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!"

I have to confess, even though I think the Daleks have been overused and I'd been spoiled rotten for the finale, I got chills here.  I really did.  At this moment, approaching a battered and confused world, the Dalek fleet is as overwhelmingly terrifying as it ought to be.

Sarah Jane, the only companion to have been there at the creation of the Daleks, starts to shake.  Jack's and Martha's jaws drop. 

"What is it? Who are they? Do you know them, Jack?" Gwen asks, starting to panic from the reactions around her.  Jack's answer is to provide fanservice to Torchwood shippers of all stripes, throwing his arms around Ianto and Gwen and kissing them each in turn.

"There's nothing I can do," he says.  "I'm sorry... we're dead."

Sarah Jane is equally uncharacteristically useless.  In a move that's rightfully parodied in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine, she launches herself at Luke, crying so hard that she can barely get her lines out.

Rose swallows hard, straps her BFG back on, and strides out into the night.  Dalek ships are flying just over the buildings now, and if they'd used the atmospheric shield to keep the human race alive, it was only because they wanted practice shooting at running targets.  Rose strides through the streets as buildings explode behind her.

On the flagship, Nick Briggs is having fun talking to himself as the Daleks report that the battle stations are ready and "the Crucible is at 90%." One of the Daleks gloats that "the human harvest is about to begin."

In New York, General Sanchez is also shouting for battle stations. "Geneva declaring Ultimate Code Red.  Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war."  Explosions rock the UNIT base and Martha, running to the window, must be getting a huge case of post-traumatic stress syndrome as Dalek ships skim the skies raining death just as the Toclafane had done a year ago.

Back on the Dalek ship, the scarlet Supreme Dalek gloats that the Daleks are the masters of Earth.  Around him, hundreds of Daleks take up the chant.  "Da-leks-are-the-ma-sters-of-Earth!"

In the meantime, the TARDIS is flying shakily through space as the Doctor explains to Donna that the Shadow Proclamation are "a posh word for police. Outer space police."  Although we're shown a quick clip of the TARDIS spinning towards a space station in real time, rather than coming to a landing it materializes in a... well, the background makes it look suspiciously like a bathroom.

The platoon of waiting Judoon cock their weapons as the Doctor and Donna slide out of the TARDIS, holding their hands up.  David Tennant gets to show off his verbal skills as he barks out a long, rapid speech in Judoon that makes the squad stand down and take him to their leader, who is a lot less impressed.  The albino woman in black refuses to believe that the Time Lords are more than "myths and legends," telling the Doctor that he cannot possibly exist. 

"More to the point, I've got a missing planet," is his response.

If possible, she gets even more underwhelmed.  "You are not as wise as the stories say.  The picture is far bigger than you imagine; the whole universe is in outrage, Doctor."  Twenty-four planets are gone without a trace, lost in the same moment.

"Which ones? Show me!" the Doctor demands, running over the top of a stool on his way to her monitor.  You just can't take that Time Lord anywhere nice.  The display gets in a nice list of shout-outs to previous episodes - Woman Wept, Klom, even arguably a shoutout to old school and the fandom again, as Callufrax (spelled Calufrax on the fic-recommending community on LiveJournal) goes by.

"What about Pyrovillia?" Donna asks, remembering her adventures in Pompeii.

The Shadow Leader sneers "Who is the female?"

Donna is the last companion anyone can get away with dissing in the Whoniverse.  Donna promptly sneers right back that she's Donna, a human being and "every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you" as the Doctor smiles proudly.

The Judoon claims that Pyrovillia is a cold case; having disappeared more than 2,000 years ago, it cannot be related.  Neither can the disappearance of the Adipose breeding world, which Donna brings up next.

But the Doctor seizes the clue.  "That's brilliant!  Planets are being taken out of time as well as space!"

He busily starts creating a holographic list of the missing planets, adding in the two that Donna mentioned.  But it's not enough until he namechecks "Midnight" and adds in the lost moon of Poosh as well.

