Stolen Earth/Journey's End: Ranking - 71

 

 Stolen Earth/Journey's End

(Series 4, Dr 10 with Donna and family, Rose and family, Martha, Sarah Jane and family, Torchwood, Uncle Tom Cobbley, All, 28/6/2008-5/7/2008, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Russell T Davies, director: Graeme Harper) 

Rank: 71

   'The bees have gone missing! Also the ants and the butterflies...wait a minute, what are they doing on Vortis?!? We might need a bigger net to catch The Racnoss. And somebody help me catch the giant wasp before it attacks Agatha Christie again...'

 

And so it ends, this most golden of eras, when Russell T Davies breathed new life into a franchise everyone was convinced was dead and not only managed to win over old fans but new people who’d never even heard of this show before. Even though there four more stories to come for David Tennant’s Doctor and Russell T Davies in the commanding officer’s chair both, in many ways they feel like encores, a long goodbye to the Doctor. This two-parter though is the emotional climax of the Russell T years, the end of an era, the pay-off to all the investment we’ve put into these characters, the physical end of an unbroken run of four years when Dr Who went from unloved forgotten cult series to a Saturday afternoon teatime institution, the logical end to everywhere the series has been leading over the past year, if not the past four. This is the story where the odds are higher than almost any other – the Earth has been taken out of orbit and a second out of time (I bet no one in Ormskirk even noticed, it feels like that all the time here) and it takes the combined forces of all our heroes from not just the Dr Who franchises but the Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures spin-off series too to put things right, plus a few others old friends from parallel worlds. It’s a scary ride full of danger, when it looks until the last moment as if the baddies have really won, when our heroes are pushed and where their friendship is severely tested like never before in a tale that calls for many sacrifices.
The biggest of course is Russell as showrunner. He doesn’t want to give up the job he loves and which he feels born for, but circumstances mean he has to. Here he is, after writing or re-writing fifty-one episodes in four years and overseeing all the day to day things that go with making a series without a break. He’s worked flatout for four years, worked himself so ragged he fell very poorly with chicken pox during the writing of this story and his husband Andrew has just had bad health news that’s made the showrunner re-think his priorities and how long he can keep doing this. For years now Russell has been travelling with The Doctor and using Drs 9 and 10 as his mouth-piece but he can’t keep up the pace, as he’s only Human after all. A lot of this story is about being torn away from the thing you love before it kills you. (Spoilers) Donna ends up with her memories wiped before they kill her, because her head is so full of Dr Who facts and ideas her head’s about to explode and no Human brain can cope with a timelord’s knowledge. So she’s sent back to her tiny little human life as if nothing has happened (it’s a variation of Jamie and Zoe’s sad goodbyes from ‘The War Games’, but worse because they already had their own lives, while Donna only ever felt she was somebody when she was with The Doctor). Her line, that ‘I was going to stay with you to the end of time’ is heartbreaking if you see it in the context of Russell giving up the show he loves, but he also acknowledges that it will kill her, kill him, if he stays. Rose has travelled across parallel worlds to be reunited with The Doctor but is sent home with a pale Human facsimile to enjoy which isn’t quite the same (it’s as if that’s the new Russell from now on, left to grow old like other Humans after having so much fun in time and space with memories of how great it used to be but no more stories). This is also the era when lots of the backstage team have chosen to move on too and it might be significant that The Doctor winds up alone, despite all that love and all those friends The Doctor ends the story alone. This story is Russell consciously stepping away from the second greatest show in the galaxy, because the first one is right here on Earth and he doesn’t want to miss any more of it (he missed Billie Piper’s wedding due to rewrites and was an jour late for a new year’s eve party with his hubby). He knows his future is as Rose in this series, watching this on the TV from a parallel world, desperately trying to break through and join in and feeling jealous (I love the fact Rose spends an episode deeply jealous of Martha in particular, after a whole year of it being the other way around).
