Day 756 - Utopia

So this is where things get a little confusing. I'm now very near the end of the third season of the new version of the show and this episode also carries on directly from the last episode of the the first season of Torchwood, with Jack hearing the materialisation of the TARDIS. Strangely in Torchwood it appeared that the TARDIS was materialising inside the hub itself when in actual fact it's just outside but I can look past such things.

So the Doctor has landed the TARDIS in Cardiff in order to soak up energy from the rift running through the city. As the Doctor spots Jack sprinting towards the TARDIS he tries to make a quick dematerialisation but not before Jack manages to grab hold of the door and ends up riding the TARDIS through the vortex! The TARDIS doesn't take too kindly to this and also due to Jack's freaky immortality the ship travels all the way to the end of the universe to try to shake him off.

The Doctor, Martha and Jack discover a small group of survivors on the planet they land on, all of which are waiting for the completion of a giant rocket which they believe will take them to Utopia, a place where they can survive the end of the universe itself. In charge of getting the rocket up and running is Professor Yana, played by Derek Jacobi! 

Now if you've got a great actor like Derek Jacobi in an episode then why limit him to just one character! Martha discovers that the kindly professor is actually a Time Lord who is hiding as a human using a similar fob watch the Doctor used in Human Nature. Instead of being thrilled the Doctor seems terrified at the prospect that another one of his own people survived the Time War and it becomes clear that this is because he suspects which one it is..the Master!

The scenes where Yana is beginning to realise there is something hidden inside him are some of the most exciting and thrilling scenes in any Doctor Who ever! When I first watched this I had no idea that the Master was returning and therefore this was just about the most exciting thing that could ever happen to me. Yes it's sad but undeniably true. We even hear a sound clips of the previous Masters! I mean come on! That is pant wettingly exciting!

Derek Jacobi is superb obviously. As soon as the watch is opened and he turns to face the camera there is no doubt in your mind that you are now looking at a completely different man. How the hell does he do that? It's all in the eyes somehow. Which is rather appropriate for the hypnotic Master.

Unfortunately Derek Jacobi's turn as the Master is even briefer than his turn as the Master in Scream Of The Shalka as he is soon shot by his assistant shortly before stumbling inside the TARDIS and locking the Doctor out. For the first time we see the Master regenerate and he turns into John Simm!

Harold Saxon aka the Master has officially arrived in the new series! Woohoo!

Day 755 - Blink

" The Lonely Assassins, that's what they used to be called. No one quite knows where they came from, but they're as old as the Universe, or very nearly. And they have survived this long because they have the most perfect defence system ever evolved. They are Quantum Locked. They don't exist when they are being observed. The moment they are seen by any other living creature they freeze into rock. No choice, it's a fact of their biology. In the sight of any living thing, they literally turn into stone. And you can't kill a stone. Of course, a stone can't kill you either, but then you turn your head away. Then you blink. Then, oh yes, it can."

Steven Moffat creates a terrifying new monster for the new generation of Doctor Who fans, the weeping angels!

This story is pretty much perfect. It's an episode I would happily show to someone who had never seen Doctor Who before as an example of how awesome the show can be. Each season tends to have an episode which does dot feature to much of the Doctor in order that the filming schedules can be completed and in some ways you would think that this would be a detriment to the show but on the contrary it allows them to come up with great ideas like this one.

The hero of the story is a young woman called Sally Sparrow who finds herself getting involved with the sinister weeping angels. These statues cannot move whilst they are being observed but as soon as you look away or blink then they'll get you! The way they kill their victims is also an interesting thing. They send you back in time and effectively let you live to death. This is what has happened to the Doctor and Martha and now they are cut off from the TARDIS and need Sally's help to prevent the angels getting their hands on it.

Some of the writing is just beautiful. After meeting a young police office called Billy, the very next time Sally sees him is as a dying old man in a hospital after the angels have zapped him back in time. He has a message for Sally from the Doctor but has been told that the only time he will see her again is the day he dies. Sally says she will stay with him to which he replies "Thank you Sally Sparrow, I have until the rain stops". Simple and beautiful.

Days 753 to 754 - Human Nature / Family Of Blood

Now we're back into some great Doctor Who with this two part story which sees the Doctor transforming himself into a human in order to hide from a race of aliens known as The Family who wish to consume the last remaining Time Lord which will then allow them to live forever.

Therefore for most of this story we do not see the Doctor at all but his human counterpart, John Smith who is working as a teacher in a boarding school in the year 1913. He has no memories of his previous life and it's left to Martha to look after him. Martha is working as a maid at the school and is the only one who knows that they are in hiding. After 3 months, if the family do not find the Doctor then they will die so all Martha has to do is wait and then when the 3 months is up she can open the fob watch where the Doctor's consciousness is stored and he will return to normal. Sounds simple enough.

Unfortunately it's not long before John Smith is falling in love with the nurse at the school and this is where things get complicated. First of all Martha is pretty pissed off that the Doctor has fallen in love with a human and it's not her. Secondly it makes restoring the back to normal and therefore effectively killing John Smith all the more heartbreaking.

These are the kind of episodes I love. Science fiction gives us a chance to explore the every day human emotions but applied to far out ideas. Here we have an ordinary man, John Smith. He has dreams of being an adventurer called the Doctor but has no idea that these dreams are in fact true. When faced with the prospect that his whole life has been a lie he completely breaks down as I imagine we all would. As Joan begins to suspect the truth about her new love we get some fantastic scenes where she subtly tries to quiz him about his childhood and starts to realise that the facts spouting out of his mouth sound simply like entires in an encyclopedia. 

In one tear wrenching scene as John Smith realises he must sacrifice himself in order to save the world, he and Joan hold hands over the fob watch and see what their entire future together could have been, with their marriage and subsequent children. As Joan puts it "The Time Lord has such adventures. But he could never have a life like that"

With the Doctor back, he quite insensitively asks Joan to join him on his travels. She's tells him she can't as the man she knew is dead and the Doctor merely looks like him. He continues to try to persuade her until he gets the coldest response ever of "Tell me one thing, if the Doctor had never come here. If he'd never chosen this place..on a whim, would anyone here have died?"

For the most part the people who meet the Doctor seem to get something positive out of it, for example a completely differbt outlook to life. With regards to Joan, she sees the Doctor as the man who killed her future husband. Not a pleasent man at all!

Day 752 - 42

What a confusing title for a blog entry that is! Yes this episode is called "42" which is play on the popular tv series 24. Just as 24 is set in real time, this episode too is set in real time (sort of) with the action taking place over the 42 minute length of the episode.

The basic plot is that Martha and the Doctor find themselves trapped in a spaceship which is 42 minutes away from plummeting into a sun. It sounds like a really exciting idea for a story but I've always found this episode to be the weakest one of this series and as such it took a lot of effort to watch.

There are some "sun creatures" who possess a couple of the crew members who then go round lazering people to death with heat rays from their eyes. It's all a bit "meh". They become a little more interesting when one of them possesses the Doctor leading to a horrible scene where Martha has to try to freeze the creature out of him by forcing him into a cryogenic chamber.

Martha and one of the crew members attempt to get through a series of locked doors which can only be opened by answering some pub quiz style questions.. for some reason. Luckily the Doctor has just updated Martha's phone allowing her to call her mum to get some of the answers. She doesn't tell her mum she is actually on a spaceship in the future which I guess is understandable. However this is where there is a least some intrigue in the plot as at the end of the episode we see a sinister woman recording the phone conversations. Martha's mum has been persuaded to work for the mysterious Harold Saxon.

