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Original Transmission
A young man, Elton Pope, runs towards a deserted group of factories, stopping as he sees a police box standing incongruously near them. He is about to touch it when he hears a cry coming from inside the buildings. He quickly enters, and sees a glowing door at the end of the corridor. He opens it, and a slavering alien lunges towards him… It turns out that Elton is in his room, narrating the story of his life and encounters with alien lifeforms into a video camera. The creature is distracted when the Doctor suddenly appears from the doorway, dangling a raw pork chop. He tells Elton to run, just as Rose runs past Elton, throwing a blue bucket of liquid at the alien. However, this serves only to enrage it, and the Doctor points out that he instructed her to throw the "not-blue" bucket. As Elton watches, the alien chases the Doctor and Rose around, until Rose comes up with a red bucket and chases it instead. The Doctor stops running and stares at Elton, seeming to recognise him. Elton runs out of the factory, hearing the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising.
Elton notes that it was not the first time he met the Doctor, nor the last. He shows another clip, this one taken by his friend Ursula Blake. As they shoot his former family home, he describes how he first met the Doctor one night when he was three or four years old. He was awakened in the middle of the night and he went downstairs, finding the Doctor in his living room, looking just as he is now. He tells Ursula that he does not know why the Doctor was there. Back in his room, Elton describes to the camera how his ordinary life was transformed, first when he was in the thick of the Auton attack on London two years previously, then twelve months after that when a spaceship crashed into the Thames. Last Christmas Day, he saw the Sycorax ship above London. The Christmas invasion prompts Elton's search for information, until he comes across Ursula's blog, where he sees a picture of the Tenth Doctor. He meets up with Ursula, who introduces him to other people who are studying the Doctor: Bridget, Bliss and Mr Skinner. They begin to meet up beneath an old library, exchanging stories and theories about the Doctor. Elton coins a name for the group: the "London Investigation 'N' Detective Agency", or LINDA. However, over time, the group starts to be become more of a social group. Bridget starts cooking for them, Skinner reads excerpts from his novel-in-progress, and they even form a band. It is at this point that Victor Kennedy, a fat, flamboyant man arrives and takes over the group. Kennedy refuses to let anyone touch him, claiming he has "ecks-zeema". Elton asks him if he meant "eczema", and Kennedy replies that this is much worse: he blisters to the touch. After telling the group to stand back, Kennedy goes on to say that they have lost focus of their original purpose. He shows them a video clip of the Doctor and Rose leaving in the TARDIS, and Elton recognises the sound: the same sound that woke him up the night he first saw the Doctor.
Kennedy begins to train them in surveillance and investigative techniques, giving them information he has somehow obtained from Torchwood files and allocating tasks to each one of them. After the first meeting, he asks to have a private word with Bliss, and the others leave, not hearing her scream. At the next meeting, Kennedy tells the others that Bliss has left the group to get married. One day, they receive news of a police box sighting in Woolwich, which is why Elton was running for the factories earlier. When he returns to the group, Kennedy is furious at Elton for letting the Doctor get away and nearly strikes him with his cane. Ursula, however, comes to Elton's defence and threatens to smack Kennedy if he does so and give him a good kick. Kennedy backs off, and outlines their next step: to find the Doctor's companion. The Torchwood files on her are lacking; the evidence having been corrupted by the Bad Wolf virus. Armed with photographs of Rose and Elton's identification of her London accent, the group search the city for her. Elton manages to find someone who recognises Rose, and in turn is pointed towards Jackie Tyler. Meeting Jackie in a laundrette, he soon becomes friends with her, becoming her personal handyman. Kennedy is delighted at the progress, and at that meeting, asks Bridget for a private word. The others, once again, do not hear her scream as they are leaving. Eventually, one evening, Jackie tries to seduce Elton, but a phone call from Rose interrupts the mood. However, Elton comes to a few realisations: he genuinely likes Jackie, and he has romantic feelings for Ursula. He offers to cheer Jackie up by getting a pizza for them, but when he returns, Jackie confronts him. She has found the photograph of Rose in his coat and realises that he was using her to get to Rose and the Doctor. Elton tries to explain, but Jackie, upset, says that she will protect the two of them until the end of her life, and tells him to leave her alone.
