Army of Ghosts/Doomsday

[saiyako]

Why do I have to love the ones that make me cry? That's just not fair...
Spoilers for... assume pretty much the whole RTD era. Including Torchwood.


Zoom-in from space again - although considering what Rose is about to say, is this Pete's World, I wonder, and not the Earth we've been following at all?

"Planet Earth. The place where I was born. And this is where I died. First nineteen years of my life, nothin' happened at all." Rose on the bus, looking so so bored - no, not bored. She looks almost lifeless. Depressed? Oh, this has gotta be Pete's World, and she's depressed cos she's on the wrong side of the wall... "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."

And we've got clips: Born Again (the "run" bit is Ten, reminding her of it, not Nine's original clip, which is interesting); New Earth, I think, with him dancing around the console; a random bit where they're just running down the street that I can't place - maybe a new bit? And an adventure we didn't see, probably from between Fear Her and this.

"How long are you gonna stay with me?" "Forever." I love that bit so much. And he knows the answer, and he knows it's not true, even if she doesn't, but just to hear her say she would is... so much more than he's ever got from anyone in his life, probably, and it's one of the few times we get to see him let himself be really, truly happy in the new series. Cos even if he can't have forever, she makes it so easy for him to pretend.

And the awesome prehistoric landscape fades into Darligulvstranden.

"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." And Rose on the beach looking... sort of zombie-ish, actually. She should have done that look in Age of Steel - oh god, no, I don't wanna mock this bit, but I've been so - I've been thinking about this pair a bit too much lately, I think, so now I come to blog them, I'm sort of at the point where I have to mock just a bit or I won't cope. Sorry.

"This is the story of how I died." And credits.

"Army of Ghosts", in which the Doctor is out of his depth, Rose Tyler knows what she wants, and Martha Jones loses a cousin

They could land in Jackie's flat, but they don't. I wonder if they meant to and the TARDIS refused? Still, with Rose carrying the backpack, we could probably guess where they were going. She's bringing stuff home, packing more, I guess.

Jackie accuses Rose of never using her phone, which is bollocks! They were in contact only two eps ago!

I love Ten trying to avoid the kiss, and the sheepish expressions he makes trying to get past Jackie. And the face he makes when he wipes his mouth off afterwards, the sort of "ick" that he doesn't say. Funny, though, how the "I need physical contact like humans need oxygen and I'll even hug random strangers" Ten, as soon as Jackie hugs him, is all "Put me down!" and squirming away from her.

This whole scene is quite sweet up until the "grandad Prentice" bit. Ten actually looks happy to be there, like he's starting to get a feeling of belonging - of family - he even looks like he wouldn't mind meeting Grandad Prentice until Rose tells him he's dead...

Oh, god, that's creepy, that's so - not the ghost itself, it doesn't look quite like a human, but Jackie's reaction to the thing pretending to be her dad. "See, that's Rose - hasn't she grown?" And the Doctor and Rose just look at it like WTF, and the next thing they're running away, and oh, Torchwood opening music, I love those little musical refs between the shows.

Having a ghost walk through you looks like it hurts.

And the Doctor hates this, it's all - "Since when did ghosts have shifts? Since when did shifts have ghosts?" I love him turning it backwards, playing with language again to get the right feel for what he's saying, cos it's gotta be hard for him sometimes, speaking English with all its vagueness and double meanings and innuendo, as opposed to Gallifreyan with its mathematical precision.

Jackie's smug about knowing more than him for once, but Rose is still freaked out too. How long's this been going on? Has to be awhile, Jackie acts like it's routine and they've got them on tv shows, but it wasn't happening in LnM, and it can't have been too long, cos they had election stuff happening then already (Oh, and cos we all forgot to mention it when we were actually doing LnM - everyone noticed the paper Victor was reading, right? About Saxon doing well in the polls? The Master's on Earth! Right now! *dances*) and we won't get the election till... after Christmas? Then this can't be too far before it - and it looks cold, this ep - especially since the election's not till - March, wasn't it? *needs to check SoD and sort that out* That seems like a long time to have the governement in caretaker mode...

"No one's running, screaming, freaking out." "Well, why should they?"

First glimpse of Torchwood itself, and Yvonne, as they shut down the ghost-shift.

Rose and the Doctor are really, really freaked out now.

Two months ago. What? That's... gah, RTD, your timelines suck!

