Live-blogging Doctor Who, Season Three: "Utopia"

So here we are for the first of the three-parter that concludes season three of Doctor Who. Hurray! And also sigh. This means a long, long wait for the next full season, though we do have “Waters of Mars” shortly—middle of November in the U.K., so hopefully not too far behind on the ABC.

Yeah, I know: not up to my usual pre-live blogging rambling, is it?

And now I’m just sitting here, staring at the computer screen and yawning. That doesn’t bode well for the liveliness of the live-blogging, does it? Though, actually, by the time I was finished typing that sentence, I was actually watching the presenter from the Triple J television programme tormenting a cat. Sure, I don’t think he actually killed it, but that was still one seriously peeved cat.

Hmm. Wolfmother + Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” = one slightly cringing nineteenth-century scholar/Kate Bush fan.

I wonder how many songs are based on nineteenth-century songs? Poll in the comments!

Ah, there you go: I’m back to normal. There’s a relief.

Oh, lovely: caterwauling. Just what you need at this time of night.

The TARDIS materialises in Cardiff, much to Martha’s screeching surprise. Seriously, that was a screech.

And here comes Captain Jack! Haring through the streets of Cardiff, with his back pack, throwing himself at the TARDIS as it dematerialises. So we have a connection to the end of season one of Torchwood.

Bits of the TARDIS explode.

NICK: Learn about fuses, Doctor.

The Doctor says the TARDIS is hurtling to the end of the universe—and Captain Jack is clinging to the outside.

Somewhere, heavily tattooed people with extravagant dentition raise their heads to say, “Hoo-mans. Hoo-mans are coming.”

Ooh-er.

Credits.

Oh, hey, it’s that guy from The Bill! But he’s been spotted by one of the people with extravagant dentition. He begs them to let him go, but they start screeching.

Hey, it’s Derek Jacobi! C-C-C-C-Claudius! And his lab-coated insectoid assistant who, while he drinks coffee, is happy drinking her own internal milk. Professor Yana (Jacobi) says that’s quite enough information, and I agree with him.

As his assistant explains to a disembodied voice that their calculations are coming along nicely, Professor Yana comes over all dizzy, with beating drums in his head. As his assistant rouses him, they see the signal of the TARDIS’s arrival.

The Doctor says that this is further than even Time Lords usually come, he says they should leave—but, of course, he’s too keen to see what’s outside in the year fifty trillion or so.

Which is dead Jack.

DOCTOR: I think he came with us. Clinging to the outside of the TARDIS. All the way through the vortex. That’s very him.

Jack comes back to life, though the Doctor doesn’t seem terribly keen to see him. The Doctor asks if Jack’s had some work done, and Jack’s says, “You can talk!” Jack then asks whether Rose actually died in the Battle of Canary Wharf, and the Doctor tells him about the parallel universe. The two share a manly cuddle, and Martha sulks.

Jack explains how he managed to get away after he was killed by the Daleks, and the Doctor is scornful about Jack’s method of travelling.

DOCTOR: It’s like I’ve got a sports car and you’ve got a space hopper.

Martha and Jack share stories, and the Doctor is not thrilled about the suggestion that he just leaves his companions behind.

DOCTOR: We’re at the end of the universe. The end of all knowledge. And you two are busy blogging!

Hey, nothing wrong with blogging.

There are some significant looks between Jack and the Doctor as the Doctor reveals he knows that Jack can’t die—though Jack has actually pretty much said exactly that—before they spot the human hunt from earlier, and hare off down the mountainside to save the human, as Jack, in the rear, shouts, “Oh, I missed this.”

They save the human, but they can’t get to the TARDIS, because the enthusiastically toothed pursuers are in the way. So they hare towards the silo they spotted earlier, where the soldiers guarding it let them in, after they’ve shown that they have ordinary teeth.

Professor Yana is thrilled to hear that there’s a doctor just arrived: he asks the disembodied voice is it’s a doctor of medicine, and the voice says that “He says ‘of everything.’”

Yana assumes that this means he’s a scientist, and I get a little annoyed. But only a little, because it’s Derek Jacobi.

We see dozens and dozens of humans, looking like refugees, huddled in the corridor, as the hunted human is reunited with his mother, and Jack is prevented from chatting up a pretty boy.

And, of course, the Doctor opens a hatch he’s not supposed to open and sees the massive rocketship waiting to take these people to “Utopia,” wherever that is. But before we can do more than gape at the scale of the ship, Yana turns up and grabs the Doctor, bubbling away with excitement about the Doctor’s presence.

Jack is stopped from chatting up Yana’s blue assistant, and Martha is more than a little freaked out by the fact that Jack is carrying the Doctor’s disembodied hand in a backpack.

The discussion about the Doctor’s ability to grow a new hand prompts Yana to ask what species the Doctor is.

DOCTOR: Time Lord, last of. Legend? Anyone? Not even a myth. Blimey, the end of the universe is a bit humbling.

He asks Yana what they’re doing here with this rocketship that, sadly, the Doctor can’t help him get working, and Yana asks how he doesn’t know about Utopia: all humans know about Utopia, he says. The Doctor says he’s a bit of a hermit.

YANA: A hermit, with friends?
DOCTOR: Hermits United. We meet up every ten years. Swap stories about caves. It’s good fun—for a hermit.