In our other reviews in this era (notably ‘Midnight’ ‘The Waters Of Mars’ and ‘The End Of Time’) we’ve been looking at how this job has gone a bit to Russell’s head, that his Doctor has developed a slight Messiah complex (all the Jesus imagery in ‘Last Of The Timelords’ and ‘Voyage Of The Damned’ hasn’t helped). The Doctor sees across this story what he’s done to people, how being around him has changed them. Martha is running around as a soldier about to blow things up, so far from the medical student patching people up when The Doctor first met her. Donna’s head is so full it’s about to explode. Even Rose with her big ol’ heart packs a big ol’ gun nowadays. All three companions plus more see their family terrified out of their wits, while the entire Earth (and a few others) are under threat from Dalek invasion partly out of revenge for The Doctor defeating them so many times in the past. This is a story that deals with the consequences, about how even The Doctor can’t run from everything forever and has him actually stay and see the ripples from everything he’s ever done, closing out a cycle that’s been around since ‘Boom Town’.
Yet brilliantly – and I’m not quite sure how Russell manages to do it – this two-parter isn’t a downer, but a celebration. This is the Dr Who equivalent of the D C Comics crossovers, with the added thrill of seeing characters we wouldn’t normally see together – or maybe the ‘Top Trumps’ version given that Davros defeats everyone until a triple Doctor score (and yes there were sets released for both the ‘old’ and ‘new’ series). The Doctor’s journey since the comeback has been a neat parallel for the series: the 9th Dr burst onto our screens alone and angry, the time war meaning that all his old achievements had been all but wiped out and forgotten. Gradually, though, he discovers what it means to be loved and give love, coming to embrace the early 21st century as a new home every bit as fitting as Coal Hill School in 1963 or UNIT in...whenever it was. In this story it’s been a very long time since the Doctor was alone and he’s joined in battle by all the friends he’s made across those four years who all come back for one final (ish) bow: there’s Martha, recently sequestered to UNIT. There’s Captain Jack beaming, everybody’s favourite cheeky hero shortly before Russell’s own (and best) Torchwood series ‘Children Of Earth’ turns him into a pariah. There’s Sarah Jane and clan, saving the world alongside her friend like old times as if she hasn’t aged a day. There’s even Rose, whose been fighting across a parallel world void to return all series long, alongside her mum and Mickey. Harriet Jones returns too but doesn’t make it past the opening credits of the second half (she was the last thing added to the script, a replacement for first Elton from ‘Love and Monsters’ then Midshipman Alonso Frame from ‘The Voyage Of The Damned’, changed when Russell Tovey was busy, with Mr Copper from the same story considered if Penelope Wilton was unwilling to come back for such a small part. Happily she was: it’s the sacrificial heroic ending she deserves. They filmed it last minute in her house and lost a lot of time trying to work out how Daleks could realistically climb over a step through her patio walls). Not to mention Donna heading into her own big ending, complete with mum and grandad. It feels a little like a Dr Who version of ‘Friends Reunited’ – everyone in this story has heard so much about everyone else by now but (due to conflicting schedules and budget) have never actually met; it’s also the single most crowded we ever see the Tardis, with a really moving line (actually taken from a Gareth Roberts novel) about how the Tardis console was designed with six sides because that’s how many people it’s meant to take to work it – only the Doctor’s been fighting alone for so long he’s learnt to do it himself. Well, not today. Today is the Doctor’s karma for all the good he’s done as well as the bad and he gets to have one last ‘farewell party’, with all the characters in this era having one last bow in front of the cameras (admittedly some more than others: Mickey and Martha get particularly short shrift here). Just as with ‘Logopolis’ (but happier) there’s a moment when the camera twirls around the Tardis console that makes us feel as if we’re a character at this celebration too, that this is a party for us too. So much so that 2500 fans called the Doctor’s telephone number after seeing it on screen ‘just in case’ it was real (luckily it’s a fake number owned by the BBC and used for dramatic purposes).