As the new little ball joins the rest of the holograph, suddenly the planets rearrange themselves.  It turns out that those particular astral bodies "all fit together like pieces of an engine."

"But who could design such a thing?" the Shadow leader demands.

"Someone tried to move the Earth a long time ago," the Doctor says softly.  "But it can't be."

Back on Earth, things are rapidly approaching a crisis.  The Valiant is down, falling from the sky.  Gwen and Ianto rattle off a list of bases invaded or destroyed while Jack tries to get Martha to run for her life.  She refuses.

General Sanchez has other plans anyway.  Project Indigo is about to be activated, and Martha is going to be the guinea pig.  Martha protests that it hasn't been tested while Daleks sweep through the UNIT base above them, wiping out the soldiers.  Behind a wall of wheel locks is a futuristic backpack/parapchute.

Jack, still connected via Martha's earpiece, begs her not to use it; it isn't safe.  An unimpressed Sanchez, who must have excellent hearing, snaps that Martha takes her orders from UNIT, not from Torchwood.  Martha is the only hope of finding the Doctor.  Moreover, he is entrusting her with the Osterhagen key in case all hope is gone.

"I can't take that," a horrified Martha whispers.

"You know what to do! For the sake of the human race!"

Daleks have breached the corridor.  Martha takes the key and pulls the ripcords on Project Indigo, the last sounds she hears being Sanchez's death yell and Jack shrieking "Don't do it!"

Jack kicks his desk in fury and grief, explaining to the rest of his team that Project Indigo is teleport technology stolen from the Sontarans, but without stabilizers or coordinates, Martha has been scattered into atoms.  "Martha's down," he announces.  Ianto puts a shocked hand over his mouth.

The Scarlet Dalek is calling for the surviving humans to be brought to the Crucible when a new voice calls from the dark.  "Supreme Dalek, is there news?"

"Is there news of him?"

"No reports of Time Lord.  We are beyond the Doctor's reach."

All we see of the new speaker is a sharp-nailed fetish glove, taping at a console.  While the Supreme Dalek blows off the idea of the Doctor foiling their plans - the Supreme Dalek is obviously unaware of 45 years of show history - the hand announces that "Dalek Caan is uneasy."

A metallic finger flips a switch and a light flashes onto one of two creepiest sights this season - an opened casing, the Dalek inside twitching its tentacles at the sudden brightness.

Supreme Dalek still isn't impressed.  "The abomination is insane." it points out.  The new voice rebuts that it still only speaks the truth, and furthermore, it had made everything possible.

(For those who've mercifully forgotten the Daleks Do Manhattan two-part episode from last year, Caan was the surviving Dalek of that encounter, having thrown himself into the temporal void to escape the Doctor.)

He's much the worse for wear now, wriggling his naked tentacles and flopping around a bit.  According to the intervews, Nick Briggs was having the time of his life getting to do more than e-nun-ci-ate-threats-care-fulllly into the ring modulator, for Caan sing-songs, babbles, and warns them all that "the threefold man... the Doctor" is coming before breaking into classic insane evil giggles.

Back on the Shadow Proclamation space base, the Doctor and the leader are bent over the monitor, trying to figure out what to do.  Donna is sitting on the stairs, still stunned, and listening to an odd, overlapping heartbeat.  Another albino woman with freaky red contacts, slightly younger than the leader, offers her water.  She also offers the insight that there was something on Donna's back and condolences for her loss.

"Yeah, my whole planet's gone," Donna sighs.

"I mean the loss that is yet to come" is the unreassuring response.

The Doctor has been oblivious to all of this, but he does come over to badger Donna to tell him what might have been happening on Earth as a warning.  Electrical storms?  Freak patterns?

"There were the bees disappearing," she says defeatedly.

