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- Dr Who recap - Stolen Earth (Shoulda paid for LoJack)
Dr Who recap - Stolen Earth (Shoulda paid for LoJack)
- By Linnea Dodson
- Published 07/27/2008
- Doctor Who
-
Rating:
Linnea Dodson
Nea has been a fan of Doctor Who since before the era of VCRs and personal computers. Now she's thrilled that there's an all-new show and all-new ways for fandom to keep up to date and spread.
View all articles by Linnea Dodson
When last we left our heros, BAD WOLF was written all over New New New New New Singapore and the TARDIS. This episode begins as the Doctor bombs out of the TARDIS - now once again reading POLICE Public Call BOX - and does the patented Tennant babble about how everything in that little corner of Cardiff looks "fine, just fine, everything's fine."
He asks a passing milkman what day it is and gets the unenlightening answer, "Saturday." Considering that this is not only a door-to-door milkman but one delivering glass bottles, the Doctor might want to establish what year it is. But he doesn't, instead distractedly muttering about liking Saturdays.
"So I just met Rose Tyler," an equally confused Donna muses. "I thought she was off in her own world."
The Doctor points out that Rose was and if the walls are breaking between the universes, "then everything is in danger. Everything!" He's turning on his heel, but there's nothing to be seen other than a lovely Cardiff suburban morning and the anachronistic milkman.
The moment the Doctor disappears back into the TARDIS, the Earth moves. (Literally.) The glass bottles shudder in their cases and start smashing on the ground. Slate tiles drop off the roof of the house and also shatter next to the milkman. Really, what year is this?
Inside the TARDIS, there's a gratuitous shot of the hand in its jar, gently bubbling away. Why the Doctor wants that underfoot every day is one of the mysteries of the universe. Above it Donna continues to yenta, admitting that she knows that things are going wrong but still asking if Rose coming back is good. How fans interpret the Doctor's reaction is extremely subjective, so I will fall back on sheer description - pause looking at Donna, smile with the corners of his mouth turned down, and whispered "Yeah." (It's the pause that I've seen have the most descriptions, ranging from "shock and sorrow" to "stunned delight." Your nautical mileage may vary depending on the ship you sail.)
Before I have to interpret 3 seconds of expression further, the entire TARDIS shudders even though they weren't in flight. When the Doctor throws the door open again, there is nothing but black space, a round planetoid that is probably meant to be the moon, and a few floating rocks outside. Fleeing to the monitor, the Doctor announces that the TARDIS hasn't moved - instead, the entire Earth has been stolen out from under it. "Earth's gone!" he repeats in shock. "The entire planet - it's gone!"
This is where I remind readers that logic got its three strikes and is out of the game as of the last episode, because otherwise we'd have to try to explain where those mountain-sized rocks came from, why the moon is still placidly spinning with nothing to orbit, and why the TARDIS didn't simply go along with everything else sitting on the planet's surface. The logic side of the brain is about to shut down in the face of incredible amounts of fanservice-fueled squee anyway, as the scene shifts "FAR ACROSS THE UNIVERSE..."
Martha wakes up on the floor of a New York UNIT base. Around her, extras with varying credibility of American accents are calling for emergency procedures and establishing status while Martha asks around if anyone is hurt.
One of the women walks past Martha to open the window blinds, through which red light is shining. When Martha asks if she's okay, her reply is "Martha - look at the sky!"
"Why? What is it?"
"Just look at the sky!"
Before Martha looks we're off to Cardiff, where Captain Jack is crawling out from debris by his desk. Surprisingly, he's under the furniture alone. "What is it, the Rift?" he calls, running into the heart of the Torchwood hub. "Ianto, are you okay?"
"No broken bones; slight loss of dignity. No change there, then," Ianto says while random chains swing gently from the ceiling behind Gwen and him. (Upsurge in Torchwood kink fic in 5... 4... 3...)
"The whole city must have felt that," Gwen gasps. "The whole of South Wales!"
Jack runs to take a look outside while Ianto goes to a computer monitor. "Little bit bigger than South Wales," he says cryptically while the scene jumps to Ealing, London.