With all that going on the plot is almost an extra but it’s a pretty good one too that builds on all sorts of little plot moments that have been building up for years. Remember The Doctor growing a new arm in ‘The Christmas Invasion’ and keeping hold of it? This is why. Remember the parallel world from ‘Rise Of the Cybermen/Age Of Steel’? We get everyone returning from there. Remember Rose’s family, the Torchwood family, the Sarah Jane family, Donna’s family? They’re all here, in typically clever Russell T Davies form, where if you weren’t following all the different series you still get to pick up on their characters quickly in lots of pithy scenes, while we also get to see sides of them we’ve never seen before (Donna flirting with Captain Jack! Sarah Jane flirting with Captain Jack! Sarah Jane being motherly to The Doctor! Sylvia being nice to Donna!) Remember Harriet Jones, the deposed prime minister? She has her time in the sun, sacrificing herself to keep her planet safe in one last act of heroism. It’s not even just the modern series: remember that ‘do I have the right?’ speech from ‘Genesis Of The Daleks’? This is the alternative (while Davros has the cheek to call out The Doctor for committing suicide, when it was Sarah who pushed him to do it first time round – she stays quiet!) Remember Davros’ mad plan to blow up the world with a reality bomb from ‘Destiny Of The Daleks’? This is that plan. Remember the plan from ‘The Dalek Invasion Of Earth’ to remove the planet’s core and pilot it like a spaceship? (And no blame if you’ve wiped it from your mind, because it is one of the sillier plots out there). Well, this is sort of that plot too. Remember ‘The Pirate Planet’ and especially Callufrax, shrunk to a tiny size and plundered for its resources? This story nicks so much of the plot it even gives that planet a namecheck. Remember ‘The Shadow Proclamation’? Well tough because that’s only in a cut scene that got dropped due to budget but even that was meant to be in there somewhere originally, with lots of Russell-created monsters saying what was expected to be their last goodbyes (like the Sycorax, Judoon and Slitheen). This is a little like the showrunner putting all the toys back in the box for someone else to have fun with, but not without giving them a quick dust and a last play along the way before sealing up the box. It takes some serious juggling and a few scenes where people are standing round. 
Most of all remember all those hints about the bees going missing we’ve had all year? Sadly it wasn’t the return of Goronwy from ‘Delta And The Bannermen’ (which might have been a continuity reference too far even for Russell T) but the bees emigrating because they knew the Earth was being ‘pulled’ from space along with 26 other planets. It’s an idea based partly on Douglas Adams (where the whales jump planetary ship in ‘Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’ when The Earth is in trouble –here the bees go back to their own planet Melissa Majora, which we really have to explore in the spin-offs one day) and Maurice Maesterlinck (a 1901 ecological work, rediscovered and repeated every few years, about how due to the way the Earth’s climate works with pollen and flowers and trees, if the bees disappeared off the face of the Earth ‘man would only have four years to live’.  Maybe the one downside of this plot is that, after a year of expecting more, the bees are more a pointer to a clue than the plot arc itself.
So who’s behind moving the Earth? Dalek creator Davros is back for the first time since 1988 and as mad as ever, particularly now he’s reduced to creating Daleks out of his own flesh. The production team have been leaving him for later across four years while they re-established The Daleks as a credible threat, but we’ve already had Daleks and even had Daleks with Cybermen, so it’s natural they should take the step of having the daddy of Dalekdom returning too (wanting to keep his return a secret, he had the code name ‘Dave Ross’ when the crew referenced him; it’s one of the few surprises they managed to keep quiet). How can Davros possibly be back after the time war? Well, remember Dalek Caan from ‘Doomsday’ two years ago? (What do you mean ‘no’? It’s the one with the Dalek-Cybermen battles!) He’s now a troubled soul, his trip through the time war doing something weird to his brain which has made all his neurons twist (he laughs at the oddest moments, Nicholas Briggs having a whale of a time playing him). It turns out he saved Davros by jumping into the time war and teleporting him out, only he’s gone a bit mad. Well, madder. He’s well played by Julian Bleach, just the right side of madness (he’d appeared in Torchwood and both Russell and producer Joel Collinson independently thought he’d made a great Davros when they were looking to cast) though still nowhere near Michael Wisher’s more ‘Human’ portrayal. The mask and overall look isn’t quite as strong as the ones in the 1970s and 1980s either, though not the sacrilege that is the modern Cybermen and at least they remember to give him a metallic hand after one got blown off in ‘Revelation Of The Daleks’ (which is more than they remembered in ‘Remembrance’). His idea to use a ‘reality bomb’, an idea Russell recycles in ‘Wish World/The Reality War’, is a very Dalek invention: I suspect that, like the time destructor from ‘The Dalek’s Masterplan’, it’s really a nuclear bomb, the next stage of warfare to come after the Nazis they were based on. It’s a bomb that wipes out all life that can’t survive in Dalekanium casings, where the only reality is death. How can the Dr and co stop him, especially when the Daleks have control over the Tardis and have him captured?
