Recap: Doctor Who Episode 2.12: Army Of Ghosts

[lostlollipop]

Episode 2.12: The Army Of Ghosts

So, basically, we’ve got a… beach? Rose stands on a rock and the wind plays with her hair and she looks really, really Sad & Pensive. In voiceover, she goes all: “my name is Rose Tyler, and I was just like everyone else, and then I met a man called the Doctor, cue clip show.” Interestingly, the Nine clips are all stock footage, but the Ten clips are all new, maybe left over from other episodes or something. At the end of it, there’s a short scene of the Doctor and Rose (wearing what seems to be her outfit from the end of ‘The Christmas Invasion’?) standing on some random rock planet inhabited by flying manta rays, the TARDIS just behind them as they admire the view. “How long are you going to stay with me?” the Doctor asks her. She looks over at him and smiles: “forever.” He smiles back. They’re so sweet I’m not even nauseated by this.
The Ominous Rose Voiceover dooms that she really did plan to, but “then came The Army Of Ghosts,” which in case you hadn’t noticed is the name of this episode. “Then came Torchwood and the war.” Close up of Rose. I suddenly realise why she looks so weird: she’s not wearing mascara. Also, she’s pale as death. Speaking of which: “this is the story of how I died.” NOOO. Credits.

The TARDIS materialises in a playground which is, oddly, completely abandoned even though it’s broad daylight. The Doctor and Rose exit, Rose carrying her backpack. They skip off, holding hands, off to visit the Wicked Witch of the West… um, I mean Jackie.

Jackie is just making tea (of course) when Rose opens the door and nonchalantly announces “we’re back!” as if they were over at the supermarket getting a pint of milk. Jackie laughs and tells Rose she shouldn’t bother with a phone, as she never uses it. She hugs her daughter fiercely. The Doctor looks on for a moment, grinning, then pushes past them. Jackie is not having that, of course, and lets go of Rose to grab the Doctor by his coat and kiss him smack on the lips, calling him “you lovely big fellow”. The Doctor makes a disgusted grimace and wipes his face on his sleeve, like he’s a little boy and Jackie’s his not-so-favourite aunt. Heh.
Rose has fished a present out of her backpack for Jackie: a tiny vase or something that she bought at an asteroid bazaar, which is made of a material (“bazoolium” the Doctor helpfully supplies) that turns hot or cold, depending on the weather.
Jackie says she’s got a surprise for Rose, too. Rose brats that she doesn’t even get a thank you for her awesome present, but Jackie ignores her and says they’re having a visitor: Rose’s grandfather. Isn’t that lovely? Rose looks less than pleased.

The Doctor leans over her shoulder and asks her why it’s not a good thing that Rose’s granddad is coming to visit. Rose says that Granddad Prentiss died, like, ten years ago, which means that he can’t be visiting anyone but St. Peter, which means that her Mum has finally gone completely around the bend. She starts speaking to her mother like she’s an Alzheimer patient, all very slowly and clearly. “His heart gave out, do you remember that?” Jackie, looking wide-eyed and excited, is like: of course! And now he’s coming to visit. Rose and the Doctor are all like: huh?

Somewhere, a dapper-looking blonde lady in an office announces that the next shift is starting. Some people switch really big levers. The blonde puts on a pair of huge Jackie O. sunglasses and grins into the blinding white light.

Jackie’s standing in the kitchen when suddenly a bright silvery human-shape phases through the wall and walks into the kitchen and around her. Jackie’s all like: hi, Dad! This is Rose, hasn’t she grown? Rose and the Doctor are much with the WTF.

They run outside, and there’s ghosts everywhere, while people go about their daily business. Some kids are throwing a ball at each other while a ghost stands uselessly between them. How much would I love it if the ghost would try to catch the ball?
The Doctor looks really confused: “no one is running or screaming or freaking out!” Heee! Jackie snots that of course they aren’t, and why should they? She adds that the ghosts will be gone soon, as the morning shift only lasts a few minutes. Now the Doctor is really baffled. “Since when do ghosts have shifts?” Jackie is all gleeful at knowing something the Doctor doesn’t know.

