Inspirations: The End of Time (I & II)

The End of Time is the only two-part story since 2005 which does not have a separate title for each instalment.

It was designed to see out not just David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, but pretty much the whole production team behind him. The biggest change behind the scenes was the stepping down of Russell T Davies as show-runner after 5 years, 2 Doctors and 3 full-time companions.

As we've previously mentioned, the quantity and scheduling of the 2009 specials remained fluid for quite some time - the only "known" being that the last of them would inevitably be the regeneration story.

It was finally decided that the story would be shown over the festive period of 2009, and when it became clear that it would be a two-parter, the decision was made to show it on Christmas night and on New Year's night, of 2010. Steven Moffat would then launch his new series, with new Doctor Matt Smith, in the Spring of 2010. At one point it had been thought that The End of Time could be shown in two parts on the same night - in the same way the soaps had split double episodes on Christmas night.

Thoughts had been given to including the Master in one of the Specials, and RTD decided to make him the main villain for the final one. Tennant and John Simm had enjoyed working with each other, and the actor had expressed an interest in returning for a final time. Simm actually turned down a major stage role to reprise the Master.

In resolving his story arc - explaining away the drumming in his head which hadn't been a feature of any previous incarnation - it was also decided to bring back the Time Lords. They were the obvious culprits.

They had been categorically wiped out back in Series 1, off screen in the gap between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors in the Time War, but it was possible to depict them at a point just before the Doctor destroyed them. RTD reasoned that they would have gone to extreme measures to survive the War, and so would no longer be the aloof, peaceful observers of previous years. They had embarked on a war to the death for a start.

RTD could have had Borusa resurrected to lead them, but elected to go with Rassilon instead. Whilst only seen once as an elderly (dead?) man, dialogue in The Five Doctors had suggested that he may have been something of a tyrant, who was turned against by his own people for his cruelty.

The idea of using lesser species to fight for his entertainment certainly did not sit well with him being an enlightened ruler.

The role would be ideal for a big name guest artist - and what better than a James Bond.

As far as a companion was concerned, RTD wanted to resolve Donna's story, but she had been left in the condition that recalling her travels with the Doctor would kill her. She could be included, but be oblivious to events surrounding her. RTD had previously liked the idea of an older female companion, had he gone with the hotel storyline that might have starred Helen Mirren or Judy Dench. Why not an older male one? This story would allow him to give the hugely popular Bernard Cribbins a significant role as Donna's grandad Wilf Mott.

Cribbins had been disappointed not to have had a scene in the TARDIS in Series 4.

RTD had decided on the Tenth Doctor's final words as far back as September 2007, when planning for the story had begun. Later that year he met with Moffat to discuss the handover, promising to set up the Doctor at a point which suited his replacement to take over (in the TARDIS, and wearing a tie). They also discussed elements to be included in the Specials which ought to be avoided if Moffat intended to include them in Series 5.

The original idea for the story was much more low key - RTD thinking that the Doctor's demise should arise from a fairly mundane event. He would save the life of an alien who was travelling on a spaceship with his family - the Doctor sacrificing his own life and suffering radiation poisoning. 

There were shades of Terminus in that the spaceship's destruction might trigger the birth of the Solar System or even of Gallifrey.

Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter pushed for something more spectacular, and so it was decided to have a rematch with the Master.

The scene with someone picking up the Master's ring (containing his genetic material) from his funeral pyre in Last of the Time Lords had been included by RTD in case someone wanted to bring the character back - little realising at the time that it would be him.

RTD was inspired by the closing scene of Flash Gordon - the 1980 film version - which hinted at Ming the Merciless' survival.

The seemingly occult resurrection of the Master was inspired by that of Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

At a very early stage RTD decided on the Doctor's "farewell tour" of old companions. Moffat was going to start with a clean slate, and it might be the last time we saw some of them in the parent series, although The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood were still in production at this time.

Which characters appeared depended on actors' availability. Elton Pope from Love & Monsters was one possibility, and it was decided that Jessica Hynes appearance could be dispensed with if she wasn't free to feature as Joan Redfern's granddaughter. 

Only Rose and Donna were essential for the tour.

Donna would finally get married, and would receive a winning lottery ticket as a gift - setting her up for the future.

Initial thoughts would be that all the companions sensed the Doctor's demise - including Rose and her Doctor on Pete's World.

Having killed off half of the Torchwood team, RTD had toyed with the idea of adding Mickey to the team now that he had returned from Pete's World in Journey's End. He and Martha were to be married now, so both actors had to be free on the same day for the filming of their scenes with a cameo from a Sontaran.

Captain Jack's scene was set in the city of Zaggit Zoo, on the planet Zog. RTD had previously used the planet Zog as an example of the sort of alien world which casual viewers would fail to engage with - hence his setting of every story of Series 1, and most of 2, on or near Earth.

The bar could be filled with a variety of old monsters, and was inspired by the Star Wars cantina sequence.

Wilf taking to the spaceship cannons was another Star Wars inspiration.

Early thoughts saw the Doctor and Master teaming up, and the latter sacrificing himself to save the Doctor. The two Time Lords may have body-swapped at one point, though RTD realised he had done this on New Earth. 

The cliffhanger to Part 1 might have been the apparent destruction of Earth.

Once the story took shape, things could be threaded through the earlier episodes to prefigure events here. These began with the Ood warning that the Doctor's song would be ending soon in Planet of the Ood, and the appearance of Ood Sigma at the conclusion of The Waters of Mars. The End of Time would begin with the Doctor visiting the Ood-Sphere. Here he would mention marrying Queen Elizabeth - which went back to The Shakespeare Code.

"He will knock four times" was said by Carmen in Planet of the Dead. Fans would be led to think that this referred to the Master's drumming sound, but would eventually be seen to be Wilf - in a scene which began life with the aborted spaceship family scenario. Wilf wasn't always going to be the one trapped in the booth. It might have been an ordinary technician (named Keith) whom the Doctor sacrificed himself to save.

The alien Vinvocci were green-skinned cousins to the red-skinned Zocci, one of whom we met in Voyage of the Damned. Their spaceship was named the Hesperus - from the Tennyson poem The Wreck of the Hesperus.

RTD liked to simply reuse concepts for his subsidiary aliens - like putting animal heads on men in boiler suits.

Rassilon's plan was originally going to be swapping the Earth with Gallifrey, putting us into the Time War in its place.

The Woman in White was the Doctor's mother as far as RTD was concerned, though this would never be stated on screen - leaving fans to decide themselves who she might be (Susan or Romana perhaps).

Next time: new Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS, new titles, new producers, new show-runner, new era...

Inspirations: The Waters of Mars

As we mentioned last time, initially there were only going to be two further Specials to follow The Next Doctor - the last of which would be the swansong for David Tennant, Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner, who were all departing together to leave the field clear for a whole new production team led by Steven Moffat.

The placing of this and the middle Special in the TV schedules were very much up for grabs. The first might not have been shown until Christmas 2009, with the final one possibly being held back until Spring 2010 to help launch Moffat's Series 5.

It had initially been hoped that another Special might have been produced, but there were worries about the time and money for this, bearing in mind that Tennant was appearing with the RSC, with limited availability.

Once the fourth Special was confirmed, the transmission placing could be rejigged. 

For a time, The Waters of Mars was to be the 2009 Christmas Special. This can still be seen in the finished programme, with the wintery setting of the final scenes back on Earth.

RTD wanted to have as the one-off companion an older female actor, hoping to get theatrical Dames Helen Mirren or Judi Dench involved. (Mirren had been sought since 2005). This would provide a different relationship dynamic from the usual young woman. The character they played would be a grandmother, staying in an old but luxurious hotel with their family at Christmas. Annoyed with the noise, they had wished everyone to disappear - only for it to actually happen. The pre-credit sequence would culminate with them knocking on the door of the newly arrived TARDIS, with the big guest artist revealed as the Doctor opens the door to them. Venturing outside they discovered that the whole of London had been deserted. It would transpire that those responsible were centaur-like aliens who wanted to use the Earth to stage a one day carnival uninterrupted by the locals. Were they to be witnessed, the missing people would remain lost forever and the aliens would gain the planet. 

