Journey's End (TV story)

"The ending approaches... People and planets and stars will become dust. And the dust will become atoms, and the atoms will become... nothing. This is my ultimate victory! The destruction of reality itself!!"

- Davros

This is the 13th and final episode of Series 4 and featured 6 companions of the Doctor. It is a continued on a cliffhanger from Episode 12.

Synopsis
The entire universe is in danger as the Daleks activate their masterplan, and enslave 21st century Earth. The Doctor is helpless, and even the TARDIS faces destruction. The only hope lies with the Doctor's secret army of companions– but as they join forces to battle Davros himself, the prophecy declares that one of them will die.

Following on immediately from the end of "The Stolen Earth", The Doctor is regenerating inside the TARDIS while Donna Noble, Captain Jack Harkness and Rose Tyler watch in horror. However, the Doctor transfers his regenerative energy into the container which carries his severed hand. He has healed himself, but chosen not to change his appearance. The TARDIS is transported to the Daleks to the Crucible and rendered powerless. The Doctor, Jack, and Rose leave it, but Donna is distracted and while looking back, the TARDIS door slams closed. Before the Doctor can free her, the Daleks dump the TARDIS into a waste shoot where it will be destroyed. As the TARDIS interior explodes around her, Donna collapses near the severed hand, and energy flows between it and her. The hand bursts out of the container, and forms as a new Doctor, although this Doctor has only one heart and has picked up some of Donna's mannerisms. With his help, the TARDIS escapes destruction and gives the new Doctor and Donna time to come with a plan.

In Torchwood Three, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones find themselves safely in a time lock created by Toshiko Sato, preventing the Dalek from entering but also preventing them leaving. Sarah Jane Smith is saved from two Daleks by Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler, but in order to follow the doctor, lay down their guns and allow themselves to be captured, taken to the Crucible. Martha Jones says her goodbyes to her mother and makes for an abandoned castle in Germany where one of five Ostenhagen stations is hidden, and waits for contact from the other bases.

Aboard the Crucible, Jack creates a distraction but is shot by the Daleks; as the Doctor and Rose are taken to the Vault where Davros is held, Jack's immortality allows him to escape. With the Doctor and Rose contained, Davros explains that the 27 planets form an energy pattern that is then amplified into a "reality bomb", able to break apart the forces holding everything together. Mickey, Jackie, and Sarah Jane escape a test chamber where this effect is shown to the Doctor just in time. Jack finds his way to the three, and with a locket from Sarah Jane, creates a device that will implode the Crucible. Meanwhile, Martha makes contact with two other bases and broadcasts a signal to the Crucible, promising to use the Ostenhagen key to detonate 25 nuclear warheads until the Earth's crust to destroy it and disable the reality bomb. However, the Daleks are able to lock onto their positions and beams Martha, Jack, Mickey, Jackie, and Sarah Jane to the Vault.

The Daleks prepare to activate the reality bomb that will wipe out all matter in this and every parallel universe through the rifts in the Medusa Cascade, but the new Doctor and Donna arrive in the TARDIS. Both, however, are stunned by shots from Davros. The reality bomb countdown reaches zero, but nothing happens; Donna has manipulated the controls to disable it. The Doctor recognizes that the creation of the new Doctor has had an unintended side effect: Donna is now half Time Lord herself, sharing the Doctor's intellect. Donna and the new Doctor free the others, and with the help of the original Doctor, disable the Daleks and start to send the planets back to their proper time and space. Before Earth can be sent, the machinery is destroyed, and the original Doctor races into the TARDIS to replace the functionality of the broken machine. Realizing that Dalek Caan has seen the end of the Dalek race and has been manipulating time to achieve this, the new Doctor uses the remaining machinery to destroy all of the Daleks and their fleet. The rest of the companions flee to the TARDIS, and while the Doctor offers to save Davros, but he refuses, calling the Doctor the "Destroyer of Worlds". The Crucible is destroyed.

The Doctor enlists the help of the other companions, making contact with the base Torchwood and with Luke Smith, Mr. Smith and K-9, to help use the TARDIS return the Earth to its proper place. Sarah Jane says her goodbyes, as well as Jack, Martha, and Mickey, who has decided to stay in this universe. Using a retroactively closing rift, the Doctor returns Rose and Jackie to the alternate dimension and leaves the new Doctor with her, as he will now grow old with Rose, no longer able to regenerate due to the human influence.

Returning to their universe, Donna finds she begins to have trouble thinking; the Doctor explains that the human mind cannot take in the Time Lord mental abilities. To save her, he wipes her mind of all her encounters with the Doctor, returning her home and explaining to her family, Sylvia Noble and Wilfred Mott, that she must never be reminded of her time with the Doctor or else she will die. As Donna recovers consciousness, she shows no interest in the Doctor; he leaves, though Wilfred promises that he will remember the Doctor whenever he looks into the sky.

