the journey's end doctor who

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Journey's End (TV story)

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Journey's End was the thirteenth and final episode of series 4 of Doctor Who .

It was the second episode of a two-part story, preceded by The Stolen Earth , which itself had picked up the cliff-hanger of Turn Left . It also had an open ending, which was quite different to how the previous seasons of the revived series ended; they each led into the next season's Christmas special, but this one did not. However, several issues were concluded: the Cult of Skaro had been completely wiped out in this episode with Dalek Caan 's death, and the relationship between Rose Tyler and the Tenth Doctor also received closure in the form of a unique regeneration where the Doctor did not physically change, but rather, served as the genesis for a half-human clone . However, the Tenth Doctor's choice to abort one of his regenerations would still count as a regeneration being used up, leaving him with only one left and paving the way for what would be the final incarnation in the First Doctor's regeneration cycle .

The story also saw the first exploration into how the Doctor's self-sacrificial nature caused those around him to perform the same acts, something that would come back to plague him much later on, noticeably in his twelfth incarnation , as seen in Face the Raven and The Doctor Falls .

The story notably introduces The DoctorDonna , a by product of the Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis that resulted in the Meta-Crisis Doctor giving Donna the memories and intelligence of the Doctor. However, much like how becoming Bad Wolf would have killed Rose, Donna had her memories of her adventures with and of the Doctor completely erased to save her life at the end of the story, and the threat of remembering the Doctor causing Donna's death as well as Donna's missing memories of the Doctor and their adventures would be left unresolved until 15 years later after this episode in 2023's The Star Beast , which saw Donna reuniting with the Fourteenth Doctor , played by Tenth Doctor actor David Tennant .

• 5.1 Real world
• 5.3 Technology
• 6 Story notes
• 7.1 Myths and rumours
• 7.2 Filming locations
• 7.3 Production errors
• 8 Continuity
• 9 Home video releases
• 10 Non-UK broadcast editing
• 11 External links
• 12 Footnotes

Synopsis [ ]

All hell has broken loose! Humanity is threatened with global annihilation, as Davros and the New Dalek Empire prepare to detonate a bomb that will wipe out all of existence. The Tenth Doctor is helpless, and the TARDIS faces destruction. The only hope lies with the Doctor's companions — the " Children of Time " — but Dalek Caan predicts that one will die...

The Tenth Doctor 's regeneration is nearly complete. Donna Noble , Captain Jack Harkness , and Rose Tyler are barely able to watch due to the light. Suddenly, the Doctor directs the rest of the regeneration energy into the container housing his severed hand ; the regeneration energy dissipates and the Doctor emerges, still in his tenth incarnation, leaving his friends gobsmacked. The Doctor explains that he used the regeneration to heal himself from the Dalek energy blast, but syphoned off the remaining energy that would have changed his appearance and personality into his other hand — a matching biological receptacle. The Doctor says he didn't want to change; Rose is relieved that "her" Doctor is still there and the two happily embrace.

Meanwhile, Sarah Jane Smith is covering her head with her arms, waiting to be exterminated by the Daleks, but with flashes of blue light, Mickey and Jackie appear beside the car and they blast the Daleks to pieces. Sarah gets out of the car, shocked, but immediately hugs Mickey. He jokes, "Us Smiths got to stick together". Jackie introduces herself, but asks, "Where the hell is my daughter?"

Over at Torchwood , Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones shoot at the Dalek, raging. But they notice something strange and they cease fire. They walk forward cautiously and see their bullets hanging in the air as if stopped by an invisible wall. Gwen reaches out slowly to touch it — she can't, but her finger makes a ripple in the air; it's a time lock that their deceased co-worker Tosh was working on. However, while the Dalek is locked out, they're locked in.

Elsewhere, a patrol of Daleks have found the TARDIS . Inside, the Doctor prepares to take off with his companions to figure out a strategy. However, right as he throws a switch, the Daleks use a temporal loop to make the TARDIS powerless. They then take it to the Crucible . Upon arrival, the Supreme Dalek orders the time travellers to depart the vessel. Jack thinks they are safe because of the extrapolator force field the TARDIS has, but the Doctor explains that unlike last time when they were fighting hybrid scavengers, now they're up against a Dalek Empire at the height of their power who have the expertise and technology to get past the TARDIS' defenses. As the Doctor puts it, "...that wooden door is just a wooden door" .

The Doctor, Rose, and Jack exit. However, Donna becomes distracted by the sound of a heartbeat and, while she is looking back, the TARDIS door slams closed. The Doctor demands that Donna be released. The Supreme Dalek denies responsibility calling it " Time Lord treachery" and even if the Doctor wasn't responsible they consider the TARDIS to be a weapon that must be destroyed. The Daleks dump the TARDIS and send it to be destroyed in the centre-core of the Crucible, a ball of Z-neutrino energy. The TARDIS plummets into the core and, without defences, begins to burn up. As the TARDIS interior erupts in flames and debris, Donna collapses near the severed hand. Just as she's convinced she's about to die, she hears the heartbeat again and touches the container, and energy flows between it and her. The hand bursts out of the container and forms into a duplicate of the Doctor , who quickly dematerialises the TARDIS. A view of the TARDIS in the core is shown to Jack, Rose, and the Doctor, who believe Donna and the TARDIS to have been destroyed.

Sarah, Jackie, and Mickey, having seen the Daleks transport the TARDIS to the Crucible, lay down their guns, allowing themselves to be captured and taken to the Crucible in order to find the Doctor.

Meanwhile, Martha Jones says her goodbyes to her mother and uses the Project Indigo device to take her to Germany , where one of five Osterhagen stations is hidden, and awaits contact from the other bases.

Aboard the Crucible, Jack creates a distraction by shooting the Supreme Dalek with his revolver, but the Dalek Supreme promptly shoots him down. The Doctor and Rose are taken to the vault where Davros is held. Rose is desolate; she doesn't know she made Jack immortal as the Bad Wolf and that his immortality has allowed him to escape.

In the TARDIS, the new Doctor has dressed in the Doctor's blue suit and has finished repairing the interior from its damages. He rambles on about how they have to be quiet — "can't even drop a spanner". Donna then asks if Time Lords can multiply like this — "Chop off a bit and grow a new one". However, the new Doctor explains that there has never been anything like him before. He then notices that he only has one heart , like a human ; he's not too pleased with this, saying it's "rubbish". Donna tells the "spaceman" to watch what he says, and the new Doctor tells "earth girl" the same. Both of them are shocked by this; he's absorbed some of Donna's mannerisms. He then begins pondering what Davros could be doing with the planets .

The Reality Bomb .

With the Doctor and Rose contained, Davros explains that the twenty-seven planets form an energy pattern amplified into a " reality bomb ", able to break apart the electrical forces holding everything together, down to the last atom, a creation Davros calls "the apotheosis of [his] genius!"

Mickey, Jackie, and Sarah have been taken with many other humans to a testing of the bomb, but they escape the test chamber just in time. The other humans are not so lucky and vanish out of existence when the bomb is activated.

The effect of the bomb is shown to the Doctor. Both Doctors are horrified as they realise how it works. But that isn't the half of it: the wavelength that the Reality Bomb produces, amplified by the twenty-seven planets, will break through the Rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade into every single corner of creation. Davros proclaims it is his ultimate victory: "The destruction of reality ITSELF!"

Jack finds his way to Mickey, Sarah and Jackie, and, with a warp star from Sarah, creates a device that will implode the Crucible. Meanwhile, Martha makes contact with two other bases in China and Liberia . The Chinese counterpart wants to get it over and done with, but Martha, knowing the Doctor, first broadcasts a signal to the Crucible to give the Daleks a chance. She vows to use the Osterhagen key to detonate twenty-five nuclear warheads in strategic locations under the Earth 's crust to destroy the planet and disable the reality bomb. The Doctor is horrified that Earth would ever construct what is essentially a giant self-destruct button. Jack and the others then contact Davros and threaten to destroy the Crucible with the warp star. The Doctor objects again and asks where they even got a warp star. Sarah steps forward and claims responsibility. Davros then interrupts her, recognising her face, and gets nostalgic, recalling how Sarah was on Skaro at the very beginning of his creation . Sarah retorts that she has learned to fight since then and demands that he free the Doctor or be destroyed by the warp star; however, seeing all his friends willing to go to such extreme measures gives the Doctor pause. Davros notices this and tells the Doctor that this is what he does to people: the Doctor may be a man who never carries a gun , but he turns ordinary people into soldiers in his war; he is told that his "Children of Time" have been transformed into murderers, noting that one has already sacrificed herself opening the subwave network . The Doctor is then shocked to learn from Rose that Harriet Jones died to ensure he got to Earth. Davros then asks the Doctor how many other people have died for him and/or in his name, and the Doctor is reminded of River Song , Astrid Peth , Jenny and many others who gave their lives to help him. Davros laughs that this is his final victory over the Doctor, by showing him his true self.

The Daleks lock on to their respective positions and transmat Martha, Jack, Mickey, Jackie, and Sarah to the vault where the Doctor and Rose are being held captive, thereby preventing them from using any of their devices to stop the Daleks. The Daleks then prepare to activate the reality bomb to wipe out all matter in this and every parallel universe through the rifts in the Medusa Cascade , but the new Doctor and Donna arrive in the TARDIS. Each tries to destroy Davros and the Daleks using a weapon created by the new Doctor, but both are stunned by shots of electricity from Davros' robotic hand before they can use it; Donna is sent flying while the new Doctor is put in a forcefield. Despite the revelation that Donna and the TARDIS survived, the Doctor is glum because the reality bomb is still counting down. The Doctor and his companions helplessly watch in horror as the reality bomb ticks down to 9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...

Rose is trapped in the vault.

Nothing happens. Suddenly an alarm blares. Everyone looks over to see that Donna has used the controls to disable it. She gives a long technical explanation as to how she did it; this is astonishing because ordinarily, Donna "can't even change a plug". The Doctor recognises that the creation of the new Doctor has had an unintended side effect: Donna is now half Time Lord herself, sharing the Doctor's intellect — she is the DoctorDonna the Ood saw coming. She explains that the meta-crisis that created the other Doctor had also affected her, but the effect had lain dormant, needing a little spark to start it — "Thank you, Davros!" Donna and the new Doctor free the others and, with the help of the original Doctor, disable the Daleks. The Daleks are left literally spinning round in circles, thanks to Donna.

The Doctors then get to work and use the magnetron to send all the planets back to their correct places. Davros attempts to stop them, but Jack, who had used the commotion to sneak into the TARDIS, emerges with his defabricator gun and Rose's energy blaster; he tosses the latter to Mickey, who holds Davros at gunpoint. Turning to Dalek Caan , he demands to know why he didn't foresee this. From Caan's maniacal cackling, the Doctor realises that he did see it. Caan admits that he had seen the Daleks for what they were, had seen all the evil they had caused across time and space, and secretly aided the Doctor in their destruction, declaring "No more!"

The Supreme Dalek descends to the vault and accuses Davros of betraying the Daleks. Though Davros insists that Dalek Caan is the traitor, the Supreme Dalek declares that he will exterminate them all and fires at the Doctor, striking the machinery. Jack swiftly destroys the Supreme Dalek, but the shot he fired has destroyed the Magnetron, leaving the single remaining planet, Earth, stranded. Getting an idea, the original Doctor races into the TARDIS to replace the broken machine. Realising that Dalek Caan has seen the end of the Daleks, has been manipulating time to achieve this, and knowing that, even without the Reality Bomb, this Dalek Empire is powerful enough to slaughter the cosmos, the new Doctor uses the remaining machinery to maximise all dalekanium power feeds and redirect the energy output back onto itself. All around them, Daleks and their ships begin to self-destruct. The original Doctor is outraged at the new Doctor for making such a choice. The companions flee into the TARDIS. When the original Doctor offers to save Davros , he refuses. Gesturing at the destruction around them, Davros shrieks, "Never forget, Doctor, you did this! I name you forever! You are the Destroyer of Worlds!" — an epithet the Daleks have long associated with the Doctor. Davros howls in fury as the flames surround him, while Caan ominously predicts again, "One will still die...". Unable to save either of them, the Doctor flees into the TARDIS just before the Crucible is destroyed.

The Doctor comes up with a plan: he'll use the energy of the Rift as a rope and the TARDIS as a "tow truck" to move the Earth back to where it belongs. With the help of Torchwood's Rift Manipulator sending the energy, Mr Smith roping it around the TARDIS and K9 supplying Mr Smith with the TARDIS' base code, the Doctor is ready to go. However, he has a surprise for his companions. He explains that the reason that he has so much trouble piloting the TARDIS is that it is designed to be piloted by six people, and he has had to do it all on his own. He lets Sarah, Rose, Mickey, Martha, and Jack help him pilot while his clone, Donna, and Jackie watch — he specifically does not want Jackie to help. The Doctor flicks a switch and the TARDIS begins to fly with the immense Earth following behind.

On Earth, Luke holds onto K9 and cheers as the house on Bannerman Road shakes, Ianto and Gwen holler in delight in the trembling Torchwood Hub, Sylvia and Wilf frantically try to stay on their feet, and Francine takes cover beneath her kitchen table.

With Donna and Jackie watching, the Doctors and companions work the controls until, with a great shuddering halt, the Earth stops and begins to spin on its own, with the Moon hovering in to resume its own orbit. As the Children of Time celebrate in the TARDIS, Wilf, Sylvia and Francine revel in the sunlight and Earth celebrates its return home.

With Earth back in its proper place, the Doctor's companions leave the TARDIS. Sarah points out that the Doctor considers himself a lonely man, but he has the biggest family on Earth: his companions. She then leaves, concerned about Luke . The next to leave are Jack and Martha, but before the latter goes, he is stopped by the Doctor — "I told you, no teleport" — and has his vortex manipulator disabled yet again; the Doctor also tells Martha to dispose of the Osterhagen Key and "save the world one last time". As the two leave, Jack tries asking Martha to leave UNIT and join Torchwood. Mickey also departs after saying goodbye to Jackie; he had initially stayed in the parallel world to be with his grandmother , but she has since passed peacefully. As there is now nothing left for him on Pete's World , "certainly not Rose", he has decided to stay in his home universe, and catches up with Jack and Martha; the latter jokingly expresses irritation, saying he had hoped to be rid of him.

Using a closing rift, the Doctor returns Rose and Jackie to Pete's World and leaves the new Doctor with her. The original Doctor explains that by destroying the entire Dalek race, the new Doctor has committed genocide . He sees the new Doctor as similar to himself after the Time War , "full of blood and anger", and says that Rose had made him better. The new Doctor explains that having only one heart, he will age as a human and not regenerate; he could spend that one life with Rose. Rose, upset that it's still not the same as having the original, asks both Doctors the words that the Doctor was unable to say to her when they last parted . The original Doctor refuses to actually say them, only responding, "Does it need saying?" By contrast, the new, half-human Doctor, having the same memories and feelings as the original Doctor, whispers them into Rose's ear, and they passionately kiss. The Doctor and Donna quickly depart in the TARDIS and the new Doctor and Rose watch, hand in hand.

