TV: (Doctor Who) The End of Time
Wow. I did not expect to learn that the Doctor caused the deaths of the Time Lords. This makes so many things clear, including his reluctance to end lives, especially to the point of genocide, and his soul-draining loneliness.
I’ve only watched Doctor Who since the relaunch in 2005. I don’t have any history with the Doctor’s past mythology or even with the Time Lords. They were all dead at that point.
I just assumed that they were an enlightened civilization driven to action by the Daleks. I pictured them like the Guardians of Green Lantern lore or like the Jedis.
The Master was mentally unstable and therefore an anomaly. Yes, I was uneasy at what they did to their kids with the trial of the Time Vortex, but I also am uneasy at some of the Harry Potter wizarding world’s treatment of it’s young ones. Every society does something wrong.
But now we find out that the Time Lords were not the benevolent keepers of Time, at least not at their end. The Doctor had to destroy his own people to stop them from destroying everything. I can’t even imagine.
Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor always had a touch of mania to him. I’m thinking that mental instability is not only relegated to the Master.
I believe that the moment in which I really fell for the Doctor was in the episode The Doctor Dances. I can still hear the joy and exaltation in the lines, “Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once. Everybody lives!” Eccleston delivered it knowing how badly the Doctor needed it. Little did we know just how much.
This reveal also makes his breakdown in The Waters of Mars just that much more frightening. He was becoming what he had to fight—had to kill. And Tennant showed us that he was mad. Man, was he scary crazy.
I loved the ending. What a great and sad round-the-horn of good-bye visits. Martha and Mickey!
I think it says something about this series that all these actors are willing to come back time and again. No one’s too embarrassed to be associated with a hokey sci-fi cult show because they know that it is not. Or at least I hope that’s what’s happening.
And don’t tell me that Donna’s fate is not the cruelest of them all. She can’t even say good-bye.
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