Last Dr Who: Right Said Fred

So that’s it then.

Last night saw the final episode of Dr Who with David Tennant as the 10th Doctor; and the last story from Russell T. Davies.

We know that Davies’ writing for the Doctor tends towards end-of-series spectaculars, tempered occasionally with a kind of mawkish self-indulgence. So what would he do this time?

Well the indulgent ending was there in spades, but I actually enjoyed the spectacle - mostly, I think because much of it was an explicit Star Wars riff. (Mark Lawson in the Guardian today seemed to think it borrowed liberally from Hamlet. But we know it didn’t; Lawson just got confused by the fact that Tennant played Hamlet elsewhere).

So we had: the mining vessel driven by the Doctor being chased by (a few of) Earth’s missiles, with Bernard Cribbins and the green cactusy alien shooting them down using flying joystick mount things, just like when the Millennium Falcon is being pursued in A New Hope.

Star Warsy music when the Doctor decides to fight the Gallifreyans (with a 1940s service revolver…).

You know the way in which the very elite Jedi get to shoot bolts of plasma stuff from their finger tips and don’t really need light-sabers to win battles? Well it turns out Time Lords can do the same. They don’t need sonic tools really (although the chief TL may have had a sonic glove, come to think about it). So the Master and the boss Gallifreyan end up exchanging lightning bolts, just like Vader and the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.

And then later, after all the excitement, right in the middle of the mawkish bit where the Doctor is saying farewell to everyone he’s ever met – or so it seems – where does he go to find Captain Jack? An Alien Cantina. Straight out of a New Hope, with pretty much the same camera angles from what I could see. Marvellous.

Actually, there was one difference: all of the aliens were creatures we had met before in the series (eg Hath, Judoon, Slytheen). So we know about them – unlike the strange beings in SW, in this cantina we know who is who. A very different effect. One further thing – just to make it obvious, was there a woman in a Princes Leia headdress in the bar too?

Still, it is pushing it to see Gallifrey as the Death Star.

One other thing. In this episode, putting aside the companion’s cameos, we had Tennant fresh from Hamlet, ex-Bond Timothy Dalton (in part reprising his role as the manager of Somerfields from Hot Fuzz), John Simm, Claire Bloom in the background, even, I note, Brian Cox as an Ood (and what the hell was June Whitfield doing there?). All acting noisily (less so Bloom & Whitfield), and all, for me, upstaged by Bernard Cribbins, doing not very much and doing it superbly. Drawing our eyes to the quiet old geezer in the background.

“ ‘ave they gone then? Oh good-O”.

Of course, our Bernard knows the ropes. He's helped the Doctor before (42ish years ago in Daleks Invasion Earth 2150, or something like that). Back when the Tardis was cleaner.

Finally, the Doctor regenerates and everyone gets a gift - but one last question:

Where did the Master go?