At Ghost HQ, the shift ends. The white-coated people pull the levers back, and the blonde takes off her sunglasses and congratulates everyone on a successful Ghost Shift. They all clap politely and then get back to work. One of these workers is a really beautiful girl. And when I say beautiful, I mean absolutely goddamn ‘I hate her so much and yet I want to be her’ drop-dead gorgeous. Dark skin, dark eyes, perfect flawless symmetrical face, figure to die for, dazzling smile. She’s fucking perfect. AND I DON’T EVEN LIKE GIRLS. Anyway, she appears to have a thing going on with her coworker, who sits across from her and isn’t anywhere near as beautiful as she is. She sends him an IM, and we discover her one flaw: she has no idea of proper grammar or punctuation. ‘god im bored’, she tells him, and they smile at each other across the room, and he goes ‘me too yawn’, so at least they’re evenly matched. He asks her whether she fancies a ‘coffee’, which is secret office romance code for ‘shag’. She does, of course, so he gets up all nonchalant-like, and announces to the room at large that he’s going to check the whatever levels of the whatever. Boss Blonde is all: okay! Then the girl gets up five seconds after and goes: I have to take these charts to the maintenance corridor he just went down for no apparent reason! And everyone’s like: sure you do, honey. They all smirk behind her back as she leaves: “and they think we haven’t noticed!” Heh.
The two sneak down the corridor, giggling like teenagers, and the guy’s found a place where they’re renovating so there’s all this plastic sheeting down that way, and no one will see them. The girl is worried it may not be safe, so the guy rolls his eyes and goes to check first. When he stays away too long, she’s all like: I’m totally leaving now, okay? But she doesn’t, and goes after him, calling out that it’s not funny (the guy’s name is Gareth, by the way, like the bridegroom of that Cyberman back in TAoS. I’ll bet the girl’s name’s Sally). Then she runs across a shape, and she thinks it’s a builder so she goes all apologetic, but then the plastic sheeting is ripped away and it’s a Cyberman, oh noes! The girl screams.

The Doctor, Rose and Jackie have migrated back to the flat and are having tea while watching television. Everyone’s all about ghosts now, as is evident by the programmes they encounter: Ghost Watch; the weather man announcing “very strong ghosts in the north of England and Wales” are expected; a talk show about a woman marrying a ghost; an interview with that guy from ‘Most Haunted’ who complains about no one watching his show anymore (ha!); a commercial for Ectoshine, which makes your ghost shinier; a ghost who has joined the cast of Eastenders; and a bunch of screaming Japanese girls with ghost T-shirts. Hilariously, the Doctor, Rose and Jackie all wince simultaneously at the Japanese girls, before the Doctor switches the television off. Hahaha! Jackie expositions that the ghosts started appearing right after the Doctor and Rose’s last visit, and that everyone was really freaked out at first but the ghosts didn’t really do anything so they’re okay with it now. Rose wants to know why Jackie thinks the ghost in the kitchen is Granddad, and Jackie goes all glassy-eyed as she explains that it “just feels like” her Dad, and there’s a smell of old cigarettes about him, just as she remembers. Neither the Doctor nor Rose have smelled anything, and the Doctor says that Jackie is just wishing it was her Dad, and the wishful thinking is making the ghosts stronger. Jackie complains that the Doctor just wants to ruin it for her. She asks the Doctor if he doesn’t think all those lost loved ones coming back is wonderful. The Doctor gives her an even stare: “I think it’s horrific.” That shuts her up.