Cast

 * The Doctor - David Tennant
 * Donna Noble - Catherine Tate
 * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
 * Martha Jones - Freema Agyeman
 * Captain Jack Harkness - John Barrowman
 * Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
 * Mickey Smith - Noel Clarke
 * Jackie Tyler - Camille Coduri
 * Luke Smith - Thomas Knight
 * Gwen Cooper - Eve Myles
 * Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd
 * Wilfred Mott - Bernard Cribbins
 * Sylvia Noble - Jacqueline King
 * Francine Jones - Adjoa Andoh
 * Davros - Julian Bleach
 * Dalek Voice - Nicholas Briggs
 * Voice of Mr Smith - Alexander Armstrong
 * Voice of K9 - John Leeson
 * German Woman - Valda Aviks
 * Scared Woman - Shobu Kapoor
 * Anna Zhou - Elizabeth Tan
 * Liberian Man - Michael Price
 * Dalek Operators - Barney Edwards, Nick Pegg, David Hankinson, Anthony Spargo, Gethin Jones

Story notes

 * According to DWM this is the biggest finale of Doctor Who ever.
 * Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones operates a Dalek in this episode, returning to Doctor Who since his brief appearance as a Cyberman in The Age of Steel.
 * This will be the longest series finale at 65 minutes long, longer even than most of the Christmas specials, except for Voyage of the Damned, which was 71 minutes.
 * Dalek Caan refers to the Doctor as a 'threefold man'. The meaning becomes clear in this episode with both the copy of the Doctor and 'Doctor-Donna'.
 * This episode marks the first series finale to show a preview of the upcoming Christmas Special. After the credits the Cybermen are said to return in the episode.
 * This episode tells us that Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister, actually died in the previous episode.
 * Davros named the Doctor 'The Destroyer of Worlds' and maybe a reference to Fires of Pompei when it was said the Doctors name was sealed in the Cascade of Medusa herself or to the Doctor being the Ka Fariq Gatri.
 * The Osterhagen key would destroy the Earth, Osterhagen just happens to be an anagram of Earth's gone
 * This episode introduces an alternative to regeneration for Time Lords called Meta-Crisis. This episode didn't introduce it. It just named it. The regeneration of the Doctor's daughter was a meta crisis.

Ratings
to be added

Myths and rumours

 * The week between the cliffhanger ending of The Stolen Earth and the broadcast of Journey's End included some of the most intense fan speculation and media attention in franchise history. The significance of the cliffhanger, which appeared to show the Doctor regenerating, along with previously reported speculation regarding Donna and other characters led to many speculations being circulated on fan discussion boards and the media. Among some of the most notable:
 * That David Tennant was in fact leaving the series, and that leaked photos and other information regarding him being in the 2008 Christmas special (as well as media reports the preceding week that he was negotiating to return in 2010) were either a "red herring" or that the Christmas special was to include a flashback.
 * The true nature of Donna was the subject of much speculation, with some fans suggesting her to actually be The Rani or Romana living under the influence of a Chameleon Arch, or a manifestation of the Master.
 * And the prediction that a companion would die led some to believe Donna, Martha or Rose would be the ones destined to die (since it had already been reported that John Barrowman would be returning to Torchwood and Elisabeth Sladen to The Sarah Jane Adventures, ruling out their characters' demise.
 * The appearance of K-9 was a surprise to many as it had been previously reported that the character would not be appearing in the episode, given the fact the rights to the character are currently held by another party for the planned K-9 television series.

