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| Episode: | 723 | | | Serial: | 177 | | | Writer: | Russell T Davies | | | Director: | Graeme Harper | | | Air Date: | 08-Jul-2006 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's another Russell T Davies Doctor Who finale, as I'm going to be watching Doomsday.
Actually, this will be a rewatch for me, so I already know where it's going. I can't make any wild theories about what could happen in it. Well, I could make some fake predictions as a joke, come up with something too absurd and implausible for anyone to take seriously, but I don't want to accidentally guess the plot of the 2026 Christmas special.
Hang on, people are saying that the Christmas special has been cancelled? Damn that's a relief! Uh... I mean, oh no!
I'll be going through this episode scene by scene, so if you want to avoid SPOILERS it would be a terrible idea to read any further. If you're looking for a recap though you're in luck! And I won't be spoiling anything that happens later in the series.
Her narration explains that she's Rose Tyler, in case you hadn't picked up on that yet, and this is the story of Torchwood. One day there may be other stories of Torchwood, maybe even a full TV series and Big Finish audio dramas, but right now this is the only story and it's the last story that she'll ever tell. Because, like she mentioned in part 1, this is a story of how she died.
I think writer Russell T Davies is being a bit cheeky here, because it's one thing having her say that she dies, and another for her to say it's the last story she'll tell. That's just lying to the audience.
Anyway...
Previously, on Doctor Who:
Rose returned home to see Jackie, only to discover that ghostly figures have been visiting Earth for a while now. The Doctor's investigation brought him straight to the Torchwood Institute, an organisation operating out of Canary Wharf which considers anything alien on this world to be theirs, including him and his TARDIS. They have been using a hole in space to generate energy, with the ghosts being a side effect.
Jackie tagged along with the Doctor as his companion, giving Rose a chance to sneak into a laboratory containing a mysterious alien sphere. She got found out right away, but she found a secret ally: an undercover Mickey Smith! Meanwhile the Doctor managed to convince Torchwood boss Yvonne Hartman to cancel the next scheduled breach opening. But her staff did it anyway as they had been taken over by... Cybermen from a parallel dimension! It's less goofy than it sounds.
With the breach fully opened, the millions of ghosts around the world were able to push through into our reality... as Cybermen! Then the sphere opened to reveal its occupants... the last surviving Daleks!
And now, the continuation:
The two companions were in a similar situation back at the start of the season, in The Christmas Invasion, when they were stuck in a spaceship full of Sycorax. Rose had picked up a lot of sci-fi terms during season one, but her attempt to make a big Doctor speech failed miserably because she didn't know how to use them.
This time though she steps up with confidence, yelling "DALEKS!" She explains she knows their name and she knows about the Time War, which means that she is someone interesting enough to keep alive. The others follow her lead and it seems like they are going to all live! For now.
Though the Daleks already have something that interests them: a device they brought with them called a Genesis Ark.
Their invasion of Earth is going well, as appearing everywhere on Earth was an excellent first move. But the Cyberleader's attempt to get a global surrender just gets them mocked by Yvonne for not doing their research. Responding to her line "We haven't got a central world authority" with "You have now" was pretty badass, but their authority seems mostly limited to this room at the moment.
As the Doctor points out, they're in people's houses and they have their children, so of course they're not going to give up.
Fortunately the army also has rocket launchers and they manage to blow one of them up! It's a very 70s Doctor Who battle, all it's missing is the Brigadier calling the shots.
In fact there's no one we know or care about out here, so it's good that this is more of a snapshot than a subplot.
Instead the Cyberleader gives his sales pitch to the world, telling them the Cybermen will remove sex and class and colour and creed. This is such a self-evidently good thing to them that they don't even try to explain why anyone would want this.
The Daleks also hate diversity, as they're a big bunch of fascists. But while the Cybermen want to convert, the Daleks just want to exterminate. They'd also like Rose to tell them which of her group is least important.
RIP another Torchwood character. Now it's pretty much just Yvonne left out of the ones who have had lines.