The ending would see a lone Ood appear, summoning the Doctor back to the Ood-Sphere and tying in with the Tenth Doctor's final story.

Of course, in the end, only this last element was retained, whilst Moffat and Toby Whithouse later utilised certain elements for The God Complex.

The next idea was tentatively titled "Christmas on Mars", and this was discussed with Phil Ford as its co-writer. Ford had contributed to The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood, as well as popular dramas such as Footballers' Wives and The Bill. After writing The Next Doctor, RTD needed to concentrate his attention on his final story for the series, and had already co-opted Gareth Roberts to help with Planet of the Dead.

Ford (and Julie Gardner) preferred the hotel plot, but RTD felt it would not make a good Christmas story. With the new Special now likely to be shown around Hallowe'en, it might suit that time slot instead.

Ford's first efforts were not what RTD wanted, being too much like "Sword & Sorcery" with alien princesses in its mix.

News from NASA that the Phoenix Mars Lander had discovered evidence of water on the seemingly dead planet finally put paid to the hotel plot, and the Martian base was settled on - as well as providing the inspiration for the story's threat.

The Mars setting caused RTD to mention the Ice Warriors even though they were not to feature, as he wanted the new story to fit with established stories about the reptilian Martians. This was their planet of origin, but they no longer lived here. A near future setting was agreed upon, as RTD wanted the technology to be recognisable to the audience.

The older female companion figure was to be the commander of the Mars base, and possibly Russian. This led to another draft title of "Red Christmas" - a play on the popular festive song / movie classic White Christmas.

Ford developed all the crew characters and came up with naming the base after pop icon David Bowie, after his song Life on Mars. However, he had made the base very high-tech, and the humans had already terraformed the Red Planet. RTD wanted it more primitive and therefore a more dangerous setting.

Ford also came up with the idea of the Doctor saving everyone at the end by summoning the TARDIS by remote control. This was something the show-runner had always frowned upon as it was an easy way out.

It was permitted here as RTD wanted to show that the Doctor was beginning to break his own rules.

This all tied in with the notion of the "Time Lord Victorious". The Doctor had basically begun to push things too far - and he was about to get his fingers burnt for doing so. This all tied in with the plans for the final Special. The idea of Fixed Points in Time had been established in stories like The Fires of Pompeii. Up until now the Doctor would never have dreamed of challenging these, but now he would. The base crew were destined to perish in one of these Fixed Point events, but he would arrogantly ignore this. The commander - initially called Valentina Kerenski - would have become a famous space pioneer, whose fate was fixed.

This would be reinforced by the sequence involving the Dalek, set during the events of The Stolen Earth. The Daleks were not going to be featuring in any of the 2009 Specials, so a cameo was one way of including them. RTD had checked with Moffat who had confirmed that he planned on using them in a significant way in his first series, so RTD agreed to give them a rest.

The inclusion of the robot Gadget allowed for the Doctor to remote control the TARDIS in a more interesting manner, and having a silly robot would go down well with the kids. It also allowed the Doctor to make a reference to K-9.

The design of Gadget was based on Wall-E, from the 2008 Pixar animated movie of the same name.

Initially, the alien threat was to be CGI water-based creatures, akin to those seen in the 1989 film The Abyss. The Mill were getting geared up for this when the decision was made to have them made-up actors.

Some of the money for this Special was coming from a deal between the BBC and the Woolworths chain, but the latter went into administration round this time - leading to economies having to be made. Out went the CGI aliens.

Crewman Andy, the first victim of the Flood, was played by Alan Ruscoe - an opportunity for the monster performer (since 2005) to be seen in the flesh.

Chook Sibtain (Tarak) had featured in The Warriors of Kudlak in SJA's first season.

The initial make-up was deemed too scary and had to be toned down.

One of the final decisions centred around the end of the episode. At first Adelaide, as the commander had been renamed, was to have been left upset at the Doctor's meddling with future history, but this was then strengthened to her committing suicide - just to ram home the consequences of the Doctor's arrogance in challenging Time. The BBC had strict guidelines around depicting suicide in family drama, so an obviously futuristic weapon was used, and the actual event took place off screen.

With a Hallowe'en broadcast finally agreed, all the Christmas trappings were removed - such as the opening where Yuri builds a Christmas tree outside the base. This became him setting up a humorous sign instead. 

Lindsay Duncan, who was cast as Adelaide, had a tentative connection with Doctor Who, having featured in the drama serial GBH, which had featured a sequence set in a hotel during a Doctor Who convention.

Next time: it's the End of Time itself... And of the Tenth Doctor. We also thought it was going to be the End of RTD, of David Tennant and of Julie Gardner with regards the programme. 

How wrong could we be...?

Inspirations: Planet of the Dead

In 2008, whilst still at the height of his popularity as the Doctor, David Tennant announced that he was leaving the programme. He chose the evening of an awards ceremony, and was filmed whilst at Stratford-Upon-Avon, during an interval in the RSC production of Hamlet in which he had taken the leading role. 

It had earlier been decided that 2009 was to be a "gap year" for Doctor Who, to allow Tennant to join the RSC. Instead of a full series, fans would be offered a limited number of one-off Specials through the year. These would now culminate in Tennant's swan-song. Not only was he leaving, Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner had also decided to move on. Producer Phil Collinson had already departed for Coronation Street.

RTD opted to co-write the Specials to help reduce his workload (Torchwood: Children of Earth having just been commissioned) and one of the writers chosen to help out was Gareth Roberts. He was one of the Virgin New Adventure authors, and for the second series in 2006 had been responsible for the on-line / mobile phone "Minisodes" which preceded each instalment.

These were discontinued when it was found that everyone was accessing them through their computer rather than on their mobiles, as had originally been intended.

For Series 3, Roberts was invited to contribute the celebrity historical The Shakespeare Code. The writer had studied and written seriously about Elizabethan literature. He had contributed a DWM Ninth Doctor comic strip based on the era, featuring the Bard's rival Robert Greene.

For Series 4 he was given another celebrity historical concerning another writer whom he admired - Agatha Christie. Roberts had also been a key contributor to The Sarah Jane Adventures - having created the Trickster and Graske characters.

Tennant's availability caused some problems with the Specials. At first there was only to be The Next Doctor, then a second Special at the end of 2009, with a third falling at Easter 2010 which would have been the regeneration story, leading directly into Steven Moffat's first series. It was thought that there would be no time for a fourth Special. Were one to be made, it was considered briefly to film it in two sections, 8 months apart. RTD was opposed to this as he worried about continuity over such a lengthy gap.

He then thought about moving the second Special forward to Hallowe'en 2009, with the third now landing at Christmas.

Once a fourth Special had finally been confirmed, it would have to be written and recorded quite quickly, in order that it could be broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2009. 

Davies originally envisioned a space opera, with the TARDIS materialising in space in the the middle of a battle. This was mainly so that the Mill could get on with making CGI segments before the story had actually been finalised, to save time.

Initial discussions with RTD were leading to the use of Roberts' NA creations called the Chelonians. They had first featured in The Highest Science, and returned in Zamper and The Well-Mannered War. Chelonians were turtle-like bipeds who revelled in warfare. However, they were honour-bound not to attack anyone unprovoked. They therefore went round trying to encourage peaceable races into buying weapons, to give them an excuse for waging war against them. Though ruthless warmongers, there was a comedic element to them.

RTD liked aliens which were based on an Earth animal / human form, so Turtle People would have appealed. The series had previously featured Rhino People, Cat People and Pig People.

In the end the story featured the Tritovores, which are fly-headed beings. 

Their look was inspired by The Fly - the 1958 sci-fi film, which had been remade in 1986.

Another early idea had been for a Star Trek crossover. This would have involved the most recent spin-off - ST:Enterprise - but that series was cancelled after only four years (ST:TNG, ST:DS9 and ST:Voyager had all run to seven seasons). 