Kennedy blames Elton yet again, and Elton has had enough. He tells Kennedy that it has all gone wrong and the rest of them are leaving. Kennedy asks Skinner to stay behind, claiming he had phone numbers for Bridget. After Elton and Ursula walk out, she realises she has left her mobile phone in the meeting room. When they return, however, Skinner is nowhere to be found, and Kennedy has transformed into a bloated, greenish alien creature with a Northern accent, with the faces of the former LINDA members grotesquely merged with his body. Elton dubs Kennedy an "Abzorbaloff". The consciousnesses of Skinner, Bridget and Bliss are still present in the Abzorbaloff's body. The creature reveals that his intention is to absorb the Doctor and his knowledge as well. Ursula demands that the Abzorbaloff give his victims back, but he absorbs her instead, Ursula's face appearing on the monster's chest. Elton begs him to let Ursula go, but the Abzorbaloff replies that the process is irreversible. Able to read the creature's thoughts, Ursula tells Elton to run, as she can sense that he is next. Elton runs, the Abzorbaloff eventually cornering him in a blind alley. Just as the monster is about to touch Elton, the TARDIS materialises, and the Doctor and Rose step out. Rose, however, is here for Elton, demanding to know why he upset her mother. The Abzorbaloff threatens to absorb Elton if the Doctor does not submit to him. From his research, he knows the Doctor will not let an innocent man die. The Doctor tells the monster not to mistake his "sweet" and "passionate" nature for being nice, and says the Abzorbaloff can do what he wants — but the others may have something to say about that.
The absorbed LINDA members realise that together, they can affect the Abzorbaloff's body. They pull together, and as the creature struggles, being pulled apart from the inside, he drops his cane to the floor. Ursula tells Elton to break the object. He does so, and the Abzorbaloff cries out in agony, dissolving into a gooey puddle. The Doctor explains that the cane created a limitation field; without it, the Abzorbaloff himself is being absorbed by the Earth. As Elton watches, the last remnant of Ursula says good-bye as she too is absorbed into the pavement. Rose comforts the distraught Elton. The Doctor finally reveals why he was in Elton's house all those years ago. An elemental shade that had escaped from the Howling Halls had taken residence in the house, and the Doctor stopped it. He was too late to save Elton's mother, who was killed. Speaking into the camera, Elton notes that the Doctor might be wonderful, but things get destroyed when he touches them, even for a second. He wonders about Jackie, and Rose, and when they will pay the price. However, the Doctor did one last favour for Elton: with his sonic screwdriver, he managed a partial reconstruction of Ursula. She is now just a talking face in a slab of pavement, but that does not matter to Elton, as he loves her. Concluding his story, Elton muses about the expectations of ordinary life: getting a job, getting married, getting a house, having children. But the real world is much stranger than that; it is so much darker, madder, and so much better.
In the Wizard University of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld there is a department called Reader of Unseen Writings, whose job it is to read the books that have not been written yet using the clues that resonate backwards through time. I say this because I am starting to understand how that job works. I can see in my mind’s eye the critical reviews that are going to come out about this episode and I know exactly what they are going to say. So before it gets ripped apart by those who have no love for the
Doctor or his monsters, lets find something positive to say. In itself, the idea of a Doctor Who story about the people left behind by him when he goes off in that box of his is not a bad idea. School Reunion gave us a big hint of how traumatic that is. And are we all really so stuck in the usual formula that we can’t handle something a bit different? I don’t think so. In itself it WAS an inspired idea. Mark Warren, who played Elton, the central character of this adventure,
was ideally cast. He epitomised the Doctor Who ‘anorac’
fan without being the total NHS glasses geek in a darkened room that
we usually expect. His portrayal of an ordinary man caught up in an
extraordinary world was very good. Usually The Doctor is the one on
screen almost every frame. This time it was Elton, the not quite with
it, but utterly likeable lad who just wanted to meet The Doctor. And
who can blame him for that? Peter Kaye, a very good comedian whose stand up material draws upon his memories of ordinary working class life in Northern England was not at all bad as an actor. As the manipulative Victor Kennedy he was very good. And he handled being a monster in what must have been very uncomfortable prosthetics very well. The L.I.N.D.A. group were a wonderful crowd of incidental characters
who are probably going to be dismissed as superfluous by some critics.
But they weren’t. They were caricatures, to be sure. The middle
aged conspiracy freak, Mr. Skinner who really wants to be an novelist,
Bridget, the mother searching for her missing daughter – an
echo of Jackie’s plight – Bliss, the dreamy art student,
and Ursula, the geeky girl represented a section of society that exist
but are so rarely allowed their chance to be front and centre in this
world. The potential relationship between Bridget and Mr Skinner,
cut short when Mr. Kennedy killed Bridget was a nice illustration
of how romance is not only for the young and the beautiful. Elton
and Ursula’s relationship, two young people who were never in
the fast lane of life, was also well played out.
Not the time spent on the L.I.N.D.A. group eating food and playing
1970s music. The point of those scenes was to develop the idea of
a group of people who come from different worlds but find a common
cause in each other. It was a touch of reality in the fantasy world
of Doctor Who and it served well to illustrate that this week we were
doing things a bit differently.
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