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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
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.
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.
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.
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Comment #1 (Posted by ninahdevi)
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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.