Apart from that bit of excitement, this one was all a bit dull really. The last couple of days have been really tough for some reason and my motivation to watch an episode each day has been waning. But I must not give up now!

Day 751 - The Lazarus Experiment

Having written for the series a couple of times already, this time Mark Gatiss is actually starring in an episode of Doctor Who. I've always though Gatiss was an awesome actor. He is blessed with one of those voices that I could listen to for hours. It's also cool as he is a life long fan of the show so is clearly loving his appearance in the series.

He plays Professor Lazarus, the creator of a machine that can rejuvenate old people back into being young again. Unfortunately after exposing himself to the first test run of the machine, he slowly begins to turn into a monster who then goes round killing the people who have come to see his miraculous project in action. I took some delight in the death of one woman, which makes me sound awful, but she was a right stuck up bitch. The Doctor bursts into the room, warning everyone to get out as they are all in terrible danger, to which this woman replies that the only danger is that someone will choke on a olive...she just really annoyed me so I'm glad she got it!

What turns what good be a typical monster run around story into a great story is slowly finding out the background of Lazarus. As a child he was forced to hide in fear in a nearby Church during the blitz, sure that he was going to die. Since that day he has done everything he can to hold back death. 

He shares some great scenes with the Doctor where they discuss life and how living a very long life isn't always a good thing as you have to see loved ones pass away whilst you continue to live.

It's in this story that Martha finally gets to become a full time companion too. At first the Doctor wants to drop her off home after meeting his promise of giving her a short trip in the TARDIS. By the end of the story he knows they have grown to close and admits to the inevitable conclusion that she is his new companion. I think at first he didn't want to call her that as it would seem to soon after Rose and almost like he was cheating on her but by this point he realises she is going to be around for the foreseeable future.

We also get to meet Martha's (rather annoying) family again and her mother takes an instant dislike to the Doctor who she doesn't trust one bit. It's not helped by the fact that the mysterious Mr Saxon is sending her messages warning that the Doctor is dangerous. Just who is Mr Saxon??

Days 749 to 750 - Daleks In Manhatten / Evolution Of The Daleks

Spiderman is in this one! Well he's not Spiderman but Andrew Garfield who plays Spiderman in the most recent movies has a part in this episode. That's quite exciting. The casting of this show has come a long way since Ken Dodd!

It was in the last episode that the Doctor finally revealed the truth to Martha about how he was the last of his kind after a huge war with a race called the Daleks. It's pretty handy that he told her this as the very next story features the return of the Cult of Skaro from the last series!

Escaping the last story through the use of an emegency temporal shift they have found themselves in 1930s New York where they are hiding out under the newly constructed Empire State Building. The building has been designed to their specifications in order that the gamma strike which is soon to hit the Earth can be captured and used in "The Final Experiment"

The Final Experiment is the Cult's last ditch attempt at the survival of the Dalek race. They are the final four Daleks in existence and yet humans are the great survivors who go on and on. Therefore their plan is to combine their DNA with that of humans and turn themselves in to Dalek/Human hybrids. As one Dalek brillantly puts it, "A life outside the shell, the children of Skaro must walk again."

Daleks have been in the show for a very long time, almost from the very beginning, and therefore I welcome any story which allows them to develop or at least give them something different to do. Seeing the Doctor chatting to a humanoid Dalek, one is beginning to show real emotion and compassion, is fantastic.

Some other aspects of the story work less well. For example, the scene where the Daleks explain their plan to the captured humans that they soon plan to convert. The Doctor is "hiding" in the background but he's still clearly visible to all the Daleks! How can not a single one of them notice that their greatest enemy just happens to be in the room with them!

By the end of the story only one Dalek remains alive. In all the universe, just one. Unfortunatley he escapes using another emergency temporal shift but the Doctor knows that he has not seen the last of this lone Dalek.

750 days done, with only another 150 to go! The end will be here before I know it...and then what the hell will I do??

Day 748 - Gridlock

The Doctor continues on his rebound from Rose by taking Martha back to New Earth, a planet to which he took Rose in the previous series.

This time we see more of the slums of the city and it's walled off motorway. A motorway with the worst traffic jam ever! Some people have been on the road for years! And the scary thing is they just accept this, they don't see it as strange and it's not until the Doctor starts making them question what is going on that start to realise that things are terribly wrong. 

As part of this story there are a number of hymns sung by the drivers whilst trapped on the motorway and I believe this episode was even nominated for a religious award due to this. But it seems to me that whoever nominated this episode has kind of missed the point of it. If anything this episode is an attack on religion. The drivers are blindly accepting things on faith alone and when the Doctor demands that they face the truth, such as when he asks if they have ever seen a police vehicle, they turn hostile at him questioning their beliefs.

Of course every Doctor Who story has to have a monster of some kind and even more exciting is that the monsters in this episode are returning creatures to the show. Of all the great creations of the past to return their is certainly a few that I was clamouring for at this point but this one took me completely by surprise! Macra! The giant crabs from the second Doctor story The Macra Terror. The story that actually no longer exists! Well it's safe to say I did not see that one coming!

The Macra aren't the only face from the past that the Doctor meets however as it is time for The Face Of Boe to make his third and final appearance in the series and more importantly reveal his greatest secret. Just before he dies he tells the Doctor "You are not alone". Therefore there must be at least one more Time Lord out there...and I think I know which one!

Day 747 - The Shakespeare Code

It's been over 6 years since this episode was first broadcast and I've only just realised that the title is a take off of The Da Vinci Code! What a moron!

So as the title suggests, Martha and the Doctor travel back in time and meet William Shakespeare. Each series of the new series seems to have an episode devoted to meeting a famous historical figure. Here it's Shakespeare, before this we met Queen Victoria and before that it was Charles Dickins.

Its nice to see Martha's ethnicity gets a mention at the start of the episode. It would have been weird not to at least mention that black people weren't exactly treated well this far back in history. she says "I'm not exactly white" to which the Doctor replies "I'm not even human, just walk round like you own the place. It seems to work for me." Brilliant! 

Shakespeare is a fun character to meet and we see many of his more famous line interwoven into the story. Its also great how he is shown to be of a supreme intelligence with the psychic paper not working on him etc. It can be a bit of a cliche to portray historical figures as less intelligent than ourselves and so its cool here when at the end of the story Shakespeare reveals he twigged on pretty much straight away that the Doctor was an alien and Martha was a human from the future.

The alien threat is a trio of Carrionites who pretty much have all the quality of witches and are using the power of Shakespeare's words to bring more of their kind into our world. The explanation being that they developed in such a way to use language where we would use mathematics. It's sort of works I guess.

Queen Elizabeth is also mentioned several times throughout the episode but is not seen until the very end. She is not exactly pleased to see the Doctor for reasons unknown to both us and him and its cool that this got addressed in the 50th anniversary episode which saw the tenth Doctor meeting her again...or for the first time. Time travel is complicated!

The unrequited love that Martha is developing for the Doctor is further evidenced here. Staying over in the house of Shakespeare, they are only given one bed to sleep in and the Doctor makes several callous remarks clearly showing how oblivious he is to how Martha feels for him. It doesn't help that he is still talking about Rose! Adric must be spinning in his grave...well if he had a grave and wasn't splattered all over prehistoric Earth...