Thoughts then went to a Star Trek spoof, with the TARDIS materialising aboard a Starship called Endeavour. 

The editor of DWM pointed out that this Special would be the 200th Doctor Who story, so the London bus which eventually featured became the No.200 service. Had they gone down the Star Trek spoof route, the ship would have been the Endeavour 200.

Once a desert setting had been agreed upon, RTD thought that it would be a great landscape against which to have a confrontation between the Doctor and the Master, who it was planned would return for the Tenth Doctor's departure.

Roberts had included the image of a London tube train in a desert in his first Chelonian novel. This inspired the inclusion of another iconic mode of London transport - the red double-decker bus.

Unfortunately Roberts went off and wrote a script which diverged wildly from the original space opera idea. The Doctor and his temporary companion - a space pilot - quickly went off to a luxury hotel, in which guests were being abducted and implanted with alien eggs (to tie in with the Easter theme). 

RTD did not like this new direction and so brought forward some ideas from a story he was developing with Phil Ford, another SJA contributor.

With the temporary companion no longer going to be a space pilot, another person was needed. This turned out to be a thief named Hermione. Roberts had been developing another person called Rebecca, who was a tour guide on an open-top London bus.

Hermione eventually became the aristocratic Lady Christina. She was partly based on DC's Black Canary, as well as being inspired by the stylish heist movies Topkapi (1964) and Charade (1963).

RTD blew hot and cold on this character, at one point preferring an ordinary housewife named Eileen who was on the bus. This would later become Angela.

Someone at BBC Wales did their sums and worked out that filming in North Africa or the Middle East was feasible. The alternative would have been to fake it in a sandpit or on a number of beaches in Wales or South West England, where the weather would have posed problems. As it was, the production was seriously affected by weather in Dubai, when it was hit by a day long sandstorm.

(The image of the Swarm approaching on the horizon had been inspired by a sandstorm sequence in the 1999 adventure movie The Mummy).

Two buses were bought - one for studio at home and one to be shipped to Dubai. This famously got smashed up at the docks, so RTD had to write in extra dialogue to cover this damage, and the surviving bus had to be adapted and used more.

The foreign location was controversial, due to the Arab state's human rights record - especially its stance on homosexuality.

Back in London, Roberts had included UNIT, including the character of Captain Magambo whom he had liked in Turn Left.

This also allowed for the creation of a new Scientific Adviser - a role that might attract a decent guest star. It also allowed for various fan-pleasing references to some of the Doctor's adventures from the classic era of the show. The Captain's straight-forwardness would contrast nicely with Malcolm's comic eccentricity.

The final elements added to the story were the ones relating to the overall story arc of the Tenth Doctor's demise. The character of Carmen was given some mild paranormal abilities, allowing her to foresee his imminent fate - mentioning that his song would soon be ending (as the Ood had previously claimed) and the cryptic message "He will knock four times...".

The Easter broadcast was acknowledged only briefly by having the Doctor sitting on the bus eating a chocolate Easter egg, a piece of which he offers to Lady Christina. He also mentions having been in Judea at the time of the Biblical events.

Next time: Water, water, everywhere...

Story 203(ii) - The End of Time Part 2

In which everyone on Earth is now the Master, whilst on Gallifrey Rassilon plots the return of the Time Lords. It is the final day of the Time War, and Rassilon attends a meeting of the High Council. He is determined that Gallifrey will not fall, even though the conflict is trapped in a temporal lock. It is reported that the Doctor has taken a powerful weapon called the Moment, and could use it at any time to bring the war to an end - through the destruction of both the Time Lords and the Daleks.
On Earth, at the Naismith mansion, the Doctor and Wilf have been captured by the Master. Wilf's phone rings, which surprises the Master as he did not make the call. It is Donna. She has run outside, and is starting to recall her time with the Doctor, which will prove fatal. The Master sends her neighbours to capture her, but the Doctor had built in a safety measure should she begin to remember. She collapses as a psychic blast knocks out her attackers. The Doctor and Wilf are rescued by the Vinvocci, Addams and Rossiter, and make for the basement. Here they use a teleport to travel up to the Vinvocci spaceship which is in hidden orbit above the planet. The teleport is disabled to prevent them being pursued - but it also means they cannot get back to Earth. The Master orders UNIT to try to trace the ship, but the Doctor sabotages it so that the Vinvocci cannot flee as they plan to do.

One of the High Council is a mystic known as The Visionary. She interprets Gallifrey's prophesies, and indicates that she may have the answer Rassilon seeks. She taps out a four-beat rhythm - the heartbeat of a Time Lord. It is known that there are two Time Lords outside the time lock - the Doctor and the Master. They will use one of them to forge a link between Gallifrey and the outside universe. Rassilon decides to transmit that beat to the Master - selecting the moment when, as a boy, he had looked into the Untempered Schism. This is the source of the drumming which has plagued the Master his entire life. To establish a connection, Rassilon then sends a diamond from the tip of his staff to Earth through a crack in the time-lock - a type of diamond only to be found on Gallifrey. On the spaceship, Wilf is once more visited by the mysterious woman in white. He later gives the Doctor his old National Service revolver, which he had brought to the Nasmaith mansion. He insists that the Doctor should not put the Master before the population of Earth, just because he is another Time Lord. The Doctor sees the diamond fall to Earth. It is found by the Master, who realises its implication. He must use it to create the link to Gallifrey. he broadcasts to the spaceship what he has found. The Doctor also realises the implication of this, and so reactivates the ship's engines.

The spaceship can now be tracked from Earth and so the Master prepares to launch a missile strike against it. The Doctor flies the ship into the atmosphere. Wilf and the Vinvocci man the ship's weapons to shoot down the missiles, whilst the Doctor pilots the ship back to the mansion. Taking Wilf's revolver with him, he leaps from the vessel and crashes through the mansion's glass ceiling. Gallifrey begins to materialise next to the Earth, threatening to tear the planet apart. In the mansion, Rassilon and some of his council appear. Wilf forces the Vinvocci to land and rushes into the building. Rassilon has with him two Council members who opposed his plan - and one of them is the woman whom Wilf has been seeing. The Doctor recognises her. The Master plans to use the Immortality Gate to turn every Time Lord into himself as well, whilst Rassilon's great plan is for the Time Lords to become beings of pure energy, relinquishing their physical form. This will lead to the destruction of Time itself - as the Ood had foreseen in their nightmares. The Doctor can stop Gallifrey emerging fully if he breaks the link to Earth - by killing the Master. He knows that the Time Lords were corrupted by the Time War and are just as much a threat to the universe now as the Daleks have been. he s torn between shooting the Master - or shooting Rassilon. he decides instead to shoot the device which houses the diamond. The Master then attacks Rassilon and is dragged away with them as the Time Lords vanish - sent back into the last day of the Time War.

Everyone on Earth is returned to normal, and Donna is found by her mother and fiance. Wilf has become trapped in the control booth of the Immortality Gate. There are two booths and one must be manned at all times, but the device is about to overload and flood the chambers with lethal radiation. He knocks four times on the glass door to attract the Doctor's attention... The Doctor has survived the fall from the spaceship, and the battle between Master and Rassilon, but realises that this is to be his fate - to sacrifice his life to save Wilf. he releases Wilf and enters the booth himself, and his body is heavily irradiated. The Doctor emerges, his wounds now healed. The regeneration has started. he decides to make the most of the time remaining to him by visiting some of his old friends. he saves Martha Jones and Mickey Smith - now married and acting as freelance alien hunters - from a Sontaran soldier. He visits a space saloon where he finds a morose Captain Jack - and links him up with Midshipman Frame, late of the spaceship Titanic. He saves Luke Smith from being run over, and sees Sarah Jane Smith from a distance. She realises that this is the last time she will see him - at least in this incarnation. He attends a book signing, as the granddaughter of Joan Redfern has published a copy of his Journal of Impossible Things which he left with her in 1913. He then goes to see Donna Noble happily married to Lance. He meets Sylvia and Wilf and gives them a gift for Donna - a lottery ticket bought with money he had borrowed from Donna's late father.
His last visit is to the Powell Estate on New Year's Eve, 2004, where he sees Rose and Jackie Tyler. He keeps himself to the shadows as he tells her he knows she will have an amazing 2005. His health rapidly fading, he staggers back to the TARDIS. Ood Sigma appears to him, indicating that it is now time for his song to end. He doesn't want to go, but the Doctor regenerates explosively, wrecking the TARDIS. A new, younger Doctor suddenly finds that his ship is about to crash...

