New Who Finales in Perspective: Series 4

Mark McCullough continues the series looking back over all the New Who finales, this time with Series 4.

The finale to Series Four was head writer Russell T Davies’ last series finale; as such he upped the scale to levels yet unseen merging the Doctor Who Universe with that of its spin-offs whilst facing against the Doctor’s greatest enemy with every single universe at stake. Can you get much bigger than that? They story begins in Turn Left which whilst strictly not part of the two-part finale, it is here that we are introduced to the threat of the darkness, although its true nature is not until the first part of the finale. The Stolen Earth picks up with Earth in extreme danger, transported across the stars with the Doctor far away. To accommodate this we see some familiar faces return to provide Earth’s side of the story. Throughout the first episode of the finale, the Doctor is separate from the situation, trying to piece together the mystery whilst Earth finds itself at the mercy of the Daleks. The concluding part sees the groups united and the Daleks plan revealed before it is eventually stopped in perhaps all too easy a manner as the Earth is towed across space by the TARDIS and all is well again.

“Rose is coming back. Isn’t that good?”

After much teasing throughout the series, it was The Stolen Earth where Rose made her return proper. Until now we had only seen glimpses of her and an appearance in a parallel universe created in Turn Left. We learn that the Darkness from the previous episode is very real and presents a threat within the Doctor’s universe. Furthermore, its effects meant that the walls between the universes were weakened allowing a dimension cannon in Pete’s World to become functional. And just like, with a couple of lines of Sci-Fi jargon, Rose’s perfect ending from Series 2 was undone. To this day I stand by my belief that this was one of the few major flaws from an otherwise outstanding era of the show headed by Mr Davies.

Unsurprisingly there are many fans who agree with my point of view that Rose should not have been brought back and for some that heavily impacts on their enjoyment of this finale. This escalates further with some criticising how the character is portrayed by the narrative, citing the fact that she is too self-absorbed and not true to the original character. I do not agree with this assessment as I rather enjoyed what was done with her and think that it fitted the development I would have expected from her in the parallel world. Her reaction towards the Doctor and the situations she faces only serves to cement the strength of the relationship she shared with the Doctor. All things considered whilst Rose served very little actual purpose to the plot, (Other than a way to write out Meta-ten) it would probably have been strange to have everyone else from the RTD era back and not her. For that reason I can see an argument for the decision.

“The Children of Time will gather, and one of them will die.”

Now that we have covered the elephant in the room, back to praise for what truly was a wonderful finale. Part of what contributed to this was the return of numerous fan favourite characters: Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, K-9, Mickey Smith, Jack Harkness and Jackie Tyler. The semi-regular cast of the series: Wilfred Mott and Silvia Noble also returned for the grand finale. To complete the line-up we have the cross over with the spin offs introducing the characters: Luke Smith, Mr. Smith, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones to Doctor Who. This group created the largest assemble of companions and allies seen on screen since the revival of the show, and one that has not been bettered since.

You may wonder how they were able to include so many characters yet still give them all satisfactory development to warrant their place in the story. Of course if you wanted to you could argue that some of them could have been taken out with minimal impact on the story, but it just would not have been the same without them. The major advantage of having such a huge cast of popular characters was that it gave the episode an element of scale which is essential for a successful finale. Another great aspect of the narrative was how the characters were pushed into doing something that is normally outside of their comfort zones in a way which proved Davros later damnation of the Doctor.

“Welcome to my new empire Doctor”

As the final finale of the RTD Era of the show, there could only have been one enemy to take the role of main antagonist, and as expected that honour fell to the Daleks. This time however they were more vicious than ever, a fully-fledged Dalek army led by the Supreme Dalek whilst also keeping Davros their creator and Dalek Caan as prisoners in the vault. This time the Daleks plan was as ambitious as you could expect from an episode of this nature. The complex plan involved kidnapping 27 planets, displacing them one second from the rest of the universe and moving them across space. Once there, the alignment of the planets was used to compress the z-neutrino energy of the Dalek Crucible to create a weapon which would be capable of disintegrating matter. With this weapon they planned to transmit the signal to destroy the rest of the universe leaving them as the supreme (and only) beings of the universe. As is necessary for all good plans, the button to undo everything is placed in the vaults with the prisoners who all want the Daleks defeated.

“Something’s been drawing us together for such a long time”

Series Eight is not the first time that a companion’s presence has had suggestions of manipulation by an outside force. We know that Donna found the Doctor through the intervention of Dalek Caan. However there is far more coincidences than just Donna which all had to fall into place for everything to be right and fill in with Caan’s prophecy:

• Donna had to Turn Left at the junction to go to HC Clements and meet the Doctor otherwise they would never had met in the first place. We witnessed the impact that event not happening would have had on the Time War
• The events in the Series Two finale of Torchwood had to occur in order for the Torchwood Rift to be able to perform their part in bringing the Doctor to Earth.
• Likewise Sarah Jane had to meet Luke otherwise the change on her time line may have nullified her involvement in this finale.
• The Doctor had to lose his hand in the sword fight with the Sycorax, this then had to be found by Jack, held in Torchwood and returned to the TARDIS in the Series Three finale.
• The Doctor had to leave Mr Copper on Earth with the money available to create the subwave network which brought the Doctor to the events
• Likewise he had to depose Harriet to give her the motivation to do what she did and ultimately die in a heartfelt scene the like of which has not been seen since.
• Mickey had to have held the button down for long enough in Rise of the Cybermen to allow the parallel worlds to cross and for Rose’s story to unfold. This allowed the Cult of Skaro to appear and ultimately for Caan to be led to the Time War

You’re probably wondering what my point is here, well I can tell you that I think this is too much for one Dalek to accomplish. I’m not however claiming that something more sinister is going on or that we didn’t get answers, we did. My interpretation however is that by Emergency Temporal Shifting into the Time War allowed Caan to ally himself with Time, events where always meant to happen by Caan was able to manipulate some of them to his own gain. It’s an interesting point which I raise because it could also be a solution to our current Series Eight mystery, an enemy with Time on their side. As it transpired, they did because they were a Time Lord, but not in the way I was expecting

Conclusion

The Series Four finale was a rather epic affair; it was filled with grand ideas, terrifying concepts and wonderful characters. That’s not to say that it didn’t have its flaws, but like any good episode, the flaws can be overlooked if the story is strong enough. The finale certainly fitted the bill as the culmination of what was good about the RTD era. Of course it was not the true finale to the era, that honour belongs to my favourite episode of all time, but the Series Four finale is not that far off.

Rating

The following ratings were achieved by taking a sample of ten people and getting them to rate the finales by each of the five criteria assigning a rating out of ten to each. This allowed us to come up with an average for each of the categories and then an average score for the episode. Whilst ten is quite a small sample size, regression to the mean was beginning to show. The results for this finale are as follows:

• Episode Score – 8.45/10
• Finale Rating – 8.70/10
• Monster Score – 8.35/10
• Arc Resolution – 8.05/10
• Character Development – 8.30/10

This gives the episode an average score of: 8.37/10. This means that the leader board now looks like this:

1. Series 1 – 9.40/10
2. Series 3 – 9.05/10
3. Series 4 – 8.37/10
4. Series 2 – 7.53/10

Join us tomorrow for Series 5.