Not only did I not do any push-ups today, but I actually ended up at Urgent Care. I have a sinus infection, and am  now on antibiotics. Hopefully they will kick in rapidly, because four days from now I have a full run through of my Fringe show plus two performances. Right now I can't even sing a note. Should make for an interesting weekend.

But hey, I watched the end of the Tenth Doctor era this morning, so at least there's that.

The End of Time - Part Two

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The back half of this story is much, much stronger than the front. At 75 minutes it is also the longest single episode of the entire modern series, and comes in third overall behind the 90's tv move and The Five Doctors. By this point David Tennant had been in the role for nearly five years, having debuted in the June of 2005 now making his swan song in January of 2010. In that time he raised Doctor Who into the stratosphere internationally and turning it into a cash cow for the BBC. That being the case, when the time comes for him to say his farewells he gets a full fifteen minutes to make a Lord of the Rings style cascading epilogue sequence (and deservedly so) before handing things over to Matt Smith.

But before he gets there, he has to deal with about eight billion Masters plus a power-mad Rassillon. Oh, and a well-meaning but hapless Wilfred Mott. So the story in the back half has the Doctor and Wilf flee into orbit with the two CactusFace aliens, where the Doctor and Wilf have another spectacular heart-to-heart about aging. The Doctor knows he is dying soon, and he is steeling himself for that final moment.

The final showdown, when it comes, consists of the Master succeeding in summoning the Time Lords from their time-locked NotABubble, and then the Doctor standing between the two sides trying to decide who he will be forced to kill. In the end he decides to shoot some of the Alien Whatever Technology instead. The Master is de-templated from the rest of humanity, the link to Gallifrey is closed, and the Doctor manages to not be killed after all.

That is until he realizes that Wilfred is trapped inside a magic Whatever booth, and the only way to rescue him is for the Doctor to enter the other side and absorb all of the raging nuclear energy. All I can say is, it's a hell of a scene and both David Tennant and Bernard Cribbins give powerhouse performances there. It is literally the culmination of the entire Tenth Doctor era, and it does not disappoint.

This is followed by Ten making one last tour to wave goodbye at all of his former companions (including setting up Captain Jack with Allons-y Alonzo in an alien bar, and visiting Joan Redfern's granddaughter on a book signing tour). Oh, and of course there is one last visit to the Sainted Rose, because sure why not. And then Ood Sigma comes to lead the universe in singing a song while the Doctor dies, he goes back to the TARDIS, says plaintively that he doesn't want to go, and then he pretty much explodes and takes out the entire original NuWho TARDIS set along with him.

(That latter happened specifically because the set had been built for standard definition cameras, and by 2010 they had moved to high-def and needed to build a brand new set.)

And then, boom, we get the Eleventh Doctor (still not a ginger) who looks at the building chaos around him, spits on the console, and geefully goes about crashing the TARDIS into the Earth below.

As final episodes go, I don't know how they could have topped this one. It culminates everything that Russel T Davies wanted to do when he set about resurrecting the show, it gives David Tennant plenty of both dramatic and comedic moments, it pays respect to all of the major players from the past five years, and then it gleefully hands the whole thing over to an entire new team and sends them off to make the series new again. 

Tomorrow: A new Doctor, new companions, a new TARDIS console room, and I hit three million steps in this ridiculous project.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Tenth, Eleventh
Companion(s): Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble, Mickey Smith, Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler
Episode(s): The End of Time - Part 2
Steps Walked: 9,849 today, 2,995,513 total
Distance Walked: 5.00 miles today, 1,562.55 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 3,714 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
Is the Doctor So, So Sorry?: There's a beautiful scene in which he is sorry for Wilf, who is reeling from the Master's global takeover
Weight: 252.68 lbs (five day moving average), net change -54.62 lbs