The 2008–2010 specials of the Britishscience fiction television programme Doctor Who are a series of five specials that linked the programme's fourth and fifth series. The specials were produced in lieu of a full series in 2009, to allow the new production team for the programme enough time to prepare for the fifth series in 2010, in light of Russell T Davies's decision to step down as showrunner, with Steven Moffat taking his place in the fifth series. Preceded by the 2008 Christmas Special, "The Next Doctor", the first special, "Planet of the Dead", was aired on 11 April 2009, the second special "The Waters of Mars", was aired on 15 November 2009, with the last special, the two-part episode "The End of Time", broadcasting over two weeks on 25 December 2009 and 1 January 2010.
The specials started production in April 2008 for "The Next Doctor", and filming for "The End of Time" began in March 2009. Two supplemental episodes were also filmed alongside the specials. "Music of the Spheres" was filmed for the 2008 Doctor Who Prom in July 2008, and the animated six-episode serial Dreamland was produced for the BBC's Red Button service, which was released over six consecutive days in November 2009. Midway through the sequence of specials (commencing with "Planet of the Dead"), production switched to filming in high-definition.
"The End of Time" was the first two-part episode with an overall title and episode numbers since Survival in season 26, the final serial broadcast during the series' original run. It is one of only two stories in the revival era to do this, the other being "Spyfall" (2020).
The Tenth Doctor lands in Victorian London and, overhearing cries for help, encounters a man calling himself "the Doctor" and his companion Rosita Farisi attempting to capture a Cybershade, which escapes. The Doctor initially believes this man is a future incarnation of himself suffering from amnesia. The man is investigating a series of disappearances around London and the Cybershades. They discover Cybermen data-storage infostamps, which the man recalls holding when he lost his memories. The Doctor realises that the man is actually Jackson Lake, a missing human who believed he was the Doctor due to absorbing the data of infostamp about the Doctor. The Cybermen have constructed, using child labour, a "CyberKing" (a giant mechanical Cyberman), using their human ally Miss Hartigan as its controller. The Doctor discovers another entrance to the Cybermen's base under Jackson's house. The Doctor, Jackson, and Rosita manage to rescue the children, including Jackson's son. The CyberKing rampages over London. The Doctor uses the infostamps to sever Hartigan's connection to the CyberKing. The emotional feedback destroys both the Cybermen and Hartigan. Using technology from Jackson's cellar, the Doctor sucks the toppling CyberKing into the Time Vortex.
Lady Christina de Souza, a thief, steals an ancient gold chalice and catches a bus with the Doctor just before the bus passes through a wormhole and ends up on the desert planet San Helios. The Doctor contacts UNIT to return the other passengers safely to Earth. The Doctor and Christina scout ahead, while the others attempt to repair the bus, and are taken to a wrecked spaceship by two alien Tritovores. The Doctor realises that a swarm of stingray-like aliens that feed by destroying the ecosystem is approaching them. The spaceship is revealed to have been crashed by the stingrays, who kill the Tritovores. The Doctor then realises that the wormhole was created by the stingrays to move to their next feeding planet; Earth. With the swarm nearly on them, the Doctor uses technology from the spaceship and the chalice to enable the bus to fly. They fly back through the wormhole just as UNIT close it, but not before three stingrays get through, which UNIT quickly kill. Christina is arrested but the Doctor allows her to escape using the bus. Carmen, a passenger who is slightly psychic, tells the Doctor "He will knock four times" before his death, unnerving him.
