Excuse the profanity but WHAT THE FRAK?????

Seriously??!!! OH MY VARIOUS GODS!!!!

Usual amount of spoilers after the jump. I think I need to put my head between my knees for a minute.Right, okay. So, to recap, the Master’s taken over, the planet is in peril … oh and the Time Lords are ‘back’. Yes, part one was overall a lot of fun but a bit pants in the story department. I ended up watching part one about a hundred times over the last week and yes, it was good with plenty of special effects but there was just too much crammed in. Way, way too much and what there was was woolly and too reliant on prophecies and potions and awesome-looking special effects.

Part two’s gotta be better, right? Erm … well …

Action-packed is definitely an adequate description of part two. As usual there’s the assurance that by the end of the episode all will be right and (the gorgeous, lovely and talented) David Tennant will undergo the inevitable metamorphosis into (the still to young for me to have a crush on) Matt Smith. But before that happens, there’s a planet to save and a few loose ends to tie up.

John Simm’s Master is fantastic in this episode. Still mad, still blonde and still the Doctor’s eternal adversary. It’s great to finally have that plot point regarding the drums resolved and for him to have that moment of redemption, that really makes you wonder what kind of Time Lord he would have been but for the drums. There’s a great scene where the pair talk and the Master has moments of common sense before his final fall into total insanity. There’s something truly compelling there as the pair battle it out in dialogue.

From a story (and, oddly, Twitter) point of view, there’s a lot here. The human race is now the Master Race (and somehow the Master clones of China have had time to replace the picture of Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square with, guess who, yes the Master) with only Donna, Wilf and the ‘Cactuses’ (aka the Vinvocci) left. But there’s more to this than just taking over the Earth. There’s no narration this episode, rather we suddenly find ourselves on Gallifrey on the last day of the infamous Time War where the mysterious Narrator (Timothy Dalton) is revealed as the Lord President of the Time Lords. At the end, the Doctor confirms his identity as Rassilon, the mad, bad founder of Time Lord society – and he appears to be wielding the Hand of Omega.

Question: What happened to Romana III? Wasn’t she Lady President at the end of the Time War?

Question: WTF? What’s Rassilon doing there? Did the Time Lords bring him back as they did the Master but WHY?? How?

Now Rassilon, well he doesn’t want to die. On that front, you can’t blame him. He’s a bit bonkers, you see, not quite as much as the Master but rather in that really scary maniacal way. Also in that powerful can make things happen kind of way – and that’s really bad. The President decides to save himself and Gallifrey via a really badly written escape plan. He chucks a diamond – which is also some kind of really tiny star – at the Earth. It just so happens to land right at the Master’s feet in the very time and place that everything is happening. Yeah, right. Okay, the reasoning for this is kind of weighed up by the idea of placing a trace on the Master in the form of the drums in his head. Yes, the Time Lords make him mad, they make him the person he is. Nice one guys. The President also does the job of explaining the noise – the rhythm of four beats – as the heartbeat of a Time Lord.

By extension, we also get to find out who the mysterious woman is. She’s not the White Guardian (damn) or any other kind of Eternal (damn). Rather, she’s a Time Lady (and maybe the Doctor’s mother but nothing’s for sure) shamed for her vote to let Gallifrey fall. Indeed she spends almost all her on-screen time in this episode (baring her appearances in front of a bemused Wilf) with her face covered a la the Weeping Angels. Who is she really? No idea. How was she able to project herself? Still no idea. Really really bad plot-wise and definitely needed some kind of resolution.

I admit to being a bit disappointed with Donna’s role in this episode. She was very much a cameo with little purpose and she misses all the action again. The mass escape to the Vinvocci ship was just time wasting and their escape a lazy way of fixing up another loose end.

The whole Time Lord thing annoyed me though. Yes, Rassilon’s powerful but being able to undo the Master’s cloning with just a metal glove. Kinda naff. As for Gallifrey following them, that’s really really naff. That said though, at least it offers one explanation how the Daleks can be in the next series. Even worse though was the ascension crap. I write about that stuff and it’s not something you can just do, much less to an insane race obsessed with its own immortality. It was the cheat’s way out.

Now I love David Tennant’s Doctor. He’s the reason, in my humble opinion, that the series has become a modern cult classic. This is a character who abhors violence and never ever carries a gun – except this time. Yes when the Doctor carries a weapon and aims at both the Master and then Rassilon, you know it’s the end. The compromise is so Doctor-like and the Master’s self-sacrifice somewhat redeems the episode from the depths it’s plumbed.

And when it’s over, there’s a wonderful moment when the Doctor realises he’s alive. Then comes the knocking – four quiet taps from off camera.

Just as he’s convinced he’s not going to die, and everything collapses. The prophecy is here and there’s little time. It’s a fitting twist that really comes out of right field and knocks you for six. Wilf’s stuck in that silly radiation chamber and one person has to go in to let the other one out. This is where the Doctor has to choose and it’s the most brilliant moment in the entire episode – nay the series. The Doctor has to choose to die, it’s essentially suicide, and he rages against it. But in the end he has no choice, he loves Wilf like a father and it’s perfectly moving as he shouts and breaks down. Regeneration might not be true death, not in the human sense, but for this Doctor – who likes his incarnation more than any other – it might as well be. The pain and anguish, the agony as he does what Christopher Eccleston did in The Parting of the Ways and gives up his life for someone he cares for, is emotive.

And then things just get silly. He should regenerate immediately, as he did at the end of series one, or nearly did at the end of The Stolen Earth. But oh no. That would be simple. The Doctor’s saved Earth and the universe so he deserves a ‘reward’.

Question: When was the last time he got one of those? He’s the Doctor, he doesn’t do what he does for karmic balance or compensation!

So the last ten minutes or so is devoted to a flashback where he goes and visits his previous companions: Rose in 2005, Donna at her wedding, Captain Jack in an alien bar (post Ianto’s demise) whom he sets up with Midshipman Alonso Frame, Luke and Sarah Jane. I do love how he meets Verity Newman, the granddaughter of Joan Redfern, his love during his human months as John Smith in 1913. Touching, just touching. Oh and let’s not forget Martha and Mickey – who are now married.

No no no no no! Martha was supposed to marry the cute doctor from The Last of the Time Lords! What happened to him. Boo!

It’s after a fleeting visit to Rose before she met his previous incarnation that the regeneration finally takes hold. It’s so final, even if the Ood song is a tad melodramatic. DT’s last words are moving and that idea that this Doctor, his personality, is dying is heartbreaking. This really is starting afresh for series five, the end of an era. When his regeneration finally takes hold it’s a fitting end to the RTD years that the ensuring energy destroys the control room of the TARDIS.

This really is a signal that the era of RTD is over and a new age is beginning, with a new TARDIS interior, a new logo and a new showrunner in the form of the lovely Steven Moffat. I’m still very on the fence with Matt Smith, he gets a couple of minutes but mainly comes across as a little unstable (no surprising really) though the ‘ginger’ quip is a nice nod to CE’s transformation into DT.

I’m still not sure how I feel overall about the two part story. That said, I’m not as worried about series five now. It will come and it will either be good, more of the same or bloody terrible. Whichever is the case, DT will always be my Doctor.