| Original Transmission
Date 25th Dec 2008
Cast
Crew
The Doctor lands in London on Christmas Eve, 1851, where he encounters a woman called Rosita and another man who calls himself 'The Doctor'. After failing to capture a Cybershade, the two men talk, with the Tenth Doctor believing the other to be a future regeneration. Unfortunately, the other is lacking many memories. Meanwhile, the Cybermen are planning an attack with a human ally, Miss Mercy Hartigan. The Tenth Doctor follows the Next Doctor to the house of a dead man, where they search for clues to what the Cybermen are planning. The Next Doctor begins to remember some of his lost memories; when the Tenth Doctor finds a pair of 'infostamps' - essentially Cybermen hard drives - the Next Doctor remembers he was holding an infostamp the night he lost his memory. The Cybermen then attack the house, but before they can kill the Doctors, the Next Doctor kills them with an electrical charge in the infostamp.
At the dead man's funeral, Miss Hartigan and the Cybermen attack the mourners, sparing four who are subsequently fitted with Ear-Pods and dispatched by Miss Hartigan to their workhouses to recruit the children. Returning to the Next Doctor's home base, the Tenth Doctor is shown the others' TARDIS "Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style" - a gas balloon. Realising what has happened, the Doctor explains that the Cybermen have escaped from the Void (after the events of the Battle of Canary Wharf) when the walls of the universe were weakened in "a greater battle". The Cybermen came upon a man named Jackson Lake, the first person to disappear, attacking him and his wife. In the battle, Lake destroyed the Cybermen with an infostamp, as earlier in the house, but it also backfired, overwhelming Lake's mind with information on the Doctor. In despair at losing his wife, Lake came to believe he was the Doctor. Meanwhile, the children are taken to a sluice gate to the Thames. The Doctor and Rosita investigate and are confronted by Miss Hartigan, who explains that the Cybermen offered her liberation. The Doctor returns the infostamp to the Cybermen, who download it, confirming him as their foe. Miss Hartigan orders the Cybermen to delete the pair, but Lake appears and destroys the Cybermen with another infostamp, allowing them to escape. A furious Miss Hartigan announces that "the CyberKing will rise tonight!"
Lake reveals that he and his family were attacked at their new house and the Doctor realises it may lead to the Cybermen base. There, they find a Dimension Vault, stolen Dalek technology that allowed the Cybermen to escape the Void. In the Cybermen base, the captive children are working generating power in a giant engine to allow the CyberKing to ascend. Hartigan is betrayed by the CyberLeader and 'converted' to the CyberKing - thus receiving liberation from her anger and hatred. However, she proves too powerful to control, and uses her new powers to obliterate the CyberLeader. The Doctor, Rosita and Jackson evacuate the children, including Jackson's son who was abducted when he was attacked. However, the CyberKing - a giant Cyberman-shaped robot ship - emerges from the Thames and begins to lay waste to London. Using the hot air balloon, the Doctor confronts Hartigan and offers her a chance to live in peace. When she refuses, the Doctor uses the infostamps to sever her connection from the CyberKing. Realising what she has become, Hartigan screams in horror destroying the Cybermen and herself. Before the CyberKing can collapse on the city, the Doctor uses the dimension vault to transport it into the Time Vortex. In the aftermath, Jackson thanks the Doctor for what he has done and offers him a place at his Christmas celebration with Rosita and his son. They walk away, to eat a Christmas dinner in honour of those they have lost.
Analysis by Cuisle This episode was made in April, so we’ve had more than half a year of speculation about whether The Doctor was going to regenerate into David Morrisey, whether the woman in red was The Rani, and what exactly the cybershades were. And really almost every guess was wrong, except mine when I said that Morrisey WASN’T The Doctor, and Izzy the altar girl from church who LISTENED to me and won a bet with her brother!
Anyway, all the hype and guesswork aside, for a start this was a visually stunning episode. The idealistic Victorian Christmas opening looked like a cross between one of those Christmas cards with glitter on the snow and the opening of Muppet’s Christmas Carol. But then we went right into the story, with The Doctor meeting The Doctor and Rosita. The word ersatz immediately came to mind when I saw the two of them. They were like The Doctor and Rose in the same way instant coffee is like freshly brewed ground coffee or margarine is like butter. There was something not quite there with them, but you couldn’t quite not like either them.
One of the best post production cuts ever made has to be the one where Russell decided that The Doctor, having listened to the Other Doctor’s heart(s) originally mentioned that he only had one – making him human. It was far more effective to leave that out. That meant that The Doctor knew the truth but he didn’t reveal it to us or to anyone until the moment was right. An excellent production decision. The sonic screwdriver and the TARDIS were, again, ersatz versions of the real thing. And weren’t they brilliant! A real ordinary screwdriver and a hot air balloon. It was almost like when we played Doctor Who in the streets as kids.
The scene when The Doctor explained to Jackson Lane who he really was and how he came to have The Doctor’s memories was beautifully played by Tennant and Morrisey. Huge kudos to Morrisey for the pathos of his character. I had guessed all along that he was a ‘fake’ but had assumed it was a deliberate attempt to cash in on The Doctor’s reputation. Instead, this accidental Doctor was so sympathetic.
The plot involving Miss Hartigan, the Cybermen/Shades, the children of London’s workhouses and a giant cyberking was actually a sideshow to the relationship between The Doctor and Jackson. It was there merely for the children and the 40+ fanboys who need action and monsters to keep them amused. It was a mere backdrop to that grown up story about a man who lost his own identity and became The Doctor for a time, and actually doing the job quite well by all accounts. The cyberman plot wasn’t a bad one, and it held my attention, but it didn’t really matter. Anything, any story, be it Daleks, Sontarans, Slitheen, Yeti, Zygons, could have been wound around Jackson and The Doctor. It was a lot like some of the stories I’ve written. The point was the relationships between the characters. The guest monster, the action, was just background. And in fact, all the way back to 1963, that has been the case. Doctor Who is about The Doctor and his friends, and the people they interact with. Those who think its about Daleks or Cybermen or any other monster have just been watching the pictures move. They haven’t REALLY understood Doctor Who.
But a good Doctor Who episode can be watched in both ways. Those who want spectacle and adventure get that. Those who want the heart, the relationships, can rise above all that and see another layer entirely. This episode is chock full of that higher level of emotional insight and that is why I enjoyed it fully. The few criticisms of it that I’ve seen so far come from the immature minds who just want monsters.
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