Day 746 - Smith & Jones

A Judoon platoon upon the moon!

It's nice to be back into the swing of things with a proper run of Doctor Who episodes in front of me after the confusing couple of weeks of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures!

Martha Jones makes her debut as the new companion. Following on from the popular character of Rose cannot have been an easy task (considering the Doctor is STILL whinging on about her!) but by now I'm so used to the ever changing companions that it didn't really bother me. If you are the sort of person who doesn't like change then Doctor Who is definitely not for you! Even the lead character completely changes every so often!

Martha is also officially the first black companion the show has ever had. Unless you count Micky. This isn't really picked up on in this first episode but will be noted on when the Doctor takes her back in time to Elizabethan England, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So this first episode of series 3 (or series 29!) revolves around the kidnapping of an entire hospital and its transportation to the moon! Martha is working in the hospital as a trainee Doctor and luckily for her and everyone else one of her patients happens to have two hearts..it's the Doctor! Bet you didn't see that coming.

A race of aliens called the Judoon have captured the hospital to segregate it from the rest of planet Earth so that they can hunt down the alien fugitive hiding within. This fugitive is not the Doctor but another alien altogether, an alien vampire!!

The Judoon are a cool design, basically they are humonoid looking rhinos! Space Rhinos! They go around the hospital, scanning everyone in order to track down their prey. They are police for hire and woe betide anyone who gets in their way.

After overhearing Martha speaking to another doctor and realising she is an intelligent woman who can keep a cool head in a crisis, the Doctor is soon dragging her out on to the surface of the moon to have a look round. Meanwhile the vampire is attacking the humans in order that she can assimilate their blood and maker herself appear human when the Judoon finally get round to scanning her.

I quite enjoyed this one. The idea of suddenly finding yourself trapped on the moon is pretty terrifying. The sheer loniness and desolation would be horrific. And the fact that you can see the Earth in the sky but have no way of reaching it makes it all the more scary!

As well as meeting Martha we are also introduced to her family, something which seem far more important in the new series than it ever was in the old one. They seem a bit less unlikable than the Tyler family but to be fair they do spend most of this episode arguing so maybe not making the best first impression on me.

There also seems to be many posters littered around proclaiming "Vote Saxon" and the mysterious Mr Saxon also gets a fleeting mention at the end of the episode..I wonder who this could be.

At the climax of the story, the Doctor invites Martha to make one trip with him in the TARDIS as a way to say thank you for her help on the moon. After Rose he says he prefers to be on his own and Martha's flirting with him doesn't go down to well. The first signs of unrequited love are being shown and I'm afraid Martha is probably going to end up with a broken heart soon. 

Welcome aboard Miss Jones!

Days 744 to 745 - Torchwood Series 1 (Part 2)

So now I'm back to the final two episodes of Torchwood series 1, both broadcast on New Years Day 2007. 

The first episode sees Captain Jack come face to face with the real Captain Jack, the pilot from whom Jack stole his identity when the real Jack was killed in action. This meeting is orchestrated by the unfortunate entering of a temporal rift by Jack and Toshiko sending them both back in time to a dance hall in war torn Cardiff.

Whilst Jack is busy getting to know Jack, Toshiko desperately tries to leave messages for the rest of the Torchwood team to find in the future which will allow them to bring them back to the present. Wow, that was a confusing sentence.

Real Jack (as I shall now be calling him) only has this one last day to live and Jack knows this (as in our Jack). This leads to many scenes of Jack pleading with the real Jack to make the most of this last night. He gets a little bit more than he bargained for when real Jack starts to reveal some attraction to our Jack, something that was very unacceptable back in the 1940s. Meanwhile Toshiko is facing prejudice of her own, being of Japanese origin. 

Owen wants to open the rift to bring them back but Ianto warns him that it is far to dangerous and they have no idea what the consequences will be. This is actually a really cool moment. Ianto pointing a gun at Owen as he prepares to activate the rift manipulator is pretty damn dramatic! Poor Owen is not in his right mind, still angry that the love of his life, whose name I have forgotten (she certainly made an impact on me) was taken from him by the rift. He believes opening the rift may also allow him to get her back..was her name Denise? Debra?

So anyway the rift is opened just as real Jack gives our Jack a big snog right in front of everyone (not sure how that will go down! But I guess he only had one day to live anyway) and Toshiko and Jack are transported back to the present day.

The second episode deals with the consequences of the rift opening with people falling through time left right and centre. A mysterious man named Billis appears to each member of the team telling them the only way to put things right is to open the rift all the way. In order to tempt them he shows them people they have lost, who he claims can be returned to them. Only Jack remains adamant that the rift remain closed.

 

To cut along story short, they open the rift, a big monster comes out whose shadow kills people (so a bit crap at night then I imagine) and then Jack lets the monster kill him, which in turn kills the monster. If that sounds rushed then it's because it is! You would think that a monster rampaging through Cardiff would make up a good bulk on the story but its tagged on right at the end and only lasts a few minutes before the creature is defeated.

 

The most awesome part of the story comes at the end. Gwen is asking Jack what vision would have persuaded him in to opening the rift to which he replies "the right kind of doctor". As he wanders out of his office he hears the familiar sound of ancient grinding engines as the TARDIS materialises out of sight. The rest of the team enter just in time to realise that Jack has disappeared! It so exciting because at times you forget that Torchwood is in anyway linked to Doctor Who so to suddenly hear the TARDIS is just bloody amazing. Nerd-gasm!

 

And so ends the first series of Torchwood. At least its all uphill from here!

 

DIANNE! Her names was bloody Dianne!... I think.

Day 743 - Invasion Of The Bane

I'm officially getting very confused now, Torchwood, Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Advenures. They have officially all started now. Things would be easier if it wasn't for the fact that some series run at the same time meaning I am having to alternate between episodes. This is adding the extra danger that not only may I miss watching an episode one day but I may watch the wrong one!!

After meeting the Doctor again recently in School Reunion, Sarah Jane has finally come to terms with how she was effectively dumped back on Earth and has decided she can continue her adventures alone. "Life on Earth can be an adventure too, you just need to know where to look"...apparently.

A young girl, Maria, has just moved on to Bannerman Road (a link to Delta and the Bannermen??..probably not) with her divorced father and it doesn't take her long before she discovered that the "crazy" lady who lives opposite her is actually battling aliens! In this pilot episode? The alien threat is the Bane, who are creating a drink called Bubble Shock, to take over the world. It's secret ingredient is a piece of loving Bane so that when activated it turns the human race into mindless Zombies. Unfortunately for them there is about 2% of the population who remain immune to the highly addictive nature of Bubble Shock and so in order to perfect their recipie they are scanning each child that enters their factory tour in order to create the "archetype" I.e the perfect human, which will then allow them to adjust the drink so that everyone loves it. This archetype comes in the form of a young boy who is soon reduced by Sarah Jane and by the end of the episode becomes her adopted son, Luke.

Making up the rest of the team are Sarah Jane's super alien computer known as Mr Smith and? Of course, K9. Unfortunately K9 is helping to block up a black hole somewhere and so is not briefly seen. I must admit this confused me a little bit. I think he has his ass stuck in it or something. Seems strange why they would do this. It seems that they just didn't really want K9 in the series so they had to think of  a reason for him not to be there and this was the best that they could come up with.

