Sunday 25 December 2005

The Christmas Invasion

Following the events in The Parting of the Ways, the TARDIS returns to Jackie Tyler's estate flat shortly before Christmas, greeted by both Jackie and Mickey Smith. However, the man accompanying Rose Tyler from the TARDIS is unfamiliar to the two of them, and seems to be in bad health. Rose explains, as they get him dressed in bedclothes left by Jackie's beau (who has a habit of leaving pieces of fruit in the pockets) and into bed, that he is the Doctor, who has just undergone regeneration. With little else to do while the Doctor recovers, Rose and Mickey go Christmas shopping but are attacked by masked Santas. They escape safely to the flat where they find a Christmas tree in the flat; as they realize that Jackie didn't buy it, the tree comes to life, spinning fast enough to destroy anything in its path. Rose grabs the Doctor's sonic screwdriver and places it in his hand, asking the still-comatose Doctor for help; instinctively, the Doctor awakes and uses the screwdriver to disintegrate the tree, and recognizes that it was being controlled by more Santas outside the flat, though they transmat away before anyone can stop them. The Doctor collapses again, telling Rose that he is still regenerating and that the energy of his regeneration is luring the Santas, and whomever controls them, here, and he is put back to bed by the others.
Meanwhile, the "Guinevere One" space probe, launched under a United Kingdom program by Prime Minister Harriet Jones, is about to land on Mars, with a live television broadcast from the probe once it lands. However, unknowingly, the probe is swallowed by a giant spacecraft that makes its way silently to Earth. As the broadcast begins, the audience is rather surprised to find an alien face staring back at them. Harriet, along with the probe's team, learn that the broadcast comes not from Mars but 5000 miles above Earth. The alien speech is eventually translated, and the aliens are revealed to be Sycorax, and they are claiming the planet as their own, demanding surrender or "they" will die. Harriet sends a response back, telling them that she will not allow it and that they are armed, but the Sycorax ignore her, and instead activate a device that causes nearly one third of the world population to fall under their control, leading these people to stand precariously at the edges of the highest roofs they can find, as if ready to jump. The probe team learns that the commonality of those under the Sycorax control is that they all share the same blood type as a sample that was included on the probe. Realising they are overwhelmed, Harriet pleads through the television broadcast for the Doctor's help. Shortly after this, she along with members of the probe team are transmatted to the Sycorax ship, where the Sycorax demand that either one-half of the world's population be sold to them as slaves, or one-third of the population, those standing on the roofs, will die.
Rose and Mickey, who have been aware of what has occurred through Mickey's hacking skills, move the Doctor back to the safety of the TARDIS as the Sycorax ship takes position over London. The TARDIS is transmatted to the spaceship, unbeknownst to Rose and Mickey, and thus when they leave it, they are panicked to find themselves facing the Sycorax, resulting in a container of tea being spilt into the underbelly of the TARDIS control room near where the unconscious Doctor is lying and causing some sparks to form. Rose attempts to bluff the Sycorax in a manner similar to what she had seen the Doctor use before with the Nestene Consciousness, but they see through her claims. However, Rose's deception has allowed the Doctor to fully recover, thanks to the spilled tea, and he emerges from the TARDIS, fully regenerated. Asking the Sycorax to wait, the Doctor goes about greeting everyone, and discovers and disables the device that was controlling the humans by blood, which can only hypnotize humans. The hypnotic suggestions got the humans to the roofs but can not make them jump; the Sycorax threat was a bluff.
The Doctor challenges the Sycorax leader to a one-on-one battle over the fate of earth, which the leader agrees to. They sword fight, first inside the ship, then moving out onto its wing, with the Doctor appearing outmatched, and at one point, having his hand cut clean off. The Sycorax believes he has won, but the Doctor notes that as he is still within the first fifteen hours of regeneration, his body has incredible regenerative powers, and he is able to regrow his lost hand and take the advantage to defeat the leader. At sword point, he gets the leader to vow to never return to Earth again, and begins to return with the rest of the group inside the ship. However, the Sycorax leader attempts to attack the Doctor from behind; but the Doctor throws a satsuma found in the bedclothes he's wearing at a control button that causes the area of the ship's wing to disappear, dropping the Sycorax leader to Earth.
The Doctor addresses the Sycorax and forbids them to ever return to Earth. The Sycorax are to go home and warn other aliens species that the Earth is off-limits to them, and that the Earth is defended.
The Doctor returns all the humans back to Earth and watch as the Sycorax ship moves away. Harriet receives a call and learns that "Torchwood is ready", and subsequently orders it to initiate an unrevealed process. (Torchwood was only previously mentioned in the episode Bad Wolf and only referred to as "they" in this episode.) To the Doctor's horror, five powerful energy beams from across London converge on the Sycorax ship and destroy it. Harriet justifies it as needed to be able to defend the Earth from other hostile aliens when the Doctor is not there. The Doctor claims he can destroy her with six simple words, and after she walks off he asks her aide "Don't you think she looks tired?".That evening, as snow (which is actually the ash from the destroyed ship) falls on London, the Doctor selects his new outfit from the TARDIS wardrobe, and joins Rose, Jackie, and Mickey for Christmas dinner. They watch Harriet Jones on the television, fending off rumours about her ill-health and a pending vote of no confidence in the House of Commons. The Doctor and Rose then get ready to set off again for more travels across space and time.