The Doctor arrives on Mars in 2059, near humanity's first Martian colony, "Bowie Base One". He arrives at the base, where he is detained by Captain Adelaide Brooke. As the crew interrogate him, he discovers that today, the base will explode, killing the entire crew. He tries to stay uninvolved, but Adelaide forces him to assist. Two crewmen appear to be in a zombie-like state, generating copious amounts of water. With the remaining crew uninfected, Adelaide orders the crew to evacuate to their rocket back to Earth while setting the base to self-destruct. The Doctor explains to Adelaide what he knows and why he cannot get involved, and begins to leave. Ed, the rocket's pilot, is infected, and sacrifices himself by causing the rocket to self-destruct, stranding the remaining crew. The Doctor rescues Adelaide and the two surviving crew, Yuri and Mia. He returns them to Earth. The Doctor insists that he has the power to change the future of the human race and no-one can stop him; Adelaide returns home and kills herself, leaving history mostly unchanged. Ood Sigma appears; the Doctor asks if it is time for him to die, but Sigma vanishes.
On the Ood-Sphere in 4226, the Ood warn the Doctor that the Master has returned, heralding "the end of time". On Earth, a cult of women resurrect the Master, but Lucy Saxon sabotages the ceremony, causing the Master to be brought back with incredible strength and constant hunger. 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 own; only Wilfred and Donna are unchanged, and Donna remembers the Doctor. Elsewhere, the President of the Time Lords, Rassilon, asserts their plan to bring back the Time Lords.
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's 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. After returning Wilfred home, the Doctor visits past companions. Inside his TARDIS, the Doctor regenerates into his eleventh incarnation (Matt Smith).
Supplemental episodes
"Music of the Spheres" was filmed for the 2008 Doctor Who Prom,[4] and the animated six-episode serial Dreamland was produced for the BBC's Red Button service.[5]
The beginning of the episode depicts the Tenth Doctor composing Ode to the Universe: a symphony based on the "music of the spheres"—an aural representation of the Universe's gravity patterns. During the composition, a Graske teleports into the TARDIS to warn the Doctor about the imminent opening of a portal linking the TARDIS to the Doctor Who Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. The Doctor conducts the orchestra in a performance before he realises the Graske has escaped into the Prom with his water pistol. He forces the Graske's return by "reversing the polarity of the neutron flow" and banishes him from the TARDIS and to the other side of the universe. At the end of the episode, he tells the viewer that the music of the spheres encompasses everyone.
In Day Springs, Nevada, 1958, the Doctor visits a local diner, and meets the waitress on duty, Cassie Rice, as well as Jimmy Stalkingwolf, Cassie's friend, both of them local Nevadans. While in Day Springs, the Doctor becomes interested in an extraterrestrial object, which draws the attention of a man in black. Also seeking the Doctor is an alien warrior, the ruthless Lord Azlok, an alien Viperox, as well as Colonel Stark, who serves as the commander of Area 51, a military base primarily known as Dreamland. The Doctor, along with the help of Cassie, Jimmy, and Jimmy's grandfather Night Eagle, plan a mission to rescue husband and wife Rivesh Mantilax and Saruba Valek, two stranded aliens, without being caught by the American armed forces or Lord Azlok.
Following the specials Russell T Davies stood down as show runner for Doctor Who after resurrecting it after sixteen years off the air.
In his book The Writer's Tale, Russell T Davies reveals that the plan to have only specials for 2009 was to allow the new production team, headed by new lead writer Steven Moffat, enough time to prepare for the full fifth series in 2010. David Tennant took this opportunity to appear in a stage production of Hamlet. For practical reasons, these specials continued to use series 4 production codes.[19][page needed]
Russell T Davies announced his departure from the series as show runner, head writer and executive producer of the show on 20 May 2008, with his final episode airing in 2010.[20] The specials not only marked an end to Davies's role as the show runner, but also Tennant's reign as the Doctor. On 28 October 2008 at the National Television Awards during his speech after winning Outstanding Drama Performance for his work in the fourth series, Tennant announced that he would be standing down as the Doctor for the fifth series and that the specials would be his last.[21]
Writing
"I would have thought that when I handed in the last script I might have burst into tears or got drunk or partied with 20 naked men, but when these great moments happen you find that real life just carries on. The emotion goes into the scripts."