I really enjoyed this episode. It's a very childish sort of show but then that is what it was designed to be so you can't really grumble about that. It does seem strange though that this all exists in the same universe as Torchwood where things are much grittier and "swearier". Elizabeth Sladen steps back into the role of Sarah Jane as if she never stopped playing the part and it still seems strange and terrible to me that she is now no longer with us.

Ok so that's a quick summing up of the pilot episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures...back to Torchwood tomorrow...I think. This is getting so confusing!

Day 742 - The Runaway Bride

You know who I feel sorry for? Adric. The poor guy was the Doctor's companion throughout one of his traumatic regenerations and eventually dies whilst trying to save the planet Earth and the Doctor barely gives him a second thought. Roll forward 5 more regenerations, Rose gets trapped in a parallel world and he won't stop bloody moping about her!

Picking up straight from the end of Doomsday, the Doctor looks up from the TARDIS controls to find a bride randomly standing opposite him. It's Catherine Tate as the fantastic Donna Noble! She's perhaps a bit more shouty here than she would be in later episodes (oops spoilers!) but I always loved the character.

Some really exciting moments in this one including the TARDIS chasing a taxi cab down the street, crashing into other cars etc. How this never got reported to the police I'll never know! Unless the other drivers thought the TARDIS was the police? It does say "Police Box" on it after all.

The main plot of the story involves a giant spider, the Empress of the Racnoss who has come to Earth in order to awaken all her children who are buried in the centre of the Earth. In order to do this she needs a certain type of energy and has manipulated a guy called Lance into effectively turning Donna into the key that is needed to release them.

Of course with Catherine Tate in a starring role you are going to get a fair bit of comedy and there are some hilarious moments with my favourite probably being when herself and the Doctor are desperately trying to hail a taxi in order to get Donna back to the church in time for her wedding. After several failed attempts Donna decides that they are not stopping as they think she is in fancy dress due to the fact that she is in a wedding dress. Just as she is thinking this, a motorist shouts to her "Get off the sauce darling!" to which she realises "They think I'm drunk". It only gets worse when a second car drives past and the guys shout "You're fooling no one mate". Poor Donna "They think I'm in drag!!!"

Rose gets a fair few mentions in this episode which I suppose was only to be expected. She was the first of the new series companions to leave and the effect that her departure has had on the Doctor is pretty devastating.

Overall I'd say this was a much better Christmas episode than the 2005 special, but I think I would be in the minority there. A lot of people did not like Donna as a character and hearing the news that she was going to return as a full time companion in 2008 made some fans very nervous. But I loved the idea. As a slightly older woman she escapes the growing cliche of having the companion falling in love with the Doctor and being all dewy eyed over him.

Upon being offered the chance to become a full time companion at the end of this story, Donna turns the Doctor down, much to his embarrassment. She realises how crazy his life is and she could not handle a life like that. She is terrified by him.

Days 731 to 741 - Torchwood Series 1 (Part 1)

So for the last ten days I have not actually been watching Doctor Who! This in itself is quite a scary thing. It was the plan all along to include Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures but it still felt a little bit like I'd failed when I didn't watch a Doctor Who episode.

So the plan was to blog about each episode but this is proving to be impossible to keep up with so I thought with Torchwood I could blog about each season as a whole which gives me time to catch up. The only problem with this is that as the first season of Torchwood comes to an end it is interuppted by the Doctor Who Christmas episode of 2006 and the beginning of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Therefore this blog enty covers only the first 11 episodes of Torchwood Season 1 and the final 2 episodes will be covered separately. It's so nice when a plan comes together.

As a spin off Torchwood is a little bizarre. Doctor Who is primarily a family show and therefore you would expect that any related spin offs would be equally family friendly but this is far from that! This is an adult show in every sense.

The first episode sees a normal police office, Gwen Cooper getting lured into the world of Torchwood when she witnesses the team bringing a corpse back to life in order to quiz him about his killer. Plenty of swearing here which feels really jarring when you think this is related to Doctor Who. It's interesting to note though that Captain Jack never swears which I've got to think wasn't an accident. They couldn't really have Jack swearing like a trooper here when he'd been clean mouthed in Doctor Who.

Speaking of Jack, its here that we discover that Rose has really screwed him over when she brought him back to life at the end of The Parting Of The Ways. Now he is immortal, demonstrated rather successfully when Suzie goes rouge and ends up shooting Jack through the head, only for him to stand up again! He tells Gwen that he is hoping his problem will be solved when he finds "the right kind  of doctor".

The second episode takes the adult nature of the show to further extremes where we have a sec crazed alien possessing a young woman and making her have sex with as many men as possible causing them to dissolve into dust whilst she feeds off their orgasmic energy! All this from the same show that brought you The Macra Terror, good grief!!

It seems very much like the writers know the limits have been taken away from them and so they have gone absolutely crazy! But its almost like leaving kids alone with a jar of sweets, they will eat them all and make themselves sick without a parent there telling them when they've had enough. I'm not sure that that metaphor makes sense, I'm very tired!

Captain Jack has a mysterious severed hand which is stored in a bubbling jar of liquid... I wonder whose hand that is..

I guess I should have mentioned exactly who the Torchwood team are. First we have Captain Jack, we already know who he is. We then have Gwen who is the latest recruit to Torchwood and its through her that we discover all about this crazy world. Then there's Owen who is the doctor of the team and to be honest is a bit of an arsehole. It doesn't take him long before him and Gwen are having an affair whilst Gwen's poor boyfriend Rhys doesn't even know what her new job entails! Then we have Toshiko who is probably the most sympathetic character. She is the computer expert and harbours unrequited feelings for Owen, more fool her! The final member of the team is Ianto. His role seems to be pretty much as Jacks personal assistant. Oh and he has a half converted cyber girlfriend who he is hiding in the basement. We've all done something daft like that.

The series is set in Cardiff, where the rift in space and time as first mentioned in The Unquiet Dead is dumping a load of alien junk into the city.

Many people said that Russell T Davies had a "gay agenda" when writing Doctor Who. Now that is utter nonsense. It's just that as a gay man himself he was obviously more willing to include a character that reflected his view of the world. In Torchwood, this is turned up to 11! Jack is omnisexual (he will do anyone and anything!) but every single team member has a gay kiss at some point in this series. And that's great to be honest. One day we will hopefully live in a world where these things won't even be an issue. But I should get off my soap box now.

I must admit to enjoying these episodes more than I expected. It made a nice change from Doctor Who whilst still holding on to some of the same ideas so as to at least feel slightly familiar. 

Oh and one more piece of information. Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who. I've done my work and now you leave this blog a wiser and better person.

Days 729 to 730 - Army Of Ghosts / Doomsday

Watching Doctor Who in a pub! Why have I never done this for the previous 728 days of my challenge! Well I guess because I haven't had the opportunity and secondly it would turn me into a raving alcoholic!

On Wednesday 20th November (yes that's how far behind with this blog I am!) The White Horse in Nantwich had a Doctor Who night in the run up to the big 50th anniversary special on the Saturday. The plan was to watch one episode for every Doctor! That day I had just watched Army Of Ghosts so Ben joked that I probably wouldn't fancy watching Doomsday (which was one of the Tennant episodes on the list of potential ones to watch) as I would then have to watch the same episode again the next day! However fortune smiled on me when it turned out that we reached the tenth Doctor at about 23:50 and everyone was kind enough and understanding enough to hold off the next episode for 10 minutes so that it would officially be the next day. Yes my OCD would not allow cheating of even 10 minutes!