"Luke?" Sarah Jane calls from where she's been knocked under a bookshelf. Fortunately for her, most of the books are still on it and not on top of her head. She runs across the attic to her adopted son (now a full foot taller than her and trying not to show it).
Luke, the poster boy for geeky aspergers syndrome, technobabbles about cross-dimensional spatial transference rather than tell her he's okay. However, for Luke technobabble counts as perfectly normal, so Sarah Jane looks out the dark window.
"It's night. It was 8:00 in the morning. Mr. Smith, I need you!" Sarah Jane calls.
Sarah Jane's half-alien supercomputer slides out of the wall as the soundtrack swells, and Sarah Jane melts her entire fandom into supersonic squee by snapping, "I wish you'd stop giving that fanfare and just tell me what happened." It's been a running joke since the first episode in the Sarah Jane fandom that the Mr. Smith theme is also the Mr. Smith startup music; having that confirmed in canon is nothing but a glorious, obvious shout-out to the fans. (So now can we have it as a download clip, please, BBC?)
Mr. Smith tells her to go outside.
But as the viewer also heads outside, we're doing so in the company of Wilf and Sylvia in Chiswick. "It's gone dark," Wilf says. "Aliens, I'll bet my pension. What do you want this time, you green swine?" he challenges, raising the cricket bat he's brought. "You get back inside, Sylvia, they always want the women." (Wilf totally owns "Mars Needs Women" on DVD and watches it when Donna and Sylvia won't catch him.)
Sylvia, for once, has focused on the main problem.
"Dad, look at the sky!"
There's a montage of everyone - Wilf, Sylvia, Sarah Jane, Luke, Jack, Martha and UNIT, even the milkman looking up in disbelief but before we get to see what they're looking at, there's one more player needed for the grand reunion.
Flash of light and enter Rose, carrying the biggest of Big Freakin' Guns. For a moment the milkman stares at her in horror before she, too, looks up.
"Right, now we're in trouble," Rose slurs - Billie's still having a little trouble with her voice - "and it's only just beginning." She pumps the gun, which whines into a charging sequence while we pan up to some of the finest work The Mill has done yet: a sky full of planets impossibly wrong, impossibly close, impressively real, as the music stings into the opening credits.
"But if the Earth's been moved," Donna is saying within the TARDIS, and there's no "if" about it when the episode's titled The Stolen Earth, "they've lost the Sun. What about my mum? And Granddad. They're dead! Are they dead?"
She's pleading with the Doctor to tell her that she's wrong, that she, like he, is not suddenly the last survivor of both species and planet, but the Doctor is too wrapped up in trying to figure out what happened. For once, it's too big for even him.
"We need help," he tells her solemnly. "I'm taking you to the Shadow Proclamation."
Back on Earth, the newscasts are talking about the 26 planets that have "suddenly appeared" (no word about the Sun, which has equally suddenly disappeared, or the gravitational forces that should be rip- I'm sorry, I was trying to apply logic again. Let me stuff that back into a box and lock it up before I can be amused by the idea that we're so Earth-centric - and as a species, we are - that the world has decided that it got several new satellites rather than has been moved out of orbit.)
Well, most of the world has decided it. Richard Dawkins makes his promised cameo pointing out the proof that the Earth has been relocated. In a burst of static we move to a comedian with a dog wondering if he's been drinking furniture polish.
Ianto, who has been flipping channels in the Torchwood hub, laughs delightedly until Jack snaps "A time and a place!" On a different level, Gwen is making sure that even the actors who couldn't appear get their characters name-checked by telephoning Rhys to reassure her husband that Torchwood will fix this and she will come home to him.
Jack technobabbles that there is an atmospheric shell "keeping in the air and holding in the heat." Ianto responds that the planetnappers must want the human race alive. My sense of logic squeaks something from its locked box about how our tides and airstreams have deranged and wonder how long it will take for plants to die without sunlight regardless of heat.
(The problem with recapping, you see, is when you watch in real-time, you get swept up in the emotion, hopefully at least long enough to enjoy the show before reality catches up with several pertinent questions. When you're hitting pause every other minute, there's too much time for your sense of disbelief to crash to the ground.)