Martha, on behalf of UNIT, tries to blow up The Earth in self defence, using an ‘Osterhagen’ key (an anagram of ‘Earth gone’ that Russell was particularly proud of, particularly as Osterhagen is a genuine German name). It does not go well. Wilf tries a spot of paintballing (in a scene suggested by Bernard Cribbins himself, leading to the injoke of a Dalek claiming ‘my vision is unimpaired’ in contrast to usual!) Torchwood stick themselves in a big ol’ bubble but that’s only going to help themselves (in a sweet gesture it was created as a self-defence mechanism by Tosh, who died at the end of their second series, but is still keeping her colleagues safe after death). Sarah Jane threatens to use a warp star to blow The Daleks up. Rose packs a big gun, yet somehow forgets to use it in the cliffhanger. The Doctor’s created an army, but the Daleks can defeat any army (while Davros gets to scoff about a ‘man of peace’ being surrounded by soldiers). What they don’t understand is friendship so it’s just as well someone’s around to give The Doctor a ‘big hand’. One of the things Russell has to juggle is that this is the end of Donna’s time in the Tardis so, even after all the other companions try to save the Earth and ‘fail’ (some more than others: it’s really odd to see Sarah Jane so panicked and apologetic) it’s Donna who saves the world. She sees the Doctor’s hand and finds herself touching it and ending up causing a half-clone hybrid of her human self and the Doctor who runs in and saves the day, babbling in a satisfyingly Donna manner but with all the knowledge of the Doctor at her fingertips. It’s a clever way of re-enforcing the overall plot about the importance of friendship and showing how crucial the companion is to the show – especially Donna, who’s job from the first (in ‘The Runaway Bride’) has been to stop The Doctor going too far. The companions can’t solve this problem alone, all failing one by one, but nor can The Doctor do this solo – he needs Donna’s ‘speed’ and her quick reactions. It’s like ‘The Space Museum’ and it’s take on karma: the more you inspire people to be the best the more it comes back to help you. Keeping the Earth safe is a team effort. Remember the ‘Doctor-Donna’ clues we’ve been getting all year? Yeah, that’s why.
