A Matter of Time: Gridlock

ORIGINAL BROADCAST: 14/04/2007

Three years ago today, the Doctor and his new companion Martha arrived in the slums of New Earth, where they met the Face of Boe for one final time. Together they must experience the horrors of the mysterious Motorway, in order to discover the terrible secrets at the heart of the city. This story starred David Tennant as the tenth Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones.

As the Doctor leaves the TARDIS at the start of the episode, he pulls out the arrow that was fired at the door in the end of ‘The Shakespeare Code’. This story is the second to feature the large crustacean race known as the Macra, which first appeared in the Patrick Troughton story ‘The Macra Terror’. The Doctor says that they have evolved since the last time that he met them.

This episode reveals the great secret promised to the Doctor by the Face of Boe in ‘New Earth’. The phrase ‘You are not alone’ would be explored later in the series, when the Doctor discovers that he is not the last of the Time Lords. The initials of the phrase also make up the word ‘YANA’, the name of the professor who would turn out to be the Master.

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