Articles in “Liveblogging”

So here we are for the end of the Tenth Doctor’s reign. Does that count as a spoiler? Nah, don’t think so.

I would like to go on the record at this point to say I really, really hate the tendency that’s cropped up online to refer to the Doctor just be the number of his regeneration: Nine or Ten, usually. I blame the recapper from Television Without Pity, though I can’t honestly say he started it. Either way, I really, really hate it.

I was listening to the news but not watching the telly when the newsreader said, “Next, a rejected rooster makes his debut as a cowboy.” If you don’t know that those are football teams, that’s a seriously weird statement.

Sadly, I was watching the television when they reported on the funeral of that Georgian luger—I really wish they’d told us in advance that it was an open coffin. I didn’t entirely want to see him being carried through the streets in an open coffin.

Heather is joining us again for this episode, but Michelle is not, sadly.

Oh, look: the advert for Doctor Who just gave away a massive spoiler.

But here we are with the episode, recapping what happened last episode, with the red-eyed Ood and Donna’s freakout and the “Master” race and Timothy Dalton’s voiceover.

We open with a shot of Gallifrey, an amazing shot with Dalek saucers crashed and burning in the foreground and, behind them, the dome over the Time Lord city, with a hole smashed in it and the city beyond burning.

So we come to a Time Lord council meeting, where the seeress tells them that this is the last day of the Time Lords. The Doctor has vanished, but he still has “the moment” and will use it to destroy Time Lords and Daleks alike.

The council’s token woman suggests that maybe it’s time to end it: that though this is only the far edge of the Time War, people are dying in blood and terror across the universe, and time itself is unravelling. But Timothy Dalton disagrees, and burns her alive with his magic glove.

He will not die, he says.

So another council member, who doesn’t want to die either, tells Timothy Dalton (who I shall call The Narrator) that there will be two children of Gallifrey remaining, whose eternal enmity will come to a final conclusion on Earth.

On Earth, the Master has tied both Wilf and the Doctor to chairs.

NICK: The Master would have waited about thirty seconds and then started plotting against himself.

As the Master is plotting, Wilf’s phone rings, which the Master says is impossible, because he’s not ringing Wilf, so who would be?

Wilf explains about the meta-crisis, and the Master says, “Oh, he loves playing with Earth girls.”

Wilf shouts to Donna to run, but Donna’s trapped by Master clones, and stuck to one place by her reviving memories of her life with the Doctor—which then cause a blinding golden light to flash down the alleyway, taking out the Master clones and causing Donna to faint.

The Doctor’s grinning, and Heather says “What a bastard!”

But when the Master strips the Doctor’s gag off, the Doctor just says, “Do you really think I’d leave my best friend without a defense?”

He tells Wilf that Donna’s fine: she’ll just sleep. But, Doctor, you said if she remembered you her brain would burn and she’d die! Now I’m bewildered.

The Master asks for the Doctor’s TARDIS, but the Doctor just tells him, “You could be so magnificent.” He wants the Master to travel the universe with him, saying that he doesn’t need to own the universe, just see it.

Then the Master tells, again, the story of how he first heard the drumbeat in his head after he was taken, as an initiation, to stare into the Untempered Schism.

And we cut to The Narrator, saying the drumbeat is the mark of a warrior. One of the other council members, who clearly has a death wish, says that it’s a sign of insanity, but The Narrator says no: “It’s the heartbeat of a Time Lord.”

Because it’s four beats. I wonder if that’s significant?

What the Master realises now, though, is that six billion people on Earth have the same drumbeat in their heads, so he can triangulate its original location.

Demanding to know the location of the TARDIS, the Master orders one of his heavily helmeted guards to kill Wilf. But the Doctor says that even after all this time, the Master is still incredibly stupid.

Because that guard is one inch too tall.

Because it’s not a Master clone, it’s one of the Cactus People.

WILF: God bless the cactuses.
DOCTOR: That’s cacti.
CACTUS: That’s racist.

After some frenetic running through the corridors—during which the Doctor is still tied to his chair, and declares it to be the “worst rescue ever”—the female Cactus Person teleports them all to their ship, which Heather declares the cutest spaceship ever.

Wilf is amazed that he’s in space, but the Doctor needs the engine room. The Cactus Woman says that they’re safe in space, but the Doctor points out that the Master has control of every missile on Earth.

So he kills the engines, so that the ship gives no sign of life whatsoever.

Just to be on the safe side, the Master (in the guise of a soldier) destroys the Earth-end of the teleport technology, so that the Doctor is stranded.

The Cactus People are furious, because they’re stranded in orbit with no way down. Wilf says he’s sure that the Doctor has something up his sleeve, but, as it turns out, he doesn’t.

We pan back from the Cutest Spaceship Ever, now drifting dead and dark with the Earth below it.

The Master demands that all of him—all six billion of him—just concentrate on the signal, on that Time Lord heartbeat beating in his head. When they do, he says, “The sound is tangible. Someone could only have designed this. But who?”

Oh, who indeed?

The Time Lords, that’s who. Sending the signal back through time from a moment just before they are locked in the Time Bubble, after the end of the Time War.

I’m typing “Time” with a capital T a great deal in this live-blog.

But the Time Lords need something tangible to attach to the signal—and, sure enough, there’s the appropriate object on the end of The Narrator’s staff. Whatever it is, it comes streaming down to Earth: the Doctor sees it pass from the Cutest Spaceship Ever, and the Master sends his men out to find it.

And they do. It’s a diamond. But not just any diamond: it’s a white point star.

This news delights the Master, who starts laughing hysterically—as though the Master could laugh any other way.

Back on the Cutest Spaceship Ever, Wilf is wandering around, calling for the Doctor and declaring himself lost.

“And yet you were found,” says Claire Bloom, popping up behind him in her white suit.

She asks Wilf if he armed himself, and he shows his gun. She says that at the end of his life, the Doctor will need to take up arms or he will fail.

When Wilf finds the Doctor, the latter is trying to fix the heating in the Cutest Spaceship Ever. Wilf’s rather delighted: “I’m an astronaut!” he says, slapping his thighs. But when he spots Earth, he worries, first, that he might never be able to visit his wife’s grave again, and, second, that the Master might have turned even the dead into his own clones.

Wilf starts talking about his war experience, but cuts himself off, saying that the Doctor doesn’t want to hear an old man’s stories.

DOCTOR: I’m older than you.
WILF: Get away.
DOCTOR: I’m 906.

Wilf finds this staggering, as you would.

WILF: We must look like insects to you.
DOCTOR: I think you look like giants.

Wilf tries to hand his gun to the Doctor, but the Doctor steadfastly refuses it, pointing out that Wilf had the gun on him in Naismith’s manor but didn’t shoot the Master.

DOCTOR: I would be proud.
WILF: What?
DOCTOR: If you were my father.

Wilf asks what happens if the Master is killed. The Doctor says that the template will snap, and they will revert to their original forms.

WILF: Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare put him above them. You take this gun. That’s an order. You take this gun, and you save your life. And don’t you die.

But at this point, the Master begins an open broadcast, telling the Doctor about the white point star.

This freaks the Doctor out. He tells the anxious Wilf that white point stars are only found on Galifrey, so this means “it’s the Time Lords. The Time Lords are returning.”

Wilf says that’s a good thing, surely. He says, “They’re your people.”

But the Doctor takes the gun, and he runs.

Using the white point star, the Master reverses the signal, opening a pathway.

The Narrator walks into something that looks rather like the senate from the Star Wars prequels. (Thought Nick calls it the panopticon.) The Narrator says that this is the time when Gallifrey falls or Gallifrey rises—and the Time Lords chant “Gallifrey rises! Gallifrey rises!”

On the Cutest Spaceship Ever, the Doctor explains that the entire Time War was time-locked, and nothing can get out. Except for something that was already there.

The signal! says Wilf. Since the Master was a child!

Man, time paradoxes give me a headache.

The Doctor, saying “Allons-y!”, sends the Cutest Spaceship Ever (now with restored power) flying straight back to Earth at an insane speed, while Wilf and the Cactus Man re-enact that scene from Star Wars when the Millennium Falcon is escaping the Death Star.

Now, just remember: don’t get cocky.

I would think that causing a cruise missile to blow up this close to the Cutest Spaceship Ever would actually cause the ship to blow anyway, but then I’m not actually a scientist.

The Master knows that the Doctor is coming to Naismith manor, but he says it’s too late—and, sure enough, The Narrator says that only two voted against the plan for the Time Lords’ return. We see those two, one a woman and one perhaps not, standing behind The Narrator with their hands covering their faces.

Then The Narrator raises his staff, and opens a glowing passage, as the Doctor launches himself from the spaceship and—as Nick coughs “Bullshit!” into his hand—falls through the skylight onto the ground in Naismith manor.

But, though he raises the gun, it’s only to see The Narrator and his companions standing in front of him.

The Master tells The Narrator, whom he addresses as “Mr President,” that he intends to transplant himself into all the Time Lords, as well. But the President merely raises his glowing glove, and reverses the Master’s process, turning everyone back into themselves.

The Doctor’s not really paying attention, though, because the Time Lords never really meant to just bring themselves back.

DOCTOR: Don’t you ever listen? “Something is returning.” Not someone, something. It’s Gallifrey.

And it certainly is—right on top of Earth, throwing our planet out of orbit.

NICK: Oh, I think the Elgin Marbles are gone for good this time.

People flee, just as Wilf makes it into Naismith manor. Wilf sees a man trapped in one of those radiation-proof booths, and runs to let him out (which he can only do by locking himself in the other booth).

The Master still thinks that the return of Gallifrey is a good thing, but Doctor says that the Master wasn’t there at the end. He didn’t see what Gallifrey became, and what monstrosities arose—monstrosities like the Nightmare Child, who could have been king, with his army of meanwhiles and neverweres.

I love that description.

But the President says that the Time Lords will ascend to beings of pure consciousness, ripping time apart in the process.

That, says the Doctor, is what they were planning in the final days of the war.

So the Doctor stands and draws his gun, training it on the President. The Master eggs him on, but the Doctor spins around, to train the gun on the Master because, after all, the link is in the Master’s head. Then he spins back to the President.

But before he can decide, the woman behind the President drops her hands from her face. It’s Claire Bloom, and she’s weeping.

So the Doctor spins again, and tells the Master to get out of the way. Instead of shooting the Master, he shoots the machine, breaking the link.

“Back into hell, Rassilon,” he says.

Wait, what? Rassilon? That’s Rassilon?

Damn.

Then, as the Time Lords fade away, the Master realises that these are the people who drove him mad for their own purposes. And he shoots Rassilon with the lasers from his hands.

I’ll just say that again, shall I?

The Master shoots Rassilon with the lasers from his hands.

Gallifrey withdraws from the sky, and the Earth settles down. The Doctor takes a deep breath.

And then Wilf, trapped in his booth, knocks four times on the glass.

Four times.

The Doctor knows what this means. The Master left the “nuclear bolt” running, so the machine is going into overload. And it’s gone critical. So if the Doctor touches one control, the booth will flood with radiation.

Wilf knows what this means.

WILF: All right, then. Just leave me.
DOCTOR: All right, then, I will. Because you had to go in there. You had to go and get yourself stuck, didn’t you? Because that’s who you are. Waiting for me all this time.
WILF: Seriously, leave me. I’m an old man.
DOCTOR: Exactly. Look at you. Not remotely important. But me: I could do so much more.

Look, Doctor? You know I love you. I have loved you for my entire life, and will love you for the rest of my life. But you’re really trying my patience right now.

But, of course, he steps into the booth, and releases Wilf, taking the fatal dose of radiation himself.

DOCTOR: Wilf, it would be my honour.
ME: Just ignore all that abuse I just levelled at you about how much less important than me you are.

But the Doctor doesn’t die and he doesn’t regenerate. He tells Wilf that the system is dead, that he absorbed all the radiation. Wilf says, “Well, here we are, then. Safe and sound.”

He points out that the Doctor is carrying some battle scars, but the Doctor runs his hands over his face, and the cuts disappear.

We know what that means: we’ve seen him regrow his hand, remember?

He tells Wilf that “it’s started,” and Wilf falls into the Doctor’s arms.

Donna, in her mother’s home, comes back to consciousness as we hear the TARDIS materialise in the street. She says, “What happened? Did I miss something, again?” And it seems to me that this suggests she is not quite the same Donna, because the old Donna didn’t care if she missed things.

Wilf asks where the Doctor is going, and he says, “To get my reward.”

And we cut to Martha, running through a wasteland towards Mickey, while being fired on by a Sontaran.

MICKEY: And this is no place for a married woman.
MARTHA: Well, then, you shouldn’t have married me.

Wait, what? The hell?

The Doctor pops up behind the Sontaran, kills him, and stands dramatically on the platform just long enough for Martha and Mickey to see him.

Then we cut to Sarah Jane Smith’s son, wandering along the road chatting on his phone, failing to see a car—though the Doctor knocks him out of the way and saves his life. Sarah knows what’s happening: she was there when the Third Doctor regenerated in “Planet of the Spiders.”

Then we’re in the cantina on Mos Eisley—or, as Heather suggests, the restaurant at the end of the universe—where a post-Children of Earth Jack is drowning his sorrows. He slips Jack a note, allowing Jack to pick up Alonzo from “Voyage of the Damned” with a quick “Going my way?”

Then we’re back on Earth, where Verity Newman, grand-daughter of Joan the matron in “Human Nature”/“Family of Blood” is signing copies of the book she wrote based on her grandmother’s memories. He asks if Joan was happy, and Verity says “Yes, she was. Were you?”

He walks away.

We’re at the church with Donna on her wedding day. The Doctor watches from outside the church gate, and Sylvia and Wilf head over to greet him.

Wilf’s delighted, because the Doctor has the “same old face.” So he thinks everything is going to be all right.

Wilf says, “There’s one thing you never told me, Doctor. That woman: who was she?”

The Doctor says nothing, but glances over at Donna.

He hands them an envelope, saying he wanted to drop by a wedding present. But he never has any money, so he borrowed a pound from a lovely man: Geoffrey Noble.

Sylvia weeps.

When Donna opens the envelope, she says a lottery ticket is a “cheap wedding present” but you never know: it’s the treble rollover the week and she might get lucky.

Sylvia and Wilf grab each others’ hands and grin.

But when the Doctor turns his back and we hear the TARDIS dematerialise, Wilf watches him leave and weeps.

I whimper a little, because Bernard Cribbens weeping always makes me wants to weep, too.

And that would be Rose’s theme rising in the background, and Rose and Jackie walk across the estate. Jackie leaves, and Rose sees the Doctor, staggering and shaking in the background.

She assumes he’s had too much to drink, especially when he asks what year it is.

It’s January 1, 2005.

The Doctor tells Rose that she’s going to have a great year, and she offers him the same wish, before walking away.

The Doctor is shaking and moaning. He falls to his knees in the snow—and an Ood appears before him, saying, “We will sing to you, Doctor. The universe will sing you to your sleep.”

A lovely choral melody arises, as we see the Oods in their city linking hands.

OOD SIGMA: This song is ending. But the story never ends.

Much like this live-blogging, then.

The Doctor makes it back into the TARDIS, and as his hands begin to glow, I realise that I have no idea what happened to the Master. Does anyone know? Did I just miss it in the live-blogging frenzy, or was it skimmed over?

The TARDIS leaves Earth, and the Tenth Doctor takes a long, shuddering breath, saying, “I don’t want to go.”

But he has no choice: the regeneration process has started.

And this time, apparently, it sets fire to the TARDIS, and blows out its windows. I guess that’s a function of the radiation?

And here’s the Eleventh Doctor. For the first time, the Doctor is younger than me.

Of course, the TARDIS is on fire, but he seems more concerned with wondering whether he’s a girl or not, and whether he’s finally ginger.

But no: he realises that he’s crashing, just in time to shout “Geronimo!” into the closing credits.

And thus ends the reign of the Tenth Doctor.

All set for the live-blogging, though I am on my second bottle of wine as we speak. I haven’t drunk them all on my own, I add. Michelle and Heather are joining us for the live-blogging again.

We’re currently debating which SBS newsreader is hotter, until we got to the SBS weather:

HEATHER: Oh, my god! Did you see that? The universe just did something really [redacted] up right then!
ME: I think that was a gap in the radar image.
HEATHER: No kidding. That was [redacted] up right then.

Okay, I just posted that article twice. What on earth is happening?!

Okay, we’re back on track now. I shall pause now and put my hair up.

Voiceover!

Shush, Treena. No spoilers!

We zoom in on the Earth, with the voiceover telling us that in the last days of planet Earth, everyone had bad dreams. But in the pagan rites celebrating Christmas, everyone forgot their nightmares.

Everyone except Donna’s grandfather Wilf, that is.

Wilf wanders into a church, where a choir is singing. But all Wilf can see is a stained-glass window where, in the bottom right-hand window, we see a strange icon.

As Wilf is looking at it, a woman appears behind him, to tell him that the church is positioned on the site of an old convent, where a demon appeared, only to be smote by the “sainted physician.” Then she disappears, as Wilf notices that the icon in the bottom left corner is the TARDIS.

Credits.

Now the Doctor, carrying on from the end of “Waters of Mars,” ends up on the Ood planet, insisting that Good Queen Bess’s nickname is no longer . . . well, we all get the point. This is the Doctor at his most hedonistic and deliberately obtuse.

Michelle says that the second Ood episode, the one with Donna, is her most memorable episode ever, which, she says, is counter to her distaste for Muppets.

The Doctor says the Oods’ level of development is too fast for the hundred years of development that the Ood say have passed since he left. But the Ood are having nightmares, and they suggest that the Doctor joins with the Ood in the dreaming.

He does, and hears the Master laugh.

“That man is dead,” says the Doctor, but the Ood say he appears in their dreams every night. And there’s more, they say. They point out that Wilf is scared, that “the king is in his counting house” [“Eh?” says Michelle, but the Doctor says he doesn’t know who that man and his daughter are, either], and there’s another, the lonely one.

That’s Lucy Saxon, formally the Master’s wife.

The Ood don’t know who she is, so the Doctor briefly recaps the end of season three.

He says that the Master is dead, but the Ood do their own recapping of the end of season three, showing the hand picking up the ring from the Master’s ashes.

The Ood, going red-eye again, tell him that the Master is only part of a broader plan, that what is coming is no less than the end of time.

The Doctor runs back to the TARDIS (and he does the beepy car joke again, but I’m ignoring it for the second time), as, cut with this, we see Lucy Saxon drawn from her prison cell by the new governor of her prison—the old governor having met with an accident that “took a long time to arrange.”

These people, apparently, are part of the Master’s long-drawn out plan to resurrect himself if something happened to him. Lucy, who has been made to kneel by this point, is horrified by this.

Wilf looks out at the coming storm.

Apparently, Lucy, as Saxon’s wife, “bore his imprint,” which means they press a tissue to her lips.

HEATHER: What, has she not washed?
NICK: Yeah, apparently that was . . .
HEATHER: So does he have super-sticky DNA?

Either way, the Master—as Nick points out, naked—comes back to life thanks to the sacrifice of his cult, as the TARDIS explodes around the Doctor.

The Master, still surrounded by waves of light, reaches out to Lucy, telling her that he can hear the drumbeats louder than ever before. He says he’s missed them. But Lucy says that no one knew him better than her, and while his disciples prepared for his return, so did she. For all the “secret books of Saxon” told of the “potions of life,” her people had enough money to prepare the counter-potion.

After all, she did go to Roedean.

And the Doctor materialises in front of a prison that has clearly suffered a serious explosion.

But the man we saw earlier as “the king in his counting house” says to his daughter that someone escaped the inferno, and he cancels Christmas for all his employees.

Wilf, saying that he and his reindeer headband are heading down to the pub for a quick snifter, actually jumps on a bus full of old-age pensioners—including June Whitfield—and asks them all to look out for the Doctor. June calls them the “silver cloak.”

In a wasteland, a man and his young friend buy hamburgers from a mobile food van, but the next customer is the Master, complete with his peroxided hair, who asks for “everything.” He says he’s “so hungry.”

And, in fact, he suddenly appears next to the man and his friend, saying he’s “starving,” and bolting the hamburger.

The man tells his friend that he shouldn’t bolt his hamburger all at once, because if he takes it slowly, he can make it last all day. The man says they should leave, but the friend says that the Master looks like the old Prime Minister, the one who went mad.

Isn’t that funny? asks the Master. Stuck looking like the old Prime Minister. Unable to escape.

And, as he talks, his face flashes into a skull, and back.

The man and his friend Ginger run, but they seek help at the food wagon, and all that they see there is two corpses, fried to skeletons. They baulk, but the Master, screeching “Dinner time!”, leaps up in the air and on them.

In a wasteland, the Doctor and the Master run towards one another. This is useful, because it gives us time to remind Michelle about the end of season three.

ME: Nobody on earth remembers anything about what happened at the end of season three.
MICHELLE: Bloody oath.

Just as the Doctor manages to catch up to the Master, the Silver Cloak find him, thanks to a neighbour of June’s.

Wilf explains briefly to the Doctor that he only told his friends that the Doctor was a doctor, before the Silver Cloak insist on having their photographs taken with the Doctor.

