'A running question of what defines humanity was cleverly developed throughout the season.'

Philip Purser-Hallard looks at the spirituality of the latest Doctor Who finale

The third season of the regenerated Doctor Who juddered to a rather uncertain halt this week with the episode Last of the Time Lords.

We learned that the Master’s a fan of Rogue Traders (and apparently also of Flash Gordon), that really, really old Time Lords turn into computer-generated goblins… and that Ann Widdecombe isn’t as good at spotting ‘something of the night’ in her parliamentary colleagues as she’d have us believe.

Doctor Who ’s show-runner Russell T Davies may be a famous atheist, but it’s clear that the writer of The Second Coming finds much of his inspiration in the language and imagery of Christianity.

Admittedly last year’s Doctor Who was a bit of a disappointment as far as religious themes went, but 2007 had more to offer.

A running question of what defines humanity was cleverly developed throughout the season, with aliens becoming human and vice versa – even if the execution sometimes left a lot to be desired.

As the villain in The Lazarus Experiment reminds us – quoting T.S. Eliot before attempting to murder the Doctor in a cathedral – ‘Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow’.

John and Paul

Much of this spiritual content comes in the two episodes written by vicar’s husband Paul Cornell, whose 2005 episode Father’s Day was shown at that year’s Greenbelt festival.

Like Father’s Day, Cornell’s recent episodes Human Nature and The Family of Blood remove the Doctor temporarily from the picture, leaving his habitual burden of self-sacrifice for an ordinary man to embrace or reject.

The twist is that this time the Doctor himself has chosen to become human, abandoning his Time Lord nature and memories in favour of life as an ordinary schoolteacher.

This man, John Smith, discovers that to save his world and friends he must ‘die’, losing his own identity in his transfiguration into the Doctor.

In a scene borrowed from The Last Temptation of Christ, Smith has a vision of the future he’s giving up – life with the woman he loves, children and grandchildren, old age – before, devastatingly, he makes his sacrifice and the Doctor returns to save the day.

(Human Nature is based closely on Paul Cornell’s 1995 Doctor Who novel of the same name, which I’ve been urging everyone to read online at the BBC’s Doctor Who site. It really is very good indeed.)

The Faith of Boe

This tragedy of incarnation is mirrored darkly later in the season, when the kind, compassionate Professor Yana rediscovers his own lost identity as the Master.

Human Nature had already hinted slyly at the arch-villain’s return, using the hymn ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’ to set the scene at Smith’s boarding school.

Russell Davies’ episode Gridlock also uses hymns – ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ and ‘Abide with Me’ – to comfort the community trapped in New Earth’s subterranean transport system.

The same story sees the final sacrifice of the Face of Boe, the godlike alien who (as Last of the Time Lords rather implausibly revealed) is actually a far-future version of the ever-messianic Captain Jack.

In the last episode of the season the Master – an Antichrist ruling over a post-apocalypse Earth – is defeated by the human race’s faith in the Doctor. The Master is sceptical, asking incredulously, ‘Faith and hope? Is that all? ... Is that your weapon – prayer?’

The Doctor – restored to vigorous life, rather like Tinkerbell, by the belief of others – tells his adversary ‘I forgive you,’ and plans to take him on as a kind of psychiatric patient, before weeping at his inevitable (though perhaps temporary) demise.

As the writer of I Corinthians could have told the Master, faith and hope certainly aren’t everything. The Doctor, who meets his arch-enemy’s hatred with love, clearly knows it too.

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Earlier articles

• It’s been unreal
• Santa Claus conquers the Martians
• Getting needlessly messianic
• Through An Orbital Mirror, Darkly
• The Shape of Kingdoms to Come
• Back to reality
• I baptised an alien