From MadCap's Couch - "Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth"

"Doctor! What is that?"
"It's Russell! He's making more plot holes!!!"

Well, after a fairly solid season...here we are.

I started this trek long ago with Series 1, never thinking we would actually get this far before I lost interest or something monumentally stupid happened that would kill my enthusiasm to review it like we did Supernatural. So, I really have no one to blame but myself.

It's like Radiohead said - "you do it to yourself, and that's what really hurts."

Here we come to what I once joked about as Russell T. Davies' magnum opus - namely the 3rd attempt at "Throw a bunch of Daleks into a room and then blow them up" - cranked up to eleven. And it's...not very good. I won't say it wasn't earned. At least, the laundry list of cameos and references and the like. For all of his many, many, many shortcomings...I do have to give Russell credit for lighting the fire that started the Revived Series of Doctor Who. Without him, we'd have to settle for the audio dramas that Big Finish cranks out (which would not be a bad consolation) and the fact that the Doctor's last onscreen adventure would have involved Eric Roberts hamming it up before being sucked into the TARDIS's blowhole...I mean, the Eye of Harmony.

Given all that Russell has contributed to in getting the show going and in keeping it going, I will say that The Stolen Earth and Journey's End are definitely earned...they're just not very good.

With that settled, let's get into it.

The Stolen Earth starts off with the Doctor and Donna landing on Earth (in a TARDIS that does not have Bad Wolf written all over it, furthering my theory that it's not the telepathic circuit poking into their heads and that Rose changed the letters...somehow...) and finding...a normal Saturday. Nothing seems to be wrong, but the Doctor insists that if Rose was able to traverse the universal barrier, then everything is going horribly wrong. He and Donna go back to the TARDIS, and everything on the Earth begins to shake...something is going horribly wrong.

In the TARDIS, Donna mentions that even if everything is going bad...Rose is coming back...and that has to be good. The Doctor agrees.

CRAP. ROSE GOT HER PARASITE INTO DONNA'S BRAIN, TOO! AHHHHHH!

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10,111,272,577

They suddenly are jolted by something and, when they look outside, they find...they're in space. The Doctor checks the instruments and finds that they haven't moved - the Earth did. 

On Earth, Martha Jones is at a UNIT base when the event happens. At first, they think it was merely an earthquake, but someone looks outside and tells Martha to look at the sky.

In the Torchwood Hub down in Cardiff, Jack, Gwen, and Ianto are recovering from the sudden move. Jack rushes outside as Ianto looks on a monitor, saying the event was bigger than several earthquakes.

"Unlike last time, they had the budget for us!"
"Helps that there's only two of us now."
"Shhhh!"

Sarah Jane Smith and her son Luke are recovering as well at their house on Bannerman Road. She summons her computer, Mr. Smith, who tells her to look at the sky.

Back on Donna's street, Wilfred Mott, professional badass has gone out with a cricket bat to challenge the alien menace head on. Sylvia, like the others, tells him to look at the sky as she clearly panics. Everyone in the various locations looks and proclaims it impossible...

A milkman that Donna and the Doctor ran into at the beginning is suddenly subjected to the unfortunate position of Rose Tyler teleporting into the general vicinity. She pays him no heed, and looks up to the sky as she charges a BFG she's carrying, insisting that this is "only just beginning". The camera pans up from her to show a series of planets in the sky...very, very close to the Earth.

Everyone on Earth isn't horrifically dead from the catastrophic events of this sudden shift because...gravity is expensive and we wouldn't have an episode otherwise.

I'm not kidding, no explanation is ever given for this.

We get an extended and much speedier title sequence to incorporate David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Freema Agyeman, John Barrowman, Elisabeth Sladen, and Billie Piper all very quickly...and then followed on with onscreen credits for many others along the bottom of the first few scenes.

On the TARDIS, Donna asks the Doctor what happened to the Earth, worrying for her mother and her grandfather if the Earth has no sun to warm it. The Doctor, after scanning, is at a massive loss and needs to go to the one group that could help: the Shadow Proclamation.

We get news and television clips of various people, including Richard Dawkins (husband of former companion Lalla Ward), reacting to the sudden movement of the Earth.

In Torchwood, Jack exposits about the Earth being trapped in an atmospheric shell...which explains why they can breathe and aren't freezing to death...but not how gravity isn't affecting them.

The various folks with technology to do so detect something among the planets that is not a planet...and 200 objects traveling toward Earth. At UNIT, Martha has found the superphone does not work for whatever reason. Someone must be blocking the signal.

