The End of the Universe?
22 June 2007Doctor Who – Utopia
[major spoiler warning!]
A strange episode – it seemed quite dull until I realised what was happening …
Trying to evade Captain Jack, the TARDIS hurtles the Doctor and Martha billions of years into the future. There they find humanity clinging on to existence in a universe without stars, and Professor Yana who is trying to build a rocket to send them to ‘Utopia’. The scary thing seemed to be a group who had evolved from the humans and were seen to hunt them down. But they weren’t really that scary and there was no threat that the rocket, with the Doctor’s help, wouldn’t take off.
So where was all the adventure and excitement? Well it all came down to Yana (brilliantly played by Derek Jacobi). You may remember the Face of Boe told the Doctor “You Are Not Alone”, and then there was the watch that he had which was just the same as the one the Doctor had had in Human Nature …
That’s when the excitement began for me. I realised that it could mean only one thing – The Master, my favourite Doctor Who villan, was back!
There was a great line from the Master – “Why don’t we stop and have a nice little chat where I tell you all my plans and you work out a way to stop me – I don’t think!”, which I think tells something of the dislike of the use of the character in the past. In an episode of Doctor Who Confidential in 2005 Russell T Davies stated that “Someone will bring him back someday, he’s too good to resist. But it has to be done properly”. It’s interesting reading back my post on this comment
I took his comment to mean that it is possible the Master could return (at some point in the future), but that the writing of the script has to be really good and have a plot that necessitates his return, not just bring him back for the sake of it.
I’m glad to see that my faith was not misplaced!
The feeling I had in “Utopia” is that all the little things that have happened over the past three seasons finally clicked together. That this is what we’ve been building toward.
I think the first half hour may turn out to be more important than the first glance. Anton Chekhov talks about the guns on the mantelpiece, and “Utopia” puts a lot of guns on the mantelpiece. Why would the Master take the navigation chip with him? Why would the Doctor raise the issue that Jack’s still alive at the end of time? Why ask the little girl what she expects to find when she reaches Utopia? Why raise the question of what, exactly, the Futurekind are?
Because this isn’t a standalone episode. This is the first part of the longest Who story in over twenty years. Not since “The Two Doctors” have we had a story this long.
And Graeme Harper is a god behind the camera. He found ways of shooting the characters and the locations that was just amazing. Look at the way the Doctor is shot during the scene while Jack’s in the radiation chamber. Look at the weird angles inside the TARDIS. The nearly-top-down view of the console? Something I wish more people would do, y’know?
Fantastic!