Returning to their universe , Donna is eager for her and the Doctor's next adventure while the Doctor is strangely subdued and asks her how it feels to have all the new knowledge in her head. Donna claims she is fine, however it isn't long belong she starts babbling random facts then gasps in pain holding her head. The Doctor, having expected this, explains that the human brain cannot take in the Time Lord mentality: if she continues in her current state, she will die as her mind will burn up. In tears, Donna protests that she wants to continue her adventures with the Doctor as "DoctorDonna" and is willing to spend the rest of her life with him. Saddened, the Doctor says that he is so sorry; Donna then realises what he is about to do and begs him not to "send her back". The Doctor then tells her that they had "the best of times". Ignoring her pleas, he presses his fingers on Donna's head, wiping her mind of all her encounters with him, rendering her unconscious as a result.

Back in Chiswick, Wilfred is excited when there is a knock on the door thinking Donna has returned home but his happiness turns to horror when he finds the Doctor outside with an unconscious Donna in his arms, asking for help.

The Doctor tells Sylvia and Wilfred everything that happened and warns them that Donna must never be reminded of her time with him or she will die. Sylvia tells the Doctor that the Earth's journey through space is currently all over the news, but the Doctor answers that it'll only be a story to Donna — another event she missed. Wilfred is upset that Donna has forgotten all the wonderful things she did, the people she met and the places she visited knowing that she had become a better person for all of them. Sylvia denies this but Wilfred insists she was a better person. The Doctor states that the Donna that travelled with him is "dead", fulfilling Caan's prediction. However, he adds that the universe will be singing songs about Donna, who was, for one shining moment, the most important woman in the entire universe. When Sylvia tells the Doctor that Donna is always the most important woman to her, the Doctor makes a point of telling Sylvia to try showing her love more often.

Dejected and drenched in rain , the Doctor is alone yet again.

As Donna recovers consciousness, she storms downstairs and starts laughing about her being asleep in her clothes, but to her now, the Doctor is a stranger. She shows no interest in the Doctor and chats on the phone to her friends, who are all talking about the Medusa Cascade incident, to which Donna thinks that her friends were either drunk or that she slept through it. Sylvia tells the Doctor he should leave.

Outside, the Doctor tells Wilf that the rain is the result of the atmospheric disturbance created when the Earth was moved back to its proper place but, like everything else, it will end eventually. Wilfred asks the Doctor who he's got now, and asks him what happened to all his other friends. The Doctor tells him that all his friends now have someone else, and that's fine with him. Wilfred promises he will look out for the Doctor every night while he looks at the sky on Donna's behalf. The Doctor quietly thanks Wilfred, then returns to the TARDIS; Wilf solemnly salutes the Time Lord as the TARDIS fades away.

Melancholy and silent, the Doctor watches the time rotor as he sets a new course. He tosses aside his rain-drenched pinstripe blazer, leans on the TARDIS console and stares off into the distance; deep in thought, lonely and heartbroken.

• The Doctor - David Tennant [1]
• Donna Noble - Catherine Tate
• Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
• Martha Jones - Freema Agyeman
• Captain Jack Harkness - John Barrowman
• Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
• Mickey Smith - Noel Clarke
• Jackie Tyler - Camille Coduri
• Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd
• Gwen Cooper - Eve Myles
• Luke Smith - Thomas Knight
• Wilfred Mott - Bernard Cribbins
• Sylvia Noble - Jacqueline King
• Francine Jones - Adjoa Andoh
• Davros - Julian Bleach
• German Woman - Valda Aviks
• Scared Woman - Shobu Kapoor
• Chinese Woman - Elizabeth Tan
• Liberian Man - Michael Price
• Dalek Voice - Nicholas Briggs
• Dalek Operators - Barney Edwards , Nick Pegg , David Hankinson , Anthony Spargo
• Voice of K-9 - John Leeson
• Voice of Mr Smith - Alexander Armstrong

Worldbuilding [ ]

• The Doctor mentions someone named Osterhagen .

Real world [ ]

• Jack calls Mickey Smith " Mickey Mouse " when they re-encounter each other.
• As her mind begins to melt down, Donna references the American comic strip character Charlie Brown . She also mentions Charlie Chaplin .
• When the TARDIS is dropped into the Z-Neutrino core of the Crucible with its defences down, it begins to be destroyed.

Technology [ ]

• The Osterhagen key is one of several required to set off a network of nuclear weapons buried deep beneath the Earth's surface. Locations include Germany , Liberia , China and an unmanned Argentina .
• The TARDIS is captured by the Daleks in what they call a temporal prison , but what the Doctor calls a chronon loop.
• The DoctorDonna enables the psycho-kinetic threshold manipulator .
• The Daleks implement Defence 05 .

Story notes [ ]

• Three major scenes were cut from the episode before broadcast:
• An extra piece of dialogue on Bad Wolf Bay where the Doctor hands his clone a coral-like piece of the TARDIS, telling him to grow his own. When the clone Doctor protests that it takes thousands of years to grow a TARDIS, DoctorDonna provides him with a faster solution, so that Rose and the cloned Doctor can travel through space "as it should be". This was mentioned in The Doctor's Data section of the Doctor Who Adventures magazine, and in the 398th edition of Doctor Who Magazine , Russell T Davies states that it is perfectly fine in his opinion to assume that this part of the scene did actually occur. The scene is included on the Series 4 DVD Box Set.
• Originally, Donna was to hear the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising, a brief look of recognition registering on her face before being dismissed. This shot was dropped at the suggestion of Julie Gardner who reminded Davies that it had just been explicitly stated that if Donna remembered anything about the Doctor she would die. The scene was included in the Series 4 DVD set.
• The original ending to this episode involved the Doctor, after saying goodbye to Wilf, seeing a strange signal on the scanner making him launch into his traditional, "What? What!? What." response, after which two Pete's World Cybermen suddenly rise up behind him — a cliffhanger . This was included in the Series 4 DVD set; in his commentary, Davies explains that the cliffhanger ending was dropped in response to comments by a Doctor Who Magazine writer who stated a cliffhanger was inappropriate after such a sad series of scenes. In REF : Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter , Benjamin Cook is acknowledged as being the one who convinced Davies to drop the Cybermen cliffhanger. Unlike most deleted scenes from Series 4, it is not possible to retroactively work the Cyberman cliffhanger sequences into continuity as the cliffhanger does not coincide with the opening of The Next Doctor , which shows the Doctor not in peril (this due, per The Writer's Tale , to the opening being changed due to the changing of Journey's End's ending). The cliffhanger was replaced with a teaser for The Next Doctor which first aired immediately following this episode. [2]
• Journey's End and The Stolen Earth together feature references to every episode of the fourth series. In addition, references dating back to the first series of the revived show (involving Rose) and Sarah's tenure as the companion of the Third and Fourth Doctor also appear.
• Almost every companion of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors appears or is referenced in some way in this episode (including Astrid Peth ), with the sole exception of Adam Mitchell .
• Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones operates a Dalek in this episode, returning to Doctor Who after his brief appearance as a Cybus Cyberman in The Age of Steel .
• This was the longest series finale at 65 minutes long and was longer even than all of the Christmas specials except for Voyage of the Damned , which was 71 minutes. This raised some issues with international broadcasts; for example, the broadcast on the CBC in Canada on 12 December 2008 was edited to 44 minutes to fit a regular 60-minute timeslot, with commercials (see below for examples). While the American Sci Fi Channel broadcast aired the episode in its entirety on August 1, it has not since been rerun, instead, ending its rotation with The Stolen Earth . Space , however, has aired it completely uncut on reruns. However, BBC America , which now re-airs Doctor Who, only shows episodes edited down to 45 minutes, except for The End of Time , where the two-parter is shown in a three-hour block.
• Dalek Caan refers to the Doctor as a "threefold man". The meaning becomes clear in this episode with both the copy of the Doctor and DoctorDonna.
• As with the previous episode, the opening credits are augmented to include six names, with several overflow acting credits displayed after the opening sequence.
• This episode marks the first series finale to show a preview of the upcoming Christmas Special (2008) . After the credits, the Cybermen are said to return in the episode. The episode is further unique for being the only series finale in the Russell T Davies era which doesn't end on a cliffhanger.

Mickey, Jackie and Sarah hide from the Daleks in a shot that demonstrates an effect nicknamed the " Harper treatment".

• Graeme Harper 's penchant for including a distorted image of a main character is present in this story. Though not included in every single story he's directed for BBC Wales , it's seen often enough to be considered something of a directorial "signature". Similar distortion is achieved through the use of magnifying glasses in Army of Ghosts , The Unicorn and the Wasp , and Utopia , and with mirrors in Turn Left . This time, it's Mickey, Jackie and Sarah that get "the Harper treatment" under a curved window.
• This story augments the notion that Time Lords have some measure of control over the regenerative process. In truth, most regenerations have added at least a little to the general mythos about the process. From the notion that a particular physiognomy could be imposed upon the Second Doctor in The War Games , details have been added about how the process works almost every time one has been depicted. In this case, writer Russell T Davies builds upon his earlier idea that a Time Lord can re-grow whole body parts during "the first 15 hours" following a regeneration ( The Christmas Invasion ). Here he suggests that a Time Lord can stop the process prior to entering the final stage, provided that he has a matching genetic receptacle into which he can store the energy.
• It is not stated in this episode if the Doctor's "partial" regeneration used up one of the regenerations in his cycle. Later, in The Time of the Doctor , the Eleventh Doctor tells Clara Oswald he's in his final incarnation, reminding her of his Time War incarnation and then telling her of the aborted regeneration in this episode, confirming that although he didn't change his appearance it still used up what would have been his eleventh regeneration.
• The scene where the Daleks are speaking German is possibly a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that Terry Nation based the Daleks on the Nazis . It is also possibly a reference to the fact that Daleks have no fear so they let the locals know exactly what they're doing.
• The word "Exterminieren", which the German Daleks use, is not in common use. In the German dubs of the episodes, the word used is "Vernichten" (literally, "Reduce to nothing"; colloquially, "Destroy"). This relates again to the Nazis, who expressively waged a "Vernichtungskrieg" - a war in order to destroy. Another (and mainly used) word to replace the "exterminate" in the translation is "eliminieren". The full dialogue for the German Daleks is as follows: "Exterminieren! Exterminieren! Halt! Sonst werden wir Sie exterminieren! Sie sind jetzt ein Gefangener der Daleks! Exterminieren! Exterminieren!" This translates as: "Exterminate! Exterminate! Stop! Or we will exterminate you. You are now a prisoner of the Daleks. Exterminate! Exterminate!"
• Billie Piper would later make two return appearances in The End of Time and The Day of the Doctor , albeit as an earlier instance of Rose Tyler and an entity assuming Rose's form , respectively.
• This is the only appearance of the sonic lipstick outside The Sarah Jane Adventures .
• This is the third-season finale of four to have a character in the TARDIS speaking about possible places to visit before the unexpected departure of a character. In The Parting of the Ways the Ninth Doctor speaks of places like the planet Barcelona before regenerating; in Last of the Time Lords , the Doctor suggests visiting Agatha Christie (among others) before Martha announces her departure; in this episode, Donna speaks of visiting Felspoon and meeting Charlie Chaplin before her mind overloads. The episodes that break this pattern so far are Doomsday , The Big Bang , and The Name of the Doctor .
• Not counting post-season specials, this episode is also one of only three finales in the revived era to not include the sudden arrival of a character at or near the end of the episode, along with Hell Bent and The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos . The Tenth Doctor appears in The Parting of the Ways ; Donna Noble appears in the TARDIS at the end of Doomsday ; the Titanic crashes through the TARDIS' hull in Last of the Time Lords ; the Eleventh Doctor appears in The End of Time , is remembered back into reality by Amy Pond in The Big Bang , and is revealed to have faked his death in The Wedding of River Song , an unknown incarnation of the Doctor appeared in The Name of the Doctor , Santa Claus appears in the TARDIS at the end of Death in Heaven , the First Doctor arrives at the end of The Doctor Falls and the Judoon arrive in the TARDIS at the end of The Timeless Children .
• Jack has flirted with or shown interest in all of the Doctor's companions appearing in this episode save Donna and Jackie. It is interesting to note that Jack does not pursue the two women who have exhibited the most aggressive attitudes towards the opposite sex, and who would arguably be the most likely to return his advances. Donna even jokes about Jack hugging her, which he laughs off.
• The actor credits for Noel Clarke , Camille Coduri , Gareth David-Lloyd and Eve Myles are timed to appear on screen as the respective actors are shown in closeup during the first two scenes. As of September 2018 [update] , this is the last episode to display "overflow" guest cast credits over the opening scenes.
• Journey's End has possibly one of the largest body counts, with billions of Daleks, a substantial number of humans and, to an extent, Donna.
• Following her appearance, Elisabeth Sladen was quoted in several interviews as predicting she expected this to be her final appearance on Doctor Who . As it happened, she would make one final cameo appearance in The End of Time , and the Doctor would later make two appearances on The Sarah Jane Adventures .
• This is the first episode in which the TARDIS is fully staffed with six pilots, and the first time it is noted definitively that it was designed to be piloted by six.
• In the classic series, the Dalek stories after Genesis of the Daleks revolved in some manner around Davros, exploring the tenacious but ambivalent relationship between the Daleks and their creator. It would appear that the civil war between the Imperial and Renegade Daleks ( Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks , plus audio stories) has been resolved, with Davros working with a united Dalek Empire against the Time Lords.
• This episode marks the last appearance of the Tenth Doctor's severed hand, which first appeared in TV : The Christmas Invasion and throughout the first series of Torchwood . The Doctor makes reference to losing it in the sword fight against the Sycorax leader. This is the first time Rose has seen the severed hand, since the Doctor didn't retrieve it from Jack until after her departure.
• When the Meta-Crisis Doctor holds Rose's hand as they watch the TARDIS disappear, he does it with his right hand - the only part of the original Doctor.
• Jack introduces Gwen as Gwen Cooper. This is the first on-screen indication that Gwen has not changed her last name to Williams following her marriage in Rhys Williams in TV : Something Borrowed .
• Davros' apparent last words are "Never forget, Doctor, you did this! I name you, forever! You are the Destroyer of Worlds!". "Destroyer of Worlds" is a translation of " Ka Faraq Gatri ", a title which had previously been used by the Daleks to refer to the Doctor.
• This was the first regular episode of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales in which Will Cohen was not credited on any Visual Effects duties.
• This story was chosen by BBC America to represent the David Tennant era during their 50th anniversary programming. Edited into an omnibus format with The Stolen Earth , it was aired by BBCA on 27 October 2013 , after the debut of their homegrown special called The Doctors Revisited - The Tenth Doctor .
• The outfit the Meta-Crisis Doctor wears mirrors Rose's outfit from this season by having a blue jacket over a red shirt as well as the Ninth Doctor's outfit with a similar type of shirt with a jacket over it.
• The Series 4 finale would turn out to be Gareth David-Lloyd 's only appearance as Ianto Jones on Doctor Who , as his character would get killed off in the next season of Torchwood , entitled Children of Earth . Also, this would be the only time Mr Smith appears on the show, with The Sarah Jane Adventures coming to an end after the death of Elisabeth Sladen in 2011 . However, the Tenth Doctor would instead meet him on his parent series in a crossover story, The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith .
• The concept that a Doctor would grow from the Doctor's severed hand who would end up with Rose was planned since the The Christmas Invasion . Russell T Davies states on the commentary track for this episode that he had the idea in mind that just prior to the Tenth Doctor's regeneration, a scene would depict him growing a clone of himself from his severed hand, and send him off to live his life with Rose. The concept was ultimately brought forward, and was developed into it's own entire story arch, due to the "timing being perfect". He says that he told David Tennant about the idea he had.
• The Dream of a Normal Death" is heard as the Doctor remembers the people who have died in his name, and again as he pilots the TARDIS at the end of the episode. This was first heard at the end of The Family of Blood when John Smith and Joan are holding the watch and seeing the future.
• When the Doctor sees Gwen Cooper for the first time, he asks if she comes from a long line of family from Cardiff, noting the physical similarity between Gwen and Gwyneth , ( TV : The Unquiet Dead ) both of whom are played by Eve Myles . According to Russell T Davies: "It's not familial as we understand it. There's no blood tie. Spatial genetic multiplicity means an echo and repetition of physical traits across a Time Rift."
• With the later retroactive confirmation that the Doctor does regenerate in this episode, ( TV : The Time of the Doctor ) Rose Tyler becomes the only individual to date known to have directly witnessed two of the Doctor's regenerations.
• This marks, as of 2020, the last televised Doctor Who story to feature K9.
• The VFX shot of K-9 teleporting into the attic to assist Mr Smith was reused from The Sarah Jane Adventures episode The Lost Boy .
• Russell T Davies had Mickey return to his original Earth in the hopes that he would appear in either Torchwood or The Sarah Jane Adventures . Ultimately, Noel Clarke 's busy schedule prevented this, though he did make a cameo in The End of Time .
• Russell T Davies had long intended that the Doctor's hand would eventually be used to grow a half-human version of the Doctor, and he had anticipated that this would take place during David Tennant 's final adventure. However, he now decided that he could get more mileage from the idea if he used it here.
• When it seemed unlikely that Billie Piper would appear due to her honeymoon, Russell T Davies considered dropping Mickey and Jackie altogether and reducing Rose's role to a short coda in which the half-human Doctor arrived on Bad Wolf Bay in the parallel universe.
• As the writing progressed, Russell T Davies became concerned that there was no way to conclude his story within the confines of a standard fifty-minute episode. He began to contemplate the necessity of cutting a major element of the story, such as the scenes in the Torchwood Hub or the involvement of Sarah Jane, and contacted Julie Gardner to discuss the problem. Gardner was able to convince Jane Tranter to extend the episode by ten minutes, making it the longest regular-season episode ever.
• Before settling on the meta-crisis as the impetus for Donna's departure from the TARDIS, Russell T Davies briefly considered other ideas, like physical injury or death, Sylvia's death, or Donna being lost in time as a lead-in for one of the 2009 specials, which entailed finding an older and wiser Donna on an alien planet.
• Russell T Davies revealed in 2020 that he planned to have a mention of Nyssa and Tegan , revealing that they are now a couple. He incorporated this into Farewell, Sarah Jane .
• Billie Piper disliked having Rose end up with the Metacrisis Doctor, feeling that it was a cop-out from the ending of Doomsday , and also not being keen on the implication that she had settled for an inferior copy of the Doctor.
• In the accompanying Doctor Who Confidential for this episode, Russell T Davies explains "This is so busy and so mental and so epic and universal in scale that of course you need two Doctors to solve it."
• Phil Collinson , Graeme Harper , and David Tennant discuss the use of musician Colum Regan , who is a very good physical match for Tennant, as a double in scenes with the two Doctors. Collinson explains that while with an unlimited budget they would use Tennant in every shot, "we only have a certain number of effects shots where you can see the two Doctors together, so we have to pick those carefully."
• Graeme Harper explained that in "two or three wide shots" they were able to use Colum Regan and David Tennant together. For the most part the double is used for scenes where one or the other Doctor is only seen from behind, or only an arm or back of the head is seen in a shot. The double has appeared in other episodes throughout the series.
• David Tennant described the procedure for making an effects shot involving Tennant as both Doctors. The camera is locked in place while Tennant goes off and changes clothing, with Regan holding his place. A shot is made for reference with Colum Regan , then another shot is made without Regan. This enables the shots to be merged during editing to create the effect of having Tennant in two places in the same shot.

