The general feeling of disappointment I've had with these specials, following the tremendous fourth season continues with this - the first half of David Tennant's swansong as the tenth Doctor.
Having visited the Ood planet and learning of their nightmares from an Ood Elder (Brian Cox), The Doctor (David Tennant) rushes to Earth as he learns of a cult resurrecting The Master (John Simm). They meet and, for the first time, The Doctor discovers that the drumming in his head, that has driven The Master to madness, is real. Before he can help, the Master is captured by Billionaire Joshua Naismith (David Harewood) who plans to use technology taken in the fall of Torchwood to grant his daughter eternal life. He wants the Master to help fix the technology, which he does, but not without rewriting it to nefarious purpose.
I suppose that, for a season finale in particular, I felt this was a bit underwhelming. I was looking forward to the Master's return but here he's a corrupted version, obsessed with eating to restore his failing regeneration energy and whilst Simm throws himself into it with his usual commitment - it's not the conniving return of the Doctors intellectual equal we might have hoped for. The visual effects for his special powers is also a bit disappointing. Harewood's Naismith isn't established enough before he's seemingly lost to the plot and whilst it's nice to see the Noble's again, they don't play that big a part.
Really perhaps, the problem is that not enough actually happens in this episode. The narration leads to a reveal, but not much actual story, and I understand that the split on these two partners is to leave The Doctor in a seemingly impossible situation at the end of the episode, before reversing it next week but the pacing of this feels off, with all of it happening in the last five minutes and it all being a bit meandering up to that point.
I keep saying in my reviews of the two-part specials that, when the first one is amazing - I shouldn't go overboard as we're only halfway through. I'm hoping that the underwhelming start is made up for in a superior conclusion.
