"Utopia" ended on a cliffhanger, with the Doctor, Martha and Jack trapped at the End of the Universe (sadly there was no restaurant in sight) and about to be devoured by Mad Max zombie things. Said Mad Max Zombie Things (MMZTs) have no real purpose except to railroad our heroes into Professor Yana's clutches, Yana turns out to be the Master, Martha does a stupid and unlocks his dormant personality, and he goes absolutely ape and turns into that guy from Life On Mars. He steals the TARDIS and leaves our heroes trapped and apparently at the mercy of the MMZTs.
But no need to worry about them, because Captain Jack has a fancy-pants wristband that lets him go anywhere, except when the plot demands that he can't, which is always, so it's actually disabled unless the Doctor needs a superpowered sidekick. Like now. So they pop back to present day London, and it turns out that the Master has been living under the alias Harold Saxon for the past 18 months, and is now the Prime Minister.
Harold Saxon has no history to speak of. His political career is less than two years long. His college records are sealed. Nobody can find his birth certificate. Only one member of the press seems at all interested in actually exploring his past (and she gets killed for her trouble). When the Doctor asks Martha what his platform was, she can't give a coherent answer. And they made him the Prime Minister anyway. (This was made in 2007, otherwise I'd be concerned that the BBC was actually allowing a conservative slant into its programming.)
All joking aside, the Master proceeds to murder his cabinet with a smile, a gasmask, and a ton of gas. There's a death panel for ya. Then for kicks and giggles, he murders the American President-elect (?) and takes over the planet with the help of six billion murderous bowling balls. Meanwhile, the Doctor accomplishes nothing. At his disposal, he has Captain Jack, an immortal sex god with a teleporter for a wristwatch, and Martha Jones, who has the distinct advantage of not being Rose Tyler. He also has TARDIS keys that he somehow rigs to make them all but unnoticed by almost everyone else.
And he accomplishes nothing. The entire first episode is devoted to making John Simm look awesome and feeding the Doctor/Master slashfic writers ("I love it when you use my name").
The next episode opens. It is one year later. Baltar's presidency is a terrible mess. Starbuck is suddenly on speaking terms with Tigh, and Apollo is fat. Wait, wrong show again. (And in fairness, Rusty did point out in the commentary that Battlestar did it first.)
It is one year later. The Master owns Earth. The Doctor, Jack, and all of Martha's family are his prisoners. Martha has spent the year roaming the earth, but we don't have to wait seven episodes before a boxing match frames a bunch of flashbacks to figure out what she's been up to. Also, the Doctor is suddenly an old man, because the Master has been torturing him with his Laser Screwdriver (which is bigger and thicker than the Sonic).
Martha pretends that she's been assembling a gun that's been hidden all over the world, and because this is so very close to being the usual RTD end-of-season deus ex machina, we don't really question it. It turns out that she's just been telling the Doctor's story to everyone, and now on the eve of the Master's war against the Universe, they all think his name at once (or rather, they think "Doctor"), and he magically gets better, becomes Space Jesus, and forgives the Master, who promptly gets shot by his wife and, rather than regenerate, dies out of pure spite.
It's a great showcase for John Simm as the Master. David Tennant gets to expand his acting repertoire and the fact that he has to spend an entire episode as either an old man or a CGI goblin at least prevents him from beeing annoyingly cheerful or even-more-annoyingly angsty. But that's really all it has going for it.
6 out of 10 for both parts.
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