It’s like all the loose ends of the past few years are being tied up in a neat bow, but somehow without it seeming like that – everything that happens in this two-parter seems like a natural consequence of the plot. As much as this scene was written as an -in-joke so David Tennant got his own back at Catherine Tate laughing at all the scifi gobbledegook he had to speak and she didn’t (she’s notoriously clueless over scifi in real life but gamely sounds as if she at least vaguely knows what she’s talking about here, nailing this scene) it’s a real punch-the-air moment as the temp from Chiswick, who’s been dismissed as a hopeless failure who’d never amount to anything, saves the world at least as much due to the clone’s Donna half as its Dr bits. It’s a tour de force for Donna’s character who ends up putting everything right again in the same way Rose did as ‘Bad Wolf’ three years earlier, but in a satisfyingly Donna way (by talking, as much as anything. Given the events in ‘The Star Beast’ and ‘The Giggle’ it might be significant she gets stuck on the word ‘binary’). And then, just as we’ve had the perfect happy ending, we get the perfect unhappy ending: Donna was never going to leave the Doctor’s side for anything but killing her off after all she’d been through would have been too heartbreaking and out of kilter for such a celebratory occasion so instead she has her memory wiped, the Doctor taking away everything she learnt during his time with her as the price to pay for having her live. The scenes of Donna going back to how she used to be before the Tardis fell into her life are amongst the most heartbreaking of all of Dr Who, obsessed with shallow surface nonsense and her tiny life and not even remembering who he is; this shows, better than any other scene, how much The Doctor inspires people to be their best selves. The difference is that Donna’s appreciated now even if she can never know it (with people on planets singing songs about her in gratitude – the dialogue in The Doctor’s farewell to Wilf is exemplary, some of Russell’s best) and the people around her look up to her not down. She’s still the same person with the same potential trapped inside her, even if she’s forgotten that she ever used it. And so, just when the Dr had more friends than he’s ever had before, another one he thought was going to be by his side forever leaves and a whole era of the show with her. Curse you Russell T for making me cry – again! (I’m not alone either: Bernard Cribbins texted Russell that after reading the script he’d been crying ‘for two days solid’).
The result is an ensemble piece where everyone shines but David Tennant perhaps most of all, as he gets to go through every emotion the past three years has thrown at him all over again, but in quick succession (and often within the same scene); he’s never been more watchable than this, particularly when doing his best Catherine Tate impression (‘Oi!’)  There are lots of little great moments in this story, from heartwarming reunions with old friends to some great bits of action (the end of the first half, with The Daleks running around contemporary London, might just be the best of this era’s many invasions and really does make them seem as if they’ve ‘won’). In case this all gets too pompous, too, there are in-jokes galore (Russell pokes fun at the ‘Mr Smith’ computer warm-up programme that takes an age and warns every alien in the vicinity with a very loud ringtone; The Doctor taking time out from running for his life to ask Gwen from Torchwood if ‘she comes from a Welsh family’ after meeting her doppelganger – played by the same actress - in ‘The Unquiet Dead’). All that and Richard Dawkins – Lalla Ward/Romana II’s husband in real life (they were introduced at a party by Douglas Adams, who knew them both) – in a typical Daviesian cameo too (although goodness knows why a biologist and theologist is talking about stars).
Now, this finale isn’t perfect by any means. While these episodes demonstrate the best of Russell T (The characters! The dialogue! The balance of sadness and comedy! The cameos! The sense of a global threat!) this episode features a lot of the worst too. There’s an unforgivably silly scene hauling planets with a lasso. There’s Caan’s prediction ‘one of your companions will die!’ which is a melodrama too, especially because none do (Harriet Jones was more an enemy than a friend). There are too many people running around (and there is a lot of running around this fortnight) for everyone to get a decent amount of screentime and Martha comes off particularly badly in her last ‘proper’ appearance, while a lot of the first episode feels like vamping until all the pieces are in place for the epic cliffhanger. We don’t get nearly enough about The Earth being moved a second out of time (How? Why?), which feels more as if it’s here s a reference back to Russell’s first Dr Who work, his ‘New Adventures’ novel ‘Damaged Goods’ (where it makes much more sense. Not enough mind you, but more sense). The Daleks have been better served in other stories and it’s actually a bit of a shame having Davros