In London, Rose finds mass looting and rioting going on. Rose actually does something objectively good, scaring off a pair of looters at an electronic store...

. . .oh, fine...

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10,111,272,576

. . .and somehow, the computer is showing the same radar that UNIT is seeing.

Somehow.

At the Nobles, Wilf gets no reply when he calls Donna's phone, meaning the signals are being stopped going in and out.

At Torchwood, Jack's phone does ring - Martha rings her up. Martha, apparently, is in New York and is working on something called "Project Indigo", which Jack is familiar with.

At Bannerman Road, Mr. Smith puts through a message from the descending ships - "EX-TERM-IN-ATE! EX-TERM-IN-ATE! EX-TERM-IN-ATE!". UNIT and Torchwood pick up on this as well...as does Rose in the electronic shop, somehow, and they all react accordingly. The Daleks have indeed come, and they start the mass attack on the Earth.

Onboard the Dalek mothership - "the Crucible" - the Daleks begin the harvest of Earth. The Dalek Supreme - a big red Dalek - claims that the Crucible will soon be complete and that soon, the Daleks will be the masters of Earth.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Donna arrive at a space station to the guns of Judoon. The Doctor speaks Judoon (as he speaks everything) and gets them to lay off. They are brought to a woman who claims that the Time Lords are the stuff of legend...which Chris Chibnall wasn't paying attention to, but that's way off. She informs them that not just Earth is missing, but twenty four planets have gone missing recently and Earth is but one of them.

Donna brings up Pyrovilia and the Adipose breeding planet, giving the Doctor the idea that the planets are being taken out of time as well as space. Using a 3-D projection, the Doctor adds the two planets to the ones missing...and then remembers the lost moon of Poosh. The planets them rearrange themselves into the optimal pattern. 27 planets in perfect balance, all fitting together like the pieces of an engine. When the Shadow Proclamation lady asks who could do such a thing, the Doctor mentions that someone tried to move the Earth a long time ago, but insists that it can't be.

He's either referring to The Dalek Invasion of Earth, where the plan by the Daleks was to hollow out the Earth and put a big ol' car wheel on it...or The Mysterious Planet, where the Time Lords moved and renamed it in order to hide secrets. Given Russell and his complete lack of subtlety, I think it's the former rather than the latter, although I could be wrong.

The Valiant wasn't a priority target, but UNIT made the Daleks think it was,
so they could avoid their lawsuit from S.H.I.E.L.D.

Back on Earth, the Daleks take down the Valiant and spare UNIT their lawsuit from S.H.I.E.L.D. and Torchwood picks up on multiple Dalek attacks across the globe. When Jack realizes what they're doing, attacking military installations, he calls up Martha in Manhattan and tells her to get out. Martha's superior comes to her, telling her Project Indigo is being activated. She goes along, insisting to him that they can't use it - they don't even know if the device works.

As UNIT battles the Daleks and gets slaughtered like dogs, Martha's CO gives her the backpack for Project Indigo. Jack tells her not to use it, but Martha gets a reminder that she gets her orders from UNIT, not Torchwood. Her CO tells her that she's the best chance to find the Doctor but, failing that, he gives her a disk - an Osterhagen key, he calls it. We don't know what it is, but it clearly terrifies Martha. She ends up taking it anyway and teleports away while the last of UNIT fight.

Jack screams in protest, but it's no use...Martha is gone. He tells Gwen and Ianto that it's teleportation technology taken from the Sontarans, but it's untested and has no coordinates or other technobabble...meaning that Martha is scattered into atoms.

On the Dalek ship, a raspy voice asks the Dalek Supreme if there's news of the Doctor. Metallic fingers tap against a Dalek-esque chair as the raspy voiced one berates the Dalek Supreme for arrogance...and reveals Dalek Caan, his shell having its dome blown completely off and the Dalek itself having been driven...more insane. Whatever happened between Evolution of the Daleks and now has seen Caan gain some form of psychic ability, proclaiming with an insane laugh that "The Doctor is coming"...

Back at the Shadow Proclamation, Donna sits by and mourns her world as one of the wait staff brings her a water...and tells her there was something on her back. She also says that Donna is something new, and that she's sorry for her loss. When Donna believes it is sympathy for losing her planet, the woman corrects her...

"I mean the loss that is yet to come. God save you."

Well, that's ominous!

