By the end of his run, and throughout the New Adventures series, the Seventh Doctor slowly became known as a master manipulator, finally catching up on old enemies and paying off ancient debts. He fought the Gods of Ragnarok. He - almost - wiped out the Daleks. He tried to hide the truth of his great legacy. He was a mysterious and ancient figure who chose to look like an innocuous middle aged man, hiding his wrath with whimsy. And then, he was killed, unceremoniously, by stepping out of the TARDIS into an unknown area of San Francisco where he was immediately shot by a group of Triads who were never heard from again. Brilliant. It told us absolutely nothing about who this incarnation had been and what he had done. It was a random, pointless and unceremonious death, compounded by the indignity of Grace Holloways hurried surgical procedures, that betrayed and laughed in the face of everything that had been done to make the Seventh Doctor one of the strangest and most mysterious of all his incarnations. Fans thought he would go out enacting some dark and manipulative scheme, not be cut in his prime by a random act of bad timing!