So that was a cool experience. I got to watch Doctor Who with other people. It was almost like I had friends for a moment. I'm kidding of course, I have no time for friends when there are 900 days of Doctor Who and related spin offs to watch! I have my priorities absolutely spot on!

On top of all that I met a nice lady who hadn't even come for the Doctor Who night but it turns out she used to work on Doctor Who during Tom Baker's time! She had been in the TARDIS and everything. I tried to hide my jealousy as best I could and act all cool. I think I pulled it off.

Rose Tyler: Planet Earth. This is where I was born. And this is where I died. For the first nineteen years of my life nothing happened. Nothing at all. Not ever. And then I met a man called The Doctor. A man who could change his face. And he took me away from home in his magical machine. He showed me the whole of time and space. I thought it would never end. That's what I thought. But then came the Army of Ghosts, then came Torchwood and the war. And that's when it all ended. This is the story of how I died.

So this is the finale to series 2 (or season 28 as it should correctly be called! Why does no one listen to me??). We finally get to find out more about the mysterious Torchwood that everyone has been banging on about all series. They are the organisation set up by Queen Victoria and tasked with gathering up all the alien space junk they can in order to arm the human race against the future. I've just realised I'm getting way ahead of myself here and pretty much quoting Captain Jack from the spin off series of Torchwood when he says the same lines at the start of every episode which gets annoying much more quickly than you may imagine.

Mysterious ghosts are appearing around the world, with people believing they are their lost loved ones returning to them. The Doctor believes otherwise though and after finding a "void ship" in Torchwood realises that these ghosts are creatures coming through from a parallel world using the gap that the void ship has created when bursting through into our world. It soon becomes evident that these ghosts are really Cybermen!! But the twist is that the Cybermen don't have the technology to have created the ship. But they didn't create the ship, the ship created the hole and they simply followed through. So what's in the ship? It's only the bloody Daleks!! Daleks and Cybermen in the same story. When I first saw this I thought I was going to explode.

Pretty soon the Daleks and Cybermen have an hilarious stand off with the Cybermen offering the idea of an alliance. Of course the Daleks are having none of that and pretty soon there is an all out war going on!

As well as the Cybermen coming through, Pete Tyler, Micky and Jake also travel through to our world and here it suddenly becomes clear as to why alternative universe Jackie was killed off in the precious episode as now we have both a Jackie and Pete who are alone and therefore a perfect match for each other. Science fiction is awesome!

Whilst all this is going on we have the resolution of Rose's time in the series and her departure is pretty heartbreaking I have to admit. It has less of an impact of me now but when I first saw this I was pretty devastated at the way she is written out of the series. Having decided he can open up the void and suck all the Cybermen and Daleks through it, the Doctor tells Rose she needs to go back with her Mum and Dad etc to the other world where she will be safe. She refuses to leave the Doctor and the others zap back to the other world without her.

Unfortunately with the void open and Daleks and Cybermen sweeping into it Rose loses her grip of the handle she is holding on to and falls. Fortunately ( and I must say, inexplicably!) Pete arrives in time to whip her back to the other world before the doorway closes for good. The Doctor and Rose have been permanently separated. Well until series 4 (season 30 dammit!) where they completely ruin this ending by bringing Rose back. But I'm not talking about that yet.

The Doctor finds one small gap which has not yet closed which comes out on a lonely beach in Norway where he can at least say goodbye to Rose, the companion who helped him overcome the horrors of the Time War. Rose finally admits to loving the Doctor (as if we didn't know) and just as he is about to say the same thing (at least I think that it what he was going to say!) the rift closes and he is left all alone in the TARDIS and crying. Aww.

But to emphasise the fact the the Doctor's adventures never stop, even after this heartbreaking moment, the Doctor looks up to see Catherine Tate standing in his TARDIS, wearing a wedding dressing and yelling at him. I did not see that one coming when I first watched this I must admit. However there is now going to be a short break before I move on to the Christmas episode as I take my longest ever break from Doctor Who in nearly 2 years! It's time for Torchwood! God help me! I must keep telling myself that it does get better, it does get better. Well more specifically it gets better, then it gets absolutely bloody awesome and then it gets mediocre. I can't wait! 

Day 728 - Fear Her

Do you all remember the opening of the 2012 Olympics? That glorious moment when David Tennant came running into the stadium with the torch to light the flame and start the games? No? Well neither to I! And thank God for that!

This episode was broadcast in 2006 but was set in 2012 and the year of the London Olympics. I guess the advantage of having stories set in the near future is that you don't have to worry too much about predicting the change if technology etc and so can present a world which is pretty much the same as our own. That being said I'm guessing this must have been made before the official logo of the Olympics was revealed as it is no where to be seen which is a shame. Although it was a ridiculous logo and since someone pointed out to me that it looks like Lisa Simpson given someone a blowjob then I've never been able to see it as anything else. Seriously! Look it up and you will see what I mean. And once you see it you will never be able to unsee it. I'm also aware that this is the second blog entry in a row where I've wondered on to the subject of oral sex. Says a lot for my mind set at the moment. Anyway...

I'd say this was the weakest episode of this series and could easily be skipped but that is not the nature of my quest. I have to take the rough with the smooth. An alien has taken possession of a lonely little girl and has given the girl the power to trap other children inside drawings. It's implied she is doing this to find more and more friends and eventually leads to a pretty cringeworthy moment when she manages to make everyone inside the Olympic stadium vanish leaving a perplexed newsreader, Huw Edwards to wonder his colleague has gone "not you to Bob???" Oh dear lord!

The alien can leave in its tiny little ship but only if it is powered by heat and love. The Olympic torch! After the guy carrying the torch falls, the Doctor appears from nowhere and runs into the stadium with the torch to light the flame and send the alien home. Some people were actually beginning to think that this scene may have been re enacted during the real opening ceremony. Thankfully we were spared it. 

The highlight of the episode comes at the very end (and no I'm not talking about the blessed relief of the episode being over) when Rose says that no one will ever be able to split her up from the Doctor to which the Doctor looks up ominously at the sky and says he feels something coming...a storms approaching.  Ohhhh its the two part season finale next!!!

Day 727 - Love And Monsters

Now I can't be sure, but I believe this is the first episode of Doctor Who to contain a joke about fellatio. I'm pretty sure it's the first...More on this later.

Now that I have your attention (or not, who knows), lets turn our attention to the rest of the episode before I delve into the blow job gag. Interesting to note there that by iPad was unsure whether to hyphenate blow job and now I'm not to sure either.

In order to fit the required number of episodes into the production schedule it was necessary to double bank meaning that this episode was actually filmed at the same time as The Impossible Planet. This meant that there could be very little of the Doctor and Rose in it as they were busy being chased and tormented by the red eyed, possessed Ood. It does sort of make for an interesting story.

I went through a phase of hating this one but its not all that bad. Might as well get the negatives out of the way first. 

Peter Kay appears as the villain of the story, Victor Kennedy aka the Abzorbaloff. Now I'm a fan of Peter's comedy for the most part but it really feels like stunt casting here. He's a fantastic comedian but there are many actors who could have played the part better I'm afraid.