The Doctor has decided he wants to investigate where the ghosts come from, so he and Rose go back to the TARDIS, Jackie trailing after them, all: you guyyys, doooon’t, we’ll get in trouuubleee! The Doctor starts assembling all sorts of stuff for his Arts & Crafts. I have a theory that the Doctor learned his mad MacGuffin skillz off Blue Peter. I should also really mention that he and Rose are singing the ‘Ghostbusters’ song as they go. He instructs Rose to watch the screen and when it goes beep press this here button (“This one?” “And you’ve just killed us.” Hee!) He asks Jackie when the next shift starts, and she tells him, adding that he shouldn’t get involved. He ignores her, big surprise, so she goes into the TARDIS to bug Rose instead. Rose is being all important with the screen and the buttons, and Jackie observes that Rose is starting to “look like him”. Rose looks flattered, which I don’t think Jackie was aiming for, somehow. Jackie says quietly that in a few years, when she herself will be gone, Rose will have no reason anymore to come back to Earth, and will forget where she came from and who she is. Rose counters that she became something better, then. “I mean, I used to work in a shop!” Jackie’s face goes hard. “I’ve worked in shops. What’s wrong with that?” O SNAP. Condescending Asshole Rose just got served, people, and it wasn’t by an Ood! You go, Jackie.
So now they’re all: ‘awkward!’ until the Doctor comes running back in, having finished his MacGuffin.

At Ghost HQ, Boss Blonde berates the strangely unresponsive boy and girl from earlier for nearly being late for the next Ghost Shift. No one notices the Ear Pods they’ve both aquired. Uh-oh. They apologise tonelessly and sit behind their desks, while Boss Blonde puts on her Jackie O’s.

Today on Blue Peter: you will need a backpack, a pair of 3-D glasses, three traffic cones, some string, and a TARDIS, and you can build a Ghost Signal Triangulator! Ghost Shift starts, and what do you know, a ghost just happens to materialise right between the traffic cones! Rose presses whatever button doesn’t kill them all, and the ghost starts swaying back and forth in a vaguely distressed manner. The Doctor is gleeful at this, while Jackie’s just afraid he’s hurting it. The TARDIS manages to locate the source of the signal, and they prepare to head for it.

At HQ, the triangulator has been detected. Ghost Shift is aborted, and Boss Blonde frantically instructs some other worker to locate the disruption. He hacks into the CCTV network, and they find a camera at the playground where the TARDIS is parked. As soon as they see it, an awed silence falls in the office. Then they watch it dematerialise. Boss Blonde is all like: OMGWTFDOCTOR! And she calls some other scientist who sits in the cellar playing Sudoku all day long guarding alien shit, and she goes all prophetic, like: HE HAS COME, and now he’s all like OMGWTFDOCTOR, and he looks at the big floating ball on the ceiling of the room he’s in, and he smirks at it because they’ll finally know what it is.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor is expositioning at top speed about the clever thing he’s just done, while Rose smiles on him indulgently. He cuts off mid-sentence to observe that she’s staring at him. Rose grins and stage-whispers: “my Mum’s still on board”, and he looks over and sees Jackie sitting behind her. “If we end up on Mars, I’m gonna kill you!” she tells him. He looks hilariously horrified. Rose giggles.

