| THE STOLEN EARTH/JOURNEY'S END by Russell T Davies |
| Story 43 Synopsis: The Doctor lands the TARDIS on Earth, which promptly disappears. He goes to the Shadow Proclamation, who tell him it's one of 24 missing planets - Donna helps show that it's 27. By following the Tandocca Trail, he hopes to find the planets, but they come to the Medusa Cascade and it's empty. On Earth, Harriet Jones uses a Subwave Network to put Martha Jones in touch with Torchwood and Sarah Jane Smith. They boost a telephone signal to the Doctor, who realises the missing planets were hidden a second in the future. They let him know that the Daleks are behind it, and Davros reveals that he has been saved from his fate by Dalek Caan, and has triggered this new plan. The Doctor lands on Earth again, where he sees Rose. But as they run to each other, a stray Dalek exterminates him, moments before Jack arrives to blast it to bits. Rose and Jack help Donna get the Doctor into the TARDIS, where he starts to regenerate. He diverts the energy into his severed hand. But the TARDIS is transported to the Dalek base, the Crucible. The Doctor, Rose and Jack leave to face the music, but Donna is trapped inside. Davros has the ship dropped into the heart of the Crucible. Jack is exterminated, but is still alive and uses his chance to escape, where he meets Mickey and Sarah Jane. Donna touches the severed hand, causing it to regenerate a Doctor clone, who dematerialises the TARDIS from its predicament. Martha teleports to an Osterhagen base, so she can launch the Key which will detonate 25 nuclear warheads and blow up the Earth. Sarah Jane has a Warp Star, which Jack uses to threaten Davros. But he just teleports them to the Crucible, having shown the Doctor that his friends are just weapons. The Doctor clone lands the TARDIS nearby, having devised a way to zap Davros and all his Daleks. But Davros zaps him, and Donna. Davros decides to launch his super-weapon, the Reality Bomb. But nothing happens. Donna has gained some Time Lord knowledge, and puts the Bomb out of commission, and nobbles Davros. The stolen planets are all returned home, except Earth. The Doctor clone zaps all the Daleks, which appals the real Doctor. Using the TARDIS, they tow Earth home. Mickey decides to stay on this Earth with Jack and Martha. Rose returns to her Universe, where the Doctor leaves his clone as punishment. Donna wants to keep on, but the Doctor knows her memories will kill her. So he wipes her memory of all their time together, and returns her to her home. Her grandfather, Wilf, sees the Doctor off, thanking him for what he has done. |
| Review:- And so it comes down to this. The 4th series provides the reasons for the missing bees and the missing planets, not to mention Rose's desperate efforts to find and warn the Doctor... Events start impressively, with Earth vanished, and the Daleks in the skies, numerous and unstoppable. Rose, Jack and Sarah Jane have all crossed swords with them before, and have reason to be afraid of them. Meanwhile, the rest of Earth is diverted from wondering about the planets in their sky, by the Dalek attack. Puzzled, and with no-one else to turn to, the Doctor takes Donna to the Shadow Proclamation, which seems to be the Judoon. Having mentioned these guys a few times over the last few years, their appearance is a bit of a letdown. As is the all-too-brief appearance for the Judoon. Why bother? All they do is explain about the missing planets, whilst Donna fills in some of the gaps. Which leads to the bees, who in no surprise turn out to be aliens (the answer to any mystery, it sometimes seems), which leads us to the Medusa Cascade, which has also been mentioned before, and which is also a bit of a letdown, like an intergalactic Hunstanton. Again, the story pitches on the metaphorical rocks, before Harriet Jones turns up to bring the Doctor's friends together through a silly McGuffin called the Subwave Network that unites Torchwood with Martha and Sarah Jane (Rose amusingly co-opts Donna's family so she can at least watch what's happening). The presence of Torchwood is a bit insulting, really, and for anyone like me who doesn't watch any of these spin-off shows, runs the risk of leaving the viewer excluded from the big in-joke. Whilst Sarah Jane isn't quite as severe a problem owing to her previous form in the series, the clear references to her own show are pretty nepotistic, too. There should have been another way. Especially given the atrocious "everyone ring the Doctor" sequence, which ends his lull at the Cascade, and leads to Harriet's untimely death, and the OTT cliffhanger. That the Doctor should be exterminated whilst ignoring the main issue is symptomatic of the whole of the last 4 years. It might be argued that the Doctor usually puts as much focus on the smaller matters as the bigger picture, but Rose has been the bigger picture regardless of rationale for 4 years. Worse, having triggered a regeneration, he simply gets better, unwittingly setting up his hand to create its own clone. You know, as you do. Luckily, it rescues Donna from certain death. Things do improve once the Doctor comes face to face with Davros. The latter's comparison between his Daleks, and the so-called 'Children of Time' is cutting, given that the Doctor has indeed turned his friends into willing killing machines. Of course, this tremendous point is undercut when Davros simply renders them powerless, and Donna ultimately does exactly the same job. Not to mention his own clone proving Dalek-killer (perhaps Time Lords can't change their spots). Then there's the all-too-easy way that the Dalek Supreme is dispatched, which rather annuls the previous efforts to show its power. It's dismaying that Davros' big plan, which involved nicking all those planets, was a big super-bomb which will destroy all matter, leaving the Daleks triumphant and alone. It's even less engaging when Jackie escapes becoming the victim of the test firing for no reason other than having a magic button to escape with. If your heroes are so unthreatened, why will you care what happens? And the final move comes from Donna, 'just a temp'. Her amazing attribute turns out to be an awesome typing speed. Well, speaking from experience, you need more than that to be amazing. Davros ironically gives her the final nudge to become a computer genius. By this point, a viewer would probably be thinking "what the heck, just get on with it". The Daleks are disposed of, yet again, Davros may or may not perish, and the Doctor spends all his extra running time in seeing his friends off. This just leads to comic questions such as why Mickey can stay, but Rose can't. But a script like this which makes no concessions even to its own logic, is not going to falter at this late stage. So, happy endings all round... except for poor old Donna, who didn't ask to become a genius, but who did ask to join the Doctor on the TARDIS. Her amnesiac fate is doomed, of course, given the mass of events she's going to be expected to have missed (the Sontaran gas, for one). But at least she allows the Doctor one last scene with the real star of this series: Bernard Cribbins, who was never less than brilliant in each of his appearances. In a parallel world, Wilf would have joined the Doctor on his travels. Alas, here, the Doctor plodded into the rain, moping in his old Ship. So that was that... a promising and impressive Dalek plan rendered useless in record time, and a pointless accumulation of the Doctor's friends, who added nothing to Donna's moment of glory. Perhaps it's better to look forward in hope than to look back in anger. |
| Disclaimer: I have watched this story. |