Recap: Doctor Who Episode 2.13: Doomsday
Previously on: there were ghosts everywhere, courtesy of Torchwood. Only they were actually Cybermen (the ghosts, not Torchwood. Not yet, anyway). The Doctor was a prisoner, and so were Rose and Jackie. And then Mickey was back and surprisingly bad-ass. And there was a huge big ball and it opened up and there were Daleks.
So, basically, the Daleks are still much with the exterminate. Rose suddenly yells “Daleks!” back, and that confuses them and shuts them up. She tells them she knows their name, and what they are, and if they want to know how she knows about them, they have to let them live. They agree, though I’m not quite sure why. Do Daleks feel curiosity or intrigue? I don’t think so. Rose is different, and alive, and that’s two reasons for her to have to be totally dead already. But whatever. Mickey and Sudoku Scientist quickly agree that they totally know all about the Daleks, too.
One of the Daleks, who appears to be the leader and, as such, is a different colour - black - tells its fellows to keep an eye on the humans while it goes to check on the “Genesis Ark”. This is a Dalek-shaped thingy that… is shaped… like a Dalek. It doesn’t do much. The Dalek guarding it agrees with me.
Up in Yvonne’s office, Jackie is crying because they’ve lost contact with Rose. The Doctor, probably just as worried, snaps at Jackie, then softens and tells her he will find Rose and get both her and Jackie out safely. Then he does the stupidest thing anyone can ever do on a TV show, which is making a promise he isn’t sure he can keep: he gives her his word that he will get them out of here.
Meanwhile, out on the streets, the army is shooting at Cybermen and sending tanks and blowing shit up. Preferably Cyberman shit, but they’re not picky. No major landmarks are collapsing yet, but hey, it’s only a few minutes into the episode, after all.
The Cybermen are confused, because the humans haven’t surrendered even though there is no logical reason for them to keep fighting. The Doctor, knowing he can snap at the Cybermen all he wants without fear of them bursting into tears on him, yells that the Cybermen are threatening their homes and children, the very things they will die trying to defend.
Back in the Sudoku Room, the Daleks have finished reading the Manual for Television Villains, and decide to skip the bullshit and ask, straightforward, who the most expendable person in the room is. Rose, who has been in a television show for two full seasons and knows what happens to expendable characters, tells them that it doesn’t work like that, and that they are all important. The Dalek orders them to designate the least important, and the Sudoku Scientist stupidly puts himself forward, thereby basically announcing that he is the expendable one. The Daleks inform him that they need information about the time and place they’re in. Sudoku Scientist stammers that he will tell them anything they need to know, but the Daleks assure him that speech will not be necessary. They tell him to kneel, so that they can extract brainwaves with their sink plungers. A word which here means: squash his head to a jelly. He screams, and Rose pushes Mickey back and buries her face in his shirt.
The Cybermen have detected the Daleks, and now the Daleks know about the Cybermen. They decide they need to communicate, and one Dalek and two Cybermen separate from their respective groups and meet in a corridor. The Doctor follows the exchange on Yvonne’s communication screen, looking horrified when he sees the Dalek.
What follows is perhaps the most hilarious dialogue anywhere ever. The Cybermen are like: you must identify, and the Daleks are like, no YOU must identify first, and the Cybermen are like: no, YOU, and so on. Finally, both decide that they’re getting nowhere, and do some research. They identify each other. The Cybermen remark that the Daleks are of “inelegant design”. The Dalek: “Daleks have no concept of elegance!” The Cybermen: “This is obvious.” Hahahahaha! Can we have a whole episode of just this?
Jackie is crying again, because she heard Rose’s stories about the Daleks and is afraid her daughter is dead. The Doctor whispers that he needs Jackie’s phone, and she gives it to him and he… calls Rose’s mobile. Jackie could have done that herself.
Rose experiences that thing where you’re right in the middle of a dramatic moment, and then your phone rings. Luckily, the Daleks are too preoccupied to notice, as they are busy discussing how best to protect their Genesis Ark from the Cybermen. The Doctor hears this, and asks Rose what it is, but she’s afraid to answer and give herself away.
The banter continues. The Cybermen ask the Daleks to join with them and conquer the Universe together. The Daleks are like: um, no, kthxbye. The Cybermen declare that in this case, they will be deleted. The Dalek in the corridor then shoots the two negotiator Cybermen down. The head Cyberman tells them this means war. The Daleks don’t think so: “this is pest control!” The Cyberman continues that they have an army of millions; how many do the Daleks have? “Four.” If the Cybermen could laugh or sneer, they’d be doing both. “You think to defeat the Cybermen with four Daleks?” No, the Daleks snark back, “we would defeat the Cybermen with one Dalek.” O snap. Daleks are definitely snarkier than Cybermen.
The Daleks declare the conversation ended, but one of them has noticed the Doctor in the background of a shot of the Cyberleader, and that he is not human. Another Dalek suddenly turns to Rose, hilariously: “the female’s heartrate has increased!”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” snarks Mickey. Heeee! The Daleks want to know who the non-human is, and Rose is all too happy to tell them: “that’s the Doctor!” The Daleks do that whole shuffle-backwards-in-fear thing that never fails to crack me up. Rose is also amused. “Ooh, now you’re scared.”
Up with the Cybermen, it is clear that they are slightly intimidated by the Daleks’ badassery. The Cyberleader orders all Torchwood personnel to be upgraded to increase their numbers within the building. Oh, and do Jackie too, while they’re at it. The Doctor can stay, because he is not human and has displayed knowledge of the Daleks. Jackie screams at the Doctor as she is dragged away, that he promised. See, I told you it was a bad idea. The Doctor shouts back that he’ll think of something.
The Daleks, in turn, aren’t at all fussed about the Cybermen, and they cluster around the Genesis Ark. Mickey asks Rose why they haven’t been killed yet, and Rose explains, by way of a flashback that Mickey can’t see, that last time she met a Dalek, it needed a time traveller’s hand print to regenerate itself. She thinks that’s why the Daleks need them.
Jackie, Yvonne and several Torchwood employees are dragged over to a random corridor designated emergency upgrading hub. Jackie asks Yvonne, over the sound of screams and drills, what will happen to them. Yvonne seems to have figured it out on the way down here, which is impressive, under the circumstances. She looks and sounds like she’s going to be sick, but when it’s her turn, she refuses to be dragged and instead walks to her death, head held high. I am grudgingly moved. Jackie looks scared as she watches Yvonne go and listens to her screams.
