The Doctor abandons Rose with a genocidal Donna in Tennant-form and there's no sign of The Shadow Proclamation anywhere!
Companions and spin-offs collide when Davros and his new race of Daleks transport the Earth far across the universe
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The Daleks, commanded by The Supreme Dalek and Davros himself, and guided by the precog ramblings of Dalek Caan, have nabbed The Earth from under The Doctor’s nose and transported it far across the universe, along with myriad other planets and the lost moon of Poosh.
But fret not. With the aid of a stethoscope, and no help at all from The Shadow Proclamation, the Doctor finds our blue planet and must now team up with not one, not two, but every last one of his companions and spin-offs.
Appearing in this episode are Sarah Jane Smith (with her son/artificial human, Luke Smith), Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble and Wilfred Mott, and Captain Jack Harkness, and Gwen and Ianto from Torchwood, and U.N.I.T. and Harriet Jones (former Prime Minister).
And while Earth loses its $#!¢, Dalek Caan is having freaky apocalyptic premonitions about the most faithful companion’s destiny of everlasting darkness and, oh, look, there’s Rose!
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A brilliant Dalek story. It had everything, explosions, daleks, crazy loony Daley Caan (more of him please!), a truckload of companion returns, Torchwood, and Davros! Davros is wonderfully chilling. Having waited 16 years for his return I was initially disappointed that original davros actor Terry Malloy didn’t reprise the role, but Julian Bleach is suitably creepy yet bonkers (and seriously underused in the recent Capaldi adventure. Grrr). The doctor’s look of terror when they Skype is brilliant.
Re: Davros’s timeline. Davros has a metal hand indicating this story takes place after his hand got shot off in brilliant 6th doctor adventure Revelation of the Daleks. However, in Davros’s last TV appearance Remembrence of the Daleks (my first and favourite ever story!) he was only a wired up disembodied head in obese Dalek casing. This was due to being chainsawed up by Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer (in the comics). So either Russell T ignored his final classic appearance or this story takes place earlier in Davros’s timeline…
Also could this be the last appearance of a milkman in a contemporary Who setting given they are now extinct?
Finally, when will we get an adventure with the Nightmare Child!?
Thank you for your show. It makes me smile. Though I’m going to get really upset when you start trashing the McCoy era!
Michael – Pakistan
Hi guys.
Thanks for reading me out last ep.
First off: a retraction for my comments about Donna being “blissfully absent” from Midnight. I do like Donna a lot, her pairing with 10 is easily the best Doctor/Companion dynamic Tennant has onscreen and it gets better still on their recent Big Finish audios. At her worst she’s deliberately grating but at her best she’s lovely and very well performed by an underrated Catherine Tate.
Anyway, Stolen Earth; After name-checking the two spinoff series in the previous episode, we now get Torchwood, Sarah Jane and all of RTD’s companions onscreen in the same ep! Call me melodramatic but at the time, this was like the Avengers assembling onscreen 4 years early. The jam and string is all converging with excellent effect, (spoiler alert the payoff is slightly fumbled next week but the setup here is superb). Judoon! Davros! Extermenieren! Big Sci-Fi guns! UNIT! The Valiant! AAHH!
Even though cell phone footage had been on Youtube for months beforehand showing Tennant being shot by a Dalek, the surprise regeneration was still thrilling and quite possibly marked the last time that Doctor Who was actually water-cooler conversation material as people spent the next 7 days wondering what the hell was going on. Had Tennant’s era actually ended here, it would have been a hell of a statement and a tremendous achievement, pity we have to limp through the 2010 specials instead.
4.0
“Bokodozobokofopojo! Maho.”
Matt from Manchester
Hey, guys. Past-Tracey here. Heard you got some other reviews so I can relax and make this short.
Once again I didn’t remember this episode. And once again it was because I didn’t like it very much. There’s an awful lot of fanservice for the spin-offs. I’m sure it was very exciting for people who have watched those… I did get very excited when Rose and the Doctor finally end up in the same universe, on the same street, running towards each other. So romantic! So fantastical! So why did the writer have to ruin it by getting the Doc shot by a dalek?? Uhh, whatever.
Rating: maybe half a banana