Inspirations: Army of Ghosts / Doomsday

 

Russell T Davies always intended that the main focus of Series 1 would be the Daleks - assuming that Terry Nation's estate would play ball. If the programme went to a second series then it would be time for the return of the second most popular foes - the Cybermen.

The 2005 series finale had seen the conclusion of the Bad Wolf story arc, revealing what it meant. It also featured an epic battle with massed ranks of Daleks, including a fleet of saucers and hundreds of Daleks sweeping through space.

The 2006 finale had to not only match this, but surpass it. Keen to have the Daleks make an appearance each year, the obvious thing was for there to be story where the two great enemies finally met each other.

This was not a new idea. Not only would generations of children - and fan-fiction writers - have imagined such a thing, but the production team of 1968 (i.e. Peter Bryant, Derrick Sherwin and Terrance Dicks) actually tried to make it happen.

There was a five year gap between The Evil of the Daleks and Day of the Daleks, and everyone tends to assume that this was the length of time Terry Nation withheld his creations from the programme, due to his plans to launch them in their own series (first in the UK and, when that didn't pan out, in the States).

The fact is that Nation was already amenable to the Daleks making a comeback exactly one year after their last monochrome outing. He considered allowing them to be used in the final story of Season 5, so long as he didn't have to write it, but then stipulated that they could not appear in the same story as the Cybermen. The reason is probably the same as for not wanting K9 to feature in Destiny of the Daleks - Nation did not want anything diminishing his creations and making them look weak.

The hoped-for inclusion of the Daleks might well be why it was David Whitaker who was asked to work on Kit Pedler's ideas for The Wheel in Space. It is hard to see why he would have been brought onto a standard issue Cyberman project otherwise.

If you are wondering why the Daleks weren't retained and Cybermen dropped from Wheel, then it's because the BBC didn't have to pay extra for use of Cybermen. 

This is another reason why it took five years for them to return - Daleks were more expensive.

Daleks and Cybermen would come close to meeting on one other occasion. The first version of Frontier in Space had the Master allied with Cybermen instead of Ogrons. Apart from raiding spaceships they would not have fulfilled the same role as the Ogrons later did, so the Dalek and Cybermen would not have overlapped in the final episode in the same way.

The only glimpse of a Cyberman in the 2005 series also just happens to be in the episode which reintroduces the Daleks.

Army of Ghosts and Doomsday were therefore designed to bring the top two monsters together, thus raising the stakes for planet Earth. One would be bad enough, but how would we cope against two?

No doubt the Nation estate had a say in which side would win when the two finally squared up to each other.

These high stakes were necessary to give Rose a decent send-off. She couldn't simply leave after a fairly standard adventure, and she'd already coped with both Daleks and Cybermen individually.

As well as Rose's departure and a high stakes finale, the episodes also had to act as a sequel to the earlier Cyberman story - Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel.

As part of Rose's departure it also had to bring some resolution to the story arcs of her mother and her ex-boyfriend, tying them in with the events on the parallel "Pete's World".

Having introduced the alt. Pete and killed off alt. Jackie; shown how our Pete had died in Father's Day; and shown Mickey's gran to be still alive in the parallel world, the various pawns were in place to link everyone up and send them all off to Pete's World to live happily ever after. 

Apart from Rose...

There had to be a reason for her to stop travelling with the Doctor, so she either had to be killed off, had her memory wiped, or become trapped in another dimension. RTD never considered killing her as it would be unfair to younger members of the audience. 

Companions may have died in the past (especially where Cybermen and Daleks were involved) but the new series was to be more optimistic. Children were to be able to imagine themselves becoming a companion one day, so it had to be an ultimately positive experience.

Another function of the story was to tie up the "Torchwood" arc. 

The name was an anagram of "doctor who", used to send production materials between London and Cardiff without anyone knowing what the contents were, and it was going to be used as the title for the new Captain Jack spin-off show starring John Barrowman. It got its first mention in one of the Weakest Link questions in Bad Wolf.