Saturday 18 June 2005

The Parting of The Ways

As the Dalek fleet approaches Earth, the Doctor and Jack land the TARDIS on the Dalek mothership to rescue Rose Tyler, using the tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator to protect themselves from the Dalek weapons. The Dalek Emperor, which describes himself as a God, explains that he managed to survive the Time War in a crippled ship, and rebuilt the race by harvesting genetic materials from the humans such as those delivered from the Game Station. The Doctor observes that the Daleks have gained human traits and emotion by this process and have, because of their creed and resulting self-hate, become deadlier than ever. After bringing Rose aboard, the Doctor returns the TARDIS to the Game Station and works with Jack and the remaining humans aboard to prepare for the Dalek attack.
Jack uses the extrapolator to shield the top six floors of the station and sets up defensive positions, while the Doctor attempts to create a Delta Wave generator from the transmission equipment that will fry the brain of any being in its path, though it will take time to charge up. The Doctor tricks Rose into retrieving equipment from the TARDIS, and while she is inside, uses his sonic screwdriver to direct the TARDIS to return her to her home in the 21st century, much to Rose's anguish. In a farewell hologram known as Emergency Programme One, he describes this as a procedure designed to stop the TARDIS falling into enemy hands. As the Daleks begin to invade the Station, murdering all humans on board and overrunning the defences, the Dalek Emperor contacts the Doctor. He tells him that the Delta Wave generator will kill everyone on nearby Earth as well as his fleet, but the Doctor says this is a preferable fate to enslavement to the Daleks.
Rose, back home, is met by Jackie and Mickey who try to console her. As Rose regains her composure, she spots the words "Bad Wolf" all around the area where the TARDIS has landed, and realises that it is a message rather than a warning. She enlists Mickey's help to try to open the heart of the TARDIS, hoping its telepathic circuits will recognise her desire to return to help the Doctor. Jackie, shaken by the revelation that Rose has met her late father Pete, decides to help and borrows a large tow-truck from a friend. Between the three of them, they are able to open the heart, which engulfs Rose in a white glow. The TARDIS doors slam on Mickey and Jackie as they try to enter, and then it dematerialises.
Back in the future, the Daleks break through the final defences, kill Jack and Lynda, and confront the Doctor just as the Delta Wave generator is ready. However, he cannot bring himself to activate it, and resigns himself to being killed by the Daleks. The TARDIS materialises in the room and Rose, now infused with the time vortex, steps out. Using its vast power, she spreads the words from the station's logo, "Bad Wolf", across time and space to be able to bring herself to this moment and rescue "her Doctor". The Daleks attack her, but she effortlessly disintegrates their entire fleet and brings Jack back to life. The Doctor, distraught about the consequences of all this, begs her to let go of the Vortex's power, but she is unable or unwilling to do so and begins to falter. To save her, the Doctor holds Rose and the two finally kiss, thus inhaling the time vortex energy into himself. He then exhales it back into the TARDIS and takes the unconscious Rose on board. Jack, confused by the disappearance of the Daleks and his own resurrection, turns up just in time to see the TARDIS disappear.Rose awakens on the TARDIS to find the Doctor in pain because the residual Vortex energy is destroying every cell in his body. He tells her that he is dying, and explains the regeneration process. After saying his farewells and praising Rose's performance and then his own, the Doctor morphs into his next incarnation.

Saturday 11 June 2005

Bad Wolf

The three TARDIS travellers find themselves separated, waking up with temporary amnesia in various reality television and game shows. The Doctor finds himself in a Big Brother house hosted by the "Davinadroid", Rose on the set of The Weakest Link hosted by the "Anne Droid", and Jack facing two gynoids, Trine-e and Zu-Zana who offer to give him a brand new image, à la What Not to Wear.
All three find out that the shows are more fatal than their twenty-first century counterparts. On The Weakest Link and Big Brother, losing contestants are seemingly disintegrated, while on What Not to Wear, participants undergo major cosmetic surgery. Jack and the Doctor escape from their shows, the Doctor bringing along a contestant called Lynda, and find themselves on Satellite Five, which the Doctor previously visited in "The Long Game", now under the control of the Badwolf Corporation.
Lynda is instrumental in explaining gaps in the narrative. She explains to the Doctor that a hundred years previous to the episode's narrative, the satellite's broadcasts suddenly stopped, and as a result, progress on Earth halted. The Doctor realises that he himself was responsible for the change.The Doctor, Jack, and Lynda progress to find Rose. They find her as she loses in the final round of The Weakest Link, and is promptly disintegrated. They are arrested, but escape their capture and travel to the control room on Floor 500. They meet the Controller, a cybernetic human, who obliquely tells the Doctor that contest losers are not disintegrated, but transmatted to an empty point in space. The Doctor and Jack discover, to their horror, hundreds of ships containing 400,000 Daleks between them. Detected, the Daleks open a communication channel to the Doctor, who resolves to rescue Rose and then purge the Dalek race once and for all. In response, the Daleks' last action before the episode ends is to start invading Earth.

