Death of the Doctor (TV story)

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Death of the Doctor was the third story of Series 4 of The Sarah Jane Adventures. It saw the return of Jo Grant, now Jo Jones after her marriage, and the first and only appearance of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor on the series.

It was the first, and only, time that Russell T Davies wrote for the Eleventh Doctor, having stepped down as executive producer for Doctor Who after The End of Time. (Steven Moffat wrote the Doctor's post-regenerative scene in that story.)

Synopsis

When the Doctor is declared dead, old companions Sarah Jane and Jo Grant meet for the first time and join forces to discover the truth. As an interstellar conspiracy gathers around UNIT HQ, Clyde finds he holds the fate of the Time Lord in his hand – quite literally!

Plot

Part 1

Sarah Jane and the gang are talking to Luke on a webcam, when UNIT arrive on Bannerman Road outside her house. She is told by Colonel Tia Karim that her friend, the Doctor, is dead, but doesn't believe it. Colonel Karim tells the gang that alien undertakers, the Shansheeth, are organising the funeral. This makes Sarah Jane more suspicious until Mr Smith tells her the Shansheeth are called the galactic undertakers. That night, Sarah Jane tells Luke the news and that she thinks the Doctor is still alive. Luke thinks the idea is crazy. The next day Sarah Jane goes to the funeral, accompanied by Rani and Clyde. Just as he is getting into the private car, Clyde receives what seems to be a static electric shock to his hand. The gang go to Mount Snowden, home to the UNIT base which will host the Doctor's funeral.

At Snowden, the gang bump into the Groske, a blue, tame version of the Graske. One of the Groske follows them and tells Clyde he "smells like time." Clyde looks at his hand, where he sees Artron energy. The gang are taken to the parlour where a gathering of remembrance is taking place. Sarah Jane asks to see the body, but Karim refuses, and Sarah is suspicious until told that he was hurt. She sits down with Rani and Clyde, confessing that she thinks the Doctor regenerated, and she doesn't even know what face he could be wearing. The Shansheeth play music on a harp to help the mourners remember the Doctor, but their thoughts of him are interrupted by the entry of Jo Jones, (née Grant) who has dropped the flowers she brought. Jo chatters while she and her grandson Santiago pick up the flowers. When they recognize each other, Jo sits next to Sarah Jane. Santiago sits behind Rani and Clyde. Sarah Jane and Jo talk and make friends, as do Santiago, Clyde, and Rani.

After the remembrance, the gang is in a bedroom where Jo agrees with Sarah Jane's belief that the Doctor is still alive. As Clyde, Rani, and Santiago leave the room, they again meet the Groske who told Clyde that he "smells like time". Clyde gives chase, but the Groske jumps into a ventilation shaft.

Meanwhile, Shansheeth Blue is "filleting the Cradle" - using the harp from the remembrance to view the memories of the Doctor that were collected at the gathering. The Shansheeth wearing red and yellow agree Sarah Jane and Jo have the strongest memories. They play more music through the vents, putting Sarah Jane and Jo into a trance. Clyde, Rani, and Santiago follow the Groske into the vent, where they lose him, but overhear the Shansheeth discussing their plot to use a Memory Weave to steal Jo and Sarah Jane's memories — which will kill them. The Artron energy on Clyde's hand returns with a bright, blue light, alerting the Shansheeth to their presence. The youngsters shuffle their way backwards out of the vent. Sarah Jane and Jo hear the clatter, which breaks their trance. They run into the corridors and bump into the others. Clyde tells Sarah Jane and Jo that this is a trap and they are the prize.

The Doctor after swapping places with Clyde.

Clyde freezes and starts talking in a different voice, a voice that knows Clyde, Rani, Jo, and Sarah Jane. Clyde regains control of his voice and realises he has someone else’s hand. Clyde disappears and the Doctor takes his place.

