Cult Spy: 'Doctor Who' Season Three Overview - Part One

Another year of absorbing time travel and malevolent monsters has come to an end as the third season of Doctor Who has drawn to a close. Don’t ever say the show doesn’t sign off in style, with the Titanic crashing through the Tardis walls this year. As long as DiCaprio and Winslet aren’t aboard with their highly contrived and poorly scripted romance then we’re perfectly happy. Anyway, random tangents aside, Cult Spy is marking the event with the first part of our overview of the season, looking at specific components of the show and how they fared over the weeks…

You Are Not Alone

Just be glad that these words didn’t signal the intention of Russell T Davies to lure Michael Jackson aboard the Tardis and croon his hit of the same name. Seeing as McFly and now Kylie are appearing on the show then it might not stretch the bounds of plausibility too far.

Instead, The Doctor was given these four words as the Face of Boe's long-awaited final message in 'Gridlock', suggesting that another of his race may have survived the devastating Time War. Could it be the Meddling Monk back for another ruck? Has The Rani evaded the massacre?

Of course not. Holmes needs his Moriarty and the answer lay within the suitably acronymic figure of Professer Yana. The seemingly benevolent old man had hidden his real persona of The Master using the same genetic transfer and watch that The Doctor deployed in 'Human Nature'. Exit Sir Derek Jacobi and enter John Simm. This was a masterful piece of plotting that really helped to give this season the feeling of being one entity, rewarding attentive loyal viewers, and not just being a disjointed mix of episodes. Further reinforcing this element was...

The Harold Saxon Mystery

Forget the events of September 11th, for the internet conspiracy theories that stemmed from that atrocity were hardly as rampant as the Harold Saxon-related speculation that did the rounds. The name first cropped up in the second season's 'Love & Monsters' and appeared through both visual and vocal references throughout the latest run of episodes, until the devious British politician was finally unveiled in 'The Sound of Drums'.

Using subliminal radio signals to dupe the population into believing he was their saviour, Saxon - alias the regenerated Master - stopped just short of using 'Things Can Only Get Better' for his campaign music. Perhaps there wasn't enough drumming in it? Any claims that Saxon was a thinly veiled Tony Blair clone were ejected quicker than a Slitheen fart when was saw just how he handled the American President. You'd never see that happen to Dubya, unless Gordon Brown has something up his sleeve. Perferably a Toclafane.

Overall, Saxon's plan to make the entire current human race extinct and replace them with the futurekind species (hidden in the Toclafane) can be seen as a politic policy that is only marginally less popular than Poll Tax. Vote Saxon indeed...

Next week in Part Two of our season overview we look at The Face of Boe Mystery and some beastly blasts from the past...