Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #12 – “The Stolen Earth”
The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.
Every week, I’ll do my best to go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the “sonic screwdriver” equivalent might be) and call out the highlights, low points, continuity checks and storyline hints I can find to keep in mind for future episodes. I’ll post the review each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before I spoil anything.
Missed a week? Check out the “Doctor Who in Review” archive or check out any of the past editions of this column via the links at the end of this article.
Keep in mind, I’m going to assume readers have already watched the episode when I put fingers to keyboard and come up with the roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!
Let’s begin now, shall we?
Season Four, Episode #12: “The Stolen Earth”
IN BRIEF: Fearing the worst, Donna Noble and The Doctor head to Earth to see what last episode’s ill omens might portend. A short time later, the Earth up and disappears — and we’re treated to a peek at how the cataclysmic event rocks the worlds of various characters from Doctor Who and the series’ spin-offs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. The Daleks have returned with some help from the missing Dalek Caan, who sacrificed his sanity to travel back in time and rescue Davros, the creator of the Daleks. The Doctor and Donna travel to The Shadow Proclamation and discover that the missing planets, when aligned properly, form a massive machine. They follow the path of the missing bees to the Medusa Cascade, only to lose the trail. Former Prime Minister Harriet Jones makes a surprise appearance, unites The Doctor’s former companions and comes up with a plan to contact The Doctor. The plan is successful, but Harriet Jones is killed by the Daleks. The Doctor arrives on Earth and reunites with Rose Tyler, only to catch a glancing — but fatal — shot from a Dalek. The gang makes it to the TARDIS just in time for The Doctor to announce that he’s regenerating, and… “TO BE CONTINUED.”
THE GANG’S ALL HERE: I have to hand it to the [[[Doctor Who]]] crew for starting the episode off with a pretty impressive “bang” — even if Rose Tyler’s “tough girl” scene with the gun didn’t seem to fit the character. The series of scenes that brought each of the Who spinoffs ([[[Torchwood]]] and [[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]]) into the story didn’t seem forced or jarring, which was a real possibility given the dramatically different tone of each series. I enjoyed Sarah Jane’s reference to this difference between the teams, saying that she and her kids-savvy adventures stay out of touch with Torchwood because they have “too many guns.”
CRISIS ON INFINITE CROSSOVERS: Okay, so I’m willing to bet I’m not the only person who, upon seeing Earth’s skies filled with far-too-close planets, thought this was probably what the skies looked like at certain points during the last few “Crisis” events in the DC Universe. Of course, after having this thought, it then occurred to me how ridiculous it would have been if the explanation for all of the planets in the sky ended up having something to do with Davros punching (literally) a hole in reality.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED: Well, it looks like we know where all of those planets disappeared to. And what the Shadow Proclamation is. And why all the bees buzzed off. (Sorry about that last one.) And 85 percent of the other lingering questions this season… Way to save it up for the finale!
QUESTIONS UNANSWERED: Let’s see… What are we missing? The mystery of The Doctor’s name is still, well… a mystery. And though we saw the Medusa Cascade, we still don’t know what connection it has to The Doctor’s name, so there’s that, too.
CREATURE REPORT: What more can we say about the Daleks? Davros, on the other hand, remains as creepy today as he did several decades ago when he first appeared on the series.
SETTING IT TO 11: Apparently, in a world where alien attacks occur with some regularity, I guess it makes sense to have a more varied spectrum of alerts for the various military and government agencies, but “Ultimate Red Alert?” Really? That sounds a bit too much like “Double Secret Probation” for my tastes.
WILF THE WONDERFUL: Friday’s episode pretty much makes it official, folks — Donna’s grandfather, Wilf, is my favorite character this season. His blink-and-you-miss-it part in the last Christmas Special, “The Voyage of the Damned,” was decent, but it was his presence in the season premiere, “Partners in Crime,” that first sold me on the possibility that there might be some advantages to former companion Martha Jones’ departure. Every time Wilf makes an appearance, it’s always a better episode because of it. Sure, Captain Jack Harkness has legions of devoted fans, but Wilf is my hero.
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A GOOD CLIFFHANGER: And with the ending of this episode, I’m reminded of how much love I have for a good cliffhanger — and how I occasionally hate them with the fire of 1000 suns. The end of this episode has me feeling the same way I felt when writer Brian K. Vaughan left me hanging on the last page of each issue of [[[Y: The Last Man]]].
LINE OF THE WEEK: “It’s like an outer space facebook!”