Up in Yvonne’s office, which is probably the Doctor’s office now since she won’t be needing it anytime soon, the Doctor is sitting on a windowsill. I confess I am a bit disappointed in him. Rose is in danger, and he promised to save Jackie, which he’s not doing. You’re a genius, Doctor, so I’m pretty sure you can angst and save the world at the same time. Mind you, he doesn’t have to think up a plan, because who should appear out of nowhere, right next to him, but the lovely Jake? He has a BFG like Mickey, and shoots the Cyberleader’s head off.
Unwittingly, Jake has just saved Jackie’s life, because the moment the Cyberleader is killed the other Cybermen forget what they were doing and concentrate on finding out who’s the next in line to become Cyberleader. They let go of Jackie, who sensibly legs it the hell out of the upgrading zone.
The Doctor is shouting at Jake for breaking through the hole in time and space and rescuing him. Jake assures him that it’s quite easy, and he hands the Doctor a medallion on a chain that kind of looks like an egg sunny side up. He punches it while the Doctor shouts at him not to, and they jump from our universe to the other one, where it’s darker and much quieter. Jake explains that in their world, they have a Torchwood too, and he works for them now. And guess who’s boss? In walks Pete Tyler, just in time to hear the Doctor shout at Jake that they need to go back and save Rose and Jackie. Pete doesn’t really care, because they have the Doctor now and this universe needs his help, too.
In the Sudoku Room, Rose asks the Daleks what the Genesis Ark is. The black Dalek replies that it is their new start (the name does give that away, though. Twice) and that it was made, ironically enough, by the Time Lords. Rose falls silent.
Parallel Universe Exposition Time! Pete and Jake tell the Doctor that the remaining Cybermen just disappeared one day, and Torchwood found out that they had found a way to travel to the parallel universe, so they had to find a way to follow them. Their world is at peace now, thanks to Torchwood and the new President, Harriet Jones (The Doctor: “I’d watch out with her.” Oh, get over it, already!), but they have a new threat. This threat is outrageous global warming, and they need the Doctor to tell them how to stop it. The Doctor snaps that it’s pretty simple: the global warming in this world is caused by the likes of them, ripping holes in the fabric of time and space each time they hop universes. Pete says that in that case, they’ll need the Doctor to do his Time Lord thing and close the walls between the worlds again. Defeating the Daleks and the Cybermen in the process, of course. The Doctor looks humbled: “do you really believe I can do that?” Pete and Jake say they do. The Doctor smiles, and tells Pete that he will save everyone, including Jackie. Pete tries very hard to look as though he doesn’t care, and says that she is not his wife; his wife died. The Doctor, latching on: “her husband died, good match!” His matchmaking skills could use some perfecting, as they are quite… morbid at the moment.
More hilarious dialogue ensues as the Doctor arrives back in our universe and calls Jackie on her mobile (where did he get her number?). In some staircase, Jackie picks up and immediately starts screeching at him, so that he can’t get in a word edgewise. Pete must be rethinking the whole thing already. The Doctor urgently asks Jackie where she is. “Staircase!” Not helping, he tells her. Can she be a bit more specific? “Yes! There’s a fire extinguisher!” Heee!
Having clarified that she is reasonably safe for the time being, the Doctor sets to work trying to figure out how to solve this.
Back in the Sudoku Room, the black Dalek tells Rose to put her hand print on the Genesis Ark. She says she won’t. Predictably, they threaten to kill Mickey if she doesn’t obey. Rose tries to buy some time by telling the Daleks the latest about their Emperor. “The Emperor survived?” the black Dalek exclaims. “Until he met me,” Rose tells them. Is she trying to get herself killed rather than help the Daleks get something they want? If so, she’s very noble and good on her. If not, then this might not be the best plan to stay alive. Still, she is grinning widely as she tells the Daleks how she destroyed the Emperor, the God of all Daleks. Then she laughs in their eyestalks. I admire her to no end in this scene. The Daleks do not share my feelings.
The Doctor chooses this moment to saunter into the room. Rose smiles in delight as he walks over and asks if she is all right. They have a cute moment, and then the Doctor bumps fists with Mickey, asking him how he’s been. The Daleks are confused at being ignored. “Social interaction will cease!” one of them orders, which is a brilliant line that I intend on using as much as possible in the future.
The black Dalek confirms that this is, indeed, the Doctor. The Doctor asks who they are, and how they survived the Time War. They introduce themselves: the black Dalek is called Dalek Sec, and the other ones are called Kahn, Thay and… something I forget. That one dies later on, anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. The Doctor expositions to Rose and Mickey that these Daleks form the Cult of Skaro, and are specially designed to imagine. Specifically, imagine ways to win the war. And their newest toy, right here, they imagine will win them the Earth. The Doctor asks what it is, and they repeat that it’s Time Lord science. Mickey asks what the Ark is, but the Doctor doesn’t know: “both sides had secrets.”
The Doctor taunts the Daleks some more, and they’re all like: why are we putting up with this when you are unarmed? The Doctor points out that he does have this; “this” being the sonic screwdriver. The Daleks sneer at it, and the Doctor is insulted on the sonic’s behalf. “No, it doesn’t kill and it doesn’t maim. But I tell you what it can do. It is VERY good at opening doors.” Then he switches it on and blows out the doors of the Sudoku room. Awesome. And in come the Cybermen and Parallel Torchwood, both shooting at the Daleks.
The Doctor grabs a pair of those clamps that makes stuff go weightless, while Pete grabs Rose and snatches her out of harm’s way. The whole merry company then spills through a fire door and out into a corridor. Jake follows, as does Mickey, although he tries to go back for his BFG and in the chaos stumbles against the Genesis Ark, activating it because he was a Companion too. The Doctor locks the door behind Mickey and remarks that the Cybermen and Daleks will be kept busy for the moment. The team run down a corridor, and Mickey apologises to the Doctor about the Genesis Ark. The Doctor doesn’t mind; he’s just glad no one got hurt. He kisses Mickey’s forehead, which is not as sweet as it sounds, because he does it while they’re both running.
