| Original Transmission
Crew
Medical student Martha Jones is walking to work when she receives a series of phone calls from various members of her family. Each is calling about her brother Leo's 21st birthday party that evening. She is interrupted by a stranger (the Doctor) who takes off his tie, smiles and says, "Like so, see?" and walks off. Bemused, she continues on. She arrives at the Royal Hope Hospital, bumping into a black leather-clad man wearing a motorbike helmet at the entrance, who ignores her. Later, getting her white coat from a locker, she receives an electric shock from its door. The consultant, Mr Stoker, is leading a ward round including Martha. They start with Florence Finnegan, whom Mr Stoker diagnoses as being salt deficient, and continue on to the Doctor, introduced as John Smith. Martha challenges him about the events earlier that morning, but he denies being present. She wonders whether he might have a brother, but he answers, "Not any more." Martha listens to his chest and hears two hearts. He gives her a wink and she smiles back at him. Later, Martha is chatting to her sister on the phone. Martha mentions that it is raining outside, but her sister says the weather is beautiful where she is, just blocks away. She turns the corner and sees the hospital in the middle of its own storm. Martha is dismissive until her co-worker and sister both tell her that the rain is going up instead of down. There is a tremor, and when Martha looks out, she realises the hospital is on the Moon. Many of the patients and staff are scared, but Mr Stoker looks out calmly, while Florence Finnegan searches for him.
Martha and her colleague head for a window which Martha intends to open, whilst the Doctor nips behind a curtain. Martha's colleague panics, telling her that if she opens the window all the air will be sucked out. Martha calmly rationalises that that cannot be true as the window is not airtight, so it would have happened already anyway. The Doctor pulls back the curtain, now wearing a blue pinstripe suit, and tells Martha she is correct. They discuss why they can all still breathe, and the Doctor is impressed with Martha's reasoning. He asks if they have any kind of balcony; Martha tells him they have one for patients to use. The Doctor invites her to go step out onto it with him, warning her they might die. Martha calmly replies they might not, winning the Doctor's further approval. Going out on to a balcony, the Doctor demonstrates the presence of a force field around the hospital. He asks Martha what she believes is going on. She firmly believes the situation is alien interference, noting that it would have sounded crazy a few years ago, but with the Slitheen, Sycorax and Cybermen trying to invade over the past two years, it's much more believable. As she continues to refer to him as Mr Smith, the Doctor informs her of his preferred title. Martha assumes he means "Doctor Smith", but he clarifies he means just "the Doctor". Huge cylindrical ships appear and land outside the hospital. Black armoured soldiers march out and the Doctor identifies them as the Judoon.
As Mr Stoker looks on, Florence Finnegan enters with her two Slabs, having the appearance of motor biking couriers, telling him she needs help. Mr Stoker says he does not believe he can help anyone in the current situation and reflects on his plans to retire and how he believes he will never see his daughter ever again. Florence insists he can help her and explains cryptically why her salt levels were abnormal. She tells the Slabs to hold him as she takes out a straw and walks menacingly towards him. The Judoon enter and begin scanning people. Their leader removes his helmet, revealing a head like a rhinoceros, then issues orders in an alien language; the Judoon draw their guns. One of the trainee doctors attempts to speak for the humans, but the leader responds by shoving him against a wall and using a device in order to translate his own speech into English. He then scans the trainee, confirms him as human and marks him with a black cross on his hand. Hiding on a balcony with Martha, the Doctor says they are looking for non-humans, bad news for him. Martha does not believe that he is an alien. The Doctor tells her that Judoon are police-for-hire, and if they decide that the hospital is hiding a non-human criminal, the hospital could be sentenced to death. The Judoon continue upwards through the building, scanning each and every human. The trainee doctor insists they are only there to conduct a harmless scan on everyone, but a male patient panics and strikes a Judoon from behind with a vase, which merely shatters against the alien's armour. The Judoon leader declares the punishment for this act of physical assault to be execution. The soldiers comply, shooting the man with energy weapons that completely incinerate him. As the shocked trainee tells them they "didn't have to do that", the commanding Judoon replies, "Justice is swift."