READER REPORT: Mike Weber had the following to say in the comments for last week’s Doctor Who in Review, pointing out an interesting parallel between the popular Season 3 episode “Blink” and another work of literature:
An interesting point re-reading P.C.Hodgell’s wonderful high fantasies featuring a very unuausal – make that Very Unusual – heroine named Jameth, i hit Bones, a 1984 short story sandwiched in the middle of an omnibus edition of the first two books ([[[Godstalk]]] and [[[Dark of the Moon]]], collected under the title [[[Dark of the Gods]]] by Atlanta’s own, lamented Meisha Merlin Press). It contains the following Very Interesting passage (Jame, who is an apprentice thief at this point, and he Master are cornered by the animated skeleton of a master architect, who wants his head back. uezal is the architect’s pet gargoyle, serving his skeleton as a head, and “vhors” are ratlike creatures; the ones in this story are also skeletal):
“Another fit of coughing seized Jame. When her eyes cleared again, the vhors and theirmaster were withn five feet of her. So that was it: Like Quezal, they could only move when unobserved. If she so much as blinked now, she was finished.”
Also, be sure to check out Vinnie Bartilucci’s additional notes on last week’s episode — they’re great stuff.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE NEXT EPISODE, “Journey’s End”: The Doctor is regenerating… or is he?
Thanks to the good people at The Doctor Who Wiki for information related to several of this week’s story notes.
Screencaps courtesy of SciFi.com. For more on Doctor Who and other great programs, check out Scifi.com and the BBC.
Want to know what you’ve been missing? Check out all of the past “Doctor Who in Review” features via the following links:
Season Four, Episode #1 – “Partners in Crime“
Season Four, Episode #2 – “The Fires of Pompeii”
Season Four, Episode #3 – “Planet of the Ood”
Season Four, Episode #4 – “The Sontaran Stratagem”
Season Four, Episode #5 – “The Poison Sky”
Season Four, Episode #6 – “The Doctor’s Daughter”
Season Four, Episode #7 – “The Unicorn and the Wasp”
Season Four, Episode #8 – “Silence in the Library“
Season Four, Episode #9 – “Forest of the Dead”
"I have to hand it to the Doctor Who crew " – you mean to tell me you dind't hang on to that line till next week? Wow, you really HAVEN'T seen the episodes in advance…"Of course, after having this thought, it then occurred to me how ridiculous it would have been if the explanation for all of the planets in the sky ended up having something to do with Davros punching (literally) a hole in reality." see previous comment…Possibly the most jaw-dropping cliffhanger in quite a while. A classic example of taking something that every one of the viewers knows is An Important Thing and using it at the proper moment. DUELING PLANETS – The idea of planetary configuration used to generate power has been referenced in Doctor Who before. The shrunken worlds in The Pirate Planet (which gets an oblique tip of the hat by "Callufrax (sic) Minor" being one of the missing worlds in this episode) were being used to generate incredible power to keep Queen Xanxia alive, frozen in temporal stasis at the last seconds of her life. In Planet of Evil, The Doctor suggests to Professor Sorenson that he "decided" to forsake investigation of the animatter crystals on Zeta Minor to look into harnessing the kinetic energy of moving planets. A slightly similar idea is the "Kemplerer Rosette" Larry Niven references in the Known Space books. Here, a configuration of planets does not generate power, but their gravitic attraction on each other allow them to remain in relative positional stasis to each other. The powerful and overly-cautious Pierson's Puppeteers placed their home world and several of their farming planets into a rosette, and are towing them out of the galaxy altogether, to escape a cataclysmic explosion at the galactic core that won't reach Known Space for tens of thousands of years.Ironically, the American Doctor Who comic published by IDW is currently doing a storyline featuring planets being stolen by a mysterious nemesis.SEVEN SECONDS INTO THE FUTURE – While I can't find any reference to back me up, I seem to recall the Transduction Barriers (as referenced in The Invasion of Time) on Gallifrey working in a similar way to the little hide-and-seek trick used for the missing planets in the Cascade. The Barriers shift the Gallifrey system several seconds out of phase with the rest of space, rendering them inaccessible to attack.CALL FOR THE DOCTOR, QUICK, QUICK, QUICK – To my disappointment, the phone number displayed on the cellphones in the episode was NOT a functioning number. Though about 2500 people had the same idea, according to the London Daily Mail – that many people tried dialing the number during and after the episode. Quite a marketing opportunity missed, IMHO. Considering how many people went to the Primatech Paper website after a business card featuring the website address and (also working) phone number on Heroes, they could have had a great deal of fun with it.YES, WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE – Harriet Jones, Former Prime Minister was supposed to have served three terms and ushered in England's next Golden Age, according to The Doctor in her first appearance. So it's not surprising that on both the episode commentary and in Confidential, jokes abounded that she had a trap door in her house and escaped at the last moment, before the Daleks had a chance to fire.GUEST STAR REPORT – If a company could earn Carbon Credits for recycling actors, Doctor Who could cover the entirety of the BBC. Davros is played by Julian Bleach, last seen as the creepy Ringmaster in the Torchwood episode From Out of the Rain.