"You can see them, they look human!" Uh, so? So does he! And they don't, really...

"They're pressing themselves into the surface of the world, but a footprint doesn't look like a boot." I love this scene. He's trying so hard not to upset Jackie, doesn't defend himself when she complains about him not being there when everyone was panicking, and he's so gentle when he tries to explain about the psychic link and how much of the experience she's projecting.

Adeola!

I kinda like Rajesh. And here's the void ship, just hanging there in exactly the way that bricks don't. I like the way he plays the scene too - it's really important to see his reaction properly, the effect it has on him, cos there's no way the effects could ever convey just how creepy the thing is.

Gareth has a pink shirt and Ianto-hair. Hmmm. XD

I love how Yvonne thinks it's cute that Adeola and Gareth think they're being so sneaky.

You can almost see the Cyberman shapes through the plastic... oh, Adeola, I'm so sorry.

"They've elected a ghost as MP for Leeds!" Er, what? But they're still - the Master's in the middle of running for PM how can they have elected a new parliament within the last two months WTF?????

I'd have said by-election, only haven't they called a general election already so WHAT'S THE POINT? *screams*

Who're you gonna call! XD

Rose wonders if it's the Gelth, nice bit of continuity.

"You're always doin' this, reducing it to science, why can't it be real? Just think of it, though. All the people we've lost, our families comin' back home, don't you think it's beautiful?"
"I think it's horrific." Oh, Thete... *hugs him* Cos of course, it's not only the principle of it - people who've gone beyond suddenly reappearing, against all the laws of physics, all the laws he relies on to make sense, but - well - when his people come back, it just means trouble.

Haha, I love him acting like a teacher for Rose - "That one?" "Mn, now you've just killed us."

"You even look like him." "I suppose I do, yeah." Jackie doesn't mean it as a compliment, but Rose takes it as one, I love that. And it's true, she does. Jackie's wrong, though. No matter how long she travels, she'll always be Rose Tyler. Does she honestly think the Doctor would let Rose stop being Rose?

3-D glasses, haha! Oh, I miss that kind, the new ones aren't nearly as awesome.

And Torchwood have picked up his meddling.

"Allons-y!" Yay! I love the Allons-y!

And Torchwood are so excited, cos at last they've found him... And Rajesh goes to the sphere: "Now we've got you." Ooh, didn't catch that bit before. There's all this fic about how Torchwood basically wanna study and dissect the Doctor, but they don't, cos here's the research department, faced with his arrival, not going "Hey, alien to cut open!" but "Hey, alien genius to help us figure stuff out!"

I love when he babbles about new words! "And then, it'd be really brilliant if I met someone called Alonso, cos then I could say 'Allons-y, Alonso", every time!"

And he's completely forgotten about Jackie. I dunno whether Rose is more disgusted or amused.

So much for the element of surprise indeed. Then again, since they wanted him around to help them with the things he's looking for anyway...

"I'm not looking after my mum!" "Well, you brought her!"

"Doctor, they've got guns."
"And I haven't. Which makes me the better person, don't you think? They can shoot me dead, but the moral high ground is mine."

He looks so confused when they start clapping - not often your captors start fanboying you, is it? And then that sort of cautiously happy and flattered look. "You've... heard of me, then." Always nice to get a bit of recognition.

"According to the records, you're not one for travelling alone. The Doctor and his companion, that's the pattern, isn't it? Where is she, then?" She. Well, yeah, okay, so most of them are girls, and they've got pics of Ten with Rose, but wow, they would have been embarrassed if he brought out Adric or Turlough. Or Fitz.

I love the bluff with Jackie. And so many excuses to pick on her:
"She's very good at tea. Well, I say very good, I mean not bad. Well, I say not bad..."

"No, we shot it down." Oh, he doesn't like that. He's starting to understand what Torchwood is, now, and he doesn't like it one bit, and Jack can stop being so defensive because he must know what the Doctor saw here. "It's the 21st century, you can't have particle guns." I like that it doesn't feel like disbelief, it feels like "Put that down, you're not old enough."

"Have you got anyone called Alonso?" *flinch* That's not funny anymore. Not after reading about Russell Tovey's reaction when someone asked him at a con whether he was gonna be in Torchwood s4... Poor Alonso - I love him, but that... was very badly handled, that bit.

Ooh, magnaclamps. Nicely set up here.