The Daleks have taken about three minutes to exterminate all the Cybermen, and are happy to see that the Genesis Ark is now ready for action.
Jackie has navigated her way out of the stairwell and into some corridor, and she is running down it when she is ambushed by two Cybermen. More than anything, she appears downhearted that she did all this running for nothing. Then suddenly the Cybermen’s heads are blown apart and they crash to the ground, revealing Pete standing behind them with Mickey’s BFG in hand, Rose, the Doctor and Mickey at his side, though all Jackie can see is her dead husband. She sounds on the verge of a breakdown: “he said they weren’t ghosts, but this is not fair. Why him?” Pete assures her he is not a ghost. She’s like: excuse me, but you’re dead and all. The Doctor steps forward and expositions helpfully that this is Pete from a parallel universe, and he goes on to explain how exactly that works. She tells him to shut up. And just this once, HE ACTUALLY DOES.
Pete and Jackie have the most awkward reunion ever, since they know each other and yet they don’t. Pete tells her that he did something with his life, and his schemes worked, and now he’s rich. Jackie says she doesn’t care about that. “… how rich?” Very, he tells her. “I don’t care about that… how very?” They smile, and Jackie confesses that she, in turn, did nothing with her life, just sat in her flat for 20 years. Pete asks why she never married. Jackie says, tearfully, that there was never anyone else. In what has to be the most hilarious moment in the whole series, Mickey and the Doctor simultaneously raise their eyebrows and try really hard not to laugh.
Rose looks tearily at her sort-of parents’ reunion. Pete counters Jackie’s statement, saying that she did raise one hell of a daughter. This brings him back to the fact that Rose isn’t his actual daughter, and so Jackie isn’t his actual wife. Jackie totally agrees. They stare at each other for about two more seconds, before falling into each other’s arms. I get a bit teary, as does Rose.
The Daleks are on the move with the Genesis Ark, happily exterminating Cybermen as they go along without even putting on the brakes. The Cyberleader is not down with that, and calls up all the umpteen million Cybermen to come to Torchwood and reinforce their army.
The Doctor and his gang are back in Formerly Yvonne’s Office, which is now deserted. They look out to see the Daleks elevating themselves and the Genesis Ark into the sky over London. Dalek Sec orders the Ark to open, which it does, and it starts spitting out Daleks one by one at high speed. The Doctor has finally figured out what kind of Time Lord science the Ark is: it’s bigger on the inside. It’s a prison ship from the Time War.
Daleks and Cybermen start battling it out on the streets, not caring who gets caught in their crossfire.
Pete has seen enough, and decides that he’s blowing this popsicle stand and going off back home. What’s more, he wants Jackie to come with him. He tells her the other world is a safe place, and will remain so if the Doctor closes the wall between worlds. Rose asks how he’s going to do that. But of course the Doctor’s got a plan. He expositions that in order to travel between the worlds, you have to cross the Void, and that travelling across the Void leaves an invisible residue on the traveller. He hands Rose his 3-D glasses, through which the “Void stuff” (a technical term, I’m sure) becomes visible. She looks at him and Pete and Mickey and Jake, as well as her own hand, and sees that they all have a sort of aura around them of little floating specks. The Doctor explains that the Void, once he opens it using Torchwood’s systems, will be like a big magnet pulling in everything that’s ever travelled across the Void. Rose realises that this means all of them will get pulled in with the Cybermen and Daleks. The Doctor, smile disappearing: “that’s why you have to go.” Rose stares at him wordlessly. Mickey asks what’s going to happen to the Doctor, then, if he remains behind to close the walls. The Doctor tells them he’s got the clamp-things, which he will attach to something solid and then hold onto.
Rose has recovered from her shock, and asks the Doctor if she’s just supposed to go to the parallel world and stay there. “Yeah,” he tells her shortly, pretending not to care. She laughs in his face and tells him that’s not going to happen.
Pete tells the assorted humans that they need to leave NOW. Rose shouts back that she’s not leaving the Doctor. Jackie, in turn, shouts that she’s not leaving Rose. Pete shouts that they’re going and that’s final, and Jackie racks up the volume and orders him to shut up, as she’s the one who’s raised this child for 20 years. Rose, however, wants her Mum to go with Pete and be happy. Rose wants to stay with the Doctor forever, because she’s seen all the things he can do and has done for mankind. That’s not why she wants to be with him, though: “he does it alone, Mum!” Oh Rose, how much do I love you?
Behind her, his eyes so very, very sad, the Doctor sneaks up with one of those yellow dimension-jump necklaces. “Not any more,” Rose is telling her mother. “Because now he’s got me!” Just as she says that, the Doctor silently slips the necklace over her head. Pete punches his master button, and the whole group disappears. The Doctor looks… bereft.
At Parallel Torchwood, Team Sunny Side Up reappears. Rose takes one look around, announces that “you’re not doing that to me again,” and punches her button, which takes her straight back. Before Jackie can follow, Pete rips off her necklace. Jackie yells at him, then at Mickey, ineffectually. Finally, she bursts into tears.
The Doctor is shocked to see Rose reappear. He grabs her shoulders and shouts at her that if she goes through with this, she’ll never see her mother again. Rose looks straight into his eyes. “I made my choice a long time ago. I’m never gonna leave you.” He stares at her with a kind of… angry wonder is the best phrase I can come up with. You can literally see the last of his restraint failing, and he hates it. But this moment, right here, is where the Doctor realises that he is irrevocably in love with Rose. God, Tennant is brilliant. He then lets go of her and snaps at her to go check the readings on that there computer screen. “And hurry up!”
Back in some stairwell, some Cybermen are on their way to do… something. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. The point of this scene is that their way is barred by another Cyberman aiming a gun at them. They’re all like: WTF? The Cyberman is all like: I am the servant of the secret fire! You shall not pass! Then it shoots their heads off. The Cyberman, now with a distinct female undertone, tells the camera: “I did my duty for Queen and country.” Aww, Yvonne!