The End of Time Part 2 was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on January 1st, 2010. It was the last of the 2009 Special episodes, although - as you can see from that broadcast date - changes in scheduling of these meant that it wasn't shown until the start of the following year.
It marks the end of David Tennant's tenure as the Doctor, as well as Russell T Davies' time as showrunner, and Julie Gardner's as fellow exec-producer. Matt Smith is introduced in the closing moments as the Eleventh Doctor, in a sequence overseen by new showrunner Steven Moffat.
As the end of an era, it marks a few more departures - at least for now. Moffat will introduce a new TARDIS - both inside and out, although the 2005 TARDIS console room will return for cameos in Series 6 and in The Day of the Doctor (when the old police box shell will also be seen).
This is the last time (at least to date) we see a number of companion characters who featured throughout Davies' tenure. These include Donna, Martha and Rose, as well as Sylvia, Wilf, Jackie, Mickey and Captain Jack. Sarah and Luke will continue with their own adventures, and even meet the new Doctor, but sadly this was to be Lis Sladens' final appearance in Doctor Who.
A couple of other characters cameo - including Russell Tovey's Midshipman Frame and Jessica Hynes as a descendant of Joan Redfern - named Verity Newman (in recognition of two of the programmes' principal founders).

At the time it was also to be the final appearance by John Simm as the Master. He publicly stated that David Tennant was his Doctor, and he didn't envisage ever returning to the role. The Master is last seen battling Rassilon as they are dragged back into the Time War.
There are also a few alien cameos, especially in the space bar sequence where Jack meets Frame. We see a Judoon, a pair of Hath, Graske, Sycorax, Slitheen and a drunken Adipose, whilst Martha and Mickey are fighting against a Sontaran, Jask, once again played by Dan Starkey. Jack's appearance ties in with the conclusion to Torchwood: Children of Earth, where he had left the planet full of remorse for sacrificing his grandson.
The identity of the woman in white (Clare Bloom) is never made explicit, and fans speculated that she could be Susan, Romana or the Doctor's mother. Davies later stated that she was supposed to be the latter.
Only one new significant character is added in the second half of the story - The Visionary. She is an old woman covered in henna-like tattoos, and was played by Brid Brennan.

Overall, it is a satisfying conclusion to an incredibly popular phase of the programme. David Tennant is given a lot to do - and does it all excellently. Bernard Cribbins gives a superb performance, and Simm tones things down a bit for the second half of the story, and is the better for it. Some fans dislike the story for its extended conclusion, as the Doctor makes his farewell visits to old friends. I personally don't have a problem with this. Like Jon Pertwee chasing Lupton in a variety of modes of transport, in Part Two of Planet of the Spiders, it is indulgent, but Tennant (and Davies) deserved to be indulged. It was nice to be able to say farewell to these popular characters, who are sorely missed in the following seasons.
Things you might like to know:

• Davies long considered having the Time Lords ally themselves with the Daleks to end the Time War. He contacted Steven Moffat to see what he might be planning for the Daleks in his first season. Moffat was going to attempt a sort of relaunch for them, with a radical redesign, so Davies elected to omit them.
• Timothy Dalton was unsure how to pitch his performance as Rassilon, until he was reminded that he was a warrior. He had watched a few episodes of the revived series on BBC America, so was familiar with the latest incarnation of the show.
• Have a hunt through You Tube and you'll find David Tennant's farewell video, where he performs The Proclaimers' I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) with various cast members. Many of the crew also feature. Elsewhere you'll find the viseo dedicated to Davies and Gardner - with Tennant, Barrowman and Tate performing a variation of Victoria Wood's Ballad of Barry and Freda.
• The US President is said to be Barrack Obama. The Sound of Drums had featured a fictional POTUS, whilst UK Prime Ministers have also been made up - though Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair have both been PM in the Doctor Who universe as they have been mentioned in earlier stories.
• The Vinvocci spaceship is called The Hesperus, although this is only mentioned in the DW: Confidential documentary. The Hesperus was a real clipper ship, the subject of an 1842 poem - The Wreck of the Hesperus - by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• For a long time Davies planned to have the Doctor die in a much more low key fashion - saving a family he'd only just met, who were trapped on a damaged spaceship.
• Davies was insistent that all of the farewell scenes should be included - apart from Jessica Hynes'. She was about to travel overseas for work and it was not known if they were going to be able to get her. Her scenes were the first to be filmed, so they could catch her before she left the country.
• The Doctor saving Luke Smith from being hit by a car was Davies' deliberate reaction to noticing that characters in the first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures were always running across roads without looking where they were going.
• The space bar was claimed by Davies to be set on the planet Zog. This planet's name was used frequently by Davies to explain why he kept the series Earthbound in its earliest phase - believing the audience would not relate to "people from the planet Zog", as a catch-all term for non-human characters.

Story 203(i) - The End of Time Part 1

In which Wilf Mott is doing some late Christmas shopping and decides to drop into a church. Lately he has been having nightmares about a strange, maniacal figure. In the church he encounters a woman dressed in white who tells him of a legend concerning the founding of the place, and he realises that it refers to the Doctor as he spots what looks like the TARDIS represented in a stained glass window. The woman vanishes before he can find out who she is. The Doctor, meanwhile, has finally arrived on the Ood Sphere, following the psychic image of Ood Sigma which he had seen just after his doomed attempt to save Adelaide Brooke. Sigma is there to welcome him and takes him to meet their elders. They tell him of visions they have been having, and of the End of Time. They allow him to share these visions, and he witnesses glimpses of Wilf, an unknown man and woman, and the Master. The whole universe has been having nightmares about the Master. He realises that the Master has found some way to return from the dead, and rushes to the TARDIS. It materialises outside the ruins of the prison where Lucy Saxon had been incarcerated. He has delayed too long in going to the Ood Sphere and now it is too late. The Master had prepared for his return through a secret cult who followed his Harold Saxon guise. They possessed his ring, stolen from his funeral pyre, and from Lucy they obtained some genetic material from which to reconstitute him. However, Lucy has also prepared for his return, and she sacrifices herself to sabotage the resurrection.

The Master still looks like Harold Saxon, and he is forced to hide amongst London's homeless -though even here he is recognised. His metabolism is breaking down - causing him to have a voracious appetite. At times he turns into a skeletal figure, and he is able to emit powerful energy bolts and to fly through the air. Wilf gets his friends together to hunt for the Doctor, and they are able to trace him after the TARDIS was spotted at the prison. They go to a cafe where Wilf intends for the Doctor to see Donna again, from afar. He would like to see her back the way she was when she travelled in the TARDIS, but the Doctor reminds him that to remember could kill her. Donna is about to be married, but she and her fiance have little money and there is a global recession. The Doctor finally manages to track down the Master to a nearby piece of waste ground. The Doctor wants to help him but is shocked to discover that his old enemy really can hear the sound of drums in his head. It is not just his crazed imagination. The Master is suddenly captured by black-clad troops and taken away in a helicopter. The following morning, Christmas Day, the Doctor goes to see Wilf, who has just seen the woman in white on his TV screen, warning that the Doctor is in danger, but he must not tell him about her. Earlier, Donna had given Wilf a book by a businessman named Joshua Naismith, but couldn't say why she had bought it for him. When Wilf shows the book to the Doctor he sees that Naismith is the man he had seen in the Ood visions.