"The bees disappearing," he repeats sarcastically.  Then he repeats it again, first in wonder, then excitement, finally launching himself with a yell back at the monitor.  Both Donna and the Shadow Leader think he's nuts, but in a burst of exposition he explains that the bees were probably going home without even so much as a last message of "so long and thanks for all the pollen."  They would have traveled by tandoka, which leaves a trail, and look at that, whatever stole Earth used the same technique!

"We can follow the trail!" he exults.

"Stop talking and do it!" Donna yells back, leading the full-on charge to the TARDIS.  

There's still a trace, a faint and scattered one, but enough to follow.  The Doctor sticks his head out just long enough to tell the Shadow Leader what can be done - only to be rocked by the news that she is accordingly impounding himself and the TARDIS.  "We are declaring war across the universe, and you will lead us into battle!"

It's a beautiful acting moment for Tennant as the Doctor relives the last, horrible moments of the Time War.  Surprisingly, he doesn't lecture or bluster about war not being the way, or how unfit he would be to lead. He just swallows hard and says that he'll give her the door key.

Then, naturally, he slams the door in her face and runs like a rabbit while the Shadow Leader orders for him to stop, screaming over the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing.

On Earth, the Daleks are starting to round up people.  One family resists, returning to their home, which the Daleks explode with them inside.

Wilf and Sylvia are watching around a corner, Wilf armed with a paintball gun.  At the sight of the burning building they run, only to be caught by another Dalek.  Wilf paint-balls it in the eyestalk, but that's not as effective as he would have hoped; the Dalek just sears the paint off.  But while it works itself up into a frenzy of "Exterminate! Exterminate!" it is exterminated itself from behind, a huge blast blowing its entire top off.

Wilf looks through the burning casing at Rose, who is recharging her BFG with another pump.  "Wanna swap?" he asks, offering the paint gun.  (Wilf, don't ever change!)

Rose establishes that they're Donna's family and that they can't contact her.  Wilf is trying to establish Donna's galactic coordinates while Sylvia still insists that his stories of Donna traveling in time and space are ridiculous.  Wilf finds it equally ridiculous that Sylvia can continue to deny it while Daleks glide through the streets.

Rose is crushed.  "You were my last hope.  If you can't find Donna, we can't find the Doctor. Where is he?"

He's in the TARDIS, which has taken him to the Medusa Cascade and stopped.  "I came here when I was a kid," he muses, "just 90 years old.  It was the center of a rift in time and space." It's also the end of the trail, which has gone cold, and nary a sight of the missing planets.

Donna panics. "You never give up!  Please!"  

But the Doctor stands silent and unmoving.

In Cardiff, Gwen and Ianto react in horror as the United Nations surrenders on behalf of Earth.  In Ealing, Sarah Jane has wrung herself out, silently holding Luke as the Daleks shout orders outside.  It's Wilf holding Sylvia in Chiswick.  As Rose stares into nothing, defeated, her attention is caught by an electronic beeping that sounds scarily like the ta-ta-ta-tat of the Master's Archangel drumbeat.

"Can anyone hear me?  The subwave network is open - you should be able to hear my voice. Is there anyone there?"  Wilf's laptop is open, and a figure can just be made out through the static.

"I know that voice," Rose says, cautiously going to the laptop.  So do I, and I'm beside myself with squee, because I love this character.

Sarah Jane isn't as excited.  Blowing off the signal as "some poor soul calling for help,"  she barely bothers to look up while Mr. Smith tries to sharpen the image.

Jack is equally unimpressed.  When Gwen points out the signal and tries to pull it in, he says "The whole world's crying out.  Just leave it."

"Captain Jack Harkness, shame on you!" snaps Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister.  "Now stand to attention, sir!"

"Who is that?" Jack asks, running to the monitor, so Harriet goes through her introduction, including showing her ID.

"I know who you are," Jack admits with a smile.

In the Noble house, Rose is leaning into the screen.  "Harriet, it's me!
It's me!" She turns in frustration to the Nobles.  "She can't hear me, have you got webcam?"