Mm... good idea of him to leave his coat in the TARDIS with the psychic paper in it. Pity it doesn't work on them, but it did give her the idea.

He recognises the name of Torchwood House, with a bit of prompting, but he doesn't think about it enough, really. You can tell cos there's no look of horrified realisation of what he's inadvertantly created.

And oh, the sphere, and now he looks scared. Even ignores Rajesh to just stare at it...

Ooh, very nice juxtaposition - "Makes you wanna run and hide", just as he leaps up to get close to it. And 3-D glasses again cos he knows it's gotta be connected, and since he knows the ghosts are crossing the void, then why not this thing?

I like how he goes straight into exposition mode even for his enemies, just because they asked.

"And what's 'the void'?"
"The space between dimensions. There's all sort of realities around us, billions of dimensions, parallel universes stacked up against each other. The void is the space in between, containing absolutely nothing. Can you imagine that, nothing. No light, no dark, no up, no down, no life. No time. Without end. My people called it the Void. The Eternals call it the Howling. But some people call it Hell."

And Rose would know how freaked out he is, because he's so quiet. I wonder if Yvonne can tell...

Yvonne's smug: "We were right. There is something inside it."
"Oh yes." Yvonne, you should trust the Doctor's reactions better - you know he knows what he's talking about, that's why you showed him the sphere, and he's scared.
"So how do we get in?"
"We don't. We send that thing back into hell!"

And now he takes charge. "Show me." And Yvonne doesn't like it, but she follows anyway.

I love Rose sneaking into the basement. She could do a little bit better at pretending she's meant to be there, though.

The Doctor's touching the wall where the breach is. I'm chilled.

"You built a skyscraper just to reach a spatial distubance, how much money have you got?"
"Enough."
Jackie recognises it as Canary Wharf, and Yvonne's quite dismissive. As usual. She seems worried that she's figured it out, though.
And now Torchwood have a pretty pissed-off Time Lord on their hands.
"So, you find the breach, probe it, the sphere comes through, 600 feet above London, bam! It leaves a hole in the fabric of reality. And that hole, you think 'Ooh. Should we leave it alone? Should we back off, should we play it safe?' Nah, you think, 'Let's make it bigger!'"

I love their argument. Yvonne's so pissed off at him "assuming alien authority over the human race", and he's even more pissed off because she's doing something dangerous and won't listen to the one bloke that she knows knows what he's talking about! And his demonstration with the window is one of my favourite bits.

"We've done this a thousand times!"
"Then stop at a thousand!"

And then he pretends to give up. I love it when he does that. And that insolent smirk, cos he knows she'll back down.

Oh - we started with Rose wandering around in a basement, didn't we? Only that one she was meant to be in. And of course, this place is gonna get destroyed, too.

Oh, Rose, that was a very nice try. But you looked too nervous. And I suppose you couldn't have known they were immune to psychic paper.

"We've got a visitor." Uh-oh. He already knows his bluff's about to be called.
And here it is: "Then we can have her shot."
"Oh, well, it was worth a try. That's Rose Tyler."

And Yvonne's enjoying the revelation about Jackie far too much.
"Please, when Torchwood comes to write my complete history - don't tell people I travelled through time and space with her mother." And to be fair, he doesn't. She was accidentally on board one time when he took off.
"I've got a reputation to uphold!"

Yvonne's really not good at this - her reaction to staff not listening to her is to keep telling them the thing they didn't listen to before? She has to rely on an alien prisoner to figure out that they're being controlled?

And hello, Mickey!

And the sphere is active... automatic quarantine, and they're stuck in there with... well, they're about to find out. And I like how Mickey and Rose just sort of fall back into it.

And the Doctor's figured out which world the ghosts come from. "They came through first. The advance guard. Cybermen!"

Mickey thinks there's a Cyberman in the ship.

The Doctor pleads with the humans not to fight the Cybermen, cos he knows it's suicide. "Here come the ghosts."

"So far as we know, the increase in ghost activity is harmless." Pfft.

The sphere opens, and...

"These Cybermen... what've they got to do with the ghosts?" *facepalm*
"Don't you ever listen, a footprint doesn't look like a boot."

"It's not an invasion, it's too late for that. It's a victory."
And then he hears the warning from the computer, and whatever he can see in the monitor readings, he Does Not Like It.

Mickey and his big gun! XD

And the Doctor knows the Cybermen couldn't make the sphere on their own, but "It is not ours". They just found it, and that's worse.