Then we disembark from the Silver Cloak’s bus, and stop in at a cafe for some exposition.

DOCTOR: I’m going to die.
WILF: Well, so am I, some day.
DOCTOR: Don’t you dare.

Oh, I admit it: I whimpered a little at that.

The Doctor explains that he can die, or that regeneration can feel like dying.

I’m going to rant here, briefly: this is not canonical! There are no grounds for thinking that the Doctor interprets regeneration as dying. Why would he? It’s an essential part of his biology.

My rant is interrupted by Donna turning up in the street outside the cafe. Wilf tells the Doctor that she’s earning minimum wage and her fiance is earning tuppence, so they can only afford a tiny flat. (What’s the difference between “minimum wage” and “tuppence”?) He asks the Doctor if he can bring Donna’s memory back, but the Doctor says that if she remembers her brain will burn and she will die.

Both men are crying by this point.

The voiceover returns, telling us that the “idiots and fools” (the king in his castle and his daughter) dream of a brighter future, while the citizens in their sleep dream bad dreams.

Then we finally see who is doing the voiceover, having told Michelle all episode that “she would see” who it was.

MICHELLE: Nope, don’t know who that is.
EVERYONE ELSE: That’s TIMOTHY DALTON!
MICHELLE: Oh, James Bond.

So we’re all on the same page, here.

The Master and the Doctor meet in a wasteland, and the Doctor gets the worst of it.

NICK: Nothing more manly than walking away from an explosion without looking behind you.
HEATHER: Oh, just kiss.

While the Doctor is lying on the ground, the Master reminds him of the time when they used to run across the red grass of the Master’s father’s lands, looking up at the sky. I whimper, because mention of Gallifrey always makes me cry a little.

Wow, this is going to be a long recap. Sorry!

The Master says that he’s the returning thing of which the Ood warned, but the Doctor says it’s something else, the “end of time.” But the Master starts ranting about the sound of drums again, and, for once, the Doctor can hear it.

Both the Doctor and the Master are amazed that he can hear it—the Doctor always thought that the Master was mad and, frankly, so did the Master. He takes off, thanks to some Iron-Man-style repulsor beams in his palms, but is picked up by some masked men in black (and a helicopter), who smack the Doctor on the back of the head with a pistol.

And now it’s Christmas morning in the Noble household. Donna has made margueritas, with oranges because she couldn’t get lemons, and has bought her mother a blouse—“Oh, it’s lovely,” says Mrs Noble. “Did you keep the receipt?”

She’s bought her grandfather a copy of Joshua Naismith’s biography—Joshua is the king in his counting house. She can’t tell why she bought it, just that it seemed like a good idea.

And, when Wilf watches the queen’s speech, Claire Bloom (as the unnamed woman in white, who turned up in the church), appears on the television, telling him to help the Doctor, and to do it armed.

This is convenient, because the Doctor has just turned up in the street outside Donna’s house, asking Wilf if he’s seen anything weird. And Wilf tells him Donna had a funny moment about the book this morning.

But as Wilf and the Doctor are chatting in the back yard, Mrs Noble turns up, telling the Doctor he has to leave, before Donna sees him and remembers.

Though she’s seen him once before and didn’t remember.

Donna, following them out into the street, finds her mother shouting at thin air, as Wilf disappears into the TARDIS.

Wilf asks why the Doctor can’t just pop back to yesterday, but the Doctor says that it’s forbidden to go back on your own timeline.

ME: Except for cheap tricks!

The Master, in Naismith’s home, recognises that his technology is not from Earth, but Naismith simply says, “And neither are you. A perfect combination, don’t you think?” Naismith sends a female technician off to get some readings.

The female technician, and her male companion, are, as it turns out, not human. They’re spiky cactus people, who think that Saxon might be exactly what they’re looking for.

Naismith tells the Master that the technology was found buried at the foot of Mount Snowdon, and fell into the hands of Torchwood. When Torchwood fell—after the Battle of Canary Wharf, we decide—Naismith gained control of it.

The Master is ravening in this scene. There’s no other appropriate verb: this is not eating, it’s ravening.

Naismith says that the “Immortality Gate,” as he calls it, repairs the body at the cellular level. So what he’s seeking is immortality—not for himself (NICK: Why not for himself? His motivation makes no sense!) but for his daughter.

As Wilf and the Doctor materialise in the stables, the Master gets to work on the machine. Cactus Woman is just talking about what a genius he is, and how he might be looking for someone just like him, as the Doctor appears and reveals that he knows she’s an alien.

But just then the Master repairs the Immortality Gate. Naismith orders the Master restrained, which is a good idea, because his resurrection didn’t work so well, and his body is eating itself.

The Cactus People tell the Doctor that they’re a salvage team, and that the gate is a medical device. It repairs bodies, that’s all. The Doctor says there must be something more than that, and, just then, Wilf asks why it’s so big.

That’s a good question, the Doctor says. But the Cactus People say it doesn’t just mend one person: it transmits the medical template across the entire planet.

And, at that point, we cut to Barack Obama. No, seriously. But, more importantly, the Master throws off his straitjacket, and leaps into the Immortality Gate.

Now everyone in the room (and President Obama) can see the Master’s face in their mind. The Doctor throws Wilf into a radiation-shielded room, which blocks the Master from his mind. But for everyone else, it’s close to zero hour.

Donna, though, is not affected. Not affected at all.

In-teresting.

The Doctor has no idea what’s going to happen—he’s asking the Master if it’s a form of mind control. Oh, not as simple as that, Doctor. As the Master says, they’re not going to think like him, they’re going to become him.

And, sure enough, everyone on Earth is now the Master. And, for Donna, watching her mother and her fiance become the Master, this is a trigger to memory—she starts thinking of the kind of things that used to happen, particularly Sontarans.

Heather points out that Donna never knew the Master, but I guess the weirdness of it all is enough.

MASTER: The human race used to be your favourite, Doctor. But, now, there is no human race. There is only . . . the Master race.

Oh, and isn’t the Master delighted by what he’s wrought?

Voiceover!

VOICEOVER: And so it came to pass, on Christmas Day, that the human race did cease to exist.

But, the voice continues, the Master had no idea what role he played in the broader scheme of things.

This, he says, is the day the Time Lords returned.

The camera scans past Timothy Dalton, and we see some men (and two women with their hands over their faces) in very, very, very familiar collars.

Time Lords! Time Lords!

W00t!

See you here next week for the second half? Of course we will!

Okay, really late start to this. This has been, quite literally, a terrible, terrible week. I can sum it up in two words: legionella pneumonia. No, not me. But it’s been a frightening, tiring week. So please excuse any vagueness or confusion in the live-blogging.

Also, we have Wagon Wheels for dessert again. So, finally, I might be fed Wagon Wheels during my live-blogging, and fulfil an ambition that is all of three weeks old.

This episode contains violence. I have given up all hopes of nudity.

The children chant and point.

HEATHER: We are coming. To a television near you.

There’s alien vomiting.

MICHELLE: Vomiting lobsters. I can cope with anything else, but it’s revolting.

Now we have Gwen’s monologue, in black and white, direct to the camera, about how she always wanted to ask about the Doctor, about how he sometimes appears, and sometimes he doesn’t.

GWEN: Sometimes the Doctor must look at this planet and look away in shame. I’m recording this in case anyone ever finds it, so you can see. You can see how the world ended.

The PM tells the country that they’re planning a series of inoculations for the children. Ianto’s nephew asks about inoculations, and Ianto’s sister says they’re injections. He says he doesn’t want to go, and Ianto’s sister says he’s not. Ianto’s niece says the man said they had to go.

IANTO’S SISTER: And I know for a fact he’s lying.
HEATHER: Because his lips are moving.

In the PM’s office, the American general says that all decisions go through him, because the PM’s staff proved they couldn’t cope.

ME: Americans.
HEATHER: Steppin’ in. Takin’ charge. Just like in WWII.

[Heather subsequently told me I should have written that as “Dubya Dubya Two,” to bring across the full force of her wit.]

UNIT are taking charge at Thames House, where they can still smell the stench of the bodies, which were, as Decker (still alive) says, piled ten deep around the doors.

The UNIT general heads into the ambassadorial suite, and there’s more vomiting. He asks the 456 how they take the children, and the 456 show the fiery Icy Pole from an earlier episode.

Then the UNIT general asks what they want the children for, whether they keep the 456 alive.

And the 456 say no. They want the children for the “hit.” The what? the general asks. The hit, say the 456. The children produce chemicals, and the chemicals make the 456 feel good.

HEATHER: That explains the vomiting.

The American general, in the PM’s office, tells the PM to remember that the U.K. started the trade.

HEATHER: U.S.A.!

Yeah, I don’t think she’s going to stop with this.

Jack and Gwen confront Frobisher, and Gwen threatens him with Rhys’s back up of the video recordings. But Frobisher says that that will only start Earth’s descent into Hell a little earlier. Jack agrees, telling Gwen to call Rhys off.

Rhys answers his phone, and asks if he should send the files, but Gwen says it’s too late. She says they killed him, and not just Clem.

GWEN: They killed Ianto.
ME: See, I want to cry. But the vowels are just too beautiful. It’s distracting.

Jack asks if his daughter and grandson will be released, and Frobisher says yes. He also agrees to take Gwen and Rhys home, but Jack himself is arrested, and imprisoned one cell across from Lois.

Lois calls out to Jack, but Jack says nothing.

The Woman in Black releases Alice, but also shows her Torchwood’s footage.

MICHELLE: I don’t love Jack’s daughter. I just feel Jack’s daughter would be cooler than that.
ME: And wear better-fitting pants.
HEATHER: Can we please not mention the pants? Just this once?

Frobisher is called into the PM’s office, and told that, in a show of good faith, Frobisher’s daughters have been chosen for the inoculation process.

Frobisher asks if this means he pretends to have his daughters inoculated.

Oh, no. That’s not what it means, honey.

The PM says no: that his daughters will then be taken to one of the designated areas, and will become part of the process.

HEATHER: They’ll become units.

I start crying. It’s really hard to live-blog when you’re crying.

Frobisher objects, but the PM says that the government has to be shown to be duped by the 456. And Frobisher has been chosen to take that fall.

So he goes to Bridget and asks for a “Requisition 31.” She asks what for? He repeats, “requisition 31.”

I’m fed a Wagon Wheel. My life is now complete.

Bridget gets a “requisition 31” and hands the closed steel box to Frobisher. He kisses her and leaves.

Gwen, landing back in Wales with Rhys, sees Andy waiting to meet her and runs to him. Gwen is not in a good state here, saying that Torchwood has ruined her life. Rhys asks her how it’s ruined, and she says, “You want to have kids in a world like this?”

RHYS: You’re not getting rid of it.
GWEN: Is that right?

The army begins to move in on schools across Great Britain.

Frobisher is driven through a press cordon.

And Bridget goes to see Lois in prison. She’s come to tell Lois how she met John Frobisher thirty years ago, before Lois was born.

Frobisher arrives home and hugs his kids.

Lois says she was on secondment to the Home Office, and she automatically thought that Frobisher was someone to keep an eye on. It was ten years before they worked in the same office. He asked for her.

Frobisher kisses and embraces his wife, then sends her upstairs after the children.

Bridget says he was a good man. “I want you to know that. John Frobisher was a good man.”

Frobisher removes Requisition 31, and heads upstairs.

Bridget says she thinks people will forget how very good he was.

Frobisher walks upstairs, and we see he’s holding a gun behind his back.

Bridget says, “When you think of John Frobisher, just remember, it wasn’t his fault.”

Frobisher shuts the door.

Pause.

Three gunshots.

Pause.

Gunshot.

Damn.

BRIDGET: Now, I think I should get back to work.

Damn.

HEATHER: Man. she’s a stone-cold bitch.
ME: No, she’s just English.
HEATHER: Can you please put that on the blog? Please?
MICHELLE: And can you mention Gwen’s thighs? Wow. Just to lighten the mood.

Gwen ends up at Ianto’s sister’s house, and we see that as Jack hugged her, as she left for Wales, he asked her to save Ianto’s family.

The army move into the schools, taking the children over the hysterical, terrified objections of the family. And, of course, the backgrounds, as the school buses drive away, are council or former council houses.

In Ianto’s sister’s house, Ianto’s sister weeps, while her husband embraces her. Gwen interrupts, to say that she really knew Ianto. But when she says that Ianto told her his father was a master tailor, Ianto’s sister says he worked at Debenham’s, and if he told Gwen that old stuff, she didn’t know him at all.

Stage one is complete, but many children in the target areas stayed home, so stage two begins. Now they’re coming into the houses to take the children.

Rhys says they’re here, and Gwen tries desperately to convince Ianto’s family to evacuate their children.

Alice is talking to the Woman in Black, and Michelle is enthusiastic about the idea that this scene would be improved if the two women kissed. She also has ideas about Lois meeting a woman in prison, but, in fact, Lois is just beating on the door while soldiers take Jack.

Gwen and Rhys take the kids out the back door, while Andy heads out the front door to find out what’s happening. Ianto’s brother-in-law heads back to cause a diversion. He mobilises all the men on the estate, telling them the army are coming to take their kids.

The army bring out their riot shields, as soldiers bring screaming children out of the houses.

The army and estate men clash—and Andy rips off his police gear to join the fray, as Gwen, Rhys, Ianto’s sister, and the kids run and hide.

Decker—who was knocked down in an earlier scene, which I couldn’t recap—is marched past Alice and Steven by men in black, followed by Jack. Alice tells Steven to stay behind, as she follows Jack.

Jack asks what’s going on, and the Woman in Black says that the key to the 456 is the wavelength. Can he come up with something?

Decker says he’s been investigating the wavelength for forty years and there’s nothing, but the Woman in Black shoots him (not fatally) and, without pausing, asks Jack if he can do something.

He thinks so.

Decker says they hacked into Torchwood years ago, and there’s nothing, but Jack and the Woman in Black ignore him.

In the warehouses behind the housing estate, Gwen is recording the direct-to-camera address that we saw at the beginning of the episode. We see now that Rhys is the one filming it, and that he’s crying.

RHYS: You didn’t mean it. About getting rid of it.
GWEN: No, I didn’t. I would never ever do that to you, sweetheart.

And they embrace.

The PM’s office says that they have 80%, but people are starting to fight back.

MICHELLE: [Redacted] oath!

They ask the 456 if 80% is acceptable, but they say no: “All of them.”

Bridget is in the PM’s office, though Denise tells her she needn’t be there. “It’s what he would have wanted,” says Bridget. “I can’t imagine why,” says Denise. But Bridget looks determined.

In the Men and Women in Black Headquarters, Jack has established that the link with Clem hurt the 456, which is why they killed him. So they can create a feedback loop, but they need a child.

ALICE: No. No, Dad. Dad, tell them no.

Decker is gleeful: “That child is going to fry.”

Alice runs for Steven as, elsewhere, the soldiers come for the children Gwen and Rhys are hiding.

Soldiers pin Alice to the wall, and grab Steven.

Soldiers grab the children in Wales, holding Gwen, Rhys, and Ianto’s sister away from them.

And in Men and Women in Black Headquarters, Alice can’t do anything but pound on a locked door as Jack uses his grandson to trigger a high-pitched frequency aimed directly at the 456. A frequency that all children pick up, but, as Decker pointed out, Steven is in the centre, and he’s shaking, shaking and vibrating, with blood running from his nose as Alice watches and Jack weeps.

And the 456 explodes, all over the ambassadorial suite, before the Icy Pole of light reverses itself, sending itself back up into the clouds.

The American general demands a report from the UNIT colonel, who is not, as I have said all recap, a general.

And Rhys and Gwen embrace the Welsh children, who now seem safe.

But when Alice is let into the room, there’s no happy ending for Steven.

He’s dead, no matter how much Alice weeps over his body.

She weeps, and she rocks, and she screams “Why?” but no one answers her. No one even looks at her.

MICHELLE: Being Jack’s kid would suck.
EVERYONE ELSE: Yeah.
MICHELLE: And being Jack would suck.

Everyone leaves the PM’s chambers, except Denise and Bridget. The PM is delighted, because he says that the U.S. took charge without ratification from the United Nations, so they can blame everything on the Americans.

Heather says nothing.

But Bridget is not thrilled that the PM is only trying to save his own neck.

So Bridget reminds him that she went to see Lois, and, while there, signed out some important evidence: the contact lenses. Oh, so that’s why she thought Frobisher would want her to hang around the PM’s office.

Denise backs Bridget up, telling the PM that she thinks she’ll be taking charge of many things around here.

HEATHER: Man, she is one power-hungry bitch.
MICHELLE: And there are a lot of chin dimples in this show.

Jack sits and waits in the corridor of the Men and Women in Black Headquarters, but Alice won’t speak to him, won’t even pass him. And he turns to walk out, walking into a bright white light.

Six months later, a heavily pregnant Gwen—“Bloody gorgeous,” Rhys says—and Rhys walk up a hill to meet Jack, who has arranged transport off world on a cold-fusion transport that’s cruising on the edge of the solar system. He just needs to send a signal.

That’s why Gwen’s here: she has his Time Agent wristwatch, found in the wreckage of the Hub.

GWEN: Indestructible. Like its owner.

She had a new strap put on it.

RHYS: Cost me fifty quid, that did.
JACK: Bill me.

Gwen asks him to stay for her, but he’s spent six months shaking off the guilt for Ianto’s death, Steven’s death, Tosh’s, Owen’s, Suzie’s.

She says, “You can’t leave.”

He says, “Watch me.”

And he leaves.

And Gwen weeps, before Rhys leads her back to the car.

Credits.

Whimper.

I’m drinking gin tonight, in preparation for this episode. Actually, we’re all drinking gin in preparation for this episode. Except Heather.

Speaking of Heather, we had the following conversation earlier:

ME: I’m not sure about this new bra.
HEATHER: By the way, did I tell you I saw this documentary about the Hindenburg?

Did anyone read the comment thread from the live-blogging of the last episode of Torchwood? Because in line with her comments in that, Heather has also spent much of the night wandering around saying things like “Now, Nick, are you sure you’re all right with dinner? Because I am an American, and I’d be happy to tell you how to do it.”

It’s much more fun live-blogging with other people around, I can tell you.

A trailer for Torchwood comes on, and we’re all reminded that there’s likely to be more alien vomiting in this episode.

This episode contains violence. Still no nudity.

We recap the children chanting, Lois wearing the video contact lenses, Jack’s daughter running with her son, the Icy Pole of light and the arrival of the 456, and their request to decimate the children of Earth.

Credits.

We flash back to Scotland in 1965, an army jeep driving down a road to an army checkpoint. Jack jumps out, in a spiffy coat—looks like an Air Force coat, actually.

The woman whom Jack meets at the checkpoint tells him that the disease the 456 told them about, a new strain of the Indonesian flu, could kill 25 million people, but the 456 are offering a cure.

In exchange for 12 children.

Jack says it sounds like a good deal. He asks the woman if they’ve picked him to hand over the children because he can’t die, but she says no: they want someone who doesn’t care.

And Jack tells the children that they’re going on an adventure, as we see the light flash again. This time, Jack tells them to walk into the light, but Clem resists. He asks Jack if it’s safe, and Jack tells him it is.

Clem walks slowly, and the light flashes brightly before he reaches it: Jack and the others shade their eyes, and Clem runs away across the fields.

Back in our time, Clem tells Jack that he (Jack) is in every nightmare Clem has ever had. Then he grabs a gun and shoots Jack.

Ianto grabs Jack, and Gwen talks Clem down, over Rhys’s objections. Clem, to be honest, is in a mess now, crying and hugging Gwen, because he thinks he’s killed a man.

Yet when Jack comes back to life, Clem freaks out, and runs to the back of the warehouse.

Gwen follows him, saying “At least you get to shoot first and ask questions later. How good is that?” Clem doesn’t seem thrilled by the idea, though: he’s banging his head on a ladder and saying, “This is too much.”

Back at the front of the warehouse, Ianto says he can’t believe Jack didn’t mention this before. Jack says the 456 didn’t talk through children then, so he didn’t immediately recognise the pattern. Ianto says that isn’t what he meant.

MICHELLE: But doesn’t he have an extensive back story? How would he cover it all?

Then the speculation slithers into the question of Jack’s sexual history, so we won’t live-blog that bit.

Alice, being taken into custody by the Woman in Black, tells her that she better hope she’s not angered Jack.

“This,” says the Woman in Black, “from the woman who spent her life running from him?”

“Why do you think I did that?” asks Alice. “A man who cannot die has nothing to fear.”

In Thames House, Frobisher tells the 456 that they need to know what they plan to do with the children, but the 456 say that someone is watching them. (Then they vomit.)

Clem freaks out, saying they know he’s watching, but Torchwood say no, and Frobisher does explain that the PM is watching through the camera set up in the room in Thames House.

He repeats that the PM needs to know what will happen with the children.

And the 456 say, “Come in.” They tell them to bring a camera, and come into the enclosure.

So they suit a man up—not Frobisher, of course—and send him in with a camera to see the 456. He can’t see anything through the fog, but everyone’s watching his footage, including the PM.

And then the 456 is right in front of him. The man pants with fear, but he holds steady.