Saturday 4 June 2005

Boom Town

The Doctor has landed the TARDIS over the Cardiff Rift, left open after the Gelth were defeated in 1869, and is using the slow radiation leakage to recharge the TARDIS. As the process will take a whole day, he, Rose, and Jack are joined by Mickey in Cardiff and take the opportunity to explore the area. While they enjoy a meal at a restaurant, the Doctor notices, to his dismay, the front page of The Western Mail, with the headline "New Mayor, New Cardiff" and a picture of Margaret Blaine, a Slitheen in its human form whom they previously encountered.
Since their meeting, Blaine has become the Lord Mayor of Cardiff, and initiated the construction of a nuclear power plant. However, several people had found significant flaws with the design that could lead to a nuclear meltdown, and had approached her about these issues, but they all have mysteriously disappeared, Blaine having killed them herself. During a recent press conference, a young reporter named Cathy approaches Blaine about these deaths and the information they had left behind. Believing she knows way too much, Blaine invites her to follow into the ladies' room where she plans to kill her like the others, but has a change of heart as the reporter talks about her impending family (as she is pregnant), realizing that Blaine herself no longer has one.
Realizing that they must stop Blaine, the Doctor's group converges on City Hall and eventually capture Blaine after chasing her through repeated uses of a teleporter. She tells the group that the teleporter is how she escaped the destruction of the rest of her family, and that she hopes that, as planned, the meltdown of the plant would open the Rift and destroy the planet, herself using a hidden tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator — a pan-dimensional surfboard — to escape the explosion. The Doctor notices that the name of the plant, Blaidd Drwg, is Welsh for "Bad Wolf", a phrase that he and Rose have observed before in their adventures. The Doctor tells Blaine he will take her back to her home planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius, but Blaine notes that the Slitheen family are convicted criminals there and she will be executed, which the Doctor insists is not his problem.
Jack recognizes that the extrapolator can be used to halve the time to refuel the TARDIS, and stays there to install it. Rose and Mickey go out for a drink to discuss their relationship; Mickey admits he's dating someone else since Rose seemingly left him for the Doctor, which angers Rose. At the request of Blaine, the Doctor joins her for one last meal at her favourite restaurant, equipped with bracelets that will electrocute Blaine if she gets more than three metres away from the Doctor. Blaine attempts to kill the Doctor through various means, but the Doctor is able to casually block the attempts. Blaine then attempts to gain the Doctor's sympathy, explaining how she will be executed and if he could take her to a different planet instead. However, before the Doctor can make his decision, a large earthquake shakes the area.The group reassembles in the TARDIS, where a bright column of light is shooting up overhead. Jack tells the Doctor that it is the power from the Rift, brought upon by the extrapolator. The Doctor realizes that this was Blaine's plan all along—that the extrapolator when used would be found by someone of advanced enough technology to recognize the Slitheen, who would hopefully activate the device, causing it to lock onto the nearest alien power source, which happens to be the TARDIS, thereby tearing open the Rift and eventually the Earth, while she rides the device to escape the destruction. Blaine takes Rose hostage and demands the extrapolator, but before she can use it, the heart of TARDIS opens and shines in her face; the light overtakes her, and shortly her skin suit falls empty to the console floor. The Doctor and Jack manage to close the TARDIS console and reseal the Rift once more. When they investigate the suit, they find a Slitheen egg; the Doctor surmises as the TARDIS is telepathic, it may have sensed that Blaine wanted a second chance and gave that to her. As the Doctor, Rose, and Jack prepare to travel to Raxacoricofallapatorius to deliver the egg, Rose realizes that Mickey has left; the Doctor offers to wait for him, but Rose lets him go, wishing that she could also have a second chance.

Saturday 28 May 2005

The Doctor Dances

Continuing from the cliffhanger of "The Empty Child", the Doctor orders the beings to go back to their room - thus causing them to return to their beds and, unbeknownst to him, saving Nancy from her brother Jamie. The Doctor, Rose and Jack go to Jamie's room where the Doctor realises that the being that was Jamie is still learning what it can do and soon, will be too powerful to stop. The Doctor turns to discover Jamie waiting in the doorway. Escaping from Jamie and the other creatures (under Jamie's control), they end up trapped in a room. Jack teleports back to his ship and uses Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" to prevent Jamie using the radio to track the Doctor and Rose. Challenged by Rose to dance while they wait, the Doctor accepts but is interrupted when they are transported to Jack's Chula ship. The Doctor uses the ship's nanogenes to heal a wound while Jack explains that he went renegade on the Time Agency when they stole two years of his memories.
Meanwhile, Nancy is briefly caught by the family returning home. Managing to blackmail her way free, she returns to the railyard to tell the other children they are not safe while they are with her. Telling them of her plan to head to the bomb site, Nancy does so but is quickly captured. Despite her pleas, she is left with a guard who subsequently transforms into a gas mask-wearing zombie. The Doctor, Rose, and Jack arrive at the bomb site and realise that the contagion is now airborne as the soldiers there begin to transform. Freeing Nancy, the Doctor investigates the 'bomb' which is actually the empty shell of a Chula medical transport. Realising that the ship also contained nanogenes, the Doctor deduces that the transformations are caused by nanogenes who have used Jamie's dead body in a gas mask as a template for all humans. As they attempt to open the transport, it transmits a "call to arms" instructing all the altered humans to come to battle; as the Chula were a warrior race, the nanogenes have given the transformed beings enhanced abilities. The altered people from the hospital arrive at the railway station but stay at a distance, and the Doctor realizes that since Jamie was the template, it is his mind that drives them; his looking for his "mummy". A distraught Nancy claims that the situation is all her fault, and as the Doctor tries to reassure her, he notes her grief and deduces that she is not, as she appears, a fourteen year old girl and that Jamie was not her brother but her son.
Jamie heads through the gate and approaches Nancy, still asking if she is his mummy. The Doctor instructs Nancy to tell Jamie the truth, and she tearfully does so, embracing her son. The nanogene cloud gathers around the two, and are able to identify Nancy's DNA as being that of a parent, and they reverse the transformation on Jamie, restoring him to life. The Doctor then scatters the nanogenes over the assembled zombies and they are all restored, as he proclaims that "Just this once, everybody lives!" As the German bomb falls onto the site, Jack uses his ship to capture it and remove it to the far reaches of space; the Doctor sets the medical transport to explode, thus destroying the technology and matching the historical records of an explosion at the site. Aboard his ship, Jack finds he cannot stop the bomb from exploding or abandon his ship, but is rescued when the TARDIS materializes at the rear of his ship. Joining the TARDIS crew, Jack watches as the Doctor and Rose dance in celebration.