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors
''This is actually a moot point - we already know that at the end of a Timelord's last life they can still regenerate, they just ''don't survive. Either the Timelord has only a limited number of bodies or a limited number of energy cycles, if the former is ''true then the Doctor has not used one of his possible incarnations - he still has the same body - or he has used the extra, otherwise ''wasted energy cycle. Either way he would still have all of his incarnations left.''
 * Since the Doctor went through the whole regeneration process, is he now in his eleventh incarnation or did feeding off the energy to his hand allow him to still have three regenerations left? A Meta-Crisis appears to be an alternative form of preventing death while at the same time preventing regeneration, therefor the Doctor still has three regenerations left since he prevented this one. By feeding the regeneration energy into his severed hand the Doctor healed his wounds without regenerating. Meta-Crisis's would mostly likely be rare occurrences with Time Lords since they require a severed appendage. -One other possibility to consider. This is now the Doctor's first regeneration. You may recall on the Valiant the Master took away the Doctor's regenerations and put all years of the Doctor's previous incarnations onto the current incarnation. When the Doctor was restored by the psychic net, were his 12 regenerations not also restored? The Master didn't take his regenerations away, he only aged the Doctor while suspending his ability to regenerate. The psychic energies only gave him the power he needed to undo the changes the Master had done.
 * If the TARDIS's power had gone how does the monitor screen work? The heart of the TARDIS was still beating, which could have supplied some power.
 * When Martha teleports and hears the German Daleks why does the TARDIS not translate the German? The TARDIS wasn't anywhere near her... Also, she understood German, so it wouldn't have needed to be translated. Also, the TARDIS had just 'switched off'. It wouldn't have worked.
 * Because he regenerated, then wouldn't he now technically be the eleventh Doctor? Why didn't he do this every other time he regenerated? Because he hasn't always had a dismembered limb of his own body near by.
 * The Daleks were maintaining the atmosphere around the Earth - probably from the Crucible. However, when the Crucible was destroyed and the TARDIS pulled the Earth back to where it should be, shouldn't the atmosphere have disappeared, killing everyone on Earth? The Doctor takes over and maintains the atmosphere from the TARDIS. He says this when he tows the Earth back
 * When the Doctor wiped Donna's mind, it looked like he only wiped the memories of the her time with the Doctor. Couldn't he have just wiped the Time Lord stuff that was overloading her brain? No, as if she remembers the Time Lord stuff she will burn up, and it would be easy to remember if you're traveling around with one!
 * Wouldn't the Nuclear Warheads placed under the crust have melted? Well, UNIT most likely would have thought about this, and provided some sort of way to protect them. They do have a vast arsenal in their power after all.
 * When we see Martha saying goodbye to her Mother, the laptop in the background cycling through number continuously, but when we have the close-up of Martha, the numbers have frozen but we can still hear them. Actually only the first line is frozen. The Second was still shifting.
 * If Donna, a human, can't live with a Time Lord's mind, doesn't that mean neither can the human Doctor? ''The human Doctor was half Time Lord, the mental half Time Lord, such as mind, but the physical part human (like Jenny), such as aging. Jenny was full Time Lord, but your point stands. He was simply a different part human. Donna is physiologically fully human but is carrying the Doctor's mind within a human brain - the half-human, half-Time Lord Doctor, while not being able to regenerate and only having one heart and probably having some other human physical characteristics, evidently has a Time Lord brain which can safely carry a copy of the Doctor's mind.' (The second Doctor was 'born' Half-Human and Half-Timelord, Donna was born 100% human. While Doctor.2 only got a few human traits like the aging and no regenerating part, Donna was never meant to carry the mind of a Time Lord. Stands to reason she gets ill effects.)'


 * What was the point of the doctor deactivating Jack's wrist teleporter if he can just put the numbers back in again. He may have locked it so only he can reactivate it. Or changed the numbers required to something more complex.
 * We didn't find out who was controlling the Daleks if Davros was called a "pet". It is assumed to be the Red Dalek, as he was the one seen giving most of the orders in this and the previous episode.
 * Why did Martha have to travel to Germany to activate the Osterhagen key when the other soldiers were in pods in their home countries? The UNIT base in New York - as we saw - was destroyed by the Daleks. The nearest Pod, would have been in Germany. - Or possibly the main pod was in Germany. Martha states that she is in Osterhagen 1, so we can assume that she was indeed in the main pod.


 * Dalek Caan stated that a companion would die. However no-one actually died, as Donna just lost her memory of the Doctor.Dalek Caan was talking in riddles just as many prophets in the Doctor Who universe do, which means not everything they say happens in the literal sense. With Rose's prophesied death it was actually revealed that she was merely listed amongst the dead in her native universe. With Donna the person she had become while traveling with the Doctor had been wiped away; he outright states to Wilf and Sylvia that that aspect of Donna was dead, technically fulfilling the prophecy, albeit in the same roundabout way that Rose told the story of how she "died" in Doomsday.


 * In the flashbacks of people who have died for the Doctor, it shows many of the cast of Love & Monsters, however by the time the Doctor appeared in the episode many of them had already died. How did the Doctor knew who they were? It can be assumed that when the Doctor attempted to help Elton Pope and Ursula Blake that they related the story of LINDA to him. Also, in Time Crash the Fifth Doctor indicates that his past incarnations have also met and interacted with the members of LINDA.


 * The moon remained in position when the Earth had moved. The moon should have locked onto the strongest gravitational force (the Sun) and been pulled towards it. How does one move a planet millions of miles? Assume there's jargony pseudoscience involved. The "jargony pseudoscience" was of Dalek origin, and there was no reason for the Daleks to go out of their way to keep the moon where it should be. If left alone the moon's orbit would adjust to the change in mass eventually. But this process would take decades if not centuries. No indication the earth was gone that long.


 * So do humans finally know the truth about alien life in the universe or will they find some excuse to explain the situation like after the Christmas invasion and battle of Canary Wharf. The Doctor says it will be treated as "just a story", as always. Think Sunnydale Syndrome.