Decker, reading the computer readouts of the man’s safety suit, says he’s getting three heartbeats, that there are three distinct forms of life in there.

And, sure enough, there are. In a harness, attached to the 456, is a child: bald, with shrivelled skin, but still recognisably a child after more than 40 years.

And he’s awake. He turns his head to the camera, and blinks, slowly.

Lois cries, obscuring Torchwood’s view of the video footage.

Frobisher demands to know what the 456 are doing to the child, and the 456 starts vomiting again, and repeating Frobisher’s insistence from their first meeting about information that is off the record—much to the irritation of the American general who in with the PM.

The 456 tell Frobisher that they do not harm the children, who live long beyond their years. And when Frobisher tells them that is unacceptable, the 456 cut him off, telling him that they have one day to gather the 10% of the Earth’s children previously demanded.

Or what? asks Frobisher.

Or they’ll destroy the entire planet, say the 456.

In the PM’s office, the American general confronts the PM about England’s previous contact with the 456, and isn’t really interested in the PM’s insistence that he was only a child himself in 1965.

Ianto tries to talk to Jack about this, but Jack pushes him away—not physically, but quite brutally, recalling all those earlier conversations about whether they’re a couple or not.

Jack leaves the warehouse to call Frobisher. Frobisher tells Jack to give himself up so that Alice and Steven aren’t harmed, but really he’s just trying to trace the call. Jack hangs up before they can get a fix.

Frobisher, who looks exhausted, is called to a meeting with the PM, who tells them that they have decided to make the 456 an “offer.”

What about the military option? someone asks. But it’s not an option: they can’t even get a fix on the 456’s ship.

So they haggle, about where to find the children.

“It won’t just be Britain, will it?” asks a woman next to the PM.

Oh, not likely.

Frobisher mentions that they have 21 children—21 units, he corrects himself—who will not be missed: they’re failed asylum seekers.

Not enough, says the PM. Can Frobisher bump the numbers up to 60? He thinks he can, so the PM authorises him to go and tell the 456 that they can have 60 units.

Frobisher calls his wife on the way, to tell her that he loves her and the girls.

Frobisher tells the 456 that he has been authorised to offer them one child for every million people on Earth: 6,700 in total, and 62 from the U.K. alone.

“That is not acceptable,” say the 456. But Frobisher repeats the number, clearly, and tells them that’s the offer.

“325,000,” says the 456, as Frobisher leaves. “325,000.”

Then the children start chanting it, all at once. But only the children in the U.K. Children in other countries are saying a different number, which in each case amounts to 10% of the population in that country.

The terminology is spreading: the man telling the PM what these numbers mean says “That’s 10% of the children . . . I mean, the units in this country.” There’s this conscious distancing of themselves from the victims of the 456’s demands. (The man in question is Nicholas Briggs, voice of the Daleks.)

The PM tells his advisors that they are facing a “worse-case scenario” now, and there’s no time for hand-wringing. They need to know how to select the children, and how to sell it to the voters.

One man suggests a random selection, but the woman sitting next to the PM says no one will ever believe that it’s random, and, anyway, they don’t want to risk their children.

She says that if this lottery takes place, then her children aren’t in it. She says she’s simply saying what everyone is thinking, and, sure enough, they say their children warrant protection.

The PM says that there’s no debate: he makes an executive decision, and that’s that the children of everyone in that room is exempt.

“What about nieces and nephews?” the woman, Denise, asks.

The PM tells her not to push it, but she heads into a rant that I wish I could transcribe in total, but I can’t, partly because it’s too long a piece, and partly because I’m clenching my fists too hard to type.

Basically, Denise says that their responsibility is to the future of the country, so shouldn’t they be protecting the successful children, the high-achieving children? And, she adds, if they can’t identify the bottom 10% of children in the country, what are the school league tables for?

(At which point, everyone in my living room shouts “myschool. edu.au!” This is a topical time for that piece of dialogue.)

There you have it, the PM says to Frobisher. There’s your 10%.

No one disagrees.

Gwen says that they have enough evidence to convict everyone in that room. Jack and Ianto head off to convince Lois to let them into Thames House, and Ianto rings his sister on the way, to tell her that she mustn’t let anyone take her children away from her.

Rhys leaves with the computer, so there’s an off-site back-up for their evidence.

The People in Black pinpoint Ianto’s location from his phone call.

Frobisher suggests that they come up with a cover story, explaining that the children are being taken off for an inoculation, then, when they don’t reappear, blaming the 456 for double-crossing them.

The People in Black pinpoint Gwen’s location in the warehouse, just as Ianto rings to tell her that he and Jack are at Thames House.

The meeting in the PM’s room starts to break up, but Lois puts her hand up and says that she has something to say. The PM tries to shut her down, but she says she’s a voter. Then Bridget tries to shut her down, and Frobisher, but she won’t listen.

“Oh, great. A revolutionary,” they say, and when Lois says yes, she is, they ask, “You and whose army?”

“Torchwood,” she says.

Michelle cheers.

As Gwen says, “She’s doing it,” Lois tells them that Torchwood have been recording everything that they’ve been saying in this room, and that it will be made public unless they do everything that Torchwood say.

And Jack marches into Thames House, declaring himself “Torchwood.”

The Woman in Black bursts into the warehouse, and Gwen says, “We’ve been expecting you.” The Woman in Black threatens to have Gwen shot while resisting arrest, but Gwen, without flinching, tells her what they’ve been recording, and suggests she sees for herself.

The Woman in Black looks as though no one has ever spoken to her like that.

And Jack marches into the 456’s ambassadorial suite, with Ianto standing on his right.

Jack tells the 456 that they will not be getting the children. He does it in a complicated fashion, and Ianto does it more directly, but they both say the same thing: no children.

The 456 say, “You yielded in the past.”

But Jack says that this time they have recordings. This time, the planet will rise up against the 456 in defense of its children.

The 456 points out that a child dies every three seconds, and the human response is to accept and adapt. But Jack says they’re adapting right now, and they’re making this a war.

“Then,” says the 456, “the fight begins.”

Jack pauses, before he says, “We’re waiting for your reply.”

“Action has been taken,” says the 456. Ooh, nice passive voice, alien dude.

Indeed, they’ve released a virus in Thames House, which is built to withstand chemical attacks. So it’s locked down, air tight, and the occupants are screaming, running down the stairwells.

The PM turns to Lois and asks, “Happy now?”

Jack and Ianto try to shoot through the glass, but the 456 begin a high-pitched screaming, which has Clem clutching at his head.

Jack says they need to get Ianto out of Thames House, but Ianto says it’s too late: he’s breathed the air. He collapses, and Jack catches him.

Clem, screaming, has blood pouring from his ears and his nose, as the 456 say, “The remnant will be disconnected.” He dies in Gwen’s arms, and she leans him back gently.

In Thames House, people are pouring down the stairs, as Decker throws himself into a biohazard suit. But the people find the doors locked against them, and they die piled up against the glass of the doors.

In the 456’s ambassadorial suite, Jack says, “It’s all my fault.”

Ianto says, “No” but Jack tells him to save his breath.

IANTO: I love you.
JACK: Don’t. Stay with me.
IANTO: It was good, yeah?
JACK: Yeah.
IANTO: Don’t forget me.
JACK: Never could.
IANTO: In a thousand years’ time, you won’t remember me.
JACK: I will. I promise, I will.

Ianto dies.

Well, I hope everyone else in my living room is crying, too.

The 456 say to Jack, “You will die. And tomorrow, your people will deliver the children.”

Jack shows no sign of hearing this: he leans over, kisses Ianto, and crumples to the floor.

We pan back from the bodies on the floor of the ambassadorial suite to the 456 watching from behind the glass.

In the PM’s office, the PM breaks the silence by asking what they do.

They have two choice, says a man: they go to war against the 456 or they go to war against their own people.

Their own people it is, they decide.

In Thames House, Gwen walks past rows of shrouded bodies to kneel between Jack and Ianto. She pulls the shroud from Jack’s face, but has to pause and take a deep breath before unshrouding Ianto.

Because Jack comes back to life.

But Ianto doesn’t.

Gwen puts her hand against Ianto’s heart, and weeps. Jack embraces her, and he weeps.

The camera pulls back to show the room full of bodies again, as Gwen says, “There’s nothing we can do.”

So, I’ve been called into this by Nick shouting “It’s starting!” while I was on the verandah with Michelle, so there’s some connubial irritation right now.

[Note: is “connubial” even the word I meant? I really need to rethink my “not live-blogging Torchwood sober” rule. And also my new “not commenting on my live-blogging of Torchwood sober” rule.]

Also, Heather has just updated both my Facebook page and my Twitter, so there is that.

Actually, the episode is starting, so I should talk about that now.

We start with the explosion from the week before last, then Lois in the cafe with Rhys and Gwen, and then Decker emphasising that they’re coming for Britain.

Credits.

Aerial shot over London. Heather bemoans the lack of parking garages, Nick bemoans the lack of weevils.

But Ianto cuts the lock into a warehouse, which will be the new Torchwood.

The news networks are going nuts, because now is “tomorrow,” when the 456 said that they’d be coming.

In the garage, there’s a sofa and a drum full of fire. Jack is mostly worried about the fact that he’s wearing tracksuit bottoms, while Gwen is worried that they have no resources.

Jack indicates that he knew that Gwen was pregnant before Rhys knew, which pisses Rhys off, though Gwen says “He just happened to be there.”

PRIME MINISTER: In light of what is happening, we’ve temporarily closed all the schools.
HEATHER: And shot all the children.

The Prime Minister makes a public statement.

ME: What did I miss?
MICHELLE: Oh, the girl. In government. With the gorgeous lips?
ME: Yes?
MICHELLE: Oh, she just looked at someone. I was looking at her lips. I didn’t really see.

Ianto’s sister is running a daycare, since the schools are closed, and Jack’s daughter still can’t get through to his mobile phone.

In the Torchwood Warehouse, they don’t have enough equipment. But Gwen says that she trained with the police, and she knows all the tricks. So they just steal whatever they need, including cars, briefcases, and computers.

Alice, Jack’s daughter, runs across the road to borrow someone’s mobile phone. We have a brief but complicated discussion about whether her pants are too tight. (The consensus, if you’re interested, is that too tight around the bottom is fine.)

Her call is traced, because of the key term “Jack Harkness.” This is her, not the woman whose phone she borrowed. And so they know that her parents are “placeholder names,” people who never actually existed.

Ianto comes back into the Warehouse, with food and clothes for everyone including “army surplus” clothes for Jack, who strolls in saying, “I’m back” to overwhelming support.

Gosh, he’s pretty.

Clem, in a pub, has another meltdown and a flashback to the other children walking into the light. Police come into the pub and try to grab him—we know, thanks to our subtle Wikipedia searching last week, that police are under the control of the Home Secretary.

That’s lucky, because Gwen now approaches Lois, who works for the Home Secretary.

Lois is reluctant to help, because she says that this is treason. (Sorry, got distracted by a conversation about whether Gwen’s hair colour is natural or not.) But Gwen is convincing Lois to wear contact lenses that will, basically, allow Torchwood to see through Lois’s eyes.

Lois says that this will put her right in the front line and, she adds, she can’t get onto floor 13 (where they’re building the cage for the 456) even if she does get into Thames House.

Jack, looking on the computer, says that Frobisher (John Forbisher, Permanent Secretary to the something that passed too quickly for me to read) is the key, but he’s a nobody. Then Ianto distracts him (firstly) by asking about whether Jack felt the explosion and then (secondly) whether Jack will just watch Ianto age and die, and just move on.

The distraction is Ianto finding out that Clem has been arrested. He sends Gwen off—“You’re a policewoman”—to get him out.

Meanwhile, Jack has what Heather has called a “lightbulb moment,” realising that he knows the three other people who were killed the day he was blown up.

In the Black Ops Secret Computer Room, the Woman in Black has found out that Alice Carter is Jack’s daughter. She calls Frobisher, who says to “bring her in.” Frobisher tells Bridget that they’re transferring to Thames House, and Lois, in desperation, says that Frobisher asked her to come to Thames House.

BRIDGET: What for? Why on Earth would he need you?
LOIS: It was a . . . private conversation.
(Pause)
BRIDGET: You’re not the first, you know. Don’t go thinking you’re the first.

We debate whether Bridget is in love with her boss (me) or just jaded about politics in general (Nick).

Gwen rings Andy, and has him, basically, lie to Camden Police to have Clem released. Clem cries when she arrives, and we all feel sorry for him.

Alice, meanwhile, is not stupid, and realises that someone has come for her. She grabs her son, and a gun, and legs it. (We have another brief discussion about how unflattering her pants are.) But she’s trapped by the Woman in Black, who talks Alice into putting down her gun by pondering whether Alice or her son are as immortal as Alice’s father.

But while Alice puts down her gun and the kitchen knife she stashed in her (unflattering) waistband, she realises the her son, Steven, is pointing at something in the sky. The Woman in Black turns to see what.

But all the children are pointing.

As is Clem.

NEWSREADER: Once again, all the children have stopped. Every child in the world.
MICHELLE: You don’t know that!
HEATHER: Yeah, there are probably some children in a cave somewhere.
MICHELLE: What about children without arms?

The news reader points out that everyone is pointing to London, and children in London are pointing to the centre.

MICHELLE: Where are children in the centre of London pointing?

They’re pointing, as it turns out, to a fiery spike of energy (which Michelle describes as “an Icy Pole of light, but not icy. You know, fiery”), which shoots from the sky and down into the cage in Thames House.

The children intone, “We are here.”

In Thames House, Frobisher tries to speak to the alien, but there’s just a lot of screaming, thrashing around, and what looks like vomiting.

(HEATHER: Space travel. Upsets my tummy.)

We might not quote Heather much in the rest of the episode, as she has a real talent for making the upsetting seem funny. Case in point: Frobisher asks what the 456 want, and Heather responds, “No more vomiting,” to which Michelle adds “And maybe something with electrolytes.”

What the 456 actually want is the chance to speak to the whole world. Frobisher points out that it doesn’t work like that, and in fact they’d only be speaking to elected representatives.

The 456 agree to that, which is a relief to Heather, because, as she says, what would they have done if the 456 didn’t agree?

The 456 do agree, and they further agree to keep the “previous encounter” with Earth (namely, with Great Britain) be kept secret, for the sake of future agreements with humanity.

Frobisher leaves the room, and slides down the far wall as though his legs are rubber.

The PM, meanwhile, is being reamed by an American general, who accuses them of establishing “the sovereign court of Great Britain” and hosting an “alien ambassador” on British soul. Apparently, the American President is quite furious about this.

The PM offers to step back, and let the civil service take charge.

I call for another glass of wine.

The American general says the civil service are still British, but the PM says they’re not elected, so there’s no accountability. Plus, he says, Frobisher is expendable.

Frobisher knows that that means, and rings his wife. His wife says she’ll be fine, and drops her phone—whereupon Jack sneaks in, picks it up, and leaves.

The media are calling it “the so-called pillar of fire,” and Michelle says that that’s what she meant, a “pillar of fire” not an “Icy pole.” I say it’s too late: “Icy pole” is on the blog.

Jack rings Frobisher on his wife’s phone, and Jack says this is 1965 all over again. He asks Frobisher if they’ve “come back” and Frobisher says “yes.”

Jack says that he can blow this sky high (his words: the cliche is not mine), but Frobisher says that they have Alice and Steven, so Jack will do what they say.

I ask Nick if there’s a possum rummaging in our rubbish bin. There isn’t.

Jack threatens to grab Frobisher’s wife, but Frobisher says that Jack is a better man than he (Frobisher) is.

Back in the warehouse, Clem is drinking tea and eating heartily.

He points his tea mug at Ianto, and tells Gwen that Ianto’s queer: he can smell it. Slightly problematic, perhaps, but he could smell pregnancy.

In Thames House, Frobisher is counting down, and Lois excuses herself to put the contact lenses in after all. (Rhys and Gwen reveal that they took the lenses home “for a bit of fun”—Rhys says that it took him a while to get used to it—and Ianto says, “Yeah. Well. We’ve all done that.”)

In the elevator, Bridget points out that history will says that, whatever happens here, the PM was not at fault. Frobisher already knows this.

(Matt? Stop tweeting! It’s distracting!)

Through Lois’s lenses, they can see the tank.

(No one is feeding me Wagon Wheels this week. That’s disappointing. Technically, no one fed me Wagon Wheels last week, but there was the promise of Wagon-Wheel feeding, and that was sufficient.)

Lois angles herself around so that she can see Frobisher’s lips—as he offers greetings from various countries—because the software Torchwood are using for voice recognition isn’t so good in profile.

Apparently, Australia sent greetings.

For shame.

The 456 respond with more apparent vomiting, which, really, is kind of foul. Frobisher holds himself upright. He says “I’m sorry, but I can’t help being concerned. Is there a problem?” They mimic his words back at him, so he simply asks if they should continue.

His main point is that they ask the 456 not to use their children for communication. Everyone is hanging on the answer to this, but the 456 simply say “Yes.”

The American general, in the PM’s office, tells them to ask why they came to the U.K. The PM says that probably isn’t important, but the general says, “Ask them.”

HEATHER: And the U.S. steps in!

Frobisher asks the question, though he isn’t happy about it. But the 456, in line with their previous agreement, says that the U.K. has no significance: “You are middlemen.”

Sure, but have you seen The Middleman? Because that was awesome!

The 456 ask for a gift.

Of course, says Frobisher. What would they like?

Your children, says the 456.

HEATHER: Yeah, see, well, probably best to find that out first.

Clem, of course, freaks out at this. He says they’re coming back, just as they did before. And he loops: “He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming.”

He means Jack.

Frobisher, in shock, asks what they mean by “children.”

“Your descendants,” say the 456.

How many? asks Frobisher.

“10%,” say the 456.

ME: They’re going to decimate them!
HEATHER: Decimate!

Back in the warehouse, Gwen disputes Clem’s response, saying that Jack fights aliens.

“Isn’t that right?” she asks Jack.

“No,” says Jack.

And he says that in 1965, he gave them twelve children.

“Why?” Gwen asks.

And Jack says, “As a gift.”

Credits.

Now I did warn you that I wouldn’t do this live-blogging sober. I was tipsy last week. I’m a little more tipsy this week: Michelle wasn’t drinking last week, and it’s always more depressing drinking on your own, isn’t it?

On that note, Michelle and Heather are joining us again this week. After all, I did swear that I wouldn’t live-blog this on my own.

We’re in ads at the moment, but I’m sure it will start at any moment. Honestly, it will.

This episode contains violence.

HEATHER: Violence!? Is that because Jack blew up in the last episode? Is that the violence you mean?

We get a recap of the last episode, at which point Michelle realises that she misunderstood the last episode: she read Ianto heading up on the elevator as Jack being blown up through the roof.

We come back to Gwen coming to in the aftermath of the explosion—I was distracted briefly by the offer of Wagon Wheels, which turned into a slightly odd offer, in which Michelle offered to hold the Wagon Wheel while I took bites out of it [Note: I think I made this sound weirder than it needed to sound] and when I pay attention again, Gwen is being attacked in an ambulance by two seeming paramedics, who said they were told there should be no survivors. She fights them off, and legs it.

Inato, meanwhile, is pulling himself out of the wreckage of the Hub, and legging it through the streets while being shot at.

NICK: Man, he’s really lucky they can’t shoot straight.
HEATHER: Yeah, you’re not weaving enough, Ianto. Be lighter in your loafers. Lighter!

Frobisher gets a phone call from the woman in black: he tells his wife that their daughters are safe now, but the woman in black tells him that “targets two and three” escaped, and then Decker from MI-something shows up on his doorstep.

Deckers says the transmissions from the 456 are instructions for something that they want built. Frobisher asks why they would attack the children, and Decker says, “Because they can.”

Michelle thinks that’s unsatisfactory from a plot perspective.

Gwen ends up in the ambulance again, and shoots bit of the surviving assassin until he tells her that he doesn’t work for the NHS as he previously claimed, but for the government.

The police seal off the Hub, and Andy objects to the woman in black’s claim that Gwen is dangerous. Sadly, this attracts the woman’s attention to Andy, and she says, “You must know where she lives.”

Gwen bursts into the flat and tells Rhys they need to get out of there.

And the woman in black and her men head across the city, sirens blaring—much to Michelle’s disapproval—on their way to Gwen’s flat. Andy is uncomfortable but unwilling to go against the people with guns.

As they leave the flat, Ianto rings, but he knows the phone is bugged, so they can’t set up a place to meet.

And the woman in black and her men arrive, but Gwen shoots their tires out and she and Rhys escape.

Andy thinks this proves that Gwen isn’t a terrorist, but the woman says she’s just a clever terrorist.

And the next place they look is at Ianto’s sister’s house, where there’s a slightly disconcerted response in my living room to the fact that Ianto’s brother-in-law is naked when they burst into his bedroom.

Ianto, meanwhile, walks through the Cardiff streets and ducks into corridors [Note: or even alleyways] as vans pass.