Up in CyberGandalf’s office, the Doctor’s plan is coming along swimmingly. He cracks a grin, and Rose, in a lovely little parallel with the Christmas Special, teases him about the fact that he just smiled. His anger replaced by jubilation, he dumps one of the clamps into her arms and tells her to attach it to the wall opposite from where he attaches his, for maximum dramatic tension. Rose does so, and they grin at each other from across the room as the Void is opened and they grab their clamps. Both of them hold on for dear life as Cybermen and Daleks go whizzing past. Dalek Sec, however, has got another trick up its non-existent sleeve, “emergency temporal shift”. He disappears, and I’m guessing that he time travelled randomly, seeing as how… well, he announced that he was going to. Daleks are predictable like that.
In Yvonne’s office, a Dalek has apparently bumped into one of the levers, the one on Rose’s side of the room to be exact, and it goes offline. The Void suction lessens considerably, so Rose decides to let go of her clamp thingy and crawl over to the lever to push it back in place and lock it. This part of her plan works; however, as the suction increases again she is left with nothing to hold onto but the lever itself. It doesn’t provide a very good handhold, and the Doctor can only watch in horror as she is lifted off her feet and her fingers start slipping. With one last look at him, she lets go and plummets into the Void. The Doctor screams.
Then, just at the last minute, Pete suddenly appears and catches her, punching his button and zapping them both to safety and lifelong isolation from the Doctor. Rose looks over her shoulder, and the Doctor’s anguished face is the last thing she sees in this world. The breach closes. The Doctor looks shattered. The loss is now so much worse, because if she’d stayed in the parallel world when he sent her there, it’d be his choice. Now he has to live with the knowledge of what could have been. I love it, in a it-tears-my-heart-apart kind of way.
In the parallel world, Rose is hammering on the wall with both fists, screaming at it to take her back to the Doctor. Billie Piper doesn’t skimp on the emoting in this scene, let me tell you. Finally the strength leaves her, and she cries inconsolably, her trademark mascara running black paths down her face, which she presses against the wall.
The Doctor is completely alone, in every sense of the word, in Yvonne’s office. He slowly walks over to the pristine white wall where the hole in reality once was, and presses his cheek to it, his face emotionless and his eyes dark and empty.
In the parallel world, Rose stops crying, as if she can somehow sense him, and presses her face to the wall, too. There are no words; just their haunted faces and the haunting music on the soundtrack. This is absolutely beautiful imagery, because they are sharing the same space, but in different realities. This is both the closest and the farthest apart they’ve ever been. I love it.
This doesn’t stop me weeping all over my television.
The Doctor pulls away first, and walks out of the room without turning back. Rose, bereft, turns her face to the wall and cries.
Rose wakes up, wearing very pretty pajamas, when she hears the Doctor call her name. By way of voiceover, she explains that she kept hearing him calling her in her dreams, so finally she told her mother and Mickey and Pete about it. We get to see the four of them sitting together by the fireplace in their jammies. Then they’re loading their luggage into a four-wheel drive, and Voiceover Rose tells us that they followed the voice in her dreams (eh?), across the Channel and to some beach in Norway. “And this is the story of how I died.”
Rose is standing on the beach, and staring out to sea, when the Doctor appears behind her, looking all see-through. She tells him he looks like a ghost, so he adjusts some setting on the sonic, and solidifies. She reaches out to touch him, but he tells her she can’t. They are now but an image to each other, “no touch”. This set me off crying again, because they’re the Doctor and Rose. Their relationship began with a touch, and always remained so physical; now it’s the last time they’ll ever see each other, and they can’t even touch. It is so beautifully cruel.
He tells her he’s in the TARDIS, and that he made a tiny gap in the fabric of reality, using so much power that the TARDIS is hooked up to a supernova. “I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye.” Rose concludes that this means he can’t take her back with him. He shakes his head sadly, and tells her that, were he to do such a thing, both their universes would collapse. “So?” says Rose, and they both laugh through their tears. She asks how long they have. About three minutes. She bursts into tears, saying that she doesn’t know what to say. The Doctor ducks his head, smiling in a way that makes my heart break. He looks over Rose’s shoulder, where Pete, Jackie and Mickey are keeping their respectful distance. He comments about Mickey being there, and Rose replies that it’s the five of them now. “Me, Mum, Dad, Mickey… and the baby.” The Doctor looks surprised. “You’re not…?” Rose shakes her head, smiling, and explains that it’s her Mum. What was he expecting her to say, anyway?
He asks her how her life’s been in this universe, and she says she’s back working in the shop. Good for her, he says rather unconvincingly, and she laughs and tells him to shut up. She’s actually working for this universe’s Torchwood now: “I reckon I know a thing or two about aliens.” The Doctor smiles proudly. “Rose Tyler, defender of the Earth!” She laughs, then starts crying again. To lift her spirits, the Doctor tells her that she’s dead. Well, as far as their universe is concerned anyway. She’s on a list of those who perished at Torchwood. She nods resignedly, and asks him what he’s going to do now. “Oh, I’ve got the TARDIS,” he tells her. “Same old life, last of the Time Lords…” The same line from the Christmas special, but with such a profoundly different meaning. As is Rose’s reply: “on your own?” Not ‘without me’, because still, even though she knows she’ll lose him, it’s never about her. If anyone is deserving of the Doctor’s love, it’s Rose Tyler. She’ll never see the love of her life again, and all she can think of is how alone he’ll be. He nods, holding back tears. Rose cries enough for the both of them, and has to take a few deep breaths before she can sob her next words out: “I love you!” The Doctor just looks at her, all the love and pain and tenderness in his eyes. Finally, he smiles bleakly. “Quite right, too.” Rose laughs through her tears, nodding. The Doctor sighs. “And, I suppose, if it’s my last chance to say it… Rose Tyler…” And then he fades away. Rose loses it good, and the music goes berserk as she throws herself into her mother’s arms, crying her heart out.
Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor has the words on his lips. But she’s gone, and he doesn’t say them. Because oh, she knows. He closes his eyes, and his tears finally escape. This is where I absolutely lost it, because THE DOCTOR CRIED.
No time for heartrending acting, though, because he’s suddenly not alone anymore. A figure in white has creepily appeared in the middle of the console room. “What?” splutters the Doctor, and the figure turns around. It’s a redhead in a wedding dress, veil and all. She looks utterly shocked. “Who are you?” The Doctor can only say “what?” again and again to every single question she shouts at him.
The End Of An Era. OMG, I need to lie down now. Wake me at Christmas.