Saturday 21 May 2005

The Empty Child

The Doctor and Rose Tyler are travelling in the TARDIS, chasing a metal cylinder that is marked as dangerous through the time vortex; the cylinder skips and leaves the vortex, traveling to London some time in the past. The TARDIS materialises at night, within a month of when the cylinder should have arrived. The Doctor investigates a nearby cabaret to try to find word of the cylinder, while Rose spots a young boy in a gas mask alone on a nearby roof and climbs up to try to help him. Shortly, air-raid sirens begin wailing in every section, and the Doctor realises they have landed in World War II, during the The Blitz, with Nazi German planes making a bombing raid. The Doctor runs back to the TARDIS but cannot find Rose; however, he is very puzzled when the telephone of his police box starts ringing as it is not a real phone but part of the TARDIS's disguise. He goes to answer despite a young woman telling him not to, and hears a young boy asking for his mummy over the phone. The Doctor turns back to the woman to find she has left and gone to raid the house of a family which has left for an air-raid shelter for food, and goes to follow her.
The Doctor watches the young woman, who has now brought several other homeless children to enjoy the abandoned meal in the home, and decides to introduce himself. He learns that the young woman is called Nancy, and that they have been sustaining themselves this way with every air raid. However, the group is startled to find a young boy in a gas mask knocking on a window; Nancy and the other children bar the house even as the child tries to stick his hand through the letterbox of the front door. Nancy tells the Doctor to not touch the boy, or he will become like him, "empty". The boy is able to control the electronic devices in the home, pleading for his mummy through the phone, radio, and a toy clapping monkey. As Nancy and the other child leave with the looted food, the Doctor opens the front door, only to find the boy gone. The Doctor follows Nancy to an abandoned rail yard where she has made her home, and tells her that he's made the connection between the cylinder that fell and the "empty" boy. Realizing the connection, Nancy tells him about a bomb falling near the Limehouse station "that was not a bomb". As they investigate the site, protected by a fence and armed troops, Nancy suggests the Doctor talk to Doctor Constantine. The Doctor remarks that Nancy is looking after the children to make up for something, and she admits that it is because her brother Jamie died during an air raid. The Doctor gives Nancy encouragement that everything will be all right before he leaves her for the hospital.
Inside the hospital, the Doctor finds Dr Constantine, who stands watch over several beds filled with corpses, each still wearing a gas mask. Dr. Constantine points out to the Doctor that the masks are not physical but appear to be part of the body, and they all share the exact same scars and external injuries. Dr Constantine explains that when the "bomb" fell, it claimed one victim, but those that came into contact with him began to show the same effects, and the symptoms spread from there. Dr Constantine reveals that the corpses react simultaneously to a large rap of his cane on the floor, or, possibly, him hitting the metal can, and that the first victim was Nancy's brother. Before he can explain more, however, Dr. Constantine is changed in front of the Doctor's eyes into a similar gas mask-wearing zombie, asking for his "mummy".
Meanwhile, as Rose attempts to use a rope to climb up to the boy, she discovers the rope is actually a line hanging from a barrage balloon above, and it lifts her up and off the roof. Captain Jack Harkness of the RAF, participating in a function in a nearby building, spots Rose's plight using anachronistic binoculars and excuses himself. When Rose can no longer maintain her grip on the rope and falls, she is caught in a tractor beam and brought safely aboard his Chula spaceship, where she lands directly in his arms, and promptly faints. When she comes to, Jack introduces himself and treats her rope-burnt hands using the ship's "nanogenes". Both Jack and Rose appear to find the other attractive, and Jack invites Rose to the top of the ship, tethered to Big Ben. As they continue to flirt, Jack explains to Rose that he used to be a Time Agent and has since gone freelance, and that he has something that the Time Agency wants and that he expects to have to negotiate with Rose for. Rose bluffs and tells him she would need to consult with her companion first, though she needs to find him first. Jack uses the ship to find the Doctor's location as he explains that the object is a fully equipped Chula warship, and that he knows that in two hours it will be destroyed by another bombing raid.
Finding the Doctor's location, Jack and Rose join up with the Doctor at the hospital shortly after Dr Constantine's transformation. The Doctor learns of the situation from Rose, but hearing about the Chula warship, demands that Jack tell the truth. Jack admits it was just an ambulance, trying to bluff about its value, but argues that it has nothing to do with the infection. As they argue, the corpses all rise and start to approach the trio, asking for their "mummy"; simultaneously, Nancy, who has returned to the house to collect more food, is also trapped and approached by the young boy, who she knows is Jamie, also asking for his "mummy", leading to a cliffhanger ending, continued in "The Doctor Dances".