Rani demands to know who he is. The Doctor explains that he used Clyde's residual Artron energy to switch places with him, which is trouble for Clyde, who is now in a red, wasteland-like planet full of debris. Although she had mentioned that she expected it, Sarah Jane marvels that the Doctor has "done it again" (regenerated) - though, as before, he smiles and says, "Hello, Sarah Jane." Having never seen this current incarnation either, Rani and especially Jo are bewildered - Jo asks, "What Doctor? The Doctor? My Doctor?" until Sarah Jane asks Jo if she knew the Doctor could change his face. She does, but is shocked that the Doctor is much younger than the other Doctors she has met and has a baby's face compared to theirs. The Doctor responds to Jo, "Oy, imagine it from my point of view! Last time I saw you, Jo Grant, you were what, 21, 22? It's like someone baked you." Hearing this, any doubt that Jo has that it is indeed the Doctor vanishes.

At this point, the Shansheeth arrive, and the Doctor strides forward to meet them, irritably saying, "I've been looking for you. Have you been telling people I'm dead?" They tell the gang the death certificate had been sent out early. Shansheeth Blue says this can be rectified. He shoots the Doctor with an energy beam, saying, "Rest in peace!".

Part 2

File:Crimson heart.jpg
Sarah Jane and Jo travel to the stars once again.

Caught in the energy beam, the Doctor disappears and Clyde reappears. Clyde and he keep swapping places. The energy beam disengaged, the Doctor, Jo, Sarah Jane, Rani, and Santiago run from the Shansheeth, and find safety behind a locked door. The Doctor takes Jo and Sarah by the hand. All three swap places with Clyde on the alien planet. As the Doctor works on the machine he used to swap places, they talk. The Doctor says he looked in on Jo and all his old companions before he last regenerated. He tells Jo that her forthcoming thirteenth grandchild will be dyslexic, but a great swimmer. With the help of Sarah's sonic lipstick and some natural tea carried by Jo, the Doctor adjusts the machine so they can travel to Earth without sending Clyde to the planet.

Clyde and Rani talk with Santiago. He hasn't spoken to his parents in six months. Meanwhile, Colonel Karim is working with the Shansheeth. They are plotting to use Jo and Sarah Jane's memories of the TARDIS to create a new TARDIS key, so the Shansheeth can stop death across the universe by interfering with the timelines.

File:Memory Weave.jpg
Sarah and Jo in the Memory Weave.

Rani, Santiago, and Clyde are rescued by a Groske and taken through the ventilation shafts. They come to a hiding place, but Karim discovers them. She locks them in and turns on the heat, making the place so hot the children may boil. The Doctor, Jo, and Sarah Jane come to the rescue, but the two companions are kidnapped and strapped into the Memory Weave. Their minds are scanned and they begin remembering the TARDIS. These memories begin to generate a new TARDIS Key as the Shansheeth and Colonel Karim make their intentions clear.

The Doctor, Rani, Clyde, Santiago, and the Groske come to the door of the room where Sarah Jane and Jo are strapped into the Memory Weave. It is locked. The Doctor tells them to remember all of their adventures with him, in as much detail as possible. Sarah Jane and Jo both remember past encounters with the Doctor and all the creatures and enemies they met. Clyde and Rani tell Sarah Jane to remember their experiences fighting aliens as well. Santiago tells Jo to remember all the places she's visited. Jo remembers all the countries she has been to as Sarah Jane remembers her battles with aliens.

The Shansheeth begin panicking as the Memory Weave reaches critical. The Doctor tells Sarah and Jo that it's his funeral and they realise there is an empty, lead-lined coffin waiting next to them to be used. Karim tries to get in the coffin with them, but they keep her out as the Memory Weave explodes, frying the Shansheeth to "fried chicken" and blasting the doors off. The Doctor and Sarah's companions enter the room and open the coffin, to find Sarah and Jo hugging each other out of fear. They notice the Doctor and everyone else looking down at them and laugh happily that they survived.

The Doctor takes them in the TARDIS and materialises in Sarah Jane's attic. Mr Smith detects the time fluctuations of the incoming TARDIS and activates to state that it has landed. Clyde and Rani exit the TARDIS. Santiago is shocked that they have a sentient computer, which trumps anything he's seen. In the TARDIS, Sarah and Jo examine the new interior. Jo feels the TARDIS is the same no matter how it looks. Jo says she could stay and travel with the Doctor forever, but notes he could get in trouble with the Time Lords. Sarah and the Doctor remain quiet, but the Doctor tells her that it's about time he got going. Sarah and Jo tell the Doctor that if he ever did die, they believe they'd feel something. The Doctor agrees and whispers that the entire universe might shiver if he died. He then shouts to make his old friends jump and they exit the TARDIS. They all watch as it dematerialises.

