This was the final goodbye (for now) for Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor. It was also good bye to Yaz, Dan, show runner Chris Chibnall and overall, the end of an era.
I think many fans would admit that this run of the show hasn’t been the smoothest, but I can honestly say that I really enjoyed this final episode of the Thirteenth Doctor, and would say it was probably the best of her run. With loads of fan service, the best line up of all star Doctor Who villains and good action, this was as good a send off as Jodie and the fam could have hoped for.
The plot went over some familiar ground to what we’ve seen previously in Doctor Who. The Master is once again teaming with the Cybermen and creating a Time Lord enhanced army which echoed both Missy and The Master teaming up with Cybermen at the end of the Twelfth Doctor’s reign, and John Sims’ Master creating the Master Race at the end of the Tenth’s.
We had the Doctor doing a deal with a rogue Dalek (which isn’t as unheard of as they would have us think) and soon enough we had a plot where the Doctor and Yaz would have to take on The Master, the Cybermen and the Daleks all at the same time.
Surprisingly Dan checked out as a companion right at the start of the episode, which was a shame. I’m not sure if John Bishop had limited availability, or they made the choice to focus on the Doctor and Yaz as the defining companion relationship of the Thirteenth, but if so, that was the right choice.
This episode was all about fan service, and if Dan needed to step away, what it did was give room for the reintroduction of Tegan and Ace from the eras of the Fifth and Seventh Doctors respectively. They were brought in as recruits of Kate Stewart and Unit due to their past experience and knowledge tackling aliens and travelling with the Doctor. When you think about it, shouldn’t all past companions have always been offered this type of role?
Tegan unfortunately was tricked by the Master into bringing a Russian doll which unleased Cybermen into Unit and wiped most of them out. Ace meanwhile randomly got her old Ace jacket from a hidden compartment in Unit and a baseball bat and then teams up with a returning Graham to fight Daleks under a volcano. Maybe I missed it, but it seemed there really was no explanation for Bradley Walsh to be back…but it was nice to see him. No Ryan though, so the fam wasn’t quite all back together here.
The biggest area of fan service came in the return of past Doctors David Bradley (once again stepping in for William Hartnell as the First Doctor), Peter Davison as the Fifth, Colin Baker as the Sixth, Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh and Paul McGann as the Eighth. Their roles were limited as some kind of apparition or hologram projection to guide both the Thirteenth and past companions, but was great to see them.
What made these inclusions especially great was how for the most part, these past Doctors have been somewhat shunned by the new era Who. Peter Davison previously returned for Time Crash, the charity special mini episode during the era of the Tenth Doctor, and Paul McGann returned for a mini episode to show how he regenerated into the War Doctor. Although all of them have taken part in Doctor Who audio adventures, this marks the first time they have been included to return as the Doctor in main televised episode. For Colin Baker in particular it adds a happier ending to his story after being written off without the opportunity to even film his regeneration.
Similarly, Sylvester McCoy got to film a final scene with Sophie Aldred as Ace as their adventures were brought to an end on TV when the show was cancelled in the late 1980s.
It’s a shame that with so many past Doctors represented that they didn’t take the opportunity to introduce Reece Shearsmith back as the Second Doctor as he had played alongside David Bradley in An Adventure in Space and Time. Likewise Sean Pertwee would have been great to play his father’s role of the Third Doctor. Maybe another time for both of these.
Tom Baker was noticeable in his absence, but was probably due to his age/health. New era Doctors Christopher Eccleston, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi were also missing, but maybe there are future plans to include some or all of them in next year’s special episodes along with a certain someone else we’ll get to shortly.
We did get one more Doctor in a special appearance of Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor, but before you ask, no there really wasn’t any explanation of any of the mysteries that were still left hanging over from the last series. Vinder also turned up, but no Bel or their kid, so all the theories that they were the parents of the Doctor were for nothing I guess. Maybe with all the negative reaction to the Timeless Children storyline they thought it best to leave for someone else to resolve and just concentrate on fan service.
We did have another Doctor in the episode though as The Master forced a regeneration upon the Doctor whereby he became the Doctor. There was a nice call back to the Second Doctor being forced to regenerate here, although the method used by the Master here was more reminiscent of the teleportation chambers from the movie The Fly and the chamber which took Superman’s powers away form him in Superman 2.
So, I think this may mean that we can count Sacha Dhawan as an official in canon Fourteenth Doctor now. Good for him. We got more fan service as he dressed himself in a combination of past Doctor’s clothes with the Fourth’s scarf, Fifth’s stick of celery and Seventh’s jumper. We even got a recorder just as the Second had.
Although this version of the Doctor was the Doctor, the personality and face was completely the Master and so Jodie was relegated to be a hologram for the next bunch of scenes. This was odd in a sense as the hologram sometimes became another past Doctor which meant that Jodie was swapped out a surprising amount of time in her final episode.
The plot became about her attempting to force another regeneration, but this time a degeneration. Now, this may just be my opinion, but regeneration or degeneration, they didn’t change time here. However, you look at it, this was two new generations of the Doctor. So, you could say Jodie was both the Thirteenth and the Fifteenth.
We got another call back to the David Tennant era when all the companions worked together to pilot the Tardis. Unfortunately bringing back the Thirteenth was short lived as the Master managed to cause a fatal blast of energy to hit the Doctor before being crushed by a rock himself. One good thing here is that it seemed to show that the Master was about to regenerate which is better than the past couple of times when they insisted on saying the Master was dead dead when clearly he was going to come back.
Yaz came to the rescue and carried the Doctor back to the Tardis, but without showing her say goodbye to everyone she just had time to say goodbye alone to Yaz. I think many fans were waiting for the kiss between them, but it never happened. They acknowledged what may have just been a fan theory in the last series, but never took it any further here, even at the end.
Jodie then took herself to a sea view and regenerated with some of the best regeneration visuals we’ve seen on the show to date. Strangely she became David Tennant again, which was also widely known to be happening. What makes it strange is that the whole degeneration thing could make sense as the explanation for what happened here, but for the way they showed it. Somehow despite Jodie still having the Doctor-Master’s clothes on during the degeneration, Jodie’s clothes vanished to show David in his usual Tenth Doctor style clothes. Does this indicate some kind of time travel or break in time?
It was great to see David back, and his lines which mirrored his first ever lines as the Doctor at the end of 2005 were a great nod to the past. A teaser for the next series showed both David as the Doctor and the first footage of Ncuti Gatwa as the next Doctor. I hesitate to say Fourteenth as after this episode the argument could be made that he would be the Seventeenth Doctor! And if you check out a previous article on this site you could see how Ncuti may be about the fifty-third Doctor!
Conclusion
This was by far the best Jodie Whittaker lead episode of Doctor Who. Great action, nice connections and tributes to the past and lots of emotional moments made this a winner. It’s a shame that they couldn’t have hit this level throughout the last couple of series of the show, but at least it ended on a high note for the Thirteenth.