And Rose knows what they are....

"LIFE-FORMS DE-TEC-TED. EX-TER-MI-NATE. EX-TER-MI-NATE. EX-TER-MI-NATE!"

And no trailer till after the credits.

Next up: Doomsday. *shiver*

*******************************************************************************************************
Rose on the beach again:

"My name is Rose Tyler. And this is the story of Torchwood. The last story I'll ever tell."

Recap, briefer than usual, or it feels like it. Minimal music, but it feels like the Doomsday music, just more ominous.

"This is the story of how I died."

"Doomsday", in which the Doctor rants, Rose Tyler makes a choice, and everything ends

I'm already crying. This is not gonna be good.

Billie Piper's name in the credits for the last time. *clings to Rose*

Rose halts the Daleks by screaming their name. A name no one on Earth in this time should know. And they decide she's needed. Oh, cos to know about the Time War, they know she has to know a Time Lord, meaning she's travelled in the vortex, and we all remember what opens the Genesis Ark, yeah?

Now, more than ever, the Doctor needs Jackie to trust him. Cos she's never really seen before how dangerous is is, and now she's in the middle of it. "I'll get you both out, you and your daughter. I give you my word."

"Oh, do some research. We haven't got a central world authority." Snarky Yvonne. XD

"But you need not fear. Cybermen will remove fear." Oh god I hate them.

And the Doctor and Yvonne, watching the carnage, and the Cyberman is so surprised that the humans haven't surrendered, and the Doctor's so scornful and angry and scared. "They're not taking instructions! Don't you understand, you're in every street, you're in their homes, you've got their children, of course they're gonna fight!" How far did the Daleks get, I wonder? Did they land on Gallifrey? Did they burn the Citadel? Were the Council holed up in the Panopticon because it was the only place left?

"WHICH OF YOU IS THE LEAST IM-POR-TANT?" "Nah, we don't work like that." Oh, Rose, I love it so much when you stand up to Daleks.

And Rajesh volunteers - oh, why? Rose was trying to protect you!

"You didn't need to kill him!" NEI-THER DID WE NEED HIM A-LIVE."
And then - "Dalek Thay". They have names...
Oh, god, the Dalek vs Cybermen bitchfest, I can't watch this without laughing! "OH GOD. IT'S A BLOO-DY CALL CEN-TRE." "I CAN'T PRESS ONE. I DON'T HAVE A-NY FIN-GERS!"

"It's like Stephen Hawking meets the speaking clock." I... can only assume the speaking clock sounds like a Dalek? And dammit, now I want to hear a Cyber do the intro to Keep Talking - "For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. And then something happened. We learned to talk."

"DA-LEKS DO NOT TAKE ORRRRR-DERS."
"You have identified as Daleks." That's quite clever of the Cybers, actually, since that was in the context of the Daleks refusing to identify themselves.
"OUT-LINE RE-SEM-BLES THE IN-FE-RI-OR SPE-CIES KNOWN AS CY-BER-MEN."

And the Doctor calls Rose, to make sure she's alive, and get a better idea of what's happening down there, and I love that after his reassurance to Jackie, he's now too freaked out to even be polite when he demands her phone.
He's not heard of the Genesis Ark? Which means the Daleks renamed it, cos when they come flying out he knows exactly what it was.

"Your design is inelegant."
"DA-LEKS HAVE NO CON-CEPT OF E-LE-GANCE."
"This is obvious." *snerk*

Cybers request an alliance, Daleks immediately refuse. Nicely consistent with both species - Cybers want to make everything that isn't like them, like them, Daleks just kill everything that isn't Dalek.

"THIS IS NOT WAR. THIS IS PEST CON-TROOOOL." Always has been, hasn't it? What else do you exterminate? You don't call it that if you actually consider your enemy a worthy opponent.
Oh, I love this bit! "We have 5 million Cybermen. How many are you?"
"FOUR."
"You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?"
"WE WOULD DES-TROY THE CY-BER-MEN WITH ONE DA-LEK! YOU ARE SU-PE-RI-OR IN ONLY ONE RES-PECT.'
"What is that?'
"YOU ARE BET-TER AT DY-ING."

