The first twenty minutes of this two-parter have to work heavy-duty and cram as much exposition in as possible, to get everyone where they need to be in order for the plot to happen, which can feel more than a bit forced, especially during the Master’s resurrection ritual. Your average season of Doctor Who has ten or eleven episodes building up to the finale, while “The End Of Time” (as the climax of the Series 4 specials) has only had a handful of episodes preceding it. When it comes to the flaws of this story, you could make a good argument that “The End Of Time” is hurt by how much ground it has to cover early on. If there’s been any sort of theme bonding the Series 4 specials together (despite them all having vastly different plots), it’s the Tenth Doctor being confronted by his own morality, his hubris, and the fact that sometimes you can’t fight fate, and “The End Of Time” is the culmination of all those ideas. He originally toyed with the idea of giving Ten a small-scale send-off, before he decided to go big by bringing back the Master (who was seemingly killed off in his last appearance, but was also given some wiggle room so he could be able to return at any time in the future) as well as the time lords to complement Ten’s story. Russell already tied up most of his companions’ character arcs in the Series 4 finale, and wrapped up several story arcs like the Torchwood Institute, Harriet Jones’ fall from grace, and the Cult of Skaro, so “The End Of Time” wound up being a story that is very Doctor-centric. Davies had plenty of time to decide what the Tenth Doctor’s swansong would be. Steven Moffat and his crew had plenty of time to prepare their game plan for Series 5 (and cast the Eleventh Doctor), while Russell T. After the big blowout finale that was “ The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End“, a year of specials followed, giving the viewers at home some sporadic new content to tide them over while the show changed hands behind the scenes. Russell knew for quite some time when he would be ready to bow out and move on to other projects, since he had already singled out Steven Moffat as his successor by 2008, and he purposely wrote his last full season as a nostalgic victory lap of sorts: celebrating everyone and everything that made his tenure special. Davies and his crew put in the hard work and poured all their creativity into the show (when they had no way of knowing whether it would pay off or not) to make Doctor Who a success again for four seasons straight. After Doctor Who had been canceled for sixteen years from 1989 to 2005, Russell T. Davies’ last episode as the series’ showrunner. It’s not only the Tenth Doctor’s regeneration story – bringing David Tennant’s three-season tenure as the rebel time lord to a close just in time for Christmas – it’s also Russell T. “The End Of Time” is quite the momentous milestone for Doctor Who.
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