Doctor Who/Recap/S30/E13 Journeys End

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< Doctor Who‎ | Recap‎ | S30


When we last left our heroes, things looked grim. Sarah Jane was about to get gunned down in her car, Gwen and Ianto's More Dakka was not going to cut it, and the Doctor was regenerating. Well, Torchwood gets protected by a nifty program Tosh designed, Mickey and Jackie materialize with their BFG's just in time to save Sarah Jane, and Ten regenerates... back into Ten.

Wait, what? Apparently, since the Doctor's hand-in-a-jar is kept in the control room, he could use it to heal without changing. He simply directed the excess energy into the hand, instead of into a whole new body. Everyone is relieved that Ten is still Ten.

The Daleks surround the TARDIS, suck out its power, and take them to the Crucible, the Daleks' base ship. Sarah Jane, Mickey and Jacks decide to go along, and some helpful Daleks take them there too.

Meanwhile, Commando Martha says goodbye to her mom and teleports to Germany, where we are treated to Daleks speaking German. And Martha speaking German. She avoids a prophetic German lady babbling about nightmares and gets to the Osterhagen station with a mysterious device called the Osterhagen key.

The Doctor, Jack, Rose and Donna are surrounded by Daleks in the Crucible and step out of the TARDIS to face them. Donna is distracted by the sound of a heartbeat, and gets stuck inside the TARDIS. The Daleks open up a trap door and the TARDIS (comically, really) gets flushed into the core of the Crucible. Donna is trapped in the burning TARDIS. She looks over at the hand and reaches out to touch it. The jar bursts, and the hand is enveloped in a golden light that seems to be forming... a new body! It's the Doctor!

Donna: It's you!
Doctor Clone: Oh yes!
Donna: You're naked!
Doctor Clone: Oh yes!

The Doctor Clone dematerializes the TARDIS just in time, but everyone else thinks it has been destroyed. Jack lets himself get killed by a Dalek and plays possum, hoping to infiltrate the base. The Dalek take the Doctor and Rose to Davros and sweep Jack in the Dalek trash.

Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor Clone finds some clothes (specifically, the blue outfit), and tries to explain himself to Donna.

Donna: You are bonkers! Is that what Time Lords do? Lop a bit off, and grow another one? You're like worms!

Apparently, when Donna touched Handy, there was a "instantaneous biological metacrisis" and the Doctor Clone grew out of Donna. As a result, he talks a bit like her too.

Donna: Oi! Watch it, space man!
Doctor Clone: Oi! Watch it, Earth girl! Ooh... I sound like you!

More than that, New Ten has only got one heart. Apparently, he's part Time Lord, part human. And he explains to Donna how special she is for being part of him now. She's finally starting to believe it a little.

Back at the crucible, Davros gives the Doctor a briefing on their plan. Apparently all the 27 planets combined form a "reality bomb" that dissolves every form of matter. Davros gets really excited and chews on every available piece of scenery. But the Doctor realizes that Davros isn't remotely in charge of his creatures any more. He was taken out of the Time War by Dalek Caan, who stared into Time itself, neatly mirroring the way Rose saved the Doctor from the Daleks once. But Dalek Caan didn't have a Time Lord around to take Time itself away again, and he went completely mad in the process. Davros is now little more than the Daleks' "pet": a source of DNA cells to rebuild the Dalek race, but locked in the basement by his own offspring. Davros explains that the 27 stolen planets form a compression field which can cancel the electrical energy of atoms. The resulting "reality bomb" has the potential to destroy all matter in every universe; reality itself would be destroyed.

The Doctor's friends haven't given up yet. Jack, Sarah Jane, Mickey and Jackie will blow up the Crucible (including themselves) with Sarah Jane's Veran necklace if Davros doesn't stop. Sarah Jane and Davros have a moment together when they recognise each other. Similarly, Martha Jones will blow up the Earth (including herself) using the Osterhagen key. Unfortunately, these threats work well with Davros' "The Reason You Suck" Speech, as Davros accuses the Doctor of being a Technical Pacifist while his friends have become tools of violence. The Doctor remembers all the people who died to save his life during his tenth regeneration. But regardless of all that, the Doctor's friends' plans come to naught, as they are immediately zapped to the Vault by the Daleks.

And suddenly, the TARDIS materializes, and the Doctor Clone runs forward with their new Dalek-killing gun. But Davros, in true Emperor fashion, can shoot lightning out of his hands, and he zaps Doctor Clone and Donna. The reality bomb goes into its final countdown and...

Nothing happens.

Donna stopped it! Even though she used to not even be able to change a plug, Davros' lightning triggered the other half of the metacrisis: when she activated the energy in the hand, part of her became filled with Time Lord essence. Now in possession of an active Time Lord mind, she's able to come up with Dalek-disabling solutions lightning fast with a huge surge of techno-babble. So that's what the Ood were talking about!