Naismith is a millionaire who has managed to salvage a piece of alien technology from Torchwood. It was he who has abducted the Master. It has been shown that the alien machine can repair injuries, and Naismith intends for the Master to refine the device so that it will make his daughter immortal. Two of his technical staff are really green-skinned alien Vinvocci in human disguise, named Addams and Rossiter. They are salvagers and have come to retrieve the machine. The Master is left to work on the device and realises its true potential. The Doctor and Wilf travel to Naismith's mansion by TARDIS and meet the Vinvocci, who reveal that the machine - the Immortality Gate - can heal entire planets. The Doctor and Wilf arrive in the main hall too late to stop the Master breaking free and leaping into the Gate, which is fully activated. It will translate the Master's body print across the whole of the Earth - turning everyone into himself. He is now the President of the USA, the whole Chinese People's Liberation Army, Naismith and his daughter, and even Donna's mother Sylvia and her fiance Lance. The Master is everyone, and everyone is the Master. Everyone, that is, except Donna Noble - but she is beginning to remember the Doctor...
Events on Earth are being observed from afar. On Gallifrey, on the last day of the Time War, Rassilon has a plan for saving the Time Lords...

The End of Time Part 1 was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on 25th December 2009. It is the first half of David Tennant's epic final outing as the Doctor, and sees the return of the Master, as portrayed by John Simm, as well as reintroducing the Time Lords.
They are led once again by their great hero Rassilon, played by former Bond Timothy Dalton. He narrates the episode and is initially only seen in tight close-up - his Time Lord robes only being seen in a reveal at the story's cliffhanger.
In keeping with the rest of the 2009 special episodes, the Doctor is partnered with a stand alone companion - in this case the previously established Wilf Mott, played by Bernard Cribbins. Donna and her mum Sylvia also return. In the cafe scene, the Doctor comments on the coincidences which surround Wilf and his family. Long before meeting Donna he had encountered Wilf when he was selling newspapers on Christmas Eve just before the Titanic spaceship almost crashed onto the planet. Many enemies had failed to trace the Doctor and yet Donna had found him again, and Wilf and his pensioner friends - known as the "Silver Cloak" manage to trace him fairly easily.
Among the "Silver Cloak" we have the late great June Whitfield, as Minnie Caldwell, and Barry Howard as Oliver - best known for his role in the BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi!.

The Vinvocci are said to be related to the Zocci (Bannakaffalatta's people). They are green instead of red but have the same spiky features. Rossiter is played by Lawry Lewin, whilst Addams is Sinead Keenan, who had played werewolf George's girlfriend in Being Human.
Other returnees include Alexandra Moen as Lucy Saxon, and Paul Kasey as Ood Sigma. The Chief Ood Elder is voiced by Brian Cox, cinema's original Hannibal Lecter, and who has since featured in  many Holywood blockbusters such as the second X-Men movie, a couple of the Jason Bourne films and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Other cast members of note include Clare Bloom, who plays the mysterious Woman in White who appears to Wilf, and David Harewood, as Joshua Naismith, who is currently a regular in the Supergirl series.

Things you might like to know:

• The Vinvocci originally had flesh-coloured faces, with only their skulls being green. After filming had already taken place Davies decided that he would prefer them to be totally green, so their faces were coloured digitally.
• An advert for Naismith's mobile phone network had featured on the side of the 200 bus in Planet of the Dead.
• The Immortality Gate had been mentioned by the Trickster in the Sarah Jane Adventures crossover story The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith.
• The Master bangs on an oil drum in a pattern of four beats to attract the Doctor - seeming to presage the "he will knock four times" prophesy.
• As her memories of the Doctor return, Donna sees glimpses of Davros, the Racnoss Queen, Sontarans, the Vespiform, Vashta Nerada and Pyroviles.
• John Sim had to spend hours putting on various costumes to be composited into scenes where everyone becomes the Master. For some sequences, however, extras were filmed at distance wearing a mask of his face.
• The two parts of this story were at one point going to have their own titles. This first half was to have been called "The Final Days of Planet Earth".
• This is only the second story to feature the actor playing the villain to get his name in the opening credits. The last time it was also the Master - as played by Eric Roberts in the 1996 TV Movie.
• The Master commands Lucy "You will obey me!" at one point during his resurrection - a nod to Roger Delgado's original portrayal of the character.
• When Wilf suggests to the Doctor that he simply use the TARDIS to go back a day to locate the Master, the Doctor confirms the long-held fan notion that Time Lords must always meet in chronological order to each other. Steven Moffat and the DWM comic strip will later disregard this.
• At one point Davies toyed with the idea of it being Omega rather than Rassilon who had been resurrected to lead the Time Lords.

We'll take a look at the story overall, with a few more things you might like to know, once we have covered The End of Time Part 2 next time...

Story 202 - The Waters of Mars

In which the Doctor takes a trip to the planet Mars. Exploring, he comes across an expedition from Earth. He finds himself captured by a small robot, and is forced to enter the base. Inside he meets the commander, Adelaide Brooke, and her colleagues. Second in command is Ed Gold, and the Doctor is also introduced to Yuri Kerenski, Mia Bennett, Steffi Ehrlich, Tarak Ital and Roman Groom. Two other crew members - Andy Stone and Maggie Caine - are in the hydroponics section, where Andy has just grown a crop of carrots - the first ever grown on Mars. The Doctor is initially held under suspicion as a member of a rival expedition, for this is supposed to be the first manned base on the planet - named Bowie Base One. The Doctor is shocked to hear this, as he knows something of the base's future. It was destroyed in an unexplained explosion on 21st November, 2059. The Doctor is horrified to discover that today is that day. He realises that he must leave, as this is a fixed point in time which cannot be altered. The death of Adelaide Brooke will inspire her granddaughter to become an astronaut, who will help usher in a new era of space exploration which will take the human race out into the cosmos. When the crew attempt to contact Andy and Maggie to come and meet the new arrival they hear an inhuman voice over the intercom.

The Doctor and Adelaide go with Tarak to the hydroponics dome where they find Maggie unconscious. They summon the robot, which Roman has nicknamed Gadget. They then see Andy attacking Tarak. His body is producing huge quantities of water which he is pouring onto Tarak. His eyes are white, and the skin around his mouth is cracked and blackened. Tarak becomes like him. The Doctor and Adelaide are forced to flee, with Andy and Tarak in pursuit. Maggie appears to be unharmed but is placed in an isolation booth in the sickbay. Yuri is the base medic and as he watches a video of his brother back on Earth, Maggie becomes fascinated with the images of the planet - especially its oceans. Yuri suddenly finds that Maggie has also been infected like Andy and Tarak. The Doctor tries to communicate with her and discovers that she is speaking an ancient Martian language. He and Adelaide investigate the cause of the infection. The base draws its water from an ice floe beneath the base. A filter in the hydroponics dome had failed, and the carrot crop has become infected. The Doctor recalls a parasite which the Ice Warriors had fought against, and he realises that it must have lain dormant in the ice. It was known as the Flood. He now knows why the base was destroyed, but still feels compelled to leave. He cannot prevent what is going to happen. Andy and Tarak continue to generate infected water, and are using it to break through the base's structure. Maggie has also managed to break out of the isolation area. A single drop of the infected water will mutate anyone it touches.

Adelaide has worked out that the Doctor knows something about what is happening, and forces him to tell her. He informs her of the base's destruction, but also about how it will inspire her granddaughter and what that will mean for the future of the human race. As the crew members begin to be taken over by the Flood, the Doctor dons his spacesuit and leaves the base. Ed is getting the rocket ready to take the survivors back to Earth when Maggie appears and infects him. He elects to self-destruct the vessel with himself on board, knowing that the Flood will infect everyone on Earth if it gets off Mars. The Doctor decides to go back to the base and save who he can. He is Time Lord - the last of the Time Lords - and is no longer bound by the laws of time. Adelaide is shocked by his actions, after everything he had told her about the future. She decides to activate the self-destruct - a nuclear explosive under the base. The Doctor uses Gadget to go and fetch the TARDIS, bringing it into the base just before it explodes, destroying the Flood. He manages to save Adelaide, Yuri and Mia. The TARDIS materialises outside Adelaide's home. Future history as been changed, and the Doctor exults in his new powers. Adelaide is appalled by his arrogant disregard for the future. She goes into her house and kills herself. History is put back on track, only now it is her grandmother's suicide which prompts Susie Fontana Brooke to follow in Adelaide's footsteps. The Doctor is left guilt-ridden at his hubris. He suddenly sees an image of Ood Sigma. Having gone too far, the Doctor thinks that perhaps it might be time for him to die. However, he returns to the TARDIS, determined to prolong the inevitable for as long as he can...