Before Donna can follow that on, the Doctor distracts her by asking about anything on Earth going weird in the last few days...and Donna brings up the bees disappearing. Apparently, many of the bees on Earth (not all of them) are actually aliens from another planet and the drop in the population means that they left the Earth...and that this somehow allows them to technobabble their way into finding a path to the Earth. The Doctor prepares the TARDIS and, when the Shadow Proclamation declares war. The TARDIS will be taken into their custody while the Doctor leads them into battle...

He agrees and then leaves because he's the Doctor and has no time for that garbage.

On Earth, the Daleks start rounding people up while Wilf and Sylvia hang out in an alley with a paintball gun. Wilf makes the good reasoning that he could defeat the Dalek by shooting it in the one eye. Good reasoning! Less good reasoning is the guy who gets the brilliant idea to throw a brick at the Daleks and then gets his house nuked for his trouble.

Escaping, Wilf and Sylvia come across a Dalek and Wilf does manage to shoot it in the eye...and it melts the paint away. Seconds later, Rose comes to their rescue...and Wilf has to come clean about what Donna has been doing, traveling the stars with the Doctor. Rose laments that they were her last hope to find the Doctor...ignoring that, for all they know, Donna is dead right now and she's complaining to a pair of people who have lost their child and grandchild, respectively.

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10,111,272,578

Yep, that one gets two. Pulling out all the stops this time.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor realizes where they've come to...stopping at the Medusa Cascade, the center of a rift in time and space. However, there are no planets to be seen...much to Donna's panic and confusion as the Doctor gives a stoic stare of having no idea what to do. Donna tries to snap him out of it, but...he has nothing, just staring blankly in utter shock.

On Earth, we come to the despair event horizon for our Earth-bound heroes. However, a transmission comes through...and when Jack tells the Torchwood team to let it go, the woman on the other ends declares shame upon him and orders him to stand at attention. The signal gets through to the Torchwood Hub, Bannerman Road, and the Noble house as well as the home of one Martha Jones...and we see that Harriet Jones, MP for Running Joke, has used a new piece of technology called the Subwave Network to find and reconnect with anyone who could contact the Doctor.

Martha did indeed survive and is currently at her mother's house, because she was the only member of the family they could get to come back for a cameo.

Rose takes the opportunity when Martha comes up to proclaim, "Who's she? I want to get through!"

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10,111,272,591

What are those for? Oh, just every episode from Series 3 that Rose saw the ruination of Martha's time on the TARDIS through...and yes, it is all thirteen. How'd you guess?

Rose can't get into the video message due to Wilf not having a camera. Everyone is spared that terrible, terrible fate.

Anyway, Harriet Jones gets more "Yes, I know who you are" jokes. Jack flirts with Sarah Jane a bit before Harriet introduces Martha as "former companion to the Doctor".

Rose takes the opportunity to go "Oi, so was I!"

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10,111,272,604

It keeps on climbing!

Anyway, getting on with the plot, Harriet explains she used the Subwave Network to bring everyone together who could help to contact the Doctor...which does explain why we don't have other companions showing up, which is at least somewhat better than the explanation we got in Aliens of London...which is to say, none.

Also, Russell apparently forgot that the Doctor gave the Brigadier a time-space telegraph in case of emergencies, but that would mean Nicholas Courtney would have been on the damn show and we VERY WELL CAN'T HAVE THAT, CAN WE, RUSSELL?!

Harriet explains that the Subwave Network is undetectable, developed by a "Mr. Copper Foundation". Jack says they need weapons and mentions the key that Martha received. When Harriet hears what it is, she tells Martha that she is not to use it under any circumstances. They must find the Doctor, when Sarah Jane mentions that the Doctor deposed her, Harriet acknowledges this. She thought about it for a long time, but she stands by what she said before: a day would come where the Earth would be in danger and the Doctor wouldn't be there to save it.

This is that day.

Martha mentions that she's been trying to get to the Doctor, but can't get through. Rose mentions, unheard and unseen by the others, that she can't either...and "I was here first!"

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10,111,272,617

Harriet believes that they can boost the signal using the power of the Rift, Mr. Smith connecting to every telephone on Earth to have them all call the Doctor at once. Ianto brings up that, if this happens, the Daleks will be able to trace the signal. Harriet confirms this, saying that her life doesn't matter if it saves the Earth. With that, everyone gets to work. The power of the Rift is activated and, after Martha transmits the phone number, Mr. Smith rigs every phone to call up...the Doctor.

On the TARDIS, the phone rings...and the Doctor uses his tech to start tracing the signal. The Daleks, too, have seen this and move to intercept.  Even Wilf, Sylvia, and Rose are using their mobile phones to assist...Rose whispering "Find me, Doctor. Find me..." as if she's so damned important.

