Doctor Who Finale Part 3 Recap: “Journey’s End”

Donna mentions how she’s been hearing a heartbeat for several episodes now, and he figures out that it must have been his. The event they experienced was a complicated one in time and space, so some of it rippled back and gave her flashes of what was to come. He reiterates how special she is, and she again doesn’t believe it. But now, he can actually see her thoughts and understand just how poor her self image is …

Doctor Two: I can see what you're thinking. All that attitude, all that lip. Because all this time, you think you're not worth it.

She really wants him to stop with the mind-reading. But then he has an epiphany, accompanied by a flashback of the first several times they met. He realizes that all along something has been pulling them together. And those forces are still at work, only it’s not clear where their linked destiny is leading them.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Martha arrives at a castle and meets up with a woman from the Office of German Stereotypes. In other words, she’s Frau Blucher from Young Frankenstein. While horses whinny in terror in the distance, she and Martha converse in German, before the woman switches to heavily accented English. She says those all cute UNIT boys who guarded the castle went AWOL. Martha says she’s there now to do the job.

Frau Blucher follows Martha inside the castle, where she prepares to use the dreaded Uta Hagen key that gets everybody’s panties in a bunch every time it’s mentioned. Frau Blucher says she knows all about the key and what it’s capable of, and she points a gun at Martha to prevent her from proceeding. Martha dares her to make her day and shoot, but Frau Blucher can’t go through with it and collapses to the ground.

Martha then re-enacts the opening credits from Get Smart, and goes through this hidden door into a secret elevator that takes her down to some sort of control room. Sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen and announcing herself as Uta Hagen Station One, she asks if there’s anybody out there, all while holding the Amex Black Card of Doom in her hand.

Meanwhile, aboard the Crucible, a couple of Wall-E-grade menial Daleks remove Jack’s body and stuff it in what I’m guessing is the Crucible’s garbage disposal. I was hoping we’d get a Wallace and Gromit-like cartoon sequence here of Jack on a conveyer belt frantically trying to outrun a variety of cleavers and dust mops. Instead, he rather easily unlatches the door and rolls out, although the scene is bizarrely scored to Carmina Burana-like Germanic choral music to lend it all a sense of urgency.

Inside the Vault, the Doctor and Rose are put in holding cells, which are those invisible cells they love on sci-fi shows because it means they can save money on sets.

For a moment, Davros enjoys belittling his old nemesis. But the Doctor is all, “Dude, you’re not my nemesis. My nemesis is Captain Hammer, corporate tool.” Okay, not really. But I’ve been dying to get a Dr. Horrible reference in here somehow. Mostly because I’ve been fantasizing about a musical crossover episode. Called “Dr. Who-rrible.”

What the Doctor does say is that it’s clear Davros is as much a prisoner in the Vault as they are. Davros calls it “an arrangement,” and the Doctor, hilariously, teases him for being a “Daleks’ pet.”