Ah, the sound of drums. That distinctive da-da-da-dum from the Doctor Who theme, which never quite seems loud enough in the current arrangement.¹ Fans and normal people alike often agree that the title theme is one of the coolest things about the show, and it’s nice to see part of it become an actual plot point in an episode, representing the newly resurrected Master’s relentless psychosis.

So it’s kind of odd to find that it’s kind of wasted. Even at the start of ‘The Sound of Drums’, immediately following a scene dominated by the drum pattern, the music completely fails to lead into the actual theme. And by the end of ‘Last of the Time Lords’, it turns out that there’s really no more to the drumming than what we learned in the preceding story.² I say “odd”, but a wasted opportunities aren’t really very uncommon in these uncharacteristically dull scripts from the usually reliable Russell T. Davies.

Everywhere you look in ‘The Sound of Drums’, there’s something that’s alright, but could have been awesome. The Master ingeniously takes over the world, and then just hangs out being irritating until the Doctor finally gets around to foiling him. Captain Jack returns from Torchwood… and gets to give maybe two lines of exposition and fire a gun. A Paradox Machine is created — sounds cool, but in fact turns out to simply allow a humongous reset button, rather than leading to oodles of crazy paradoxes, as one might hope. The Doctor gets turned into a wizened old Gollum creature, but it’s not part of the plot or anything; it’s just a slightly odd substitute for locking him up.³ And it leads to the Doctor’s slightly ridiculous Tinkerbell moment.

Ultimately, perhaps ‘The Sound of Drums’ was doomed to be disappointing. After all, the whole fun of bringing back the Master is tipping the recent series’ premise on its head — you’re not the last of the Time Lords, Doctor. Except, no, if you defeat the Master, then you are again. Going from point A to point B back to point A is so rarely thrilling.⁴

But sprinkled between the disappointments are the occasional flashes of magic that you expect from this show. The Master’s booby trap for our heroes is nicely played, and his massacre of the Cabinet is brilliant. The phone call between the Master and the Doctor is almost pure genius. The whole idea of the Doctor coming back to an already-conquered Earth is cleverly established. Martha’s farewell is perfect and earned. When she walks in, you know she has to leave — that after a year saving the world, she can’t just jump back in to that blue box.

But disturbingly, and perhaps worse than the wasted opportunities, are the things that just fall flat. The Jones family, having been established reasonably neatly, are mostly wasted — Leo just disappears,⁵ they all go a little psychotic for the Master in a particularly oddly pitched scene, and then we’re supposed to care that Mrs Jones is going to do something horrible and kill the Master, when she’s been consistently horrid at best all year.⁶

The biggest disappointment, however, is the actual interplay between the Doctor and the Master. When I heard John Simm had been cast, it seemed perfect — talented and similar in stature to Tennant, he seemed the perfect choice to come up against our unstoppable Doctor. But in the end, we only get one proper scene between them, and it’s at the very end. When things reach their inevitable emotional conclusion, I found it hard to care as much as I was clearly supposed to — the hate/love relationship between the two of them is only mentioned and rarely displayed.⁷ Part of the problem of course is taking Tennant out of the last episode almost completely, and having Simm spend most of his time talking to a special effect. Sometimes I like to imagine a story which allowed the two Time Lords⁸ to dynamically battle each other across time and space, both of them being ingenious and amazing. But now of course it just makes me grumpy.

The last two parts could so easily have been awesome, but instead, painfully, they settle for being some of the most mediocre that Who has produced in the last three years. It’s not the death-knell for the series, of course, but it would be nice if next year, the finale could not involve aliens descending from the skies to destroy the earth. It’s getting old.

1. Or, to put it another way, I need better speakers. ↩
2. Well, alright, what we learn in ‘The Sound of Drums’ isn’t awful. The Master went crazy from looking at the Doctor Who title sequence (or “untempered schism” if you like) and the bass line got stuck in his head. It’s just a bit underwhelming to have the central bizarreness of ‘Utopia’ explained in exposition. ↩
3. Putting what has been referred to as “Dobby-Doctor” in the story seems as stupid as, say, making Angel into a puppet in the last episode of the season. As a standalone episode, it could have been cool. ↩
4. Davies points out the similarity of the ‘Last of the Time Lords’ “One Year Later” caption to that of Battlestar Galactica‘s second series finale in his commentary, though he points out that he’d thought of it before he saw Galactica‘s take on it. Perhaps we should be grateful that the Who reset button happened almost instantaneously, and didn’t take a really boring half-season of television. ↩
5. Well, apparently the actor was suddenly double-booked, so I feel churlish complaining. ↩
6. If Jackie were about to kill the Master, then I’d care. Sometimes I think I miss Jackie more than Rose. ↩
7. Of course, the Doctor did have some lovely scenes with the Professor, pre-Masterfication. I found that if you considered the Pertwee Master stories (which are referenced a boodle of times in the last three stories), the last scene becomes a little more poignant. I’m reasonably sure that the vast majority of viewers aren’t able to do that though. ↩
8. Speaking of Time Lords, it must be said that the shots of Gallifrey looked reasonably awesome. Though part of me was hoping that they wouldn’t bring back the collars. ↩

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Friday, August 17th, 2007. It concerns such pressing issues as Doctor Who, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.