August 9, 2024

Famous Last Words

"What was the last thing you said? It took like over a year to get you out of my head."

A couple of odd, plot adjacent thoughts flashed through my mind during Empire of Death. When the TARDIS became corrupted by Sutekh I wondered if, given that there was a duplicate TARDIS sitting in Chiswick in Donna Noble’s garden, and probably not more than a couple of metres away from an, if not exactly duplicate, then certainly, additional Doctor, one or the other would make an appearance before the episode was out.

Now, these mini-speculations turned out to be not so much plot adjacent as plot perpendicular, and rightly so. Russell T Davies is far too wise a writer and showrunner to bring back David Tennant’s Doctor to help save the day during Ncuti Gatwa’s first Doctor Who season finalé; the meta implications of that are pretty dreadful all round.¹

But these foolish thoughts sent me off down a rabbit hole all the same. Because when that dust started rolling across the Earth, eliminating all its path like an even-more-debilitating-than-usual form of hayfever pollen, it implicitly disintegrated that additional Doctor and maybe his TARDIS.² Which is when I knew that this wave of destruction would be reversed before the end of the episode.

This became, because of the ridiculous ping pong way my thought processes work, the thought that, even if he eventually came back (off screen) the Fourteenth Doctor’s equally off-screen death would be accompanied by last words we’d not seen or heard.

(Yeah, I know. That’s my brain. Try living in it.)

Last words are, or have become, an important part of a Doctor’s oeuvre. It’s a decade and change ago now, but as part of Doctor Who’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations in 2013 BBC Worldwide released a series of mugs and t-shirts, one for each Doctor. As well as striking, if occasionally puzzling, designs representing that Doctor’s adventures, they also featured said Doctor’s first and last words on the back. Seeing them laid out so starkly reveals something about them.

That Colin Baker’s Doctor was condemned, by the circumstances of the actor’s departure from the role, to the final words “Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice!” is a decades long source of fan regret and/or amusement. What these mugs revealed, however, was that fewer other Doctors that you’d expect could lay claim to memorable last words. William Hartnell’s Doctor is usually regarded as having the final words “It’s far from being all over.” Which manages to be both mythic and exciting, while also reflecting beautifully that the series had a long life ahead of it.

It’s not true, of course. No, the Hartnell Doctor’s final words are “Keep warm”. Sound advice in the Antarctic, but not the stuff of legend. Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, Colin’s own favourite of his predecessors, had to make do with the final line “No! Stop, you're making me giddy! No, you can't do this to me! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!” Which isn’t exactly one for the ages. And is quite hard to fit on a mug. Although they did.

What both sets of last words indicate, however, is that the people making Doctor Who in 1966 and 1969 didn’t think an actor’s last words as the Doctor were important. But at some point between those lines of dialogue being written and them ending up on tableware, something changed and they became so. It must have done. Otherwise they wouldn’t have, well, ended up on tableware.

As with so much of Doctor Who, we actually owe this invented tradition to Barry Letts. The Pertwee Doctor’s final words, in a story co-scripted, directed and produced by Letts, are clearly the first time a Doctor’s exit had been written with a sense of history bearing down on the writer of the scene. The programme was now ten years old. It was expected to run forever, and Pertwee was at the time the series’ most enduring leading man. Having laid down his life for a point of principle the Doctor tries to comfort his companion even as he lies dying: “A tear, Sarah Jane? No, don’t cry. Where there’s life, there’s…” and he dies, unable to finish the sentence. It’s magnificent - and Pertwee delivers it magnificently. It’s a big lift from his Doctor’s first words on screen, which were “Shoes! Must find my shoes! Unhand me Madam!” Although I know which of the two is quoted more frequently around our house.

Tom Baker’s Doctor also gets a mythic send off, perhaps the most famous of the old century. Surrounded by new friends and facing visions of old ones he stage-whispers “It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for.” It’s epic stuff, and an interesting contrast with the exit of his successor, Peter Davison. His Doctor dies with the single word “Adric”. The name of one of those new friends who surrounded his previous self. A boy who has in the intervening years died, with the Doctor unable to save him. The personal versus the epic. Both work.

We’ve already touched on Colin Baker’s overdubbed root crop related last moments. Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor has not so much final words as a final noise of “Uggggh aaaah” or something, as the character is killed, as people in America often are, by the indelicate nature of for-profit medicine.³

The twenty-first century Doctors last words are linked by an interesting recurring theme: They’re all essentially metafictional. Everyone noted at the time that the Eccleston Doctor’s comment to his companion, “Rose, before I got I just want to tell you you were fantastic, really fantastic. And you know what, so was I?” seemed to be as much about the actor’s extraordinary contribution to revitalising Doctor Who for the twenty first century as they were about the character’s finally learning to love himself again.