The Waters of Mars was written by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford, and was first broadcast on 15th November, 2009. It was the third of the one hour special episodes which followed Series 4, leading up to David Tennant's departure. The story had an on screen dedication to Barry Letts, producer of Doctor Who from 1970 - 1974, and exec-producer on Season 18. He had passed away on 9th October, 2009.
Originally, it was planned that this story would be broadcast at Christmas, with Tennant's swansong the following week at New Year. This is why the street where the TARDIS lands is covered in snow, and we would have seen the Bowie Base crew preparing for their first Christmas dinner on Mars. A working title had been "Red Christmas". As The End of Time expanded, it was decided to move this story to an earlier broadcast date. It was to have been shown on Saturday 21st November - the date which features in the story 50 years hence - but scheduling by the BBC moved it to the Sunday before this.
Phi Ford, who had become the lead writer on The Sarah Jane Adventures, had come up with a quite different story, called "A Midwinter's Tale", which would have featured an alien princess arrive on Earth, pursued by her enemies in what would have been more of a festive romp.

As with all of the 2009 Specials, the Doctor is partnered with a one-off "companion" - in this case Captain Adelaide Brooke, played by Lindsay Duncan. Davies had hoped to secure the services of Helen Mirren for the role, and the character was originally going to be Russian.
Ed Gold is played by former Neighbours star Peter O'Brien. He had featured in the second season of Davies' Queer As Folk, playing Doctor Who fan Vince's would be boyfriend - who gets dumped when he can't name all the actors who played the Doctor. Yuri is Bosnian actor Aleksandar Mikic. Mia is Gemma Chan. Playing Andy Stone we have the first appearance of Alan Ruscoe without being hidden under layers of latex. In Series 1 in 2005 he had been an Auton, a Slitheen, one of the Forest of Cheem, Trin-E and the Anne-Droid. Chook Ibtain (Tarak) had featured in Warriors of Kudlak - one of The Sarah Jane Adventures - as the villainous Mr Grantham. Maggie Caine is Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Roman Groom is Michael Goldsmith, and Steffi Erhlich is Cosima Shaw. Ironically, Shaw would go on to appear in the National Geographic TV series Mars.
Paul Kasey also makes an appearance - as Ood Sigma.
The Waters of Mars also features a cameo from a Dalek - their only appearance in David Tennant's final year. We see a flashback to an incident from Adelaide's youth, set during the events of The Stolen Earth, when she saw a Dalek flying in the sky outside her bedroom window which spared her life.

Overall, a fast paced adventure with some pretty scary monsters, of the old base-under-siege school.
Things you might like to know:

• This was director Graeme Harper' final Doctor Who story. He had directed fifteen stories in total, starting with 1984's Caves of Androzani, plus some SJA's.
• In deleted dialogue, the Doctor claimed that the Ice Warriors had failed to defeat the Flood, which is why they had abandoned Mars.
• The base is named after David Bowie, who had recorded the song Life on Mars for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. There is another Bowie reference hidden in the dialogue when Adelaide tells her crew that they won't see another human being for five years - Five Years being another Bowie title.
• The Doctor's spacesuit is the one he picked up on Sanctuary Base 6 on Krop Tor, in The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit.
• There is a mistake in one of the web news pages which we see about the destruction of the base. It claims that Adelaide had 7 people in her crew, when there were in fact 8.
• As the Doctor struggles with his decision whether or not to leave the base crew to their fate, we hear snippets of dialogue from earlier stories. These include Rise of the Cybermen, Doomsday, Gridlock, Utopia and The Doctor's Daughter.
• Carmen's prophesy from Planet of the Dead - presaging his demise - appears to be coming to fruition when the Doctor hears Andy knock three times on the door. The Doctor sends an electric shock through the door to prevent him knocking for the fourth time.
• Davies was inspired to create the robot Gadget after watching the Pixar movie Wall-E.

Story 201 - Planet of the Dead

In which a young cat burglar - Lady Christina de Souza - steals the priceless Cup of Athelstan from the International Gallery in London after it has closed for the night. Discovering that her getaway driver has been arrested, she runs out onto the street and jumps aboard a No.200 bus, which is headed south of the river. She finds herself sitting next to the Doctor, who is using a device to track rhondium particles. As the vehicle passes through a tunnel under the Thames, pursued by police cars, the machine goes haywire. The police at the other end of the tunnel report that the bus has not passed through. It has vanished. On the bus, the Doctor and his fellow passengers are thrown around. When the turbulence passes, they discover that they are now stranded in the middle of a vast desert, in broad daylight. They have passed through a wormhole, which has wrecked the upper deck. Present are the driver, a woman named Angela, an older couple - Lou and Carmen - and a pair of young men, named Barclay and Nathan, as well as Christina. The Doctor has to inform them that they are now on an alien planet. The driver attempts to walk back through the wormhole - and the police back at the tunnel see his burned-up body emerge. The Doctor explains that it was the metal frame of the bus which protected them, and only it will get them all back home again. Back in London, UNIT take charge of operations. In command is Captain Erisa Magambo (whom Rose Tyler and Donna Noble had once met in an alternative timeline), and she is accompanied by the organisation's latest Scientific Adviser, Malcolm Taylor, who is a huge fan of the Doctor's. They are able to establish telephone contact with the bus thanks to the Doctor boosting a mobile phone. Malcolm tells the Doctor that the wormhole is getting bigger.

The self-assured Christina takes charge. Barclay and Nathan are tasked with digging out the bus' wheels, whilst the Doctor and Christina elect to go and explore. Carmen has mild ESP powers - she wins £10 on the lottery every single week. She senses death approaching them. The Doctor and Christina come across the wreck of a gigantic spaceship, and are then captured by a Tritovore - a bipedal insectoid creature with the head of a fly. It takes them into the ship where they meet another of its kind. The creatures accuse them of causing their ship to crash. They discover that this is the planet of San Helios, and up until one year ago it was covered in vegetation and great cities. The Tritovores had come to trade here. The Doctor wonders what could have wiped out all life here so quickly - reducing everything to sand. They discover that the spaceship flew into a swarm of massive flying manta-ray creatures, which are omnivorous. It was the swarm which destroyed all life here. The creatures have metal shells and, when they fly rapidly en masse around the planet, they generate the wormholes - which take them to new worlds to consume. Earth will be the next target. The Doctor realises that he can adapt the spaceship's power source to get the bus moving. Christina elects to use her burglary apparatus to descend into a deep pit to retrieve it. She wakes a dormant manta-ray and it attacks her. The Doctor pulls her to safety, but the creature kills the two Tritovores.

The Doctor and Christina race back to the bus, where Angela breaks the bad news that they have run out of petrol. The Doctor has brought four magnetic clamps from the Tritovore ship, and he these placed on each of the wheels. He needs a special metal to make the new engine work and so compels Christina to hand over the goblet which she had stolen from the museum, as gold will do the trick. As the alien swarm bears down on them, the bus floats up into the air and heads for the wormhole. On Earth, Captain Magambo orders Malcolm to close the portal, to stop the swarm coming through. The scientist refuses to obey her. The bus passes back through the wormhole and reappears in the road tunnel. It soars into the night sky over London. A small number of rays manage to come through after it, but these are soon dealt with, and Malcolm closes the wormhole. Captain Magambo has brought the TARDIS from the grounds of Buckingham Palace, where the Doctor had earlier parked it, and he states that he will divert the swarm to a safer location. Carmen tells the Doctor that she foresees his end. She tells him "Your song is ending, and it is returning. He will knock four times...". Christina wants to travel with the Doctor, but he rejects her. She is placed under arrest, but the Doctor then uses his sonic screwdriver to free her handcuffs and she jumps into the bus - flying off on new adventures of her own.