The next morning, Frobisher tells his daughters to keep their phones on during the day, though they point out that the phones will be confiscated if they ring during class. He says he wants to speak to them, and they say, “Since when?” But they’re not too freaked out, because they say “Dad?” and then start intoning, “We want a pony. We want a pony. We want a pony.” “See?” he says. “Nothing to worry about.” But he looks terrified.

Clem wanders the street, and pulls out a newspaper. And Alice’s son asks whether Uncle Jack doesn’t work in the area of Cardiff that blew up, but Alice says that Cardiff is a big place.

Lois comes to work, and checks out the order to kill list, with Jack’s name on it.

Frobisher, meeting the Prime Minister, asks if the 456 have contacted any other countries. He says that’s what everyone is asking, but the Prime Minister says there’s no chatter on the wire. Frobisher thanks the Prime Minister for trusting him, but the PM says all he’s done is put Frobisher on the front line: “That’s what the front line is for,” he says. “The first to fall.”

The rescue team find Jack’s arm in the rubble of the Hub.

We have a brief but scintillating discussion about which of these characters are queer. Apparently, Alice is, but Lois is not—though some people in my living room wish she were. The discussion on Bridget is more divisive.

Lois tells Frobisher about the meeting with Jack, but Frobisher says that Jack is dead, killed in the explosion.

We know that’s questionable, since they’ve pulled Jack’s arm, shoulder, and “part of a head” out of the rubble, and loaded it into a private ambulance that attracts Heather’s scorn: “They’re Black Ops!” she says. “Do you think Black Ops would spray paint ‘Private Ambulance’ on their vans?”

Ianto gets a message to his sister, reading, “Where Dad broke my leg, at noon. Bring laptop.” Ianto’s sister is uncertain about this, but her husband says that she’s the only family Ianto has.

Rhys tries to get money from an ATM, but his account has been frozen. (And I missed the adorable scene where Rhys tried to take the bag off her, Gwen got offended, and Rhys said, ‘You want your trigger finger free, don’t you?’)

Gwen says they need to go to London.

In the secret Black Ops headquarters, the body bag containing the arm, shoulder, and part of a head now contains a skinless body. The woman in black rings Frobisher to tell him that Jack’s “Lazarus qualities” remain undiminished, as Frobisher heads off with Bridget and Lois to check out the structure being built at the 456’s orders.

Gwen and Rhys head into a truck full of potatoes, sneaking in under the canvas to hitchhike their way to London.

Ianto’s brother-in-law head out to the car watching his house with a group of young men and boys, claiming that they obviously have “a couple of paedos” on the estate, and they begin rocking the car as Ianto’s sister escapes to meet her brother.

Jack, in Black Ops headquarters, comes to and starts screaming. And screaming. And screaming.

Gwen, riding on top of the potatoes, feels ill. Rhys asks if she’s travel sick, but she asks when he’s ever known her to be travel sick.

GWEN: You know those announcements that you rehearse in your head?
RHYS: Yes?
GWEN: Well, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

Rhys gets her point fairly quickly, but then he freaks about the car chases and the gun fights.

RHYS: How could I let you do that in your condition?
GWEN: You carried my bag.

I love, love, love Rhys in this storyline.

Ianto meets up with his sister, who is horrified by his bloody, dishevelled condition, and asks what kind of civil servant he is.

IANTO: An under-appreciated one.

Then they see that all the children have frozen again. But now they’re chanting, “We are coming. Tomorrow. We are coming. Tomorrow.”

And Clem, standing in a pub, is chanting too.

Ianto realises that this is why they tried to blow up the Hub, as Clem, coming to in the pub, asks the barmaid, “Oh, can you smell that?” He runs out into the street, shouting, “They are coming tomorrow. I can smell them!”

Ianto nicks his sister’s laptop and car, and leaves.

Frobisher is largely concerned with his daughters, and, second to that, the Prime Minister.

We take a brief break while I look up the Home Secretary on Wikipedia so we can all be sure exactly what he does in the running of the U.K.

Gwen, ringing the Home Secretary’s office, is lucky enough to get through to Lois. She wants to meet with Frobisher, and she and Rhys wait in a cafe for him. Rhys asks if they can trust Frobisher, and Gwen says that he’s their man in government: if they can’t trust him, they really are in trouble.

And, of course, they can’t trust him. But they can trust Lois! Hopefully, because she turns up at the cafe, telling Gwen that Frobisher gave the order to kill Jack Harkness, along with four others, killed the same day.

LOIS: I didn’t sign the Official Secrets Act to cover up murder. But I didn’t take the job to commit treason on my second day.

Rhys talks Lois out of enough money to buy them dinner—they’ve come all the way from Cardiff on an empty stomach, after all. (Gwen says she’ll have a steak pie, chips, and a cup of tea, and winks at Rhys. I can’t express how adorable that is.) Gwen asks about Ianto and Jack, and learns that Ianto is missing, and Jack is apparently dead.

Jack is not dead, but he might wish he is, because they’re filling his jail cell with what we want to call cement, but Michelle says, “Didn’t you watch Bones the other day? It’s not cement, it’s wet concrete.”

Ianto watches them do this.

In the meantime, Lois gives Rhys and Gwen a way to intercept the undertaker who has been sent to collect the doctor’s body, the doctor who betrayed Jack. His body is being held in the same complex as Jack.

Frobisher heads back up to the top of Thames House (home of MI5) in the company of the PM, where a cage is being built for the 456.

Rhys and Gwen, in dark clothing, head into the compound, still claiming to be there to pick up the doctor’s body. Rhys is terrified, insisting that they aren’t going to get away with this, but Gwen is confident.

Gwen, heading through the building, is being chatted up by a soldier, who wishes that more undertakers looked like her. Rhys thinks he’s blown their cover, but in fact the soldier is just distressed to find out that they’re married.

Apparently, the soldier is called “Corporal Camarra,” which confuses me because I thought they said “Cobra Commander.”

Gwen, meanwhile, takes him down and takes the cameras out with the magic pen that she used when talking to Clem. But it’s not much help, because there are Black Ops troops at either side of the corridor, and Gwen has just found that Jack is encased in concrete.

[Note: I originally spelt that “Black Ops troupes,” which I would love to leave for the comedy value alone. But it’s just too silly.]

But at the point, Ianto, in a bulldozer, pulls Jack’s entire cell out of the wall as a single concrete block, and Gwen and Rhys leap out after it and onto the bulldozer.

Rhys and Gwen manage to block pursuit by setting fire to a petrol tanker, while Ianto drives his bulldozer to a quarry. Ianto tells Gwen to get the car started, while he raises the concrete block high, high, high over the quarry floor, and then drops it.

HEATHER: Please, lord, let gravity work.

And it does work.

HEATHER: I think he’d be broken a little bit.
ME: Doesn’t matter.
HEATHER: I know. But, you know, ow.

Nevertheless, Jack is alive—and naked, but he’s never cared about that. And, in fact, when Gwen hands him a jacket, he slings it over his shoulder and walks off to the car, otherwise naked.

Heather has some concerns about the effect on the car’s upholstery, while Michelle wonders if deaf kids sign the 456’s message.

At the top of Thames House, the tank is filled with gases that I have no chance of reproducing, given the speed with which Decker lists them.

So the tank is ready, the whole room is laid out according to 456 instructions—“Something of an ambassadorial suite,” says Decker. “Or a throne room. Or a slaughterhouse.”

Bridger wonders why the 456 seem to be coming for Britain, and Decker says, “Exactly. Why is that, Mr Frobisher?”

Frobisher doesn’t answer: he and Bridget leave the room, and we close with Decker heading up to the tank, and breathing out heavily, fogging the glass with his breath.

Oh, I don’t think I’m ready for this. Then again, I don’t think I’d ever be ready for this.

I said to Nick, “I’ll do it, but I’m not doing it alone and I’m not doing it sober.”

So I’m quite tipsy, and also Michelle and Heather have come over to see us through the black, black nihilism that is Torchwood season three.

And here we are.

Oooh, this episode contains violence, but no sex or nudity.

HEATHER: I don’t know if I can watch it. It’s for mature audiences. I’m an Australian now.

We open in 1965, with a busload of children being driven across a green and verdant landscape—a green and pleasant land, even—and then all herded out of the bus to stand in the road.

A bright light appears, and the children all walk towards it bar one, who hesitates.

Credits.

Cardiff, present day. We see Gwen accessing an ATM, where she hears a woman nagging her son for standing there and not listening to her. She smiles and looks back.

A busy man in a suit is chattering to his wife, unaware that his children are staring straight ahead.

An attractive dark-haired woman finds her son standing catatonic in the doorway. Rhys swears at children stopping in the middle of the road. Another dark-haired woman nags her children.

Then the original dark-haired woman is back, as her son, Steven, comes back to life and continues his forward movement.

Gwen reaches the Torchwood Hub, which is completely silent and dark. Of course, there are fewer staff members now than there used to be.

And Jack and Ianto are in a hospital, listening to a young doctor tell them that “poor Mr Williams” won’t be making it after all—he’s just died.

They tell the doctor that they’re his neighbours, and the doctor says, “If only there were more like you in the world.”

Ooh, meta.

Being such good neighbours, Jack says, could they see the body?

Of course they can, says the doctor—and, after a brief discussion about whether they actually are a couple or not, Ianto hands Jack a laser saw, so they can chop the man open and remove the alien parasite living inside him.

The doctor witnesses this, and isn’t entirely thrilled by the whole process. He chases Jack and Ianto into the carpark, insisting that they’re Torchwood.

JACK: Never heard of them.
NICK: It only says it on your car, Jack.

The doctor mentions some mysterious deaths, but Ianto says that the NHS has too much red tape, and they pass on the opportunity to explore it further.

We cut to an attractive young woman in a power suit heading into an official-looking building, past the man we saw ignoring his two young daughters earlier. As he heads into his office to consult with a general—he says there’s a problem with the children—the young woman apologises for being late.

We hear the story of the children half from Gwen, who tells us about the traffic accidents involving children, and half from the general speaking to the public servant, who fleshes out the information that first Gwen and then Ianto are giving us: the problem involves the children and is occurring worldwide.

The general is from UNIT, so we know this probably involves something a bit alien.

At the Hub, Jack is complaining that Martha Jones is on holiday—and, oh, I could talk about that, but I won’t. Spoilers!—just as Ianto says that the doctor is back.

Not the Doctor, the doctor.

Gwen heads out to talk to the doctor—nominating herself “recruitment officer” and complaining that they used the same trick on her, once upon a time—while Ianto says to Jack that even Gwen is calling them a couple.

Jack asks why that’s significant, and walks off saying he hates the word “couple.”

IANTO: Me, too.

Oh, bless you, Ianto. Pretty lad like you? You don’t need to put up with Jack’s moods.

Gwen chats to the doctor about the strange details of Torchwood work and the vast paycheck—she used to buy clothes and stash them under the bed so that Rhys wouldn’t see them.

The doctor talks about the alien awareness that is gripping Earth, and how it has led to an increase in suicides. He talks about one particular woman, who had been a Christian all her life, and left a suicide note saying that it was as though science had won. She said she had seen her place in the universe, and it was tiny.

I’ll say it again: most nihilistic show on television.

But as Gwen is explaining the wonder of alien contact, she sees that the children have frozen. Again.

HEATHER: Nothing creepier than children not moving.

The children start screaming in unison, a single, high-pitched scream that goes on and on without pause for breath.

HEATHER: Okay, that’s creepier.

They stop screaming, just for a moment.

Then they start speaking in unison, saying, at first, “We . . . we . . . we” over and over again, then “We are . . . we are . . .” and finally “We are coming. We are coming.”

Over and over. All the children.

And one man. One man who seems to be in his mid-50s.

The public servant demands that someone bring him a child, but the children snap out of it, and continue playing as though they have no idea that they’ve paused in their actions.

All bar the man, who says to his carers that “They’ve found me.”

In the public servant’s office, all is chaos. His private secretary, Bridget, asks Lois, the new girl, to set up an automated e-mail for the press, and hands over her e-mail password.

A man called Decker comes to see Frobisher—the public servant—and says, “456. I warned you.”

Meanwhile, Lois answers the phone to Jack, who explains that he’s Torchwood and, when she doesn’t know what that is, asks how she can work for the Home Office and not know Torchwood.

Thankfully, she has Bridget’s password, so she can get into what Heather calls “the secret government Wikipedia page” on Torchwood, and read all about it.

Frobisher, meanwhile, is taken by Decker to Thames House—where, as Nicks says, the MIs live—where he is played a secret recording from the 456 channel. But, Decker says, the 456 channel is still open, and nothing’s come through that, only through the children.

Frobisher says that the Prime Minister will have to be told, but Decker doesn’t seem to think it’s important: he says that the 456 precede the Prime Minister anyway.

Back at the Hub, Gwen points out that all the children all over the world are speaking English, which seems odd. Jack says that if you scanned the Earth from outside, English would look like the dominant language, but Ianto says that would be Chinese—Mandarin, actually, he says.

So that’s a problem in and of itself.

But Gwen is distracted by the footage of Timothy, the man who spoke in unison with the children. She heads off to speak to him, over in England. On route, she talks to Rhys, who is looking at a house for sale they planned to view. And Rhys points out that if the second event was planned around recess, when most children would be out in the playground, that implies that whoever is responsible is looking directly at the U.K. It’s worldwide, he says, but aimed at the U.K.

Jack, talking to Ianto, says they need a child. Ianto asks where they’ll find a child, but Jack walks off, saying he’ll see Ianto later.

In the Prime Minister’s office, Frobisher listens to the PM talk about how it was much easier when the only threat was reds under the bed. Frobisher says that they’ll need to issue a blank sheet, but the PM says that he won’t be involved with this at all: the blank sheet needs to rest with Frobisher.

Jack turns up at the house of the attractive dark-haired woman we saw earlier, where her son Steven greets him as “Uncle Jack.”

And Ianto heads to see his sister, the other dark-haired woman we saw earlier, asking to take his niece out to Mcdonald’s or to the films this afternoon. The sister says no: her daughter’s not leaving her sight, not while the alien weirdness is going on.

Jack sits and drinks tea with Alice, asking how Steven is going and her ex-husband. She mentions that Jack doesn’t visit much, and he says that was her decision: “I just can’t stand it, Dad,” she says.

Jack makes the same suggestion that Ianto did, that he could spend time with his grandson, but Alice knows her father, and calls him a bastard: “You’re not experimenting on that child, Dad,” she says. That’s why she wants him to stay away: because he’s dangerous.

Ianto’s sister, meanwhile, is asking about Jack. A friend of hers saw him out with Jack, and says Jack was film-star handsome. He remains a little aloof, until he’s prompted to say, “He is very handsome.”

He tells his sister that it’s not men: it’s just Jack. And he doesn’t quite know what it is, so he doesn’t talk about it. His sister says she won’t talk about it, just as her husband comes in and greets Ianto (albeit affectionately) as “gayboy.”

To Ianto’s comparative relief, the Torchwoodmobile is stolen at that point.

Gwen, meanwhile, is in England—she has already told Rhys “farewell forever” and told him that she’s had her shots—talking to Timothy White, which she knows (through a culturally specific reference that escapes me) is a fake name. Timothy was found sleeping rough on the streets at age eleven, and still had a Scottish accent then. The staff know nothing of his history.

Gwen, in an interview room with him, says she thinks it’s aliens speaking through Timothy. Timothy says there’s no such thing as aliens, but Gwen says those days are past: she’s seen aliens, she says. Timothy grabs her hand and sniffs it deeply, finally declaring in surprise that she’s telling the truth.

When Gwen turns off the security camera in the room with her “gizmo,” Timothy—still refusing to tell her his real name—tells her the story we saw part of at the beginning of the episode, with much stuttering and hesitation. He says that the children on the bus were all from children’s homes, and they disappeared into a white light: all but him.

Gwen says she can help him, but she needs to know his real name: he says, hesitatingly, that it’s Clem, Clement Macdonald.

But as Gwen pushes him for more information about his background, Clem sniffs deeply and says, “You’re pregnant.”

“No,” says Gwen. “No, I don’t think so.”

And the nurse breaks into the room at that point, saying that the security cameras went down, but that Gwen has spent enough time with Clem anyway.

Gwen asks Ianto to check up the name Clement Madonald, and someone in the Home Office intercepts the search.

Frobisher tells Bridget he has some work for her: he gives her a blank sheet of paper.

NICK: God. You’d need to be careful with your stationary re-supplying, wouldn’t you?

Sure enough, the blank page is an order to kill, with Lois realises when she sees Bridget’s distress and promptly checks Bridget’s e-mails.

And Captain Jack, checking out a report from the young doctor from earlier, is shot from behind. A woman in dark fatigues comes in, as the doctor complains that he was supposed to infiltrate Torchwood. She asks him if he killed the patient he used to lure Jack in, and, when he admits he did, tells him to get off his high horse.

The doctor asks is they think it’s true about Jack and, as Jack comes to life, the woman shoots him again. So, that’s a yes, then.

Then she cuts Jack open with his own laser scalpel.

At the home, Clem, somehow aware that the Home Office is sending its police after him, legs it across the grounds.

The woman in fatigues shoots the doctor in the back as he tries to flee, and the mysterious men (and women) in black walk unhurriedly down the corridor as Jack comes back to life.

Jack and Gwen both head back to the Hub, where Gwen’s first action is to check that she is pregnant with the medical scanner.

Jack comes into the Hub after her, and tells Ianto they need clean-up on one body at the hospital. Ianto asks if they killed Jack, too, and, when Jack says yes, gives him a hug.

Jack follows Gwen into the medical centre, where he sees that Gwen is pregnant—which Ianto takes as a good opportunity to point out that he lost the car.

Gwen asks what she’ll do about her job, but Jack says they’ll cope: he puts his hand over hers on the medical scanner.

Which promptly reveals that he has a bomb embedded in his abdomen.

He tells Gwen and Ianto to run. Gwen won’t, until Jack reminds her that she’s pregnant.

The children start chanting again.

Ianto says that there’ll be nothing left of Jack, but Jack says he can survive anything: he puts Ianto on the elevator after one last kiss, and Ianto rises up to the roof.

The children continue to chant “We are coming” as Frobisher shrieks at his daughters to stop.

The Hub explodes.

So that’s Jack’s brother, Suzie, Tosh—every secret hidden in the Hub, gone. Including Jack?

And the children chant, “We are coming. We are coming. We are coming. Back.”

End.

Dear Brisbane,

This weather? It’s ridiculous. Please stop it immediately.

Love, Me.

In other words, this is the last episode of Torchwood season two. So we’ll find out in about an hour or so whether or not they’ll be heading straight into “Children of Earth.” In a way, I really hope they don’t. I’m not quite sure I’m psychologically ready to live-blog that storyline.

According to the ABC, we have another episode of Hyperdrive next. No, wait: now they’re saying Torchwood is next! I’m confused by the station promos! They’re giving me conflicting information!

Hey, looks like they’re not going to “Children of Earth”! More on that later.

This episode contains violence, but no nudity or sexual references.

Monologue.

JACK: And Torchwood is ready.
NICK: Well. Sort of.

We flash back to last week’s episode, the explosive devices, and Captain John Hart. Not to mention Jack’s brother Gray.

We come back at the same warehouse, but the Torchwoodmobile is gone: John has taken it. And Tosh is reading Rift activity all over the city. And Andy rings Gwen, telling her—as he walks past blood splatters all over the walls—that they really need her.

The team splits up, with Jack going back to the Hub. Tosh says it’s a trap, but Jack says that he’s the only one who could control John—that’s why the Time Agency partnered them.

RHYS: Time Agency? Don’t tell me that’s based in Cardiff, too.

At the Hub, Jack walks in to loud disco music, which John claims is “their” song.

JACK: We don’t have a song. And if we did, it wouldn’t be this.

Jack asks John what he wants, and John says he wants Jack to know that he loves him. Jack scoffs, but John says, no: he really does love Jack.

Then he shoots him. With two automatic weapons. Many, many times. And we go to credits on Jack face down in a pool of water, as John says, “Because this? Is going to get nasty.”

At the police station, Gwen finds that the four most senior officers have been taken out by weevils. Andy objects to Rhys being there, since he says that this is a crime scene.

Rhys says that he’s keeping more secrets than Andy could possibly guess. Andy asks what he means.

RHYS: Like a Time Agency based in Cardiff?
GWEN: Oh, it’s not based in Cardiff.
ANDY: Great secret. I ask, you tell.

In another site, Tosh and Ianto (Tosh hopped up on Owen’s industrial-strength painkillers) are confronted by what the staff are calling “ghosts”. They’re men in robes, with scythes, who insist that Ianto and Tosh pray to their heathen gods, before charging.

But Tosh and Ianto shoot them, without flinching.

In a hospital, Owen takes down an alien who lives to eat, by distracting it with food. Don’t ask me to spell that alien’s name.

In the Hub, Jack comes back to life, chained to the wall. There’s much banter, naturally, about bondage and John’s previous sex life with Jack. Again, John taunts Jack with the fact that though Jack has all eternity at his command, he still won’t spend time with John.

John says that he’s localising the Rift storms, but when Jack objects, John electrocutes him through the chains.

Jack says that whatever John’s planning, he, Jack, will stop him. John says, “I hope you can.” But though Jack pulls against the chains, he can’t break free. So John says they need to go and make sure that they get a good view.