They materialise in a warehouse, where the TARDIS is instantly surrounded by army personnel, who point guns at it. The Doctor and Rose observe this on the monitor, and the Doctor decides that in order to find out what’s going on, he’ll need to venture out and ask them. Rose throws herself in front of the doors, barricading it and informing the Doctor that they’ve got guns. “And I don’t,” says the Doctor, “which makes me the better person, don’t you think?” He gently puts his hands around her waist (squee!) and moves her out of the way, adding: “they can shoot me dead, but at least the moral high ground is mine!” before opening the door. Heh.
When he steps out, all the soldiers immediately cock their guns. He puts up his hands and looks grim. Then suddenly the Boss Blonde comes running in and starts clapping and making exclamations such as: “hurray!” and “o happy day!”. I am not joking. Russell, you need to realise that no human being beside yourself actually uses these expressions in real life.
Once the applause dies down, the Doctor is all like: “thank you. I’m the Doctor…” And this sets them off again. “Oh, I say! Hurray!” The soldiers put down their guns and start applauding too. The Doctor makes an embarrassed ‘cut it out’ signal, and wants to know how they know who he is. Boss Blonde is like: of course we know who you are! You are the reason of our existence! “The Doctor and the TARDIS! Hurray!” And they start clapping AGAIN. The Doctor thought he’d seen the worst of fanclub life with LINDA, but they’re nothing compared to this lot. He asks Boss Blonde who, exactly, she is, and she introduces herself as Yvonne, but enough about her, she just wants to fangirl him some more! She asks where his Companion is, because that’s how he travels, and he can’t hide her from them. The Doctor, spooked by her stalkerishness, blindly reaches behind him into the TARDIS, and produces… Jackie. He introduces her as Rose, and goes on to say things like: “she’s not the best I’ve ever had, bit too blonde,” and “last week she looked into the Time Vortex and aged fifty-six years.” (“I’m forty!” “Deluded, too. Bless.” LOL!) He also makes yapping hand gestures behind Jackie’s back for the amusement of the soldiers. He’s having the time of his life, let me tell you.
Yvonne just smiles politely, and offers them the full tour. The Doctor says he’d love to, and can’t resist to add: “not too fast, though; her ankle’s going.” Jackie, awesomely, hisses back: “I’ll show you where my ankle’s going!” Hee hee! Suddenly I really want to know what the series would be like with Jackie as a full-time Companion.

Yvonne skips ahead and welcomes the Doctor to Torchwood, which is their company name. Founded by Queen Victoria to defend the Empire against aliens, or more specifically, the Doctor. They enter a huge hall packed with stuff from Russell T. Davies’ attic… I mean alien artefacts. The Doctor inquires that if he’s Enemy No. 1, doesn’t that make him a prisoner? “Oh yes,” Yvonne says dismissively, but he shouldn’t worry about that now. She shows him a space BFG (making a point of thanking the soldier who hands it to her by name, and then smarming that she’s all about people), and the Doctor states that they “can’t have particle guns”, like they’re kids too young to play with those, which I suppose in his perspective, they are. Yvonne disagrees, and shows him some more alien gizmos, like clamps that make stuff go weightless, and a hovering thingy. All captured from alien technology which violated their airspace. “The weapon that defeated the Sycorax on Christmas Day? That was us!” she sing-songs annoyingly, as if this fact will somehow endear the Doctor to the idea of Torchwood. They have a motto: “if it’s alien, it’s ours.” This apparently also goes for the TARDIS, which is being towed away despite the Doctor’s indignant protests. He then sniffs that they’ll never get inside it, anyway, and Yvonne waves that away because she is an arrogant asshole. The Doctor exchanges a Significant Look with Rose, who is peeking at him through the doors.

Yvonne is now leading the Doctor and Jackie to the piece de resistance, the Sudoku Room, where that guy we saw earlier is flailing about like a very awkward fangirl, practically wetting himself with excitement at meeting the Doctor. The Doctor, of course, doesn’t even look at him, because the giant floating snooker ball behind him is far more interesting. He seems appalled at the sight, so I’m betting it’s not a space piñata or something equally festive. Yvonne and Sudoku Scientist are quite proud of it. Jackie says it gives her the creeps, and Sudoku Scientist admits that it does feel like it’s staring at you. They expect the Doctor to tell them what it is, and they are not disappointed. Having donned his 3-D glasses again and examined the thing, he expositions that it is a Void Ship, a vessel designed to exist outside of time and space, and thus able to travel the nothingness between dimensions, otherwise known as Hell. Yvonne is excited, and wants to know how to open it. “You don’t,” the Doctor answers. He is an-gry. Torchwood’s got some ‘splaining to do.

Higher up, the beautiful girl is staring at another of her coworkers in a very sinister way. She sends him an IM: hey matt, want to see something good? Evil-Zombiefication has done wonders for her grammar skills, at least. The aforementioned Matt is puzzled, because wasn’t she with Gareth? If she should be showing anyone something good, it’d be him. But she’s very very attractive, so he goes with her anyway. Smiling sweetly, she tells him to go into this here corridor lined with plastic sheeting, PLEASE. Weirded out, he steps inside. The girl stalks away, her face emotionless, as he screams and sparks fly out of the doorway.

Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, Rose has found the Doctor’s coat and pulls out the psychic paper, pocketing it. She then steals out of the TARDIS, nicks a white coat, and walks around the hangar as if she always has been. Jackie’s right, she does take after the Doctor.

Up in Yvonne’s office, the Doctor wants to know how they came by a Void Ship, and Yvonne expositions that it literally fell into their lap. Some years ago, they discovered a radar blind spot in the sky over London, and they wanted to know what it was, so they built a tower up to it, out of tax-payers’ money of course. The Void Ship fell through it, and the ghosts came after it. And they somehow built in this impractical lever system to open and close it at intervals, apparently. For what reason, I am not quite sure. The Doctor, who, I should mention, was waxing lyrical about humans and their lust for discovery and barging into super-dangerous things just to see how they worked not half a season ago, now gives Yvonne a tongue-lashing about how stupid and irresponsible they’re being by climbing up to a hole in time and space and trying to make it bigger to see how it works. Yvonne snaps back that he’s just as patronising all the stories say. The Doctor decides to prove his point by resonating the glass door of Yvonne’s fishbowl office, making a large crack in the glass which slowly fans out. The crack, he explains, is the hole, and Torchwood is pushing against that hole and making more cracks around it, until finally… he taps the glass, and the door shatters. Yvonne, unimpressed, says they’ll solve that problem when it presents itself. The Doctor says they should stop the Ghost Shifts to prevent reality splintering even further each time they open that hole. Yvonne doesn’t listen, because she is a jerk. The Doctor yells at her, ineffectually. She says they’re going on as planned. He fixes her with his Time Lord Glare for a few seconds, then suddenly switches it off and says: “okay.” Yvonne is thrown off. “What?” Okay, he repeats, she can do whatever she wants. He grabs a chair and plops down on it, and tells “Rose” to come join him. Jackie does, glaring at Yvonne as she goes and standing behind the Doctor. A voiceover informs them that they’re about to go into Ghost Shift. “Ooh, can’t wait to see it!” the Doctor exclaims with the smirk of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing. He and Yvonne stare each other down. Unsurprisingly, Yvonne loses. She tells her people to cancel the shift until they have more information, and while they’re not doing anything anyway, could someone get a broom and sweep up this glass?

Rose is walking down a corridor, following some random scientist. He goes into the Sudoku Room, and she sees him swipe a card across a scanner to open the door. When the door has closed again she walks up, kisses the psychic paper for luck, and swipes it across the scanner. The door opens, and she walks in, triumphant.
Inside, the Sudoku Scientist and his assistant are hanging out, looking at the Void Ship some more and waiting until it does something. Sudoku Scientist sees Rose enter and ask what she’s doing here. He needs to ask twice, because Rose is staring at the thing, transfixed. He explains that it has that effect on everyone, and asks how he can help her. She shows off another of the Doctor’s traits by sucking at being undercover, all like, yeah, some bloke was taken prisoner, some Doctor, did they tell you where they took him? Sudoku Scientist asks her for ID, and she hands over the psychic paper. He looks at it and hands it back, explaining that all Torchwood personnel have basic psychic training, so the paper doesn’t work on him. Bus-ted! He tells his assistant to call security and report an intruder, and the assistant turns around and OMG IT’S MICKEY!! He gives a shocked Rose a big grin, a finger-on-lips, and a double thumbs-up behind Sudoku Scientist’s back. I bounce and squeal, and I didn’t even know I’d missed him.