Planet of the Dead was written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts, and was first broadcast on 11th April 2009. It was the second of the special episodes which would lead up to the departure of David Tennant as the Doctor at the end of the year. The end of the Tenth Doctor is foreshadowed by Carmen's ominous prediction in the last few minutes. The broadcast date was Easter Saturday - an occasion marked in the script by having the Doctor eating an Easter egg on the bus when Christina first gets on.
This was the first episode of Doctor Who to be filmed in High Definition, which had previously been used for Torchwood's first two seasons. As such, this was the first story to get a Blu-Ray release.
The 2009 Specials employ guest artists as one-off companions. In this case, it is Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza. She had come to prominence in Eastenders and briefly played the Bionic Woman in a short-lived remake, as well as appearing as a recurring villain in the Merlin BBC TV series. Lady Christina's backstory is that her rich father lost his fortune in the collapse of the Icelandic banking system, which was topical at the time. She steals for fun as much as for profit, and it is this aspect of her character which leads the Doctor to turn down her request to join him in the TARDIS.
The bus is given the route number 200 - an acknowledgement that this was regarded as the 200th Doctor Who story since 1963. As you will have noticed from this post's title, not everyone agrees with this numbering. (See my piece on Utopia to find out why).

Co-writer Gareth Roberts had originally hoped to use his creations the Chelonians in this story. They had been devised for one of his New Adventures novels - The Highest Science. They are later name-checked as one of the alien races converging on Stonehenge in The Pandorica Opens. Roberts' novel also features a group of humans transported to an alien planet in a bus which has been brought through a spatial anomaly. The Chelonians are a warlike race of turtle-like creatures, small and squat, with big shells on their backs. It was realised after the decision was made to film this story in a real desert location that such a costume would prove too hot and bulky for the actors to perform in. The Tritovores were devised instead - Russell T Davies having a liking for creatures which were basically humanoid in form but with a recognisably Earthly animal's head. The large masks meant that they were quite cool to wear.
The story of the bus being transported to Dubai and having an unfortunate accident soon after arrival is well known, but for completeness sake I will summarise. Realising that a sandpit or beach in South Wales just wouldn't work for the story, the decision was made to film oversees - and Dubai was selected. A red London double-decker had to be bought and sent over there. It couldn't be driven, as it would have had to pass over some politically unstable borders, and was too big to be flown out. It therefore had to go by sea. It made it all the way to Dubai safely, only for a crane operator to drop a container on it at the docks. There was an initial panic, until pictures came through of the damage. RTD realised that it wasn't as bad as feared and he amended the script to take the damage into account.
They only had a few days to film, and the first of these was totally ruined by a prolonged sandstorm.

The actors who got to go abroad for filming included Tennant and Ryan, as well as the bus driver and some of the passengers. The hapless driver is played by Keith Parry. Angela is Victoria Alcock. Nathan is David Ames, who went on to become a regular on Casualty. Barclay is played by Daniel Kaluuya, one of many of the cast of the Channel 4 series Skins who have gone on to greater things. He starred in the 2017 cult hit Get Out, and appeared in Marvel Studios' massively successful Black Panther.
Lou and Carmen don't ever leave the bus, so it was a trip to Wales rather than Dubai for Reginald Tsiboe and Eastenders' Ellen Thomas.
Also stuck back in Blighty were guest artist Lee Evans, who played Malcolm, and Noma Dumezweni, reprising the role of Captain Magambo after first appearing in Turn Left in Series 4.
The policeman who is relentlessly pursuing Christina, DI McMillan, is played by Adam James, who was an old friend of David Tennant's.
The two Tritovores - Sorvin and Praygat - are played by regular monster performers Paul Kasey and Ruari Mears. Only Kasey was required on location in Dubai.

Overall, it is an middling story. The ingredients should have given us something a little more epic. Evans' slapstick is a little irritating, and Christina comes across as not terribly sympathetic as a character. Between the DWM Mighty 200 poll in 2009, and the 50th Anniversary one in early 2014, it dropped from 99th to 191st place (out of 241).
Things you might like to know:

• There was some criticism of the choice of Dubai for filming, due to its poor reputation for human rights - especially its treatment of gay people.
• Back in 2006, Ellen Thomas had played one of the Clockwork Droids in The Girl in the Fireplace.
• The Doctor complains about humans on buses always blaming him - a reference to the traumatic events of Midnight.
• The Doctor had previously built a device for detecting rhondium particles in The Time Warrior.
• He recommends Nathan and Barclay to Magambo as potential UNIT recruits - as he had earlier helped Martha Jones join the organisation. This seems at odds with his obvious dislike for their militaristic ways.
• Malcolm has read all of the UNIT files on the Doctor. His favourite is the one about the Giant Robot (a reference to 1974 / 5's Robot, written by Terrance Dicks).
• Malcolm likes to give names to units of measurement - including his own. A number of Malcolms (100) are said to add up to a Bernard - as in Quatermass. Remembrance of the Daleks had intimated that Bernard Quatermass exists as a real person in the Doctor Who universe, and the Doctor has never referred to Quatermass as a TV series, in the way he has with Star Trek for instance.
• Having played Hamlet at the RSC for the previous 6 months, David Tennant was worried that he could get the Doctor's voice right. The same thing had happened to Billie Piper when she returned in Series 4 after a long break from playing Rose.
• The bus has a poster for a mobile phone network called "Neon" on its side. This company will prove to belong to the millionaire Joshua Naismith, who will feature in The End of Time Parts 1 & 2.
• Adam James had Jon Pertwee as his godfather.

Story 200 - The Next Doctor

In which the TARDIS arrives in Victorian London. The year is 1851, and the Doctor discovers that it is Christmas Eve. As he takes in the festive atmosphere, he suddenly hears someone calling for him to come and help. Rushing to the scene, he is surprised to learn that it was not him who was being called for, but another Doctor... He meets a man who claims to be the Doctor, who has a companion named Rosita, and who is hunting down a Cybershade. The Doctor recognises this creature as the product of Cybertechnology, probably based on an animal. The Cybershade pulls both Doctors up to the upper level of a warehouse and across the floor. Rosita arrives in time to prevent the creature pulling them out of the far window to their doom. The Doctor suspects that he may have encountered a future version of himself, but is intrigued by the fact that he does not recognise him. Also, the other Doctor's sonic screwdriver appears to be a normal one. Wanting to know more, he decides to follow him. He hears the other Doctor and Rosita talking about a funeral due to take place that afternoon - that of the Rev. Aubrey Fairchild. The Doctor follows the other Doctor to Fairchild's home and the two break in. The Doctor scans for technology and they find a stash of metal cylinders, which the Doctor recognises as info-stamps, which can store and download data. They are then attacked by a pair of Cybermen. The other Doctor uses one of the info-stamps to destroy the Cybermen, beaming the data into them and overloading them.

The Doctor takes the opportunity to examine his other self using a stethoscope, and learns that he only has one heart. The funeral is gatecrashed by Miss Mercy Hartigan, who is employed at one of the city's workhouses. The mourners are shocked by her presence, but soon come under attack from her allies - the Cybermen. A number of the mourners are spared - all supervisors of other workhouses in the area. They are to become mental slaves of the Cybermen. The Doctor goes with his other self to a stable yard which he is using as a base of operations. Asking to see his TARDIS, the Doctor is shown a blue gas-filled balloon. The other Doctor claims the acronym stands for Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style. The Doctor finds that some of the info-stamps recovered from the Rev. Fairchild's home contain the history of London from 1066 to the present day. More info-stamps are discovered hidden in the belongings of a man named Jackson Lake, who it is claimed disappeared just before the Cybermen appeared. The Doctor notes that there is too much luggage for just one man. He sits the other Doctor down and explains to him what he thinks might have happened. The other Doctor is actually Jackson Lake. One of the info-stamps contained data about the Doctor, and this was accidentally downloaded into his mind - causing him to believe that he is the Doctor. Lake starts to remember how the Cybermen invaded his home and killed his wife. There is something else about that night which he struggles to remember - but can't.