Saturday 14 May 2005

Fathers Day

The episode opens with a flashback of Jackie telling a younger Rose about her father Pete, who died on 7 November 1987, the day their friends Stuart Hoskins and Sarah Clarke got married. She tells Rose that no one was around when Pete died after being run over by a hit-and-run driver.
In the present on the TARDIS, Rose asks the Doctor if they can go back to the day her father died so that she can be there when it happens. The Doctor agrees, but cautions Rose to avoid interfering. They watch as Pete, attempting to retrieve a fallen gift for the wedding, is struck by a hit-and-run driver. Rose is unable to move when the Doctor tells her to go and be with her dad, and Pete soon dies. After Rose recovers, she asks the Doctor if she can try again with the time machine. The Doctor, against his judgement, allows for it, but warns Rose to not run until their former selves have left to prevent a paradox. As the accident is able to happen, Rose runs out and pushes Pete aside, saving his life, but causing their former selves to vanish. The Doctor angrily warns Rose about the damage to the timeline but Rose dismisses it, believing Pete to just be an average person. While Rose goes with Pete to the wedding, the Doctor storms back to the TARDIS, only to find that it is now an empty shell and realizes something is very wrong. Elsewhere, strange flying beasts start appearing and consuming people below without warning.
As Rose and Pete drive to the wedding, there is anachronistic hip-hop music ("Don't Mug Yourself" by The Streets) playing on Pete's radio, and Rose gets a unidentified voice message on her phone, "Watson, come here, I need you." At the church, the same car that nearly ran Pete over appears and threatens to run over Pete, but he dodges it, and the car disappears again. As they mill with the guests, including Jackie who has brought the infant Rose with her, young Mickey Smith runs up to the party and warns that all his friends were taken by beasts. As the same time, the Doctor reaches the church and warns everyone inside just as a one of the flying beasts appears and attacks the party. With the surviving members safely in the church, the Doctor explains to Rose that her actions have caused a time paradox, which the Time Lords, if they were still around, would be able to fix; instead, the flying creatures are like bacteria, sterilizing the wound in time by consuming everything inside it, though the age of the church will protect them. As they talk, the key to the TARDIS starts glowing and heating up, and the Doctor realizes that he can summon it and use it to fix the problem, but warns everyone to not touch it until the process is complete. The Doctor also warns Rose not to touch her younger self, as this will further damage the time stream.
As they wait for the TARDIS to fully reappear, Pete overhears the Doctor and Rose talking, and realize that Rose is his daughter. When he approaches her and asks her about how good a father he is, Rose is unable to answer truthfully. Jackie, seeing Pete talk to Rose, believes Pete is having an affair with her, but in order to show that Rose is really their daughter, he thrusts the infant Rose into Rose's arms. As the Doctor warned, this causes a paradox that allows one of the beasts to appear in the church. The Doctor, as the oldest being there, sacrifices himself as the beast rushes to the crowd, causing it, the Doctor, and the faint TARDIS image to disappear, leaving the TARDIS key cold. As the group tries to figure out what to do next, Pete watches the same car that tried to run him over appear and disappear over and over again. He comes to the conclusion that he was meant to die by that car, and determines that by letting himself die, the timeline will be repaired. He has an emotional goodbye with Jackie and Rose, and then runs out to face the car the next time it appears. Pete is fatally struck by the car, but in that instant, the timeline is restored: all those consumed by the beasts reappear, including the Doctor, while the others, save for Rose and Pete, are unaware of the events. Rose runs to Pete's side and quietly stays with him until he dies. Rose returns to the Doctor, and the two walk hand-in-hand back to the restored TARDIS.
The episode ends on a similar flashback as the opener, as Jackie explains to a young Rose that Pete didn't die alone - a young woman stayed with him until he died, leading the adult Rose to eulogise about Pete Tyler, her father, "the most wonderful man in the world."

Saturday 7 May 2005

The Long Game

The Doctor, Rose and Adam travel forward in time to the year 200,000 and land aboard Satellite 5, a space station orbiting Earth during what should be the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, but the Doctor immediately recognizes that the activity aboard the station is not consistent with future history. The Doctor investigates the station and meets with journalists Cathica and Suki who work on Satellite 5, using his psychic paper to pose as a member of management. They tell the Doctor that Satellite 5 is a 600-channel news satellite broadcasting to the Empire, and that they hope to be promoted someday to "Floor 500", the management floor. Rose and Adam investigate food stalls near where the TARDIS landed. Adam is overwhelmed with the strangeness of the situation, so Rose lets him borrow her "superphone" to call his family in the past; but he only gets their answering machine. Adam pockets the "superphone". The Doctor and his companions are observed by the Editor, a human in a dark, icy room, watching their actions through security cameras.
The Doctor reunites with Rose and Adam, and they are invited to watch a 'broadcasting' session with Cathica and other journalists. Cathica uses a port in the centre of her forehead to process information directly into her brain, which is then transferred to chips in the other journalists' head, who then broadcast it to their appropriate stations. While Adam is amazed at the technology, the Doctor notes that humans should have surpassed it by now. However, the Editor has detected that Suki is an unauthorized intruder in the "newsroom", and announces to all that she has been promoted and should come to Floor 500. Suki says her goodbyes, as those that go to Floor 500 never come back, and departs; when she arrives, she finds Floor 500 to be cold and populated by shriveled corpses. She encounters the Editor, who exposes her as a member of the Freedom Foundation, an anarchist underground group. Suki holds the Editor at gunpoint, telling him she knows that the news reported from Satellite 5 is manipulated, and demands to know who controls the station. The Editor points her to the "Editor-in-Chief", who, unseen, descends upon the screaming Suki.
Adam excuses himself to recover his thoughts in an observation lounge, where he uses the station's computer to gain information that he relays back in time to his answering machine via the "superphone". However, the computer limits his access, and directs him to 'floor 16', the station's medical facility. He there learns that he can get a port similar to Cathica's which will link him directly to the archives, but he hesitates.
Meanwhile the Doctor and Rose try to get more information from Cathica. Cathica gives vague answers, but the Doctor deduces that something is holding the human race back, both in attitude and technology, for the last 91 years - ever since Satellite 5 started broadcasting. The Doctor hacks into the station computers and notes that a lot of heat is being vented from the top floors into the lower ones. The Editor is aware of the Doctor's actions, and allows him to gain the password to come to Floor 500. Rose and the Doctor try to convince Cathica to join them, but she wants nothing to do with it.
On floor 500, Rose and the Doctor encounter the Editor, as well as Suki's dead body and those of several others being used as slaves to the computer systems. The Editor explains that through Satellite 5, they have been able to change the Empire into a place where humans are allowed to live, using manipulated news to install fear into the human race as to keep them in a closed society. These actions have been controlled by a consortium of banks, and the "Editor-in-Chief", the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe ("Max" for short), who hangs above their heads. The Doctor notices that Cathica has had a change of heart and decided to follow them to Floor 500 as she listens in unobserved on the conversation outside the room; for her benefit, the Doctor verbally notes that the Jagrafess' metabolism generates a lot of heat, and thus the station itself is its life support system, venting the heat into the lower floors below.
Adam has the port implanted, and, after recovery, goes to the newsroom and opens his port; he calls his answering machine with the "superphone", and initiates a link with the computer. The Editor is alerted to this, and is able to learn of the TARDIS and that the Doctor is a Time Lord from Adam's mind, and now aims to get the secret of time travel from the Doctor so that he can rewrite history to prevent humans from even developing. Cathica, hearing this, goes to the newsroom on Floor 500 and uses her link to sever Adam's connection and to reverse the flow of the environmental systems, sending heat to Floor 500, causing the Jagrafess to overheat. The Doctor and Rose escape while the Editor tries to sever Cathica's connection but cannot; he then tries to escape as well but is held by Suki's corpse, and ends up caught in the explosion of the Jagrafess.
The Doctor congratulates Cathica, but is furious with Adam. The Doctor takes Adam home in the Tardis, destroys the answering machine and banishes Adam from the TARDIS, noting that Adam will have to live a quiet life so no-one discovers the port in his forehead. As the Doctor and Rose leave, Adam's mother comes home, and commenting on how time flies, snaps her fingers, causing Adam's forehead port to open, and causing his mother to stare in horror.