As early as the second episode of Series 2 - Tooth and Claw - its nature had been explained, so the mentions throughout the series were there just for a bit of fun, something for viewers to spot. There was nothing really to work out - not in the same way as the identity of "Bad Wolf" had been.

It was an organisation set up by Queen Victoria to defend Britain against aliens and, by extension, the Doctor. 

All Army of Ghosts did was show us what it looked like, and who was in charge of it. They were the means by which the Daleks and the Cybermen could come together in present day London.

The branch at Canary Wharf was Torchwood One, whilst Captain Jack's Cardiff branch was Torchwood Three, thus connecting the parent series with its spin-off beyond just the use of Barrowman.

Back in 1993 the BBC had brought us a Doctor Who / EastEnders crossover for Children in Need. This was Dimensions in Time, co-written and produced by John Nathan Turner. A hoped for multi-Doctor adventure - "The Dark Dimension" - had fallen by the wayside due to budget and casting issues and this would be all fans would get for the 30th anniversary. As a piece for charity, it was agreed that it would never be repeated or merchandised in any way, and is generally regarded as sitting outside canon.

The Doctor had made references to EastEnders as being a soap opera in his universe (such as comments about the Christmas episode disasters in The Impossible Planet). Army of Ghosts confirmed its fictional status, when the Doctor and Rose witnessed Barbara Windsor's character dealing with the ghost of Den Watts on TV.

Doctor Who would continue to feature celebrity cameos like Windsor's in its remaining RTD finales. This time we also get "psychic" Derek Acorah (Most Haunted), TV presenter Alistair Appleton (Cash in the Attic), and talk show host Trisha Goddard (Trisha).

Some specific Cyberman influences include the DWM comic strip "The Flood" - the final McGann one prior to Rose. In this the Cybermen infiltrate London and other parts of the globe from another dimension, appearing as ghostly forms initially. They are exposed by a top secret alien hunting organisation, based at a London tourist destination for cover.

The Big Finish audio Spare Parts, which had lent a small amount to the earlier Cyberman origins story, featured a character named Yvonne Hartley, which is very close to the Torchwood CEO's name.

Torchwood itself is reminiscent of other alien-hunting outfits, such as in Mulder and Scully's X-Files, Buffy's The Initiative, The Men in Black, and Doctor's Who's very own UNIT.

The creation of Torchwood as far back as the Victorian era has thrown up all manner of continuity headaches - not least why they failed to act against the Doctor during all the years he was exiled to Earth, or on any of the many, many visits he's made to the UK since its founding.

There are some parallels with Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials, in that the final book of the trilogy (The Amber Spyglass) features an army of beings coming from another dimension, and one character uses the titular spyglass to see what others can't, just like the Doctor and his 3-D spectacles. The books feature an alternative universe England, similar to Pete's World.

Rose's bald statement to the audience that she is dead reminds us of The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's 2002 novel which is told from the perspective of a dead girl.

The episode ends with a throw-forward to the second Christmas Special. Many felt this ruined the sombre mood of the episode, but RTD wanted to show that, even when companions leave, the series carries on and the Doctor is already facing his next adventure...

Inspirations: Fear Her

The 11th episode slot for Series 2 changed hands a couple of times, and so became a bit of a last minute job. For a long time it might have been home to the Stephen Fry Arthurian epic he never got round to finishing. This would have been set in the 1920's, and so the placeholder title was simply "1920's".

Later, the dating had moved to the 1930's, and more detail had emerged - it would be based on Gawain and the Green Knight.

Promised a big budget for flying horses, alien planets and other costly VFX it quickly became apparent that the Fry story couldn't be accommodated in this slot, so it was deferred to Series 3. In the end, Fry proved too busy to complete the piece and it was never produced.

In its place came a story which had been developed for inclusion either in 2006 or in 2007, essentially a spare one for Series 2. It was written by Matthew Graham, who had written for EastEnders as well as his own series such as post-apocalyptic drama The Last Train. RTD had wanted him to write for the 2005 series, but he had been too busy on his copper-out-of-time series Life On Mars.