And now the Doctor makes sure to be seen behind the Cybers.
"THIS MALE RE-GIS-TERS AS E-NE-MY." Interesting. They don't know who he is, but they still... oh, they can monitor lifesigns, so what they've figured out is, he's a Time Lord, they just don't know which one.
"THE FE-MALE'S HEART-BEAT HAS IN-CREASED."
"Yeah, tell me about it." *sigh* Mickey, I thought we were over this.
"IDENTIFY HIM!"
Oh, and this bit too: "Alright then. If you really wanna know. That's the Doctor."
AND THEY BACK OFF! He's not even in the room and they panic! HAHAHAHAHA!
"5 billion Cybermen, easy. One Doctor - now you're scared." Rose, ILY.

And the Cybers have figured out the Doctor knows the Daleks and they need him.

And Rose has figured out why the Daleks need her.

Oh, I keep changing my mind about how to read Yvonne's final words. I do like the way she breaks in the middle of explaining to Jackie what's gonna happen to them... and then the repeated "I did my duty. For Queen and Country. I did my duty. Oh god, I did my duty." First defensive, and then horrified - either at the unfairness of where it led, or, as I'm reading it today, in sheer horror that she let herself become part of this.

There's a deleted scene right here I'm gonna quote:
We start with the Doctor staring out the window, and the Cyberleader coming up to him:
"You will impart information about the Daleks."
"You want advice? C'mere, I'll give you my advice. I've got a machine downstairs - it's called a TARDIS - and you and me - just - just - just you and me -" and he gives it this cute little conspiratorial look, as though as he's actually inviting it to travel with him - "we can get into the TARDIS and fly away. Go to the other side of the universe and escape. Cos there's nothing else I can do. For the first time in my life. Nothing. In a few hours time, this planet will be a ball of flame. All we can do is run away and watch it burn."

And they left in just the very end of that scene, very next line is:
"You are proof."
"Of what?"
"That emotions destroy you."
"Yup, I am." Oh, Ten...

Luckily, the despair doesn't last long, cos he's spotted something. "Mind you, I quite like hope. Hope's a good emotion. And here it comes." And here's Jake and his posse, blasting the Cyberleader away! Woot!
The Doctor still looks kinda freaked, though. "You can't just hop from one world to another, you can't!"
And the tech comes from Torchwood, and he doesn't like that either. Oh, that horrified "NO" when Jake brings him across the void.

I love that Jackie just runs away while the Cybers are distracted.

Yes, Rose has figured it out, about the Artron energy. "In the Time War, the Daleks evolved so they could use it as a power supply." Nicely explains the plot-hole we thought we had in Dalek.

And the Genesis Ark is Time Lord tech. Oh, the look on Rose's face at that.

Exposition from Pete. People tried to protect the Cybermen, after what they did? Surely the people who were in that room could tell what happens when you shut down the emotional inhibitor... once they have their souls back, they want to die. And with the inhibitor active, are they really qualified to decide what they want for themselves?

And the Doctor looks so happy at the mention of Mickey.

"They're callin' this the Golden Age."
"Who's the President now?
"A woman called Harriet Jones."
"Oh, I'd keep an eye on 'er." He looks very unimpressed... still hasn't forgiven her. Mind you, he did just get a whopping big reminder of her betrayal from Yvonne, does kinda sting.
And the global temperatures have risen, because of the breach.
"Every time you jump from one reality to another, you rip a hole in the universe. This planet is starting to boil, keep going and both worlds'll fall into the void!"

Pete's only concerned with protecting the Earth, and oh. We were talking about how weird the Doctor's matchmaking was, with Jackie and alt!Pete. This is where he brings it up.
"Pete Tyler! I knew you when you were dead! Now here you are, fighting the fight! Alone... There is a chance, back on my world, Jackie Tyler might still be alive."
"My wife died."
"Her husband died, good match."
It's incentive. He's trying to manipulate Pete into helping him.
"There's more important things at stake. Doctor, help us."
"What, close the breach? Stop the Cybermen? Defeat the Daleks? Do you believe I can do that?"
"Yes."
"Maybe that's all I need."

And off they go!

Jackie and her fire extinguisher! *facepalm*

"Jacqueline Andrea Suzette Tyler."
"She's not my wife."
"I was at the wedding. You got her name wrong." XD
And I'll bet anything alt!Pete did too! Which is the point, obviously. Keep him uncertain enough that he'll start to consider this world worth saving too.