The Doctor attempts to access information from a hospital computer but finds to his frustration that the Judoon have wiped the records. He explains to Martha that he had no idea they were coming and that he had only admitted himself to the hospital because he had detected signs of a Plasmavore. He asks her if she knows anyone who has checked into the hospital in the last week with unusual symptoms; she says that Mr Stoker would know and heads to his office. When she arrives there, Florence is still sucking his blood through the straw. Martha runs off but Florence orders one of the couriers to go after her. The Doctor meets her in the corridor and they run together to a room with an X-ray machine. The Doctor seals the door with his sonic screwdriver and tells Martha to activate the machine when he says "Now!". The courier comes in and the Doctor scorches it with radiation but his screwdriver is destroyed in the process. He expresses remorse at first, but then throws it away. Martha tells the Doctor about Florence and he says that because she sucked Mr Stoker's blood and assimilated him, she will register as human when the Judoon scan her. He explains to Martha that she is a Plasmavore, a blood-sucking alien. He hurries to find her before the Judoon but it is too late; she has already been scanned and marked as human. The Judoon see the Doctor and scan him. He registers as non-human and they think he is the Plasmavore. They try to execute him but he escapes with Martha. Meanwhile, oxygen levels are decreasing and Martha's co-worker is giving extra oxygen to a patient. The Doctor tells Martha to give him time to find Florence, then kisses her and runs off, leaving a startled Martha in his wake. The Judoon catch up with her and begin scanning her. They identify her as human, but with traces of non-human DNA (from the kiss). Meanwhile the Doctor finds Florence tampering with an MRI device. Reverting to his cover story, he pretends to be just another amazed human who has no idea what is happening. She orders her remaining Slab to hold the Doctor while she explains her plan. She says that she will overload the MRI device, frying the brains of everyone in the hospital and half the population of Earth, leaving her free to escape the Judoon because she is safe in the room. The Doctor tells her they are doing secondary scans, so she sucks his blood to defend herself against it. He falls to the floor, apparently dead.
Meanwhile, the Judoon have confirmed Martha is human, and march to the MRI lab. Martha is shocked to see the Doctor dead but realises he sacrificed his life to save them. She scans Florence, who now registers as alien having assimilated the Doctor's blood. The Judoon charge her with the murder of the child princess of Patrivolde Regency Nine. Florence proudly admits her guilt, then orders her minion to attack the Judoon; they swiftly dispatch it and eradicate Florence too, but not before she can activate the overload. The Judoon detect the problem, but declare their duty fulfilled and swiftly withdraw. The oxygen is nearly depleted and the magnetic overload is approaching critical state. Frustrated, Martha tries to resuscitate the Doctor herself, eventually thinking to apply pressure to both his hearts. He awakens and unplugs the machinery. Martha passes out and the Doctor picks her up, crying for the Judoon to save them as they take off. It starts raining again and the hospital is transported back to Earth where Martha's sister Tish is waiting. Martha watches the Doctor leave and sees him head toward a strange blue box, but while she is distracted by her sister both the Doctor and the box disappear.
At Leo's party, the family are arguing over Annalise (Martha's father's girlfriend), who mocks Martha's claims of having been to the moon and cites the publically released cover story (involving everyone in the hospital being drugged in a conspiracy). The argument spills into the street, increasing in animosity as Martha's mother vents her resentment toward Annalise, but Martha spots the Doctor. She follows him around the corner, to see him standing before the blue box, whereupon he introduces himself as a Time Lord and the box as the TARDIS. He then offers her a trip to thank her for her help, but she tells him she does not have the time – she cannot go off into space with him, she has to go into town the following morning and pay bills. He informs her that his ship is also a time machine. She does not believe him. The TARDIS dematerialises and rematerialises; the Doctor steps out, holding his tie. Martha realises that this accounts for their encounter earlier that day.
She then cautiously enters the TARDIS and is amazed that it is bigger
on the inside. The Doctor talks about Rose, saying that they were
"together" and that she is now "with her family",
but says Martha is not replacing Rose; he is just going to take her
on one single trip to thank her for saving his life. She flirts with
him, saying, "You're the one who kissed me." He assures
her that it was a genetic transfer, and she explains that she is not
remotely interested – she only goes for humans. As he turns
away, though, she looks quite sadly at the floor. The Doctor powers
up the TARDIS. As the TARDIS flies through the time vortex it begins
to shake violently, while the Doctor and Martha shake hands over the
console. The Doctor says, "Welcome aboard, Miss Jones!",
to which she replies, "It's my pleasure, Mr. Smith!"
There will almost certainly be critics who won’t like this. There will be some who will pick up on little details like the Doctor hopping around trying to get the Roentgen rays out through his shoe. They will almost certainly dismiss that as silly. They will probably complain that the CGI alien ships looked like they came from The Last Starfighter and that too much time was wasted on the introduction of Martha to the TARDIS in the last ten minutes.