Doctor-Donna: Did I ever tell you, best temp in Chiswick? A hundred words a minute!

The Daleks are rendered harmless. Jack is dazed and confused and very aroused at the prospect of three Doctors at once.

As they get into the TARDIS, the Doctor Clone decides to blow up all the Daleks, which he does... to the utter horror of the Doctor, who really doesn't like to be reminded of what he did in the Time War. The Doctor offers Davros a chance to be saved, but Davros chooses to just sit behind some flames for a bit.

All the planets are sent home, but Earth just doesn't make it before the teleportation device gets blasted. So, they decide to turn the TARDIS into an Earth tow boat. In Cardiff, Torchwood Three uses the Cardiff Rift to provide massive amounts of energy. The Doctor introduces himself to Ianto and Gwen through their video connection, and he and Rose are happy to see that Gwyneth has a 21st century relative. In Ealing, K-9 and Luke provide the supercomputer Mr. Smith with all the TARDIS data needed to get the Earth back home. Everyone gathers around the TARDIS core to help fly the Earth back home. (Well, all except Jackie, who isn't allowed near the controls.) Everyone hugs everyone. Donna especially hugs Jack a lot.

Sarah Jane heads back home to Luke. The Doctor blocks Jack's teleportation wrist watch again. Martha promises to destroy the Ostenhagen key and walks off with Jack (whose story continues in Torchwood). Mickey realizes that he's finally done following Rose around and... starts following Martha around. The TARDIS heads back to alternate dimension Norway to drop off Rose and Jackie. Rose doesn't want to leave the Doctor, but the Doctor offers her a nice consolation prize of the Doctor Clone, because the Doctor feels that this version of himself is a bit too genocide-happy (much like he himself used to be) and needs a Rose in his life to cure that. The Doctor Clone is also part human, able to age, and willing to spend his life with Rose from now on. This doesn't sit quite right with Rose yet. She begs the two Doctors to finally tell her what he wanted to say to her last time, after she said "I love you" to him. The Doctor still Cannot Spit It Out.[1] The Doctor Clone whispers it into her ear, and although we can't hear it, she's happy enough and responds by snogging him.

In the TARDIS, Doctor-Donna is starting to exhibit some problems. There never has been a human with a Time Lord brain, and she's quickly overloading. There's only one cure. She begs and pleads, but he takes her into his arms and gently uses his touch telepathy to wipe her memories. She can never remember who she was, or anything about the Doctor, or she'll burn up. She goes back to the way she used to be, and she can never know about how much she saved the universe or how amazing she was. The Doctor takes her home, where she turns into her old self... her old old self, loud and crass and extremely, insufferably dumb. ... And someone's going to have to tell her that she's missed two full years, and that her fiance and her father are dead. The Doctor tells Donna's mom to be nice to her for a change, bids Wilf farewell, and steps out of their lives.

The Doctor goes off, once again on his own. He takes off his jacket.

Tropes

Jackie: I was pregnant, do you remember? Had a baby boy.
The Doctor: Ah! Brilliant. What'd you call him?
Jackie: Doctor.
The Doctor: Really?
Jackie: No, you plum. He's called Tony.