Back in Yvonne’s office, Jackie is staring out the window and has realised that this is Canary Wharf. Yvonne smirks in her obnoxious way and says that that’s just the public name for it: it’s actually Torchwood Tower.
Her communications screen bleeps, and the Sudoku Scientist pops into view, saying that he found this here blonde, and that he suspects that she’s with the Doctor. Yvonne turns the screen towards the Doctor, who is sitting with his feet on her desk, and asks whether he knows this girl. The Doctor makes a face and says he’s never seen her before in his life. Yvonne replies that in that case, she’ll be shot. The Doctor sighs in exasperation and admits that it’s the actual Rose Tyler. “Sorry,” says Rose to the camera, and waves meekly. “Hello!” The Doctor waves back. They’re so cute.
Yvonne asks the obvious question about Jackie, and before the Doctor can make something up, Jackie says she’s Rose’s mother. Yvonne is extremely amused. “Oh, you travel with her mother?” The Doctor makes a pained grimace and begs Torchwood not to include that in their history of him.

There is a commotion outside of the office, and Yvonne runs out to yell at some people, because didn’t she say that the Ghost Shift was cancelled? Matt, Gareth, and Beautiful Girl don’t answer and stare straight ahead as they type at full speed. The levers start going over by themselves, and the white-coated men (who, by the way, seem to have no function in the company other than lever-related activities) try to stop them, but are unsuccessful. The Doctor hurries out and bends over Beautiful Girl, examining the earpods she has in, which have a blue light on them. He’s seen them before, and he tells the girl that he is sorry, so sorry. Then he sonics the earpods, and she lets out a piercing scream, echoed by Matt and Gareth. Then all three flop over onto their desks, dead. Yvonne exclaims that he killed them, and he grimly replies that someone else already did that before he even got there. Yvonne tries to extract an earpod, and of course ends up with a handful of brain. Yay.
The Doctor shields his eyes from the blinding light, and announces that they’re going into Ghost Shift, whether they like it or not.

Unheard by anyone, the Sudoku Scientist is screaming at Yvonne through his communications screen that the Void Ship has activated. Mickey loses his white coat and runs over to a worktop under which, unseen by anyone, he’s taped a huge BFG. He tells Rose not to worry, he does this sort of thing all the time now. Rose seems to be rather partial to this new, bad-ass Mickey. She grins that it’s good to see him, and he spares her a short glance, gloriously devoid of yearning, and gruffs that it’s good to see her too. Sudoku Scientist asks “Samuel” what the hell is going on. Mickey corrects him, locks and loads his gun, and introduces himself: “Mickey Smith, defending the Earth.” Aw, YEAH!

Yvonne and Jackie are staring in horror at the ghosts that come marching out of the hole and into the room, in perfect formation. The Doctor, telling them what we all knew the moment we saw Beautiful Girl modelling the Earpod Of Doom so very fetchingly: “they’re Cybermen.”

Out on the streets and across the world, people start running and screaming and freaking out when their friendly neighbourhood ghosts turn into metal men and start killing people.

The Doctor asks the nearest Cyberman how they managed to build a Void Ship. The Cyberman replies that the Void Ship is not theirs, and they don’t know where it came from. They just followed it into this world. The Doctor wants to know what’s inside it, but the Cyberman doesn’t know that either. He’ll go back to conquering the world now, thanks. The Doctor remarks that there’s no conquest, because they’ve already won. Now that’s the spirit.

In the Sudoku Room, Mickey’s aiming his BFG as the Void Ship opens and Rose and the Sudoku Scientist huddle behind him. He tells them this baby can take down any Cyberman. Then he has a good look at the things emerging from the Void Ship.
“Life forms detected!” screams that awesome and instantly recognisable voice. “Exterminate, exterminate, exterminaaaate!” Is there any better way to end a Doctor Who Episode?

Next week: it’s time for the Dalek/Cyberman showdown! Also, Jake is back. Yay! He appears to be fighting alongside the Cybermen. Does that mean they’re with the good guys now? Also, before you get too excited: this is totally still the story of how Rose died.

Doctor Who Episode Cliche Meter
Scenes taking place in a lift: 0
Scenes running down corridors: 1
Takes place in London: Yes
Doctor gives the Alien Of The Week a choice: Not yet