The Abzorbaloff as a creature is pretty rubbish too. Basically a fat green alien (with a mohawk!) who absorbs people into himself and the feeds on them. It was actually designed by a Blue Peter competition winner. Now as a child's creation it's fantastic and really imaginative, it's just let down in the realisation. I think the kid himself imagined the monster as as giant as a double decker bus and they just completely ignore that fact. That would have been much cooler.

So to some of the good stuff. The plot centres on a man called Elton whose life has been touched by the Doctor and now he is trying to find out as much as he can about this mysterious stranger. Through his searches he ends up teaming with a group of people who are also on the hunt for the Doctor and LINDA is born (the London Investigation 'N' Detective Agency...yeah I hate that too). They are a fun little group until Victor Kennedy joins and takes over, making the search for the Doctor much more of a serious affair than it had been before.

Elton tracks down Jackie Tyler and infiltrates her life, hoping to find information. Soon they become good friends but things turn sour when Jackie discovers the real reason he spoke to her in the first place. This is where the story shows some of its true strengths. It's a proper examination of what happens to all those people who are left behind. Poor Jackie is always wondering where Rose is and what she is up to, whether she is safe.

Deciding to confront Victor about the terrible way he has made the group treat Jackie, Elton is terrified to discover him in his true form, the Abzorbaloff! Elton escapes but not before the love of his life, Ursula, is absorbed into the creature.

To cut a long story short, the Doctor arrives to safe the day and the creature melts away into the concrete. As Ursula was the last victim, the Doctor manages to bring her back (kind of). It's revealed at the end of the episode that Ursula is now living happily with Elton, as a face sticking out of a paving stone! Who the hell would want to live like that??? She doesn't appear to have any ears but can still hear somehow. And Elton cheekily explains that they still have a bit of a love life! Not only is that very very rude (shaking my head in disgust) but what an horrific thought, having sex with a face sticking out of a slab of concrete. And they say love is dead!
 

Days 725 to 726 - The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit

People sometimes ask me whether I'm tempted to watch more than one episode a day and i never usually am, but I was very close to doing it with this one! of course I would then have had to rewatch that second episode the next day so in the end I just thought I'd wait. But it was tough! 

The basic premise of this story is, the Doctor meets the devil himself!! Well sort of. The creature he meets is the one that gave birth to the idea of the devil so that raises the question, does that make this the real devil?

A great two part story which also introduced the Ood as a recurring alien in the new series. They are described as being a slave race, they live to serve others. This is an idea that will be explored in a later episode and it seem strange that the Doctor doen't question it here as it seems morally dubious. The Ood are a great looking creature with their squid mouths which David Tennant informs us (in a DVD extra) feel fantastic that he just wanted to go up to them and chew them. Bit weird that David...a little bit weird.

I have to admit that as much as I like this one, Rose is starting to get on my nerves a little. As a companion she is becoming far too cocky. Also at times she seems to be imitating the Doctor so much that Billie Piper takes on some of the characteristics of David Tennant when she is talking. I like to think that this was all intentional, to show the growth of her character before her eventual "demise" at the end of the series.

Aside from that little quibble (is quibble a word?), this is a fantastically atmospheric story with some great scenes such as the ones where the Doctor is being slowly lowered into the pit with no idea how deep the pit goes. As his cable runs out, with no sign of the bottom of the pit, he has to make the decision of whether he dares let himself drop, knowing that it could be as little as 30 feet or could be miles! It's at this point that the Doctor starts to possibly explain his true feelings for Rose. They have been cut off from one another since the communications went down so the Doctor tells Ida that is she manages to contact Rose "if you speak to Rose tell her....tell her I....oh she knows" at which point he lets himself drop. That's awesome!

Day 724 - The Idiot's Lantern

It's 1953 and people are being sucked off by their television sets!! At least their faces are.

This was an unusual day on my journey through every episode of Doctor Who as I ended up watching this in a busy restaurant. It was a Friday and several of us had gone out for a meal after work for Lucy's leaving do. I had steak, obviously. My initial plan was to get up early to give myself time to watch it before work. Unfortunately that didn't happen, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to get out of bed it seems. So I had to revert to my back up plan which was to download the episode onto my iPhone just in case I didn't make it home before midnight. Now why I didn't just watch it at lunch time is anyone's guess!

So we were at the meal and everyone had finished eating but people stayed there for several more drinks before moving on. I wasn't drinking unfortunately as I was driving but I stayed out with the others for the time we were in the restaurant. It was a really fun evening but as time wore on the anxiety grew and grew. It's so bloody stupid but I'm way too far down the rabbit hole now to complain about the mad things I'm putting myself through. Luckily the others were understanding enough (and possibly getting frustrated with me nipping to the loo every so often to catch a few minutes of the episode) that they didn't mind me watching it at the table. To all the other people in there who didn't know what I was doing I  must have looked like the most antisocial bastard in the world!

In hindsight I think I would have got home in just enough time to watch it but I just couldn't take that chance. So if any if you who were at the meal are reading this (highly doubtful! No one reads this!) then I apologise and thank you for your patience.

Look at that, a blog entry where I've hardly talked about the episode at all! Except to make a smutty joke. There's always room for a smutty joke!

Days 722 to 723 - Rise Of The Cybermen / The Age Of Steel

The Cybermen are back! And what's more they have been "upgraded" for the 21st century series. See what I did there?

These aren't the Cybermen from the old series however, which to be honest is a bit annoying. The TARDIS crashes through a hole in the universe and the Doctor, Rose and Micky find themselves in a parallel world. In this world Rose's father Pete Tyler is still alive and is a successful businessman.

Unfortunately the more than slightly insane John Lumic has designed a way to prolong human life (motivated by the fact that he himself is dying) by placing the brain in a metal shell. The new Cybermen are born. To build up his own private army of Cybermen he sends trucks round to gather up homeless "volunteers" by tempting them in with the promise of a free meal. Brilliantly these lorries are all labelled with the name of a dummy company called International Electromatics, which just happens to the the company run by Tobias Vaughn in the second Doctor Cyberman story, Invasion.

Some stand out moments include the scene when a Cyberman is knocked down by one of the freedom fighters the Doctor has teamed up with, the Cyberman's emotional inhibitor is broken and it begins to speak like a normal, albeit confused, human. The twist that this particular Cyberman was a woman really hammers home the point of the horrific nature Lumic is making everyone all uniform and the same. This is used again when Jackie Tyler is revealed to have been converted into a Cyberman. 

This story also signals a goodbye, at least for now, of Micky. With this world having lost its version of him to the Cybermen her feels it is his place to stay and help in the fight. When the Doctor explains that travel between parallel worlds is practically impossible, Rose realises that she will never see him again. Micky and Rose have had a bit of an odd relationship. Poor Micky hasn't really known where he stands with her but it seems here he is finally making his decision. He knows he has lost her to the Doctor and in this world his gran is still alive so he decides to stay behind after an emotional goodbye.

I've always thought the Cybermen were more frightening than the Daleks. They have that creepy thing of looking kind if human but with that blank expression. These new Cybermen are certainly a more impressive threat than some of their predecessors, but they don't half make a racket when they walk! They couldn't exactly sneak up on you!

Day 721 - The Girl In The Fireplace

       

I absolutely love this episode! This is just the sort of story that could never be told in any other television show. Fact!

After arriving on a space ship in the 51st century, the Doctor, Rose and Micky are confused when they find an 18th century French fireplace. Even more shocking is that say in the other side of the fire is a young girl. So begins this bizarre love story between the Doctor and Madame de Pompadour.