This raises the question of why they didn't crush Rose's head, seeing as her knowledge was her argument for keeping them alive, but the characters themselves question this later on and there is an answer!
This leads to the first meeting of the Daleks and the Cybermen in Doctor Who history! To put that into perspective, this is episode 723 (counting the TV movie). And their first conversation starts with both sides demanding the other identifies themselves first. It's so perfectly petty and childish.
The Cybermen point out that their aggression is illogical and tells them to change their tone. To which Dalek Thay replies "Daleks do not take orders!" The Cybermen are satisfied by this, saying "You have identified as Daleks." First point to the Cybermen!
But the Cybermen actually want to form an alliance! They're both similar beings, upgraded in metal shells, so they could totally team up and conquer this planet.
The Daleks turn the offer down, so the Cybermen treat Thay as hostile. The Dalek's shields take their shots easily and it returns fire, killing them both. Okay, I think the Daleks won that round actually. It would've been very weird if they hadn't, considering that the Cybermen are human technology from the 21st century and the Daleks are advanced enough to destroy the Time Lords.
I wish I could quote the whole script at this point, because I love these two. The Dalek leader says it's not war, it's pest control, and that they could destroy 5 million Cybermen with just one Dalek. The Cybermen are superior in one one respect: they are better at dying. This is the battle of Canary Wharf right here, all the shooting afterwards is just an epilogue.
Though the Daleks take notice of someone on his phone in the background. They know he's an enemy but they don't know who he is. I'm not sure how that works, but it does give Rose a chance to tell them that he's the Doctor. That makes them worried.
Yvonne has a good idea of what's about to happen to the two of them and helpfully informs Jackie. They're going to take out her brain and put it into a suit. Though where that suit came from isn't explained. It's also not explained why there are sparks when they start cutting instead of blood.
Jackie accuses Yvonne and Torchwood of getting them all killed, which has a bit of truth to it. Though as Yvonne goes to her doom, she keeps repeating "I did my duty for Queen and Country". Half defiant patriotism, half a weak defence for the choices she made that will doom her queen and her country.
Loyalty to royalty has come up a bit this season actually, with Queen Victoria showing up in Tooth and Claw and Queen Elizabeth's coronation in The Idiot's Lantern. Plus different country, but there was the King of France in The Girl in the Fireplace.
There was originally a lot more to this scene, with the Doctor feeling a bit depressed and helpless. He was going to tell the Cyberleader they may as well leave in the TARDIS, because the Daleks are going to kill everyone and they can't do anything to stop them.
I'm glad that bit was cut though, as I'm not keen on the Doctor giving up before he's even tried anything. They did keep the last few lines though, where the Cyberleader says that he's proof that emotions destroy you, and the Doctor replies that he quite likes hope though.
The Cyberleader is hit, and the Cybermen in the building start sharing files to make a new Cyberleader, giving Jackie a chance to escape!
Anyway, in some episodes the Doctor is continually making choices, reacting to things, getting new information and generally being a dynamic protagonist. In this episode he's been stuck in the Lever Room for 11 minutes being useless and miserable.
Fortunately that's about to change, as Jake teleports him to the parallel universe Earth, so he can be stuck in the parallel Lever Room for a bit instead.
It turns out that in this universe, the People's Republic caught onto what Torchwood were doing and took control. So now Pete's running the place and they're the heroes! They've also got all the alien tech, which is why they're using Sliders parallel universe transport devices.
Weirdly this all happened three years ago, even though the parallel universe two-parter was only a few episodes back and Jackie was the same age in that world. I suppose the universes are a little out of sync and it actually took place in 2004. Either that, or the finale's sneakily jumped ahead to 2010.
Pete explains that they're calling this the Golden Age, thanks to their new president Harriet Jones. So they're having the future that our Earth was supposed to have, before the Doctor messed it all up. The Doctor's unrepentant though, in fact he warns them about her! It's like the reveal of Harriet Jones was supposed to be a dark twist, as if he said Blon the Slitheen was in charge. But I still like Harriet Jones! She was a pretty good leader up until she blew up that retreating alien spaceship, and she did have her reasons for that.