He drags Jack up onto the roof of a building that I can’t identify. And he electrocutes him again, when Jack objects. He opens comms, to talk to all the Torchwood employees, and tell them to get up onto the roofs of their buildings, or they’ll miss all the fun. Or, he adds, does he mean carnage? He always gets those mixed up.

As it turns out, he means carnage, as he explodes bombs all over Cardiff, to the horror of Tosh, Ianto, Gwen, and Owen—not to mention Jack, who drew himself up in time to see the explosions. But even as he objects, Jack triggers a Rift opening, and takes Jack away with him.

This leaves Gwen in charge. She wants to know the extent of the damage. Tosh says that there were fifteen major explosions, taking all communication networks offline.

Of course, they’ve also damaged the local nuclear station. (Which really just reminds me of Plan 9 From Outer Space, which managed to be anti both nuclear power and anti solar power.)

Gwen wonders where Jack is, and we find that he’s still in Cardiff—in 27 AD. John shows Jack that there’s a bomb bonded to John’s arm, as well as something that allows “him”—whoever “he” is—to monitor John’s every word.

JACK: He has me doing everything he says. I’m not my own man, Jack. I thought you’d notice. But no: you’re so selfish. As though I want to blow up your stupid city, when I could be experiencing seventeen different pleasures in the Lotus Nebula.

He tells Jack to run, but Jack says that it’s the oldest trick in the book—just as Jack hears someone calling his name. He swings around, in a gorgeous slow-mo shot, to see his brother walking towards him against the sun flare on the lens.

They embrace, until Jack says that he’s sorry—and Gray says it’s not good enough, and stabs Jack in the belly.

As Jack falls, Gray tells John to get a shovel.

Back in the present day, Gwen mobilises the police force, and Tosh and Ianto realise they have to work on-site to restore basic requirements.

In Cardiff on 27 AD, John is binding Jack, as Gray tells Jack that the creatures in question, the ones who over-ran the Boe Shane Penisula, live to torture, that he lived for years among corpses, hoping to become one.

And he has John bury Jack alive, in Cardiff, in 27 AD, so he can choke, and die, and come back to life for the next two thousand years.

John throws his ring into the grave on Jack’s chest—when Gray challenges him, he says it’s of sentimental value—and fills in the grave, before Gray rematerialises in the Torchwood Hub.

In the police station, Gwen breaks down a little, and Rhys gives her a lovely pep talk that prompts her to ask “Will you marry me again?” When Tosh says that Gwen needs to get back to the Hub, Gwen says she can’t leave the police station, but Rhys says she can: they’ll be fine.

Back at the Hub, Gwen comes face to face with John, and, not surprisingly, draws a gun on him, and tells him to get on his knees.

JOHN: Honestly, it’s all sex, sex, sex with you people.

But he agrees, and then tells Gwen about the bomb, about Jack being buried alive, about Gray.

Gwen asks, quite rightly, why she should believe John, and he tells her something of Gray’s history (and, by extension, something of Jack’s history). He says Gray saw him as the rescuing hero, so it took him (John) too long to realise that Gray had learned terrible things from watching the creatures at work.

At that point, John screams, as the bomb molecularly bonded to his skin unbinds. He says that, apparently, he didn’t have to come back after all. He could have gone to anywhere in the galaxy. But he does tell them that they can track Jack through the ring that he threw in the grave—just as Gray triggers some noise that drives the weevils mad, making them attack people in the street.

Ianto and Tosh can’t make it to the nuclear power station. But Owen, helping at the hospital, says he’ll go: he’s king of the weevils, remember.

John is still trying to find Jack, who is not where he should be, as they’re ambushed by two weevils, sadly while separated from their guns. But Tosh and Ianto arrive in time to shoot the weevils—as Gwen, Ianto, and John are dragging them down to the cells, Gray locks them all in and blocks their comms.

Owen, in the nuclear station, tries to convince the last remaining member of staff to leave the station. She doesn’t want to, but he talks good talk, Owen. I secretly kind of like him this season.

The talk is just talk, though. As the staff member leaves, he frantically contacts Tosh, who tells him that the reactor has already gone critical, but that she can help him.

That, of course, is before Gray turns up and shoots her in the stomach.

Owen asks for her repeatedly over the comms, but she can’t talk. She reaches for the comm, but Gray, asking her to describe death to him, kicks the comm down the stairs.

Then Gray hears a knocking noise, which he follows. Owen says, “Tosh, are you there? I need your help, babe” as Tosh begins the long, slow process of dragging herself down the stairs to the comm.

And Gray, following the knocking sound through the Hub, finds Jack inside the Torchwood vault. Jack, it seems, was buried in a twenty-foot grave, and found by Torchwood. They’re horrified, since he’s supposed to be on assignment for them. He’s horrified, because he’s crossed his own timeline. So he asks then to freeze him.

And he says to Gray, “I forgive you.” And walks away. Gray follows him, demanding that Jack talk to him. But Jack says no: he gave Gray absolution, and now Gray needs to give it to him.

Gray will not. He says everything is Jack’s fault, that he prayed for death because of Jack, the favoured son, who will live forever.

And Jack says that he knows it’s all his fault, as he chloroforms Gray, and cries over him.

In the cells, John manages to recall the weevils.

And in the Hub, Tosh grabs the comm, and manages to restore power in the nuclear station. She sounds breathless, and Owen asks if she’s hurt. But she says it’s just her arm, and that she’s sorting out another painkiller—which she does by stabbing herself in the leg with a hypodermic.

But Tosh realises that there’s no way to stop the meltdown. All they can do is contain it, by channeling the flow back into the room that Owen is in. He should have time to get out.

Tosh, during all of this, is bleeding and wincing, leaning up against some over-turned medical equipment.

Jack manages to free the others from the cells, whereupon there’s some promiscuous hugging, though John doesn’t get one.

Owen manages to contain the meltdown, but Tosh tells him to run, because a power surge is triggering an emergency shutdown. And he runs, but the door slams in his face.

He screams to Tosh to help him, that he’s not going to die again.

TOSH: Please stop.
OWEN: Why should I? I’m going to rage my way to oblivion.
TOSH: Please stop, Owen.
OWEN: Why? Give me one good reason why I should?
TOSH: Because you’re breaking my heart.

Whimper.

He ask Tosh what’s going to happen to him. She doesn’t want to describe it, because what will happen, basically, is that his body will slowly decompose as he watches. Tosh says that it’s all her fault, but he says no: she’s saved his back so many times, right back to his second week, with the space pig. (A call back to “Aliens of London.”)

OWEN: We never did get that date, did we? We sort of missed each other. My fault. I never noticed till it was too late. I’m sorry.
TOSH: Me, too.

Whimper. Sob.

The meltdown starts.

It’s really, really hard to live-blog while you’re sobbing.

Owen fades into a blur of white life. [I’m going to leave that, though I actually meant “blur of white light.” Yet “blur of white life” seems strangely apposite.]

And Jack bursts into the room, to find Tosh bleeding on the floor. She tells them that Owen’s dead, that she couldn’t save him.

Jack and Gwen huddle over Tosh, who is looking horribly pale and sore by this point.

She doesn’t talk, just stares at Jack as she dies.

And Jack is weeping.

And Gwen is weeping.

And I’m weeping.

And Nick’s weeping.

We don’t see Ianto’s face, but I assume he’s weeping. Everyone else is.

As Cardiff recovers, Gwen lies on the sofa in her apartment and weeps in Rhys’s arms. Jack, in the Hub, cryo-freezes Gray, though John says that Gray isn’t going to recover in a hundred years. Maybe, he asks, death will be the release that Gray needs? But Jack says there’s been enough death.

John points out that Jack didn’t struggle when John buried him, and Jack says it was his penance. Then he freezes Gray.

John says he’s heading off to bits of the planet he’s never seen before, but before he goes, he kisses Jack on the cheek, and says, “I’m sorry. For your losses.”

He walks away.

Ianto logs Owen out for the last time, as Jack puts away Owen’s white coat.

Gwen packs Tosh’s glasses and other effects, as Ianto logs Tosh out for the last time. But doing so triggers a last message that she has left on her machine.

TOSH: So, if you’re seeing this, I guess this means I’m, well, dead. I hope it was impressive, not crossing the road or an incident with a toaster. I just wanted to say, it’s okay. Jack, you saved me. You showed me the mysteries of the universe. All the wonders. And I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And Owen—you never knew. I loved you. All of you. And I hope I did good.

Jack says that now they go on. Gwen she’s she doesn’t think she can, not after this. But Jack says she can: they all can.

“The end is where we begin,” he says.

And they say that’s the last episode of Torchwood, so I’m guessing they’re not heading straight into “Children of Earth.” I have to say, “Thank goodness.” I don’t think I could cope with that.

But, when they air it, I’ll be here, weeping and live-blogging, as usual.

Oh, it’s been a while since I’ve had a new episode of Doctor Who to live-blog. Not since “Planet of the Dead” in May, which is here, if you didn’t read it the first time.

Oh, dear: the ABC newsreader has just said that police in the Top End have been “dropping lines with youngsters.” I think it’s about fishing, but I’m laughing too hard to actually listen to the story.

Now, for this live-blogging I have my brother and his girlfriend, who are up from Sydney on a visit, sitting in, but I don’t know if they’ll be saying anything they want live-blogged. Let’s play it by ear, shall we?

Currently, my brother is being bewildered by the fact that Queensland ABC has a different newsreader than does Sydney ABC. He doesn’t come and visit me very often . . .

Here we are.

We open on crackly video footage of baby Susie and her mother, talking to Lindsay Duncan. The footage is breaking up, because of the solar flares, but before the woman can finish talking about her house deposit, the footage breaks up.

Then the TARDIS materialises, and out the Doctor steps in his spacesuit, saying, “Oh, the Red Planet!” That’s a beautiful shot.

But we cut away from it to a Russian chap, Yuri, who is setting a solar panel with “No Trespassers” on it outside the space base. Ed, an Australian chap, tells Yuri not to waste solar panels, just before Lindsay Duncan comes in and tells Ed she expected better of him. Ed gives her an unhappy look as she walks away.

Then the Doctor, looking over the space base, is arrested for trespassing by a robot.

No, seriously.

Credits.

Beautiful shot of the dome, before we cut inside to find Lindsay Duncan holding a gun on the Doctor.

LINDSAY: State your name, rank, and purpose.
DOCTOR: The Doctor. Doctor. Fun.

People are fascinated by the Doctor’s appearance on Mars, but he’s more interested in convincing Lindsay to put down the gun that she’s holding to his head. She does, but only because Gadget, the robot, is still covering him. Gadget is being controlled through “auto-glove response” by a young American guy.

We cut to the bio-dome, where the gardeners are pulling up the first carrot grown on Mars. At which point my brother’s girlfriend, a botanist, goes into hysterics. But Andy, the gardener, washes the carrot (more hysterics), and drops to his knees in the background, where he starts convulsing.

Maggie, the other gardener, asks if he’s all right, and when he turns around, to show pale eyes and a cracked, dry mouth, she starts screaming.

Back on the control room, the Doctor has just learned that this is Bowie Base One, the first humans on Mars. And now he knows who they are.

And he runs through the names. “Oh, I’m so stupid!” he says. “You’re Captain Adelaide Brooke!” And we flip to her bio., which shows her as dying in 2059. Deputy Ed Gold, dead 2059. Tarak Ital, MD, dead 2059. Senior Technician Steffi Ehrlich, dead 2059. Junior Technician Roman Groom, dead 2059. Nurse Yuri Kerenski, dead 2059. Geologist Mia Bennet, dead 2059.

“Oh, you’re only 27,” he says to Mia, who looks more than a little freaked out by this.

The Doctor asks the date, and we flip to a news report that shows the destruction of Bowie Base One. Today.

The Doctor says he really has to go, because this is one of the rare cases where he really can’t interfere. But as he’s turning away, he asks about the other two members of the crew, Maggie and Andy. And when Ed brings up the bio-dome on the comms, we hear a strange roar.

Adelaide won’t hear of the Doctor leaving at this point, because this all started after he arrived. So she’s heading to the bio-dome, and he’s coming with her, she says. Tarak goes, too. And Gadget, though the Doctor keeps talking about how much he hates novelty robots.

ROMAN: My friend, she made her domestic robot look like a dog.
DOCTOR: Oh, well, dogs. That’s different.

As they approach the bio-dome, the Doctor asks Adelaide if it was worth it, and she says it was, talking about the environmental disasters on Earth. But the conversation is cut off—just after the Doctor rather cloyingly refers to her as “the woman with starlight in her soul”—when they see Maggie lying unconscious outside the bio-dome.

Yuri comes running with a med kit, so he can stabilise Maggie. Ed comes running because I’m quite convinced that he’s knocking off Maggie. But Adelaide gives him an official warning for leaving his post, and sends him back.

Steffi tells Adelaide that the voice print of the roar matches Andy’s voice print.

She, the Doctor, and Talak head into the bio-dome, which is a real botanical garden in Cardiff, apparently, complete with birds.

In the med. centre, Yuri tells Adelaide that Maggie is awake, but she’s in isolation for twenty-four hours. Ed asks Maggie if she remembers how she ended up in the tunnel, but Adelaide snaps at him to keep the comms clear.

In the bio-dome, Talak comes across Andy, who is standing silently at the end of a corridor, with water dripping from his sleeves in huge quantities. Talak asks Andy to turn around, and he does with the same roar that we heard when he turned on Maggie.

In the med centre, Yuri is talking about his brother, while, in soft focus behind him, Maggie starts convulsing. When she stops and looks up, her voice sounds different, as she asks Yuri where his brother lives. And when he turns and looks up at her, we see that she has the same dry, cracked mouth as Andy, and water is pouring out of her mouth.

Yuir contacts Adelaide, who tells him to calm down, but she tries to contact Talak to tell him that the area is unsafe. It’s certainly unsafe for Talak, who is currently down on his knees as Andy, who has a hand on Talak’s face, pours water over him.

They convince Andy to let Talak go, but to no real purpose, because Talak is already showing the same blank eyes and cracked mouth. The Doctor says that they need to go, and he and Adelaide leg it, followed closely by Andy and Talak. The Doctor and Adelaide make it through the sealed door, but Andy and Talak stand outside, trying to break the seals with water.

In the med. centre, Ed is looking at Maggie, who has both hands against the glass wall, with water pouring out from her palms and her mouth.

The Doctor, with his usual curiosity, wants to know if Andy can talk, but there’s no sign that he can. The Doctor has to dial his curiosity back, because he says he can’t stay, no matter what has started here. The door is airtight and therefore, Adelaide says, watertight, but it’s also electronic, so Andy and Talak fuse the circuits, and the door opens.

Luckily, since Andy and Talak can run faster than the Doctor and Adelaide, they’ve left Gadget outside, and the Doctor soups him up, so they can get to the main door ahead of their pursuers—of course, this isn’t much fun for Roman, who is still wearing the gloves, but at least they make it through the door ahead of Talak and Andy. This door is hermetically sealed, so they can’t break through, says Adelaide, but the Doctor says that water is patient, and water always wins.

Adelaide heads to the med. centre, with the Doctor trailing behind her, complaining about the distances they have to travel. In the med. centre, the Doctor speaks to Maggie in a language that he says is “ancient North Martian,” though Adelaide tells him not to be ridiculous. Maggie seems to recognise the language, though, as Ed points out.

The Doctor wonders what the creatures want, and Yuri says she was looking at the picture of Earth, with all its water.

Ed tells Adelaide that this is an unknown infection, and they need to go to Action One. The Doctor leaps in to say, “But that’s evacuation!”

Yes, it is. They need to evacuate the base, especially since these creatures seem to want Earth.

So they’re stripping the base as quickly as possible. But the Doctor takes Adelaide aside, to point out that though Talak changed immediately, Maggie did not. Any one of them could be infected, the Doctor says, and water is patient: they could take the infection back to Earth.

Adelaide agrees, and heads out to check the ice field.

There’s no reason for him to check the ice field, the Doctor says to Yuri, who isn’t paying the slightest bit of attention as he packs up the med. centre. No reason at all—before he goes haring off, screaming, “Adelaide!”

Yuri leaves the med. centre, and Maggie immediately blows out the electronic seal on the isolation bay door, steps out into the med. centre, and screams, a scream to which Andy and Talak respond.

At the ice field, the Doctor talks about the Ice Warriors, and wonders if they ever came across this creature.

As he and Adelaide access the computer data about the water flow, Adelaide says to him, “You don’t look like a coward. But all you’ve been trying to do is run.” And he explains that some moments in time are fixed, some moments in time must always occur. And this moment here, on Bowie Base One, must always happen.

What happens here? Adelaide asks.

And the Doctor says that he thinks something wonderful happened. Something that started fifty years ago. Adelaide says that she never told anyone that, but the Doctor says that she told her daughter, and maybe, one day, her daughter told the story of the time, fifty years ago in continuity, when the Earth was stolen (at the end of season four of Doctor Who), and Adelaide saw the Dalek.

She says it looked right into her, and then it simply went away. She knew that night that she would follow it.

DOCTOR: But not for revenge?
ADELAIDE: What would be the point of that?
DOCTOR: And that’s what makes you remarkable.

He tells her that she, Adelaide Brooke, is the woman who starts the human race’s movement into space, when her granddaughter, Susie Fontana Brooke is the captain of the first lightspeed shuttle to Proxima Centauri. That, he says, is the start of it all.

ADELAIDE: Why are you telling me all this?
DOCTOR: For consolation.

The computer beeps to tell them that Andy logged on to explain that the replacement water filters they sent didn’t fit. So the infection arrived today and since water is only cycled out of the central dome every week, the rest are clear.

She gives the Doctor his suit and tells him to leave.

ADELAIDE: I know which moment this is. It’s the moment we all escape.

But as they’re carrying food and equipment to the shuttle, and the Doctor watches then, we see Andy and Tarak climbing up ladders onto the top of the central dome, where they drop to their knees. Adelaide hears the beeping noise that the module sensors give, registering Andy and Talak’s presence on the roof. And from there, they start forcing water down through the structural elements of the dome.

Mia, clutching Yuri’s hand, wants to know whether they can get through. Adelaide says no: that’s ten feet of steel combination up there. But she asks Roman to keep an eye on the ceiling while the rest are loading the shuttle.

And as the film drops to slow motion and the music swells, the Doctor finally turns his back and heads out into the airlock. Adelaide watches him leave.

Ed races to the shuttle.

In the airlock, in his spacesuit, the Doctor finds that he can’t open the door. And Adelaide’s voice comes over the intercom, demanding to know what happens to the crew.

ADELAIDE: I could ramp up the pressure in there. Crush you.
DOCTOR: But you won’t. You could have shot Andy Stone, but you didn’t. I loved you for that.

And he tells her to imagine that she’s somewhere, say Pompeii. And you try to save them, he says, but what you do actually makes it happen. “Whatever I do, it makes it happen,” he says.

But he tells her that she’s taking Action One, and there are four other actions: the fifth is detonation. There’s a nuclear device in the heart of the dome, and today, Adelaide Brooke detonates that, destroying the base and all her crew. That’s what inspires her granddaughter.

DOCTOR: She takes your people out into space, because you die on Mars. You die. Today. She flies out there like she’s trying to meet you.

Adelaide asks the Doctor to help her, but he says he can’t. Most of the time he can, he says: most of the time he can at least save some of them. But not her: that’s why the Dalek spared her, because her death is fixed.

“You’ll die here, too,” she says. But he says no: she’ll save him.

She opens the door, saying “Damn you.”

And water breaks through the ceiling, at first blocking off their exit, and then blocking Steffi off from the rest of the crew. The Doctor hears all this through his helmet, as he walks away from the base.

Steffi locks herself into a small room, as Adelaide says they’ll get her from the access panels at the back. But, no: the water has broken into the room Steffi is hiding in, and she, pressed up against a comm panel, triggers a video of her family, which she’s watching as the water hits her and she begins convulsing.

The Doctor keeps walking away, and Adelaide tells the rest of her crew to get out, as Steffi opens to door and walks towards her.

In the shuttler, Ed is getting the engines online: we see them catch in the background as the Doctor walks away from the base.

As the rest of the crew hurry through the dome, Roman catches a drop of water on his face, and tells them all to go without him as he begins convulsing.

Ed, in the shuttle, is attacked by Maggie, who manages to drench him. He sets the shuttle to destruct, saying that he has no choice: they want the shuttle to get to Earth. He tells Adelaide that he hated this bloody job, that she never gave him a chance because she could never forgive him. Then he blows the shuttle—and that debris burns for quite a while in what must be a non-oxygen atmosphere.

The base burns, and the Doctor, knocked off his feet by the explosion, hears in his head all the snippets of information he has given his companions over the years, about how he’s the last of the Time Lords, that all the other Time Lords died, all of them.

And he marches back into the dome.

ADELAIDE: It can’t be stopped. Don’t die with us.
DOCTOR: Someone told me recently that I was going to die. They said “He will knock four times.” And I don’t think that meant here. Because I don’t hear anyone knocking, so you?

And then someone knocks. But only three times. The Doctor tells them that three knocks is all they get.