The Hub computer shows a simulation of the planets with something red bleeping in the middle of the configuration. "What's that?" Gwen asks. "That's not a planet!"
"The reading seems to be artificial in construction," Mr. Smith is telling Sarah Jane.
"A space station in the heart of the web," Sarah Jane muses while Luke uses his mobile phone to namecheck the rest of the Sarah Jane Adventure Scooby Gang, who are conveniently safe and conveniently unavailable.
Mr. Smith's next warning is that a fleet of spaceships is approaching the planet. Sarah Jane smiles tightly at her son, not sure if this is good news or bad.
UNIT doesn't get that philosophical. "Tracking 200 objects... Geneva is calling code red... everyone to battle positions," a UNIT General shouts, and the American viewers heave a sigh of relief that most of the New York dialog is going to be delivered by a native - and of New York, even!
"Doctor Jones, if you're not too busy," General Sanchez asks sarcastically, because Martha also has her cell phone to her ear. But her hopes of calling the Doctor have been foiled by lack of signal.
"They must be blocking it, whoever they are," she reports.
"We're about to find out," Sanchez replies. "They're coming into orbit."
In the streets of Cardiff, Rose passes through looters, rioters, drunks, and a whole bunch of extras just running back and forth screaming. (You can see someone with a red shirt under a jacket running left to right; about a second later, someone with a bright red shirt runs right to left.)
Rose encounters looters going through a computer shop; once again pumping her BFG she scares them into leaving. But it turns out she wanted privacy more than law and order as she sits down in front of one of the laptops to watch the approaching fleet.
Wilf is also on the phone, stymied by his attempts to contact Donna.
Finally a phone call goes through - Martha can't call offworld, but she can get to Jack. They establish that no one has been able to contact the Doctor, but Martha herself is in America because she's been promoted to "Medical Director of Project Indigo."
"You finally get that thing working?" Jack asks conversationally.
Martha gets a bit upset because Indigo is top secret and Jack shouldn't know about it. Ianto gets a bit upset because Jack's explanation involves Jack, a UNIT soldier, and a bar. Gwen calls everyone back to the real problem, which is the fleet that is just about to enter Earth airspace.
"I'm receiving a communication from the Earth-bound ships. They have a message for the human race," Mr. Smith tells Sarah Jane.
"Put it through. Let's hear it," she orders.
"Exterminate! Ex-terrr-min-ate!"
He asks a passing milkman what day it is and gets the unenlightening answer, "Saturday." Considering that this is not only a door-to-door milkman but one delivering glass bottles, the Doctor might want to establish what year it is. But he doesn't, instead distractedly muttering about liking Saturdays.
"So I just met Rose Tyler," an equally confused Donna muses. "I thought she was off in her own world."
The Doctor points out that Rose was and if the walls are breaking between the universes, "then everything is in danger. Everything!" He's turning on his heel, but there's nothing to be seen other than a lovely Cardiff suburban morning and the anachronistic milkman.
The moment the Doctor disappears back into the TARDIS, the Earth moves. (Literally.) The glass bottles shudder in their cases and start smashing on the ground. Slate tiles drop off the roof of the house and also shatter next to the milkman. Really, what year is this?
Inside the TARDIS, there's a gratuitous shot of the hand in its jar, gently bubbling away. Why the Doctor wants that underfoot every day is one of the mysteries of the universe. Above it Donna continues to yenta, admitting that she knows that things are going wrong but still asking if Rose coming back is good. How fans interpret the Doctor's reaction is extremely subjective, so I will fall back on sheer description - pause looking at Donna, smile with the corners of his mouth turned down, and whispered "Yeah." (It's the pause that I've seen have the most descriptions, ranging from "shock and sorrow" to "stunned delight." Your nautical mileage may vary depending on the ship you sail.)
Before I have to interpret 3 seconds of expression further, the entire TARDIS shudders even though they weren't in flight. When the Doctor throws the door open again, there is nothing but black space, a round planetoid that is probably meant to be the moon, and a few floating rocks outside. Fleeing to the monitor, the Doctor announces that the TARDIS hasn't moved - instead, the entire Earth has been stolen out from under it. "Earth's gone!" he repeats in shock. "The entire planet - it's gone!"
