The End Of The World

Once again Russell T Davies has pulled a proverbial dove out of his writers hat much to the amazement of all concerned (well me at least). I sat last Saturday and watched Rose and I enjoyed it, in my opinion it was probably the best Doctor Who story since 1984 (Caves of Androzani) and wondered, "How can this be beaten or topped". Then this week we started with the episode "The End of the World" the usual fare (the Doctor takes his companion to see some wonder of the universe and blags his way in). The old touches were there that made the series a favourite of mine back in the 70's and half of the eighties. The slightly telepathic piece of paper that made people see what they were meant to see being the first part that made me smile, ecclestons portrayal of the doctor ad-libbing that his breath was a gift being the other. 

Still this Doctor had something hiding behind the eyes something the others never had we saw a part of it when Rose asked him where he was from. The snappiness, the anger and the hurt that was put across tricked the viewer into thinking that the doctor was just irritated with the question and didn't want to reveal his people or the power they had. His way of apologising to Rose (by enabling her phone to call her mum 5 million years in the past was nice touch) shows that this is a doctor that will not apologise with words but with acts of kindness. 

Moving on from this the plot chugged along at a reasonable rate and started to reveal itself as pretty much a standard who plot however by the end it all revealed itself to be a charade. A smoke and mirrors exercise all put together for what can only be 2 minutes of the real reason for the plot and one of the biggest shocks that somehow I had managed to avoid during all the spoilers the new series and I’m glad I had. 

With Rose (the reasons of which were for the new main plot to be expanded) confined to a room the Doctor had a temporary new companion in the tree person Jabe who was wonderfully played by Yasmin Bannerman. She played the character of Jabe with just the right amount of knowledge and yet at the same time a sense of humanity one of the most powerful scenes has to be the act of kindness she shows the Doctor by saying she was "sorry for what had happened". Eccleston himself proved exactly why he deserves to be in big blockbuster movies and is such a character actor with tears welling in his eye's you couldn't help to be moved by the whole scene (even though it could only have been 30 - 60 seconds in total). 

The ending of the story will probably be the part that will get the most criticism and for reasons of spoiler fairness I must ask that if you haven't seen the story look away now because if you haven't this will really annoy you.

The Doctor lets someone die; he doesn't try to help them he lets them die. He stands there and watches someone die without any remorse or attempt to help them he just watches it and lets it happen. This was the man who would try to save anyone and yet now he watches people die. 

We were of course privy to at least why he had changed so much when Rose stood there saying she had missed the end of world and that no one had seen the earths final moments and lamented that all of earths history and it's people (her people) were gone he took her back to her time and let her see it was all still there and revealed that he was the last of time lords and all clicked in to place. 

The Doctor may have always been a galactic hobo, a traveller but his home was still there. Gallifrey and the time lords were in the background everything he was and had been made into was still there for him. With this Doctor it wasn't, it was gone he was the only one left of his race, no friends, no Romana, no history. With that moment you understood why he was the way he was and why this Doctor would try to save species and race's (the Nestine consciousness) but for the individuals who had no wish to play by rules and wanted death and destruction for power, glory or money he would have no mercy. This Doctor is one to watch and although Eccleston has left, I still can't wait for the eleven other episodes and this episode left me with only one question:

"Who is powerful enough to destroy the time lords"?

PS It's a rhetorical question by the way please, don't respond!