Review #49

The Endless Drums part two

Continuation of Utopia & The Sound of Drums

This story was good. It wrapped up the 3 parter in a good ish way. The whole gap year thing kinda messes with the time lines and stuff but it is a way to deal with this already complicated story. Martha deciding to leave to care for her family after everything the master put then through was sweet. I don't really have much else to say because I've mentioned everything over the last 2 reviews. Good story but could really do with a bit of work. Episode gets an 8/10 and the overall story gets a 6/10

the doctor and the master's evil fetish year

I will say this is definitely the weakest finale of RTD1 but I don’t hate this as much as everyone else does, maybe because I’m in love with the Jones family.  The conclusion is kinda stupid but it’s fun after the misery of the majority of the story.

Also if you’re in the US please don’t watch the cut down version (45m) on Max, the full version is 55 minutes. I watched the shorter cut for the first time today and it removes so many important and impactful scenes (plus a musical scene that I love)!!

Jesus f**king christ

Last of the Time Lords is a pretty serious let-down after all the excitement and energy of Utopia and the Sound of Drums. Martha running around the world spreading the word of the Doctor and turning him into some sort of psychic messiah through the Master's technology is impressive as a feat for her character, but still a little underwhelming. It's always annoyed me that Martha is a medical doctor who never really gets to show off her very useful profession over the course of Series 3. It's disappointing, as is the way this episode kind of just erases everything from the Master's rule over Earth. It makes the story feel a little cheap.

Speaking of cheap, the Doctor does not look good in this episode. A lot of those effects just don't look that great to me. John Simm was fun collapsing in on himself by the end of the episode and has a great reveal here with the Toclafane, but the larger episode feels a little awkwardly acted overall and it really doesn't hold up as a finale that well at all. It's not terrible or unwatchable, but definitely a bit of a missed opportunity as up until this point, we had a really strong string of episodes and Last of the Time Lords really could have capped everything off nicely.