YMMV / Doctor Who S29 E13 "Last of the Time Lords"

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Were the Toclafane naturally that evil before they were converted into what they are now? Or did the Master butcher their minds as thoroughly as their bodies? Keep in mind that the last time we saw them, they refused to immediately resort to lethal force with the Futurekind and settled for scaring them off rather than genuinely firing at them. It wouldn't be out-of-character for the Master to "cheat" to break the Doctor's spirit in this fashion.
• Angst? What Angst?: Humanity failed to evade the death of the universe, instead turning into the grotesque, murderous Toclafane as a last-ditch effort. Neither the Doctor, nor Martha, nor even the writers show much distress at this revelation, which is never brought up again. Though, to be honest, it's been a year of total hell, there is only so much despair one can take before they just stop caring. Plus, you have to admit, it's pretty impressive that humanity survived until the very end of the universe itself. Of course, it'd be even more impressive if humanity had managed to keep its morality to the very end instead of having every single human turn evil. Furthermore, "Army of Ghosts" and several expanded universe materials have stated that the eventual death of the universe will be followed by the birth of another just as the current universe came about from the death of a previous universe - humanity might yet stand a chance.
• Awesome Music: Murray Gold's observance of the Doctor's restoration to youth is a stunner - both grand and understated, its choral lilt is like a musical sob of relief.
• Broken Base: This episode marks a shift from the Tenth Doctor being depicted as someone who was vengeful deep down and willing to consign his enemies to a Fate Worse than Death if he felt they deserved it, to being much more an outright Messianic Archetype. Fans are divided between those who felt that his previous depiction was too dark and/or too much like the Seventh Doctor and so welcomed the change in direction, and those who felt that it made the character less interesting.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: This is easily the happiest ending of any season of the RTD era: almost all of the horror is undone, Martha leaves the TARDIS on her own terms and reunites with her family, and while the Doctor is still sad about losing the closest thing to a childhood friend he had left, he seems ready to continue adventuring. It wouldn't even be all that esoteric... if it weren't for a few "little" things, like Martha (and her family, and everyone else on the carrier) still remembering this traumatic, PTSD-inducing year; America having lost its President (and despite being intended as an unflattering Expy of George W. Bush, he still came across as a basically good man who didn't deserve to die); and Britain losing its best political minds when the Master gassed them all to death, along with a good, courageous woman who tried to stand up to the Master only to get tortured to death by the Toclofane. And speaking of the Toclofane, it turns out that the final, definitive fate for humanity is that in the final generation, all the humans (even the best of them) will within that generation degenerate into monstrous, childish thrill-killers, making everything on the show that has anything to do with humanity feel completely pointless to some. ^note Of course, this last one is assuming that the Toclofane are a natural and inevitable future of humanity; as stated under Alternate Character Interpretation, we only have the Master's word that he didn't personally bring about this fate, and as the new series has reiterated countless times over, time can be rewritten. Beyond that, perhaps some humans survived elsewhere; one was later seen to have made it to the ruins of Gallifrey by this time.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: The Doctor has a lot of messianic moments throughout the series, but gaining power through faith had some overtones.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Many fans didn't like The Reveal that the Toclafane were actually the human race at the end of the universe who butchered themselves in a desperate attempt to survive. These fans feel like the idea that humanity's eventual fate is as Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchildren turns all of the Doctor's heroic acts to save us and steadfast beliefs that we are spectacular in spite of our many flaws, the entire point of the show, completely incorrect and pointless.
• Narm:
  • The Tenth Doctor as Tinkerbell Jesus. The Doctor has a lot of messianic moments throughout the series, but gaining power through faith was too much for many.
  • The scene where the Doctor is aged into what many fans ended up calling the "Gallifreyan house elf" is pure narm. The music sounds almost comical and the Doctor's sped-up actions lead him to perform a weird fist-pumping gesture that looks completely ridiculous. Bizarrely, an almost identical scene in the previous episode (where the Doctor is aged into an old man) manages to be absolutely horrifying, so what went wrong?
• Never Live It Down: Even many fans of the Russell T Davies era tend to find the "Tinkerbell Jesus" sequence one of the worst arc resolutions in the revived series.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Aside from destroying the paradox machine, Jack barely contributes to the plot, spending most of the episode chained up. The previous episode saw him inexplicably give Martha his Vortex Manipulator so she could escape when he would have been much more useful helping her out.
• Retroactive Recognition: Tom Milligan is Lucifer.
• Ugly Cute: The tiny old Doctor that the Master kept in a birdcage. He was so tiny and sad! And kind of looked like Tweety Bird, between the birdcage and the huge head. Also, there's something very endearing about the Doctor's personality in that minuscule body.
• Vindicated by History: Not many fans cared so much for Martha's departure at the time, mostly because it lacked the emotional impact from Rose's separation from the Doctor a season before it. However, the general opinion over it has become increasingly popular over time and it constantly ranks high amongst the best companion departures from New Who, as it avoids the tragic and timey-wimey shenanigans that has persisted in the subsequent companion exits. It also helps that Martha moved on with her life rather than obsessing over the Doctor, and also gets the chance to gently call him out for how he's unconsciously been treating her and comparing her to Rose, while still parting on good terms. Until 2021, Martha remained the only (regular) companion from the revival series to leave the TARDIS solely by her own choice, and not by circumstance.

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