Haha, when you've gotta pick one side or the other to fake a team-up with, pick the logical one. XD

Back to Rose facing down Daleks, I love this bit. And she won't open the Ark until they threaten Mickey. *hugs her*
And then she thinks of a way to stall! Just like the Doctor would. XD
"If you, er, escaped the Time War, don't you wanna know what happened? What happened to the Emperor?"
'THE EM-PE-ROR SUR-VIVED?"
"Till he met me. Cos if these are gonna be my last words, then you're gonna listen. I met the Emperor, and I took the time vortex and poured it into his head and turned him into dust. Do you get that? The god of all Daleks, and I destroyed him, ha!"

And just enough time, Rose, well done!

"Sensors report he is unarmed."
"Yep, that's me, always."
"Then you are powerless." Ohhhh, Sec, you should know better than that. Don't you pay attention to your own history?
"No, not me, never." Another favourite bit. XD

I love that he pauses to greet Mickey, and they both really do seem happy to see each other.

"HOW DID YOU SUR-VIVE THE TIME WAR?"
So solemn, this bit. So open, surprisingly so considering he's talking to Daleks. "By fighting. On the front line. I was there at the fall of Arcadia. Someday I might even come to terms with that." And now we see why - to shame them. "But you lot ran away!"
"WE HAD TO SURVIVE."
"Last four Daleks in existence, what's so special about you?"
And Rose tells him they have names.
I love how they actually bother to introduce themselves!
"So that's it! At last, the cult of Skaro, I thought you were just a legend!" I'm getting major Tooth and Claw flashbacks from this bit - werewolf squee even extends to Daleks! *snuggles Ten hard cos he's such a Ravenclaw*

Rose is sceptical that he doesn't know what the Ark is - but, to be fair - "Both sides had secrets." He hasn't told her what his people actually thought of him, obviously. Share all their secret plans with a renegade? I bet he only found out about the Final Sanction from a leak in the Council, there's no way Rassilon would actually have told him.

"They said one touch from a time-traveller would wake it up."
"Technology using the one thing a Dalek can't do - touch. Sealed inside your casing. Not feeling anything, ever. From birth to death, locked inside a cold metal cage. Completely alone. That explains your voice. No wonder you scream." Oh... I love his delivery here - this speech that could have sounded so compassionate and sorrowful, instead is massively vindictive. He's enjoying the thought that they're suffering in there every moment. And why not? They left him all alone in the universe, and for a telepath who can feel his people's absence every single moment, that's excruciating.
And Sec gets so angry - because it's true... and this is Sec he's talking to, that's important. I mean, the other three can hear him, but he's right up in Sec's - well, what might as well be Sec's face, saying this stuff. And it's making an impression.
"THE DOC-TOR WILL O-PEN THE ARK!"
I love his scornful laugh! "The Doctor will not!"

"Oh, harmless is just a word, that's why I like it! Doesn't kill, doesn't wound, doesn't maim. But I'll tell you what it does do. It is very good at opening doors." And here's the cavalry! Cybermen are the cavalry. That's... weird. IDEK.

The Ark needs more space... and it looks so small, but it's Time Lord science - did any of you lot get this before it opened? Just thinking, the fans actually might have an advantage over the Doctor here, because what's the first thing we learn about Time Lord tech, the one we see all the time, the one the other characters keep remarking on? Whereas for the Doctor, it's like... I mean, if you have a weapon just described as "human science" - is it nuclear, does it shoot bullets, does it release gas, is it viral, is it some sort of robot? And that's just human invention! See his problem?

And they're all dead. Oh well. Kept the Daleks occupied long enough for the humans to get out, only MIckey falls at the wrong moment, and of course you reach out for whatever's near you... the Doctor doesn't mind, though, because, "Without us, they'd have opened it by force, to do that they'd have blown up the sun, so you've done us a favour!" I love that he kisses him on the forehead!

Aw, Pete and Jackie. "You look old." "You don't." *snuggles them*
"You didn't marry again, or...?" "There was never anyone else." Aww.

"I don't care about that. ...how rich?"
"Very."
"I don't care about that. ...how very?"
LMAO

The Doctor already knows what he's gonna do... and he sneaks into the armoury to get the magnaclamps. But the Daleks are there to get the roof open, and the Doctor's still trying to work it out... until the Ark starts to turn and the Daleks come out, and now he understands - "Time Lord science. It's bigger on the inside." The only time anyone's said it with such horror, far as I'm aware.

