| Original Transmission
Date 16th Apr 2005
Cast
Crew
Plot Outline from Wikipedia The TARDIS materialises on a street in Rose's council estate. The Doctor has taken Rose back home, some twelve hours after she left at the end of Rose, by his estimate. However, when Rose goes to see her mother, Jackie stares at her in shock, as they have in fact been gone for twelve months. In the interim, Rose was declared missing, her mother organised a search campaign with posters and her boyfriend Mickey was suspected of murder. Jackie does not understand why Rose cannot seem to tell her where she has been all this time; she blames the Doctor, accusing him of taking her daughter for immoral purposes and slaps him.
Rose and the Doctor talk on the roof of her tower block, where she expresses her frustration at not being able to tell her mother because she would not understand. Nobody else on Earth knows that there are aliens and spaceships and things… just as a massive cruiser-like spaceship roars overhead, trailing black smoke. The craft zooms through Central London, its wing cutting into the side of the Clock Tower that holds Big Ben, ringing the bell before it finally careens and splashes down into the River Thames. The river is cordoned off by soldiers from the Parachute Regiment, and the Doctor and Rose have to watch the events unfold on the television in Jackie's flat. The world is being put on red alert, divers have apparently recovered an alien body from the wreckage of the craft, but there is still no word from the Prime Minister. The body is placed under military supervision under the command of General Asquith and brought to the nearby Albion Hospital. The general examines the body and asks Dr Sato, the pathologist, whether the creature is a fake. She tells him that X-rays of the skull show wiring she has never seen before — no one could have made it up.
MP Joseph Green, a large, flatulent man and a minor member of government, is escorted to 10 Downing Street, and is met by Indra Ganesh, a Junior Secretary with the Ministry of Defence. Ganesh tells Green that with the Prime Minister missing and the Cabinet trapped outside London due to the gridlock, Green is now Acting Prime Minister. Ganesh hands Green a red box containing Emergency Protocols to deal with extraterrestrial incidents, and Green is met by Margaret Blaine of MI5 and Oliver Charles, Transport Liaison, both as rotund as Green is. Blaine reports that she escorted the Prime Minister this morning to his car, but according to Charles, the car has disappeared. The three government officials leave Ganesh and enter the Cabinet Rooms. Once inside, they look at each other and start laughing.
The evening settles on Rose's estate, and people are holding alien-welcoming parties. The Doctor leaves Rose's flat, saying that he is not good with people. Rose thinks he is going to investigate the crash, but the Doctor tells her that he is not going to interfere with humanity's first contact with extraterrestrial life. To assure her he is not going to disappear, he gives her a TARDIS key. However, once downstairs, he enters the TARDIS and starts it up. Mickey spots the Doctor from his own flat and rushes down, too late as the TARDIS dematerialises.
The Doctor lands the TARDIS in a storage cupboard in Albion Hospital, and opens the door only to run into a group of soldiers, who level their rifles at him. At that moment, they hear a scream, and the Doctor immediately takes charge, barking out orders to lock down the perimeter. The Doctor finds Dr Sato cowering in the corner of an operating room. The supposedly dead alien had come back to life. The Doctor spots the alien, which looks like a pig in a spacesuit, and the creature flees in terror, only to be shot by a soldier. He angrily berates the soldier for killing the creature, protesting that it was only frightened. Examining the body with Dr Sato, the Doctor tells her that it is a real pig, its brain augmented by alien technology. Something else alien wanted to fake an alien crash landing, but for what reason? By the time Dr Sato asks the question, the Doctor is gone, to the echo of a dematerialising TARDIS. Harriet Jones, a backbench MP, approaches Green, Charles and Blaine, wanting a report to be placed on the next Cabinet agenda, but is brushed off. She enters the empty Cabinet Rooms and opens the Emergency Protocols box to place her report there, but is intrigued enough to start reading. Later, she hears General Asquith complaining to Green, Blaine and Charles about their inaction, and hides in a side room. In the Cabinet Rooms, the three government officials seem to find Asquith's complaints amusing, and they all start to break wind, laughing. When Asquith threatens to relieve Green of his role as Acting Prime Minister and place the country under martial law, the three unzip the tops of their heads, a bright blue light shining through. As Harriet watches terrified through a crack in the door, General Asquith screams.