  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: A couple of grammar mistakes on the German and while "Exterminieren" is a German word, it's rarely used in that language.
  • Back for the Finale: While not the series finale, the episode serves as the finale of the Russell T. Davies era, and sees the return of every former companion from the previous four seasons and many recurring characters such as Sarah Jane, Harriet Jones, and Jackie Tyler.
  • Badass: The German soldier in the Castle, she stayed to defend it even when the soldiers left, because it was her duty.
  • BFG: Rose has one of these. Jack's is pretty big too.
    • Mickey and Jackie of all people even have BFGs. They're endemic.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Mickey and Jackie saving Sarah Jane Smith from a pair of Daleks early on.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Rose and the Doctor are finally reunited, but he has to watch her in the arms of another man and leave her behind forever. Donna saved not only the entire Earth (and the other 26 planets), but all of creation, but can't remember or else she'll burn up. So Donna's an idiot again, and the Doctor's on his own again.
  • Break the Cutie: The Universe really hates Ten. C'mon, Davros' Reason You Suck Speech was bordering on Mind Rape.
  • Call Back: the Reality Bomb annihilates humans with the same effect as Bad Wolf/Rose annihilated Daleks with.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: The Doctor lets Sylvia have it for her awful treatment of Donna.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: The Doctor can't complete the sentence "Rose Tyler..." from "Doomsday". Handy, however, can.
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: The show finally gets its last bit of mileage out of The Doctor's lost hand.
  • Cloning Blues: Subverted: the Other Doctor doesn't angst about how he isn't real, although everyone else does.
  • Continuity Porn: So much, so much, so much! Flash Back to everyone who sacrificed themselves for the Doctor in the new series, Davros recognising Sarah from "Genesis", and return to Bad Wolf Bay.
    • There's also a bit of a nod to "The Unquiet Dead"; apparently Gwen is spatial genetic multiplicity (read: identical relative) of Gwyneth.
    • In a piece of confirmed Fanon, we see the TARDIS flown by as many people as it's meant to be for the first time in 45 years.
    • Doctor-Donna remembers how to fix the TARDIS' Chameleon circuit, like the Sixth incarnation. She seemingly has a better connection to the Matrix.
      • The Doctor probably knows how to fix it anyway, he's just fond of the Police Box disguise.
    • Doctor-Donna's fate is sealed as her mind has absorbed too much information to possibly contain. It's a very similar fate to Bad Wolf/Rose, though the solution is somewhat different.
    • Also, Sarah Jane was given the warp necklace thingy by a "Veran soothsayer," the same one who gave her the puzzlebox in The Sarah Jane Adventures's "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?"
  • Crisis Crossover: Ianto, Jack and Gwen from Torchwood, and Sarah Jane, Luke and Mr Smith from The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Rose and Martha and Mickey and Harriet Jones and basically everyone connected to the show since Rusty got hold of it all turn up. Even K9 gets to appear. Crisis of Infinite Doctors, perhaps?
  • Deus Ex Machina: K9 being called out at exactly the moment he's needed. Good dog!
    • And the hand becoming another Doctor just in time to save the TARDIS. Although technically that would be a Deus ex Manu.
  • Disney Death: The Doctor.
  • Discontinuity Nod: There has never been a being that's half-human/half-Time Lord before. Never ever ever. And the Doctor certainly isn't one.
    • Davros being little more than a slave to the Daleks, and in fact being taken for a ride by Caan, could also be a similar nod to the post-Davros Dalek situation. Many fans lamented that after Genesis, the Daleks had become nothing more than thugs for Davros himself, although this was rectified somewhat in Revelation and Remembrance.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: Inversion. The Doctor mocks Davros as the Dalek's "pet", and he is actually a prisoner, kept alive only to help them construct the Reality Bomb and will likely be exterminated once the plan is complete. He is not The Dragon in any meaningful sense, but nonetheless he is a minion serving as the de facto main antagonist.
  • Earth Is the Center of the Universe: "Only one planet left! Oh, and guess which one." A literal example too, as the Medusa Cascade is at the centre of all creation.
  • Edited for Syndication: The CBS Canadian broadcast of the episode cut 20 minutes out of the episode for a hour-long broadcast with commercials. A list of the cuts is here.
  • Epic Fail: Both Sarah Jane and UNIT have gotten their hands on two devastating superweapons, the Warpstar that will destroy the Dalek mothership and the Osterhagen Key that will destroy the Earth (thus ruining the Dalek's plans), respectively; Sarah Jane allied with Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler to infiltrate the ship and Martha Jones risked capture and death in Dalek-occupied Germany to be in position to activate the Key. Much of the episode focuses on the efforts of several characters to get in the right position to use them, and when the moment comes many of them contact the Daleks via video link to warn them to back off or die. It seems that the Dalek's evil plan is finished... except that Davros just transports everyone to his vault, capturing them and rendering both weapons useless.
  • Fan Fic Magnet
  • Fan Service: Naked Doctor clone. Well not really Fan Service, but as damn close as you're ever going to get, unfortunately.
  • Flowers for Algernon Syndrome: Yet another trope that applies to Donna's metacrisis.
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: Literally. Imagine the bill!
  • Genre Savvy: Mickey is quick to realize with a Human-Doctor on board, he would be dropped off with Rose in the alternate universe.
  • Gratuitous German: EXTERMINIEREN!
  • The Greatest Story Never Told: Donna saved all of reality, but can never know it, not ever, because then she'll die.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: New Doctor and Doctor Donna, sort of.
  • Heel Face Turn: Dalek Caan. Sort of. Combined with The Chessmaster, and a giant Xanatos Gambit. Notable in that he's essentially the first Dalek to do so of his own free will, not involving genetic mumbo-jumbo. This after killing another Dalek for basically the same thing.

Davros: [shocked] You betrayed the Daleks?
Dalek Caan: I saw the Daleks. What we have done throughout time and space. I saw the truth of us, creator, and I decreed: No more!

Word of God has already stated that Davros survived. Davies admitted he doesn't want to kill such a classic villain off. Odds are good that Dalek Caan survived somehow, too.