Doctor Who Episode Cliche Meter
Scenes taking place in a lift: 1
Scenes running down corridors: 4
Takes place in London: Yes
Doctor gives the Alien Of The Week a choice: No way!
So, basically, the Daleks are still much with the exterminate. Rose suddenly yells “Daleks!” back, and that confuses them and shuts them up. She tells them she knows their name, and what they are, and if they want to know how she knows about them, they have to let them live. They agree, though I’m not quite sure why. Do Daleks feel curiosity or intrigue? I don’t think so. Rose is different, and alive, and that’s two reasons for her to have to be totally dead already. But whatever. Mickey and Sudoku Scientist quickly agree that they totally know all about the Daleks, too.
One of the Daleks, who appears to be the leader and, as such, is a different colour - black - tells its fellows to keep an eye on the humans while it goes to check on the “Genesis Ark”. This is a Dalek-shaped thingy that… is shaped… like a Dalek. It doesn’t do much. The Dalek guarding it agrees with me.
Up in Yvonne’s office, Jackie is crying because they’ve lost contact with Rose. The Doctor, probably just as worried, snaps at Jackie, then softens and tells her he will find Rose and get both her and Jackie out safely. Then he does the stupidest thing anyone can ever do on a TV show, which is making a promise he isn’t sure he can keep: he gives her his word that he will get them out of here.
Meanwhile, out on the streets, the army is shooting at Cybermen and sending tanks and blowing shit up. Preferably Cyberman shit, but they’re not picky. No major landmarks are collapsing yet, but hey, it’s only a few minutes into the episode, after all.
The Cybermen are confused, because the humans haven’t surrendered even though there is no logical reason for them to keep fighting. The Doctor, knowing he can snap at the Cybermen all he wants without fear of them bursting into tears on him, yells that the Cybermen are threatening their homes and children, the very things they will die trying to defend.
Back in the Sudoku Room, the Daleks have finished reading the Manual for Television Villains, and decide to skip the bullshit and ask, straightforward, who the most expendable person in the room is. Rose, who has been in a television show for two full seasons and knows what happens to expendable characters, tells them that it doesn’t work like that, and that they are all important. The Dalek orders them to designate the least important, and the Sudoku Scientist stupidly puts himself forward, thereby basically announcing that he is the expendable one. The Daleks inform him that they need information about the time and place they’re in. Sudoku Scientist stammers that he will tell them anything they need to know, but the Daleks assure him that speech will not be necessary. They tell him to kneel, so that they can extract brainwaves with their sink plungers. A word which here means: squash his head to a jelly. He screams, and Rose pushes Mickey back and buries her face in his shirt.
The Cybermen have detected the Daleks, and now the Daleks know about the Cybermen. They decide they need to communicate, and one Dalek and two Cybermen separate from their respective groups and meet in a corridor. The Doctor follows the exchange on Yvonne’s communication screen, looking horrified when he sees the Dalek.
What follows is perhaps the most hilarious dialogue anywhere ever. The Cybermen are like: you must identify, and the Daleks are like, no YOU must identify first, and the Cybermen are like: no, YOU, and so on. Finally, both decide that they’re getting nowhere, and do some research. They identify each other. The Cybermen remark that the Daleks are of “inelegant design”. The Dalek: “Daleks have no concept of elegance!” The Cybermen: “This is obvious.” Hahahahaha! Can we have a whole episode of just this?
Jackie is crying again, because she heard Rose’s stories about the Daleks and is afraid her daughter is dead. The Doctor whispers that he needs Jackie’s phone, and she gives it to him and he… calls Rose’s mobile. Jackie could have done that herself.
Rose experiences that thing where you’re right in the middle of a dramatic moment, and then your phone rings. Luckily, the Daleks are too preoccupied to notice, as they are busy discussing how best to protect their Genesis Ark from the Cybermen. The Doctor hears this, and asks Rose what it is, but she’s afraid to answer and give herself away.
The banter continues. The Cybermen ask the Daleks to join with them and conquer the Universe together. The Daleks are like: um, no, kthxbye. The Cybermen declare that in this case, they will be deleted. The Dalek in the corridor then shoots the two negotiator Cybermen down. The head Cyberman tells them this means war. The Daleks don’t think so: “this is pest control!” The Cyberman continues that they have an army of millions; how many do the Daleks have? “Four.” If the Cybermen could laugh or sneer, they’d be doing both. “You think to defeat the Cybermen with four Daleks?” No, the Daleks snark back, “we would defeat the Cybermen with one Dalek.” O snap. Daleks are definitely snarkier than Cybermen.
The Daleks declare the conversation ended, but one of them has noticed the Doctor in the background of a shot of the Cyberleader, and that he is not human. Another Dalek suddenly turns to Rose, hilariously: “the female’s heartrate has increased!”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” snarks Mickey. Heeee! The Daleks want to know who the non-human is, and Rose is all too happy to tell them: “that’s the Doctor!” The Daleks do that whole shuffle-backwards-in-fear thing that never fails to crack me up. Rose is also amused. “Ooh, now you’re scared.”
Up with the Cybermen, it is clear that they are slightly intimidated by the Daleks’ badassery. The Cyberleader orders all Torchwood personnel to be upgraded to increase their numbers within the building. Oh, and do Jackie too, while they’re at it. The Doctor can stay, because he is not human and has displayed knowledge of the Daleks. Jackie screams at the Doctor as she is dragged away, that he promised. See, I told you it was a bad idea. The Doctor shouts back that he’ll think of something.
The Daleks, in turn, aren’t at all fussed about the Cybermen, and they cluster around the Genesis Ark. Mickey asks Rose why they haven’t been killed yet, and Rose explains, by way of a flashback that Mickey can’t see, that last time she met a Dalek, it needed a time traveller’s hand print to regenerate itself. She thinks that’s why the Daleks need them.
Jackie, Yvonne and several Torchwood employees are dragged over to a random corridor designated emergency upgrading hub. Jackie asks Yvonne, over the sound of screams and drills, what will happen to them. Yvonne seems to have figured it out on the way down here, which is impressive, under the circumstances. She looks and sounds like she’s going to be sick, but when it’s her turn, she refuses to be dragged and instead walks to her death, head held high. I am grudgingly moved. Jackie looks scared as she watches Yvonne go and listens to her screams.
