18 June 2007

Doctor Who: Utopia: Spoilers ahead

The third season of Doctor Who gets better, as Utopia, episode 11 of the series, ended with a surprise twist and the the beginning of three-part season finale.

Ledgendary actor Derek Jacobi guest stars in this story set at the end of the universe (but seemed to miss the resturant), where TARDIS, the Doctor, Martha and returning Captain Jack encounter the last surviving humans trying to get to Utopia.

But as the Doctor helps the humans to escape from the Futurekind, a kindly old professor named Yana turns out to hide a great secret. One Martha realizes when she see's him carrying the same style pocket watch the Doctor used when hiding from The Family of Blood. A watch only a Time Lord would have.

But while to Martha and Jack seemed to be convinced this means the Doctor is not the only Time Lord left (as the the Face of Boe mentioned in Gridlock), the Doctor is not so sure.

When Yana finally opens the watch, his life is returned to him and he knows who he is, and who the Doctor is, but that is cut short when his assisstant -in a last bit of life left in her - shoots him.

As his body begins to die, he rushes into the TARDIS, locking the Doctor out. And it is here, as he plots his escape, he regenerates.

The Master is reborn.

Next week: Trapped at the end of the universe the Doctor must save Martha and Jack from his worst enemy while John Saxon takes over as Prime Minister of England. A man who strangly looks like the newly regenerated Master.

Be there for the The Sound of Drums.

Addendum:

Continuity is a terrible hobgoblin. I’m thinking, trying to figure out if Russell T Davies will bother with The Master’s plot hole.

At the end of 1981's The Keeper of Traken, it was revealed that The Master was nearing the end of his twelfth regeneration -the end for a Time Lord. With help from the Source on Traken, the Master took over the body of Tremas. For the rest of the series run, the Master remains in this form, seemly trapped in this body. In The Five Doctors, the Time Lords ask him to save the Doctor, with his reward if he succeeds, a new life cycle (which is never revealed if they gave it to him, or if they could even do it).

In the last episode of the original series, Survival, the Master is trapped on the planet of the Cheetah people, until we see him again in the 1996 TV movie. Here, the Master is put to death for all of his crimes, by the Daleks no less. But, as the arch enemy can always do, the essence of the Master survives and he’s able to take over the body of an EMT guy. The Doctor leaves the Master trapped in the Eye of Harmony.

Now, in Utopia, the Professor (which Ace used to call the seventh Doctor) Yana turns out to have the same Chamaeleon Arch watch the Doctor had from the recent two-part story Human Nature and The Family of Blood.

Will Davies reveal how The Master ended up where he did, how he escaped the Eye of Harmony from the TV movie, how he survived the time war?

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