And the Daleks are inside because "It's a prison ship." Why imprison them, though? Why not just kill them? It's not like they're going to be able to just return them to their lives after the War, cos their life is war - well, pest control.

And now the very last bit of exposition, and I love it so much. "Well, isn't anyone gonna ask, what is it with the glasses?"
And Rose immediately obliges, "What is it with the glasses?" And she's smiling for - the first time this ep, I think! Because he is!
"I can see, that's what!" Specifically, he can see voidstuff. "Via the Void! Ooh, I like that." XD
And Rose gets it, "LIke background radiation!"
And the obligatory teasing of Jackie: "First time she's looked normal in her life!"

"The voidstuff gets sucked back inside!"
"Pullin' 'em all in!"
"Pullin' 'em all in!"

But Rose spots the problem. "We're all contaminated, we'll get pulled in."
"That's why you've got to go. ... I'm opening the Void, but only on this side." How was she supposed to go, knowing that?

Mickey points out the Doctor'll be pulled in too.
"That's why I've got these," holding up the clamps. "Just hold on tight, I've been doing it all my lfie!"

Rose refuses to go, but tries to send Jackie. And, gah, I kinda hate this bit, where Ten and Pete conspire to send the women across. It just - I know why they do it, but -
I love their different reactions, though - Jackie protests and argues, but Rose just goes back. "Oh no, you don't. He's not doing that to me again." And hello issues from PotW, good to see you again.

"Once the breach collapses, that's it! You will never be able to see her again, your own mother!" *sobs* Oh, shit. This is so much harder after EoT.
"I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you. So what can I do to help?" And he gives in, and, oh, that look, cos he really never had believed it till now.

And, oh crap, the Cybermen come up to retreat through the breach, but - "You will not pass." *hugs Yvonne* I don't care if she doesn't make any sense, she -

It's really hard to watch this bit, the Doctor's so hopeful that this will actually work and he won't have to lose Rose...

"Emergency Temporal Shift!" Always have to give them an out...

But one of the levers just went offline - did one of the Daleks hit it on the way through? And the Doctor's horrified, cos he knows exactly what this means, he knows Rose won't be able to hold on now, and he's screaming...
Oh god, the look she gives him when Pete catches her...

I can't - I - Rose pounding on the wall, and the look on his face and the way she goes quiet when he comes to the wall, and the music oh, god...

I am never ever gonna get over this episode.

Right - now that I'm done crying for a bit...
See, this is his life - soon as he actually lets himself believe she'll stay with him for the rest of her life, he loses her. And he's supposed to open straight up to Martha after this? Let himself get attached again? Just, what?

Maybe that's why I can't do Doctor/Martha. I multiship him all over the place, but with her, it's just DNW, and I like her, just not paired with him. I dunno...

Back to narration... ohhh, I love that he can reach her mind through the void. And as soon as she tells the others her story, they just go...

Noticing Rose is wearing the same colours as hoodie!Master here. Just saying.

"It takes a lot of power to send this projection, I'm in orbit around a supernova. Burning up a sun just to say goodbye."

"I'm still just an image. No touch." Exactly what he mocked the Daleks for...

"Two universes would collapse." "So?" He knows she only half means it, though.

Bad Wolf Bay.

I love how she keeps teasing him - letting him assume the baby's hers, telling him she's working in a shop again.

And he doesn't complain about her working for Torchwood... because it's Rose, so it must be okay, right? *snuggles him* Then again, he knows Pete's in charge, and he knows him well enough, I think, to know he wouldn't run it the way Yvonne did. And he knows Rose wouldn't work somewhere that was run that way.

"I've got the TARDIS. Same old life, last of the Time Lords." He's trying so hard to look like he's okay, for her. And callbacks to TCI, "Same old life."

And she says the words, but, well, we all knew. And he knew, when she said "I made my choice".
"Quite right, too." Gotta love Ten's narcissism. And this bit's a bit Star Wars, isn't it? "I love you!" "I know."
"And I suppose, if it's my last chance to say it... Rose Tyler -"
And he doesn't let himself cry until the projection fades.

This is like a dark mirror of New Earth. Ten alone in the TARDIS, wandering around the console, only this time he's just going through the motions.

...oh god, here she is. Yeah, he really needs someone to shout at and insult him right now. And yes, that was sarcasm.

Next up: The Runaway Bride. Probably the shortest recap I'll ever do.