He was asked to come up with a story which involved only a small group of people, in a confined location - i.e. something cheap. A group trapped in an underground bunker was suggested, but felt to be too restrictive.

Graham's own idea was for a villain who could define beauty quantifiably, and could remove colour from the world.

RTD then asked Graham what kind of story would his six year old son find scary. The colour-draining idea was felt not to fit the bill, and the two eventually hit upon possessed pictures. 

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in July 1890, was mentioned. Paintings were thought to be quite creepy when the eyes seemed to follow you around the room.

This developed into Graham's idea of pictures coming to life that had been drawn by children, so that they were misshapen, with elongated limbs etc.

Had they stuck to this idea, the episode might have been more favourably received. Instead, they opted to concentrate on people being turned into pictures, rather than the other way round, and we only see pictures moving very briefly in the finished episode - and not particularly scarily at that.

A potential influence is Paperhouse, a 1988 film in which a girl draws a house in which the characters she has added come to life. She can go there and interact with them. She makes friends with a boy who believes himself to be real, and she the imaginary one. She draws her father as an angry figure, and when she rubs his face out, it turns him into a blind ogre. The only way of stopping him is to destroy the part of the drawing of the house where he is.

This film was an adaptation of a novel, Marianne Dreams, which was written by Catherine Storr and published in 1958.

It was RTD who insisted that the story be set in some recognisable locale, such as a suburban street. Younger viewers would be excited to think that the TARDIS could land at the end of their road one day.

However, rather than set the story in the present day a near-future setting was decided upon, with Davies suggesting London 2012 and the forthcoming Olympic Games.

This would allow them to get away with only minimal design work. It was Graham who suggested that the Doctor carry the Olympic torch at one point - so we can see how both men were equally to blame for the mess this ended up as.

The name of the fictional East London street was 'Dame Kelly Holmes Close'. Holmes had just done extremely well at the 2004 Athens Olympics, which had resulted in her being made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005.

Making the street a Close - i.e. a cul-de-sac - was supposed to add to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

A poster at the TARDIS landing site is for Shayne Wards' Greatest Hits album. He had just won the second series of The X Factor, so having a greatest hits package was supposed to hint at the near future dating. They say nothing dates like the future, however. By 2011 Ward had already been dropped by his record label, and would later turn to acting (appearing on Coronation Street for a couple of years).

Draft titles included "Chloe Webber Destroys The World" and "You're A Bad Girl, Chloe Webber" - both of which were liked but felt to be far too long. The final title of Fear Her was one which Graham didn't even think fitted the story particularly well.

The flower-like Isolus was inspired by the 1978 remake of the classic 1956 sci-fi movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In this the alien menace spread through plant spores. Initially deciding on pods, RTD suggested something more delicate like pollen.

Its name comes from the Terry Nation school of naming things - it's isolated from the rest of its kin.

The "Scribble Monster" which attacks Rose was added to the story when it was realised that it was very low in incident.

When the Doctor talks about being threatened by cats in wimples, he's referring to the Cat Nuns of New Earth.

The monster in the closet derived from the same childhood fears which Steven Moffat had far more successfully mined for the Clockwork 'Droid hiding under the bed in The Girl in the Fireplace.

Chloe's mother sings the Australian nursery song Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree to calm her. Graham sang this song to his own children at bed time.

Despite having a mid-summer setting it was realised that the episode would be filmed in January / February, so dialogue had to be added to cover this - the Isolus draining heat from the area.

The Doctor and Rose pretend to be police officers investigating the disappearances. The Doctor calls Rose "Lewis". Detective Sergeant Lewis was the sidekick to Inspector Morse, played by Kevin Whateley, who would go on to have his own successful Oxford-based crime drama series, with one of Billie Piper's ex-husbands as his sidekick.