Adelaide tries to tell him that this futile, but he says there used to be people in charge of time, but they all died. He’s the last, and the laws of time are his to do with as he wishes.

This, right here, is the culmination of the Doctor’s Messiah complex of the last three seasons. This is the Doctor seeing himself as a god. Let’s see how well that works.

It seems as though the laws of time are going to win, as every step he takes (literally) blows up in his face, but he still has Gadget, left in storage, whom he sends haring out of the dome, in a slightly silly shot.

Maggie, down on the ice field, causes the glacier to crack.

And Adelaide initiates Action Five, setting the countdown for the nuclear device.

But Gadget reaches the TARDIS, and it’s a good thing that the Doctor didn’t forget to give him the key. I would have forgotten to give him the key.

Gadget triggers the TARDIS’s dematerialisation, but the bomb only has seconds left to countdown.

Bowie Base One explodes, and we pan back from the now-empty Mars. But, it seems, seconds were long enough, because the TARDIS rematerialises in the street, in the snow, discharging a smug Doctor, a stony Adelaide, a phlegmatic Yuri, and a heavily traumatised Mia.

They’re standing outside Adelaide’s house. Mia, seemingly, can barely cope with the fact that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside, though I think it’s more that this is the only trauma she can articulate at this point.

She runs off, and Adelaide sends Yuri off after her.

Adelaide stays, and challenges the Doctor. She accuses him of changing the entire future of the human race.

ADELAIDE: No one should have that much power.
DOCTOR: Tough.
ADELAIDE: You should have left us there.
DOCTOR: Adelaide, I’ve done this sort of thing before. Saved some little people. But no one as important as you. Oh, I’m good.
ADELAIDE: Little people? Like Yuri and Mia? Who decides that they’re so unimportant? You?
DOCTOR: For so long, I thought I was only a survivor. But I’m not. I’m a winner. The Time Lord Victorious.

I can hardly look at his face as he says this. Adelaide tells him that someone needs to stop him, and he asks who will, her?

Adelaide walks away from him, through the front door of her house—which he opened from a distance with his sonic screwdriver, drunk on his new sense of power—and shoots herself.

The Doctor staggers back against the TARDIS, hearing Adelaide’s voice telling him what she just told him: that she doesn’t care who he is, the Time Lord Victorious is wrong. The music swells behind him, as he watches history reshape itself to show that Adelaide Brooke died on Earth.

“I’ve gone too far,” he says, turning to see an Ood standing in the London street behind him. “Is this it?” he asks. “My death?”

The Ood doesn’t answer and the Doctor, heading into the TARDIS, stands and stares at the console before saying “No” and sending the TARDIS spinning off into time and space.

I’ve just noticed that I’ve labelled the last two episodes of Torchwood as season one rather than season two. I really should go back and correct those at some point, shouldn’t I?

Another important service announcement is that the most recent episode of Doctor Who—“The Waters of Mars”—is airing on the ABC this Sunday, and I will, of course, be live-blogging that. Even though my brother and his girlfriend are visiting us this weekend. See? Dedicated!

I’m also feeling a bit smug, because I sent an article draft to my co-writer. So prepare for smug live-blogging.

This episode contains violence. Dammit, Torchwood! Bring back the nudity and sexual references!

Monologue.

We open on what seems to be a banksia. Nick thinks it’s a thistle, which, I admit, seems more plausible. Torchwood—minus Gwen—drive up to a warehouse, where they’re identifying non-human lifesigns that they’ve never seen before. They split up and enter the warehouse on two different floors: Jack with Tosh, Ianto with Owen.

When Tosh identifies one creature at each end of the building, she and Jack split up. But the creatures aren’t creatures—they’re bombs, which go off just as each member of Torchwood (except perhaps Ianto) is standing directly over one. That’s a bit of a problem, I would think.

Gwen is woken by her mobile phone, which makes her realise that she’s horribly late for work.

But she’s about to find that being late for work is a good thing, as we cut to Jack lying unconscious in the rubble of the building.

Then we flashback to “1,392 deaths earlier,” as Jack (and his fancy muttonchops) comes back to life after being stabbed in the stomach with a broken bottle. As he comes uncomfortably to life and pulls the bottle out of his abdomen, he sees two neatly dressed Victorian ladies, one of whom beats the living daylights out of him and then shoves a rag in his mouth.

He comes back to consciousness (or life?) strapped to a chair, with the two women standing over him. They drench him with water and electrocute him but, when that doesn’t work, they shoot him.

He comes back to life, and they ask him who the Doctor is. He denies knowing the Doctor, but they’ve been transcribing his drunken conversations in pubs, as well as counting how many times he comes back to life.

They are, of course, Torchwood, and they’re still in the grip of Queen Victoria’s original plan for the institution.

They threaten to keep him where he is, and then they hire him, where he arrests one of those blowfish creatures whom he shot in the first episode of this season—this one has been drinking without paying, as well as joyriding in a horse and carriage.

Torchwood doesn’t have great long-term storage facilities, it seems, because one of the women shoots the blowfish, much to Jack’s horror.

NICK: These two just seem unnecessarily sadistic to me.

I tend to agree.

Jack tries to back out of his agreement with Torchwood, but he does need the money. He sits drinking in the pub when a little girl comes up and asks if she can read his cards—it’s the same young girl whom he approached in the episode after Owen died, when he was trying to find the second Resurrection Mitten. She tells Jack that he’ll have to wait a century for the Doctor to return, and he asks what he’s supposed to do in the meantime.

Montage! Of course, he keeps working for Torchwood, down through the ages, as we see neat handwritten documents replaced by typewritten files and, eventually, by computer printing. That’s a neat montage.

At least until he comes back to the Hub on New Year’s Eve 1999 and finds the entire crew dead. Well, nearly the entire crew: still alive is his boss, a man called Alex, who says that he’s the one who killed them. Jack pulls a gun on him, and Alex explains that this place is now Jack’s: Alex says that they thought they could control the equipment that they found, but they can’t. He’s clutching a locket and says that when he looked inside it, it showed him the future.

“The 21st century is coming,” Alex says. “And we’re not ready.”

And he shoots himself in the head.

Jack comes screaming back to life in the warehouse, much to Rhys’s horror. (Rhys had to give Gwen a lift.) And he asks where Tosh is.

Tosh is screaming herself, which is hardly surprising, since she’s trapped under what looks like half a wall.

We flash back five years, to where Tosh’s boss is telling her that she works too hard. This is a much dowdier Tosh: less make-up, ponytail, khaki trousers, high-necked T-shirt, and a cardigan. She tells her boss to have a good evening, in what is a barely polite dismissal, and he replies, “I doubt it.”

But as soon as he’s gone, Tosh checks the security cameras, to watch him out of the building. Then she runs down the stairs to a secure room. She punches in the security code, and rummages through the files stored in the room, taking one with her.

She walks out of Lodmoor Research Facility, flirting in passing with the elderly security guard (“When are you going to let me whisk you away from all this?” he asks, to which she replies, “As soon as you clear it with your wife and grandchildren”), and, once home, starts work on something based on the blueprints that she stole.

Then she’s running down a dark street, and breathlessly telling a man that she’s got it. He ushers her into a room littered with papers, and she demands to see her mother and know that she’s safe. The woman to whom she shows the “sonic modulator” gets the man to bring Tosh’s mother out, but they won’t release her, because Tosh did too good a job on the sonic modulator.

They demonstrate that they’re serious by using the sonic modulator against Tosh and her mother—and, when we see the blood on Tosh’s mother’s forehead, remember what she looked like when she appeared to Tosh in the hospital at the end of season one. She’s even wearing the same clothes.

But then UNIT burst in and cuff Tosh. Alone in a tiny cell (and a red jumpsuit), she’s told over an intercom that this is a secure UNIT facility, and that her rights as a citizen have been withdrawn. She asks about her mother, but the voice says it can’t provide that information.

Seriously, this cell is about a metre wide by six metres deep. No windows, no bed, not even, as far as we can see, a chamberpot.

Tosh gets a montage, too, but it’s not as fancy as Jack’s—it simply shows her moving into various positions on the bare floor of her cell.

Then she’s told to prepare for inspection, and, as she slowly pulls herself up against the far wall of her cell, the door swings open, and it’s Jack. He tells her that her mother is fine, but has been ret-conned. And then he tells her that they’re making an example of her, for stealing official secrets in this climate.

He tells her that the plans for the sonic modulator were faulty, that’s why they were shelved. And, as the camera focuses on Tosh’s stunned face, we see that she has a swollen, bloody mouth and a vicious black eye.

Jack’s basically offering her a job, but he’s also taunting her at the same time, saying that she’s good, but it’s a shame she’ll be locked up for life.

He tells her it’ll be dangerous,. Can she stand a little danger? he asks. And we cut back to Tosh screaming under the pile of rubble, telling Gwen that she thinks her arm is broken. Gwen leaves Rhys with Tosh, and heads off to find the others.

But as we see Ianto trying to drag himself across the floor, it’s Jack who we hear calling his name.

We flashback to 12 months earlier, as Jack is tracking a weevil, which is menacing Ianto. Ianto thanks Jack for helping him, and Jack responds, “And you are?” (But in a flirty way, not a dismissive way.)

Ianto says it looked like a weevil to him, but Jack says he doesn’t know what Ianto’s talking about. He shoulders the weevil and walks away, as Ianto calls “Love the coat.”

The next morning, Ianto is waiting outside the Hub with a cup of coffee, asking Jack for a job. Jack knows who Ianto is—including the fact that Ianto was born in 1983, which makes me feel ancient, frankly—because Ianto used to work for Torchwood Canary Wharf. But Jack says he severed all ties with that institution, and he doesn’t want to see Ianto again.

By this point, Torchwood Cardiff is clearly largely in place, because Jack, in the Torchwoodmobile, is calling to Tosh, Owen, and Suzie. But he has to stop when he sees Ianto standing in the road. He tells Ianto to get out of Cardiff, to go back to London, and to find a new life. But Ianto asks Jack if he wouldn’t like to help Ianto catch this pterodactyl.

And, of course, Jack would. And the pterodactyl, like the rest of us, finds Jack appealing.

IANTO: Must be the aftershave.
JACK: I never wear any.
IANTO: You smell like that naturally?
JACK: 51st-century pheremones. You people have no idea.

There’s a rather complicated sequence there involving Jack being carried around a warehouse by a a pterodactyl, and then Jack and Ianto lying on top of each other.

NICK: Oh, Jack. You’ll hire anyone who lands on top of you.

Ianto walks away, and Jack tells him to report to work first thing tomorrow. As Ianto walks away, Jack calls, “Like the suit, by the way,” and Ianto’s expression—I don’t know what to make of it. It looks more like a grimace of pain than a smile.

In the present, Jack puts Ianto’s dislocated bone back into place, and they head off to find Owen, who is lying flat on his back with a precarious broken window dropping slowly towards him.

We flashback four years, to Owen and his fiancee Katy planning the seating chart for their wedding. Katy asks if Owen wants tea, but, as she stands in the kitchen, we see she can’t remember how to make a cup of tea: he prompts her to put water in the cup, then reminds her that it should be from the kettle, and then prompts her to add milk. She snaps at him to stop nagging, that she doesn’t want—but she can’t remember the word “milk,” and she breaks down.

As she stands in the garden, Owen talks to her doctor, who reminds him that all the signs are that Katy has early onset Alzheimer’s—the youngest patient on record, Owen recites wearily—but Owen says he’s marrying her anyway.

As they sit and wait in a hospital corridor, Katy tells Owen that it’s like being lost in a place that you know really well: you try and find your bearings, and sometimes you do, but sometimes you don’t.

When they meet with Katy’s doctor, he says Owen was right to ask for another scan, because there’s a clear and present tumour in her brain, which they need to remove immediately. Owen asks Katy if she understands, and she says that she can’t remember his name.

As Owen waits outside the operating theatre, he’s accosted by Jack, who says that he’s sorry, and that he tried to warn them. He and Owen walk into the theatre, and everyone’s dead, including Katy, who also has a tentacle poking out of her brain. Jack says that the creature in her brain is an alien lifeform, and, when it is threatened, it emits a gas toxic to humans.

Owen freaks out, and Jack drugs him.

When Owen wakes up, no one knows anything about Jack or the accident in the theatre. The man he speaks to—an administrator at the hospital—tells him that Katy’s brain tumour was inoperable, and that the surgeon died in a car accident. And, sure enough, when Owen checks the security footage, Jack is nowhere in sight.

But he is in sight in the cemetery, where Owen goes to check out Katy’s carefully stage-managed grave. Owen hares across the cemetery and punches Jack repeatedly in the face, telling Jack with every punch that Jack could have saved Katy. But Jack says that he really couldn’t, and then offers Owen a job.

Owen is reluctant, because he says that there are no such things as aliens. “D’you think?” asks Jack, and we cut to Owen opening his eyes in the Hub, which is, admittedly, quite empty of aliens at that time. Still, Owen seems convinced.

We cut back to Owen lying on the rubble in the warehouse, watching the window fall towards him in jerks. Gwen is there, and she tells Owen she’s going to pull him out as quickly as possible. She needs to, because the glass shatters just as she pulls him away.

They reconnect outside, and ask who did this—just as Jack’s bracelet flashes into life, as we see a hologram of Captain John from the first episode, who asks what they all thought of his little gift.

Then he tells Jack to say hello to his brother, and a hologram of a shackled man flashes up next to him.

“It can’t be,” Jack exclaims.

John says he’s going to tear the world apart, starting now. Maybe then, he says, Jack will want to spend some time with him.

And he disappears.

Wow. That’s what I call a cliffhanger.

Oh, no. I remember which episode this is!

What’s say we just skip the live-blogging for this week? What do you say to that?

. . .

No? Really? Oh, okay, then.

Let’s just get through this and then we can watch a documentary about Bon Jovi.

This one contains coarse language and violence. Torchwood is really not coming up to scratch with the sex, lately.

Opening monologue.

We open on a bridge. And a moon. A boy is walking across the bridge, which looks like many other bridges in the world. He gets a text message from his mum, telling him that he’s nine minutes late. He looks up, and can see her watching from the window of their house, just at the edge of the bridge. He texts back, “Chill.”

But then a high wind springs up, and lightning crackles around him, and we see his phone fall down the ground.

Credits.

Jonah Bevan was born in 1993, and disappeared, says Gwen’s friend Andy, seven months ago. He’s talking to Gwen because Jonah’s mum insists that there was no one around at the time when Jonah disappeared.

Gwen isn’t paying much attention, though: she wants to know where Andy was at the wedding. But Andy says he didn’t want to sit and watch her “pledge her stupid life” to Rhys, who, he says, could stand to lose a couple of pounds.

Apparently, they have some history, Gwen and Andy.

But Andy wants to talk about Jonah. He points out that there’s some odd kind of light in the last image the security cameras took of of Jonah—and, forty-five minutes later, there’s Jack turning up in the Torchwoodmobile.

Gwen asks Tosh about Rift activity (there was none), and asks Jack what he was doing there, but Jack says he can’t remember. He says there’s a cute little coffee shop out there, and it must just have been a coincidence.

He can’t stay, he says. He’s going weevil hunting with Ianto. I’m waiting for Gwen to say “Is that what you’re calling it these days?” but she disappoints me.

In a coffee shop with Andy, Gwen says there’s nothing she can do. But Andy accuses her of covering the whole thing up, and says that she’s hard now: the old Gwen would have been up talking to Mrs Bevan in a flash.

Of course, next thing we know, she’s knocking on Mrs Bevan’s door. And this whole sequence is horrible, because, of course, Mrs Bevan thinks that Jonah has run away. She spends most of her time watching videos of crowd footage—football matches, concerts, and so on—trying to pick him out of the crowd. And she sometimes sleeps in his room, because the pillow still smells like him—though, she says, the more she does it, the more it smells like her. And she sits in his room and imagines that she’s him—and keeps his diary for him.

It’s all so horribly sad.

And Gwen, when she gets home, is really not in the mood to talk about babies, as Rhys says they’ve been planning to do. But she is in the mood to practice.

Sadly, the post-practice cuddling the next morning is interrupted by a phone call from Tosh.

Tosh says she noticed what she calls a “negative Rift spike” at the time that Jonah disappeared: they’ve been thinking that these readings were irrelevant, but, since this coincided with Jonah’s disappearance, Tosh is wondering is maybe the Rift takes things rather than simply leaving things behind.

Gwen asks if they can keep this to themselves, and she heads out to the support-group meeting that Jonah’s mother has set up for people in her situation. (Andy tried to find her a support group, but there weren’t any, so she started one.) Andy’s there, too, but no one else—at least not at first, but people start pouring into the church hall that Nicky has hired, and neither Andy nor Gwen can cope.

Gwen says that she offered to help Andy look for one lad, but Gwen says she can’t cope with the forty or fifty other missing people whose families are in the church hall. Andy says that they’re not part of the investigation, but Gwen says that of course they are: find a pattern, and maybe they’ll find Jonah.

So she asks Tosh to cross-reference these missing people with negative Rift spikes, and see if there’s a pattern. Oh, and preferably some CCTV footage.

And, sure enough, there are negative Rift spikes for missing person after missing person—there’s a wall papered with Gwen’s paperwork on the missing people.

“Now we tell Jack,” Gwen says.

Gwen explains that Cardiff has an epidemic of missing people, far more than comparable cities. And it’s because of the Rift.

Hey, Owen! I forgot you were in this show.

Jack says that this is good work, but he doesn’t know what she wants him to do about it. Jack says there’s nothing they can do.

Gwen says that they can help the survivors, but Jack says that’s not what they do. He tells Gwen to shut it down, and storms out. Ianto goes after him, saying that he’ll have a word with Jack.

Owen says, “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

GWEN: Oh, bollocks to serenity.

We can see, as Gwen sits at the conference table, Ianto talking to Jack—we can’t hear what they’re saying, but Jack gestures emphatically and storms off, and Ianto turns to look apologetically at Gwen.

Then Gwen and Rhys have a fight in the park, about Gwen putting Torchwood above her work, before she heads back to the Hub.

ME: We do get a lot of shots of Gwen’s bottom in this show.
NICK: It is a very nice bottom.
ME: Yes. Yes, it is.

Gwen storms straight into Jack’s office, only to find him and Ianto embracing passionately. (Shirtless!)

JACK: Always room for one more. We could have used you an hour ago for naked Hide and Seek.
IANTO: He cheats. He always cheats.

Gwen says she’ll make Jonah her special project, but Jack says absolutely not. He calls Ianto back into his office—“More work to do!”—and Ianto goes, telling Gwen in passing that there’s a package on her desk.

The package, as Andy tells Gwen in the coffeeshop, is a GPS system, pointing them to an island in the middle of the Bristol Channel. He says, if she’ll let him come with her, they can find out what the GPS co-ordinates mean.

She agrees, but ditches him at the pier the next morning, after asking him to go and buy them a couple of teas. (It’s slightly more complicated than that, but I’m running behind.)

On the island, Gwen finds a lighthouse, and, from the top, she can see two women in scrubs leading a hooded figure across the island’s surface to a series of concrete bunkers—and they’re being followed by Jack.

Gwen, of course, goes haring down the stairs and across the island, where she heads down into the bunkers with the aid of her trusty flashlight. She finds an entrance buzzer, and hits it: when someone answers, she gives her Torchwood access code and says she’s with Jack Harkness.

WOMAN: He’s supposed to warn us.
GWEN: Law unto himself, isn’t he?
WOMAN: He knows we’ll always forgive him.

The woman lets Gwen in. Inside, the bunker is like a hospital or an asylum—but rather like a hospital or asylum from one of the cities abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster would look now, all peeling paint and forty-year-old furnishings.

The bunker resounds with screams and weeping.

Gwen realises, as she passes the rooms with the names chalked outside them, that these are the people they’ve been tracking, the people taken by the Rift. And Jack steps in at this point, to say he’ll take it from here.

She asks Jack if the people have been here all this time, and demands to see Jonah. Jack tries to explain, but Gwen screams at him to open the door.

He does.

But when we see Jonah, Gwen assumes that she’s in the wrong room. Because this Jonah is not fifteen. This Jonah is badly damaged, and can’t breathe without rasping.

Gwen asks what happened to him. And he says that there was a bright light, and when he opened his eyes, the planet was on fire. A man pulled him from the flames and into a building, and tried to work on the burns. He barely noticed, he said, when the building started shaking, and that’s when he realised that it wasn’t a building: it was a ship, the last rescue craft from the planet.

Gwen is crying.

Jonah asks if he is really home, and Gwen says that he is. He says that he tried so hard to get home. And Gwen says that his mother is still looking for him. Jonah asks if she can bring his mother to see him.

Gwen, sitting out on the cliffs, listens to Jack explain that he set this up, because he found two survivors of the Rift in the cells when he took over. Now there are seventeen, all badly damaged.

Gwen says she needs to bring Jonah’s mother to see him. But Jack protests: he says Gwen will need to explain about the Rift and Torchwood, and Gwen says that she will.

She does, but Nicky doesn’t entirely trust Gwen’s explanation. That’s fair enough. Gwen rings Andy, who is rightly furious, though when he challenges her on the fact that she’d never recommend him to Torchwood, both Nick and I try to convince him that he’d never want to work for Torchwood anyway.

