Yes, the TARDIS lands in Cardiff to refuel, and the Doctor picks up a hitchhiker: Captain Jack Harkness, lately of
Torchwood, who is
not going to let the Doctor get away twice. Travel through the Vortex being rather hard on the unprotected, Jack ends up dead when the TARDIS ends up on a lonely dark planet trillions of years in the future... but everyone except Martha knows that
death is pretty temporary for Captain Jack.
Once everyone's all caught up, the Doctor lays it out: they're at the ass-end of time, right at the heat death of the universe. The stars have all burned out. Humanity, they learn, have all congregated together in this planet's
Elaborate Underground Base, where they've been lured by vague promises of shuttle service to Utopia.
The only one who knows anything about how to get to Utopia is kindly old Professor
Yana, who is played by
Sir Derek fucking Jacobi. If you'd told people, back when the old show was cancelled in '89, that not only would
Doctor Who return, but they'd get people like Sir Derek Jacobi to play
the Master, well. They'd probably punch you out for taunting them or something. So, when and if you get a time machine, it's probably just as well if you don't do this.
Anyway. Sir Derek's plan is to load everyone onto these enormous rockets and send them to Utopia, but the rockets aren't actually in working order. They need someone to enter a chamber filled with deadly radiation to reset some switches. Sounds like a job for someone immortal!
And it works! The evacuation starts; the rockets are boarded by the last dregs of humanity, hoping for something,
anything better than a slow death in the night. Everyone congratulates each other on a job well done... and then Martha notices that Professor Yana has a pocket watch. And it looks just like
the Doctor's watch. Which can be used as a receptacle for Essence Of Time Lord.
The Doctor goes into full-on
Oh Crap mode and dashes back to try to stop Yana from opening the watch, but he's too late: Yana is dead, long live
the Master...
Who promptly regenerates into
John Simm, steals the TARDIS and leaves our heroes stranded in the umpteen-billionth century with savages beating down the doors. Boo. YA.
Tropes