Yana tells the Doctor about the message they received: “Come to Utopia,” over and over again from far across the stars. And the Doctor, being who he is, manages to get the rocketship powered up with just his sonic screwdriver. Who dissed the sonic screwdriver, eh? Oh, that’s right: it was Jack. But then he died. So it all evens out, especially since he got better.

The disembodied voice tells all passengers to prepare for immediate boarding, and Martha makes friends with the little blonde boy—girl? No, boy—who showed them around everywhere.

But, as the blonde boy heads into the rocketship, we see the key plot point that I completely forgot to mention earlier: one of the Futurekind (the enthusiastically toothed people from earlier) has snuck in among the humans. That can’t be good.

The Doctor and Yana work on the final configurations for the rocketship, but the Doctor realises that Yana is staying behind (with his insectoid assistant, who refuses to go without him). Just then, luckily, a deus ex machina turns up—literally, in the form of the TARDIS, and the Doctor says that he has a way of getting Yana out as well.

Yana’s headache comes back, and he tells the Doctor that it’s the sound of drums, which he’s suffered all his life.

There’s a cute scene there with Martha and the insectoid assistant, which I’m running too far behind to recap.

The communication system goes down, and Martha offers to help. So we have Martha, Yana, and the Doctor standing around the monitor, watching a man manually doing . . . something. I’m not sure what, but it involves radiation. And despite Jack’s best efforts at keeping the radiation levels even, they lose power, because the Futurekind saboteur is destroying every piece of wiring she can get her hands on, before being shot by soldiers.

The man who was communicating with the man in the radiation chamber yells at him to get out, but he’s incinerated by the radiation. Jack tries to jumpstart the cables, to bring it back under their control, and is killed.

This works quite well to everyone’s benefit, because Jack can’t die. (Of course, Martha gave him mouth-to-mouth before she realised this, which allows Jack to wake up saying, “Was someone kissing me?”)

Jack, about to head into the radiation chamber, asks the Doctor how long he’s known, and the Doctor replied, “Ever since I ran away from you.”

Martha tells Yana that she doesn’t know why Jack can’t die, because the Doctor travels through time and space and picks people up like stray dogs. This strikes Yana like a tonne of bricks, though Martha, who has her back turned to Yana, can’t see this.

The Doctor and Jack talk about how and why he is as he is, revealing the Doctor’s prejudice against fixed points in time and space, which is what Jack is now.

Jack says the last thing he remembers from when he was mortal was facing three Daleks, and the word “Dalek” reverberates through Yana’s head.

Then the Doctor explains that the last act of the Time War, Rose’s absorption of the Time Vortex, meant the bringing of life, and the word “Dalek” is replaced in the reverberations in Yana’s head by “Time War.”

Yana is crying by this point.

Jack wonders if he’s out there himself, somewhere, and Doctor says that would be good—the only man Jack would ever be happy with. Jack says this regeneration is a little cheeky, and the word “regeneration” reverberates through Yana’s head.

But Yana’s assistant sees now that he’s crying, and asks why. He says it’s the idea of time travel: he’s always been fascinated by time, he says, and he pulls out a watch, just like the watch that the Doctor had in “Human Nature”/“Family of Blood.” The watch that contained the Time Lord’s essence when the Doctor became human.

Martha backs away slowly, and runs down as fast as she can to find the Doctor. The Doctor doesn’t know whether to be thrilled or horrified, but then he realises that the professor can see the watch now, now that Martha has brought it to his attention.

And we see Yana staring at his watch, and we hear Roger Delgado speaking and Anthony Ainley laughing.

Back down below the rocketship, Martha reminds the Doctor of the Face of Boe’s dying words: You Are Not Alone.

And the Doctor just happens to be staring at the word “Yana” as he hears this—or should we say the acronym “Yana.”

Yana, standing in front of the TARDIS, turns around slowly, and we see that this is not Yana. Not the Yana we’ve been seeing—especially not when he destroys the base defenses, letting the Futurekind in, as the Doctor, Jack, and Martha race through the compound.

His assistant tries to stop him, even drawing a weapon. But Yana simply says that now he can say he was provoked, as he picks up a sizzling cable, one of the ones that Jack electrocuted himself on. He asks why, in all this time, she never thought to ask about the watch, never thought to set himself free.

She calls him “Professor,” and he says that that’s not his name: the professor was an invention, he says. She asks who he is, and he says, “I am the Master.”

Squee!

Three years I waited for the Master to come back. I knew he wasn’t dead. I knew he wouldn’t have gone back to fight and die in the Time Wars. Not the Master!

Then he kills his assistant, as the Doctor is beating on doors and begging Yana not to open the watch.

But Yana’s assistant still has her gun, and she shoots him. He stumbles into the TARDIS, complaining about being shot by an insect, and a girl insect at that.

The Doctor begs him to open the TARDIS doors, saying it’s only the two of them now, and they have to stick together. But the Master has a better idea: regeneration. And the Doctor watches the light of the regeneration from outside the TARDIS, while Jack and Martha try desperately to hold the main doors shut against the Futurekind.

Then the Master wakes up as John Sim. He’s not really comfortable with his new voice, which Martha says she recognises, but that doesn’t stop him from making the Doctor beg—and admit that he knows that this is the Master—and then from just taking off in the TARDIS after all, though the Doctor seems to be doing something with his sonic screwdriver.

Oh, how will our plucky heroes ever get out of this one?!