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Original Transmission
Cast
Crew
Plot Outline from Wikipedia Six months after the events of Aliens of London and World War Three, an anxious scientist, Mr. Cleaver, begs the Lord Mayor of Cardiff to stop the construction of a nuclear power plant. The design is unsafe to the point where it could lead to the death of millions, almost as if someone wanted the project to go wrong. The Mayor asks if he has revealed his findings to anyone else. Cleaver has not, so the Mayor — the Slitheen disguised as Margaret Blaine — removes her skin-suit and kills him. Mickey arrives at Cardiff Central station. He makes his way to the TARDIS parked in the middle of the square leading to the Wales Millennium Centre. The Doctor, Jack and Rose have parked it here to refuel by drawing power from the scar left when the Rift used by the Gelth was closed in 1869. The three are almost insufferably pleased with their adventures.
Mickey gives Rose her passport, as she had requested, and inquires about the TARDIS looking like a police box. The Doctor explains that its chameleon circuit was stuck in that shape when it landed in 1960s England, and that he has grown attached to the shape and stopped trying to fix the circuit. He dismisses concerns over its conspicuousness by saying simply that humans do not notice such things. As the process of absorbing the radiation from the scar will take another twenty-four hours, they decide to take in the sights of 21st century Cardiff. Meanwhile, Blaine is holding a press conference announcing the building of the Blaidd Drwg nuclear plant in the heart of the city, complete with a model. She assures her audience that as long as she walks upon the Earth, no harm will come to any of her citizens. A reporter, Cathy Salt, from the Cardiff Gazette, approaches Blaine and questions her about the mysterious deaths associated with the project, the latest being Cleaver, who was decapitated after slipping on very, very sharp ice. Blaine brushes the stories off as "small town thinking," but Salt informs her that before he died, Cleaver published some of his findings on the Internet, including his concerns that the design of the reactor would lead to a nuclear meltdown. Blaine invites Salt to follow her to the ladies' room. Blaine enters a cubicle, talking to Salt through the door, and unzips her skin-suit in preparation to kill the reporter. She hesitates, however, when she hears that Salt has a fiancé, and is three months pregnant. Blaine becomes depressed when she thinks about her lost family (killed at the end of World War Three) and allows Salt to leave unmolested, never knowing how close she came to death.
In a restaurant, the Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey are laughing and sharing an anecdote from Jack's life. The Doctor then notices, to his dismay, the front page of The Western Mail, with the headline "New Mayor, New Cardiff" and a picture of Blaine. The four march off to City Hall, where Jack outlines a plan of attack against Blaine, giving everyone instructions on which exit to cover. The Doctor takes umbrage, asking who is in charge, and Jack defers to him. The Doctor grins and tells them to go with Jack's plan. They use their mobile phones to co-ordinate their efforts. After a brief chase, during which Blaine repeatedly teleports away but the Doctor simply brings her back with his sonic screwdriver (as in The End of the World), she surrenders. During interrogation, the group finds that the teleporter is how Blaine managed to escape the conflagration that killed the rest of the Slitheen. The nuclear plant is built on top of the rift, and if it goes into meltdown, it'll open the rift and destroy the entire planet. The model turns out to hide a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator — a pan-dimensional surfboard — that could ride the wave of the explosion right out of the solar system. The project's name is Blaidd Drwg, which means "Bad Wolf" in Welsh and which Blaine claims she just picked at random, causing both the Doctor and Rose to realize that the phrase has been following them around. The Doctor looks worried for a moment, then dismisses it as coincidence. He tells the others that they will be taking Blaine back to her home planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius. Blaine informs them that the Slitheen are convicted criminals on their home planet, and she will be executed when she returns. The Doctor replies that it is not his problem.
The travellers take Blaine back into the TARDIS to hold there until they can return her to her planet. Blaine is extremely impressed by the TARDIS, enthusiastically proclaiming it to be the technology of the gods. Jack hooks the extrapolator into the TARDIS console; the power systems are not wholly compatible, but it should reduce the refuelling process by about twelve hours. Blaine calls them her executioners; daring them to look her in the eye, making the others uneasy as they settle down for the night. Rose and Mickey step outside to talk, and Rose admits that she really did not need the passport, but just wanted to see Mickey. The two decide to go and have a drink and perhaps find a hotel for the night. Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, Blaine asks, as a last request, that she be allowed a meal at her favourite restaurant. Jack produces a pair of bracelets that the Doctor and Blaine will wear — if Blaine moves more than ten feet away, she will be electrocuted by ten thousand volts of electricity. With this precaution, the Doctor agrees to escort Blaine out for the requested meal. Jack stays behind to work on the extrapolator and the TARDIS console.
