The Doctor is approaching his final death, so the TARDIS brings him to the Rose Garden, a place he has considered home throughout all of his incarnations, a place he has shared with no-one, a place he has always gone when he needed solace and time to reflect on things. He remembers his past life: his companions dead or gone from him, his enemies vanquished or redeemed by him, his past incarnations and the Other before them. Now, as he approaches the final end, it seems only fitting that he return to this most private, most personal place.

However, even here his peace is interrupted, by the arrival of the Black Guardian and his counterpart, the White. He recognises and resents the part this two thirds of the Six-Fold God, the Council of Guardians, has played in his life and those of the rest of the Deca - the Master, the Rani, Mortimus, Drax, et al. But he is horrified to realise that all his life he has been a servant of the Black Guardian, a force for Chaos, while the White Guardian, Lord of Order, was served instead by the Valeyard. The Valeyard, that bastard reflection of him born when his twelfth incarnation was exterminated by the Daleks; the Valeyard whose final destruction had seen the eradication of the Daleks' timeline and the restoration of Gallifrey's. The Valeyard who was created by the White Guardian, as were the Daleks, the Sontarans and so many others, as forces to impose order, structure, on the universe.

Now, confused by the revelations laid before him, the Doctor is offered Enlightenment once more, and this time he accepts it...

Having passed out in the South Pole Tracking Station, the first Doctor encounters the phantom of his next incarnation in his subconscious, who convinces him to stop fighting the coming regeneration.

Two people are trapped in the TARDIS; a young man and an increasingly senile individual who believes himself to be the Doctor in his last incarnation, kept alive only by machinery most of the time. However it turns out that the young man is the Doctor, while the old man is his companion, now aged nearly to death and confused as to who he truly is. They have been trapped in the Vortex for years, and the only way to release the TARDIS would also kill the human companion. So the Doctor waits, unable to end the life of his friend, letting him have his comforting delusions, until he finally passes away naturally.

The TARDIS arrives at the toll plaza (last seen in Delta and the Bannermen), and the Doctor meets the strangely knowledgeable tollman Fergus. They discuss the seventh Doctor's life and his transgressions commited while acting as Time's Champion; abandoning Mel on Iceworld, killing Ace's lover on Heaven, leaving Bennie to deal with the Gods of Dellah alone, and dodging his promise to collect the Master's remains from Skaro for over a century after leaving Lungbarrow and Gallifrey. When the increasingly irritated Doctor tries to ascertain the source of Fergus' knowledge, he claims his awareness of the Time Lord's guilt and regrets came to him in a dream. The tollman makes his customer confront his feelings over the deaths of Roz, of Liz, of so many of his companions whose lives were shaped by their time with him. But the memories of his recent companions allows the Doctor to face up to what he has done, to recognise the good he has done to, and the need that the universe has for someone like him, to fight the darkness and the monsters. And Fergus reveals that it is his job to make the Doctor realise that he can remember the good as well as the bad, and that his friends have forgiven him for any trials he put them through. Now Fergus, servant of the Eternal Time, can release the Doctor from his position as Time's Champion, and the burdens that go with it, and send him on his way for one final time, to collect the Master's remains and return them to Gallifrey.