"She won't let me." Wilf points to Sylvia. "She says they're naughty."

It's cheesy, it's manipulative, and I'm loving every second as the music rises and Harriet continues to pull together the defeated companions though sheer force of personality.  "Sarah Jane Smith... are you there?"

"Yeah... yeah, that's me!" a re-energized Sarah replies, running forward.

Satisfied, Harriet starts tapping on her keyboard, and the computer screens divide into quarters. One is Harriet's apartment, one is the Hub, one is Sarah Jane's attic, but the fourth... "the fourth contact seems to be having some trouble getting through."

"That's me!" a joyous Rose shouts. "Harriet, that's me!"  Harriet boosts the signal and...

"Martha Jones!" Jack laughs as Martha fills the final quadrant.

"Who's she?" Rose asks, pouring gasoline on a two-year shipper war. "I want to get through!"

Martha is explaining that Project Indigo must have used some form of telepathy as its coordinates, because she returned to the one place she most wanted to be - her mother's house.  "But then it was like the laptop turned itself on."

"That was me," Harriet says, raising her ID again, but Martha also knows who she is.

"I thought it was about time that we all met, considering the current crisis," Harriet says, starting to perform introductions.  It turns out that Torchwood and Sarah Jane have been aware of each other, but Sarah Jane has been keeping her distance because she doesn't like all those guns around Luke.  This must be the first time that they've actually seen each other, though, because Jack promptly flirts with Sarah Jane, who coos back.  I'm thrilled beyond belief - I'd love to see those two getting together. 

Harriet, not so much. "Not now, Captain," she sighs, introducing Martha as "former companion to the Doctor."

"Oi, so was I!" Rose protests, throwing a lit match after that fuel.

Harriet explains that she has "sentient software" that will find "anyone and everyone who can help contact the Doctor."  That explains why Rose is in on the loop even if she can't talk back.  It's undetectable outside the network, so the Daleks can't hear them.  Harriet says she developed it, but it had been created by the "Mr. Copper foundation."  (For those counting the shout-outs, he was the survivor of the fake Titanic crash who was left on Earth with a million quid.  It's nice to know he made something of his life.)

"What we need is a weapon," Jack says.  Torchwood Three must not have access to the huge weapon Harriet used in Christmas Invasion, and all Martha has, aside from Project Indigo, is the Osterhagen key.

Harriet promptly orders her to never use is and answers Jack's questions with "forget about the key, and that's an order."  Well, there's a clue that it'll be useful by the end of the story.  (Osterhagen, by the way, is an anagram of "Earth's gone."  The German fans also pointed out that it is one letter off from the German for "Easter Bunny," which makes for some seriously whacked-out theories about next week.)

A wary Sarah Jane points out that the Doctor deposed Harriet. 

"He did," Harriet admits, "and I wondered about that for a long time, if I was wrong.  But I stand by my actions."  At this point I don't care if she's fictional, I don't care if I'm the wrong nationality, I want to stand up and salute her.  It's controversial, but I always thought that Harriet did the right thing for the right reasons in Christmas Invasion.  Knowing that she still holds the courage of her convictions and that she has quietly worked for the day that she predicted back then, "when the Earth is in danger and the Doctor did not appear" makes me so incredibly proud of her.

(One of the more bizarre rumors leading into this episode was that Harriet had become so twisted with hate for the Doctor that she had deliberately sold out the Earth - that she was, in fact, the scarlet Dalek.  Having that in the back of my brain only made me that much prouder that her character remained only the more determined to be a defender of Earth when no one else, apparently even the fandom, had confidence in her.)

Martha explains that she has a phone that should always get through, but she still can't contact the Doctor.

"Nor me" Rose complains, and takes a flamethrower to the fuel on the shipping war by adding, "and I was there first!"  It's especially selfish and inaccurate considering that Rose knows that Sarah Jane came before either of them.

