Doctor Who 2004

 

Over the past four years from 2000-03 the success of Doctor Who had skyrocketed, the show reached an average of over ten million and the general public’s opinion of the show being a silly and cheap sci-fi show that had lost it’s way in the 80s had become a successful drama programme. 

New fans were also getting into the classic era after Sarah Jane had returned and some of the greatest villains of the show’s past had returned in recent years with Davros and the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master to god-like evils such as the Toymaker and evils of Gallifrey returned in the form of Morbius.

But now the so-called “Golden Age” of Doctor Who was ending, Executive Producers Russell T Davies, Mal Young, Matthew Robinson and Producer Nicola Shindler were to bow out of the show after a series of specials. During the planning for the two parter Silence in The Library and Forest of The Dead, Davies offered the role of showrunner to Steven Moffat. The series would air in the spring of 2005, although this was Moffat’s “Dream Job” he had to weigh this carefully with the other opportunities to develop original shows, not to mention spending half of the year in Cardiff right next to Doctor Who’s base of operations. Nonetheless, Moffat accepted the position and was later announced as Doctor Who’s next showrunner.

Around this time Michael French was immensely popular as the Tenth Doctor, with him being more popular than the original face of the show, Tom Baker. However with Davies leaving and other opportunities in TV roles, the actor was beginning to consider his future. He was originally tempted to stay with Moffat drawing up his plan for his first year as the new showrunner, however as he decided to to leave when Davies did, allowing Moffat to create his own Doctor.

Michael French won best actor award for the Doctor on October 28th 2003, beating out Shane Ritchie, David Jason and Brian Capron. It was here where he announced that the 2004 specials would be his final year as the Doctor to a shocked audience. 

For these specials, it was decided that each of them would have a one-off companion to accompany the Doctor, similar to Astrid Peth and Seeta Zanetti. 

Even though 2003 already had three special episodes, the BBC allowed a Christmas Special to air that year; this meant that 2003 would have 17 televised stories throughout the year. Davies already had an idea for the special, he chose to use the Cybermen and was inspired by them marching across the snow-covered Antarctic wastes in The Tenth Planet, their debut story in 1966. However, he thought of setting them in a historical setting.

Planning for the later specials Davies realised that writing all of them by himself was impossible as he was now busy planning for Voidwatch’s third series: Children of Earth, this meant that Davies would have to collaborate with other writers on at least some of the Doctor Who specials. Based on ideas Davies provided, they would create a thorough plot and preliminary drafts of the script, which Davies would subsequently refine to its final version. This was hardly a novel idea; in fact, several Doctor Who episodes had already used it. However, Davies had previously chosen to forego any credit for creating the script. Since his name on the screenplays would help draw in big-known guest stars, Young now insisted that he be officially recognised as a co-writer for the specials.

For the second special, Davies decided to turn to Gary Russell as a co-writer. The third special would be written with Jed Mercurio.

The fourth and fifth specials would be written by Davies himself, this special would see the return of Wilfred Mott and the Master.

The Next Doctor

By Russell T Davies

The Doctor lands in London on Christmas Eve, 1851. Overhearing cries for help, he encounters a man, played by Christopher Eccleston, calling himself "the Doctor" and his companion Rosita attempting and failing to capture a Cybershade. The Doctor believes the man, who is suffering from amnesia, may be a future incarnation of himself. The man, dubbed the Next Doctor, takes the Doctor to a nearby house of a recently deceased reverend, believing him to be tied to a series of disappearances around London. Inside, they discover a pair of Cyberman data-storage infostamps, which the Next Doctor recalls holding the night that he lost his memories.

The two Doctors regroup with Rosita at the Next Doctor's base. The Doctor comes to realize that the Next Doctor is really a human, Jackson Lake, the supposed first missing person. The Doctor suspects that Jackson had encountered the Cybermen and used the infostamps, containing knowledge of the Doctor, to ward them off. Jackson's mind then entered a fugue state from the trauma of the Cybermen killing his wife, and as the infostamp had infused his mind with knowledge of the Doctor, he came to believe he was the Doctor. 

The Doctor and Rosita set off to try to find the source of the Cybermen.

The Doctor and Rosita find numerous children, pulled from workhouses around the city by Miss Mercy Hartigan, are being put to work at an underground facility under Cybermen guard. The Cybermen betray Miss Hartigan, and convert her into the controller for the "CyberKing", a giant mechanical Cyberman powered by the energy generated by the children. She also gains control over the Cybermen. Jackson remembers encountering the Cybermen on moving into his new home. The Doctor discovers another entrance to the Cybermen's base under Jackson's house. 

Within the complex, as the CyberKing starts to rise to the city, the three rescue the children, including Jackson's son, who was abducted in the initial attack that triggered Jackson's fugue state. The CyberKing starts to lay waste to the city. When Miss Hartigan refuses the Doctor's offer to leave the planet, the Doctor uses the infostamps to sever her connection to the CyberKing, exposing her to the raw emotion of what she has done. The emotional feedback destroys both the Cybermen and Miss Hartigan. As the CyberKing starts to topple, the Doctor draws it into the Time Vortex with technology from Jackson's cellar, saving London.