Though the Doctor does seem to have changed his mind a bit about parallel universes being too much of a temptation, as he keeps pointing out to Pete that he's alone, but he does have a daughter and a wife alive in the other world. Pete feels there's more important things at stake though, as this breach is cooking his world by a few degrees more every few months. The Doctor needs to close it or else both worlds are doomed.
Also Rose has a theory about why they've been kept alive. The damaged Dalek back in Dalek used the background radiation she'd soaked up as a time traveller to regenerate itself, and now these guys need a bit more of that time traveller energy to wake up their Ark. The scene shows just how far the two of them have come, as he's being brave and she can speak sci-fi.
Though the Daleks have been listening in and they give them a bit of info they didn't have: they stole the Ark from the Time Lords! So there's another twist.
There's a comedy moment here where he gets exasperated when she struggles to give him a description of where she is (staircase with a fire extinguisher isn't quite enough info). I'm glad he actually cares though, as he's been very mean to her in this two-parter!
Next he gives Pete's squad a quick upgrade, modifying their guns to work on Daleks, and then he goes to the Cybermen waving the white A4 sheet of surrender. He didn't have much luck when he tried to surrender to them in Rise of the Cybermen, but this time they finally accept it!
Instead she decides that she's going to brag to them. Maybe she's stalling, doing the Doctor's trick of talking until something clever happens, maybe she just wanted to torment them. But she tells them how she killed the Dalek Emperor, by pouring the Time Vortex into their head and turning him to dust. Well, that's kind of what happened. Close enough, considering that she has no memory of it.
So now Tennant gets his first ever scene with the Daleks! And his only scene with them in this story.
He's being very casual, holding himself together better than when he was Eccleston. Though he does take a moment to mock them for not being able to touch the Ark themselves, sealed away in their metal shells. It's no wonder that they scream.
Turns out that these four are the Cult of Skaro, a secret order that were allowed to think more creatively in order to better defeat their enemies. So the Daleks realise that their philosophy is holding them back, but instead of rethinking the whole 'single-minded hatred of all that is different' thing, they're just willing to be hypocrites.
Unfortunately they didn't imagine that the Doctor would use his sonic to blow the doors so that Pete's Torchwood team and the Cybermen could both come in blasting!
Pete rushes over and helps his alternate universe daughter up (he does care!) Meanwhile Mickey does an action hero move, sliding over to his own big sci-fi gun so he can be useful. Unfortunately he gets knocked back, touches the Ark, and activates it. It's not made to look like his fault at all.
In fact as they're running away down the hallway the Doctor kisses him on the head and tells him he did them a favour. The Daleks would've burned up the sun trying to get it open otherwise. So that's lucky.
So Jackie finally meets Pete - the ghost she didn't want to see. The Doctor explains that he's from a parallel Earth, but she tells him to shut up and he respects her wishes not to reduce it to science.
Meanwhile Rose is silently wishing really hard that they'll get together.
This is Jackie's moment really though, without any of the plot interfering. The episode has pulled a Star Trek: Discovery and put the very urgent ultra-high-stakes crisis on hold so that the characters can have an emotional scene. Fortunately it's a very good emotional scene, and I love Jackie's failed attempts at acting like she doesn't care about Pete's vast wealth.
Anyway, they all make it out of the scene without getting shot in the back, so the plot can keep going!
Man, I can't believe how many words I've typed about this episode. Okay, it seems to me that I've got two choices here. I can either go back and write another draft, editing the text to make it more concise and punchier. Or I can just split this in two and say this is the end of part one. Which would be easier?
TO BE CONTINUED
COMING SOON
Oh hang on, I'm supposed to be publishing these exactly 20 years after the episodes first aired, to the exact day. Uh... okay, give me a few minutes.
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