Harriet explains that she wanted to gather them all together as "the Doctor's Secret Army" (the comparisons to Dumbledore's Army in Harry Potter were being made before the evening was over).  Together, they could find a way to find the Doctor.

Jack, heartened, technobabbles that the power of the rift could be used to boost Martha's phone signal.  Luke points out that Mr. Smith can patch every single telephone to call the same line to further amplify the call.  (This seems a rather needless shout-out to Last of the Time Lords and everyone shouting "Doctor, Doctor!" all at once.)

Ianto sees the flaw in the plan.  Won't the Daleks see the signal if it's boosted that much?

Harriet calmly explains that she'll ensure that the signal appears to be coming from her apartment.  The Daleks will get her, but her life isn't important, not when the people are being slaughtered on the streets.

"Marvelous woman," Wilf enthuses.  "I voted for her."

"You did not," Sylvia snipes.

There's a montage of people typing in a flurry while Ianto minces (sorry, that is the only accurate word!) over to the rift manipulator with the world's largest extension cord.  The telephone number is clearly shown on both Martha's mobile and Mr. Smith's screen; while Rose, Wilf, and Sylvia dial their mobiles, a couple thousand people not on the television do as well.

On this world, it's an out of service number.  On the telly, Martha's old cell phone rings and the Doctor makes a quick lash-up of stethoscope, cell phone, and TARDIS console to follow the signal in.

The Daleks see it; the orders go out to pinpoint the origin and exterminate it.

"I warned you, Supreme One," the voice in the shadows says.  "Just as Dalek Caan foretold, the Children of Time are moving against us."  (Best. Name. Ever!  Even if it sounds faintly like an 80s rock band.)

The Hub and Mr. Smith are both exploding in showers of sparks.  Rose holds her cell phone up, whispering "Find me, Doctor.  Find me!"

Gwen warns Harriet that the Daleks are coming but Harriet stays at her post, masking the transfer of the network to the Hub until the last second.  And it is a second - onboard the burning TARDIS, the Doctor shouts that the phone call is coming one second into the future.

The Daleks are blowing out the side of Harriet's building as she transfers control to the Torchwood Hub.  "Captain, you're in charge now.  And tell the Doctor from me that he chose his companions well.  It's been an honor."

There's one last comedy bit as Harriet shows her ID to the three Daleks gliding up behind her.  "Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister."

"Yes-we-know-who-you-aaaare."

And then there's no comedy at all.  Calm, controlled, and defiant to the last, she says, "Oh you know nothing of any human.  And that will be your downfall."

For a moment the Daleks pause.  Then a gun moves and Harriet Jones' quadrant of the computer screens snaps to static as the sound of Dalek weapons is heard.

There has been a long discussion about this in the fandom.  Some see it as part of an anti-feminist agenda; yet another strong woman who must be humbled by death like Mrs. Moore on the alternate Earth. Others see an ageist agenda in the same thing. Personally, I feel it is very much in character and a wonderful scene. The first episode where we met Harriet, she was ready to die to stop the Slitheen.  It's the same thing now - despite the routine of constantly introducing herself, she was a woman of rock-solid convictions.  No matter what the Doctor threw at her, she remained proactive in her work to defend the Earth.  Like Jack, I salute Harriet.  She is going down as a soldier, as much a hero as General Sanchez, whose last act was to die defending Martha.

In a burst of very silly-looking CGI - I'm sorry, the TARDIS just looks foolish as it twists in space and the concentric circles of "telephone waves" aren't helping - the planets fizz into view.  They had been put into a pocket of time, one second out of sync with the rest of the universe.

Now that he's in the same temporal zone as everyone else, the Doctor's monitor picks up the video portion of the signal, patching the TARDIS console room into Harriet's quarter of the screen.  

"Where the hell have you been?" Jack shouts.  "Doctor, it's the Daleks!"