Andy, nevertheless, convinces Nicky to trust Gwen, and Gwen takes her out to the island.

She talks to Nicky again before she opens Jonah’s door, but Nicky isn’t really listening. She just needs to see Jonah.

Nicky, though, when she sees Jonah, disavows any sense that this is Jonah. She screams at Gwen that she’s sick, that this is not her son.

Jonah starts talking about his broken wardrobe door, about the fact that she used to let him steal sips of her beer, that she always worried about money, and, at first, Nicky won’t look at him. But the more he talks, the more convinced she becomes, until she embraces him, as he says he tried so hard to come home, that she won’t believe the sights that he’s seen.

He apologises for coming home late that night.

But the nurse comes in and says that Nicky needs to leave. Jonah is starting the “down swing.” They’ve seen Jonah in the “good phase,” which becomes briefer every day. But that phase is ending.

Nicky says that she wants to take care of Jonah herself: she’ll tell people that he’s her father.

But the nurse says they need to leave.

And he starts screaming. And screaming. And screaming.

Gwen tells us, in voiceover, that the scream lasts twenty hours a day. Before he was returned, Jonah looked into the heart of a dark star, and what he saw drove him mad.

One week later, Gwen visits Nicky to say that she can visit Jonah any time she likes, when he’s in a good phase. But Nicky says that she hopes Gwen never does this to anyone else. Gwen says that she thought Nicky wanted to know, but Nicky says she was better not knowing. She says that before Gwen, she had hope.

And Gwen strips all her missing-person information from the walls as Nicky, on the other side of town, strips Jonah’s bedroom, and smells his jumper, and sits down on the edge of his bed to weep.

Jack watches Gwen as she files all the information away, but doesn’t let her know he’s there and doesn’t speak to her.

Back at the flat, Gwen is lighting candles on the dinner table, and telling Rhys that tonight they talk about whatever he wants, but he asks if she’s all right, and she’s weeping before he even manages to get his arms around her.

And they sit down on the sofa, and Rhys tells Gwen to tell him everything, from the beginning.

And Gwen does: “There’s this woman, Nicky. She had a son, Jonah. He went missing, seven months ago . . .”

End credits.

Sniffle.

I have no idea what’s happening on Hyperdrive right now. Of course, I don’t much care, either, so there is that. And I probably won’t figure it out in the thirteen minutes we have left of the episode.

Heather has come along for the live-blogging again, and Michelle as well this time, which I think is a first. Ooh, Heather’s going to be annoyed if there aren’t any carparks in this episode. And I don’t think it’s the most carparky of episodes.

So tired. I hope this live-blogging makes some kind of sense.

I will say that the spaceships in Hyperdrive are kinda sexy. That one was a bit like a Siamese fighting fish. Or an enthusiastic goldfish, maybe.

Opening monologue. Also some shouting at the computer for misbehaving, which confused my guests briefly.

We open in the past, judging from the costumes, as people walk out in a field, past flaming torches, to a circus, complete with even-creepier-then-usual clowns and a ringmaster with a sinister moustache.

A young girl accepts a ticket from the ringmaster, and runs into the circus, as her mother hearing a noise behind her, glances back over her shoulder. When she glances back, her child and the entire circus are gone.

Credits. No one is surprised to see that P.J. Hammond wrote this episode.

A young man in glasses is watching old newsreel footage in his home, surrounded by dangling strips of negatives. But in the middle of a random scene, he see the ringmaster beckoning him—even when the newsreel stops running.

In the Hub, Jack comes in to see Tosh, telling her that he heard an old sound, like a pipe organ. Did she hear it? No, she says.

Where’s Ianto? he asks. Ianto would know. But Tosh says that Ianto, Gwen, and Owen have gone to an old cinema with history of rift activity, to check it out. When she turns back, Jack is gone.

It may be for work, but Ianto is very excited about visiting the Electro, which is a beautiful, beautiful building.

The man running it wants to know where his “useless son” is, because he’s the one with the film. And, sure enough, that’s the boy from the earlier scene.

HEATHER: Why is the boy splicing things in a warehouse/Unabomber-style hideout?
NICK: Because he couldn’t find a carpark.

This is, to Gwen’s apparent disappointment, an educational film, and a deliberately anachronistic evening, complete with cinema pianist.

But it doesn’t stay educational for long: the circus footage first flickers in and out of the footage of Hope Street, but soon the circus footage takes over, and you get, as Gwen says, the same pictures over and over again—even though the projectionist has turned the projector off.

And there’s Jack! Ianto sees footage of Jack flickering up on screen, but no one else does. And then the footage turns into the beckoning ringmaster, before flickering away into nothing. Gwen tells Ianto to come on, but he sees sinister flickering shadows as he walks out into the foyer.

Jack has arrived at this point, and he and Ianto stand in the empty cinema, while Ianto explains what he saw. And Jack says that cinema might have preserved their images, but it killed the travelling shows.

Of course, it hasn’t quite killed this travelling show, because here are the ringmaster and a mysterious woman in a beanie, walking through the rain towards a young woman stranded at a bus-stop. They try to give her a ticket to the travelling show, and it’s interesting, because when the little girl took the ticket in the beginning, Michelle was wondering out loud if this was before the days of “don’t take things from strangers, little girl.” Well, it’s past those days now, because this girl tells them to sod off—but the ringmaster touches her mouth and, as she coughs up some sparkling silver smoke, catches it in a bottle.

Jack is interrogating the projectionist when Tosh says that there’s been a burst of rift activity at the Electro and then again in a small street off Hope Street—where Torchwood find the girl from before, her mouth all puckered and dried, sitting at the bus-stop staring at nothing.

Owen says that she has a heartbeat but she’s not breathing: they’ll have to get her to hospital.

The ringmaster and the woman have moved onto a small cafe where, when the owner opens the door to tell them to go away, they repeat their earlier process, draining the liquid out of her.

The cafe owner has been brought into the hospital where the bus-stop girl is being held, as Owen tells them that she’s been completely dehydrated, and shouldn’t still be alive.

Torchwood stride down the corridor as Jack says for them to still be alive under these circumstances, their life force must have been separated. It must be held somewhere, but they don’t know where, because the two victims were chosen at random.

Back at the Hub, Jack and the team are looking at old footage of his travelling-show days. His was just an ordinary travelling show, but, when he was part of it, there were ghost stories about another, more sinister show, who came from out of the rain, performed only in the dead of night, and left sorrow wherever they went.

Jack’s telling Gwen about the deaths of the travelling shows, as Ianto wants to see the film frame by frame. And, as he does, he notices that the girl from the water tank and the ringmaster have disappeared off the film altogether.

As Jack says, the travelling shows were trapped on film forever—but when the film was played at the Electro, they were released. So Torchwood have to track them down.

JACK: Ianto, you’re with me. I need your local knowledge.
GWEN: Oh, it that what you’re calling it these days?
HEATHER: Gwen is so jealous.

Jack tells Ianto that he was sent to join the travelling show on the orders of someone whom he chooses not to name: he was chasing rumours about the night travellers.

And, speaking of the night travellers, here we are back in the past, watching the ringmaster talk about the girl in the beanie, telling people that she’s the closest thing they’ll ever see to a living mermaid.

And in the Hub in our time, Tosh says she’s registering the ocean—the ocean in the middle of Cardiff. Of course, Cardiff is a port city, isn’t it? But I don’t think that’s a good thing. [Edited to add: I mean, despite the ambiguity here, that I don’t think it’s a good thing that there’s an ocean in the middle of the city. I have no particular problem with Cardiff being a port city, despite what my syntax might imply.] At that point, we see a man suddenly brake his car, telling his wife that he thought he saw ghosts. She tells him not to be so stupid, until she looks out the car window and sees the ringmaster.

The ringmaster and his girl are currently hanging around an abandoned swimming pool, as the girl rants about rain and water, and they both hold the ringmaster’s mysterious bottle up to their ears, listening to the “last breaths forever.”

But the girl isn’t entirely satisfied: she wants to bring the other people out of the film, to travel with them again. The ringmaster agrees.

Heather makes an observation that I can’t possibly put on the blog because it would skew my search results too far.

At the hospital, Jack and Ianto look at the catatonic bodies of the two boys who were in the car, but when Jack says, “They came from out of the rain,” the nurse says that she’s heard those words before, from Christina, a woman in a psychiatric unit who was terrified of stage performances.

Jack tells Ianto that he thinks they’ve just found their first witness. And Christina tells them about the time the night travellers came to her village—as well as telling Jack that his eyes are too old for his face, which mean he doesn’t belong.

Back at the abandoned swimming pool, the mermaid woman walks slowly across the cracked concrete to a changing room: she creaks the door open, to see a row of silent people, standing and staring forward.

Christina, meanwhile, is telling Jack about the time that the ringmaster asked her if she’d like to join his show, and be in his audience forever. She says he wanted to take her breath and hold it in a flask. She says people disappeared from the village that night.

Jack, at the Hub, realises that if he can find the ringmaster’s silver flask, he can save the people whose breath has been stolen.

The ringmaster, of course, is looking for the rest of his film, to bring the others back to life, which is why it’s a worry when the young projectionist from the Electro comes home to find a mermaid in his bath. But she doesn’t harm him: they’re only looking for the film.

Still, he’s scared half to death, and rings Jack immediately: Jack sets off with Ianto in the Torchwoodmobile. But though the bath is still full, the people have gone by the time Jack gets there.

And when Bernard’s parents arrive at the Electro, they hear organ music. They wonder if Bernard has come in today, after all? But, no: they’re greeted by the mermaid, holding a lantern and saying, “This way, please.”

At the warehouse, Jack comes up with a complicated plot to destroy the ringmaster and the mermaid: he says that they’ve been trapped in the film for so long that they’ve become part of it. But what, he asks, would happen if they filmed them?

I think that would result in a bootleg copy, but what do I know?

This is a complicated plot.

At the Electro, Bernard’s parents are frozen into their seats, because, of course, the circus needs an audience. And as the film plays, the characters begin to step out of the screen, beginning with the strongman and the fire jugglers, then the clowns.

Jack, meanwhile, is crouched behind the seats, secretly filming this, while Owen tries to open the projection room. The ringmaster grabs him, but Owen, of course, doesn’t have any breath. As the ringmaster dashes past, Ianto manages to grab the flask, but the ringmaster catches up to him, and grabs the flask back.

As Jack pulls the film from his camera, and the ringmaster disappears when his image is exposed to light, he throws the flask away—and, with the lid gone, the last breaths of the victims escape into the air.

And the victims gasp and die.

Ianto runs, to grab the flask, but by the time he grabs it, there’s only one breath left in it.

It belongs to one of the small boys from the car, so Jack is able to at least save him, while Ianto, looking on, cries.

JACK (to small boy): Welcome back.
MICHELLE: Your whole family’s dead!
NICK: We’re Torchwood—we only save five percent of people.

We pan over Cardiff, as Jack delivers a speech about how the night travellers might still be somewhere, on another piece of film, a speech that Nick interprets to mean “Preserving the past is bad.”

And, sure enough, a man and his son buy, at a flea market, a reel of film that, when the boy drops it, releases a small burst of sideshow music . . .

So, this is the final episode of season three—which means the last of the live-blogging, unless they want to replay season one, until the latest special, “The Waters of Mars,” airs on the ABC in, oh, about three weeks.

In other news, I’m live-blogging this from one of my armchairs, which is unusual. I normally live-blog sitting at my little Tibetan coffee table, but it’s currently covered in about this much marking, give or take another ten papers, so it’s out. Sadly, the armchairs, while seriously sexy and pretty much exactly like this (oh, I’m going to be sorry when that link expires), are not really conductive to typing: the arms are too close together. So I apologise in advance for any typos. I’ll fix them up later.

In other, other news, I may or may not have just watched “The Waters of Mars,” and it may or may not have, in the words of the great Atlas from Astro Boy, have put me out of the mood for live-blogging Doctor Who.

(Well, technically, Atlas said, “This idiocy has put me out of the mood for fighting” after Daddy Walrus smacked him in the head with a series of baseballs shot out of an automatic pitching machine, but the principle is the same. Why, yes: I have spent the entire day marking. In fact, I’ve spent every day marking for much of the last week. Does it show?)

In other, other, other news, if anyone can tell me what’s going on with these helicopters that have been flying over the house more or less constantly for the last hour, I’d be really pleased to know what’s going on.

Yes, yes: I’m waiting patiently for the episode to start now. And writing witty things on people’s Facebook statuses, which is one of my favourite hobbies.

But here we are with the actual episode, and the Doctor pointing out that the Master is Prime Minister of England, that he has cannibalised the TARDIS to make a paradox machine, and that Martha is coming back. Well, the Doctor doesn’t point that bit out. Lost my parallel structure, there.

Credits.

When we come back, we hear a recorded message saying that Sol 3—planet Earth—is entering final extinction, and is closed for space traffic. This is a year later, and we see a boat reach the shore carrying Martha Jones. She’s met by Tom Milligan, who says there’s no need to ask who she is: “the famous Martha Jones.”

She says that she needs to see Dr Docherty, and Tom says there are many stories about Martha and her adventures in the last year. He says that the story goes that she’s the only person on Earth who can kill him: that she and she alone can kill the Master. She tells him to drive.

And here we have the Master singing and dancing to “track three”—the Scissors Sisters—while he kisses his wife (who looks drugged, actually, and not that thrilled) while Martha’s mother, in a maid’s outfit, serves him coffee, which he spits out onto the table, and the aged Doctor crawls out of the tent he’s been living in.

The Master wheels the Doctor across to a window, and tells the Doctor that they broke his heart, the Toclafane, ever since the Doctor figured out what they really are. He tells the Doctor that rumour has it that Martha is back in England, and wonders what she wants.

Tish, dressed as a maid, takes Jack his cold mashed swede for breakfast, and signals “three” with her fingers.

Martha, on the coast, see a massive statue of the Master, looming over the coast. She says they’re all over the world; he’s even carved himself into Mount Rushmore. Martha and Tom crawl up and overlook a shipyard—a spaceship yard. She tells him that he should see Russia: that’s shipyard number one, she says, all the way from the Black Sea to the Baring Strait.

Two Toclafane fly down and challenge Tom, who is all right because he has a medical pass. They tell him soon he’ll be very busy, and fly off. He’s surprised they can’t see Martha, and she explains about the TARDIS keys from the last episode. She tells him she’s been in space, and he asks if there’s anything else he needs to know.

MARTHA: Yeah. I’ve met Shakespeare.

He asks what time it is, and she says it’s nearly three. At which we see Martha’s family and Jack heading into action mode, as the Master asks who he should have for his massage today while his wife, who seems to have a black eye, now I look again, looks on blankly.

Jack gets out, and is shot repeatedly. Martha’s mother and Tish don’t get far, while Martha’s father is grabbed almost immediately. And the Doctor grabs the Master’s laser screwdriver—remember, who’d have sonic?—but it has isomorphic controls, so it only works for the Master.

The Master taunts the Doctor a little with his previous potency and authority, and then says he has a message for Martha.

Martha, meanwhile, meets Dr Docherty, who is trying to get the television to work: “God, I miss Countdown,” she says. Martha says that televisions don’t work any more, but Dr Docherty says that they’ve been told there’ll be a broadcast from the Master. And, sure enough, there is. But only so he can show the Doctor, and then add all nine hundred of his years to him, so that he ends up as a little stunted CGI creature—much to the Master’s apparent bemusement, since he looks terribly sheepish at this point.

MASTER: Message received and understood, Miss Jones.

Dr Docherty says that the Archangel network is the Master’s weakness. Martha says that’s why she’s come to see Dr Docherty: “Know your enemy,” she says. She has a CD with information about the Toclafane’s weaknesses, after a lightning strike brought one down in South Africa. They ask if that’s what she’s been looking for, and she says no: she just got lucky. Dr Docherty says she heard Martha was looking for a weapon, but Martha doesn’t answer.

On the UNIT ship Valiant, Martha’s family have been locked up for the night, as they each fantasise about killing the Master. Martha’s mother doesn’t want Tish to kill him, but Tish says that he made them stand on deck and watch the islands of Japan burning—millions of people, she says. The Doctor is in a cage, too, but a cage for a bird. And Jack is chained up again.

The Master comes to the Doctor, with the drugged-looking Lucy, and tells the Doctor that tomorrow is the day. A Toclafane flies in and says that tomorrow they rise, never to fall, and the Master says that the Doctor should be grateful: after all, he says, the Doctor loves them, so very, very much.

At the same time, Dr Docherty manages to open the Toclafane sphere that Martha and Tom captured, to see a little shrunken head—a little shrunken head that tells her that the sky is made of diamonds.

Ooh-er. That makes them . . . well, that makes them humans. The humans who were escaping to Utopia.

We cut back to the Master, who says that he took Lucy to Utopia, to show her the end of the universe. She says that everything was dying, and she saw that there was no point in anything. Her voice is so blank as she says this.

MASTER: You should have seen it, Doctor. Furnaces, burning. The last of humanity, screaming against the dark.

Martha says that she’d rather worked it out when she saw the paradox machine. Because these are the future of humanity, come back to murder their own ancestors, which is a paradox: without the cannibalised TARDIS, the two could not co-exist.

Tom asks the captured Toclafane why, when they’re the same species, they kill so many humans, and he says because it’s fun, and laughs and laughs.

Dr Docherty asks Martha to tell her the truth: legend says that she’s been travelling the planet looking for a way to kill the Master. Martha says that the Doctor told them that people have been watching the Doctor and the Master in all the years that they’ve been coming to Earth, and they’ve come up with a weapon. Not just a gun, but a gun of four chemicals, which, combined, will kill the Master stone dead.

Martha only has three, but the last, she says, is in London. Dr Docherty says they can stay the night, but Tom says that they can get halfway and stay in the slave quarters in Bexley. Slave quarters are just houses: Tom says that it’s cheaper than building barracks. And when they arrive, they ask Martha if she says who she says she is, and if she can really kill him. Tom says to leave her alone, but she says they want her to talk, and she’ll talk.

But Dr Docherty is sending a message to the Master, after asking—futilely—whether her son is still alive. She says she has information about Martha.

And Martha, in the slave quarters, is talking to the slaves about the Doctor, about how many times he has saved their lives without them knowing. But she’s barely finished before the Master is out in the street, calling to Martha.

The slaves hide her, but the Master knows that she’s there.

His soldiers take up their positions. He says he’ll give the order unless she gives herself up.

So she does.

She steps outside, to a round of applause from the Master, who asks for her bag. She throws it to him, and he blows it up. Then he tries to kill her, but Tom throws himself out of the house and takes the blast instead, which the Master finds hilarious.

It seems to have given him an idea, though, because he says that the Doctor should be witness to Martha’s death.

So he takes her back up to the Valiant, past her family. She gives him the teleport device that she took from Jack, and he tells her to kneel. He says his ships are ready to launch, to “burn across the universe,” in three minutes’ time, when the black-hole converters are ready.

He plans to kill Martha, and asks if she has any last words. When she doesn’t, he says that she’s not a patch on his old companions: once, he says, the Doctor had companions who could absorb the Time Vortex.

Now, how does he know that? How does he know about Rose?

But Martha is laughing. She’s laughing at the Master’s credulity, at the idea that he would believe in the “gun in four parts,” that he thinks they didn’t know about Dr Docherty’s son and the fact that she would betray them.

The important thing was the story, she says. Everyone on Earth, all thinking about the Doctor at once.

Prayer and hope? the Master asks. Is that her plan?

Yes, says Martha. Prayer and hope—and fifteen satellites transmitting a telepathic field.

NICK: Classic Master overreach.

And sure enough, the power of millions of people thinking the Doctor’s name brings him back to full health. And more, since he’s now levitating across the floor, with his arms out-stretched.

Oh, this is messianic. Especially when he grabs the Master and says, “I forgive you.”

But there are still the Toclafane, so Captain Jack, who has been brought in to watch Martha’s execution, heads off to destroy the paradox machine.

The Master, though, has transported to the coastal shipyards with the transport device that he took from Martha, and though the Doctor says that he can’t win, he says that there’s a black-hole converter in every ship, and he can destroy the planet. If he can’t have it, no one can.

The Doctor disagrees, though. He says he knows the Master, and the Master will never kill himself. Sure enough, he won’t: they transport back to the Valiant, just as Captain Jack destroys the paradox machine. The Toclafane disappear, and the Valiant is at the centre of a storm as time reverses.

Why does time reverse? Oh, who cares.

At any rate, with the paradox machine gone, time is reset to the point at which the Toclafane were called through the rip in the universe, just after the President of the United States was killed.

DOCTOR: None of it happened.
ME: Well, except for the poor President!

Everyone on the Valiant can remember, though, because they were at the eye of storm or some such [technobabble].

Jack wonders what they’ll do with the Master, and Martha’s family want to kill him. They say they saw everything: they saw everything he did, and they remember it. But Martha’s mother, who has picked up a fallen gun, can’t bring herself to do it. She drops the gun.

The Doctor says that the only safe place for the Master is the TARDIS. Maybe, says the Doctor, he’s been wandering for too long, and he needs someone to care for.

