Rage Against the Dying of the Light: Death and Rebirth in "Doctor Who: The End of Time (Part Two)"

The Doctor is bigger than just one man.

To date now, eleven actors have taken on the mantle of The Doctor, the alien time-traveler who travels about the heavens in a blue police call box that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

The Doctor's frequent regeneration speaks not only of the resilience of the spirit but also to the temporary nature of all things. It's a reminder that, with each step we make, death stalks all of us, human and Time Lord, mortal and immortal alike. It's what we choose to make of that death--and of that life--that define us for who we really are.

With last night's final 2009-10 Doctor Who special, Doctor Who: The End of Time (Part Two), written by Russell T. Davies and directed by Euros Lyn, we said goodbye to the actor whom many of us believe has best embodied the madcap heroic attributes of the Doctor: David Tennant.

While I was moved when Christopher Eccleston stepped aside at the end of the first season, it is Tennant's departure that stabs me like a knife in the heart. Throughout his run, Tennant's turn as the Doctor has left an indelible mark on the Doctor Who franchise and its numerous fans, both young and old. We all knew that the Doctor would die, that he would regenerate (specifically into incoming series star Matt Smith), and that we would have to say goodbye. But that doesn't make the leave-taking any less difficult or any less fraught with emotion.

So what did I think of Doctor Who: The End of Time (Part Two)? Let's discuss.

I thought that Doctor Who: The End of Time (Part Two) showed significant improvement on the first part of the two-part David Tennant finale, which itself felt like it shoehorned in too many story threads, characters, and disjointed subplots. Was it necessary for Tennant's swan song on the series to include the return of The Master (John Simm), the possible return of the Time Lords, the Naismiths, Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), Wilf (Bernard Cribbins), Lucy Saxon (Alexandra Moen), the Mystery Woman (Claire Bloom), the Ood, the Vinvocci, and a slew of others? In that sense, the storyline was bound to suffer from the weight of too many elements, all jockeying for supremacy.

The first half seemed to set up several mysteries that went unanswered in the second half (and therefore may not have been important in the first case). Just why was the Master blond? Who was behind the cabal that resurrected him? Why did he suddenly have new powers? Why didn't Lucy Saxon's sacrifice work? And what happened to Lucy if she wasn't fused with The Master? Putting those minor thoughts aside, the larger mystery--the identity of The Woman--looms even larger. I'm still not entirely sure, even after watching both halves of the Doctor Who: The End of Time, why she was necessary for the story. Or even who she was, a fact that seems to be under debate.

What Doctor Who: The End of Time (Part Two) did successfully was hit some well-crafted emotional beats, particularly between the Doctor and Wilf. Both old men, both on the road to death, the unlikely duo has been linked by death from the start. Each is, in the words of Dylan Thomas, raging against the dying of the light in their own way. 80-year-old Wilf is in search of one last adventure before he lays down his pistol for the last time, while the Doctor is attempting to throw off the shackles of fate, to avoid his death, to negate the prophecy.

But death can't be escaped from. Not even for a man to whom time and space are mere playthings. The Doctor's folly is that he wants too desperately to live. It's a strain of the same disease which infects the bloodthirsty Time Lords, trapped within the Time Lock, looking for a loophole with which to save themselves. While the Time Lords--led by the nefarious Lord President, Rassilon (Timothy Dalton)--find that escape via the Master's insanity, the never-ending sound of drums in his mind, the Doctor realizes that any attempt to battle death is foolish. Death comes knocking whether you want it to or not.

I thought it a cruel, ironic twist that the four knocks of the Doctor's death came not from The Master, not from Rassilon, or the countless threats that the Doctor has faced down over 900-plus years of existence but from Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins) himself. Doom isn't drawn pistols or energy-wielding gloves but four knocks from a kindly old man. I knew once Wilf had managed to lock himself inside the nuclear shielding that the Doctor was done for. But while others would have plead to the Doctor for salvation, Wilf is prepared to sacrifice himself to save the Doctor. For others, it might have been an easy choice. What weight does the life of an elderly man, a nobody by all accounts, have against that of a Time Lord?

But The Doctor isn't most people. His death has been foretold and his life has come down to this very moment. Can he live with himself if he lets Wilf die? Can he live with one more death on his conscience when he could avoid it? And so The Doctor steps inside the shielding and absorbs the now critical nuclear energies into himself. He frees Wilf and condemns himself.

