The Last of the Time Lords

1. This was obviously Martha’s episode and she didn’t disappoint. From the front or the back. Especially the back.

2. Then of course she left. For good. She’s gone. Or not. It doesn’t really matter – they’ve played this card too many times so no "end" ever has any impact. Even Rose’s – she’ll be back if Billie ever wants to do it again. Anyone who, even for a second, felt any emotion when Martha walked out of the Doctor’s life really hasn’t been paying any attention.

3. Still, on the surface she’s gone for good so all those media appearances they booked for Freema to deny she’s leaving just served to make her look like a piece of cheese.

4. What was the point of bringing Martha’s family into it? True, they weren’t as annoying as Rose’s family but they weren’t sympathetic, they weren’t likable and their only role in the story were to be part of possibly the least complicated plan it has ever taken a whole year to devise.

5. The other return was of course Captain Jack. It’s always good to see John Barrowman (and I’m speaking as someone who doesn’t watch chat shows, talent shows, poor quality sketch shows or Torchwood so I can say that without sounding sarcastic) but why exactly was Captain Jack there? He was chained up and he fired a machine gun with a strange look on his face. The Doctor could at least have sent Martha and Jack to Earth with Jack as the decoy and Martha doing the real work.

6. To be honest, I think he was there to promote Torchwood (and get it a BBC1 slot for next season) and so they could do the Face of Boe gag at the end. Someone online said that Boe couldn’t be Jack because the F of B never said anything saucy. I think even homosexual innuendo would get old after five billion years. Either that or losing his genitals made it a painful subject.

7. At least the Daleks didn’t return for once. I half expected them to open one of the Zeroids and find a little Dalek inside. Because season finales always have Daleks as the surprise guests – that’s the rule. Only now we have to replace that with a rule about season finales always being shite.

8. The one potentially redeeming feature was the Master. However bad this story was – and it was both figuratively and literally a load of balls – at least the Master would be back and might get a chance to do a good script. Oh bum – no he won’t. At least not in his present form. He’s been fried at least twice before though and Pip’n’Jane did famously have him say he was indestructible. And the whole universe knows it.

9. I would speculate on the identity of the woman who picked up his ring but I really can’t be bothered. I literally don’t care. It might be his wife, it might be the Rani, it might be Kylie or it might be Diana, Princess of Wales. Just as long as it isn't Catherine Tate.

10. They missed a trick by not having the Doctor sing as the Master’s body was cremated. Xena always sang when cremating the bodies of friends and loved ones. David Tennant could’ve done an operatic dirge based on the music of Dudley Simpson.

11. The Master’s plan made somewhere between no sense and absolutely no sense. He kept talking about a new Time Lord empire. How would that work with just two Time Lords? Was he planning on mating with the Doctor? That’s an unseemly image. Earlier Doctor/Master combinations would’ve been more unseemly but it is still unseemly. There is nothing seemly about it.

12. Speaking of unseemly, the Master keeping the Doctor as a pet (completely with "Dog" bowl outside his tent) and then the Doctor deciding to keep the Master as his pet on board the Tardis suggests that in 900 years of knowing each other they never did decide who was the dom and who was the sub. That would explain their nasty break-up – it had nothing to do with seeing into the vortex or bashing a school bully over the head with a stone - it was pure sexual identity politics.

13. The Master’s toy – the anti-sonic screwdriver and soon to be Christmas stocking favourite – obviously had a literary bent as he only had to set it to JK Rowling mode and, voila, the Doctor is transformed into Dobby the house elf.

14. Either that or it is a little more classically minded and he set it to Gollum.

15. Though the description of the super-aged Doctor – a tiny wizened old creature with a domed head, a stoop and a tiny suit – does remind me of William Hartnell.

16. Either that or we’re about to have a story which explains that the tiny little Doctor slipped out of his cage one night, became ruler of the Primitives on the planet Uxarieus and stopped the Master getting hold of the Doomsday weapon.

17. Speaking of being reminded of old Doctor Who, the Doctor becoming a glowing, floating super-being who appears at the last minute to defeat the plans of a megalomaniac in charge of a sky base appears to have been photocopied from 1972’s "The Mutants".

18. Equally obvious (though perhaps more generic) is the popular ending to 1996’s "TV Movie" where, at the last minute, time is rolled back and all the bad things never happened. Barry Letts have fumed over that on more than one occasion – I wonder if he’ll do so this time or will he keep quiet so the invitations to premieres continue to arrive?

19. RTD even managed to plagiarise himself (no doubt hoping to borrow Terrance Dicks’ line about how you can’t plagiarise yourself when the latter hangs up his convention anecdotes) as the Doctor follows Rose’s lead in becoming a temporary god when the need arises.

20. Actually, if you think about it, rolling back time to the moment they did – verified by the news report about the president being assassinated – probably wasn’t the best thing to do. Americans tend to bomb first and ask questions later so Britain killing the president would probably mean this sceptred isle was about to be nuked.

21. At least the countdown was amusingly retro – the numbers may have been computer generated but they turned in that awkward way that flipy-over numbers did in the olden days.

22. The drums – the ones that were never explained but which seemed to come from the very soul of the universe – are actually the beginning of the Doctor Who theme tune. So Ron Grainer is God. There is literally no other explanation.

23. The ending with the Titanic, coupled with a picture of the Doctor on the Titanic in episode one of the first series, has lead to a charming amount of online speculation that it is all a grand scheme and that Christopher Eccleston will be coming back for the Christmas special. I think that is about as likely as Jon Pertwee coming back for the Christmas special.

24. Lots of people loved it, lots of people hated it. I neither loved nor hated it – I went in expecting to be largely disappointed, slightly insulted and swerved several times for no real reason and that’s exactly what happened. This has been the best season since Doctor Who came back and the number of truly great stories massively outweighs the number of awful ones. And it still wasn’t as bad as the Phantom Menace so that’s in its favour too.