Saturday 30 April 2005

Dalek

The TARDIS is drawn off course by a distress signal, and materialises in a bunker in Utah, 2012. The Doctor and Rose Tyler find that the bunker is a museum, full of alien artifacts. An alarm is immediately set off, and they are taken to see the owner of the Vault — Henry van Statten, a billionaire collector of alien artifacts. Impressed with the Doctor's extraterrestrial knowledge, he invites the Doctor to see the "Metaltron", a creature he claims is the last of its kind. The Doctor enters the "Cage", where the creature is held, and begins to speak to it, offering his help. The creature responds by snarling in fury at him. The Doctor realises in horror it is a Dalek. Initially terrified at its threats of extermination, the Doctor is delighted to discover the creature is damaged and helpless, and attempts to kill it to purge the Dalek race forever, before being stopped by van Statten's guards.
Meanwhile, Adam Mitchell is showing Rose around the base. Adam shows her the Dalek, being tortured by a technician to force it to speak. Sympathetically, Rose asks to be taken down to the Cage to help the Dalek. Rose then touches the Dalek casing, which immediately absorbs her DNA and background radiation (a radiation that is picked up in mass quantities from time travel, and is the Daleks' sole power source). It escapes from its cage and downloads the entire internet, realizing that it is the only Dalek left. In response, the area is evacuated, and guards focus fire upon it, to no effect; the Dalek swiftly exterminates the guards. The Dalek demands to speak to the Doctor, and tells him that it was able to regenerate its casing, but was unable to find any other Daleks or orders, and will follow the default function: the extermination of everything in its path.
As Rose and Adam are escaping from the Dalek, the Doctor tries to stall to save them. Adam escapes, but Rose is cornered by the Dalek and is seemingly exterminated. Horrified, the Doctor blames van Statten for everyone's deaths. However, the Dalek has not killed Rose, as her DNA is making it hesitant. It instead negotiates, trading her life for access past the bulkheads which are obstructing its way. The Dalek then travels to van Statten's office, and is about to kill him before Rose intervenes and offers the Dalek its wish: freedom.
On the highest level of the museum, the Dalek creates a hole and opens its casing to directly feel sunlight for the first time. The Doctor arrives, gun in hand, and orders Rose to move. Rose refuses; the Dalek is changing, as it could not kill her or van Statten. Appalled at his own actions, he lowers his weapon. Both he and the Dalek realise that the Dalek is mutating further, and is becoming unable to conform to the Dalek objective. It asks Rose to order its death, and after being given the order, annihilates itself.At the end of the episode, van Statten's assistant Diana Goddard orders van Statten's mind wiped and the vault filled with concrete. At the TARDIS, the Doctor ruefully observes that as the last survivor of the Time War, he "wins". He also tells Rose that he would be able to sense the presence of other Time Lords had they survived. Adam then comes by, telling the Doctor that Goddard is sealing the base. Rose invites Adam aboard the TARDIS, which he enters with a puzzled expression before it dematerialises.

Saturday 23 April 2005

World War Three

Following from the cliffhanger in "Aliens of London", the Doctor's extraterrestrial constitution allows him to survive the electrical pulse administered by the Slitheen Green, which has killed the other alien experts in the room. He manages to direct the charge to Asquith, and the shock spreads to Green and the other Slitheen via their communication devices. Margaret Blaine is temporarily stunned, allowing Harriet Jones and Rose Tyler to escape the room in 10 Downing Street where she had them cornered, while Mickey Smith is able to push aside the police inspector who was advancing on Jackie Tyler. The Doctor attempts to get the police, but by the time he has returned, the Slitheen have gotten back into their suits. Green instead pins the deaths of the alien experts on the Doctor, and orders him shot on sight. The Doctor escapes to the upper floors of 10 Downing Street, and reunites with Rose and Harriet in the Cabinet Rooms where they try and determine what Emergency Protocols are in place for an alien invasion. Before sealing off the rooms, the Doctor confronts the Slitheen and learns that they are a family rather than a race, and they are not invading Earth, but rather raiding it for some commercial purpose.
The Emergency Protocols are found to be of no help as they merely list the alien experts already dead in the room downstairs. They also reveal that the United Kingdom cannot launch nuclear weapons at the Slitheen as the codes can only be released after authorization by the United Nations. Gathering all the information they have found about the Slitheen, the Doctor deduces that they are a calcium-based lifeform from Raxacoricofallapatorius, and that they use compression collars to squeeze their bodies into the human skins, which accounts for their flatulence. Although the Slitheen have shut all communications to the Cabinet Rooms, Rose's tampered phone allows her to make contact with Mickey and Jackie, now safely in the former's flat. The Doctor gives Mickey instructions on how to log on his computer into the UNIT website, and uses that to determine that the Slitheen ship is presently in the North Sea, transmitting some signal that Mickey attempts to decode. However, as he works, the Slitheen posing as a police inspector breaks in, but thanks to advice from the Doctor, Jackie kills it by dousing it with copious amounts of vinegar.
Back at Downing Street, Green and the other Slitheen declare a matter of national security and request that the UN release the activation codes to strike against a fictitious mothership that is hanging over London. The Doctor realizes that the Slitheen actually plan to fire the weapons against other countries in order to start World War III so they can sell the Earth's radioactive remains as a fuel source, which they have already begun advertising through the signal Mickey has decoded. The Doctor tells Rose and Harriet that he knows a possible solution, but that it might cost their lives. Jackie, who had been pestering him for endangering Rose's life and is still on the phone, is outraged, but Rose and Harriet both tell him to go ahead, the latter even casting her timidity aside to order him as an elected representative. Complying, the Doctor helps Mickey to hack online into the controls of the Royal Navy HMS Taurean, a Trafalgar class submarine off the coast of Plymouth, and to fire a non-nuclear Harpoon missile at 10 Downing Street, where all the Slitheen conspirators are now gathered. The area around 10 Downing is cleared while the Doctor, Rose, and Harriet take shelter in a cupboard. The Slitheen's last second attempt to escape is delayed by the difficulty of putting on their human suits and they are caught in the explosion when the missile hits. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet all survive, and Harriet takes charge of the scene with a new found authority. The Doctor - who had found her name familiar when he first met her - suddenly remembers that she is due to become a highly successful Prime Minister and "the architect of Britain's Golden Age". The entire event is dismissed in the press as a hoax, and the Doctor has Mickey use a special computer virus to wipe all records of his existence from the Internet.Jackie is now impressed by the Doctor and wants to invite him for dinner to get to know him better, but he declines fiercely. Instead, he separately invites Rose and Mickey - who has now earned his respect - to go travelling some more immediately. Mickey, still overwhelmed by the Doctor's adventurous lifestyle, declines but Rose packs some belongings and boards the Tardis.