Call To Arms

By Russell T Davies and Gary Russell

An ancient distress signal is received by UNIT, they contact the Doctor for help and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is also contacted, where he and the Doctor are delighted to see each other again.

The message, decoded by UNIT scientist Lieutenant Maya Calloway, played by Naomi Ryan, contains a cryptic warning: "The last bastion falls. Arm the watchmen."

As the message is decrypted the cloister bell goes off in the TARDIS, the Doctor, Maya and Lethbridge-Stewart rush inside where the TARDIS is pulled through a rift into a desolate battlefield on the edge of the known universe.

They arrive on Vorshan IV, a once-thriving colony world now reduced to crumbling ruins. The sky is thick with smoke and the remnants of a once-proud defence force, the Vorshan Watchmen, barely cling to survival against an unstoppable enemy: the Vharrak, a race of biomechanical conquerors that assimilate organic matter into their war machine.

With UNIT's military expertise, Calloway’s technological acumen, and the Doctor’s wits, the team must rally the last survivors of Vorshan IV to make a final stand. 

Lethbridge-Stewart quickly takes command of the fractured Watchmen, proving that he is still the legendary leader of old. 

Calloway, skeptical of both the Doctor’s methods and Lethbridge-Stewart’s outdated tactics, trusts them as the true scale of the Vharrak threat is revealed.

As the battle rages, the Doctor discovers the horrifying truth: the Vharrak are not merely invaders, but the corrupted remnants of the Vorshan people themselves, transformed by a sentient war engine left behind from a forgotten conflict, a Vharrak soldier tells the Doctor that something is returning through the dark and he will knock four times.

The only way to stop the Vharrak is to shut down the core intelligence that controls them, but doing so will mean the death of what remains of the Vorshan race.

In a desperate gambit, the Doctor uses the TARDIS to create a controlled time-fold, freezing the planet in a moment before its fall, giving its people a second chance in a timeline that will never be written. 

The Doctor, Maya and Lethbridge-Stewart get back to the TARDIS as the time-fold consumes the battlefield, locking the horrors of the Vharrak away forever.

Returning to UNIT, the Doctor and Lethbridge-Stewart thanks Maya and Lethbridge-Stewart recommends to Captain Magambo that Maya receives a promotion for her valiant efforts, Magambo accepts to which Maya thanks both the Doctor and Lethbridge-Stewart, she then says goodbye to the two of them. The Doctor then offers Lethbridge-Stewart one last trip, one final adventure through the stars. Lethbridge-Stewart smiles but declines. "I think, old chap, it’s time I finally stood down." 

The Doctor smiles and with a final salute, Lethbridge-Stewart watches as the TARDIS vanishes.

Maiden Voyage

By Russell T Davies and Jed Mercurio

The TARDIS materialises aboard the USSC Prometheus, embarking on its maiden voyage across an uncharted region of deep space. The ship is state-of-the-art, its hull laced with experimental anti-matter drives, its crew the best in their field. At the helm is Captain Tanya Irving, played by Maxine Peake, a decorated yet pragmatic officer who believes in science, not superstition. The Doctor, intrigued by the ship’s cutting-edge technology, mingles with the crew. But something feels wrong. There’s a faint whispering in the air ducts, shadows that move when no one is watching. The crew dismisses it as paranoia, until people start vanishing. The first to go missing is Lieutenant Kiran Smith, an engineer who was investigating a fluctuation in the anti-matter core. His radio crackles with static, then silence. The Doctor and Captain Irving lead a search, but all they find is his uniform, inside out, as if something had peeled him away from reality itself. One by one, the crew are picked off. The ship’s AI, ORACLE, begins to malfunction, issuing garbled warnings: “Course deviation… anomaly detected… no survivors… no survivors…” Then the Doctor sees them. The Wraiths—shifting, skeletal figures trapped in the ship’s walls, phasing in and out of existence. They are the echoes of another voyage that ended in catastrophe. The Prometheus is caught in a time fracture, reliving the same journey over and over, its crew eternally doomed. The Doctor rushes to the ship’s Temporal Core, the experimental system keeping the Prometheus in its death loop. If he can reverse the time fracture, he might be able to free the ship. But there’s a cost: every version of the crew (the past, present, and future) will merge into one moment of absolute oblivion. No one will survive. Captain Irving refuses to go down without a fight. She orders an evacuation, but the escape pods vanish before they can launch, swallowed by the anomaly. The future has already happened. As the Doctor frantically searches for another way, Irving makes her choice. She locks him out of the core chamber and, with grim resolve, overrides the ship’s systems. "You don’t get to choose who lives or dies, Doctor. Neither do I. But we do get to face it with our eyes open." With one final command, she triggers the ship’s self-destruct. The explosion collapses the time fracture, erasing the Prometheus and all who sailed on her. For a brief moment, silence. Then the TARDIS materialises in the void where the ship once was. Alone. The Doctor stands, staring at the endless black. The weight of another impossible loss settles on his shoulders. He flicks a switch. The TARDIS door slams shut. 