Ratings [ ]

The episode gained an overall, consolidated viewing figure of 10.57 million viewers in its first BBC1 airing. This placed it as the No. 1 program in the UK across all channels of the week, beating all the Wimbledon finals and all 5 episodes of Coronation Street , all 4 of Eastenders and all 5 of Emmerdale . This makes Journey's End the highest rated episode in the 45-year history of Doctor Who , surpassing Voyage of the Damned and The Stolen Earth , both of which ranked second in their respective weeks. However, the episode is not the most-watched episode of the revived series; that distinction belongs to the 13.31 million viewers obtained by Voyage of the Damned (the most-watched episode of all time remains City of Death Part 4 with 16.1 million viewers in 1979 ). The episode also achieved an Appreciation Index rating of 91, tying with The Stolen Earth , a number considered unprecedented for a mainstream network drama production. [3]

Myths and rumours [ ]

• The week between the cliffhanger ending of The Stolen Earth and the broadcast of Journey's End included some of the most intense fan speculation and media attention in franchise history. The significance of the cliffhanger, which appeared to show the Doctor regenerating, along with previously reported speculation regarding Donna and other characters, led to many speculations being circulated on fan discussion boards and the media, the most notable being that David Tennant was, in fact, leaving the series, and that leaked photos and other information regarding him being in the 2008 Christmas special (as well as media reports the preceding week that he was negotiating to return in 2010) were either a "red herring" or that the Christmas special was to include a flashback. Although Tennant had made it known to the producers that he was planning to leave the series, the intent was for him to return for a series of specials later.
• Though the Tenth Doctor did not change his incarnation when he regenerated, the energy he expelled used up a full regeneration regardless. This put into question how many more times the Doctor can regenerate before permanent death. After years of fan debate, this was ultimately proven true in TV : The Time of the Doctor , where the Eleventh Doctor confirmed he had exhausted a regeneration with this course of action (putting it down to the Tenth Doctor having "vanity issues"), and after factoring in the War Doctor as a suppressed incarnation, had no more regenerations left. He was later given a brand new regenerative cycle or unlimited regenerations by the Time Lords as a gift for saving Gallifrey .
• Concerning Donna's ring, at the end of the series 4 finale, when the Doctor says goodbye to her it glimmers briefly into the camera. Some fans theorise that the ring is a possible Chameleon Arch module containing Donna's memories of her time with the Doctor. It has also been suggested that the ring resembles a ring worn by the Master in a previous episode. Others theorise that the ring is simply large, black, and very shiny.
• The prediction that a companion would die led some to believe Donna, Martha or Rose would be the ones destined to die (since it had already been reported that John Barrowman would be returning to Torchwood and Elisabeth Sladen to The Sarah Jane Adventures , ruling out their characters' demise). Ultimately, this was a partial red herring, as it was an aspect of Donna that died, but not the character herself.
• A number of fans began to speculate as to whether or not the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor would eventually become to be known as the enigmatic, malevolent Valeyard . The six-issue comic book mini-series The Forgotten became the subject of related speculation when the final cliffhanger panel of issue #5 featured the unveiling of a villain resembling the clone; ultimately it was revealed that another villain was responsible, although the Doctor still, puzzlingly, refers initially to the character as the Valeyard.
• The appearance of K9 was a surprise to many as it had been previously reported that the character would not be appearing in the episode, given that the rights to the character were held by another party for the planned K9 television series. K9 continued to appear occasionally in The Sarah Jane Adventures , too.
• Some fans believed that Harriet Jones was wanting revenge upon the Doctor for bringing down her reign as Prime Minister, so she decided to help bring the Daleks back, and she was, in fact, the Supreme Dalek. A supposed "leaked script" showed that Harriet Jones was helping the Daleks. This was proved false.
• The fact that Jack, Martha, and Mickey depart together sparked speculation that Martha and Mickey would appear in Torchwood , possibly replacing Tosh and Owen (Martha had already made several appearances in the spin-off). The subsequent announcement that Freema Agyeman had been signed by ITV, a rival network to the BBC, to take a lead role in the series Law & Order: London, reduced the chances of her appearing in Torchwood . She did subsequently take part in the BBC Radio adventure Lost Souls , but that story took place prior to the events of The Stolen Earth . In his book The Writer's Tale Russell T Davies mentions that he had promised Noel Clarke that he would appear in Torchwood Series 3. Ultimately, however, neither Clarke nor Agyeman did appear in Children of Earth , and dialogue in " Day One " indicated that Martha was still with U.N.I.T. and on her honeymoon. The two would ultimately return in The End of Time as a married couple at some unspecified point in the future, with Martha no longer affiliated with U.N.I.T.

Filming locations [ ]

• BBC Studios, Unit ½, Tonteg Road, Treforest Industrial Estate, Upper Boat, Pontypridd
• Arcot Street, Penarth (Sarah Jane and the others surrender to the Daleks)
• Robinswood Crescent, Penarth (Sarah's car is stopped by a Dalek patrol)
• Hawthorn Road, Pontpridd (Wilf and Sylvia watch the Dalek ships leave Earth)
• High Street, Penarth (The TARDIS is transferred to the Crucible)
• Mir Steel (formerly Alpha Steel), Newport (Inside the Crucible)
• Cwrt-y-Vil Road, Penarth (Martha says goodbye to Francine)
• Castell Coch, Cardiff (UNIT Germany)
• Nant-Fawr Road, Cardiff (Outside Wilf’s)
• Southerndown Beach, Ogmore Vale, Bridgend (The Doctor drops off Rose and new family back at Bad Wolf Bay)
• At the end, the TARDIS lands in Morgan Jones Park, Caerphilly .

Production errors [ ]

• When the Doctor returns Rose to Bad Wolf Bay, in the shots of the Doctor and Donna you can clearly see Rose's hair blowing in the wind, yet in the shots of Rose her hair isn't blowing. It happens too often to be random gusts of wind.
• In the same scene, when the Metacrisis and Jackie discuss her child Tony, the shadow of a boom mic can be seen in the sand.
• When the Meta-Crisis Doctor arrives at the Crucible and opens the doors of the TARDIS, a bright light is used to hide the rear panel of the police box prop and create the "bigger on the inside" camera effect. However, it fails to cover a small section of this panel at the floor level of the prop.
• When the DoctorDonna deactivates the holding cells, Davros doesn't move or react, unlike all other characters present. A model, or empty costume, is clearly in his place.
• When The Doctor and his companions are flying the TARDIS, Martha can briefly be seen looking and smiling at the camera,
• Finger smudges can be seen on the Supreme Dalek's top piece.
• The Bluray release of this story uses the wrong font to credit the additional cast immediately after the opening titles. Traditionally, the font used for the Russell T Davies era is "Futura Medium", and this font is still used to credit the Producers and for the title card. An entirely different font - "Tahoma" - is used to credit Noel Clarke, Camille Coduri, Adjoa Andoh, Eve Myles and Gareth David-Lloyd in this episode. The error is also present in The Stolen Earth .
• When Gwen asks what the power for the rift manipulator is for, there’s no filter over Eve Myles voice suggesting it’s coming through the speaker, instead sounding like she’s also in the room.

Continuity [ ]

• Davros has previously demonstrated the ability to shoot electricity. ( TV : Revelation of the Daleks , AUDIO : Davros )
• When the Doctor sees Gwen Cooper for the first time, he asks if she comes from a long line of family from Cardiff, noting the physical similarity between Gwen and Gwyneth . ( TV : The Unquiet Dead ) Gwen confirms that her family has been in Cardiff since the 1800s.
• This is the first time the Doctor's TARDIS has been piloted by six people, the number first specified in PROSE : Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible . This retroactively serves to somewhat explain the Doctor's difficulty in correctly piloting the craft and its frequent use of a hexagonal console. ( TV : An Unearthly Child , et al.)
• Davros mentions meeting Sarah Jane at the birth of his creations. ( TV : Genesis of the Daleks )
• The Supreme Dalek proves sadistic, mirroring a previous one . ( AUDIO : Return to Skaro )
• Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler return. ( TV : Doomsday )
• Donna proposes a way for the Doctor to fix the long-broken chameleon circuit . ( TV : An Unearthly Child ) The Sixth Doctor had previously attempted this, with some limited temporary success, ( TV : Attack of the Cybermen ) as had the Fourth Doctor. ( TV : Logopolis ) In his sixth and ninth incarnations , the Doctor indicated that he rather liked the police box form. ( TV : Attack of the Cybermen , Boom Town )
• Donna reiterates that she could type 100 words per minute while working as a temp in Chiswick. ( TV : The Stolen Earth )
• The fact that a single TARDIS has enough power to relocate Earth harks back to the Time Lords moving Earth to another part of the universe about two million years in its future, where it became known as Ravolox . ( TV : The Mysterious Planet )
• The Doctor tells Wilf that he's "fine" after he drops off Donna. This echoes a similar statement he made which Donna interpreted as meaning the complete opposite. ( TV : Forest of the Dead )
• After the Dalek became trapped in the Time Lock at Torchwood Hub, Ianto finds out that the Time Lock was created by Toshiko before her death in the hands of Jack's brother Gray . ( TV : Exit Wounds )
• The Doctor once again disables Jack's vortex manipulator's teleport function. ( TV : Last of the Time Lords )
• Sarah Jane Smith previously mentioned the Verron soothsayer who gave her the warp star . ( TV : Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? )
• Davros taunts the Doctor with memories of people who gave their lives for his, much in the same way that the Timewyrm taunted the Seventh Doctor . ( PROSE : Timewyrm: Revelation )
• The device created by the Meta-Crisis Doctor looks similar to the device used against the Daleks by the Seventh Doctor . ( TV : Remembrance of the Daleks ) That device was similar to one the Third Doctor built on Spiridon . ( TV : Planet of the Daleks )
• Davros refers to the Doctor as the "destroyer of worlds". The Seventh Doctor referred to himself as such previously. ( AUDIO : Afterlife )
• Donna calls the Meta-Crisis Doctor mental after he dresses which causes him to believe she's objecting to his blue suit. A similar exchange occurred previously with the real Tenth Doctor and Martha, where he believed her incredulous reaction to his absorbing radiation was a critique of him wearing one shoe. ( TV : Smith and Jones )
• The Doctor again states his aversion to violence, and in particular his horror of genocide. He is appalled when the Meta-Crisis Doctor destroys the Daleks, evil as they are. He recognises, however, that the destructive impulse comes from himself. The Fourth Doctor likewise had an opportunity to destroy the Daleks before they left Skaro but was faced by a moral quandary. Circumstances at that time prevent him from having to make that decision. ( TV : Genesis of the Daleks )
• Blon Fel Fotch accused the Ninth Doctor of "running because [he] daren't look back". ( TV : Boom Town )
• Donna, observing the Doctor's terrible power on their first meeting, told him, that he needed someone to stop him. ( TV : The Runaway Bride )
• After Tegan , sick of the death that seemed to follow the Doctor, left him, the Doctor himself admitted that he had to "mend [his] ways". ( TV : Resurrection of the Daleks )
• Upon first meeting him, the Doctor tried to convince Davros that the Daleks are dangerous by comparing them to a virus that could kill all living forms. He asked Davros, that if he created such a virus, would he unleash it? Davros considered for a moment, before saying that he would do it, that such power would set him amongst the Gods, confirming his madness. ( TV : Genesis of the Daleks ) Here, Davros has created the Reality bomb , a device which will destroy all of reality, and all life forms. Essentially, Davros has created the very virus the Doctor described, but in a different form.
• The Meta-Crisis Doctor describes the Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis as "wizard". In Donna's World , Donna used this same expression when the Royal Hope Hospital returned to Earth. ( TV : Turn Left )
• The "Doctor Donna" was foretold by the Ood . ( TV : Planet of the Ood )
• The Doctor and Mickey perform a "fist bump" in lieu of a handshake when Mickey departs. ( TV : Doomsday )
• The Doctor's TARDIS has been captured before. ( TV : The Poison Sky )
• Mickey and Jack's feigned antagonism on encountering each other reflects their genuine antagonism during their initial meeting. ( TV : Boom Town )
• When Davros asks the Doctor "How many have died in your name?", the Doctor recalls Harriet Jones , ( TV : The Stolen Earth ) Ceth Ceth Jafe , ( TV : The End of the World ) the Controller , ( TV : Bad Wolf ) Lynda Moss , ( TV : The Parting of the Ways ) Sir Robert MacLeish , ( TV : Tooth and Claw ) Angela Price , ( TV : The Age of Steel ) Colin Skinner , Ursula Blake , Bridget Sinclair , ( TV : Love & Monsters ) the Face of Boe , ( TV : Gridlock ) Chantho , ( TV : Utopia ) Astrid Peth , ( TV : Voyage of the Damned ) Luke Rattigan , ( TV : The Poison Sky ) Jenny , ( TV : The Doctor's Daughter ) River Song , ( TV : Forest of the Dead ) and the hostess , ( TV : Midnight ) all people who sacrificed themselves for the Doctor or those he couldn't save from death.
• The Reality Bomb is conceptually similar to the particle disseminator possessed by the Valeyard . ( TV : The Ultimate Foe )
• This is the first time that Rose has seen Jack Harkness since she, as the Bad Wolf entity , resurrected him and made him immortal. She does not know that he is immortal and is surprised when he comes back to life. ( TV : The Parting of the Ways )
• The Daleks have previously made extensive use of transmat technology. ( TV : Remembrance of the Daleks , Bad Wolf )
• Donna refers to the Doctor as "Spaceman". ( AUDIO : Technophobia )
• Dalek Caan states that he has seen the destruction the Daleks have caused throughout their existence, and decrees "No More". The War Doctor also made this decree when deciding to end the Time War. ( TV : The Day of the Doctor )