Up in Yvonne’s office, which is probably the Doctor’s office now since she won’t be needing it anytime soon, the Doctor is sitting on a windowsill. I confess I am a bit disappointed in him. Rose is in danger, and he promised to save Jackie, which he’s not doing. You’re a genius, Doctor, so I’m pretty sure you can angst and save the world at the same time. Mind you, he doesn’t have to think up a plan, because who should appear out of nowhere, right next to him, but the lovely Jake? He has a BFG like Mickey, and shoots the Cyberleader’s head off.
Unwittingly, Jake has just saved Jackie’s life, because the moment the Cyberleader is killed the other Cybermen forget what they were doing and concentrate on finding out who’s the next in line to become Cyberleader. They let go of Jackie, who sensibly legs it the hell out of the upgrading zone.
The Doctor is shouting at Jake for breaking through the hole in time and space and rescuing him. Jake assures him that it’s quite easy, and he hands the Doctor a medallion on a chain that kind of looks like an egg sunny side up. He punches it while the Doctor shouts at him not to, and they jump from our universe to the other one, where it’s darker and much quieter. Jake explains that in their world, they have a Torchwood too, and he works for them now. And guess who’s boss? In walks Pete Tyler, just in time to hear the Doctor shout at Jake that they need to go back and save Rose and Jackie. Pete doesn’t really care, because they have the Doctor now and this universe needs his help, too.
In the Sudoku Room, Rose asks the Daleks what the Genesis Ark is. The black Dalek replies that it is their new start (the name does give that away, though. Twice) and that it was made, ironically enough, by the Time Lords. Rose falls silent.
Parallel Universe Exposition Time! Pete and Jake tell the Doctor that the remaining Cybermen just disappeared one day, and Torchwood found out that they had found a way to travel to the parallel universe, so they had to find a way to follow them. Their world is at peace now, thanks to Torchwood and the new President, Harriet Jones (The Doctor: “I’d watch out with her.” Oh, get over it, already!), but they have a new threat. This threat is outrageous global warming, and they need the Doctor to tell them how to stop it. The Doctor snaps that it’s pretty simple: the global warming in this world is caused by the likes of them, ripping holes in the fabric of time and space each time they hop universes. Pete says that in that case, they’ll need the Doctor to do his Time Lord thing and close the walls between the worlds again. Defeating the Daleks and the Cybermen in the process, of course. The Doctor looks humbled: “do you really believe I can do that?” Pete and Jake say they do. The Doctor smiles, and tells Pete that he will save everyone, including Jackie. Pete tries very hard to look as though he doesn’t care, and says that she is not his wife; his wife died. The Doctor, latching on: “her husband died, good match!” His matchmaking skills could use some perfecting, as they are quite… morbid at the moment.
More hilarious dialogue ensues as the Doctor arrives back in our universe and calls Jackie on her mobile (where did he get her number?). In some staircase, Jackie picks up and immediately starts screeching at him, so that he can’t get in a word edgewise. Pete must be rethinking the whole thing already. The Doctor urgently asks Jackie where she is. “Staircase!” Not helping, he tells her. Can she be a bit more specific? “Yes! There’s a fire extinguisher!” Heee!
Having clarified that she is reasonably safe for the time being, the Doctor sets to work trying to figure out how to solve this.
Back in the Sudoku Room, the black Dalek tells Rose to put her hand print on the Genesis Ark. She says she won’t. Predictably, they threaten to kill Mickey if she doesn’t obey. Rose tries to buy some time by telling the Daleks the latest about their Emperor. “The Emperor survived?” the black Dalek exclaims. “Until he met me,” Rose tells them. Is she trying to get herself killed rather than help the Daleks get something they want? If so, she’s very noble and good on her. If not, then this might not be the best plan to stay alive. Still, she is grinning widely as she tells the Daleks how she destroyed the Emperor, the God of all Daleks. Then she laughs in their eyestalks. I admire her to no end in this scene. The Daleks do not share my feelings.
The Doctor chooses this moment to saunter into the room. Rose smiles in delight as he walks over and asks if she is all right. They have a cute moment, and then the Doctor bumps fists with Mickey, asking him how he’s been. The Daleks are confused at being ignored. “Social interaction will cease!” one of them orders, which is a brilliant line that I intend on using as much as possible in the future.
The black Dalek confirms that this is, indeed, the Doctor. The Doctor asks who they are, and how they survived the Time War. They introduce themselves: the black Dalek is called Dalek Sec, and the other ones are called Kahn, Thay and… something I forget. That one dies later on, anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. The Doctor expositions to Rose and Mickey that these Daleks form the Cult of Skaro, and are specially designed to imagine. Specifically, imagine ways to win the war. And their newest toy, right here, they imagine will win them the Earth. The Doctor asks what it is, and they repeat that it’s Time Lord science. Mickey asks what the Ark is, but the Doctor doesn’t know: “both sides had secrets.”
The Doctor taunts the Daleks some more, and they’re all like: why are we putting up with this when you are unarmed? The Doctor points out that he does have this; “this” being the sonic screwdriver. The Daleks sneer at it, and the Doctor is insulted on the sonic’s behalf. “No, it doesn’t kill and it doesn’t maim. But I tell you what it can do. It is VERY good at opening doors.” Then he switches it on and blows out the doors of the Sudoku room. Awesome. And in come the Cybermen and Parallel Torchwood, both shooting at the Daleks.
The Doctor grabs a pair of those clamps that makes stuff go weightless, while Pete grabs Rose and snatches her out of harm’s way. The whole merry company then spills through a fire door and out into a corridor. Jake follows, as does Mickey, although he tries to go back for his BFG and in the chaos stumbles against the Genesis Ark, activating it because he was a Companion too. The Doctor locks the door behind Mickey and remarks that the Cybermen and Daleks will be kept busy for the moment. The team run down a corridor, and Mickey apologises to the Doctor about the Genesis Ark. The Doctor doesn’t mind; he’s just glad no one got hurt. He kisses Mickey’s forehead, which is not as sweet as it sounds, because he does it while they’re both running.
The Daleks have taken about three minutes to exterminate all the Cybermen, and are happy to see that the Genesis Ark is now ready for action.