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10,111,272,618

With the Daleks about to bust in, Harriet transfers the Subwave Network to Torchwood and tells Jack that the Doctor chose his companions well. We get one final "Yes, we know who you are" joke...from the Daleks of all people...and Harriet Jones is exterminated, dying a hero to save the Earth.

Following the signal, the TARDIS gets into the Rift proper and finds the planets that were taken, including the Earth. They patch into the Subwave Network and the Doctor gleefully watching as everyone panics and tries to tell him what's going on...and Donna tries to flirt with Jack to no avail.

. . .oh, and Rose mournfully mutters that she's there, too.

. . .yeah, I'm not giving her another point, this is just pathetic at this point.

The Daleks hack the subwave network...and we get the reveal of Davros. Sarah Jane and the Doctor both recognize him, to their horror. Sarah Jane because the last time she saw him, he was being shot by his own creations. For the Doctor, it's because Davros was destroyed in the very first year of the Time War in spite of the Doctor's efforts to save him. Davros reveals that Dalek Caan did it...emergency temporal shift took him into the Time War. The Doctor insists it's impossible, but Caan nonetheless managed it...though it cost him his mind.

Davros gives a bit of gore as he reveals that each of these Daleks was grown from a cell of his body..."True" Daleks. He taunts the Doctor, asking him what he has now. After everything they've seen, everything they've lost...the Doctor has only one word for Davros: "Bye!". Dalek Caan gleefully proclaims everlasting death for the most faithful companion as the Daleks trace the signal to Torchwood. At Torchwood, Jack asks Martha for some technobabble about the Project Indigo device that allows him to get his time vortex manipulator working again. He leaves Gwen and Ianto to the defenses of the Hub and teleports out after promising that he'll come back.

Mr. Smith picks up the TARDIS coming, Sarah leaving and telling Luke to say in the House...Mr. Smith vowing to protect Luke.

At the Nobles, Rose calls...someone...and has them lock her onto the TARDIS, teleporting away.

The TARDIS lands and the Doctor and Donna find a surprisingly abandoned city street. The Doctor asks Donna what Rose had said, but when he presses her, she tells him to ask her himself...and he looks over to see Rose at the end of the street. The music from Murray Gold swells as they run to one another...so wonderful and perfect and beautiful and...oh, what's that? My test results came back, I have diabetes.

THANKS, RUSSELL! YOU IDIOT!

Anyway, a lone Dalek comes by...and misses his shot to kill Rose by hitting the Doctor. Jack teleports in and kills it...and Rose comforts a dying Doctor. Jack tells her to get him into the TARDIS, Donna and Rose doing so while Jack covers them.

"I knew we should have taken that left turn at Mondas!"

At Torchwood, Ianto and Gwen prepare to go down swinging.

In the console room, Jack tells Rose and Donna to get back: the Doctor's dying, and Rose knows what happens next. The Doctor's hand begins to glow...

Sarah Jane drives into the area, only to be stopped by a pair of Daleks that threaten to exterminate her.

On the TARDIS, Rose gives Donna a crash course on regeneration...and the inevitable happens, the gold-white energy of regeneration spewing from the Doctor's body...leaving us on a "TO BE CONTINUED"...

…god, this episode is gonna have some disappointing payoff.

The Stolen Earth is an episode that is big in scale, but not great in delivery. It has so many moving parts that churn toward a conclusion that it (obviously) can't achieve in the first part. Rose basically existing in every scene to look mournful and complain about not finding the Doctor gets old fast even if you're a fan of her.

The plot of the Daleks doesn't really make sense even if you consider what they're doing in the next part. Early on, it's claimed they're keeping the humans alive, but...why? Also, even when you consider the real reason behind it all, it makes little sense...but we'll get to that into the next part.

And then...we come to the regeneration.

This is stupid and should have been avoided.
There, I said it.

This is something that could have easily been avoided by either just killing Rose or not having the Doctor get shot, because there was frankly more than enough tension to end an episode on, but never mind that now. I'll be able to complain about it more in Journey's End. Speaking of which, Journey's End is next...and we'll see quite a lot going on. Russell T. Davies' Dalek Masterplan is unveiled, Rose Tyler puts the capstone on her character being the absolutely worst person ever (and believe me, the count is going to skyrocket), and we bid a fond farewell to the best companion of the Russell T. Davies era.

Journey's End. One week. Be there!