This is where I remind readers that logic got its three strikes and is out of the game as of the last episode, because otherwise we'd have to try to explain where those mountain-sized rocks came from, why the moon is still placidly spinning with nothing to orbit, and why the TARDIS didn't simply go along with everything else sitting on the planet's surface. The logic side of the brain is about to shut down in the face of incredible amounts of fanservice-fueled squee anyway, as the scene shifts "FAR ACROSS THE UNIVERSE..."
Martha wakes up on the floor of a New York UNIT base. Around her, extras with varying credibility of American accents are calling for emergency procedures and establishing status while Martha asks around if anyone is hurt.
One of the women walks past Martha to open the window blinds, through which red light is shining. When Martha asks if she's okay, her reply is "Martha - look at the sky!"
"Why? What is it?"
"Just look at the sky!"
Before Martha looks we're off to Cardiff, where Captain Jack is crawling out from debris by his desk. Surprisingly, he's under the furniture alone. "What is it, the Rift?" he calls, running into the heart of the Torchwood hub. "Ianto, are you okay?"
"No broken bones; slight loss of dignity. No change there, then," Ianto says while random chains swing gently from the ceiling behind Gwen and him. (Upsurge in Torchwood kink fic in 5... 4... 3...)
"The whole city must have felt that," Gwen gasps. "The whole of South Wales!"
Jack runs to take a look outside while Ianto goes to a computer monitor. "Little bit bigger than South Wales," he says cryptically while the scene jumps to Ealing, London.
"Luke?" Sarah Jane calls from where she's been knocked under a bookshelf. Fortunately for her, most of the books are still on it and not on top of her head. She runs across the attic to her adopted son (now a full foot taller than her and trying not to show it).
Luke, the poster boy for geeky aspergers syndrome, technobabbles about cross-dimensional spatial transference rather than tell her he's okay. However, for Luke technobabble counts as perfectly normal, so Sarah Jane looks out the dark window.
"It's night. It was 8:00 in the morning. Mr. Smith, I need you!" Sarah Jane calls.
Sarah Jane's half-alien supercomputer slides out of the wall as the soundtrack swells, and Sarah Jane melts her entire fandom into supersonic squee by snapping, "I wish you'd stop giving that fanfare and just tell me what happened." It's been a running joke since the first episode in the Sarah Jane fandom that the Mr. Smith theme is also the Mr. Smith startup music; having that confirmed in canon is nothing but a glorious, obvious shout-out to the fans. (So now can we have it as a download clip, please, BBC?)
Mr. Smith tells her to go outside.
But as the viewer also heads outside, we're doing so in the company of Wilf and Sylvia in Chiswick. "It's gone dark," Wilf says. "Aliens, I'll bet my pension. What do you want this time, you green swine?" he challenges, raising the cricket bat he's brought. "You get back inside, Sylvia, they always want the women." (Wilf totally owns "Mars Needs Women" on DVD and watches it when Donna and Sylvia won't catch him.)
Sylvia, for once, has focused on the main problem.
There's a montage of everyone - Wilf, Sylvia, Sarah Jane, Luke, Jack, Martha and UNIT, even the milkman looking up in disbelief but before we get to see what they're looking at, there's one more player needed for the grand reunion.
Flash of light and enter Rose, carrying the biggest of Big Freakin' Guns. For a moment the milkman stares at her in horror before she, too, looks up.
"Right, now we're in trouble," Rose slurs - Billie's still having a little trouble with her voice - "and it's only just beginning." She pumps the gun, which whines into a charging sequence while we pan up to some of the finest work The Mill has done yet: a sky full of planets impossibly wrong, impossibly close, impressively real, as the music stings into the opening credits.
"But if the Earth's been moved," Donna is saying within the TARDIS, and there's no "if" about it when the episode's titled The Stolen Earth, "they've lost the Sun. What about my mum? And Granddad. They're dead! Are they dead?"
She's pleading with the Doctor to tell her that she's wrong, that she, like he, is not suddenly the last survivor of both species and planet, but the Doctor is too wrapped up in trying to figure out what happened. For once, it's too big for even him.