"Oooh, he's a bit nice," Gwen says in an aside to Ianto.  "I thought he'd be older."

"Not that young," Ianto mutters.  They're the last two who can be heard as everyone talks at once in release and relief - Martha explaining the Daleks, Sarah Jane introducing Luke, and in the Noble home, Wilf is exulting at the sight of Donna safe and sound.

The Doctor starts sorting them all out - "Sarah Jane!  Who's that boy?" (He obviously wasn't paying attention a second ago.) "That must be Torchwood.  And Martha!"

"Who's he?" Donna asks, pointing straight into the camera and all but drooling on herself.

"Captain Jack and don't.  Just don't," the Doctor warns.

Rose, watching and unable to participate, is ready to cry.  "Doctor, it's me.  I came back."

But the Doctor hasn't forgotten her.  When Donna points out it's "like an outer space Facebook," he whispers, "Everyone except Rose."

Dalek Caan is wriggling in glee.  "The Dark Lord is here!" he burbles, flinging his tentacles around.

The shadowed voice is coming closer to the light.  "This network.  I would address it."

On the TARDIS, the "outer space Facebook" dissolves into static.  The Doctor recognizes that another signal is coming through and pounds his monitor, shouting, "Can you hear me?  Rose?"

But it isn't Rose speaking.  "Your voice is different, and yet its arrogance is unchanged," the shadowy figure from the Dalek ship says.

Sarah Jane, having flashbacks to Genesis of the Daleks, starts shaking again.  "No!  But he's dead!"

At last the figure moves out the shadows (and quite a few old school fans plotz in either nostalgic glee or sheer excitement).  "Welcome to my new Empire, Doctor," the wizened figure in the Dalek-like wheelchair says.  "It is only fitting that you should bear witness to the resurrection and triumph of Davros, lord and creator of the Dalek race."

The Doctor is frozen in horror.  Donna tries to remind him that he's safe in the TARDIS, but the Doctor isn't even in the here and now.  "You were destroyed. In the very first year of the Time War, at the Gates of Elyssium.  I saw your command ship fly into the jaws of the Nightmare Child.  I tried to save you."

"It took one stronger than you.  Dalek Caan himself."

"I flew into the wild and fire," Caan singsongs. "I danced and died a thousand times."  The emergency temporal shift had dropped Caan into the Time War, although the whole thing was Time locked. (This leads to an interesting speculation - is it less that the Doctor destroyed his planet than he closed it off in an unbreakable loop while the war still rages?)

Davros explains that he created a new race of Daleks, giving himself to their creation quite literally.  He strips back his jacket to reveal the second creepiest image of the season - an open ribcage, heart beating under the wrecked shreds of skin.  Now there's an image that'll leave the kiddies sitting up all night in terror!

"I have my children, Doctor," Davros says smugly.  "What do you have?"

The Doctor is trembling.  "After all this time, after everything we saw, everything we lost, I have only one thing to say to you... BYE!"

The TARDIS spins off.  Davros warns the Daleks that the Doctor will head to Earth while Caan babbles about "everlasting death for the most faithful companion."  (Take your pick!  Does he mean Rose, Martha, Donna, Jack, Sarah Jane, or the TARDIS itself? Place your bets!)

The Daleks have figured out that the network signal is coming from Torchwood.  An extermination squad is sent.  Ianto sees them coming and tells Gwen but deliberately doesn't tell Jack, who is once again glued on the phone to Martha. She reads him a couple of numbers from the Indigo backpack.  Turns out the two numbers UNIT couldn't translate were a teleport base code, which is all Jack was missing to get his wrist transporter to work.

He tells Gwen and Ianto that he has to find the Doctor.  Misinterpreting their silence, Jack swears that he's coming back.  Gwen sounds normal as she tells him not to worry about them; Ianto has to swallow before he says "We'll be fine."  The moment Jack disappears clutching his gun, the Hub shudders and Dalek voices can be heard above them.