Davies' role in late 2008 was split between writing the 2009 specials and preparing for the transition between his and Moffat's production team; one chapter of The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter discusses plans between him, Gardner, and Tennant to announce Tennant's departure live during ITV's National Television Awards in October 2008.[23] His final full script for Doctor Who was finished in the early morning of 4 March 2009, and filming of the episode closed on 20 May 2009.[24][25] Russell T Davies co-wrote "Planet of the Dead" with Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its 2005 revival.[26] Davies also co-wrote the next episode, "The Waters of Mars", with Phil Ford.[27]
Writing in his regular column in Doctor Who Magazine 416, Davies revealed that the original title for "Part One" of "The End of Time" was "The Final Days of Planet Earth", while "Part Two" was always referred to as "The End of Time".[28] Due to the sheer scale of the story, however, it was decided that both instalments needed the same title, differentiated by part numbers,[28] the first such instance since Survival.[28] Davies's script for the second episode finished with the Tenth Doctor's final line, "I don't want to go", followed by action text describing the regeneration and ending with the words, "And there he is. Blinking. Dazed. The New Man."[29] He then sent the script to his successor Steven Moffat, who is responsible for all of the Eleventh Doctor's dialogue that follows.[30] Moffat, as incoming executive producer, also assisted in the production of the final scene.[31]
Music
Murray Gold composed the soundtrack to these episodes, with orchestration by Ben Foster.
Filming
"The Next Doctor" was filmed in April 2008 at Gloucester Cathedral,[32]St Woolos Cemetery in Newport[33] and the streets of Gloucester, where shooting was hampered by up to 1,000 onlookers. The main setting of Torchwood, their Torchwood Hub was also redesigned and used as the workshop for the children.[34]
"Planet of the Dead" was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high-definition,[35] prior episodes having been filmed in standard-definition and then upscaled for broadcast on BBC HD. The two major filming locations of "Planet of the Dead" were the desert of Dubai, used for scenes on the "planet of the dead",[36] and the Queen's Gate Tunnel in Butetown, Cardiff, used for the majority of Earth-bound scenes.[37]
Filming for "The Waters of Mars" began on 23 February 2009.[38] In late February, Tennant, Duncan and other actors were seen filming in Victoria Place, Newport.[39] The filming took place on a city street, which the production team covered with artificial snow.[39][40] The glasshouse scenes were filmed in the National Botanic Garden of Wales, Carmarthenshire.[41] The first location filming for "The End of Time" took place on Saturday, 21 March 2009 at a bookstore in Cardiff.[42]Jessica Hynes was filmed signing a book titled A Journal of Impossible Things, by Verity Newman.[43]
The 2008–2010 specials are five specials that linked the programme's fourth and fifth series. They began on 25 December 2008 with "The Next Doctor", with three airing in 2009, and concluded on 1 January 2010 with the second part of "The End of Time".[44]
Doctor Who Confidential also aired alongside each episode of the specials, continuing on from the previous series. "The Next Doctor" was the first special to be accompanied by its own Confidential episode, and was considered part of the fourth Confidential series.[45] Alongside the accompanying episodes for each of the specials, three additional Confidential episodes alongside the specials' episodes: one for the past five Christmas specials, one for the 2008 Doctor Who prom, and one for the revealing of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.[46]
Preliminary figures show that "The Next Doctor" had a viewing audience of 11.71 million during its original airing, with a peak at 12.58 million viewers. It was the second most watched programme of Christmas Day 2008, behind Wallace and Gromit's A Matter of Loaf and Death.[78] Final viewing figures show an audience of 13.1 million viewers.[79] The episode had an Appreciation Index figure of 86 (considered Excellent), making it the second most-enjoyed programme on mainstream television on Christmas Day.[79]