Scattered throughout the ship are time windows into different parts of Madame de Pompadour's (I'm going to use her real name Reinette from now on, can't be bothered to type that everytime!) life. Having met the Doctor as a little girl (Reinette was a little girl I mean, not the Doctor, although the way regeneration is going you can't rule that out one day) he has had a profound impact on her life. Especially after he saves her from one of the sinister clockwork droids. These droids originate from the space ship and have created the time windows in order to extract the head of Reinette when she reaches a certain age. There is reason behind this madness believe me. The ship is in a bad way and the droids have been doing everything they can to repair it with the limited replacement parts. Unfortunately the parts were so limited that they decided to canalise the the crew. This leads us to some horrific moments of Rose and a Micky finding human body parts wired into bits of machinery.

Whilst telepathically reading Reinettes mind, she manages to access the Doctor's memories also and from here their bond becomes closer. Considering this story was written by Steven Moffat who also wrote the excellent Empty Child of the previous year I wonder if the dancing equals sex rule still applies. If it does then we can maybe read more into the scene when Reinette is begging the Doctor to dance with her. Even more when he declines because tonight is the night she "dances" with the king. 

There are just so many good lines in this story. These include Reinette's quite profound thoughts of "it's the way its always been, the monster and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other"

Other great lines come near the end of the episode. With the droids defeated, now cut off from their ship the Doctor speaks quietly to their leader: "How many more ticks left in that clockwork heart? A day? A week? It's over! Accept that! I'm not winding you up..." Brilliant!

I could write an entire blog just about this one story! But this blog entry is way overdue so I must press on I'm afraid. But to summarise this is highly recommended!

Day 720 - School Reunion

The return of Sarah Jane Smith and K9 to the world of Doctor Who! Finally this new series is developing the courage to acknowledge it's past and what better way to do it that to bring back one of the Doctor's old companions.

When I first watched this when it was first broadcast in 2006 I had no real knowledge of who Sarah Jane was beyond that I knew she had been in the series before. It's a shame that that sense of delight at seeing her again that old time fans must have had was robbed from me somewhat. I've more than made up for this since but it would have been nice to have that nostalgic feeling that I'm afraid to say was missing for me.

Lets get the plot out of the way because its a pretty crap one. Aliens are using children's imagination and accelerating their learning in order that they can crack some sort of paradigm which will allow them to become God like creatures, shaping the universe around them. Seeing the children all sat at computers in a hypnotic state is all a bit too "Demon Headmaster" to me. Despite my reservations regarding the story, Anthony Head puts in a brilliantly creepy performance as the headmaster of the school, especially in the scenes he shares with the Doctor has they confront each other around the school swimming pool.

The really heart of this episode though is down to the return if Sarah Jane. Not only is this a brilliant nod to the past but it explores areas of the Doctor's life which had been untouched until now. Just what does happen to all those people he travels with and then just dumps back home? Poor Sarah Jane seems to have spent her life waiting for the Doctor to return and as such is a little angry at him. Also it's a bit of a shock for Rose when she discovers that she is no pt the first of the Doctor's companions. Micky is along for the ride in this story, taking great delight in Rose's plight when she realises there have been other women before her!

The inclusion of K9 makes the attempted spin off "K9 and Company" officially canon. It's in this spin off that Sarah Jane and K9 meet and as they are together now then this must have really happened. This is why K9 and Company had to feature in my quest at the end of the fourth Doctor era. You see there is a plan for all of this! 

I've never been a big fan of K9 as I just think the idea of a robot dog is a little too daft, even for Doctor Who! But nevertheless it's still great to see things from the Doctor's older adventures cropping up in the new series.

This episode has quite the emotional ending when Sarah Jane finally gets to say her proper goodbye to the Doctor. I'm sure I'll be seeing her very soon anyway!

Day 719 - Tooth & Claw

I'd like to say that my lack of blog entires over the last couple of days was to give people a break from the constant Facebook posts but the truth is I've just been too lazy and/or busy to keep up with it. As such I'm falling further behind but I still think there is a good chance that I can catch up with myself I'm only 6 days behind. Those helpful two part stories let me catch up.

Season 2 of the new Doctor Who (or season 28 as it should be technically called!) has another celebrity historical for us. This would seem to be the pattern over the next few years. Having met Charles Dickens in the prior season story The Unquiet Dead, it's now time to meet Queen Victoria in this episode. And a frightening adventure with a werewolf!

Having the story set in Scotland gives David Tennant a nice excuse to use his native Scottish accent for the first part of the episode and he attempts to convince the Queen's guards that he is Doctor Jamie McCrimmon. The first time I watched this I just assumed that this was a random fake name but knowing the series like I do now I can pick up on these cool extra bits that are put in, Jamie McCrimmon being a former companion to the Doctor (who was Scottish obviously, the companion I mean not the Doctor) during the era of the second Doctor.

Queen Victoria is played fantastically be Pauline Collins. The Queen has recently been widowed and the impact that this has had on her life is very much at the centre of the story. At times she seems playful, longing to hear the stories of the fabled werewolf but beneath this is a real sadness. She wanted to belief in such supernatural events in order that she can also belief one day she will have contact with her beloved Albert once again. 

However after her encounter with Rose and The Doctor (the former trying to get the Queen to say "we are not amused" throughout the duration of the episode) she realised that the supernatural creatures (or more correctly, aliens) that exist can threaten the Earth. She therefore banishes the Doctor from her empire and resolves to set up an institute to investigate such occurrences and to fight back. She names the institute after the estate from which the story was set, Torchwood!!

Day 718 - New Earth

The first proper outing for the tenth Doctor and Rose sees them FINALLY leaving the planet Earth! After an entire series of Earth based stories this was quite refreshing. And to which planet do they travel? New Earth! God damn it! What's this obsession with Earth!?

The Doctor has received a message telling him to come and meet someone in the hospital of New New York. Yes that's not a typo, the city is called New New York. (Although technically it's the fifteenth New York since the original so really it should be New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York. But Doctor Who fans don't get tied up in the details..ahem..)

The patient in question, sending out the message, is the The Face Of Boe, an alien creature who had a minor role in the previous season's story The End Of The World. So minor in fact that it's only in this story that we hear him talk for the first time! He appears to be dying, having been rumoured to have lived for millions of years, and legend has it that upon his death he will speak his great secret to the "wanderer without a home".

The nurses in this hospital are cats....not sure what else I can say about that really, except that they are marginally better realised than the Cheetah people from Survival! Also being a dog lover myself (in a strictly platonic sense you understand) I have a little mistrust for cats which is proved to be correct here when we discover that they have grown thousands of humans and kept them hidden beneath the hospital in order that they can act as specimens for them to test all their treatments on. These poor people have been infected with every disease in the universe and as such don't look all that pretty.

The Face Of Boe is not the only returning character from The End Of The World however as Lady Cassandra is also investigating the hospital, purely for her own ends as she hopes to find the terrible secrets of the cat nurses and then blackmail them in order that they can pay for her extensive beauty treatments. I mean at this point Cassandra is just a piece of stretched skin, what else can she possibly have done to her??

Using some sort of techno gizmo she transports her mind inside that of Rose. Billie Piper is a really good actress. I don't think I've really mentioned that before but it shows here when she is essentially having to play two characters, both Rose and Cassandra.

At the episode's end, The Face Of Boe decides he's not dying (like it's that easy!) but promises the Doctor that they will meet a final time and his secret will be spoken. "That is enigmatic, that is text book enigmatic!"