back as their mouth-piece because he doesn’t get to do anything as interesting as the individual Daleks we’ve seen across the past four series (and it seems to be assumed nowadays that every Dalek story has to have Davros in them), while Dalek Caan is a little too mad, even for a Dalek and his change of heart seems to come out of nowhere, rather conveniently for the plot. I wish the story has spent less time fussing about Earth and more time exploring the other lost planets, sold to us in a ‘Logopolis’ way as they disappear from the night sky one by one. For the record they include Clom (home of the Abzorbaloff from ‘Love and Monsters’), Pyrovillia (‘The Fires Of Pompeii’), Adipose III (‘partners In Crime’), the Lost Moon of Poosh (mentioned in ‘Midnight’), Woman Wept (mentioned in ‘Boom Town’) and Calufrax (‘The Pirate Planet’), two new ones Jahoo and Shalakatom, plus another eighteen. Yet The Doctor only seems focussed on Earth. We get so many flashbacks telling us things we know that it makes you want to exterminarium someone. This story is trying to tie up so many loose ends, whilst juggling so many ideas and franchises and be a suitable finale(ish) for Donna and be a big and bold spectacle in its own right that it had to give somewhere and this is where: of all the Russell T stories this is actually the one that portrays the Daleks worst of all and if you came to this story without the others you wouldn’t quite get why they’re such a threat. It’s a shame we don’t get the ‘Shadow Proclamation’ scene – not that the story needs it exactly, but it would have added another level to both the ‘threat’ and sense of ‘goodbye’. I can’t believe Donna never got a showdown with her mum and while The Doctor has a go at her it’s not quite the same. The ending, clever as it is, still basically has The Doctor solve the day by pressing a lever, even if technically it’s three Doctors pressing three levers (the Doctor, the Donna and the wholly metacrisis). Many fans don’t like the metacrisis Doctor being paired up with Rose either, including Billie Piper, who felt it a copout from her original story arc that she considered ‘perfect’. I kind of like it though, even if Rose switches her allegiances a bit quickly (and the metacrisis Doctor is oddly acquiescent): Rose deserves a happy ending, something to keep her in the parallel world, while it’s made clear the Doctor needs her as much as she needs The Doctor, while if she’s been ‘our’ representative at home it’s rather sweet Russell gives her a Dr Who toy to take home to keep and treasure, the way we do. The biggest divide between them has now been taken away now she’s his ‘equal’. The finale also feels like the last three season endings stuck together rather than anything that ‘new’ (Rose taking on the eye of the Tardis to save The Doctor from ‘Bad Wolf/Parting Of The Ways’, the parallel world suction device of ‘Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday’ and the ‘think nice thoughts and work together to get rid of The Master from ‘The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Timelord’). Overall this is one of those greatest hits packages that has a ‘bonus’ new song that just sounds like all the others.
No matter though. If you can’t sum up an entire series and pick and mix the best bits you haven’t used yet in a finale, when else can you? I’d happily forgive all the recycling for the best shots of a Dalek invasion since the 1960s, as the Daleks take over not just the home counties but the whole Earth in a mass glossy expensive sequence that seems designed to appear in future documentaries about the show and seems to last forever, yet still not long enough (‘Exterminarium!’ is one of my favourite lines. Not least because Terry Nation has Nazis in mind when he created them). I love the way that we get to see just how many friends this Doctor has made since we met him again post time war (as Sarah says ‘you act as if you’re so alone but you have the biggest family on Earth!’) and how much he’s healed, how much he’s grown, how much he’s loved and how many people love him back. As David Tennant said to Dr Who Magazine ‘it’s like This Is Your Life’, but with Daleks’ and it’s true, something the show had never ever tried before, even in anniversary specials that have a very different feel to this one (mind you, the ‘About Time’ series calls it ‘Dimensions In Time’ with a budget’ and that’s true too!) Despite all the many things this story has to juggle (catering for big time fans who cheer at the mention of Calufrax, people who know the modern show but not the old one, those who watch regularly but don’t know Torchwood or Sarah Jane and newbies who want to see what all the fuss is about) it still gets the most important things right, giving is a threat worthy of having so many old friends back again and giving Donna the proper farewell she deserves. Given that Russell T was, at the time, overworked underpaid and running on fumes healthwise and still had to make this season ending different to the last three (while so close to the wire Timewise that post-production on ‘Journey’s End’ only