Saturday 16 April 2005

Aliens of London

The Doctor returns Rose back to Earth in the TARDIS, but miscalculates, ending up 12 months after he first left with Rose instead of 12 hours. As such, Jackie, Rose's mum, is furious with the Doctor, and Rose's boyfriend, Mickey is upset as he was suspected of murdering Rose. While Rose expresses her frustration to the Doctor of not being able to tell the truth of where she's been, they witness a spacecraft crash through Big Ben and fall in to the River Thames. Central London is shut down while its population become excited at the possibly of first contact with an alien species. The Doctor suspects trickery, and uses the TARDIS to land where the alien craft and its pilot has been taken. Along with Dr. Sato, he discovers that the alien craft was launched from Earth, and its pilot was nothing more than a Earth pig, modified by alien technology.
Meanwhile, the government is unable to locate the British Prime Minister due to the confusion of the crash, and MP Joseph Green is named acting Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street. However, Green is revealed to be a Slitheen, a calcium-based alien species that compress their bodies into large human "suits" resulting in frequent releases of flatulence, along with two other high members of the government, Margaret Blaine of MI5 and Oliver Charles, an MP for the Department of Transport. While they secretly celebrate successfully luring the humans into their plan, they are unaware of their conversation being witnessed by Harriet Jones, a backbench MP.When the Doctor returns to Rose, they are surrounded by soldiers, prompted by a call from Jackie to an Emergency Alien Hotline, and escorted to 10 Downing Street. The Doctor is asked to join a panel of alien experts, including those from UNIT, while Rose is escorted in the building by Harriet. Harriet explains the aliens to Rose, and together discover the corpse of the Prime Minister. They make to reveal their discovery but are caught by Blaine, who begins to unzip her human suit to attack them. Meanwhile, as the Doctor attempts to convince the experts of the forgery of the events, another human-disguised Slitheen sends an electrical shock through the assembled group, including the Doctor. These events lead to a cliffhanger, resolved in "World War Three"

Saturday 9 April 2005

The Unquiet Dead

The Doctor attempts to pilot the TARDIS to Naples in 1860 to show Rose the past, but misses short, ending up in Cardiff in 1869. While they land and Rose changes into more appropriate garb, there is trouble in a nearby funeral parlour run by Gabriel Sneed and his servant girl Gwyneth - the corpse of a grandmother has been taken over by a blue vapour, killing her mourning grandson Redpath, and then escapes the parlour. Gwyneth with her clairvoyance senses that the corpse, per her last desire, is going to see Charles Dickens at a nearby music hall. In the middle of his performance, the blue vapour leaves the woman, scaring the audience away and attracting the attention of the Doctor and Rose. Gabriel and Gwyneth arrive to retake the corpse as the blue vapour disappears into the pipes, and they are also forced to kidnap Rose by knocking her out with chloroform when she confronts them. Charles accuses the Doctor of ruining his performance, but after the Doctor gushes over his literary genius, and learning that an adventure is afoot, Charles gladly joins up to help.
At the funeral parlour, Rose wakes up and is borne down by the animated corpses of Redpath and his grandmother. The Doctor and Charles arrive, breaking into the parlour and rescuing Rose; the Doctor attempts to learn from the corpses why they are doing this, and determines that the parlour is built on a rift in spacetime, and the blue vapours are beings crossing through the Rift; they are able to use the corpses for a short time, but cannot sustain them. Rose talks more with Gwyneth, and her clairvoyance is discovered, an effect of living in the parlour since her parents died, according to the Doctor. Using Gwyneth as a channel, they hold a séance to directly communicate with the beings, who they learn are called "Gelth", their bodies destroyed as part of the Time War. The Doctor offers the Gelth temporary use of corpses only until he can transport them to a place where they can build new bodies, using Gwyneth as a bridge to cross the Rift.
As the process starts, the number of Gelth is much higher than anticipated, and their true motive is revealed: they are willing to kill the living to give themselves more hosts and take over the planet. Gabriel's neck is broken and his body taken over by a Gelth as Charles flees the parlour, leaving Rose and the Doctor trapped. Outside, Charles notes that the beings are affected by gas, and returns to the house, extinguishing the gaslights and turning the gas on full. The Gelth are forced to abandon the corpses and though the Doctor tries to encourage Gwyneth to send them back across the Rift, she cannot, nor can she leave; instead, she takes out a box of matches, intending to ignite the gas and killing the Gelth along with herself. The Doctor, Rose, and Charles flee the parlour before it is engulfed in flames. As the Doctor and Rose head back to the TARDIS, Charles thanks them for their help and makes a commitment to patch up things with his family and finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood, though the Doctor notes later to Rose that Charles will die within the year, leaving that work unfinished, but they have made him feel more alive than he ever has been. The Doctor and Rose give their goodbyes and disappear in the TARDIS. An astounded and delighted Dickens walks away through the streets of Cardiff, greeting everyone he passes and quoting from his book A Christmas Carol; "God bless us, everyone!"