Jackie has navigated her way out of the stairwell and into some corridor, and she is running down it when she is ambushed by two Cybermen. More than anything, she appears downhearted that she did all this running for nothing. Then suddenly the Cybermen’s heads are blown apart and they crash to the ground, revealing Pete standing behind them with Mickey’s BFG in hand, Rose, the Doctor and Mickey at his side, though all Jackie can see is her dead husband. She sounds on the verge of a breakdown: “he said they weren’t ghosts, but this is not fair. Why him?” Pete assures her he is not a ghost. She’s like: excuse me, but you’re dead and all. The Doctor steps forward and expositions helpfully that this is Pete from a parallel universe, and he goes on to explain how exactly that works. She tells him to shut up. And just this once, HE ACTUALLY DOES.
Pete and Jackie have the most awkward reunion ever, since they know each other and yet they don’t. Pete tells her that he did something with his life, and his schemes worked, and now he’s rich. Jackie says she doesn’t care about that. “… how rich?” Very, he tells her. “I don’t care about that… how very?” They smile, and Jackie confesses that she, in turn, did nothing with her life, just sat in her flat for 20 years. Pete asks why she never married. Jackie says, tearfully, that there was never anyone else. In what has to be the most hilarious moment in the whole series, Mickey and the Doctor simultaneously raise their eyebrows and try really hard not to laugh.
Rose looks tearily at her sort-of parents’ reunion. Pete counters Jackie’s statement, saying that she did raise one hell of a daughter. This brings him back to the fact that Rose isn’t his actual daughter, and so Jackie isn’t his actual wife. Jackie totally agrees. They stare at each other for about two more seconds, before falling into each other’s arms. I get a bit teary, as does Rose.
The Daleks are on the move with the Genesis Ark, happily exterminating Cybermen as they go along without even putting on the brakes. The Cyberleader is not down with that, and calls up all the umpteen million Cybermen to come to Torchwood and reinforce their army.
The Doctor and his gang are back in Formerly Yvonne’s Office, which is now deserted. They look out to see the Daleks elevating themselves and the Genesis Ark into the sky over London. Dalek Sec orders the Ark to open, which it does, and it starts spitting out Daleks one by one at high speed. The Doctor has finally figured out what kind of Time Lord science the Ark is: it’s bigger on the inside. It’s a prison ship from the Time War.
Daleks and Cybermen start battling it out on the streets, not caring who gets caught in their crossfire.
Pete has seen enough, and decides that he’s blowing this popsicle stand and going off back home. What’s more, he wants Jackie to come with him. He tells her the other world is a safe place, and will remain so if the Doctor closes the wall between worlds. Rose asks how he’s going to do that. But of course the Doctor’s got a plan. He expositions that in order to travel between the worlds, you have to cross the Void, and that travelling across the Void leaves an invisible residue on the traveller. He hands Rose his 3-D glasses, through which the “Void stuff” (a technical term, I’m sure) becomes visible. She looks at him and Pete and Mickey and Jake, as well as her own hand, and sees that they all have a sort of aura around them of little floating specks. The Doctor explains that the Void, once he opens it using Torchwood’s systems, will be like a big magnet pulling in everything that’s ever travelled across the Void. Rose realises that this means all of them will get pulled in with the Cybermen and Daleks. The Doctor, smile disappearing: “that’s why you have to go.” Rose stares at him wordlessly. Mickey asks what’s going to happen to the Doctor, then, if he remains behind to close the walls. The Doctor tells them he’s got the clamp-things, which he will attach to something solid and then hold onto.
Rose has recovered from her shock, and asks the Doctor if she’s just supposed to go to the parallel world and stay there. “Yeah,” he tells her shortly, pretending not to care. She laughs in his face and tells him that’s not going to happen.
Pete tells the assorted humans that they need to leave NOW. Rose shouts back that she’s not leaving the Doctor. Jackie, in turn, shouts that she’s not leaving Rose. Pete shouts that they’re going and that’s final, and Jackie racks up the volume and orders him to shut up, as she’s the one who’s raised this child for 20 years. Rose, however, wants her Mum to go with Pete and be happy. Rose wants to stay with the Doctor forever, because she’s seen all the things he can do and has done for mankind. That’s not why she wants to be with him, though: “he does it alone, Mum!” Oh Rose, how much do I love you?
Behind her, his eyes so very, very sad, the Doctor sneaks up with one of those yellow dimension-jump necklaces. “Not any more,” Rose is telling her mother. “Because now he’s got me!” Just as she says that, the Doctor silently slips the necklace over her head. Pete punches his master button, and the whole group disappears. The Doctor looks… bereft.
At Parallel Torchwood, Team Sunny Side Up reappears. Rose takes one look around, announces that “you’re not doing that to me again,” and punches her button, which takes her straight back. Before Jackie can follow, Pete rips off her necklace. Jackie yells at him, then at Mickey, ineffectually. Finally, she bursts into tears.
The Doctor is shocked to see Rose reappear. He grabs her shoulders and shouts at her that if she goes through with this, she’ll never see her mother again. Rose looks straight into his eyes. “I made my choice a long time ago. I’m never gonna leave you.” He stares at her with a kind of… angry wonder is the best phrase I can come up with. You can literally see the last of his restraint failing, and he hates it. But this moment, right here, is where the Doctor realises that he is irrevocably in love with Rose. God, Tennant is brilliant. He then lets go of her and snaps at her to go check the readings on that there computer screen. “And hurry up!”
Back in some stairwell, some Cybermen are on their way to do… something. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. The point of this scene is that their way is barred by another Cyberman aiming a gun at them. They’re all like: WTF? The Cyberman is all like: I am the servant of the secret fire! You shall not pass! Then it shoots their heads off. The Cyberman, now with a distinct female undertone, tells the camera: “I did my duty for Queen and country.” Aww, Yvonne!
Up in CyberGandalf’s office, the Doctor’s plan is coming along swimmingly. He cracks a grin, and Rose, in a lovely little parallel with the Christmas Special, teases him about the fact that he just smiled. His anger replaced by jubilation, he dumps one of the clamps into her arms and tells her to attach it to the wall opposite from where he attaches his, for maximum dramatic tension. Rose does so, and they grin at each other from across the room as the Void is opened and they grab their clamps. Both of them hold on for dear life as Cybermen and Daleks go whizzing past. Dalek Sec, however, has got another trick up its non-existent sleeve, “emergency temporal shift”. He disappears, and I’m guessing that he time travelled randomly, seeing as how… well, he announced that he was going to. Daleks are predictable like that.