Meanwhile, Mickey confronts Rose about where she has been with the Doctor, and smugly tells her about the TARDIS disappearing, telling Rose that the Doctor has abandoned her. When Mickey, Jackie and Rose go to where the TARDIS was formerly parked, Rose's key starts to glow, followed by the TARDIS materialising before their eyes. Rose proceeds inside with Mickey, but Jackie is too overwhelmed by what she has seen, and exits the ship to run back to her flat. The Doctor confesses that he suspected the crash — it was too perfect a set-up. Mickey notes that it is an odd way to invade a planet by putting it on red alert. Mickey (whom the Doctor insists on calling "Ricky") and the Doctor exchange barbs, but the Doctor has more important things to do. While Mickey and Rose catch up, the Doctor modifies the TARDIS scanner to track the spacecraft back twelve hours before the crash and discovers that it was launched from Earth. Whoever these aliens are, they have been here for a while. Jackie sees a news report calling for anyone who has seen any evidence of the existence of aliens and calls the Emergency Alien Hotline to report that she has seen one — the Doctor, in a blue box he calls the TARDIS. This combination of key words triggers a Code 9 alert, and Ganesh rushes to tell General Asquith. Inside the Cabinet Office, the alien that was Oliver Charles puts on the general's skin, while Blaine remarks that they have do something about the "gas exchange" that is causing their flatulence. Ganesh tells Asquith about that the Doctor has been spotted, and when Blaine asks who this "doctor" is, Ganesh explains that the Doctor is the expert on aliens, one they desperately need. In the meantime, other alien experts from around the world, including the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, are being summoned to Downing Street.
When the Doctor, Rose and Mickey exit the TARDIS, they are immediately surrounded by armed soldiers, vehicles and a helicopter. Mickey runs away and escapes, but the Doctor and Rose are put into a limousine and escorted to 10 Downing Street. The police escort Jackie up to her flat and a full-figured, gassy police inspector assures Jackie that Rose is in a position to help her country, and asks Jackie how she made contact with the Doctor. At Downing Street, Ganesh, who has gathered all of the experts together, meets the Doctor and Rose. Ganesh tells them that their ID cards must be worn at all times, and ushers them into a room. Rose, however, is not cleared and thus not allowed in. Harriet Jones, who managed to sneak out of the Cabinet Rooms unseen, comes along at this point and offers to take care of Rose. She takes Rose to the Rooms and shows her Oliver Charles's empty skin. When they search the room for alien technology, they find the body of the Prime Minister stuffed in a cupboard. Ganesh enters at this point, and is aghast when he sees the Prime Minister's body. At the briefing headed by Asquith and Green, the Doctor reads the reports and notices that three days before, a satellite picked up a blip of radiation under the North Sea. However, before anyone could investigate, the crash happened. The Doctor realises, however, that the reason someone would fake an alien invasion is so they can gather those who have experience and knowledge in fighting off aliens together in one place. The crash is not a diversion — it's a trap. In the Cabinet Rooms, Blaine enters, closing the door behind her. Ganesh states that it's impossible for the Prime Minister to be dead, as he was driven away from Downing Street that morning. Blaine smugly explains that the only reason that he thinks that is because she told him that earlier, and begins to unzip her head before a horrified Ganesh, Rose and Harriet. In Jackie's flat, the police inspector does the same, and in the briefing room so does General Asquith. The enormous, greenish aliens wriggle out of their skins, the one inhabiting Blaine attacking Ganesh and the one that used to be the inspector cornering Jackie in her kitchen. In the briefing room, the unmasked Asquith identifies himself and his cohorts as the Slitheen. With that introduction, Green activates a hand-held device that sends a deadly dose of electricity jolting through the experts' ID cards, including the Doctor's…
Analysis by Cuisle Remember about the subtext of the series being about consequences.
For the first time ever we find out that there are consequences to
The Doctor taking a human being into time and space. We see her mother,
a year on, running a ‘where is RoseTyler’ poster campaign
while Mickey has been questioned as a murder suspect and taken over
from Clive as the internet expert on The Doctor’s activities.
The only other time any reference was made to the family backgrounds
of companions was in Survival, the last of the Sylvester McCoy episodes,
when Ace returned to her home town and discovers the fates of her
former friends. Even then, nobody seems to have missed her much, but
Rose’s disappearance had a profound effect on both Jackie and
Mickey and Rose seems in two minds about whether she will stay with
The Doctor or not.
There are many people, I’m one of them, who thinks we can do
better than that in the face of the world. And the significant population
of the world who are more than a size 14 were really not thrilled
at having fat jokes thrown in as well. Granted the logic that 8 foot
aliens needed big people’s bodies, but that actually meant that
any overweight person with a stomach upset was going to be an object
of amusement from now on. Russell T. Davies, who is not exactly a
stick insect himself, ought to have known better.
Subplots, of course, are the relationship triangle between Rose, The Doctor and Mickey. When The Doctor observes Rose and Mickey together there is definitely some green eyed jealousy there, while Mickey very much resents The Doctor for taking Rose away from him. That Rose’s relationship with The Doctor is growing is evident in little moments all through the episode if you’re awake. Most significant, maybe, when The Doctor says “I don’t go anywhere without her” at Downing Street. He wants her with him. She wants to BE with him.
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