completed a fortnight before broadcast) it’s a wonder its even vaguely as coherent as it is, never mind one of the best stories in arguably Tennant’s best and most consistent season. The second episode ‘Journey’s End’, particularly, is a fine journey indeed, as gripping, tense, dramatic imaginative and funny as the rest of the Russell T Davies run, with lines that will make you laugh and make you cry. Even with a couple of fine stories to come in the specials (along with one good one and one duff one) the Russell T Davies should have ended here with what’s a perfect summary of why I think, however long Dr Who gets to run (Maybe that was it with his second go? Or maybe it will run forever? Why not?) this era of Dr Who will always be seen by fans as special, whether they were returning to the series, came to it years after or grew up alongside it. The only really serious downside to this story is that it still isn’t as great as the momentum of ‘Midnight’ and ‘Turn Left’ suggested it would be, where the Doctor’s vanity and Donna’s sacrifice catch up with them both. But then what could possibly live up to those two stories? Even if this story ends up turning back to the middle of the road again after such a delightful darker cul-de-sac, with a more audience-friendly simple invasion story rather than a psychological dark night of the soul, it’s a road that was such a privilege to travel down. DW has never been more epic or bold or bright or noisy or colourful than here in all its sixty years and counting. It’s the end of an era, with a story that sums it up in all the best and worst ways, but boy what an era it was. The fact that the last episode managed to be the most watched bit of telly that week (the only time Dr Who has ever managed this in sixty-two years) both stories gained an audience appreciation index score of 91 (meaning that many people didn’t just like it but loved it) shows how many other people loved this era too.
POSITIVES + Oh that cliffhanger! It’s not just one person we care about in trouble – its everyone! Sarah Jane’s sobbing as Daleks materialise in Bannerman Road as she rushes back to her son Luke. Torchwood are taking a last stand in their hub. Martha’s preparing to blow herself and half the planet up rather than let the Daleks take it over. Wilf’s just splattered a Dalek with a paintball gun. And most of all The Doctor’s just reunited with Rose after a season of them just missing each other. We finally get the moment we’ve all been dreaming of for two series now as they get a chance to actually be together. The Doctor’s running towards Rose and we all breathe a sigh of relief and think things are going to be alright. And then they’re not (spoilers) The extermination and hinted regeneration as the Doctor falls to the ground, with an episode of the season still to go, was the series’ single biggest talking point since the first sight of a Dalek back in the second story in 1963. Everyone wanted to know how the Doctor would get out of this (if indeed he would get out of this, as we’d already heard the semi official leaks of David Morrissey replacing him, see ‘The Next Doctor’ and this suddenly seemed like a series where anything can happen again). The solution isn’t your typical copout either but is very Dr Whoy, very clever and very in keeping with the Russell T Davies era.
NEGATIVES - Rose somehow doesn’t seem like Rose this episode and it slightly jars, especially up against everyone else being themselves. It’s a combination of Billie Piper being away from playing Rose for so long (and admitting that she had to go back and look at DVDs as she’d forgotten so much of how to play her; to be fair too she’s just back from her honeymoon after her wedding to Laurence Fox and time with him would turn anyone into Davros), Russell being away from writing her for so long, the speed at which Rose changed during her last few stories and the tiny amount of screen-time the character gets, but it’s still an anticlimax after a season of being teased with shots of her trying to ‘break through’ from her world into ours that Rose might as well be a new character. Even accepting she’s been living without the Doctor for so long she’s changed and that she’s fighting down the Daleks who all but killed her the last time they met this Rose is awfully bloodthirsty without much of the empathetic soul we first met left. You only have to see this story back to back with ‘Dalek’ to see the sea-change: Rose has gone from being the one trying to save the Doctor’s humanity against his greatest foe to being the one egging him on to lose it. UNIT should have hired her, not Martha (and what’s Martha doing with the storyline of threatening to blow the world up? Surely that’s a more natural fit for Captain Jack or even Sarah Jane given her own long bruising history with The Daleks). Rose has had a memory loss too apparently,  as half the things she knew in ‘Turn Left’ are explained to her from scratch here (she’s surprised at Captain Jack’s ‘regenerations’ for instance, not to mention Martha, Dalek Caan and what exactly happened while she was the ‘Bad Wolf’).