In Yvonne’s office, a Dalek has apparently bumped into one of the levers, the one on Rose’s side of the room to be exact, and it goes offline. The Void suction lessens considerably, so Rose decides to let go of her clamp thingy and crawl over to the lever to push it back in place and lock it. This part of her plan works; however, as the suction increases again she is left with nothing to hold onto but the lever itself. It doesn’t provide a very good handhold, and the Doctor can only watch in horror as she is lifted off her feet and her fingers start slipping. With one last look at him, she lets go and plummets into the Void. The Doctor screams.
Then, just at the last minute, Pete suddenly appears and catches her, punching his button and zapping them both to safety and lifelong isolation from the Doctor. Rose looks over her shoulder, and the Doctor’s anguished face is the last thing she sees in this world. The breach closes. The Doctor looks shattered. The loss is now so much worse, because if she’d stayed in the parallel world when he sent her there, it’d be his choice. Now he has to live with the knowledge of what could have been. I love it, in a it-tears-my-heart-apart kind of way.
In the parallel world, Rose is hammering on the wall with both fists, screaming at it to take her back to the Doctor. Billie Piper doesn’t skimp on the emoting in this scene, let me tell you. Finally the strength leaves her, and she cries inconsolably, her trademark mascara running black paths down her face, which she presses against the wall.
The Doctor is completely alone, in every sense of the word, in Yvonne’s office. He slowly walks over to the pristine white wall where the hole in reality once was, and presses his cheek to it, his face emotionless and his eyes dark and empty.
In the parallel world, Rose stops crying, as if she can somehow sense him, and presses her face to the wall, too. There are no words; just their haunted faces and the haunting music on the soundtrack. This is absolutely beautiful imagery, because they are sharing the same space, but in different realities. This is both the closest and the farthest apart they’ve ever been. I love it.
This doesn’t stop me weeping all over my television.
The Doctor pulls away first, and walks out of the room without turning back. Rose, bereft, turns her face to the wall and cries.
Rose wakes up, wearing very pretty pajamas, when she hears the Doctor call her name. By way of voiceover, she explains that she kept hearing him calling her in her dreams, so finally she told her mother and Mickey and Pete about it. We get to see the four of them sitting together by the fireplace in their jammies. Then they’re loading their luggage into a four-wheel drive, and Voiceover Rose tells us that they followed the voice in her dreams (eh?), across the Channel and to some beach in Norway. “And this is the story of how I died.”
Rose is standing on the beach, and staring out to sea, when the Doctor appears behind her, looking all see-through. She tells him he looks like a ghost, so he adjusts some setting on the sonic, and solidifies. She reaches out to touch him, but he tells her she can’t. They are now but an image to each other, “no touch”. This set me off crying again, because they’re the Doctor and Rose. Their relationship began with a touch, and always remained so physical; now it’s the last time they’ll ever see each other, and they can’t even touch. It is so beautifully cruel.
He tells her he’s in the TARDIS, and that he made a tiny gap in the fabric of reality, using so much power that the TARDIS is hooked up to a supernova. “I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye.” Rose concludes that this means he can’t take her back with him. He shakes his head sadly, and tells her that, were he to do such a thing, both their universes would collapse. “So?” says Rose, and they both laugh through their tears. She asks how long they have. About three minutes. She bursts into tears, saying that she doesn’t know what to say. The Doctor ducks his head, smiling in a way that makes my heart break. He looks over Rose’s shoulder, where Pete, Jackie and Mickey are keeping their respectful distance. He comments about Mickey being there, and Rose replies that it’s the five of them now. “Me, Mum, Dad, Mickey… and the baby.” The Doctor looks surprised. “You’re not…?” Rose shakes her head, smiling, and explains that it’s her Mum. What was he expecting her to say, anyway?
He asks her how her life’s been in this universe, and she says she’s back working in the shop. Good for her, he says rather unconvincingly, and she laughs and tells him to shut up. She’s actually working for this universe’s Torchwood now: “I reckon I know a thing or two about aliens.” The Doctor smiles proudly. “Rose Tyler, defender of the Earth!” She laughs, then starts crying again. To lift her spirits, the Doctor tells her that she’s dead. Well, as far as their universe is concerned anyway. She’s on a list of those who perished at Torchwood. She nods resignedly, and asks him what he’s going to do now. “Oh, I’ve got the TARDIS,” he tells her. “Same old life, last of the Time Lords…” The same line from the Christmas special, but with such a profoundly different meaning. As is Rose’s reply: “on your own?” Not ‘without me’, because still, even though she knows she’ll lose him, it’s never about her. If anyone is deserving of the Doctor’s love, it’s Rose Tyler. She’ll never see the love of her life again, and all she can think of is how alone he’ll be. He nods, holding back tears. Rose cries enough for the both of them, and has to take a few deep breaths before she can sob her next words out: “I love you!” The Doctor just looks at her, all the love and pain and tenderness in his eyes. Finally, he smiles bleakly. “Quite right, too.” Rose laughs through her tears, nodding. The Doctor sighs. “And, I suppose, if it’s my last chance to say it… Rose Tyler…” And then he fades away. Rose loses it good, and the music goes berserk as she throws herself into her mother’s arms, crying her heart out.
Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor has the words on his lips. But she’s gone, and he doesn’t say them. Because oh, she knows. He closes his eyes, and his tears finally escape. This is where I absolutely lost it, because THE DOCTOR CRIED.
No time for heartrending acting, though, because he’s suddenly not alone anymore. A figure in white has creepily appeared in the middle of the console room. “What?” splutters the Doctor, and the figure turns around. It’s a redhead in a wedding dress, veil and all. She looks utterly shocked. “Who are you?” The Doctor can only say “what?” again and again to every single question she shouts at him.
The End Of An Era. OMG, I need to lie down now. Wake me at Christmas.
Doctor Who Episode Cliche Meter
Scenes taking place in a lift: 1
Scenes running down corridors: 4
Takes place in London: Yes
Doctor gives the Alien Of The Week a choice: No way!