Home video releases [ ]

• This story was released in the Series 4 DVD box set in November 2008 along with the rest of the series.
• It was released as Series 4 Volume 4 in a vanilla edition with Turn Left and The Stolen Earth on 1 September 2008.

Non-UK broadcast editing [ ]

Journey's End was broadcast on the CBC in Canada on 12 December 2008 in an extensively edited version, created in order so that the episode, which ran approximately 65 minutes without commercial interruption on the BBC, could fit into a standard 60-minute time slot with commercials, meaning the episode itself had to be whittled down to approximately 44-45 minutes. The deletion of approximately 20 minutes of scenes renders this version of Journey's End one of the most extensively edited Doctor Who episodes in the entire history of the franchise. The CBC subsequently made an unedited version of the episode available, but only on its website and only for four weeks after the TV broadcast (the broadcast occurred after Series 4 had been released to DVD in that country).

Some of the most major edits included the Meta-Crisis Doctor connecting the dots between his/the Doctor's coincidental encounters with Wilf and Donna, the Doctor's farewell to his companions in the park, Rose's final question to the Doctor and her subsequent kissing of the Meta-Crisis Doctor, and the final scene of the Doctor in the TARDIS, alone.

It was subsequently announced that the CBC was discontinuing its broadcasts of Doctor Who , with the competing network Space taking over broadcasts of the series beginning with The Next Doctor and continuing into 2010. [1] BBC America also aired an extensively edited version of the episode in February 2009.

External links [ ]

• Doctor Who - The Locations Guide
• BBC Episode Guide to Journey's End
• Original script , posted online by Russell T Davies in conjunction with the release of his book Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale .

Footnotes [ ]

• ↑ Tennant also plays the hybrid incarnation of the Tenth Doctor .
• ↑ http://www.shannonsullivan.com/doctorwho/serials/2008lm.html
• ↑ Doctor Who Ratings - UK final
• 1 Midnight entity
• 2 Weeping Angel
• 3 The Doctor

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Doctor Who S4 • Episode 13

Journey’s End

Sets: Doctor Who (2005-2022) Tenth Doctor

86% 1,819 votes

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All hell has broken loose! Humanity is threatened with global annihilation, as Davros and the New Dalek Empire prepare to detonate a bomb that will wipe out all of existence. The Tenth Doctor is helpless, and the TARDIS faces destruction. The only hope lies with the Doctor's companions — the "Children of Time" — but Dalek Caan predicts that one will die...

Signal Strength: 60%

Characters & Enemies

Tenth Doctor

Captain Jack Harkness

Donna Noble

Gwen Cooper

Harriet Jones

Ianto Jones

Jackie Tyler

Martha Jones

Mickey Smith

Sylvia Noble

Wilfred Mott

Also featuring:

Available in:, series 4 volume 4: turn left – the stolen earth – journey‘s end dvd.

The Complete Fourth Series DVD

The Dalek Collection DVD

The Monster Collection: Davros DVD

Series 4 Blu-⁠Ray

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Journey's End

• In the wake of Davros' threat to destroy the existence of the Universe itself, the Doctor's companions unite to stop the Dalek empire. Which one will die by the prophecies and what will the fate be for the Doctor?
• The Doctor and his companions prepare to do battle with Davros and the Daleks who are out to destroy everything and everyone in the universe other than themselves. All seems lost when the Daleks apparently destroy the TARDIS but it's not that simple as an empowered Donna - and a new version of the Doctor - take control and face the Dalek menace head on. For one of the Doctor's companions however, there will be a heavy price to pay. — garykmcd
• The Doctor regenerates back into the same form, using a hand he had lost earlier as raw material. Jackie Tyler and Mick appear and save Sarah Jane from the Daleks, but the Daleks capture the Tardis and take it to their base, the Crucible. Jackie, Mick and Sarah Jane surrender so that they can go to the base as well, while Martha teleports herself to Germany. Rose reveals that her timeline is being destroyed, and an analysis of timelines shows that everything revolves around Donna. The Daleks have the power to break into the Tardis, so the Companions voluntarily leave it. But the door slams shut before Donna can come out, and the Daleks attempt to destroy the Tardis by sending it and her into the core of the Crucible. In the core, Donna sees the Doctor's hand and it regenerates into another Doctor. They manage to teleport the Tardis before it is destroyed. The doctor has partially regenerated using Donna and now, partly human, has only one heart. Sarah Jane and Mick escape through a door, while the other prisoners are subjected to a Reality Bomb test, powered by the alignment of the 27 planets. Jackie also teleports away, but the other prisoners are vaporized. The Reality Bomb separates atoms, so it has the power to destroy the universe if triggered. Captain Jack also joins them. Martha in Germany activates her OsterHargen key. It is a plan set up to destroy the Earth by detonating a string of nuclear explosions. Destroying the Earth will also destroy the power source of the Reality Bomb. At the same time, Harkness and Sarah Jane devise a plan to destroy the Crucible. They also threaten the Daleks. Davros points out that the companions all have devised weapons to attack the Daleks, against the Doctor's code of nonviolence, and the Daleks teleport all the companions to the Crucible. The ignition sequence of the bomb begins. The second Doctor returns in the Tardis and attempts to shoot down Davros. He fails, and Donna does not how to work the gun, but Davros blasts her with an energy beam. The energy wakens a new part of Donna - when the second Doctor became part-human, Donna also became part Timelord. She shuts down the bomb and takes control of the Daleks. The second Doctor, in rage and hate, fearing a Dalek dominated galaxy, activates destruction of all of the Daleks and the Crucible. With the help of all the companions, the Earth is brought back to its original location. The companions disperse. The second Doctor, who has anger management issues, goes to stay with Rose. Being part human, he has just a single life, and they decide to spend it together. But Donna's human side is too weak to keep a Timelord in her head. The Doctor has to wipe her mind and warns her parents never to let her remember or she will die. He leaves, alone, in the Tardis.

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Doctor Who series 4 episode 13: Journey’s End review

After a week of heavy speculation, and one of the best cliffhangers in Doctor Who memory, was Journey's End worth all the hype? Here's our review...

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If The Stolen Earth pumped us up with excitement, then Journey’s End eventually, after some promise, took a pin and slowly deflated us. Because as the episode wound itself into its back third, once all the scores seemed to have been settled, it was clear that this wasn’t going to be the classic series finale we’d been teased with. And while it was better than last year’s The Last Of The Time Lords (even if it didn’t necessarily feel like it immediately after the end credits), this was still a major missed opportunity, and a real disappointment.

After all, it’s only a week ago that The Stolen Earth had spent 50 minutes building up to a threat far more striking and vicious than we’ve seen in Doctor Who over the past few years. It also left us with a cliffhanger that genuinely left you wondering what on earth was going to happen next.

Yet it didn’t even take a minute to piss that away. As many suspected, the hand next to the Tardis proved to be vital, as a quick special effect later, and the Doctor had taken whatever energy he needed from the regeneration, and diverted the leftovers onto his hand. Think back to The Christmas Invasion all those years ago: did we ever think that the Doctor’s severed hand would become the get out of jail card it’s become, lining up next to the sonic screwdriver and the psychic paper in the armoury of get-outs and plot devices? And yet its role in this muddled episode had only just begun.

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Once over that initial anti-climax, and the reintroduction of Mickey and Jackie to blast away some Daleks to save Sarah-Jane (along with some time bubble to keep the Torchwood folks safe), it seemed the ante was being upped again. There was an increasing feeling that the Doctor was powerless, and that it would really take something quite brilliant to beat the Dalek threat. Heck, this time the pepperpots could even – amusingly – fly over Germany, speaking the lingo too (a genius moment, to be fair). And when the Doctor revealed that the Daleks could blast away the Tardis door without a second thought, it was defences down in every sense. Had the Doctor ever been so vulnerable in the face of his deadliest enemies?

It was building up a treat. Julian Bleach’s Davros was banging on well, even when he got to the now-traditional ranting and raving. What’s more, the part of the script where Davros drew parallels between the two, ‘exposing’ the Doctor’s soul and asking “How many have died in your name” – as his assistants lined up with the kind of mass destruction weapons that the Time Lord abhors – was really well done. Let’s not forget too the moment where Davros recognised Sarah-Jane from Genesis Of The Daleks . That was a classic Who goosebump moment surely, for the long-time fan of the show.

Still, it all came crashing off the rails.

Let’s deal with the Daleks masterplan first. If the ending of Last Of The Time Lords was from Superman (with everything being rewound, and the reset switch being flicked), this was straight out of Superman II , as the Dalek’s weapon was inevitably concentrated on themselves. Had Russell T Davies stayed on for another series, then I’d dig out my copy of Superman III right now and save myself the bother of writing the end of series review in two years’ time. Combined with the bizarre sight of the Tardis pulling, well, an entire planet, it wasn’t anywhere near what last week had been tempting us with. That’s being a little kind.

Then there was the threefold Doctor. The duplicated Tennant, with the half-human twist, was a bit of a muddle, and in the end only really seemed in place to give Rose her long-cherished happy ending. But the turning of Tate into half-Time Lord was quite bizarre. Catherine Tate has spent most of the series showing the early naysayers that she’s a good actress, and that she knew what she was doing. Then, at perhaps her most crucial point of the run, she turned into the Catherine Tate we feared we were going to get. All of a sudden, a force that just an episode ago caused Captain Jack, the Doctor and Sarah-Jane to give up without a fight were rolling over like dominoes, beaten by some fast typing and Tate one-liners. At a push, it’d be a struggle to get away with that in an early series episode, but this was the series finale .

What was also disappointing was how Davros was allowed to peter out. The mechanic of having him as effectively a prisoner of his own creations isn’t new, and it does – as a narrative device – help to level off the old problem of him making the Daleks around him seem weak. But once he’d done the necessary taunting of the Doctor, and had his weapon turned against him (actually, that happened last time we saw him too, in Remembrance of the Daleks – you’d think he’d put in a failsafe for these things, given that he’s such a genius), he all but disappeared. A shame, as the maniacal man is safe in Julian Bleach’s hands, and once he’d gone, the episode fell into its worst excesses.

Chief among them was the ‘second’ Doctor being left with Rose, with the pair of them snogging away on a Norwegian beach. The speech that the Doctor gave her, about how before he met her he was full of anger and rage pretty much pretends that the preceding 40 years of assistants and characterisations of the Doctor never happened. It also, presumably, guarantees Tennant a cameo option long after he hands over the key to the Tardis. After all, all that stuff about everything being sealed off for good last happened two years ago, yet wasn’t enough to keep Billie Piper’s name off the credits this time round.

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But then there was also the unwillingness to follow through on Dalek Caan’s prophecy that the most loyal of assistants would die (which looked even more certain when, two thirds of the way through, we had a big happy-clappy session in the Tardis). Granted, when K9 popped up you did wonder if he would prove to be the way out, but instead it was a mini-reset switch that was opted for, as the crosshairs on Donna Noble’s head were quickly Tipp-exed out in favour of reaching for the Undo option. I’ve defended several times the reluctance of Russell T Davies and his team to genuinely kill off interesting characters, but this was a case where you couldn’t help but feel it should have happened. Instead, Donna was left back as Catherine Tate, so she could start work on another series of her sketch show as if the last thirteen episodes had never happened. It might not have dampened the sense of loss that the Doctor was showing at the end, but it did feel like one of a number of small-to-middling cheats that Journey’s End employed.

You’ve probably got the impression by now that, for this reviewer at least, Journey’s End was quite a disappointment. To be fair, it did have its qualities, and if the ‘resetting’ of Donna means we’ll never meet Bernard Cribbins in Who again, then that’s a sad day, because again, he easily showed many of those around him how it should be done. Likewise, there’s a sporting chance that we’ll never again meet Elisabeth Sladen in the main Doctor Who programme either, and that too is a pity, for much the same reason.

Furthermore, the effects continued – pulling Earth aside – to impress, and there was an awful lot crammed into the episode, even considering its extended running time. Threads were tied up, and there was a real feeling that a lot of backstory was being pulled together, at a break-neck pace. If you didn’t care so much about the programme and its narrative, and were just looking for a fast, glossy hour in front of the telly on a Saturday night, then it probably did the job very well.