The End of Time, Part One

By Russell T Davies

In a Sanctuary in 4226, an order of fortune tellers warn the Doctor that the Master has returned, heralding "the end of time". On Earth, a cult resurrects the Master, but his widow Lucy sacrifices herself to sabotage the ceremony. The Master is returned to life with incredible strength, but is plagued by constant hunger and suffers from slow degeneration. Arriving back on Earth on Christmas Eve, the Doctor encounters Wilfred. 

The Doctor finds the Master at wastelands outside London, and learns that the Master has been suffering from hearing the sound of drums. The Master is taken by armed troops and placed in custody of Joshua Naismith. Naismith has recovered a broken alien "Immortality Gate" and wants the Master to fix its programming. The Doctor regroups with Wilfred; a woman in white warns Wilfred to arm himself before departing. 

At Naismith's mansion, the Doctor and Wilfred meet two Vinvocci disguised as humans, who assert the Gate is a harmless medical device. 

The Master activates the Gate, which he has reprogrammed to replace all of humankind's DNA with his Time Lord; only Wilfred and Penny are unchanged, and Penny remembers the Doctor. Elsewhere, the President of the Time Lords, Rassilon, played by Simon Callow, asserts their plan to bring back the Time Lords.

The End of Time, Part Two

By Russell T Davies

The Doctor and Wilfred become fugitives from the Master and his duplicates, and take refuge on a spacecraft. The Lord President implants the sound of drums (revealed to be a Time Lord's heartbeat) in the Master's head as a child. He also creates a whitepoint star that allows the Time Lords to bring Gallifrey to Earth, inadvertently releasing the horrors of the Time War alongside it. The Lord President
and other Time Lords appear in Naismith's mansion. The Doctor jumps from the spacecraft into Naismith mansion. He debates shooting the Master or the President, who plans to destroy the Time Vortex and the universe so that the Time Lords can become beings of pure consciousness. The Doctor fires the gun at

the whitepoint star, shattering it. As Gallifrey is pulled back, Rassilon attempts to kill the Doctor, but the Master intervenes, restoring humanity. The Doctor finds Wilfred is
trapped in one of the Gate's control rooms that is about to be flooded by radiation. The Doctor absorbs the radiation, but knows that the radiation has triggered his regeneration.

He then saves Chantelle and Aidan, now married, from a Sontaran, saves Ashley McKenna from being run over and exchanges a meaningful look at Sarah Jane, connects Vince with former midshipman Alonso Frame, meets Joan Redfern's great-granddaughter and inquires if she led a happy life and he reunites with Wilf at Penny’s wedding. The Doctor’s final stop is the Powell Estate on New Year’s Day 2000 and he sees Rose again, he tells her to have a great new year as she leaves. When Rose is gone, the Doctor staggers away as the pain of the radiation poisoning is finally setting in. A few feet away from the TARDIS, he collapses. He

looks up to see the woman standing with Rassilon, the woman Wilf saw in his dreams, standing calmly.

As the Doctor struggles to his feet, the woman tells him that the universe will sing him to his sleep and "this song is ending, but the story never ends." This gives the Doctor the last bit of strength he needs to make it to the TARDIS. In the Sanctuary, the fortune tellers sing "Vale Decem" in chorus.

The Doctor enters the TARDIS. After taking off his coat, he notices his right hand glowing with regenerative energy. He sets the TARDIS in flight as he circles the console. Fighting back tears, he utters: "I don't want to go..."

As the words leave him, golden energy radiates from both his hands and face as he breathes heavily. Taking a deep breath, the Doctor stretches his arms out as golden energy bursts from his hands and head and his body regenerates. The regenerative energy shatters the TARDIS windows and sets the console room ablaze, blowing out the lights and raining debris down from above. The Doctor's face is consumed by the regeneration energy. The Doctor closes his eyes as his facial features fade and morph into those of a new man with dark hair, who is screaming in pain. As the strain of the regeneration wears off, we see the Eleventh Doctor, played by Richard Coyle. He stumbles back with a look of surprise. He quickly examines himself to make sure all his body parts are still in the same place (although he is shocked at his new appearance).

Remembering there was something important that he forgot, the Doctor tries recalling what it was until another explosion forces him to his knees. Realising that what he was trying to remember was that the TARDIS is now crashing, the Doctor oddly seems happy as he jumps over to the monitor — it shows the ship spinning wildly towards Earth. Delighting in the chaos, the Doctor clings to the console laughing maniacally and lets out a triumphant “Yee-Ha!”

The 2004 Specials were seen as Doctor Who at the very top of it’s success, they were met with high praise with critics and fans alike and they felt that this was the best ending for the RTD and the Michael French era. Overall the RTD era would be seen as the most successful era of Doctor Who since the Hinchcliffe era and French’s Tenth Doctor would be considered to be one of, if not, the best Doctor of all time, next to the likes of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.

Thanks Billybob, for the artwork to The End of Time.