During the meal, Blaine reveals her true name: Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen. She first tries to poison the Doctor's drink, then shoots a poisoned barb at him, and as a last resort, breathes poison gas in his face, but the Doctor casually blocks all these attempts. Along the waterfront in Cardiff, Rose is telling Mickey about her travels to other worlds when he confesses to her that, as Rose has been away for so long, he is now seeing Trisha Delaney. Rose is slightly taken aback, but tries to be supportive. Blaine, in the meantime, describes to the Doctor in graphic detail the execution process on Raxacoricofallapatorius. The condemned is lowered into a vat of boiling acetic acid, which eats away the outer skin and allows the internal organs to leak into the solution, all while the condemned is still alive and screaming. She pleads with the Doctor to take her to a planet where there are other Slitheen, that she be given another chance, but the Doctor does not believe that she has reformed.
Rose and Mickey's night has grown awkward, and Rose gets an admission from Mickey that the only reason he is seeing Trisha is because she is there and Rose is not. Mickey is upset that Rose left him without a second thought, and he still comes running when she calls. He tells her that he does not mind if she continues to travel with the Doctor, but he wants her to promise that when she stops, she will come back to him. Before Rose can answer, she hears a rumbling sound, like low thunder. Blaine continues to plead her case, describing how she spared Cathy Salt, but the Doctor reminds her that she is wearing the skin of a person whom she killed, and that she is speaking through a dead woman's lips. The Doctor adds that occasionally she may let one person go, but it means nothing — it is just so that she can live with herself. Blaine coldly retorts that only a killer would know that; the Doctor is the same. She explains that she was brought up to kill, that she had no choice. Then, the Doctor hears the rumbling as well, and suddenly Cardiff is being shaken by an earth tremor. As the streets fill with panicked people, the Doctor, and Blaine and Rose rush back to the TARDIS to find it shooting a coruscating column of light into the sky — the rift is opening on top of it. The cause is the extrapolator, which is still feeding off the TARDIS engine even though Jack has disconnected it. As it turns out, Blaine's obvious escape plan was a decoy for her alternative escape plan: anyone who discovered her would have to have access to advanced technology, and would therefore be intrigued by the extrapolator. The device was programmed to lock on to the nearest alien power source, in this case the TARDIS, and open the rift. As the planet rips apart, she will ride the extrapolator to freedom, as planned. She rips off a sleeve of her skin-suit, grabs Rose and threatens to kill her unless Jack places the extrapolator at her feet, which he does after a nod from the Doctor. However, the turmoil caused by the rift opens up the TARDIS console as well, and a blinding glow from within washes over Blaine. The Doctor explains it is the living heart of the TARDIS — its soul. Blaine stares into the glow, transfixed, and releases Rose. The Doctor urges Blaine to continue looking into the light. Blaine eventually smiles and thanks the Doctor before the glow envelops her completely, and the seemingly empty skin-suit collapses to the floor. The console closes, and the Doctor, Jack and Rose shut down the TARDIS console together, closing the rift once more.
Rose asks what happened to Blaine, and the Doctor replies that even he does not know how powerful the heart of the TARDIS is. The ship is telepathic, and can translate alien languages for its passengers; perhaps it can translate thoughts as well. He reaches inside the skin-suit and removes a Slitheen egg, the form into which Blaine has regressed. Blaine can now live her life again with her own choice of good or evil. Rose remembers Mickey, and rushes out to find him. On the streets, Rose asks the police about Mickey. However, Mickey is watching her from a distance and bitterly turns away without making his presence known to her. Rose returns to the TARDIS, which is now ready to depart. The Doctor offers to wait for her to find Mickey, but Rose says that Mickey deserves better. They prepare to take Blaine's egg back to Raxacoricofallapatorius, where she can get her second chance. A forlorn Rose looks at the egg, murmuring that a second chance must be nice.
Analysis by Cuisle The TARDIS needs to refuel? That struck me as a very strange idea. The TARDIS is powered by a piece of the Eye of Harmony, a star that was forced into supernova by a Time Lord called Omega millions of years before thus creating the power over time travel for his people and setting them above all others in the universe. That, or variations of that, is the understanding all serious Doctor Who fans have of the way the TARDIS works. It doesn't just run out of fuel.
The issue of crime and punishment was obviously a major plot of
this episode. Margaret tells The Doctor that in taking her to her
planet he is responsible for her execution and challenges his right
to take her life. We know The Doctor is essentially a pacifist who
tries to avoid taking life when possible. The accusation is an unfair
one and rings hollow to my mind, but The Doctor finds it uncomfortable.
There have been accusations that the eventual resolution of the problem
by the TARDIS was Deus ex Machina, but for The Doctor it WAS a better
solution than if he HAD to take her to her execution. He avoids having
to face the issue.
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