But for everyone else? It simply didn’t feel like it had the courage or intention to follow through on the set up from The Stolen Earth , and that’s a real shame. For while time is likely to view Journey’s End as a decent enough end to a series, the potential was here for it to be so, so much more. Instead, it feels like the ball has been smashed wide just on the verge of scoring a spectacular goal. For years into the future we’ll continue to rewatch and enjoy the build up, but still wonder what’d have happened had the finish been better.

You could argue that it’s a fair reflection of the yin and yang of the Russell T Davies era, where brilliance has to go toe-to-toe with frustration. Writing as someone who had, more often than not, enjoyed what RTD has done with his revival of Who, I’d probably go along with the argument. After all, just a few hours ago the speculation was still raging about whether they’d have the courage to replace Tennant in what would have been the biggest surprise the show has ever pulled. Now? We’ve got two of him instead.

All considered, a Saturday night is far better with Doctor Who on it than not, and series four has had plenty of highlights. But maybe a two year break now to recharge the batteries before another full series isn’t a bad idea. It won’t stop us tuning in at Christmas for the Cybermen though….

Check out our review of last week’s The Stolen Earth

In fact check out all of series 4…

SERIES 4 reviews

episode 12 – The Stolen Earth Simon Brew

episode 11 – Turn Left Simon Brew

episode 10 – Midnight Simon Brew

episode 9 – Forest Of The Dead Martin Anderson – Simon Brew

episode 8 – Silence In The Library Simon Brew – Martin Anderson

episode 7 – The Unicorn and the Wasp Simon Brew – Martin Anderson

episode 6 – The Doctor’s Daughter Martin Anderson – Simon Brew

episode 5 – The Poison Sky Martin Anderson – Simon Brew

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Simon Brew | @SimonBrew

Editor, author, writer, broadcaster, Costner fanatic. Now runs Film Stories Magazine.

The Genesis of Davros in Journey’s End

By Cameron K McEwan

June 19, 2016

To celebrate the current subject of Monster Month, Davros , we’ve delved into the archives to present a very special moment in the character’s history.

A very special moment, however, that has never been seen.

During the 2008 finale, Journey’s End , writer Russell T Davies had intended to show just how Davros became so, well, Davrosy . In his behind-the-scenes book, The Writer’s Tale , Russell revealed that Davros was to tell the story of his appearance and the genesis of his role as “mad scientist”.

With kind permission from Russell T Davies, please find below this amazing scene and artwork from Davies depicting Davros in the proposed, but never filmed, flashback…

This scene takes place immediately after Davros loses the plot slightly and goes on a rant about the "destruction of reality itself!"

DAVROS It begins! Finally, we will achieve all that I have ever wanted. Peace. Everlasting peace.

THE DOCTOR They'll kill you, Davros. Once it's done. Cos the Daleks despise you, for being flesh. Ohh, you will be exterminated.

DAVROS As I said, Doctor. Peace.

ROSE What happened to you? I mean your face. Your eyes. What happened?

DAVROS Are you showing me pity, Miss Tyler?

ROSE Someone must have. Once upon a time.

DAVROS Not for so many years. But I was like you, back then. Walking tall, so young and so proud. On a world called Skaro. A world at war.

ROSE With who...?

DAVROS With each other. My race, the Kaleds, in perpetual battle against the Thals. My very first memory; hiding underground, with the screams of battle above. I saw the surface of the planet, only once...

And I swore, then. To end it. I pledged my life, to help my people, to ensure their survival. I studied the soldiers. Their frailty. Their pain.

I sought to find a way, to free them from the agonies of the flesh. And then...

...I became victim myself. Perhaps it was necessary. To inspire me.

THE DOCTOR …except you weren’t helping those soldiers. You were experimenting on them. You even experimented on your own family. Twisting the evolution of the Kaled Race, until they became the Daleks.

DALEK CAAN We were born! Out of blood!

DAVROS Can you imagine? I had one idea! An idea that has never stopped. Rolling out across the centuries. I have slept, and woken, and died, and every time I open my eyes, there they are. My Daleks. Outlasting eternity.

And all from one man!

THE DOCTOR Oh, but every time you open your eyes, Davros… There’s me.

Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale by Russell T Davies is available from all good bookstores.

Script and image produced with kind permission from Russell T Davies.

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Recap / Doctor Who S30 E13 "Journey's End"

Edit locked, journey's end.

"I just want you to know there are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her. That there are people living in the light, and singing songs of Donna Noble, a thousand million light years away. They will never forget her, while she can never remember. And for one moment, one shining moment... she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe." — The Doctor , saying one of the most heartbreaking goodbyes he has ever had to give to a companion.

The One With… the return of an overcooked note  Okay, that was in poor taste... ham among Who villains, the birth of Handy , and the one where Rose finally gets her happy ending. But Donna doesn't. And neither does the Doctor. Nor does her family. Not yet, anyways.

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. Now we're picking up where he left off. Torchwood gets protected by a nifty program Tosh designed, Mickey and Jackie materialise with their BFGs just in time to save Sarah Jane, and Ten regenerates... back into Ten. This display of "vanity issues" will prove to be a slight problem a ways down the line .

Anyway, Ten is still 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 (especially Rose, since she came so far and all).

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

Meanwhile, Commando Martha says goodbye to her mother and teleports to Germany, where we are treated to Daleks speaking German , Martha speaking German and an older woman speaking German — notice the running theme here? She avoids a prophetic woman 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 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 dematerialises 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 Daleks take the Doctor and Rose to Davros and sweep Jack into the 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. ("Oh, that's disgusting.") Apparently, he's part Time Lord, part human. He explains to Donna how special she is for being part of him now and she's finally starting to believe it a little.

Back on the Crucible, Davros gives the Doctor a briefing on their plan. Apparently all the 27 planets combined form a "reality bomb" that can dissolve every form of matter. Davros gets really excited and chews on every available piece of scenery . But the Doctor realises that Davros isn't remotely in charge of his creatures anymore. 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 . However, 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, and locked in the basement by his own offspring. Anyway, Davros explains that the 27 stolen planets form a compression field which can be released as a wave with the power to cancel out the electrical energy of atoms, reducing all matter into dust and then turning the dust into atoms and the atoms into nothing. The resulting "reality bomb" has the potential to keep travelling forever across all universes and even creep its way into parallel universes , destroying all life and matter in existence, until only the Daleks remain.

The Doctor's friends haven't given up yet. Jack, Sarah Jane, Mickey and Jackie will use Sarah Jane's Veran necklace (which contains a crystallised nova explosion ) to blow up the Crucible (including themselves) if Davros doesn't stop. Similarly, Martha Jones will use the Osterhagen key to activate a doomsday device that will blow up the Earth (including herself) and put everyone out of their misery and leaving Davros stuck with just 26 planets: not enough to power up his reality bomb. Unfortunately, these threats work well with Davros's "The Reason You Suck" Speech , as Davros accuses the Doctor of being a Technical Pacifist while turning his friends into tools of violence. The Doctor remembers all the people who died to save his life during the New Series. Regardless of all that, the Doctor's friends' plans come to naught, as they are immediately zapped to the Vault by the Daleks.

Suddenly, the TARDIS materialises and the Doctor Clone runs forward with their new Dalek-killing gun. Then Davros, in true Emperor fashion, shoots lightning out of his hand, and zaps the 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's 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!

Held at gunpoint by Mickey, a completely astounded Davros demands to know why Dalek Caan didn't foresee this. To his horror, the Doctor and Caan reveal he did , given that someone has been manipulating events to bring him and Donna together; Caan admits it, but insists he only ensured what was meant to happen did. A furious Davros angrily accuses Caan of betraying the Daleks; Caan retorts he saw the Daleks for the monsters they are and moved to stop them once and for all. As they get into the TARDIS, the Doctor Clone decides that even without their reality bomb, the Dalek empire is still a monstrous threat against the universe, so he tampers with the Crucible's control's panel to unleash a lethal energy feedback that blows up all the Daleks, to the utter horror of the original 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 stay behind and die ( though it doesn't last ) on the exploding Crucible, bitterly cursing the Doctor and naming him " The destroyer of worlds! "

All the planets are sent home, but Earth just doesn't make it before the teleportation device gets blasted by the Supreme Dalek. 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 properly 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, K9 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. (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 deactivates Jack's vortex manipulator again. ("I told you: no teleport .") Martha promises to destroy the Ostenhagen key and walks off with Jack (whose story continues in Torchwood , "Day One" ). Mickey realises 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, so 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 . note  Rose: 0. Little shops: 3. 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, as her behaviour becomes hyperactive, and she literally can't stop talking or focus on a single matter. This leads to the most Sadistic Choice the Doctor's ever had to make. Donna's Time Lord brain is overloading her human body, which, as the Doctor solemnly explains, is the reason why there never has been a human/Time Lord fusion before. Either her head asplode , or the Doctor wipes her memories of everything she's done with him going back to her first appearance. The Doctor knows there's only one option to save Donna's life. She begs and pleads, but the Doctor takes her into his arms and gently wipes 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 someone's going to have to tell her that she's missed two full years, and that her fiancée and her father are dead , that is, if the memory-wiping was thorough enough to blank out that much. The Doctor tells Donna's mother to be nice to her for a change, bids Wilf farewell and steps out of their lives. ( For now .) invoked

The Doctor goes off, once again on his own. He takes off his suit jacket, soaked to the brim in rain... just like his morale.

Tropes featured in Journey's End include:

