Doctor Who: 5 Questions Which May Go Forever Unanswered

4. Was That Honestly The Final Fate Of Humanity In "Utopia"?

Lost in the excitement of the return and subsequent vanquishing of our hero's no. 1 nemesis The Master €“ in two incarnations, no less €“ in the season-ending trilogy "Utopia"/"The Sound of Drums"/"The Last of the Time Lords" was perhaps one of the darkest outcomes in Doctor Who history. Recall the series of events at the end of "Utopia." The spaceship carrying the last representatives of the human race and other sentient beings takes off, following "a call coming from across the stars." The Master, having discovered his own true identity, makes short work of his former companion Cantho. Ignoring the Doctor's pleas to wait for him, the Master is seen removing circuitry from the navigation control with a dismissive spitting out of "utopia." In the following two episodes, the Master was revealed to have captured these end-of-time survivors and morph them into the compact killing machines known as Toclafane. A dark enough fate for those whom the Doctor has called more than once "quite his favorite species," sure. Consider this, though: Thanks to the classic Davies Era reset button in the concluding moments of "Last of the Time Lords," the events triggered by the election of "Harold Saxon" to Downing Street *never happened*. Remaining as fact, however, is the Master's regeneration and, presumably, those events leading up to it. Ergo, that spaceship carrying the last bastions of intelligent life was set adrift, lost somewhere a dying universe, ever searching for a paradise which may not even exist. An ignominious end and, if this is truly the final fate of humanity, truly the darkest statement of the Davies Era €“ we're talking, like, thousands of times darker than "Midnight."