Jo and Santiago leave for Norway and the trio are left behind. Sarah Jane says that she googled TARDIS and learned of others whom she believes to have been companions of the Doctor. She tells them of Tegan Jovanka, fighting for aboriginal rights in Australia; Ian and Barbara Chesterton, Cambridge professors who are rumoured not to have aged since the 1960s; Harry Sullivan, her old friend from UNIT, who worked on finding remedies for diseases; Ben and Polly, running an orphanage; and a Dorothy (or Dorothea) something who has raised millions of pounds (money) through her company "A Charitable Earth".

As they watch Jo and Santiago leave, Sarah Jane says, "With friends like us, he's not really going to die, is he?"

Cast

Crew

General production staff

Script department

Camera and lighting department

Art department

Costume department

Make-up and prosthetics


General post-production staff

Special and visual effects

Sound



Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.
          

Unlike most other SJA stories, Russell T Davies, being the writer of this story, did not get a "created by" credit.


References

Time Lords

  • The Doctor says he can regenerate 507 times and change to any colour of skin. When the three digits are added together the sum is 12. Later statements by Russell T Davies suggest this was likely a joke. However TV: Let's Kill Hitler would later confirm that skin colour change is possible in a regeneration.
  • Jo says she should leave before the Doctor "gets in trouble with the Time Lords". The Doctor gives her a sombre look. Neither Sarah Jane nor he tell her that the Time Lords are dead. (Jo became aware of the Time Lords in TV: Terror of the Autons.)

Individuals

  • The former Jo Grant is called Jo Jones in this story, reflecting her marriage to Clifford Jones, introduced in TV: The Green Death. In the Doctor Who franchise, the name Josephine Jones was first used in the novelisation PROSE: Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, in which former companion Jo makes a cameo appearance (she does not appear in the original TV version, although she is mentioned by name).
  • This story contains the most extensive updates of past companions since TV: The Five Doctors.
    • Liz Shaw is stranded on a UNIT Moon Base and cannot get back until Monday. The fact she's alive and well contradicts the events of the novel PROSE: Eternity Weeps, set in the early 2000s, in which she died, though in that novel she was also working on the Moon for UNIT.
    • The Brigadier is stranded in Peru, on an ongoing mission. He is also said to be in South America in TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith and TV: The Poison Sky.
    • Sarah Jane arrived at U.N.I.T "just after" Jo left.
    • Jo has seven children and twelve grandchildren, with a thirteenth on the way. The Doctor says that the thirteenth will be dyslexic, but a great swimmer.
    • As far as she is aware, Jo hasn't seen the Doctor since the events of TV: The Green Death, though she did try to call him through U.N.I.T but was told he had left (TV: Planet of the Spiders has Jo corresponding with the Doctor and U.N.I.T. via mail, however). She finds the fact that Sarah Jane met the Doctor several times after leaving him unexpected.
    • Tegan Jovanka is fighting for Aboriginal rights. Sarah Jane actually met Tegan in The Five Doctors, but School Reunion implied that she does not appear to remember this adventure. This is supported by her apparent "discovery" of Tegan via Google here—Sarah Jane does, however, remember speaking to K9 and going to the bus-stop, as those images appear when she is remembering. This reference indicates that Tegan is still alive in 2010, despite having a life-threatening health condition in 2006 (AUDIO: The Gathering).
    • Ben Jackson and Polly Wright are running an orphanage in India.
    • Harry Sullivan is said to have worked with vaccines and saved thousands of lives. He is referred to in the past tense by Sarah, in tones that imply that he has died. Harry was previously implied to be dead in the novelisation of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. His actor, Ian Marter, died in 1986.
    • Ian and Barbara Chesterton are professors at Cambridge and according to rumour, haven't aged since the 1960s, suggesting something they encountered in their travels with the Doctor caused them to stop aging. (This rumour would contradict the links William Russell recorded in-character as an elderly Ian for the VHS restoration of TV: The Crusade, if such links are considered canonical. If Ian hasn't aged since the sixties, then those links may be far in the future, as it is theoretically possible that his immortality could wear off at some point.)
    • A companion called Dorothy(ea?) is said to have raised billions of pounds through her charity "A Charitable Earth." As the charity spells out the words "ACE," this is likely the seventh doctor’s companion Ace. However it could also be a reference to the First Doctor’s companion Dodo Chaplet, since charity work would fit better with her personality. She was also one of only two companions left on contemporary Earth not mentioned (the other being Melanie Bush). This would make this the first on-screen reference to both their real names, Dorothy McShane and Dorothea Chaplet which were established in the novels.
    • Four of the companions mentioned by Sarah Jane are played by actors now deceased: besides Marter, Michael Craze (Ben) and Jacqueline Hill (Barbara).
  • Jo says she's aware of the Doctor's ability to change his appearance. She encountered multiple incarnations of the Doctor first-hand in TV: The Three Doctors.