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg : The Doctor offers to do anything to save Donna. The Doctor: Put me in her place! You can do anything to me, I don't care, just let her go!
• Air-Vent Passageway : Captain Jack crawls through miles of ducts tracking three lifeforms, only to discover they're Mickey, Sarah Jane and Jackie.
• Almighty Janitor : The Doctor mocks Davros as the Daleks' "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.
• And Starring : Elisabeth Sladen again.
• Apocalypse How : The Daleks aim to cause a Class Z-1 using their Reality Bomb. The device essentially dismantles the electrical field holding atoms together, and if it's successfully fired at full power in the Medusa Cascade then it will leak through the Cascade's rift into all parallel universes and alternate dimensions , so the sheltered Dalek fleet will be the only things left intact anywhere the whole of reality. It's revealed that the Reality Bomb's existence has already been causing a Timey-Wimey Ball sort of World-Wrecking Wave to negatively affect multiple universes and has even wiped out the Daleks and Cybermen inside the Void, although said wave's effects are stopped at the end.
• Martha: If I use [the Osterhagen Key], they detonate, and Earth gets ripped apart. The Doctor: What?! Who invented that?! Well, someone called Osterhagen, I suppose.
• Jackie: I was pregnant, do you remember? Had a baby boy. Metacrisis Doctor: Ah! Brilliant. What'd you call him? Jackie: Doctor. Metacrisis Doctor: Really? Jackie: No, you plum. He's called Tony.
• A couple of grammar mistakes in the German, and while "Exterminieren" is a German word, it's rarely used in that language. If you consider the in-universe perspective then they're technically not grammar mistakes ; the Daleks are aliens and have, according to the series at least, never spoken German before. A few errors can be allowed. invoked Especially when the "correct" translation ("vernichten") was unacceptable for real world reasons : it would be meaningless to listeners who don't speak German, and for German speakers it's associated with the Nazis and using it in this context would be extremely dark for a family show.
• "Dårlig Ulv Stranden" still doesn't make much sense in Norwegian.
• Back for the Finale : The episode sees the return of every former companion from the previous four series and many recurring characters. The opening credits list David Tennant , Catherine Tate , Freema Agyeman , John Barrowman , Elisabeth Sladen and Billie Piper — everyone who has ever been credited in the opening since the revival first began, with the exception of Christopher Eccleston and the addition of Sladen. Also back are Mickey, Jackie, Wilf and basically every recurring character in the revival, plus Gwen and Ianto from Torchwood and Luke, K9 and Mr. Smith from The Sarah Jane Adventures . Whew!
• Bathos : Amid the drama surrounding the potential use of the Osterhagen Key, The Doctor wonders aloud who invented it, only to Verbal Backspace . Martha: There's a chain of twenty five nuclear warheads placed in strategic points beneath the Earth's crust. If I use the key, they detonate and the Earth gets ripped apart. The Doctor: WHAT?! Who invented that? Well...someone called Osterhagen, I suppose - Martha, are you insane?
• BFG : Mickey and Jackie turn up toting the same kind of gun that Rose had in the previous episode.
• Big Bad : Davros is the one who has the personal confrontation with the Doctor, outlines the Daleks' plan to him and gives the order to activate the Reality Bomb, with both ordinary Daleks and the Supreme Dalek apparently obeying him. Despite this, the Doctor accuses him of being the Daleks' "pet", suggesting he considers the Supreme Dalek to be the real Big Bad.
• Big Damn Heroes : Mickey and Jackie saving Sarah Jane Smith from a pair of Daleks early on.
• Big "NO!" : Martha shouts one when she is transported to the Crucible right before she can use the Osterhagen Key to activate the nuclear warheads, moments after she intended to do so when she heard the Supreme Dalek activate the plan to send her to the Vault to be with Davros and the Doctor.
• Bilingual Bonus : The German dialogue. Translation available on the BBC website.
• Bittersweet Ending : Rose and the Doctor are finally reunited, but he has to watch her fall in the arms of another man (his clone no less!) and leave her behind forever. Donna saved not only the entire Earth (and the other 26 planets) but all of creation , but she can't retain the memories or else she'll burn up. So, she has no idea how important she is, and the Doctor's on his own again. Sarah Jane points out to the Doctor that he has many friends who love him, quite a few of whom remain on Earth, in the main universe, and with their memories intact. The Doctor then goes to travel alone.
• Break the Cutie : The Universe really hates Ten. Davros's Breaking Speech was bordering on Mind Rape , reminding the Doctor of all the people who have died for him and accusing him of creating soldiers out of his companions. Davros: How many more? Just think, how many have died in your name? The Doctor, the man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not, out of shame. This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself.
• Broken Record : The Doctor already knows what's about to happen to Donna. The audience realises something's very wrong when Donna gets stuck on the word "binary".
• The Reality Bomb annihilates humans with the same effect that Bad Wolf!Rose annihilated Daleks with.
• The BFG that Jack uses is the old Defabricator he turned into a gun and used on one Dalek in " The Parting of the Ways ".
• A very small one: Sarah Jane and Rose are happy to see each other, having become friends back in " School Reunion ".
• Calling the Old Woman 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 " — but Handy can. It's implied that Ten deliberately didn't spit it out to make sure Rose went with and accepted Handy.
• Chekhov's Boomerang : The show finally gets its last bit of mileage out of the Doctor's lost hand. It's now turned into a full-sized copy of himself and so it absolutely cannot turn up again.
• Flashbacks to (almost) everyone who sacrificed themselves for the Doctor in the new series.
• Davros recognizes Sarah Jane from " Genesis of the Daleks ".
• The return to Bad Wolf Bay.
• A nod to " The Unquiet Dead "; Gwen is a spatial genetic multiplicity of Gwyneth. (Basically, Uncanny Family Resemblance , except, according to Word of God , "It's not familial as we understand it. There's no blood tie. Spatial genetic multiplicity means an echo and repetition of physical traits across a Time Rift.") invoked
• Doctor-Donna remembers how to fix the TARDIS' chameleon circuit, like the Sixth incarnation. Since she has the Doctor's mind it's implied that he can fix the chameleon circuit, he just doesn't want to as he likes the police box shape.
• 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 different.
• Sarah Jane was given the warp necklace thingy by a "Veran soothsayer"; the same one who gave her the puzzle box in The Sarah Jane Adventures 's "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?"
• Luke mentions that "Maria and her dad" are safe "in Cornwall".
• Ten asks Rose what happened in the Alternate Universe since they run a few years ahead of the prime universe. He previously used this knowledge to save the Earth from man-made catastrophic volcanic eruptions many incarnations ago.
• Couch Gag : The previous episode's use of multiple names in the opening credits, with additional actors receiving credit over the first post-credits scene, is repeated. As of 2019, these two episodes are the only ones to do this.
• Crew of One : The Doctor explains that the TARDIS flies so shakily most of the time because it's meant to have at least six pilots. With a full team of companions and two Doctors, it flies perfectly smoothly despite towing the Earth.
• Crisis Crossover : Ianto, Jack and Gwen from Torchwood , Sarah Jane, Luke and Mr. Smith from The Sarah Jane Adventures and Rose, Martha, Mickey and basically everyone connected to the show since RTD got hold of it all turn up. Even K9 gets to appear.
• Darkest Hour : Every major character is captured. Martha's Thanatos Gambit with the Osterhagen Key goes nowhere. There's a short Hope Spot where Metacrisis!Ten and Donna try to capture Davros's genetic signature, only to be blasted with his Palpatine-esque hand lightning , and they too are captured. Everything seems to be lost as Davros gives the signal to detonate the Reality Bomb. Then Metacrisis!Donna is awakened, and the gloves come the hell off .
• Death by Cameo : Gita Kapoor is one of the victims of the Reality Bomb test.
• Death Montage : A VERY dramatic example when Davros reminds the Doctor of the number of people who have died helping him. It's a lengthy montage even though it only includes deaths in New Who.
• Demoted to Dragon : Davros. Despite being the original master of the Daleks and the Doctor's Arch-Enemy , it's made clear that the Supreme Dalek is the one who's calling the shots, and Davros is in fact his minion, with the Doctor rubbing salt in the wound by denouncing Davros as the Daleks' "pet".
• K9 being called out at exactly the moment he's needed. Good dog!
• The hand becoming another Doctor just in time to save the TARDIS, although technically that would be a Deus ex Manu. Also, the Ood and Caan knew it was coming all along.
• Didn't See That Coming : Davros certainly didn't know that the Doctor had dumped regeneration energy into the hand. Only the Doctor clone and Donna knew that it had set the hand up to instantly grow a new Doctor through spontaneous metacrisis (he only knew after the fact, and only Donna knew when she was told). NOBODY knew that zapping Donna after all of that happened would trigger the Time Lord brain in Donna.
• Although even if he was telling the truth there (and the canonicity and accuracy of that statement have been hotly debated), he isn't the same kind of fusion Handy is.
• 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 in " Revelation " and " Remembrance " with the Renegade Daleks.
• Disney Death : The Doctor was mortally wounded in the last episode, and not only did he regenerate, but he also didn't have to change his appearance.
• UNIT's Osterhagen Key is designed to destroy the Earth as a Mercy Kill . Martha considers setting it off to deprive the Daleks of one of the 27 planets they need for their plan.
• The Reality Bomb makes it small potatoes, however, as it's intended to destroy everything , and requires several solar systems' worth of stolen planets to amplify.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest : The Doctor sends Rose back to her parallel universe with an identical clone of himself.
• Earth Is the Centre of the Universe : "Only one planet left! Oh... guess which one." A literal example too, as the Medusa Cascade is at the centre of all creation.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom : The Daleks prevent Martha Jones from using the Osterhagen Key doomsday device. Just as well. Martha even emits a Big "NO!" when she realizes they are transporting her to the Crucible the split-second before she can carry out her threat.
• Easy Amnesia : Inverted . Donna's memory isn't wiped that easily, but anything that reminds her of her travels with the Doctor will restore it and kill her.
• Euphemism Buster : Davros tries dancing around the exact details of what's going on with him and the Daleks, but the Doctor gleefully shoots him down. Davros: We have... an understanding. Doctor: Nah, I've got the word for it: You're the Dalek's pet!
• Evil Sounds Deep : The Supreme Dalek has one of the deepest Dalek voices yet.
• Explosive Overclocking : Donna nearly suffers from a biological version of this, with her body unable to contain the Doctor's intellect.
• Fanservice : Naked Doctor clone.
• "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome : Yet another trope that applies to Donna's metacrisis. A Time Lord's vast intelligence is killing her via overloading her human body, so the Doctor erases her mind and returns her to her previous shrilly self.
• Gambit Roulette : Dalek Caan's scheme to wipe out all the Daleks by creating a new Dalek empire has been in the works for ages . Being a prophet definitely helped.
• Go Mad from the Revelation : Dalek Caan is a downplayed version. He's a little wonky, but he knows exactly what he's doing.
• Good All Along : Dalek Caan, who, while crossing through the Time Lock and losing his mind, came to a Heel Realization and decided to destroy the Daleks. Although he mentions that even without his help, the good guys would have still won.
• Gratuitous German : The Daleks in Germany are speaking in German. It doesn't make much sense other than an excuse to have the Daleks speak the language of a certain regime they share similarities with . " Exterminieren! Halt! Sonst werden wir Sie exterminieren! Sie sind jetzt ein Gefangener der Daleks! "
• The Greatest Story Never Told : Donna saved all of reality , but can never know it, not ever, because then she'll die. However, the Ood will make sure that Doctor-Donna is never forgotten.
• Half-Human Hybrid : The Doctor Clone and Doctor-Donna are a Time Lord/human and a human/Time Lord, respectively.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat : Possibly one of the most glorious examples in the series' history, with Doctor-Donna, Davros, the Daleks and the Doctor himself engaging in epic hammy warfare.
• Heel Realization : Dalek Caan is essentially the first Dalek to realize that his race are evil bastards of his own free will, not involving genetic mumbo-jumbo. This after killing his former superior, Dalek Sec, 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!
• Heroic Sacrifice : Davros pulls a Breaking Speech on the Doctor, its central theme being turning his companions into people who either do this, killing themselves on his behalf , or become ruthless killers in their own right. He even outright compares them to the Daleks, calling them the Doctor's creation.
• Hope Spot : The Metacrisis!Doctor and Donna appearing with the gizmo to steal Davros's genetic signature is this, cut short when Davros zaps the Metacrisis!Doctor with his hand lightning . Then there's another one when Donna picks the device and tries again. She is also zapped. This, however, actually works out in Donna's favour.
• Hybrid Power : The Doctor undergoes a "biological meta-crisis" in which he uses regeneration energy to form a clone which has some of Donna's personality. More importantly, the same process gives Donna the Doctor's mental prowess, which, combined with her "gut instinct" as a human , makes her a hypergenius capable of things even the Doctor would never think to do. Unfortunately, the human-Time Lord meta-crisis proves to be unstable and would kill her if she didn't have her memory erased .
• Davros has the gall to use his parting words to call the Doctor THE DESTROYER! OF! WORLDS! when he was about to wipe out every universe ever just minutes earlier.
• The Doctor sees his clone as a monster for destroying the Dalek, yet the Dalek were a non-negotiable, genocidal race that needed to be stop. Or at least that's his excuse to hand his metacrisis self to Rose so that she never puts the multiverse in danger again — or so his clone, which he might well see as a neo-War Doctor, stays out of trouble.
• Ironic Echo : "I was going to be with you, forever."
• Jerk Ass Has A Point : Davros accuses the Doctor of pretending he never sheds blood but actually employing his companions to do his killing for him, turning them into his weapons. There is a degree of truth to this, especially the 7th Doctor with Ace in stories such a 'Silver Nemesis' and 'Remembrance of the Daleks' (the last time we see them face off).
• Large Ham : Even discounting the usual suspects, Doctor-Donna and Davros could have stocked a deli section all by themselves. She has the high energy technobabble and he's got the evil gloating.
• Lampshade Hanging : The fact that, from their second appearance onwards, the Daleks are blatant Nazi stand-ins is cheekily addressed when Martha goes to Germany and they're speaking in German.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia : Played With . The Doctor can't just wipe Donna's memories of his consciousness; he has to wipe all of her memories of him and their travels together. If she ever remembers anything about him, she will end up remembering everything and would die.
• Left for Dead : Davros and Dalek Caan are last seen in the exploding Crucible. The Doctor offers to save Davros but he refuses. Caan seems totally unfazed by it.
• Lightning Can Do Anything : In this case, provide the jolt to activate the Time Lord mind inside Donna.
• Mad Oracle : Dalek Caan is an oracle and may be mad, but he is both much more coherent and much more in control of events than anyone expects.
• Mama Bear : Jackie goes into a Dalek battlefield with a large gun to try and find Rose.
• Mercy Kill : What the Osterhagen key is intended to do to Earth and humanity; blow them all up if their suffering becomes too great.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold : Dalek Caan. The good guys think he's both evil and crazy and the Daleks shun him as an abomination, but he helps save the universe in the end.
• Mix-and-Match Man : The Doctor + Donna clone.
• Specifically: After the Ninth Doctor's heartfelt goodbye and regeneration, the very first thing the Tenth Doctor does is puzzle over his new teeth. After saying goodbye to Rose for what he believes to be the last time, the Doctor turns around to find a certain angry bride in the TARDIS. And after they defeat the Master, but Martha walks away, he sets the TARDIS in flight again — only to smash into the Titanic .
• Murder by Cremation : The Daleks attempt to dispose of Captain Jack's body in an incinerator. Of course, he's not actually dead at the time...
• My Friends... and Zoidberg : Everybody can help with the TARDIS... except Jackie. She should just stand over there... thanks.
• My God, What Have I Done? : The Doctor has this after he hears what happens to Harriet Jones (former Prime Minister), given that he deposed her.
• My Skull Runneth Over : Donna is burning up from all the information inside her head. Over nine hundred years of Time Lord education and adventure is too much for a human brain.
• 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 is born naked, "oh yes".
• New Powers as the Plot Demands : The Doctor's ability to cancel a regeneration in progress by siphoning his energy into a receptacle is seen for the first time.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain : Had Davros not fired at Donna, his victory would have been assured because it activated the Time Lord knowledge inside her. It worked well on the Doctor Clone so he figured it would work on her.
• No Endor Holocaust : Dragging the Earth at super-light speeds across half the Universe would cause more trouble than a mild earthquake. Just dragging it out of the Moon's influence would cause endless disasters. Presumably the TARDIS extended its Inertial Dampening , but even with the dampening, the same global earthquake that knocked potted plants off shelves in London probably set off massive avalanches and landslides in other regions.
• "Not So Different" Remark : Davros tries to pull this one on the Doctor; he makes Daleks, and the Doctor makes Companions. Both of them are soldiers.
• Nothing Can Stop Us Now! : Davros shouts this when the Reality Bomb is ready, and all of his enemies are defeated. " NOTHING can stop the detonation! Nothing! And NO ONE! "
• Obfuscating Insanity : Dalek Caan may well be completely crazy (the script never really says one way or the other — but it's notable that as soon as the truth is revealed, the mad giggling stops, and Caan's voice becomes much clearer and more concise), but he is also way, way more functional and in control of events than anyone thinks it's possible for him to be until it's too late for Davros or the Daleks to stop him — which is the only reason the universe gets out alive.
• Omnicidal Maniac : "The DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSEEEELLLLLFFF!!!" Davros has been one for quite some time. Now that he's capable of destroying the subatomic makeup of every universe, he's overjoyed .
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping : The Doctor after three years of impeccable Estuary, as David Tennant's Scottish accent begins to show through (listen carefully at the very end when he says "Still, that's fine.").
• Our Clones Are Different : The Tenth Doctor redirects his aborted regeneration's energy into his preserved severed hand, and Donna later comes into contact with the energized hand, resulting in a "biological meta-crisis" where the hand both literally and figuratively regenerates the rest of its missing body, now spliced with human DNA donated from Donna. The result is a physically-identical clone of the Tenth Doctor who has part-human DNA from Donna — the effects of which include a more human-like internal biology, lacking a regeneration cycle, and having a mix of Donna's and the original Tenth Doctor's personality quirks — and the new Meta-Crisis Doctor has the same thoughts and memories as the original Tenth Doctor up to the aborted regeneration, but with a more ruthless and aggressive streak due to the clone being "born in blood and battle and revenge".
• Out-Gambitted : Both Sarah Jane and UNIT have gotten their hands on two devastating superweapons, the Warpstar that will destroy the Dalek mother ship and the Osterhagen Key that will destroy the Earth (thus ruining the Daleks' 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 Daleks' Evil Plan is finished... except that Davros just transports everyone to his vault, capturing them and rendering both weapons useless. Then Donna and Doctor Clone show up with their Dalek-destroying weapon... only to get zapped and the weapon destroyed.
• Plot Tailored to the Party : The episode is carefully designed so that the resolution requires the TARDIS to be linked to the Cardiff Rift via Mr Smith, using base codes provided by K-9.
• The Power of Friendship : All of the Doctor's previous companions have shown that they're quite willing to die (in some cases, repeatedly) to protect him. This episode puts a dark twist on this with the claim by Davros that the Doctor basically turns everyone who loves him into living weapons for his cause. Davros: You take ordinary people, and you fashion them into weapons... behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor, you made this.
• Promotion to Opening Titles : Same as the last episode, with Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri added post-titles.
• "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". 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 travelled with the Doctor, who vanished along with Doctor-Donna. Which is, as the name says, partly the Doctor himself.
• "The DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSEEEELLLLLFFF!!!"
• "DETONATE! THE REALITY! BOMB!"
• Put on a Bus : Everyone bar the Doctor goes back to their pre-crisis lives; Torchwood, investigations, the alternate universe, UNIT, etc.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech : Davros howls one at the Doctor in the moments before the Crucible self-destructs. The Doctor: Davros! Come with me! I promise I can save you! Davros: [ berserk with fury ] Never forget, Doctor... YOU DID THIS! [gestures at the destruction around them] I name you forever; YOU are the Destroyer of Worlds!
• Reset Button : The Doctor has to reset Donna back to the way she was when she first appeared to save her life.
• It only takes three Osterhagen Stations to activate the Osterhagen Key failsafe.
• We have three instances of the Tenth Doctor.
• The Daleks are using 27 = 3³ planets to power their reality bomb.
• This episode is the third in a row that the track The Rueful Fate of Donna Noble is played. This time it sticks.
• Running Gag Stumbles : Played for Drama . The Tenth Doctor's previous series each ended with him bidding farewell to his companion and getting back to business in the TARDIS, only for an unexpected and comical cliffhanger to ensue. In this finale, however, he parts ways with Donna, somberly returns to the TARDIS, and then... episode's over.
• Secret Message Wink : Captain Jack Harkness intentionally gets himself shot by a Dalek, as he possesses Resurrective Immortality that they don't know about. As the Doctor and Rose are being escorted out of the room, Jack, Playing Possum , gives a discreet wink to the Doctor to let him know that he's going to use the opportunity to sneak around.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism : The Earth has 26 strategically placed nukes that will tear it apart. This is the Osterhagen Key.
• Davros is basically Emperor Palpatine in a hover-chair. The melted face, the constant talk of fulfilling destiny, and he even shoots lightning! (However, it should be noted that most of these elements date back to when Davros was introduced in 1975 — eight years before Palpatine was first seen on screen.)
• Jack calls Mickey " Mickey Mouse " when the two meet up again.
• Shut Up, Hannibal! : Davros: It is time we talked, Doctor, after so very long... The Doctor: No no no no no, we're not doing the nostalgia tour! I want to know what's happening right here, right now.
• Significant Anagram : "Osterhagen", as in the Osterhagen Key, is an anagram of "Earth's Gone".
• Some Kind of Force Field : Davros traps the Doctor, Rose and the Metacrisis Doctor in containment cells that look like spotlights.
• Spoiler Opening : Averted. Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri's guest-star credits don't appear on screen until the characters make their surprise reappearance.
• Stop, or I Shoot Myself! : Martha succeeds in getting two other Osterhagen stations online (at least three were needed), and threatens the Daleks with blowing up the Earth. She realizes that they need all twenty-seven planets to power something big (The Reality Bomb). Earth would be destroyed but the plan would fail.
• Stunned Silence : The reaction of Donna, Rose and Captain Jack when the Doctor regenerates into... himself.
• Suicide by Cop : Dalek Caan's prophecies were just a ruse to create a situation where his entire race (and Davros) was completely exterminated as he had finally realized that the universe would be a much better place without them around.
• The Doctor "bailing out" of a regeneration by siphoning the energy off into his severed hand instead.
• The Doctor's method of resolving his relationship with Rose; clone!
• The Daleks pull one when the Doctor's friends threaten to blow up either the Earth or the Crucible. Instead, the Daleks transmat all of them into the Vault, thwarting both plans.
• Take Me Instead : When the TARDIS is dropped into the core of the Crucible with Donna inside, the Doctor tries to save her by insisting the Daleks put him in her place.
• Technobabble : Doctor-Donna fires techno terms like a machine gun as she stops the Reality Bomb, frees everyone and then disables the Daleks.
• Tempting Fate : Davros: "AND NOTHING CAN STOP THE DETONATION! NOTHING! AND NO ONE!" Honestly, he was begging for it.
• 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".
• Donna had already taken a level in badass during her time with the Doctor, but she takes another level when she becomes imbued with his consciousness. Doctor-Donna is a glorious thing to see. Too bad it has to result in a Reset Button for her personality.
• Translation Convention : Averted with the German-speaking Daleks. The TARDIS's Universal Translator only works when the Doctor is present.
• True Companions : The "Children of Time" are all ex-companions and very good friends.
• This also serves as a Brick Joke because the Doctor speculated to Clone Martha in "The Poison Sky" that Jack would be interested in one of these. He was right.
• Two-Keyed Lock : It takes three Osterhagen Stations to activate the Osterhagen Key failsafe.
• The Unreveal : We never do find out what it was that Ten wanted to say to Rose in " Doomsday ", but we can guess. Whatever it is, it makes Rose kiss him.
• The Dalek Supreme does know better than to trust the wild prophecies of a madman and initially dismisses Caan... but also underestimates him in the process, which is a very bad idea. Davros, however, claims that Caan "only speaks the truth", and doesn't underestimate his prophetic abilities... but can't imagine that one of his creations would betray him. Again.
• Davros is outsmarted by his own creation in the most thorough way since the character's introduction.
• [Verb] This! : After the Supreme Dalek tries gloating at the Doctor about how he's feeling the TARDIS die, Jack declares "feel this!" and tries shooting it.
• Victory-Guided Amnesia : After saving all of creation, Donna's memories are erased so she can continue to live.
• Villain Has a Point : Davros's scathing observation about how the Doctor forges his Companions into weapons to do the dirty work for him. Even more scathing and Fridge Brilliance when you remember the Doctor's Companion the last time Davros encountered him on-screen was Ace, she of " Dalek meets baseball bat " fame. invoked Davros : The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people, and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your Children of Time transformed into murderers! I made the Daleks, Doctor. You made this .
• Vitriolic Best Buds : Captain Jack and Mickey give off this vibe. Jack: Just my luck. I crawl through two miles of ventilation shafts, chasing life signs on this thing, and who do I find?! Mickey Mouse! Mickey: You can talk, Captain Cheesecake! [they abruptly laugh and hug] Jack: Good to see you! And that's Beefcake ! Mickey: And that's enough hugging.
• Ten uses his regenerative energies to create the Metacrisis Doctor.
• Davros is seemingly killed again, not that anyone expects him to stay dead .
• Rose is convinced by the Metacrisis Doctor to spend her life with him.
• Donna's brain is wiped of ever knowing the Doctor. Due to the human brain not being big enough to store the knowledge of a Time Lord, if she somehow remembers him, she will die .
• Of the Doctor's companions on Earth at this time who have faced the Daleks, we know that Sarah Jane, Rose, Jack and Martha survived — and Donna too (minus her memories). 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? Although Harriet Jones's subwave network only sought out people who had the means to help contact the Doctor; presumably none of them did.
• We never exactly find what happened on the other planets the Daleks stole. However, a comic later that year, The Forgotten , gave some information about what happened on one of the worlds.
• Jack and Rose's confused "huh?" after the Doctor apparently cancels out his regeneration counts, especially for Rose as she's seen it happen before. (Donna, meanwhile, has no idea what was supposed to happen in the first place.)
• The Doctor and his companions helplessly watch in horror while Davros laughs in glee as the reality bomb painstakingly ticks down to 1. Then... nothing happens.
• World-Wrecking Wave : Exaggerated by the Reality Bomb's threat level: if activated at full power, the Bomb will unleash a wavelength that will dismantle everything within range down to a subatomic level. And the wavelength will continue until it's wiped out everything within the observable universe except for everything onboard the Dalek Crucible, then it will break through a space-time rift into every parallel universe and alternate dimension until the Crucible's contents are all that's left in ANY reality .
• 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!

