Tom Salinsky

I said it last time, and it bears repeating: the build-up is easy and the payoff is hard. One of the best ways of making the payoff really land is to have our hero achieve victory at some personal cost. The first two RTD season finales achieved this with considerable style. In Doomsday, the Doctor loses Rose and in The Parting of the Ways, he loses his life (he got better). Subsequent finales didn’t have the same power, with David Tennant’s exit undermined a little by his rather self-indulgent pre-expiry victory lap.

But we knew, or I guess we knew, that Russell wasn’t going to kill Ruby, murder Mel or have Ncuti make an early exit. So the nearest we get to a squeeze of vinegar to help the triumph over adversity feel a bit more earned is the reunion between birth mother and daughter, which felt real and complicated in the best tradition of nu-Who, but came after the villain was summarily despatched and all of the dusted citizens of the universe popped back into life again.

The other problem for finales is you have to answer all of those niggling questions. So, yes, we find out that Ruby’s mother was just a girl young in trouble, but her significance to those travelling in the TARDIS – a TARDIS with a malevolent quasi-Egyptian god wrapped invisibly around it – created a weak point in time. That’s a fair enough explanation as far as it goes, but I can only assume that the Time Window was using a hefty dose of artistic license as it depicted her pointing out a signpost to nobody with such melodramatic flair.

And of course, as soon as the world turns to sand, the spectre of a reset button rears its head. That’s the problem with bringing the apocalypse as opposed to merely threatening it. But the world stayed dead for an appreciable amount of time, and – thanks to that heartbreaking scene with Sian Clifford – we felt it as opposed to were merely informed about it. The journey also contained much that was worthwhile, with Bonnie Langford doing wonderful work, whether roaring through “London” on a Vespa, tenderly fondling Colin Baker’s old tie, collapsing in near-exhaustion on the floor of the TARDIS, or possessed by Sutekh and giving us magnificent claw-hand-of-evil acting.

Ncuti and Millie showed their class here too, with Millie’s fake-out “God of nothing” moment being a stand-out – and if you thought the secret of her mum was pure bathos, then here’s the Doctor saving the day with bungee cord, a whistle and a spoon. Detailed explanations of the whistle and the spoon were apparently both written and then discarded in favour of more showing-not-telling. It’s fine to cut pedantic explanations if they aren’t needed, but this walks a fine line between “It’s a neat trick, I’ll explain later” and “Details are boring, on with the adventure.” I think it’s on the right side of that line, but it’s a close one.

So, this is an episode of moments rather than a truly cohesive hour of storytelling, but many of the moments are fabulous, with Kate Stewart’s sign off, the Remembered TARDIS, Mrs Flood cos-playing as Romana/The White Guardian/Mary Poppins/Jackanory and Ncuti’s howl of despair into the echoing void. It’s clear this is a TARDIS team for the ages, but I hope next year Russell remembers that he doesn’t have to end the entire universe for us to care – sometimes just seeing two characters holding hands in adversity is enough.