Culture

Planets

  • Jo mentions Metebelis III.
  • Jo and Sarah both reminisce about their trips to Peladon, specifically their encounter with Aggedor. The Harp music reminded Jo of The Royal Palace on Peladon.
  • Jo mentions visiting Karfel.
  • The Doctor mentions that he had left Amy Pond and Rory Williams on a honeymoon planet - that is, the planet is on its honeymoon; it married an asteroid.

Species

Earth technology

  • The mention of a UNIT moonbase marks the first time since the revival of Doctor Who in 2005 that Earth is revealed to have an ongoing presence off the planet. In TV: The Christmas Invasion, the UK is shown sending its first probe to Mars, even though we'd already been there and beyond in the Third Doctor era. However see UNIT dating controversy.

Story notes

  • This episode marks the last on-screen adventure that Sarah Jane has with the Doctor.
  • Russell T Davies thought about using Death of the Doctor as the name for the End of Time Part 2. (REF: The Writers Tale: The Final Chapter)
  • The Doctor refers to Sarah Jane and Jo as "Smith and Jones", the title of the Doctor Who Series 3 opening episode.
  • As UNIT arrives at 13 Bannerman Road, UNIT musical cues are played as the incidental music.
  • This is only the second time that the Doctor has appeared in one of the televised spin-offs. The first was also on The Sarah Jane Adventures, but in The Doctor's tenth incarnation, in TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith.
  • This is one of the first times since the revival of Doctor Who that the issue of how many regenerations has been mentioned, with the number given as 507. This of course is in contrast to the fact that (on-screen) it has previously been mentioned as being only 12, giving each Time Lord a total of 13 lives. Russell T Davies, who wrote this episode, stated in an interview, "They only said 13 once or twice." [1][2] It's worth noting that, within the context of the episode, the Doctor appears to simply be teasing Clyde.
  • Steven Moffat stated in an interview that the controversial topic of the regeneration limit for Time Lords would be "addressed in a very, very cheeky way by an old friend of mine" at some point in Series 5. [5] It turns out that the "old friend" was Russell T Davies and the "very, very cheeky way" was the 507 line.
  • The death of Tia Karim marks one of the few times in the young viewer-friendly Sarah Jane Adventures that a human adversary has been killed through the direct actions of the heroes (if unintentionally). In contrast, in TV: Secrets of the Stars, it is left ambiguous as to whether Martin Trueman is killed or not.

Ratings

  • Part 1 - 0.92 Million[3]
  • Part 2 - 0.96 Million, the highest rating of any CBBC show, ever, as of 2010[3]

Myths

  • Amy and Rory would appear.[source needed] This rumour was false, but a reason was given for why they didn't appear (see Continuity).

Filming locations

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • One of Sarah's memories depict Sutekh seated on his throne. Sarah did not encounter Sutekh in this way.
  • In The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, the Artron energy was in Clyde's right hand, but in this story it is in his left hand.

Continuity

Home video releases

to be added

External links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ SFX - INTERVIEW Russell T Davies talks about THAT Sarah Jane Adventures line accessed 18th November 2010
  2. ↑ Contrary to Davies' comments, the 12-regeneration limit has in fact been referenced on numerous occasions, and was a major plot point in at least three stories: TV: The Deadly Assassin, Mawdryn Undead, and Doctor Who: The TV Movie. The idea of regeneration limits had been addressed numerous times as well, such as in TV: The Five Doctors and The Twin Dilemma.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Doctor Who News Page - Death of the Doctor Tops Ratings accessed 18th November 2010
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