"But every night, Doctor, when it gets dark, and the stars come out, I'll look up on her behalf. I'll look up at the sky and think of you." — Wilfred Mott , trying to comfort the Doctor.

Video Example(s):

Sarah jane and davros.

Davros hasn't forgotten Sarah Jane's face since the events of "Genesis of the Daleks."

Example of: Continuity Nod

Davros' Speech

Alternative Title(s): Doctor Who NSS 4 E 13 Journeys End

• Doctor Who S30 E12 "The Stolen Earth"
• Recap/Doctor Who
• Doctor Who 2008 PS "Music of the Spheres"

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Doctor Who: Journey’s End (Review)

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who .

Journey’s End originally aired in 2008.

Stand witness, humans. Your strategies have failed, your weapons are useless, and… oh, the end of the universe has come. – Davros, master of understatement

Journey’s End covers a lot of ground incredibly quickly. Even running one-and-a-half times the length of a regular episode, Journey’s End feels like it’s ready to burst at any given moment. Those who don’t like Davies’ finalés will find a lot to complain about here. The stakes are raised so high as to become almost abstract. The plot is written into a corner where it takes nothing short of a convenient deus ex machina to resolve it all. The Tenth Doctor and Rose are as annoying together as they have ever been, despite both being quite awesome apart.

However, if you’re looking at The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End as a story, you’re missing the point. The real news is that this was a crowning accomplishment for the series. Not only did The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End both pull a record high Appreciation Index of 91, Journey’s End edged out East Enders and Coronation Street to become the most-watched show on British television that week. This was the first time that Doctor Who had accomplished this since it came back.

The Daleks’ master plan…

The only comparable accomplishment in the history of the show is City of Death scoring the show’s highest ever ratings. And that only happened because an ITV strike made it quite difficult for anybody to watch anything else at the time. So, no matter how you cut it, Journey’s End is a phenomenal piece of event television, one that really solidifies the importance of the resurrected Doctor Who in British popular consciousness.

In a very real way, the title feels somewhat apt. The long journey of Doctor Who from a failed science-fiction show in the wilderness to a crown jewel in British television was finally over.

It’s been a hell of a ride…

How do you get from a show cancelled due to lackluster ratings and lack of audience interest to Journey’s End ? The answer is obvious. Russell T. Davies. The man has his detractors. He certainly has his weaknesses. As a scripted piece of television, Journey’s End is far from perfect. It doesn’t even measure up to Davies’ best scripts of the season – Midnight and Turn Left . However, as an executive producer, Davies is a force to be reckoned with.

It’s hard to believe that something like Journey’s End could even be possible before Rose aired. Doctor Who ran the risk of being that failed telemovie starring Paul McGann and Eric Roberts. Even when Davies managed to secure the support to bring the show back to television, there was no guarantee of success. David Tennant has remarked on the surreal experience of being invited to watch Rose and Dalek before the show aired, and being offered the lead in a series that could easily fall flat on its face. He could easily have been the thirty-five-second Doctor. “But I would probably have got my own Big Finish series out of it,” he quipped .

Together again, naturally…

Instead, the show became a massive critical and commercial success. It has bounded from strength-to-strength. As Journey’s End takes great joy in reminding the viewer, this isn’t just a revival – it’s a franchise with two very different satellite spin-offs. Even after Davies departed from his executive producer role, the show has continued to expand. Steven Moffat and Matt Smith really helped the show to break out Stateside. Even Davies managed to take the spin-off Torchwood to the United States.

Journey’s End is the season finalé to the last full season from Davies and Tennant, the two public faces of this rejuvenation. As such, it’s a showcase for both. As I noted in the review of The Stolen Earth , this two-parter is really about bringing back everything that Davies has brought to the table. The casts from the spin-offs, the supporting characters, the Daleks, even K-9! It’s a gigantic valentine to everything that Doctor Who is, including being big and bold and ridiculous and absurd.

Steering the ship…

It even brings back the classic Daleks, not the rather serious reinvention introduced in the show’s first season. This is a “fully-fledged Dalek Empire at the height of its power.” And that means they are not afraid to be a little ridiculous. We get Daleks screaming in German! We get Daleks spinning around on the floor! We get the cast kicking and pushing them around as if they are silly props gliding on wheels rather than legitimately terrifying galactic conquerors.

It’s telling that the Daleks’ master plan involves nothing less than “the destruction! of reality! itself!” One level, this is Davies’ series finalé scale escalated to its logical conclusion. In The Parting of the Ways , the Daleks threatened the future. In Doomsday , the Daleks and the Cybermen threatened modern-day Earth. In The Last of the Time Lords , the Master had conquered mankind and was planning on taking over the cosmos. The only way to really top that involves a plan to destroy everything ever.

Call for help, with a kiss?

However, more than that, this means that the Daleks threaten the Doctor with nothing. With oblivion. With emptiness. With vacant space. The threaten to destroy an entire universe populated with characters defined by their relationship to the Doctor – they plan to wipe out an entire fictional reality. They threaten the Doctor with nothing short of cancellation, the complete absence of a future, the end of everything that he has built up and connected.

Journey’s End is really the crescendo of Davies’ run, and he succeeds by pitting the Doctor against the end of his entire universe – a gigantic threat that the Doctor has already faced and endured. The Doctor has survived cancellation. It goes without saying that he can handle the Daleks. While things look bleak here, there’s never any suggestion that the Daleks have a chance of succeeding in this outrageous plan of theirs.

Zap to it…

Unlike the Master, who took over the world and the show, or the Dalek Emperor who force the Ninth Doctor to admit defeat, Davros and the Daleks mount a credible attack, but they never come close to defeating the Doctor or any of his companions. They shoot Jack, the immortal companion – but he escapes unscathed. Jackie, Mickey and Sarah Jane are able to infiltrate the Crucible without any real trouble. When Davros manages to shoot and hit both the not! Ninth Doctor and Donna, he fails to kill either.

This is mirrored in the criticisms that Davros lays at the Doctor’s feet. Davros and the Tenth Doctor have the same sort of wordy exchange that the Dalek Emperor had with the Ninth Doctor through The Parting of the Ways . Both villains accuse the Doctor of being weak and flawed, and hypocritical. Both ask him to consider the consequences of his actions. Both lay very serious accusations at the feet of the Doctor.

The sky is burning…

However, The Parting of the Ways suggested that some of these criticisms were fair and reasonable. The Doctor’s decision to surrender ( “coward any day” ) is presented as ambiguous. It’s a valid and important principled stand from the character, one which makes sense in light of his character arc and one which the show has validated in the past. On the other hand, it allows the Daleks to conquer and murder completely unchecked, exacting a far greater cost.

In contrast, Davros’ criticisms in Journey’s End wring a bit false. The fourth season has explored the idea of the Doctor as a flawed hero, climaxing with the brutal deconstruction of Midnight . However, Davies followed Midnight with Turn Left , a story which suggested that the Doctor might not always save everybody, but his presence is definitely a good thing. Without the Doctor, the world falls apart. Only mostly winning might sting, but it’s still something far more satisfying than completely losing.

Warped priorities…

Davros launches some interesting philosophical attacks on the Tenth Doctor. “The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun,” he mocks, obviously not quite remembering Resurrection of the Daleks . But who can blame him? “But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people. And you fashion them into weapons.” This sounds like a legitimate point, but it’s coloured slightly. Martha is apparently working inside U.N.I.T. to make them less trigger-happy. Jack is in the process of de-fanging Torchwood, producing a kinder and gentler secret spy organisation. Sarah Jane Smith has started a family. They make the world better, just as the Doctor tries to do.

And, besides, it’s hard to begrudge any attempt to stop the destruction of reality itself. The Osterhagen Key might kill every living thing on Earth, but they will die anyway when the “reality bomb” activates. At least if Martha can destroy Earth, she breaks the Dalek engine. Similarly, the warp star would kill Sarah Jane, but it would allow her son to survive. These are not ideal outcomes – indeed, they mirror the efforts made by humanity in Turn Left to compensate for the lack of the Doctor – but they are better than the alternatives.

The fall of the Doctor…

However, while Davies does accept that the Doctor has a dark side, he makes it very clear that the Tenth Doctor is inherently heroic. When the not! Ninth Doctor comes running out of the TARDIS, it’s the Doctor who screams “no!” He seems quite aware that his counterpart is planning to commit genocide. After all, the  not! Ninth Doctor is literally using the “genetic code” of the entire species against itself. He is launching an attack on the Dalek race at their genetic level.

So Journey’s End projects all of the Doctor’s flaws and weaknesses and dark sides into the not! Ninth Doctor. He might be played by David Tennant, but it’s quite clear who this clone is meant to represent. The missing piece of the puzzle, the lost bit of Davies’ Doctor Who , the unnamed figure lurking just outside this merry little reunion party. Journey’s End sees Davies pulling back all sorts of elements from the show’s history, even stretching back to the first season. The Shadow Proclamation appears. The Slitheen are name-checked. The Emperor is referenced.