BEST QUOTE: Daleks: ‘Exterminieren! Exterminieren! Halt! Sonst werden wir Sie exterminieren! Sie sind jetzt ein Gefangener der Daleks! Exterminieren! Exterminieren!!!’
PREQUELS/SEQUELS: Welcome to the list the Dr Who proms! These have been so successful now that there have been four at the time of writing, featuring the eras of Drs 10 (2008, with Freema Agyeman hosting)11 (2010, with Karen Gillan hosting, plus a 50^th birthday bash in 2013 with Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman hosting) and 13-15 (2024, hosted by Catherine Tate) all held in the Royal Albert Hall as part of the ‘Proms’, an attempt to make classical music more accessible to the general public in an annual event stretching back as far as 1895 (basically ‘Ghostlight’ era with a dash of ‘Evil Of The Daleks’). The Dr Who version was originally suggested as an idea by Russell T Davies as a showcase for Murray Gold’s music and to get youngsters hooked on classical music (the same way that ‘Confidential’ got them hooked on making TV programmes). They’re a pleasing mixture of music (Murray’s scores are at their best when heard as medley suites rather than illustrating a particular scene) and monsters (who roamed the aisles scaring children and/or bassoon players). As well as music from the series, bunched into suites for Doctors, companions and monsters, little uns got to see the Dr Who theme and relevant music performed by a full orchestra (Holst’s exquisite Planets suite was always a highlight). The best bits were always the pre-recorded bits of film, though, starting with ‘Music Of The Spheres’ in the original 2008 version broadcast the Autumn after series four had been on the air. It’s a fun six minute romp written by Russell and starring David Tennant’s Dr 10 working on his own symphony in the Tardis when he’s interrupted by The Graske, a pint-sized villain from The Sarah Jane Adventures (he’s still got the Tardis defences down as per ‘Stolen Earth’ ‘Timecrash’ and the forthcoming ‘Voyage Of the Damned’). The Graske warns The Doctor of a space portal and he wonders about what’s on the other side -  it turns out it’s the Albert Hall! (I like to think this is an elaborate joke based on The Beatles’ line from ‘A Day In The Life’ that there were 10,000 holes in The Albert Hall, only they didn’t specify if they were time portals). To put things right The Doctor sends his manuscript through the portal and right on cue papers fall down from the ceiling in the actual Hall! Put-out conductor Ben Foster then steps aside for The Doctor to conduct his piece using his sonic screwdriver for a ‘worldwide premiere’ –which sounds like a bit of a mess, however much The Doctor says its ‘brilliant’. Meanwhile The Graske has slipped through the portal and is running round the orchestra pit squirting the musicians with a water pistol! (Russell T would have been busy writing ‘Fires Of Pompeii’ about now with its own water pistol scene, just saying). One reversal of the neutron flow later and The Graske is back on board The Tardis. ‘That was fun – and a little bit mad’ says The Doctor. And it is! Very good fun in fact and a scene that helped cement Tennant as The Doctor in the eyes of the six year olds in the audience who are all clearly worshipping him and loving the fact that he’s broken the fourth wall to interact with them (it’s hard to imagine Christopher Eccleston doing this sort of thing if he’d stayed with the show). The concept of the ‘music of the spheres’ is a real thing by the way, also touched on in ‘The Devil's Chord’, the belief of many astronomers (and more than a few musicians) that the universe is laid out in such a mathematical way that it equates to musical notes and ‘harmonies’. Although I can’t actually hear it if I close my eyes and listen, the traffic round my way’s too blooming loud. A useful filler, ‘Spheres’ was released on DVD/blur-ray three times in quick succession: as part of a standalone ‘Proms’ set, as an extra on ‘The Next Doctor’ DVD and again on the ‘Complete Specials’ set. See ‘The Name Of The Doctor’ for the 2013 prom minisode.

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