But that would be unfair nitpicking. This opening episode which introduced Martha was as good as it needed to be. It opened, must like ‘Rose’ way back this weekend in 2005, focussing on Martha, and we wondered when The Doctor was going to turn up. His brief introduction, in which he came up to Martha and took off his tie in front of her was a tantalising moment. Of course that was going to be explained later. It was obvious, also, that The Doctor had a reason to have signed himself into the hospital as a patient. And it wasn’t long before he was proved right. The gradual realisation that something was wrong at the Royal Hope Hospital was very well done. First we discovered that a very localised thunderstorm was focussed on it, while a mere street away Martha’s sister was bathed in sunshine. Then the rain started raining upwards, an absolutely brilliant effect. And then moments later the hospital and the pavement around it was on the moon. When The Doctor and Martha stepped out onto the balcony it looked fantastic.
The ‘slabs’ had been christened before the episode on my online forum as the evil Stiggs. That is a cultural reference you either understand or you don’t. If you don’t, there’s no point trying to explain. But the fact that the alien motorcycle couriers in black leather and shiny helmets didn’t utter a word throughout the episode actually confirms the ‘Stigg’ reference. Their purpose wasn’t immediately obvious. They might well be a set up for a new wave of action figures. Their costumes would certainly translate to 5 inch size easily. In the episode they played a sort of cross between the robot santa ‘pilot fish’ preparing the way for the baddie, and Cassandra’s helpers from End of the World, as they flanked Mrs Finnegan. Then there is the Judoon! They were, as The Doctor said, logical but THICK. And that was just what they needed to be. They had one fixed mission and would not deviate from it – find the non-Human. The ‘execution’ of the man who tried to fight against them seemed almost unnecessary violence. But it wasn’t. It was necessary to establish that they could not be messed with. Mrs Finnegan the Plasmavore COULD be messed with, though. And The Doctor messed with her big time. His ‘dumb Human’ act when he confronted her was reminiscent of his ‘drunk’ act in Girl In The Fireplace. The Tenth Doctor is an accomplished actor! And this sort of thing works very well to distract his quarry. Allowing himself to be ‘killed’ by the plasmavore in order to trap her with his non-Human blood assimilated into herself was a very interesting plot device. By rights, as we know, he should have started to regenerate when his hearts stopped. Possibly, this was why he passed the genetic material to Martha in that ‘kiss’. So that she could return it with the artificial respiration that brought him back. But the story doesn't actually convey that idea on screen. Which leads to one possible weak point in the story, which might well be missed on first viewing. Assuming it WASN'T to do with the artifical respiration later, WHY did The Doctor transfer genetic material with a kiss? Yes, it meant that the Judoon knew Martha had been in contact with a non-Human. It wasn't a totally pointless scene. But is THAT ALL? I strongly suspect that Russell T. Davies just wanted to write a kiss into the story, because there was one in New Earth and the two stories were bound to be compared. And Ok, fair enough. It made a pretty scene. But he does need to avoid putting things in just on a whim like that. Because the critics will hammer him for it.
But getting back to the 'death' scene, the fact that he looked like a man whose hearts had been stopped, and who was running out of oxygen, is a credit to David Tennant’s acting. He made it look like a struggle as he stopped the MRI machine from overloading and doing with ordinary hospital equipment what the Delta Wave of Parting of the Ways would also have done. All this too a little over 35 minutes. Like ‘Rose’ it wasn’t an over complicated story. It needed the space between the action and in this case at the end of the action to establish Martha as a companion. Comparisons with the ‘Rose’ episode are inevitable. Rose Tyler’s introduction to the TARDIS was in the middle of the action with the Mickey Auton on the attack. Her astonishment at the ‘bigger on the inside’ alien ship was secondary to the main event. Martha, had time to work it out. She felt the ‘wooden’ exterior of the spaceship. She noted that it would be ‘intimate’ inside, before going inside and saying the inevitable phrase - ‘it’s bigger on the inside’ – The Doctor mouthing the words along with her was a sardonic reminder of how often that has happened over the years.
How many companions, over the same years, have stepped aboard for ‘one trip’ only to be gone for months? When The Doctor told her it was just one trip, we didn’t believe him. Nor did we believe him when he said he didn’t need anyone else. He certainly DOES. A great introductory story for Martha. A great recap of exactly why
The Doctor is the man he is and how he does things. Yes, that last
ten minutes after the action did make it seem a little unbalanced
in terms of story telling. But with Doctor Who nothing goes along
predictable lines, not even the script. And another thing. Right in the middle of Passion Sunday Mass, I realised that, in common with a lot of last year's stories there WAS a huge piece of Christian symbolism in the story. The Doctor DIED and was RESURRECTED. It probably doesn't do to dwell too heavily on such things. They don't stand up to a serious theological examination. But I for one find the loose analogy fascinating.
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