Overnight figures estimated that "Planet of the Dead" was watched by 8.41 million people. The initial showing had an Appreciation Index of 88: considered excellent.[80][81] The final viewing figure for the initial broadcast was 9.54 million viewers on BBC One, making it the fifth most watched programme of the week and the most watched programme aired on BBC HD at that time.[80] Including repeats in the following week and viewings on the BBC iPlayer, 13.89 million viewers watched the episode in total.[82] The episode received average critical reviews. Simon Brew of science fiction blog Den of Geek said the episode was "by turns ambitious and predictable" but "still quite entertaining". Brew positively reviewed Michelle Ryan's performance—finding it on par with her role in Bionic Woman rather than her role as Zoe Slater in EastEnders. He closed his review by saying that "'Planet of the Dead' was passable enough": he thought it "never really gelled" for him.[83]Charlie Jane Anders of io9 compared it to two previous episodes, "The Impossible Planet" and "Midnight", both of which she enjoyed. She thought that the episode was "a pretty solid adventure with a cool set of monsters".[84]
According to overnight viewing figures, "The Waters of Mars" was watched by 9.1 million people.[74] The episode also received an Appreciation Index score of 88.[73] More accurate, consolidated statistics from the BARB state that official ratings ended up at 10.32 million viewers for the UK premiere and that "The Waters of Mars" was the fifth most watched programme of the week.[85] It was first broadcast on a Sunday, the only non-Christmas episode of the revived series to air outside the usual Saturday evening slot. Critical reception was generally positive. Sam Wollaston of The Guardian complimented the episode for showing "a side to the Doctor ... that we haven't really seen before – indecisive, confused, at times simply plain wrong" and Tennant's tenure of the part overall as bringing "humanity and humour to the part"[86] Though Robert Colvile of The Daily Telegraph criticised "the glaring inconsistencies", he complimented the scenario for "allow[ing] us to watch Tennant wrestle with his conscience and curiosity ... [in what] was a logical progression for the character".[87]
Overnight ratings placed Part One of "The End of Time" as the third most-watched programme of Christmas Day,[76] and an appreciation index score of 87, considered 'Excellent'.[75] Final consolidated ratings placed Part One as the third most watched program of Christmas Day, behind The Royle Family and EastEnders with a final figure of 11.57 million viewers. This is the highest timeshift that the show has received since its revival (the previous highest being 11.4 million for The Next Doctor in Christmas 2008).[85] Overnight ratings placed Part Two as the second most-watched programme of New Year's Day, behind EastEnders, with a provisional viewing figure of 10.4 million viewers.[88] Official BARB ratings placed Part Two as the second most watched programme of the week behind EastEnders at 11.79 million viewers.[89] In a review of the first part of the story, Peter Robins of The Guardian concedes that when the story is done it is the quieter more emotional parts from the beginning of the episode that the viewer will remember. Robins also notes that Cribbins seems to be playing the same role that Tate did by "becoming the tragic hero while remaining the comic relief".[90] Andrew Pettie of The Daily Telegraph commented on Cribbins' performance, and states that he cut a King Lear like figure and notes that the Master's plan was evil even by his standards.[91] Mark Lawson of The Guardian stated that the plot device of the Master repopulating the human race as himself "gave Simm the chance to wear a lot of different costumes and the special effects department to show some of the digital ingenuity which has helped the show's renaissance." Lawson also went on to praise Tennant for bringing a "proper tragic force" to the role and was again shown in this last story. Lawson states that "the final line Davies gave to Tennant was a suddenly regretful "I don't want to go!", and it is likely that, somewhere inside, both actor and writer feel a little like that."[92]
Selected pieces of score from these specials (from "The Next Doctor" to "The End of Time"), as composed by Murray Gold, were released on 4 October 2010 by Silva Screen Records under the title of Series 4 – The Specials.[96] 47 tracks were released on two CD, with a total length of 116 minutes, 9 seconds.[97] The iTunes Store release also includes a digital booklet and two bonus tracks, one each from "The Next Doctor" and "The End of Time".[98]