They go to Lake's home and find a Dimension Vault device, stolen from the Daleks. This must have allowed the Cybermen to escape from the Void and come to Victorian London. The Doctor attempts to confront Miss Hartigan, but she is protected by Cybermen and Cybershades. The Cybermen have a base beneath the Thames, and here they are constructing a Cyberking. Miss Hartigan will be used to control it. However, her mind is so strong that she overcomes their mental conditioning. She destroys the Cyberleader and takes command over the others. The enslaved workhouse supervisors are compelled to bring all the children from their establishments to the Cyberman base, where they will be used as slave labour to complete the machine and to power it up. The Doctor and Jackson break in as the machine begins to activate, and start to get the children out. Jackson then recalls the other thing he lost the night his wife was killed - his son. He is here in the base, and the Doctor helps to rescue him. As the children flee the base, Rosita sees a massive machine, shaped like a Cyberman, rise from the waters of the Thames. This is the Cyberking, which the Doctor recognises as a dreadnought-class battleship, with a conversion factory built into its body.

The Cyberking begins to fire on the city. The Doctor takes to Jackson's TARDIS and goes to confront it. He attempts to reason with Hartigan, but she is bent on conquest. The Doctor uses a number of info-stamps to break the Cyberman conditioning and she sees what she has become. Unable to accept this, she is destroyed, taking the Cybermen and Cybershades with her as she is mentally linked to them. The Doctor then uses the Dimension Vault to send the collapsing Cyberking into the Void. Back on the ground, the Doctor hears Jackson tell of how people will talk of this for centuries to come, and is puzzled as to why it never makes it into the history books. He allows Jackson to see the interior of his TARDIS, before accepting an invitation to have Christmas dinner with Jackson, his son, and Rosita.

The Next Doctor was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on 25th December, 2008. It was to be the first of a series of Specials throughout 2009 which would culminate in David Tennant's departure the following Christmas. As his departure had already been announced, viewers were left to speculate if David Morrisey was indeed going to be a future incarnation of the Time Lord. (Matt Smith would not be announced to the public as the Eleventh Doctor until early in the New Year).
Morrisey and Tennant had worked together in the past - in the BBC's musical drama Blackpool.
You will note that I make this the 200th Doctor Who story, whereas the next special - Planet of the Dead - will make this claim. This is all down to whether or not you take Utopia to be the first episode of a three-part story, or if you count it as a stand-alone episode in its own right. (I have, of course, gone for the latter). Even Russell T Davies was confused on this, himself previously claiming that it was stand-alone. Previous production teams had become confused about numbering, with Trial of a Time Lord sometimes being claimed as a single story, or split into separate interlinked stories.
The Victorian setting was one which Davies thought worked in the programme, especially for a Christmas Special. The workhouse elements remind you of Oliver Twist, and Dickens has become synonymous with Christmas thanks to A Christmas Carol, and the showing of The Signalman as a Christmas ghost story by the BBC. When Dickens had appeared in the programme itself, it was in a story set at Christmas time (The Unquiet Dead).

One of the first images Davies came up with was of the Cybermen in a graveyard, in the snow. The Cybermen are basically walking corpses, so this seemed a suitable setting for them. 5 years later, Steven Moffat would have the climactic scenes of his first proper Cyberman story set in a cemetery.
Davies also had in mind the image of the female villain arriving at the funeral in a bright scarlet dress - the only colour in an otherwise monochromatic sequence.
Miss Hartigan is played by Dervla Kirwan, who had come to prominence in the BBC drama series Ballykissangel. Jackson Lake's son, Frederic, is played by Tom Langford. He had previously appeared in the Torchwood episode Out of the Rain. In the same way that the Doctor once had a companion named Rose, so Lake's companion is called Rosita. She is played by Velile Tshabalala. The script implies that she was once a prostitute. Rosita is Spanish for "little rose".
As well as a similarly named companion, the other Doctor has his own TARDIS - really just a hot-air balloon - and a sonic screwdriver. The latter is just an ordinary screwdriver, and is only sonic in that it makes a noise if you hit it against something. Before he works out just who this new Doctor might be, the Doctor suspects that he may have used a Chameleon Arch, as seen in Series 3, to conceal his true identity, but Lake's fob watch is just that - an ordinary watch.

There are a few new additions to the Cyberman mythos. There is a new Cyberleader design - based on the Controller from The Age of Steel, with its transparent brain casing. It sports a black face plate, possibly inspired by Kroton, the Cyberman with emotions who appeared in the DWM comic strips of the 1970's and '80's.
The Cybershades have beaten copper face plates, and are said to have been created using animals rather than humans. Then we have the steam-punk Cyberking - a massive Cyberman shaped battlecraft. The Cybermen - Cybus ones who survived the events of Doomsday - are having to use what local technology they can find in Victorian London.

Overall, a perfectly fine Doctor Who episode for Christmas night viewing. The Cybermen are used well, and Miss Hartigan makes for a great new villainess. David Morrisey would, indeed, make a good Doctor.
Things you might like to know:

• Davies was going to use the name Aubrey Fairchild in an earlier story - as the British Prime Minister who succeeded Harold Saxon - but changed his mind. He liked the name, however, so used it in this story.
• Davies had previously talked about ignoring the 1996 TV Movie (even including this in his scripts for Series 2 of Queer as Folk, where the McGann Doctor was said not to count). However, the 8th Doctor was then seen as one of the drawings in John Smith's "Journal of Impossible Things" in Human Nature. In The Next Doctor, the Doctor activates an info-stamp and we see images of all the previous Doctors, and there is Paul McGann amongst them.
• Should you be interested, the clips of the other previous Doctors come from The Time Meddler, The Ice Warriors, Terror of the Autons, City of Death, Arc of Infinity, The Mysterious Planet, Time and the Rani, and Parting of the Ways.
• The interior of the Cyberking was filmed on the set of the Torchwood Hub.
• This was the first Christmas Special not to have a direct link with the conclusion of the previous season. If you've read Davies' book The Writer's Tale, you'll know he anguished over whether or not to have the Cybermen turn up in the TARDIS at the conclusion of Journey's End, and the sequence was actually filmed. He was talked out of including it by DWM's Benjamin Cook, co-author of the book, in that it comprises a series of e-mails between the two. The scene appears as an extra on the Series 4 box set.
• The DVD release contains alternative takes to those seen in the broadcast version. (Fans have compared the delivery of certain lines of dialogue).
• This was the last story to be made in standard definition. The next Special would be filmed in HD, and so become the first ever Blu-Ray release.
• Some references to previous Cyberman stories include Miss Hartigan saying "Excellent!", as previous Cyberleaders were want to do, Mickey Smith thought that the Void Ship might contain a "Cyberking", and the Cybermen recognising the Doctor via a video feed is reminiscent of the scene from the second episode of Earthshock, where they review video footage from one of their sentinel androids.
• Davies was ultimately dissatisfied with the ending, believing that Miss Hartigan should have been redeemed and she was the one to send the Cyberking into the Void, rather than the Doctor. He was also unhappy with Jackson's over-reaction to being inside the TARDIS, suggesting that he write a story in which the Doctor took him on a brief adventure to an alien planet before bringing him back to Christmas Day in London, 1851.
• A young audience member at the preview of the episode asked the question as to why the Cyberking wasn't mentioned in the history books. It was pointed out that no spaceship had crashed into Big Ben in 2006, so things were different in the Doctor Who universe. Later, Steven Moffat used the Cyberking as an example of things being removed from time by the cracks in time and space in Series 5.