 * Why do the Daleks stationed in Germany go to the trouble of translating their orders into fairly comprehensible German, but use the made-up word 'extermenieren' instead of the verb 'ausrotten', which is the true German translation for 'exterminate'? Linguistic issues aside, Martha did not have access to the TARDIS or the Doctor and their associated automatic translation services. Presumably if she'd landed in Japan, they'd be speaking Japanese.


 * The Doctor Who Paul McGann movie asserted that the Doctor was already half-human yet here we have a truly "half-human half-Time Lord" Doctor who is quite different since he only has one life and one heart. This seems to confirm the belief that the Eighth Doctor's claim of being half-human was actually an elaborate trick to fool The Master in The Enemy Within. Agreed, many fans already see the Doctor's claim to be non-canon, and the introduction of the chameleon arch in Human Nature establishes at least one "out" related to this, notwithstanding various spin-off fiction that have offered their own spin. File under "I'll explain later".


 * In the previously mentioned flashback of people who have died for the Doctor, it shows Ursula Blake and Jenny, who are later resurrected from the dead. How come it did not show Jack Harkness, who also died for the Doctor and was also resurrected? The flashback is from the Doctor's point of view, and from his point of view, Ursula was transformed into a piece of concrete and Jenny was dead (only the audience knows that Jenny survived); Jack doesn't count because he revived from his death and appears to have accepted his immortality, thereby relieving the Doctor of any guilt in that regard. Or because Jack is the Face of Bo...?


 * The Earth was never brought back in time the one second that Davros had rushed it forward to keep it out of sync with the rest of the universe. Therefore it shouldn't be moved back with the moon or the solar system, as the Earth is still ahead in time. History would also be changed as humans from Earth would never be able to react with any other alien species.Seeing as this problem would also occur for the other 26 planets, one can assume that the Doctor put every planet back into sync with their original time periods when he removed them from the Medusa Cascade.


 * If the act of temporal shifting back to the Time War showed Dalek Caan the entire history of the Dalek race and led him to conclude the Daleks should be destroyed, why didn't he just let Davros die in the war and then kill himself? Caan was driven insane after saving Davros, therefor he had only seen the whole of time after Davros was already safe. He then began setting the course of events that would lead to the fall of the New Dalek Empire. Still, a Dalek that you could like.... ''He was exposed to the whole of time via his emergency temporal shift when he broke through the time lock on the Time War in order to save Davros. Still, if he was a jibbering lunatic upon encountering Davros there's no way he would have been believes so perhaps the insanity and realization of the whole of time (and the realization that the Daleks must be destroyed) was a delayed reaction to Caan's exposure to the vortex which didn't occur until after Davros was saved.


 * You don't find out how the Davros built the Daleks Casing and the Crucible, he didn't have any supplies and the Daleks have no hands to build them.


 * If any mention of the Doctor or the Tardis would cause the Time Lord consciousness within Donna to reawaken and burn up her mind isn't the Doctor taking a tremendous risk by letting Donna see him in the Noble's house? Even if his presence in the living room wasn't enough to trigger Donna's memories wasn't he tempting fate by deliberately getting her attention while she was on the phone in order to say goodbye?

Continuity

 * Those shown in flashback who died for the Doctor are Harriet Jones, Jabe, The Controller, Lynda Moss, Robert MacLeish, Mrs Moore, Colin Skinner, Bliss, Ursula Blake, Face of Boe, Chantho, Astrid Peth, Luke Rattigan, Jenny, River Song and the Hostess.
 * When the Doctor sees Gwen Cooper for the first time, he asks if she came from long line of family from Cardiff. This is because the similarity between Gwen and Gwyneth (DW: The Unquiet Dead), both who are played by Eve Myles. The Doctor and Rose both recognize the uncanny family resemblance.
 * This is the first episode where the TARDIS is fully-staffed with six pilots, and the first time it is noted definitively that it was designed for six, after various mentions about it being made for more than a single Time Lord.
 * This episode marks the last appearance of the Tenth Doctor's severed hand which first appeared in "The Christmas Invasion".
 * Rose and Mickey, who previously had an on again, off again relationship, appear to have drifted apart. They do not look at each other, speak to each other, or interact at all during the episode, even when they are in the TARDIS together. Mickey does not say goodbye to her (though he does say goodbye to Jackie saying he'll miss her "more than anyone") and he tells the Doctor there's nothing for him in the parallel world, "certainly not Rose". He catches up with Jack and Martha which suggests he may join Torchwood Cardiff.
 * Jack tells Martha "I'm not sure about UNIT these days, maybe there's something else you could be doing?" suggesting he may ask Martha to join Torchwood.

DVD and Other releases

 * This is due to be released in the Series 4 boxset in November 2008 along with the rest of the Series.
 * It will be released as part of Series 4 Volume 4 alongside Turn Left and The Stolen Earth on 1st September 2008.