Sylvia says she still is because she’s her daughter. The Doctor tells Sylvia to tell Donna that once in a while.
Donna walks in, babbling about falling asleep in her clothes and all the texts she’s got about flying planets in the sky. The Doctor introduces himself as John Smith and Donna doesn’t even look at him. It’s the worst. (K: SERIOUSLY)
After Donna leaves, Sylvia tells the Doctor he should leave now.
Donna’s in the kitchen, gossiping on the phone. The Doctor tells her he’s going now and she barely spares him a, “yeah, okay.” Wilf sees the Doctor to the door. It’s raining outside. The Doctor says goodbye and walks out into the rain. Wilf stops him and asks who he’s got now. The Doctor says all his companions all have someone else, but he’s fine. He’ll be fine. Wilf says all the same, he’ll look up at the sky every night on Donna’s behalf and think of him. This entire conversation in the rain gives us one of the most classic gifs of all time.
K: Did you mean “me right now at this moment”? Because if so, that gif is 100% accurate.
Mari: The Doctor thanks Wilf, heads to the TARDIS and flies away.
The Doctor broods on the TARDIS.
This episode took so long to recap and I think the reason ties back to why I liked this episode, but I don’t love it: it has way too much going on. It hurts to say, too, because I don’t think I would give back any of those guest stars. I loved seeing them all back across these last two episodes and I love the bigger idea of them coming to the Doctor’s rescue but also being so altered because of his presence in their life. However, there just wasn’t enough room to do all of this justice. They don’t even bat an eyelash as Davros calls them all murderers, fashioned by the Doctor. We don’t get to explore any of that because we’re moving on so quickly, from scene to scene and crazy revelation to the next. It gives the episode a lasting impression of chaos, and it’s a shame that that’s what sticks in an episode with some many welcome faces. And, more, that is a final goodbye to beautiful, lovely, amazing, I’m-gonna-miss-her-so-much, Donna.
Catherine Tate’s acting was as good as it always was in her goodbye scene. Donna’s ending is just so heartbreaking to me because her entire arc has been about being made a better, more confident version of herself because of travel. She’s been brave and useful and she stepped outside of how much she was put down low by her mother and others. Donna earns so much throughout her time on the TARDIS and to see that all wiped away really is devastating, especially when you consider that it was always coming to this anyway.
My mixed emotions absolutely extend to the entire idea of Doctor New and how he ends up with Rose. My shipper heart don’t cur and loves that they found this loop to keep Rose reasonably happy while still maintaining the integrity of the Doctor’s character. I think my biggest complaints are about convenience and how quickly everything ties together at the end. We go from the Doctor accusing Doctor New of genocide to him being like, “wanna spend your life with me or nah?” to Rose and boom. Everything is settled. It’s too much, too fast, at least when we are looking at the episode objectively.
K: I’m pretty much incapable of looking at this episode objectively because it smashes my heart into a million pieces every single time I watch it. That said, Mari makes a hundred excellent points in her summary, so I second pretty much all of that.
Next time on Doctor Who: The Doctor finds another Doctor in S04 E14 – The Next Doctor.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.