  • Lightning Can Do Anything
  • Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Davros even calls the Doctor that (minus the "Mike Nelson" bit, of course).
  • Mix-and-Match Man: The Doctor + Donna clone.
  • Mood Whiplash: Like hell.
  • My Friends and Zoidberg: Apparently everybody can help with the TARDIS... except Jackie. She should just stand over there... thanks.
  • My Skull Runneth Over: Donna. Damn.
  • Mythology Gag: Even though in this phrase it is technically referring to the same incarnation of the Doctor, the line "Three doctors?" evokes the old crossover episodes.
  • Naked on Arrival: The Doctor-clone.
  • No Endor Holocaust: Dragging the Earth at super-light speeds across half the Universe would probably cause a liiittle more trouble than a mild earthquake. (Presumably the TARDIS extended its Inertial Dampening, big-time.) Just dragging it out of the moon's influence would cause endless disasters. (And the moon shouldn't be there anymore when they put the Earth back.)
  • Not So Different: Davros tries to pull this one on The Doctor. Since Davros is an Omnicidal Maniac, though, it doesn't really come off.
  • Nothing Can Stop Us Now: Davros
  • Omnicidal Maniac: "The DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSEEEELLLLLFFF!!!"
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: The Doctor, of all people, in the scene at Bad Wolf Bay, as David Tennant lapses into a Scottish accent after three solid years of credible Estuary.
  • Premature Encapsulation
  • Promotion to Opening Titles: Same as the last episode, with Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri added post-titles.
  • Prophecy Twist: "That version of Donna is dead". "The end of everything (Dalek)"
    • Threefold Man... and all this time people thought a previous Doctor was coming back.
    • Same for Doctor-Donna, which about everyone assumed was the Ood being incapable of telling the two apart.
    • "Most faithful companion", also. The TARDIS "died" (or was declared so); his human version went to Pete's World (when Rose did, she was considered "dead"); the Donna that traveled with the Doctor, who vanished along with Doctor-Donna. Which is, as the name says, partly the Doctor himself. It's more of a Prophecy Wham than a Twist.
  • Put on a Bus: Everyone bar the Doctor.
  • Reset Button: The Doctor mind-wiping Donna.
    • Conspicuously avoided was resetting many of the other important happenings in the episode, to the point where it's an Aversion bordering on the Subversion.
    • The Doctor full-on breaking Jack's teleporter definitely fits, though.
    • The Sarah Jane Adventures has confirmed that there was indeed no "Reset" and that the human race is now fully aware of the existence of aliens.
  • Rule of Three: It only takes three Osterhagen Stations to activate the Osterhagen Key Fail-safe.
  • Running the Asylum
  • Self-Destruct Mechanism: The Earth has one.
  • Significant Anagram "Osterhagen", as in the Osterhagen Key, is an anagram of "Earth's Gone".
  • Some Kind of Force Field trapping our heroes.
  • Soul Fragment
  • Techno Babble: Laid on with a trowel.
    • Doctor-Donna is the guiltiest of the group.
  • Tempting Fate: Davros: "AND NOTHING CAN STOP THE DETONATION! NOTHING! AND NO ONE!" Honestly, he was begging for it.
  • There Is Another: There are always more Daleks.
  • This Is Sparta: Davros' hammy Motive Rant.
  • Took a Level In Badass: Gwen and Ianto taking on the Dalek with G36s.
    • This entire episode goes out of its way to establish the position of ex-companion as a badass prestige class, even giving them a cool collective name as "The Children of Time."
  • Translation Convention: Averted with the German-speaking Daleks.
  • True Companions: The "children of time".
  • Twin Threesome Fantasy: "Three doctors?" Jack: "I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now."
  • Two-Keyed Lock: It takes three Osterhagen Stations to activate the Osterhagen Key Fail-safe.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Dalek Supreme, who should know better than to trust the wild prophecies of a madman. Also Davros, outsmarted by his own creation in the most thorough way since the character's introduction.
    • He does know better, and initially dismisses Caan. Davros however claims that Caan "only speaks the truth", and can't imagine that one of his creations would betray him. Again.
      • Betraying him seems kind of pointless, given that he is actually their prisoner. What he has trouble imagining is that Caan would betray the Daleks.
  • Victory-Guided Amnesia
  • What Happened To The Mice: Of the Doctor's companions on Earth at this time who have faced the Fell Saltshakers, we know that Sarah Jane, Rose, Jack, and Martha survived and that Donna died From a Certain Point of View. What were the other 20th century Earth companions (many of whom were confirmed to be active as of the fourth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures) doing?
  • Xanatos Roulette: Dalek Caan's scheme to wipe out all the Daleks by creating a new Dalek empire. Being a prophet probably helped.
  • You Are Not Alone: Sarah Jane reminds the Doctor:

Sarah Jane: You know, you act like such a lonely man, but look at you! You've got the biggest family on Earth!

  1. ↑ Rose: 0. Little shops: 3.
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