It also seems pretty obvious that the Tennant Doctor’s plaintive “I don’t want to go” refers not only to the character and the actor who is playing him, but also to the author of the lines, departing writer / executive producer Russell T Davies. Who then both proved the point by coming back. Hurrah.

Davies’ initial successor, Steven Moffat, managed to write the final words for more Doctors than he cast. His first Doctor, Matt Smith was given an extraordinary final speech, and the actor was more than equal to it in delivery. You should watch all of it here, it being one of the best scenes in the history of Doctor Who, and thus of television.

It’s incredibly rich and complex, taking in ideas of identity and mortality that can be applied to the audience as easily as the Doctor, and seemingly reflecting the relationships of both Moffat and Smith to the programme, the former staying on and the later leaving a project they had begun together. It finishes in glory, with a statement that probably makes more sense as coming from, and being about, Matt Smith than it does as a statement about or from the Doctor. But Moffat ties it together enough by prefacing it with lines where Smith’s Doctor talks excitedly, and with anticipation, about what the future holds for his next self. It’s an astounding piece of work. Now watch it again.

However, this wasn’t the first time Moffat had written a Doctor’s last words. It was the third time that year. Paul McGann returned in the anniversary minisode, seventeen years after his only TV appearance as the Doctor in the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie. Those anniversary mugs list McGann’s Doctor’s last words as “Oh no not again!” because that’s the last thing he says in that episode, but here the actor gets a proper swansong as the character, regenerating into the newly created John Hurt Doctor, a “missing” unnumbered incarnation between McGann’s and Eccleston’s. (But then you knew that.)

Moffat cleverly gives the McGann Doctor last words “Physician heal thyself” which are a quote from the Bible. From the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 4, Verse 23, where they are spoken by Jesus himself. A long time Doctor Who Magazine reader, Moffat will surely have been aware of McGann’s comment to the magazine that the prominence of Catholic imagery during his Liverpool upbringing meant that, on seeing Doctor Who as a child, he instinctively drew comparisons between how the Yeti opened their chests to reveal a spherical control unit and the Catholic tradition of devotional paintings of Christ’s sacred heart.

Before his biblical quotation, however, the Doctor says something else revealing: “I don’t suppose there’s any need for a Doctor anymore”. Which is obviously a reference to how John Hurt’s Doctor disavows the title itself. It is, like, some of the Smith Doctor’s last final speech, anticipatory.

A week later, at least in transmission terms, Moffat was at it again. John Hurt’s one-off Doctor’s last words “Oh, yes, of course, I suppose it makes sense. Wearing a bit thin. I hope the ears are a bit less conspicuous this time.” are a self-aware nod. Or rather three. The last is a nod to a scene in Rose, where the Eccleston Doctor seemingly sees his prominent ears for the first time. It also seems like a reference to the writer Robert Holmes’ habit of including jokes about Jon Pertwee’s nose in Doctor Who. The middle section is a paraphrase of a line from The Tenth Planet (1966) where the Hartnell Doctor notes his body is “wearing a bit thin” shortly before his regeneration. It acts as a reference, and an explanation of sorts, as to why the Hurt Doctor too is regenerating. Like the Hartnell Doctor he is simply dying of old age.

This ties into something that the first sentence of the speech acknowledges by denying. That it doesn’t seem to quite make sense. Why is this Doctor suddenly regenerating, having been hale and hearty before he opened the TARDIS door? It comes as no surprise at all to discover that this brief scene was added during, indeed near the end of, shooting on the anniversary special, and that the script as originally issued to the cast didn’t show the War Doctor regenerating at all, simply leaving in the TARDIS.

Since then we’ve had Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi’s epic final monologue, with him criss-crossing Michael Pickwoad’s never-bettered TARDIS set, and its many levels, as if delivering a speech on the theatrical stage. Again, his very final words seem meta-fictional with the long term fan Moffat getting the longer term fan Capaldi to say “Doctor, I let you go”. (Moffat has also since come back. Hurrah again.) The rather odd way we’ve intersected with Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor means it’s basically impossible to work out what her incarnation’s actual last words were, although Martin’s last words onscreen as the Doctor⁴ so far are “See you around”. Here’s hoping.

Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor bows out with perhaps the best line she was given in the whole of her time on Doctor Who;

“Oh, the blossomiest blossom. That's the only sad thing. I want to know what happens next. Right, then, Doctor Whoever-I'm-about-to-be. Tag, you're it.”

The “I want to know what happens next” again feels as much a comment from departing writer / executive producer Chris Chibnall as the Doctor or the actor playing them. While “the blossomiest blossom” seems to nod both to the final interview given by television giant Dennis Potter, and a scene in the 1972 Doctor Who story The Time Monster.⁵

At present, by the way, the Fourteenth Doctor’s final (known) words are “I’ve never been so happy in all my life”. Given what we’ve established about how last words work, does that mean you’re glad to be back, Russell?

We’re glad to have you back.