Personal favorite throwaway bit:"You're trying to tell me that bees are aliens?""Don't be daft! Not all of them."
What an amazing episode. It is unfortunate that the previews on SciFi for the next episode came up so quickly to spoil some things. The commentary is by the Dalek crew and I have notes I'll have to type in later in the week about that. One humorous line was about The Doctor and Rose running towards each other on "the longest street in London." So, now we know what happened to Dalek Caan. They had reduced the Daleks back down to one and then he somehow gets Davros out of the Time War bubble and the two of them create a new Dalek race again. Folks watching this on SciFi should know that the season finale is scheduled to start at 8:30 so they can get it into a 90 minute block. The commentary for the finale runs just about 63.5 minutes so with any luck the 26.5 minutes left will be enough advertisements for SciFi and they won't cut anything out.
I finally went to You Tube to see the BBC trailer for Journey's End. It didn't spoil anything. I can't fathom why SciFi didn't use that.
As i've said before, when i saw the end of this episode (and remembering that Rose's brief appearance in the first episode was left out of pre-broadcast airings for critics), i found myself wondering of the reports of Tennant appearing in the specials next year were one of the most successful disinformation campiagns in the hostory of television.
I just happened to catch the episode after spending the day at the SD convention. Having stood for a few minutes by a 'life-size' Dalek it was a kick to find the old boys popping up as the villains here.Did love both 'bee' line and the Facebook reference, but I'm sure there were many more I missed. Also, seeing all those companions there on the computer screen did make me go all warm & fuzzy for a moment.Got to set the DVR for sure this week!
The commentary for this episode features Nicholas Briggs (Dalek Voice), and Dalek Operators Barnaby Edwards and Nick Pegg. They said that this was the first time they shot Daleks out on the streets with people watching. Apparently people in Cardiff have figured out when Doctor Who does it location shooting there. Nicholas Briggs voiced the Judoon, Dalek Caan, the Supreme Dalek and more. Elizabeth Sladen doesn't particularly like Mr. Smith because he really heats up the set there. The TARDIS set, Torchwood, and Sarah Jane's attic are all together in the same studio. They said that reading the script was a thrill a minute. The Dalek operators likened being in a Dalek to being in a Flintstones car. Apparently the door that the Supreme Dalek comes through is about a half inch smaller than the Supreme Dalek. There was a big cut in the script when the Doctor and Donna visited the Shadow Proclamation. Originally they were going to have the Slitheen and other alien races there as well. They decided to cut it for time and cost considerations as it didn't really add much to the story.Nicholas Briggs said he got into the Dalek Caan character through the laugh. He figured that Caan's being sucked through the Time War and back again got his neurons firing in the wrong direction.Here's more to love about Bernard Cribbins (Wilf) – the line "do you want to swap" guns was his adlib idea. The whole scene about attacking the Dalek with the paint gun was his idea.Harriet Jones was in a real house and not a set. They believe that there are several outtakes of Daleks falling off ramps going to attack Harriet Jones. One joke about the next episode – "the tap dancing Dalek sequence was quite consuming."One thing of interest to notice about the Dalek designs is that the Daleks around Davros had different implements than the Daleks in the other room.A note about the filming sequence – the first day of Dalek filming was the Daleks entering Torchwood. A month later the last bit of Dalek filming was the Daleks stopping Sarah Jane in her car. The commentary was quite entertaining.
There's one running joke/tribute that I hadn't mentioned. In every Dalek episode since the start of the new series, when you enter the Dalek base, they've gon back to the old Radiophonic Workshop archives and pulled out the classic sound effect for the dalek base. That low heartbeat-like pulse you hear in the backgroun in the base, that's straight from the old series. It's also on the "Doctor Who Sound Effects" album they did back in the day. And yes, I own a copy.