It's not as if he would just leave the random extra in there to die >_>

Because he hated the idea of leaving another one of his friends to die and was angry at Wilf for wanting him to do it. So instead of doing that he sacrificed his own life which prompted his regeneration. He's lost enough friends already.

Perhaps he was angry at the fact that it was a trusted friend that knocked 4 times, when he was probably expecting an enemy to herald his impending death (i.e. the Master and his drum beat). Actually, it would probably have been even more irritating for him if it had been the random extra that knocked 4 times.

i think he was more annoyed that he'd not seen it coming.

after all, hed seen off the master, the timelords, gallifrey, daleks, cybermen, in fact, just about everything, to find the most innocent person he'd have expected would bring about his demise

after all, if it was the master or a cyberman stuck in there, he'd have let him die, wouldnt he?

Because, for one small moment, he thought he'd defeated the prophesy, got away with it and lived.

Then Wilf knocked and he realised it wasn't to be...

A bit like the bit in the last episode of Blackadder when the guns stopped and Captain Darling and rest thought that the war was over. Darling says something like "At last the great war is over, 1914 to 1917" and then the audience (and Blackadder) acknowledge that this was not the end of the war...

Personally I though the scene with Wilf knocking was the best scene in the whole story and will stay with me for a long time...

That's true, although if it had been the Master, I think he would have saved him. 10 seemed to think it was worth keeping the Master alive-urging him to regenerate in TLOTTL, asking what he (the Doctor) would be without the him (the Master) in TEOT part 2 etc..

He wasn't really angry with Wilf. He was angry and frustrated that he was going to die, because he thought he'd defeated time. That's been a bit of a motif for Tennant's Doctor. All those interventions he's made, and especially the one he made during The Waters of Mars; he's increasingly wanted to control time and thought that maybe he could. Remember the Timelord Victorious?

It was a resolution of that conflict. At the end he was angry not with Wilf but with himself for trying to defeat his own destiny. Every question he asks during his rant he already knows the answer to. David Tennant put it best in Confidential: he was raging against the dying of the light.

I agree that the specific moment of knocking, and of the audience discovering that it was Wilf, was one of the best moments in the Episode. Although it was practically the only moment of the whole episode where we actually got some real, actual plot - not just fancy words and silly 'stars' and bright lights and 'look into my eyes, look into my eyes, what you are seeing is Good Writing'...

Perhaps the whole point about the gun was so Wilf could shoot himself, so the Doctor wouldn't have to save him.

No. The woman told Wilf that the Doctor had to take up arms or die. Possibly without shooting the machine the Doctor would have died and not regenerated because Rassilon would have killed him PERMANENTLY.

i missed a large chunck of this scene and it sounds important i do intend to rewatch the epsiode i saw Wilf knock 4 times inside the booth and came back to see the doc shouting and get into the other booth causing him to get covered in radiation.

I might have missed something vital here by why couldn't the doctor just smash the glass booth and Wilf get out

You didn't miss much.

My guess is he couldn't smash the glass as that would trigger the radiation leak, 'killing' both Wilf and Doc.. and goodness knows who else. After all, if there was no glass, it would have escaped and we don't know how far that radiation would have travelled.

Even if the act of breaking the glass wouldn't itself have triggered the leak, the leak was inevitable and if the Doctor broke the glass then that could possible lead to many more deaths on Earth if the radiation travelled far.

The glass was Vivocci, I guess that is very strong.

True, though in part 1 he did get Wilf to get one man out of the booth to get in it himself when the Master took over the Gate.

Shame about the MAHOOSIVE gaps between the glass door and frame then

I sort of thought it was fitting as DT's Doctor has shown childish elemnts to his personality at times. The egotistical rant at the end of WoM, the anger at Wilf and indeed his last words.

Did anyone else think it was very rude of the doctor not to salute Wilf back and not to gave a wave to Mickey and Martha. I know he was about to die but he did give Sarah Jane a wave.

Yes. I was really quite annoyed by it!

The Doctor doesn't do saluts.

I think they all appreciated him just being there at all. To be honest, I thought it he was rudest to Verity Newman at the book signing.

"Was she happy?"
"Yes"
"Were you?"
*walks off*

But with the rest of them, I think they all know enough about the Doctor to understand how he does things. He never stops, he never talks, he never asks to be thanked. It's just the way he is.

As far as I interpreted it, Mickey and Martha had pretty much got that he was going to 'die' - as had Jack, and Wilf knew anyway. Verity simply asked him if he was happy, and his expression (and the fact that he looked as though he wanted to burst into tears), to me, told her that he wasn't. That was my favourite, the book-signing scene. So upsetting, for them both.

It's always been hard for the Doctor to say goodbye to those he loves. I thought that was shown rather brilliantly.

I agree that Wilf's four knocks were the best part of the episode. The way they came just as the Doctor thought he had won (and as the viewers would have thought he'd won if we hadn't already known that it was DT's last episode!) The Doctor's anger was at fate when he realised that he couldn't escape his destiny.

yes, but wasn't it somewhat dopey of Wilf, who knew about the four-knocks prophecy (he did, didn't he?) to then, um, KNOCK FOUR TIMES (4 x 4, just to really underline it.) Wilf is an OAP and all that, but his character has always been presented as "switched on", and as he was so concerned about The Doctor's impending "death", it seems unlikely he would just "forget" about the prophecy just at the moment he was "making" it come true. No?

He'd forgotten because he believed the 4 knocks was the sound of drums/heartbeats in the Master's head. With the Master and Gallifrey gone Wilf like the Doctor thought it was all over and the prophecy hadn't come to pass. It just didn't occur to him that knocking on the glass four times was actually fullfilling the prophecy..he thought the Doctor was saved. I doubt he even counted the knocks....though we and the Doctor did !!!

hmmm. Maybe. I just think that Wilf could have done several things to draw his plight to the Dr's attention. Shout "oh, Doctor, over here!" or somesuch. Or knock three times. Or knock five times. Or knock twice and shout. Or cough loudly. For him to knock exactly four times, and this to be exactly the prophecy, is for me a coincidence too far. Unless one subscribes to the view that it was a "fixed point in time," had to happen, and that Wilf was unwitting agent for higher forces.

I just think the combination of Wilf fulfilling the knock, AND the incredibly cumbersome "one button in one button out" construction of the radiation chambers, classes as sloppy/lazy writing.