Mr. Smith is rattling off the coordinates of the TARDIS landing spot.  Ordering Luke to stay in and stay safe, Sarah Jane grabs her car keys and heads out to find the Doctor.

Rose is on her phone as well, ordering "Control" to lock her onto the TARDIS.  Just before she disappears in a flash of light, she asks the Nobles to wish her luck.  Wilf does as she vanishes.

The Doctor lands on a rubble-strewn street.  He's pumping Donna to tell him any hint of what Rose might have told her in the alternate universe.

Donna looks over his should and tells him to ask Rose himself.

She's at the end of the block, still carrying the BFG that looks remarkably like the one the Doctor pointed at her in "Dalek."  At first the Doctor looks shocked, then incredulous, and then, as Rose smiles brilliantly, they start running towards each other.

This would be all so romantic if they weren't so far away, if the music wasn't quite so schmaltzy, and most of all, if it wasn't the last few minutes of a cliffhanger ending.  Rose sees the Dalek first, but the Doctor only turns just enough to make its bolt pass through one side of his chest and not dead center.  He falls.

Jack teleports in and shoots the Dalek, but the Doctor's still down.  They all rush to him.  Rose reaches him first and just as on the beach in Norway, they tend to piffle a bit, going on about "long time no see" and "well, I've been busy."  The Doctor flinches in pain and Rose begs him not to die.  (At first, that bothered me.  After all, Rose is the only one who has had a front-and-center seat for a regeneration.  However, she also knows that Daleks can kill Time Lords, so she probably does have reason to fear for his life right now, especially as he's in so much pain.)

Jack grabs Rose's huge gun as the women get the Doctor to the TARDIS.

Inside the hub, Gwen is pulling out machine guns while Ianto protests that they won't work against Daleks.  "Well I'm going down fighting, like Owen, like Tosh," Gwen says, delivering defiance and a namecheck for the remaining characters simultaneously.

Inside the TARDIS, Donna is asking if there is any medicine for the Doctor.  Jack is pulling her and Rose away, reminding Rose that she knows what comes next.  Rose is begging the Doctor not to change, Donna is begging for an explanation, and the Doctor begins to glow.

Sarah Jane is driving like a bat out of hell and almost runs over a Dalek.  Frankly, she should have, rather than cower behind the wheel and apologize, as she does instead.  She throws up her hands to cover her face as the Daleks start chanting "Exterminate!"

A Dalek has breached the hub.  Gwen shrieks in rage and Ianto grimaces as they both open fire.

Jack pulls Rose away from the Doctor, wishing him luck.  Rose begins to explain regeneration to Donna, stopping to tell the Doctor "but you can't!" when she reaches the part about change.  

"It's too late.  I'm regenerating" is the last thing the Doctor says before he turns into a column of energy and the screen fades to:

TO BE CONTINUED.


Sci Fi Channel posted spoilers of the second half but I won't; the recap stops here.  It's always impossible to sum up an episode halfway through - especially one that ends on a cliffhanger like THAT! - but I have to say that as long as I can ignore the little voice of logic going "What?  What the...?  But..."

I'm enjoying the cheese and the thrill ride for being cheesy and thrilling.  Well, mostly.  Even given the wonky reality of the show, I'm surprised at how Rose is insistent that the Doctor cannot change.  She's been through one regeneration and loved him all the more afterwards; it seems to me that she should therefore be the least resistant to seeing him in a new body.

Still, it's great to see the grand overlap of all three shows. There's just enough fanservice for every faction to feel that they've been given something just for them.  And there's certainly enough action for everybody!

The uncut version of the finale, Journey's End, is 65 minutes long.  The Sci-Fi channel has advertised that it will show it complete and uncut as a 90-minute special.  That is quite nice of them - they usually edit out up to 10 minutes to make room for more advertising - but I'll let you work out the run time differences and realize how many extra commercials that's going to mean.