By the end of the story the character of Cassandra has developed (I like a bit of character development) to the point where she is willing to accept her own mortality which leads us into the most touching scene of the episode where the Doctor takes her back in time (she is now inhabiting the body of her clone servant, Chip, whose body is failing her) so that she can see herself as she was when she was still pure human, prior to all the treatments that turned her into a bitchy trampoline.

I didn't love this episode but the ending is pretty damn marvellous!

Day 717 - The Christmas Invasion

Christopher Eccleston revived the character of the Doctor brilliantly but it was probably David Tennant who became most well known and beloved for his portrayal of the Time Lord and so it's a bit weird watching his very first story again whilst trying to recapture that anxious feeling of wondering if the new Doctor was going to be any good. We are certainly made to wait a pretty long time as the Doctor spends a good portion of the story unconscious in bed!

I think I'm right in thinking that this was Doctor Who's first Christmas special since episode 7 of The Daleks' Master Plan way back in 1965 (so actually 40 years to the day that this special was broadcast). The changing perception of people's television viewing is certainly evident. Episode 7 of The Daleks' Master Plan was written so that it didn't contain anything vital to the plot of that serial and was therefore a bit of fluffy nonsense really. This was done as it was believed that no one would be watching television on Christmas day and therefore they didn't want the viewers to miss vital information which would prevent them from understanding the later episodes. Fast forward 40 years and the Christmas specials are some of the most watched things on television all year!

While the Doctor lies unconscious in bed, the Prime Minister is facing the imminent threat of a huge spaceship approaching the Earth. In a stroke of brilliance the Prime Minister is none other than Harriet Jones from the last series who has clearly moved up in the world of politics, although she still insists on flashing her ID badge and identifying herself, "Harriet Jones - Prime Minister" to which everyone responds "yes....we know who you are". When the Sycorax (the aliens of the story) respond with the same phrase, it's pretty funny.

Meanwhile poor Rose is really shaken up by what has happened to the Doctor and even seems angry with him, claiming that the old Doctor would have been there to save them whilst this impostor is just lying asleep in bed!

When the Doctor finally does come round (stirred to wakefulness by a cup of tea no less!) he springs straight into action with wise retorts to the Sycorax and challenging the leader to a sword fight. The amazing thing about David Tennant is that he was already a big Doctor Who fan in real life and therefore his enthusiasm comes across ten fold on screen. It's also nice that he seems to have softened a bit to Rose's family and even gives Jackie a hug at the end of the episode. I don't think they could have kept up the slightly moody Doctor for much longer so this was a bit of a relief.

Another key part of this story are the references to a mysterious institute known as Torchwood. Harriet Jones eventually uses Torchwood to blow up the Sycorax ship despite the fact that they were retreating much to the Doctor's horror.

The Doctor's new outfit is very nice. When the series was first brought back they were frightened of going too eccentric and as such Eccleston wore a pretty bland (but still cool) costume. Now the series has some confidence some of the Doctor's more outlandish taste in clothing is rearing it's head again. Luckily he has slightly more taste that his sixth incarnation! No clown costumes in sight!

A new Doctor and yet more adventures to come!

Days 715 to 716 - Bad Wolf / The Parting Of The Ways

It seems to be a fairly common event recently that I'm bidding farewell to another Doctor and as such it's time to say goodbye to yet another one with this being the swan song of Christopher Eccleston,

It's actually a really good two part story but the way it starts makes you think that you could be in for a right crap one. I may as well go into the rubbish bits first.

The gameshows of the future...oh God this is awful. The Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack find themselves transported inside a "game station" where there is a separate gameshow behind each door. This would be a cheesy enough story in of itself but what makes it worse is the fact that this is set in the year 200100 but the gameshows are all based on ones from the early 21st century i.e Big Brother, The Weakest Link, even Ground Force gets a mention! I don't think The Weakest Link is still on air even now so what are the chances that these shows would last another 198,000 years!

Seeing Christopher Eccleston in the Big Brother house is pretty funny though. I think I can safely say that you will never really see Eccleston in any celebrity reality television shows. If he won't come back for the 50th anniversary then I doubt he's going to turn up on Strictly Come Dancing!

These gameshows have a sadistic twist however as the people that lose them are apparantly vapurised and unfortunately for Rose she is not a very good contestant in The Weakest Link. Although saying that she does make it all the way through to the final. That seems a little unbelievalbe as her knowledge has a 198,000 year gap in it!

The Doctor escapes from the Big Brother house to discover this is all taking place on Satelite 5 (the setting of one of the previous episodes, The Long Game). The Doctor's meddling 100 years ago has created this terrible future. Even worse the corportation running the station is known as the Bad Wolf Corporation!

Jack soon discovers some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Rose has not really been vapourised but transported through space. The bad news is that she has been transported right into the middle of a massive Dalek fleet who have secretly been converting human beings into Daleks for hundreds of years and now they are ready to invade the Earth!

As Jack goes off to defend the station he bids goodbye to his friends who he realised he may never see again. It's a short scene but it has to be noted due to the fact Jack kisses the Doctor! He kisses Rose too of course but even so. I mean I think it's great because it shows how in the future these sort of issues won't be a problem which is fantastic but it does make me laugh how fans were up in arms at the Doctor kissing his companion Grace back in 1996 and now he's kissing guys too!

The Doctor can stop them by sending a huge delta wave their way to fry their brains. Unfortunately he does not have time to refine the wave meaning that it will kill all humans on Earth along with the Daleks! This is where the emotional twist comes into play. Knowing that they are all about to die, the Doctor tricks Rose into going inside the TARDIS and then sends her home. As Rose stands inside the TARDIS a holographic image of the Doctor appears to her to say goodbye. I got a little choked up I must admit.

Back on Earth, Rose continues to see the words Bad Wolf everywhere and she realises that this is some kind of link to the Doctor telling her that she can get back. I don't think the whole Bad Wolf thing is explained very well which is a shame considering that this has been the running theme throughout the whole series.

As she desparatly tries to open up the TARDIS console so that she can telepathically tell the machine where to take her, we get another fantastically emotional scene with her mum. In order to get her mum understand how good the Doctor is she tells her all about how he took her back in time to meet her Dad and Jackie realises that the blonde girl she saw from a distance as Pete dies was Rose herself! It's true to say that Jackie and the Doctor have had a pretty poor relationship throughout this series and so this scene was needed to show Jackie just how good the Doctor can actually be.

Soon she manages to open the console with the help of Micky and a fairly hefty chain attached to a lorry and after abosrbing a load of energy from the time vortex itself she is soon racing back to the future in time to save the Doctor by using her new God-like powers to divide all the atoms in the Daleks and bring Captain Jack back from the dead. Realising that the power will soon consume her, the Doctor draws the energy out of her. By kissing her of course. Good grief! The Doctor is snogging everyone in this story!

So this leads us on to the regeneration into the tenth Doctor. Having absorbed the lethal energy out of Rose it proves to much for him and he begins to regenerate. What's cool about the regeneration here that sets its apart from all previous ones is the way the Doctor regenerates standing up. Previously all
Doctors had been lying down. Standing up with the regeneration energy flaring out of the arms is just so much cooler!

And so here I am, another chapter complete and the birth of the tenth Doctor, stumbling into the world, shocked at the weird sensation of having new teeth!