"We need help," he tells her solemnly. "I'm taking you to the Shadow Proclamation."
Back on Earth, the newscasts are talking about the 26 planets that have "suddenly appeared" (no word about the Sun, which has equally suddenly disappeared, or the gravitational forces that should be rip- I'm sorry, I was trying to apply logic again. Let me stuff that back into a box and lock it up before I can be amused by the idea that we're so Earth-centric - and as a species, we are - that the world has decided that it got several new satellites rather than has been moved out of orbit.)
Well, most of the world has decided it. Richard Dawkins makes his promised cameo pointing out the proof that the Earth has been relocated. In a burst of static we move to a comedian with a dog wondering if he's been drinking furniture polish.
Ianto, who has been flipping channels in the Torchwood hub, laughs delightedly until Jack snaps "A time and a place!" On a different level, Gwen is making sure that even the actors who couldn't appear get their characters name-checked by telephoning Rhys to reassure her husband that Torchwood will fix this and she will come home to him.
Jack technobabbles that there is an atmospheric shell "keeping in the air and holding in the heat." Ianto responds that the planetnappers must want the human race alive. My sense of logic squeaks something from its locked box about how our tides and airstreams have deranged and wonder how long it will take for plants to die without sunlight regardless of heat.
(The problem with recapping, you see, is when you watch in real-time, you get swept up in the emotion, hopefully at least long enough to enjoy the show before reality catches up with several pertinent questions. When you're hitting pause every other minute, there's too much time for your sense of disbelief to crash to the ground.)
The Hub computer shows a simulation of the planets with something red bleeping in the middle of the configuration. "What's that?" Gwen asks. "That's not a planet!"
"The reading seems to be artificial in construction," Mr. Smith is telling Sarah Jane.
"A space station in the heart of the web," Sarah Jane muses while Luke uses his mobile phone to namecheck the rest of the Sarah Jane Adventure Scooby Gang, who are conveniently safe and conveniently unavailable.
Mr. Smith's next warning is that a fleet of spaceships is approaching the planet. Sarah Jane smiles tightly at her son, not sure if this is good news or bad.
UNIT doesn't get that philosophical. "Tracking 200 objects... Geneva is calling code red... everyone to battle positions," a UNIT General shouts, and the American viewers heave a sigh of relief that most of the New York dialog is going to be delivered by a native - and of New York, even!
"Doctor Jones, if you're not too busy," General Sanchez asks sarcastically, because Martha also has her cell phone to her ear. But her hopes of calling the Doctor have been foiled by lack of signal.
"They must be blocking it, whoever they are," she reports.
"We're about to find out," Sanchez replies. "They're coming into orbit."
In the streets of Cardiff, Rose passes through looters, rioters, drunks, and a whole bunch of extras just running back and forth screaming. (You can see someone with a red shirt under a jacket running left to right; about a second later, someone with a bright red shirt runs right to left.)
Rose encounters looters going through a computer shop; once again pumping her BFG she scares them into leaving. But it turns out she wanted privacy more than law and order as she sits down in front of one of the laptops to watch the approaching fleet.
Wilf is also on the phone, stymied by his attempts to contact Donna.
Finally a phone call goes through - Martha can't call offworld, but she can get to Jack. They establish that no one has been able to contact the Doctor, but Martha herself is in America because she's been promoted to "Medical Director of Project Indigo."
"You finally get that thing working?" Jack asks conversationally.
Martha gets a bit upset because Indigo is top secret and Jack shouldn't know about it. Ianto gets a bit upset because Jack's explanation involves Jack, a UNIT soldier, and a bar. Gwen calls everyone back to the real problem, which is the fleet that is just about to enter Earth airspace.
"I'm receiving a communication from the Earth-bound ships. They have a message for the human race," Mr. Smith tells Sarah Jane.
"Put it through. Let's hear it," she orders.
"Exterminate! Ex-terrr-min-ate!"
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Comments
Comment #1 (Posted by ninahdevi)
Rating:
Just have to say thanx a million for doing these. keep up the good work. Can't wait to get your take on next week's ep.