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Original Transmission
Cast
Crew
Plot Outline From Wikipedia The episode begins with the Doctor, Martha and Jack materialising in a London alleyway, using Jack's Vortex Manipulator, which the Doctor mended in the year 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000). Martha asks the Doctor how he will know where the Master is, to which the Doctor replies he will know when he sees him. The trio look around to see "Vote Saxon" posters everywhere. Then, Mr. Saxon makes an announcement on a giant TV screen, and the Doctor realises who the mysterious "Mr. Saxon" is - the Master.
Elsewhere, a woman named Vivian Rook asks to have a interview with Mrs. Saxon in 10 Downing Street. She warns her of Mr. Saxon, saying he doesn't exist and that he only really appeared 18 months beforehand. She then turns and sees Saxon watching her. He confirms that Mr. Saxon doesn't exist, and then four levitating globes appear out of thin air and kill the woman. Meanwhile, the trio have gone to Martha's house to find out more about Mr. Saxon. He makes an announcement on the TV about the Archangel network, which Martha says is a mobile phone network.
Saxon makes an announcement on the TV about the Toclafane, and the Doctor discovers a bomb on the back of Martha's TV. They run out as her apartment explodes. Martha then rings up her mum, to check on her; Francine wishes for Martha to come to her house, claiming that she plans to get back together with Clive. As Francine passes the phone to Clive, he tries to warn her about Mr Saxon but the "sinister woman" is listening. She orders the police to arrest him as well as Francine. Martha hurriedly drives to the scene with the Doctor and Jack, but before she can do anything the Police open fire on them and she is forced to drive away.
Using Martha's phone, the Doctor discovers that the Master is using a mysterious 4-beat rhythm on the phones to subconsciously lull people into voting for him. He creates a perception filter and adds it to the TARDIS keys, rendering the time team hidden from direct view. The threesome then uses Jack's Vortex Manipulator to teleport into the Valiant, an airship where the meeting with the Toclafane is scheduled to take place. The Master presumably uses the TARDIS, which has been "cannibalised" and converted into a "Paradox Machine", to open a rift in the sky above the Earth. This releases approximately six billion (equivalent to the population of Earth in this time period) Toclafane, which he orders to decimate the population.
The Master then produces a device called a laser screwdriver and, using the Doctor's biological data - the hand chopped off on Christmas Day - coupled with Lazlabs technology, ages the Doctor by 100 years. The Master looks at the doomed Earth with his wife and the Doctor, Martha having teleported to earth using the Manipulator, promising to return.
The penultimate episodes of the last two series were disturbing. In 2005 we were left with a cliffhanger in which The Doctor tells Rose that he is dead. In 2006 we had Rose telling us that she was dead. This time, it looks like the end of the world, and more than ever before The Doctor is powerless. And that is disturbing. Because The Doctor is the rock we all lean on. We believe in him, rely on him. We expect him to have the answers. And it looks as if he’s out of answers.
Because The Doctor had lost everything that he ever fought with. He has lost his TARDIS, turned into a satanic version of itself by The Master. He has been aged horribly by The Master’s reversal of professor Lazarus’s technology. He is a prisoner, unable to do anything. So what now? It’s going to be a very long week waiting to find out just how this will be resolved. How will The Doctor get out of this? It has BEEN a long week waiting to find out how the trio got back to Earth. And that problem was solved in a few seconds. They used Jack’s Time Vortex Manipulator. Dead easy. Deus ex Machina you cry? No, because we knew jack HAD the Manipulator. And we know The Doctor is a Time Lord. Between the two of them, simple enough.
But the world they return to is different. And it is frightening because it LOOKS just the same. Shopping arcades and suburban streets, chip shops and taxi cabs. Nothing had changed outwardly, but the world was sinisterly and horribly different. It had The Master in it. The Master! John Simm plays a blinder in the part. He is so insane he has gone through insanity and out the other side. And yet how many of us were behind his mockery of the American president’s bluster! We’ve all heard so much sabre rattling from the White House in the past decade, it was almost a moment for cheering when he engineered the downfall of a US President who claimed he was representing Planet Earth!
But sympathy with The Master is sympathy with the Devil himself. And in the end he is evil. His motives are self serving. His actions cause pain and death to the innocent. And we need The Doctor to be able to fight back and save the world. It IS going to be a long week.
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