To me, the most powerful elements of Doctor Who: The End of Time involve the Doctor and Wilf, whose friendship and scenes together give the finale some emotional weight. I'm less certain about the handling of the return of the Time Lords or The Master's modus operandi. (He was really going to then turn the Time Lords into more genetic copies of himself? Why?) It's a big reveal and an even bigger plot that's given short shrift by the demands of the story here. Part One of "The End of Time" dealt almost solely with the return of The Master, his resurrection, and his eternal battle with the Doctor but that's all swept aside in place of Gallifrey in Earth's orbit, a somewhat incomprehensible plot involving white-point stars, drumbeats, and paradox, and the possible resetting of the Time War.

The Doctor had to end the Time War and doom his own people once before (off-screen anyway, before the start of the revival series) but here this monumental decision to again obliterate his race takes place over the course of a few seconds as the Doctor has to decide whether to shoot The Master or Rassilon. He does neither as The Master attacks Rassilon with his new-found powers and they are all seemingly sucked back into the Time Lock.

Also propelled back into the darkness: the Mystery Woman who had appeared to Wilf throughout the two-parter. Why the Lord-President would take the two opposing Time Lords through the rift to Earth was odd to me but her presence seemed to be the mechanism by which the Doctor realized there was only one course of action. As for her identity, it's left deliberately vague. The obvious answer would be that she was the Doctor's mother (which itself feels far too pat and on the nose) but I couldn't help but wonder if it was the Doctor's granddaughter Susan (from the original series). The Doctor doesn't answer Wilf when asked who she was but instead looks to Sylvia (Jacqueline King) and Donna Noble. (It is, after all, Wilf's granddaughter's wedding day.)

But the real question is: why was the presence of the Mystery Woman--whether she was the Doctor's mother or granddaughter or, hell, Romana--necessary at all? How was she able to manipulate time and space to appear to Wilf from within the Time Lock? And why did she order Wilf not to tell the Doctor of their conversations and urge him to retrieve his pistol... which remained unfired by the end of the story, at least against an individual. (Which, ironically, goes against the narrative contrivance of having a loaded gun in the first act and setting it off in the third act. Was it, perhaps, a comment on the Doctor's dislike for guns? And the knowledge that he would choose peace over violence even at the end?)

The Mystery Woman's identity, however, remains a mystery. What is more tangible and therefore more powerful is the Doctor's final moments in the series. Choosing to bestow boons upon his former traveling companions, he tracks down Martha (Freeman Agyeman) and Mickey (Noel Clarke)--now married--and rescues them from a trigger-happy Sontaran; saves Luke (Tommy Knight), the adopted son of Sarah-Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), from an oncoming car; gives "best friend" Donna one hell of a wedding present (a winning lottery ticket purchased by borrowing a quid from her dead father); gets a book signed by Verity Newman (Jessica Hynes), the granddaughter of lost love Joan Redfern; introduces heartbroken Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) to Alonso Frame (Russell Tovey); and encounters Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) one last time, meeting her on New Year's Day 2005 and telling her that she is going to have a great year.

(Aside: I'm not quite sure why the Doctor didn't visit Joan Redfern herself rather than her author granddaughter Verity, given that he traveled back in time to see Rose but that's a quibble in a grand sequence of reminiscence.)

But it's the Doctor's final words--"I don't want to go!"--that show him truly grappling with his own mortality, an attempt to bargain with the universe at large. (It might as well have been Tennant himself saying those words as they made me burst into tears.) But as the glow of regeneration comes over him, the Doctor does rage, violently as the TARDIS seemingly begins to crumble around him, collapsing in a sea of sparks and a throb of energy... before the Doctor transforms into his Eleventh incarnation (Matt Smith).

While we're only given a glimpse of Smith as the Doctor, I'm already a fan, thanks to his use of Tennant's trademark head-tapping, the shock on his face when he considers that he came back as a woman, and his gleeful cry of "Geronimo!" as the TARDIS begins its rapid descent toward Earth.

All in all, Doctor Who: The End of Time found the Doctor--and the series--looking backward and forward in the same breath, much like the Doctor himself. The ending of Doctor Who: The End of Time, while arriving after a needlessly confusing and convoluted narrative, was a fitting send-off for Tennant, a man who made a mark on the eternal and never-ending character of the Doctor. He'll be much missed as we move into a new decade, new adventures, and a new Doctor. Allons-y once more...

Season Five of Doctor Who is set to launch in spring 2010.