The Artist at the End of Time

Once and Future #2

Released: 14 June 2023

Listened: 6/19/23

Moving on, the Doctor is in his fifth incarnation in this chapter. Although “Past Lives” emphasized that this was a later Doctor inhabiting the form of the Fourth, this one just seems to be the Fifth, with maybe a few more memories. The big guest star is Georgia Tennant, Peter Davison’s daughter, which is why she’s in this particular story. Fortunately, he remembers her, so we don’t have to go through the “you’re not really my daughter” thing (although he forgets again by the end). The other big twist is that the story involves the Curator, the Colin Baker version, instead of the Tom Baker version, although the Doctor doesn’t recognize his form. The Curator takes a more active role in this story than we’ve seen before; he’s creating a number of works of art, indicating talents he hasn’t shown previously. He’s also trying to take direct action to stop some bad things from happening, which is very unlike what we’ve seen before. He’s very Curator-y in that he’s constantly being enigmatic for the sake of it (or so it seems), and he loves to take the long view. However, the actual menace turns out to be rather banal and perhaps even a bit silly. James Goss is very good at writing families, and fortunately this one isn’t nearly as dysfunctional as he portrays the Noble family. The plot, unfortunately, feels kinda thin.