The end of the third season of Doctor Who

Watched the last episode, "The Last of the Timelords" on Sunday night. It was large in scope, although emotionally more distant than the finales from the first and second season. In my opinion. By having the Doctor appear as a 900-year-old gnome they really missed out on the huge opportunity to get maximum use out of the Master/Doctor relationship. The final confrontation and death(?) of the Master was everything I could have hoped for. Really the culmination of the emotional beating that the Doctor has taken throughout this season; his tears and entreaties were heartrending.

And from the Television Without Pity season three recap by the amazing Jacob, here is a statement about what "Doctor Who" means to its fans and why it matters:

"One thing I think it is not, though, is the Companion setup. I don't like to think that the show, this weird phenomenon that's twice as old as yours truly, comes down to escapism, to the romance of neglecting and avoiding and running away from life. I mean, I realize that it's more than that -- I can't seem to shut the hell up about all the other things it is -- but the thing about stories, like dreams, is that they're all you. In Jungian terms, the Companion is the Ego and the Doctor is the Self and the TARDIS is the Ego-Self Axis, and if you ask me why, as an atheist, I'm so obsessed with writing and reading about religion, that's the pat answer that I won't give you, because it's too small. It's a collection of trees that can't actually express the forest. But I think in human development there's something that leads us on, some gift of the world, that gives us guidance toward becoming whole. I think there's something, a Doctor, that wants us to look in those dark corners and tease the mysteries out and become strong enough to see things the way they are, without all the magic and hope and fear and ugliness that we project on them, because when we do that, we're abusing ourselves, because the world inside our head is where we actually live, and the best we can hope for is to work until it matches the world outside our heads as closely as possible. So I've never found it weird or particularly interesting to cast Doctor Who as either a meditative experience of the divine or as a description of individuation, the process of growing up. Those are all just a bunch of words for fairy tales, which are all just versions of the Quest, and the Quest never ends. You shouldn't go around kicking trees when you're in the middle of the forest, because if you miss the forest, you're screwed, because it's a...really awesome forest."