Davros isn’t one to point fingers. Mainly because he doesn’t have many…

And Christopher Eccleston remains absent, just as he shall remain absent from the fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Eccleston remains a controversial and divisive figure, falling out with the production and quitting the show after the first season. There’s an air of mystery and confusion around his time in the role. He only signed on for one season, but he admits that he was “open-minded” on the prospect of signing on again. Touring to promote The Writer’s Tale , Davies suggested that the only reason Eccleston signed for a single year was because nobody knew the show would be a success.

The reasons for Eccleston’s departure is unclear. Alan Davies has suggested that the hectic shooting schedule exhausted him. While Eccleston has shot down these rumours , it is worth noting that the production schedules for subsequent years was less hectic, with the introduction of  “Doctor-lite” episodes the following season and even the split seasons of the Moffat era. Eccleston himself has made vague references to conflict behind the scenes and has recently championed his collaborations on the show with Joe Ahearne . Make of that what you will.

Talk about a “meta-crisis!”

Eccleston will not be returning for the fiftieth anniversary , despite Matt Smith’s interest in recruiting him . Watching the interviews with Eccleston leading up to the anniversary, it’s hard not to get a sense that he really doesn’t want to be drawn on the matter ( “would I like to be involved?” he repeats to one interviewer , “ if I told you that I’d have to shoot you…” ) and it’s no surprise that recent interviews with the actor have clearly marked the anniversary as a topic that is not to be raised .

And yet, despite his brief tenure and the sense that he did not part on the best of terms with the producers, Eccleston remains a crucial part of Doctor Who . While he wasn’t in the role when the show really took off, his presence did grant the show a certain amount of credibility and prestige. He is – to a certain group of fans – “the” Doctor. That group might be smaller than the corresponding groups for David Tennant or Matt Smith, but it still exists.

Caan’s really come out of his shell!

Eccleston’s divorce from the show is keenly felt, leaving a very obvious absence in places where the revived series tries to celebrate its own legacy and history. It’s no coincidence that Steven Moffat’s fiftieth anniversary involved bringing two separate non-Eccleston Ninth Doctors to the show, recruiting the almost-Doctor Richard E. Grant as a recurring guest star and creating a new Ninth Doctor to be played by John Hurt.

So it’s no surprise that Eccleston is incorporated into Journey’s End , which really serves as a capstone to four years of the revived show. And, watching Journey’s End , it’s hard not to feel that that the show’s relationship with Eccleston is just as awkward as his relationship to it. The clone of the Doctor is very clearly intended to be a riff on Eccleston. He might be played by Tennant and wear the character’s trademark suit jacket, but he also rather pointedly wears one of Eccleston’s jumpers (because the leather jacket would be too obvious) and speaks with a more working class accent (which he apparently got from Donna). He charges at the Daleks holding a sci-fi space gun.

The Tenth Doctor even acknowledges the comparison. “You were born in battle, full of blood and anger and revenge,” he tells his counterpart on the beach. “Remind you of someone? That’s me, when we first met. And you made me better. Now you can do the same for him.” The fact that the Doctor uses the word “born” indicates that he is talking about Eccleston’s version of the character and not the Paul McGann version or any of the pre-cancellation Doctors. He is talking about the first Doctor of this revival, not the last Doctor of the classic show.

There are other points of comparison. This version of the Doctor gets to commit genocide in order to contain the Daleks. “Because with or without a Reality bomb,” he warns Donna, “this Dalek Empire’s big enough to slaughter the cosmos. They’ve got to be stopped.”   This is the crime that stained the soul of the Ninth Doctor. It was something he never recovered from. So having the character play out that role once again makes it clear that this clone is an analogue for the Ninth Doctor, who will likely never appear on the show again outside of flashbacks.

Reunited at last…

All this is fine, however, it feels like Davies is going out of his way to dismiss or belittle that version of the Doctor. He is stranded on a parallel world by the Doctor for the greater good. As he prepares to wipe out the Daleks, Donna pleads, “Just, just wait for the Doctor.” The  not! Ninth Doctor asserts, “I am the Doctor.” The obvious implication is that he is not actually the Doctor. He’s merely a convenient place-holder. As far as  Journey’s End is concerned, the Tenth Doctor represents a considerable improvement.

He’s portrayed as a character who is very clearly of secondary importance to Rose. Rose fixed him; Rose made him better. Which is undoubtedly true, but Journey’s End treats it as a one-way process, as if this version of the character is nothing but a war criminal waiting to happen, who needs to be locked away for the good of the universe. It feels like a conscious effort to marginalise Eccleston’s contribution to the show, to reduce him to merely “that character who existed before David Tennant became the Doctor.” It’s the a bum note in this other celebratory two-parter.

It’s not at all like Davros to overreact…

Like The End of Time, Part II , this episode builds a lot of weight around the concept that the Tenth Doctor is the Doctor. In  The Parting of the Ways , the last episode to feature the Ninth Doctor, regeneration was described as “a little trick, it’s sort of a way of cheating death.” It was not death, merely change. The show itself accepted it quicker than Rose did. In The Stolen Earth , faced with the prospect of regeneration, the show repeatedly and consciously equates that process with death, something that would continue into the specials.

“He’s dying and you know what happens next,” Jack tells Rose. Rose immediately goes into mourning, “Oh, no… I came all this way…” It doesn’t matter that – if the process completes – the Doctor will still exist and will still be able to help Rose save the world. The show seems to suggest that the passing of the Tenth Doctor is the equivalent of the death of the Doctor. David Tennant’s character is the Doctor, accept no substitutes! It’s not the first time that regeneration has been explored as death, but it’s very disconcerting when coupled with Journey’s End ‘s attitude towards Tennant’s direct predecessor.

Starter for Ten?

Of course, this sets up a nice character arc for the Tenth Doctor, as he desperately avoids changing, afraid of losing what he is right now. “Used the regeneration energy to heal myself, but soon as I was done, I didn’t need to change,” he explains. “I didn’t want to. Why would I? Look at me.” It’s quite clear that the Tenth Doctor is terrified of the change that comes with regeneration. The problem with this is that the show asks us to agree with him entirely – why would he want to change? I hope he never leaves! Even amid the celebratory atmosphere of Journey’s End , it does leave a strange taste in the audience’s mouth.

And then there’s Rose. I really like Rose at certain points. She was a character who was hugely instrumental in the success of the revived series. I think she was the perfect companion for Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor, just as Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble was perfectly suited to David Tennant’s Tenth. I even quite like her appearance in Turn Left , where she serves as the ultimate example of how the Doctor is “the man who makes people better.” Empowered by her time with him, Rose is able to ascend to something truly spectacular, saving all of time and space. That’s a wonderful rebuke to any of Davros’ criticisms.

Life’s a beach…

However, The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End undermine that portrayal by revealing that she might be saving space and time, but she’s also using her ability to track down her ex-boyfriend. Davies very clearly has a fondness for Rose, and well he should – Rose is the most important part of that crucial first season that belongs entirely to him. Davies reinvented the Doctor, but he’s still the same character from the classic show. While Rose owes a massive debt to Ace, she feels like she could have innocently wandered from one of Davies’ other scripts into the show. Davies is very happy with his work, and he should be.

However, Journey’s End has a lot of the same problems as Doomsday . It’s very hard to feel too sad for Rose when the universe concedes to give her absolutely everything she could have wanted while accepting that Billie Piper can’t be a regular on the show forever. She got a better and more satisfying life, a reunited family and deeper understanding of the universe. And yet she spends most of The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End demanding that the universe give her more. It seems like the Ninth Doctor’s critique of her in Father’s Day was correct. She is selfish and entitled.

Raining on his parade…

Consider her final scene of the episode. “No,” she protests, “but I spent all that time trying to find you. I’m not going back now.” Notice that she didn’t spend the time trying to save the universe, but hunting for the Doctor with the assumption that she could stay with him. When the Doctor asks her to care for the not! Ninth Doctor, which seems quite an imposition, Rose isn’t insulted at being treated like some storage cupboard on the TARDIS. Her response is, “But he’s not you.”

“He needs you,” the Doctor replies. “That’s very me.” Donna cuts in, “But it’s better than that, though. Don’t you see what he’s trying to give you? Tell her. Go on.” And this is the point where  Journey’s End becomes a lot more creepy. The Doctor’s end game here is more than just to keep the universe safe from his alternate self. “I look like him and I think like him,” the  not! Ninth Doctor explains. “Same memories, same thoughts, same everything. Except I’ve only got one heart.” He clarifies, “I’m part human. Specifically, the ageing part. I’ll grow old and never regenerate. I’ve only got one life, Rose Tyler. I could spend it with you, if you want.”

Martha’s really not key here…

It’s hard to read the scene. Did Davies intend it as a genuine and emotional farewell? Given how earnest the whole “does it need saying?” bit is, it feels like Davies is being entirely earnest here. At the same time, as the Doctor ships Rose back to Pete’s World with a brand spanking new clone to keep her company, it seems like he’s trying to deal with a stalker. He’s filing Rose and the not! Ninth Doctor away together somewhere where they won’t bother him, treating Rose in the way you’d imagine that a Time Lord treats a psychotic stalker ex-partner.

This obviously doesn’t fit with the version of the Doctor that was heart-broken in Doomsday and for most of the third season, but it feels like an uncomfortable piece of relationship subtext to that scene. “It’s not you, it’s my clone.” It’s obviously nowhere near as bad as the abusive relationship subtext that existed between the Sixth Doctor and Peri, but it feels like it does both characters involved a massive disservice.

Holding it together…

Still, at least there’s Donna. Watching Davies’ finalés, I’ve found that the effectiveness of his default convenient plot resolution is directly proportional to the emotional cost of that resolution to the characters. While he’ll vaguely foreshadow the resolution before he goes all-in on it, Davies does tend to pull the resolutions for his high-stakes episodes out of thin air. Here, for example, the Doctor and Donna defeat the Daleks by twisting some dials to some epic music.

The end of The Part of the Ways is just as contrived and convenient as the climax of The Last of the Time Lords , but the former works because the characters pay a massive personal price for the victory. The lead character departs the show, the Ninth Doctor passes into history. In contrast, The Last of the Time Lords sees the Doctor crying over the corpse of a genocidal mad man. Perhaps that’s why Doomsday ‘s resolution always grated, because the only price was the inevitable companion departure to a world perfectly tailored to her every need.

Once burnt…

This extends beyond Doctor Who . In Children of Earth , the ultimate resolution to the alien plot line is a bunch of techno-babble, but it’s techno-babble that comes at a huge dramatic cost to the main characters. Davies is a writer who is primarily driven by character, and so it makes sense that the real consequences to his epic finalés tend to be measured in terms of character. So while the resolution to Journey’s End is just as trite as that of The Last of the Time Lords , it’s easier to forgive because it comes at a massive cost.

That cost is Donna. I’ll admit to a slight bias here. Donna is probably my favourite companion in the history of the show, and a lot of that is down to the chemistry between David Tennant and Catherine Tate. The pair have wonderful comic timing, and their styles compliment each other. The Tenth Doctor is such a bombastic screen presence that he needs a companion who will hold ground against him. Davies and Tate craft a companion who doesn’t take any nonsense from the Doctor, and that’s refreshing. The only other Doctor-companion relationship that works like that is the dynamic between Tom Baker’s Doctor and Lalla Ward’s Romana.

All the best Daleks are mad…

So wiping Donna’s memory, and destroying her as a character, is the most beautifully cruel price that Davies could ever exact for the convenient plot resolution. He effectively wipes out all her growth and development through The Runaway Bride and the entire fourth season. He sets her back to how she might have been if she never met the Doctor in the first place. While Rose, Martha and Jack are all enriched by their experiences with the Doctor, Donna will retain none of that. Interestingly, Davies didn’t hit the big “reset” button on the events of this two-parter, he opted to hit “reset” on an entire character.

And it is heart-breaking. Davies makes the case that the Doctor is an empowering force, a man who helps people develop their potential and become all that they could ever be. That’s the real benefit of travelling in the TARDIS. So taking that from Donna is an absolutely devastating blow, and gives Journey’s Ends a much-needed dramatic core. To quote the Doctor from Silence in the Library , it gives the episode “size” – more than Dalek invasions or the destruction of reality itself. Davies’ stories always work better on a personal level, and Donna gives Journey’s End a decidedly personal level.

It’s great when old friends stop by…

It helps that Tate is phenomenal. Tate always had wonderful comedic timing, but she has also demonstrated considerable dramatic talents over the course of the fourth season. The quiet scene in the TARDIS after dropping Rose off is the most emotional sequence of the episode, as Donna starts to realise that she can’t keep the gift she’s been given. (Tennant is pretty great as well, playing quiet anguish superbly.) As it dawns on her, Donna begs, “No. Oh my god. I can’t go back. Don’t make me go back. Doctor, please, please don’t make me go back.” It’s a phenomenally powerful scene, and a brutal subversion of what Davies has always presented as the wonder of travelling with the Doctor.

Of course, it’s hard not to read Donna’s farewell as a piece of reflection on the part of Davies himself. Donna is returned as a clean slate, returning to the most normal of lives. And yet the universe that she helped save remains. Given that Davies would soon be surrendering the show to Steven Moffat, it seems like a very personal resolution to the plot. Davies won’t be writing Doctor Who any longer. He will be nothing more than a passive observer of the Doctor’s adventures. However, he also made some incredibly lasting contributions to the show and the franchise that will live on long after his departure.

Donna answered the call…

The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End are messy. They are loud, overblown and bombastic. The plotting is rather lax in some places, and the resolution to the Dalek threat is somewhat trite. However, they’re also a capstone to Davies’ years of writing Doctor Who . They’re a gigantic celebration of the franchise, of everything it is and everything it has been. It’s very hard to begrudge it that. Indeed, it’s hard not to get caught up in the geekish pleasure of this gigantic crossover, which even finds room for K-9.

At the same time, it’s a trick that only really works once. By the time that The End of Time comes around, there’s a sense that Davies has already had his big bombastic farewell tour of Doctor Who .

You might be interested in our other reviews from David Tennant’s third season of Doctor Who :

• Partners in Crime
• The Fires of Pompeii
• Planet of the Ood
• The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky
• The Doctor’s Daughter
• The Unicorn and the Wasp
• Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead
• The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts , bbc , Dalek , Davies , Davros , doctor , DoctorWho , fiction , Journey's End , Last of the Time Lords , Online Writing , paul mcgann , rose tyler , russell t. davies , science fiction , Stolen Earth , tardis , Tenth Doctor |

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Journey's End Original Airdate: 5 Jul, 2008

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The Crackdown on Student Protesters

Columbia university is at the center of a growing showdown over the war in gaza and the limits of free speech..

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Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech.

Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York politics and government for The Times, walks us through the intense week at the university. And Isabella Ramírez, the editor in chief of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, explains what it has all looked like to a student on campus.

On today’s episode

Nicholas Fandos , who covers New York politics and government for The New York Times

Isabella Ramírez , editor in chief of The Columbia Daily Spectator

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Inside the week that shook Columbia University .

The protests at the university continued after more than 100 arrests.

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