Saturday 2 April 2005

The End of The World

The Doctor takes Rose to five billion years into her future in the TARDIS, landing on "Platform One", a space station in orbit around Earth; the earth has long since been abandoned and under the National Trust, but as money has run out, it is about to be destroyed by the expansion of the Sun, only presently held back by gravity satellites. The Doctor uses "psychic paper" to pass as their invitation to the party, and he and Rose find many elite extraterrestrial beings there to celebrate the end of the earth in the protection of Platform One's automated shields. The guests include Lady Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen, simply a face on a large piece of skin that must be continually moisturized, mounted on a frame with her brain in a jar below it, who calls herself the last human in the universe. The guests exchange gifts as part of the celebration (including Lady Cassandra's gift of a Wurlitzer jukebox, calling it an "iPod"). Rose is overwhelmed by the strange beings and customs as well as how distant she is from home, and leaves to an observation room to collect her thoughts. The Doctor follows her, and tries to cheer her up by allowing her to call her mum Jackie after altering her mobile phone to be able to work over the distance in time; this however only serves to depress Rose more.
Meanwhile, the gifts brought by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme, small metallic spheres, are revealed to contain robotic spiders that immediately work at disabling functions on Platform One. The Steward of Platform One recognizes something is wrong, but is killed when the spiders cause the solar filter of his room to lower, exposing him directly to the powerful solar radiation. The Doctor goes to investigate with the help of Jabe, a humanoid plant being from the Forest of Cheem, and discover the Steward's death and the spiders. Rose attempts to learn more from Lady Cassandra but only gets more upset over Cassandra's arrogance, and walks away, only to be knocked out by members of the Meme. She wakes up in an observation room, the solar shield slowly lowering, and calls for the Doctor to save her. The Doctor finds he can stop and raise the shield, but cannot unlock the observation room, and so turns to the various guests.
The Doctor uses a spider that he captured to determine that while the Meme released them, they are only empty shells, and that the real controller is Lady Cassandra. Cassandra admits to this, and was planning to use the situation as a hostage crisis to get money to pay for her repeated operations, but now will simply let the assembled guests die, then profit from the stock increases of their competitors when they are dead. Cassandra transmats to her ship as the spiders bring down the shielding and the gravity satellites are turned off ; The direct radiation causes the solar filters to strain and crack, killing several of the guests from the intense radiation exposure, and leaving Rose to scurry to find some shelter within the observation room. The Doctor and Jabe travel to the bowels of Platform One where the system to restore the automated shields is located, though it requires one of them to travel through several spinning fans. Jabe recognizes the Doctor as the last Time Lord after The Time War, and sacrifices herself to hold down a switch to stop the fan blades, allowing the Doctor to reactivate the system just before the expanding Sun hits the station and destroys Earth.The Doctor returns to the remaining guests and Rose, free of the observation room, and uses a device to transmat Cassandra back onto the station. In the elevated temperature and without moisturizing, Cassandra begins to dry out and crack, and while she begs for mercy from the Doctor, he refuses to listen, and shortly, Cassandra explodes. Rose notes that with all the events that occurred, no one had witnessed the actual destruction of Earth. Returning to Rose's present, the Doctor explains to her that his own planet, Gallifrey, was destroyed in the wake of a great war and that he is the last Time Lord, and that people tend to forget that things don't last forever. Rose sympathizes with the Doctor as they enjoy some chips on a sunny London afternoon.

Saturday 26 March 2005

Rose

Rose Tyler, a young woman of 19 accidentally trapped one evening in the London department store named Henriks where she works, finds herself surrounded by plastic mannequins that have come to life in the basement. She is saved by a man who introduces himself as "The Doctor" and tells her to flee the building. He then blows up the transmitter that controlled the mannequins from the store's roof, ravaging the building in the process. The Doctor visits the now unemployed Rose the next day and rescues her from a second attack by a mannequin's arm she had taken home unthinkingly, but refuses to give her more explanations.
Rose talks with her boyfriend, Mickey Smith, about her experience, and they find a conspiracy theory website that claims a man fitting the Doctor's description has appeared throughout history. Rose and Mickey visit Clive, the man who runs the website. While Rose is in Clive's house, Mickey is kidnapped by a wheelie bin and replaced with a plastic replicant. When the fake Mickey attempts to question Rose about the Doctor, the Doctor shows up and beheads the replicant. The Doctor takes Rose to his TARDIS, which is disguised as a 20th century police box, and uses the fake Mickey's head to locate the controlling signal. The Doctor explains to Rose that the fake Mickey was an Auton, controlled by the Nestene Consciousness, and that if he cannot stop it by using a vial of "anti-plastic" liquid, it will destroy all humans on Earth. He also explains to her that he is an alien.
The Nestene Consciousness has taken up residence beneath the London Eye. The Doctor tries to negotiate with it, but it gets angry when he identifies himself as a Time Lord, blaming him for the destruction of its home planet during "the time war." The Nestene Consciousness activates all the autons at the Queens Arcade, where several shoppers are shot dead, including Clive. The Doctor is overpowered by the Autons, but Rose rescues him and drops the "anti-plastic" into the vat where the Nestene Consciousness resided, killing it.
After fleeing the underground complex with Mickey, who was held hostage by the Nestene Consciousness, the Doctor offers Rose more adventures with him. Though Rose initially refuses as she is concerned about her mother and Mickey, she ends up joining the Doctor when he explains that the TARDIS can also travel in time as well as space.