Doctor Who
OK, launching straight into the spoilers - basically the Daleks (led by Davros, who Dalek Caan rescued following his emergency temporal shift in S3) have stolen the Earth (along with 26 other planets, including the Adipose breeding planet from Ep 1) and invaded. Oh, and the effort of re-entering the Time War (which was apparently sealed off from time travellers) has made him go nuts.
The Doctor and Donna are on Earth in the TARDIS as it disappears, leaving them floating in space. They go to the Shadow Proclamtion (which is an intergalactic UN type of dealy). After some exposition they end up getting a hint as to Earth's location and follow it, ending up near a nebula where the trail ends. The hint, I kid you not, is a trail left by alien bees who could sense what's coming. A serving wench also drops some hints (as with last week) that Donna's going to die.
On Earth, UNIT HQ in New York is exterminated, except for Martha, who escapes using an experimental teleportation jacket thing UNIT have reverse engineered from the Sontarans. Martha also has a key to, umm, something or other (don't remember the name), which sounds like a doomsday device of something. She ends up at her mother's house BTW.
The Daleks are rounding up humans to use in experiments (according to some background chatter), and dimension hopper Rose rescues Donna's mum and granddad - she then sticks with them for a while to try and get in touch with Donna and the Doctor.
The (reduced, *sniff*) Torchwood team are also there, doing Torchwood-y things (i.e. running around not doing much at all, and Sarah-Jane and some kid who is apparently her son are monitoring on a super computer (who is called Mr Smith. I hope like hell he isn't the kids dad. Perhaps I should get around to watching her spin off after all...)
Anyhoo, the above lot all pick up an incoming signal, from Harriet Jones, ex-Prime Minister, who's using a sentient program to set up a big conference call with everyone who's had contact with the Doctor. Except Donna's granddad doesn't have a web-cam, so Rose can't join in. They end up coming up with a plan to contact the Doctor by using every phone on Earth to ring the Doctor (Martha's phone doesn't have the power to get through). Long story short, they use their combined resources to do so, the Dalek's track the signal and exterminate Harriet Jones, ex-Prime Minister.
But rejoice, for the signal gets through and the Doctor follows it to Earth and the other planets (who it turns out are a second out of phase with the rest of the universe). There's some expositiony bwahaha gloating from Davros (who's hijacked the sentient program thingy) to the Doctor, and the Doctor ends up landing the TARDIS on Earth.
The Doctor & Donna leave the TARDIS to see that the planet seems to be deserted. He then starts pressing Donna for any information Rose gave her in last week's ep. Donna tells him to ask Rose herself, as Rose is standing a long way down the street (she's teleported from Donna's house after speaking to "Control" - bound to be alternate reality Torchwood) The Doctor and Rose run towards each other to do what would be a very cliched hug, would it not be for a Dalek who shoots the Doctor (which is a glancing blow), knocking him to the floor. Rose runs up to him and starts crying at him that she's there for him, and blah blah blah. This is as cliche as the hug would have been.
Captain Jack then bamfs in (he's got Martha to give him some numbers from her teleport gizmo which repair his) with a BFG and shoots the Dalek. He then orders Rose and Donna to get the Doctor to the TARDIS.
Jack's left Gwen and Ianto at the Hub to fight off a force of invading Daleks. In Gwens words they're going to "go down fighting, like Owen and Tosh". *sniff*, I can't help tearing up. Sarah-Jane's left the potentially-half-super-computer kid to go and chase down the Doctor. Unfortunately she takes a turn and almost hits two Daleks, who turn round and announce they're going to exterminate her. She throws her arms in front of her face, and that's how she's left.
The last you see of Martha is her talking to Jack , giving him the teleport-fixing numbers. I'll lay down good money that she ends up bamfing into the Hub and saving Ianto & Gwen.
Back at the TARDIS, they get the Doctor and lie him down in front of the control console. Jack tells Rose to get away from him because "she knows what's coming next". Donna doesn't so asks - Jack explains that Time Lords can repair their cells, as the Doctor says "It's starting".
And boom. He starts regenerating. And the episode ends with no bloody trailer.
So, my thoughts - good episode, despite some bloody stupid bits - alien bees? Dialing using every phone on the planet? And if Jack only needed two numbers to fix his teleporter, why didn't he just keep trying until he got them? There's only 100 different combinations (assuming order matters), hardly any great effort to type in. Then again, it's possible I'm over-thinking things, and it wouldn't be Who without a bit of silliness.
As for the cliffhanger - bah. It'll be a partial regeneration. He didn't get a full hit from the Dalek's ray, and besides, there's been no flurry of media activity about Tenant leaving, and the papers have also published set pictures of him from the Christmas special. So no worries there.
I am a bit concerned about the remaining Torchwooders though - they've already killed off the interesting half of the team, could they be considering offing the rest and giving Jack new supporting players for Season 3? If so, boo.
As for the plot for next week, I think it's clear that the thingy Martha took when she escaped from UNIT is going to be a deus-ex-machina. Perhaps if it were Stephen Moffat writing it it wouldn't be, but according to Wikipedia it's a Russell T Davies episode. He's just not that good.
So overall, a good episode, not one of the greatest episodes I've seen, but far from the worst. Lots of set up, but then again, what first half of a season ender isn't?
Oh, and according to Wikipedia the kid isn't half-super-computer, Sarah-Jane just adopted him. Bah.