But Lucy shoots him.

“Always the women,” he says.

The Doctor says that it’s only a bullet wound: the Master can just regenerate. We know that’s possible, because the Doctor himself regenerated after a bullet wound which was, incidentally, in the Master’s presence, though the Master was rather disembodied at the time.

But the Master refuses. He tells the Doctor that he’s finally won, and dies.

The Doctor burns the Master’s body on a pyre, which reminds me (simultaneously) of the end of Return of the Jedi and, not surprisingly, of Tim Bisley burning his Star Wars memorabilia after The Phantom Menace came out.

Back in the present, Martha gives Dr Docherty a bunch of flowers, and tells her that she really doesn’t blame her. A bewildered Dr Docherty asks, “But who are you?” as Martha runs off.

In Cardiff, Jack runs off, though the Doctor says he could travel with him again. But Jack says for the whole year, he’s been thinking of his team in Torchwood.

First, though, the Doctor disables Jack’s time-travelling device.

DOCTOR: You could go anywhere. Twice. The second time to apologise.

Jack asks about aging: what if he lives for a million years, he asks? The Doctor says he doesn’t know, and Jack says he knows it’s vanity. But he used to be a bit of a poster boy, back when he lived in the Boeshane Penisula and was the first boy from there to be signed up for the time agency.

JACK: The Face of Boe, they used to call me.

And he runs back to the Hub as Martha and the Doctor goggle at him and say, “No, It can’t be—no” to each other.

Outside the TARDIS, Martha talks to her family and rings the hospital to make sure that Dr Thomas Milligan is still alive. When she wanders into the TARDIS, the Doctor is rambling about how brilliant Agatha Christie must be, and would Martha want to meet her?

But Martha says that she can’t travel with him any more. She says that her family saw half the planet slaughtered, and they’re devastated. She needs to stay and take care of them. The Doctor says he understands, and that Martha saved the world.

And so she did.

She leaves, but pops back in to tell a rambling story about her friend Vicky’s unrequited love for Sean, and how this is her getting out of a bad situation. But she gives him her phone, and says that when it rings, he better come running, because she’s not having him disappear.

And in the ashes of the Master’s funeral pyre, we see a red finger-nailed hand come down and pick up a ring, as the Master laughs in the background.

Then the Titanic drives through the TARDIS control room.

No, seriously.

“Voyage of the Damned” is on next week, but I won’t be live-blogging it. Well, not again. It’s already here. It’s not great, but it’s there.

And that’s season four! See you in about three weeks—the 6th of December—for “Waters of Mars,” the third of season five’s five specials.

I would like a dog.

No, that has nothing to do with tonight’s episode. Why do you ask?

Tonight’s episode contains coarse language and violence, but no nudity. Dammit, Torchwood! Pick up your game!

Opening monologue.

We actually have a short flashback here to the scene where Gwen says she’s getting married to Rhys because no one else will have her. Then we flash forward to Gwen’s hen’s night, which is about as crass as they’re supposed to be.

Gwen is two hours late for her own hen’s night, because she’s been chasing something through a subway station. Something that eats people. She shoots a nice man in a conservative business suit, who turns out to be some kind of shapeshifter.

We cut forward to Gwen, at her hen’s night in a feathery cowboy hat and novelty T-shirt, being surprised by a stripper.

Then back to two hours earlier, where she’s being attacked by the shapeshifter.

Back to the hen’s night, and girly chat in the toilets.

Back to the shape shifter, who is biting her, before being shot by Jack.

Back to the hen’s night when she says it’s just a scratch.

And forward to the wedding morning, where Gwen is suddenly nine months pregnant. That’s going to be difficult to explain.

Credits.

Owen says that Gwen is nearly full term, and at Gwen’s response, Jack points out that the shapeshifter must have passed the eggs through the bite. Owen says that she’s carrying some kind of alien egg, and Jack starts waffling about immaculate conception.

Gwen freaks when she hears that the wedding will need to be postponed. “Do you know how much a wedding costs?” she asks.

Jack says that she’s not carrying the baby Jesus in there, but she says that Owen pointed out that if something had gone wrong, she would be dead, so that she’s getting married anyway, and then she can worry about things afterwards.

Back at the Hub, Owen and Jack tell Tosh and Ianto that Gwen’s getting married anyway (Tosh will act as bodyguard, while Ianto will buy a “bigger” wedding dress). Gwen is, at the same time, telling Rhys that she’s pregnant. Well, pointing to her belly, which is sufficient.

Meanwhile, in the wedding salon.

IANTO: I’m looking for a wedding dress. For a friend.
SHOP ASSISTANT: Of course you are, sir. Don’t worry. We’re quite used to people buying dresses for their . . . friends.

Rhys is quite keen on postponing the wedding, but Gwen breaks down in a rather lovely speech (which I don’t have time to recap) about how much she wants to marry Rhys.

At the Hub, Tosh is all dressed up and looking lovely—Owen, rather sweetly, tells her that she’s “drop-dead gorgeous, and I should know.” Tosh convinces him to come to the wedding, while also telling him that it’s not a date.

Gwen is telling her parents—her father, adorably, calls her “duckling”—that she’s pregnant. Of course, they’ll be a bit shocked when there’s no grandchild, but what else could she do?

Apparently, as we realise at the hotel, Gwen’s parents and Rhys’s parents don’t get on well: as Rhys’s parents arrive, Gwen legs it rather than let her see them pregnant.

Gwen confronts Rhys, who suggests that perhaps they should tell the truth. Gwen tells him not to be ridiculous, but Rhys, rather angrily, tells her that lies don’t work: she’s already tried them. And when Jack rings to say that Tosh will arrive soon, Rhys takes the phone and says that they don’t need Jack at all: he’s already done enough to ruin the day, Rhys says.

The guests begin to arrive.

RHYS’S BEST MAN: I’m Banana. I guess you can tell why?
TOSH: You come up in spots and go soft quickly?

Then she tells him that bananas make her vomit.

Tosh has brought with her the new wedding dress, which Jack has sent over. Tosh, incidentally, has very, very pretty legs. Tosh and Gwen have a conversation about how Tosh will marry one day. We’ll leave that there, I think.

Jack-Ianto flirtation. But it’s interrupted by Owen, who has found a [technobabble], which means big trouble. Oh, okay: it was a proteus gland. No, I don’t know what that means.

In the interim, Rhys’s groomsman, Mervyn, is being seduced by someone who Tosh realises—having found a spot of black blood on a cocktail napkin—is actually the shapeshifter. She’s also Jack Davenport’s ex from Ultraviolet. Tosh manages to track the shapeshifter down, but it’s too late: she’s already eaten Mervyn.

Back at the Hub, Owen explains that the problem is that the shapeshifters, which are called Nostrovites, mate for life: the male was killed, but the female is out there, looking for its baby to mature, so that she can rip the surrogate mother open and pull the baby out.

Jack, Ianto, and Owen roll out, with Owen bringing the singularity scalpel—the item that he saved Martha with, having blown up a number of other people along the way.

JACK: What is it with you? Ever since Owen died, all you do is agree with him.
IANTO: I was brought up to never speak ill of the dead.

Gwen dresses, and then breaks down in front of her mother, especially when her mother says that a baby is God’s gift and a blessing. By the time her father comes in to walk her down the aisle, she breaks down and tells him that the baby is not Rhys’s.

Outside the hotel, Rhys’s father tries to convince Rhys not to marry Gwen, to which Rhys responds furiously.

Gwen’s father is, obviously, not impressed to hear that there’s another man, and even less impressed when Gwen says she’s actually been impregnated by an alien. He really has trouble with dealing with this.

GWEN: Don’t ask me to explain. I’m pregnant. Rhys is not the father. It’s an alien. It’s an alien.

Tosh, meanwhile, is in some kind of web, strapped tightly to Banana, who begins screaming, until Tosh make use of what minimal movement she has to shut him up. (His other alternative is singing in falsetto.)

Gwen walks down the aisle in a flurry of whispers about her unexpected pregnancy. But we can hear the baby’s heartbeat strongly, and so can the Nostrovite.

Torchwood, meanwhile, are chasing the wedding down, while Jack rants about how getting married in the middle of nowhere shows an inner conflict.

Just as the minister gets to the “speak now or forever hold your peace” bit, Jack, of course, bursts into the church, to stop the wedding. Owen and Ianto track down Tosh.

Jack explains, over Rhys’s fury, that he’s trying to save Gwen’s life, because they’ve only just realised about the female Nostrovite.

Outside, the bridesmaids are speculating about the baby being Jack’s.

Gwen, inside, is saying that she’s marrying Rhys regardless, because of how much crap he’s had to put up with since she joined Torchwood. But Rhys says it’s his wedding, too, and he gets a say.

Around about then, a bridemaid finds Mervyn’s body, and runs out screaming. Jack sends Ianto after her to contain the situation.

GWEN’S MOTHER: The problem seems to be an American with no sense of timing. Or fashion.

The bridesmaid bursts in on the guests, screaming, and Ianto has to reveal that the situation is “uncontained.” But Tosh can identify the Nostrovite, which leads to some shooting and screaming, but no actual fatalities.

Inside, Owen is planning on using the singularity scalpel to remove the foetus, but Gwen is not thrilled by all this. And when Rhys’s mother comes into the room, Owen runs out after the shapeshifter.

But when he sees Jack, Jack points out that the alien is a shapeshifter, which leads to a scene in which Jack gets punched in the face by Rhys. Of course, the alien has taken the role of Rhys’s mother, but she’s outside, not inside.

The Nostrovite grabs Gwen’s mother, and Gwen approaches very slowly, until the Nostrovite calls out to its child, whereupon Gwen shoots it with the gun concealed in her bouquet.

Owen tells Rhys how to use the singularity scalpel, because, as he points out, Owen doesn’t have two working hands.

As Gwen waits inside, Jack comes to her, and Gwen talks a little about how she feels about him. But, of course, it’s the Nostrovite, and Gwen nuts him.

Good on you, Gwen.

At that point, Owen and Rhys burst in, and Owen shoots the Nostrovite while Rhys drags Gwen across the grounds. The Nostrovite goes to bite Owen, but, as a carnivore, it’s not really about roadkill.

When Real Jack and the others show up, Owen points out that their guns don’t work.

JACK: We’re going to need a bigger gun, then.

Rhys and Gwen end up in a barn, with the Nostrovite beating down the door, and Rhys trying to operate the singularity scalpel . . . successfully, as it works out.

Then the Nostrovite bursts through the door, in the guise of Rhys’s mother, and as he’s just about to go for her with a chainsaw (can anyone say Oedipal?), Jack blows her up with a really, really big gun.

Jack admires Rhys’s “Evil Dead” look, and tells him that the good guy always gets the girl, but only after giving Gwen a bit of a squeeze.

Not like that!

Then Rhys and Gwen get married, even though everyone now knows about aliens.

And, at the reception, Owen asks Tosh to dance with him, while Rhys and Gwen dance, and Jack, sitting on his own, cuts in.

JACK: Mind if I cut in?
NICK: Jack, you’re always bloody cutting in.

Jack tells Gwen to enjoy the honeymoon.

GWEN: What will you do when I’m gone?
JACK: The usual. Pizza. Ianto. Save the world a couple of times.
GWEN: Will you miss me?
JACK: Always.

Aw. Then Ianto cuts into the dance, and he and Jack dance, though Jack casts one last look over at Gwen.

Towards the end of the reception—and we can tell it’s the end, because they’re playing Soft Cell—everyone falls asleep. Because Jack has mixed level-six retconn into the champagne. Wow, I hope they don’t interact in an unfortunate way.

Jack offer the same cocktail to Rhys and Gwen, but Gwen says no: no secrets in this marriage, she says. She and Rhys head off, while Torchwood shift into clean-up mode.

IANTO: That’s what I love about Torchwood. By day, chasing the scum of the universe. Come midnight, you’re the wedding fairy.

Back at the Hub, Jack, alone, looks at a wedding photograph of himself and a woman in a fetching, nineteenth-century dress.

Well, now: that was relatively light-hearted, surely? I’m positive that won’t last.

No preliminaries this time: I fell asleep after dinner and have only just woken up in time. Or been woken up, more accurately.

Blame Nick. I do.

We open with a wormhole, through which fall the Doctor, Martha, and Jack. Jack says they’re lucky: they seem to have landed on 20th-century Earth, but the Doctor says that it’s wasn’t luck. It was him.

Martha says that the Master has the TARDIS: he could be anywhere in time and space. The Doctor says no: he’s here. And although Jack points out that the Master has regenerated—clearly the first time Martha has heard of such a concept—the Doctor says he’ll know him when he sees him.

There’s a drumbeat behind that dialogue.

And Martha points out that they’ve missed the election, right as the Prime Minister Harold Saxon appears on the television.

The Doctor says that’s him: the Master is Prime Minister of England. “The Master and his wife,” he adds, as the Master kisses a pretty blonde woman next to him.

Credits.

We come back to see the Master at Number 10, with his wife telling him she’s so proud of him, as we see Tish, newly employed by Number 10.

The Master walks into the cabinet room, and accuses his ministers of not having a sense of humour as he throws his papers everywhere.

MASTER: You ugly, fat-faced bunch of wet snivelling traitors.
CABINET MINISTER: Yes, very funny.
MASTER: No. No, that wasn’t funny.

Then he gases them all to death, beating a drumbeat out on the table as they die.

Back at Martha’s flat, Jack is showing the Doctor the Harold Saxon websites, while Martha deletes an excited message from Tish saying she has a new job—“as if it matters,” say Martha.

Back at Number 10, a highly determined journalist pushes her way past Tish to insist on an interview with Lucy Saxon. She’s gushing and excited until she manages to push Tish out of the room—despite Tish’s attempts to stay—and then she tells Lucy that she believes Harold Saxon is not what he seems.

In Martha’s flat, Jack is showing the Doctor testimonials on Saxon’s website. And in Number 10, the journalist is saying Saxon’s entire life is a fake—until eighteen months ago, just after the downfall of Harriet Jones. Ah, maybe the Doctor shouldn’t have brought down England’s Golden Age, then? And at the same time as Saxon came to life, they launched the Archangel network.

Lucy, on the other hand, is real: a good family, Roedean, not especially bright but genuine. But Lucy, though she seems a little hesitant, says she made her choice, for better or for worse.

“Didn’t I, Harry?” she asks, as we see the Master standing behind her.

“My faithful companion,” he says.

She asks the Master who he is, and he says he’s the Master—“and these are my friends,” he adds, as several glowing spheres appear out of nowhere, and attack the journalist.

The Master and Lucy dash out of the room to the journalist’s screams—and the Master opens the doors several time, to hear her still screaming, which seems a little odd, playing a gruesome death for laughs.

Back in Martha’s flat, the Doctor explains that he locked the TARDIS, so it can only travel between the year one trillion and the last place the TARDIS landed, with maybe an eighteen-month leeway. And Martha says she was going to vote for Saxon, but she can’t explain why—though, as she speaks, she’s tapping out the same drumbeat that we heard behind the earlier conversation.

The Master appears on television, speaking to the nation to tell them that’s he’s been contacted by aliens. The aliens describe themselves as the “Toclafane,” which causes the Doctor to snort. He says that everyone will benefit from the new knowledge that the aliens can give them, even medical students.

And at that, the Doctor spins the television around to see a bomb behind it. Though they manage to get out of the flat, Martha is worried about her parents.

Her parents are being monitored by Saxon’s forces, and, when they’re arrested, and Tish, too, Martha drives out to find them. But her parents are being loaded into a van, and they tell Martha to drive—which she does, in a hail of bullets.

NICK: They’re lucky that car is bulletproof.

Under Jack’s orders, Martha ditches the car, and rings her brother, to tell him to stay in Brighton, where he’s been fortuitously staying.

But the Master is monitoring her phone calls. He taunts Martha until the Doctor grabs the phone.

DOCTOR: Master.
MASTER: I love it when you use my name.

The Master asks where Gallifrey is, and the Doctor says it’s gone, and the Time Lords, too. The Master explains that they brought him back because they thought he was the perfect warrior for the Time War. He was there when the Dalek Emperor took over the Cruciform. But he was so scared, and he ran, and made himself human, so that he’d never be found.

DOCTOR: Don’t you see? All we’ve got is each other.
MASTER: Are you asking me out on a date?

The Master won’t have it, though—and he points out that England is the most surveilled country on Earth. He can see them, and he has control of the citizenry in a way that the Doctor can’t explain. We can tell it’s a subconscious control, though, because the people around the Doctor are drumming their hands as he speaks to the Master.

He tells the Doctor to run, and the Doctor does, with Martha and Jack with him.

Back in Downing Street, the Master is giggling at the Tellytubbies, which, for those old-school fans out there, is a lovely, subtle throwback to Roger Delgado—the original Master and, in Nick’s eyes, the best—whistling along to The Clangers. The Toclafane tell him that they need to hurry, because the time of darkness and cold is coming.

In an underpass, the Doctor tells Jack and Martha about Gallifrey, and Nick and I cry a little. Seriously, this flashback to Gallifrey—and this is the first and, I believe, the only time we’ve actually seen Gallifrey in the new series—always makes me cry. I think it’s the collars. Do you think they’ve been keeping those in the BBC costume department for all those years?

Basically, once I’ve dried my eyes, he says that the Master was driven mad in a Gallifreyan coming-of-age ritual.

Since this is a happy, sharing time, Jack tells the Doctor that he’s working for Torchwood, which, obviously, doesn’t please the Doctor. But Jack says that the old regime was destroyed at Canary Wharf, and when Jack helped rebuild it, he did so in the Doctor’s honour.

I still don’t think that the Doctor would approve of half of what you do, Jack.

I’m really, really finding it hard to keep up with the plotting in this episode. Too dense.

The Doctor, though, has figured out that there’s code in the Archangel mobile-phone network, which the Master was the minister in charge of implementing. And he can cancel it out by borrowing technology analogous to the TARDIS chameleon circuit.

DOCTOR: Because the TARDIS is designed to blend in. Well, sort of.

Now, the Master’s TARDIS had a working chameleon circuit, and yet, somehow, he’s the bad guy. That makes no sense!

At the airport, the Master—who has now decided to give up any pretense to sanity—meets the American President, who says that UNIT, not the British Army, is in charge, and that the meeting with the Toclafane cannot take place on any sovereign soil. Instead, it will take place on the UNIT aircraft carrier the Valiant.

Ooh, UNIT have got a bigger budget than they used to have, don’t they?

And, as we see the Master standing on the runway, his coat flaps open so we can see the red-silk lining, and Nick and I are temporarily distracted by how much like Jon Pertwee’s outfits the Master’s clothes look.

The Master seems to see the Doctor, Martha, and Jack, standing off to one side under the individual cloaking devices, but he’s distracted by the arrival of Martha’s bound—but not gagged—family. And the Doctor uses Jack’s arm device to transport the three of them to the Valiant—which is an aircraft carrier, but an airborne one, not a sea-going one.

The Master taunts the president a little more, but he also tells Lucy, in passing, that, as Minister for Defence, he helped design the Valiant. Every piece, he says.

On the Valiant, Martha wants to looks for her family, but the Doctor is distracted, because he can tell that the TARDIS is nearby. But that’s not going to help them, because the Master has cannibalised it: it’s now a paradox machine, set to trigger at two minutes past eight, when first contact with the Toclafane is set for eight a.m.

In the meeting room, as the president sounds anxious, the Master offers Lucy a jelly baby. Now, do you suppose that it’s deliberate that he’s not just cannibalising the TARDIS, but also the Doctor’s past regenerations?

The Doctor has a plan: he wants to get his cloaking device around the Master’s neck, which will cancel out his hypnosis effect. But it’s hard to sneak up, he says, when everyone’s on red alert.

The Toclafane appear, but they won’t listen to the president: they want the Master. And the first thing that the Master does is order them to kill the president.

The Doctor wants to carry on with his plan, but the Master has his people grab the Doctor: as if, he says, a perception filter will work on him.

He has them grab Martha and Jack, though not for long, because he kills Jack, apparently just for fun.

MASTER: Laser screwdriver. Who’d have sonic?

There’s some technobabble there, leading back to “The Lazarus Experiment,” which leads to the Master artificially aging the Doctor one hundred years. Between that and the fact that he brings her family in, the Master basically ensures that Martha can’t do anything, either. All three are helpless.

And with that, it’s two minutes past eight, and the Master, thanks to his paradox machine, tears a hole in the universe, and six billion Toclafane pour into our world.

Here’s how the next bit went the first time I saw this episode:

MASTER: Shall we decimate them? That sounds good. Nice word: decimate. Remove one-tenth of the population.
EVERYONE IN MY LIVING ROOM: Yay!

Were we applauding the decimation or the correct use of the word? You decide!

The next few minutes are mostly screaming and running, as the Earth burns—but in the middle of it, the Doctor whispers to Martha, and she teleports away from the Valiant with Jack’s device, pausing only to look back up and say, “I’m coming back” before running off towards the burning city.

MASTER: So it came to pass that the human race fell, and the Earth was no more. And I looked down on my new dominion as Master of all. And I thought it good.

Man. That’s one hell of a cliffhanger.