Advising Rose to be watchful, the Doctor uses the phrase "keep 'em peeled" - i.e. keep your eyes peeled. This had been the catchphrase of Shaw Taylor, presenter of the ATV show Police Five. This five minute segment asked members of the public to assist the police with solving real crimes - a precursor of Crimewatch UK. That was the inspiration for this story's "London Crimecrackers" programme, which is prominent in the episode's Tardisode.

Star Trek is another popular cultural reference, as the Doctor asks Chloe if she can do the Vulcan hand salute. It was first seen in the story Amok Time in September 1967, when Spock greets T'Pau.

David Tennant likened the bedroom scene between the Doctor and Chloe to The Exorcist (1973), in which a priest tries to communicate with an entity possessing a young girl.

The Doctor surprises Rose - and those viewers who only came on board in 2005 - that he was a father once, reminding us that he used to travel with his grand-daughter Susan.

This week's Torchwood mention comes in dialogue from Huw Edwards, who is commenting on the events at the Olympic Stadium - suggesting that even BBC newsreaders know all about the supposedly top secret organisation..

Next time: All those mentions of Torchwood finally take us somewhere - although we've pretty much known what it's all about since the second episode. It's also the day Rose Tyler dies. Except it isn't...

Inspirations: Love & Monsters

Love & Monsters is the series' first ever Doctor-lite episode. When Series 2 was commissioned, the 13 standard episodes were to be produced along with a Christmas Special. The amount of time available to make 14 episodes was the same as that for 13, however. 

Options were to drop one of the standard episodes, or "double bank" - i.e. have two episodes filmed at the same time. The former option was not popular, as it would mean a shorter season and 13 episodes were more ideal for overseas sales, as this was exactly one quarter of a TV station's output year.

With double-banking however, you had the problem of needing to have your regular cast in two places at the same time. The way round this was to drastically reduce their screen time, so they basically became cameos in their own series.

Davies himself agreed to write this story, and decided to have it focus on how other people viewed the Doctor from a distance. This was partly inspired by a Star Trek: TNG episode called "Lower Decks", which focused on an incident as viewed by non-regular crewmembers; and "The Zeppo", an episode of Buffy which was told entirely from the viewpoint of one particular character (Xander).

The episode began life as a story called "I Love The Doctor" (or I 'Heart' The Doctor) which was a potential comic strip by RTD. 

The Elton Pope character was originally going to be female.

RTD was mainly inspired by his experiences of organised fandom. At conventions and other events he had seen people come together due to their love of Doctor Who and become friends - their friendship actually growing beyond their shared liking of Doctor Who. Whilst it remained a passion, they could enjoy other non-Who things together. However, there was a minority of people who were so diehard in their love of the show that they could not think of anything beyond it, always wanting to drag things back to the programme, whose minutiae they pored over. They tended to be regarded by the majority as killjoys, being so overly obsessed with the show.

This all formed the backdrop to the 'LINDA' group, who had the shared obsession about the Doctor but could build on this to explore other areas; and Victor Kennedy - obsessed to the exclusion of everything else. 

These total obsessives had a tendency to suck the fun out of things, which probably chimed with the alien which had been planned for inclusion in this episode. (It has been claimed that Victor is based on one fan in particular - Ian Levine, who acted as continuity consultant under JNT until the two had a huge falling out. You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment).

For the second series, RTD had organised increased cross-promotion with Blue Peter, the BBC children's magazine programme which had long been a great friend of Doctor Who. The series had featured regularly ever since the initial success of the Daleks (designer Ray Cusick had been granted a coveted Blue Peter badge). Former companion Peter Purves had been a presenter on the series for around a decade, and it became a tradition that new Doctors would appear on the programme as one of their very first publicity acts. Sophie Aldred had worn her own BP badge as part of Ace's costume, and her number one wish had been to be a BP presenter. (Offered the choice, she would probably have picked it over Doctor Who).

For Series One, Blue Peter had been invited to watch the filming of Dalek, and a specially recorded clip of Blue Peter had been recorded to appear in Aliens of London - the making of a spaceship cake.

Back in 1967 BP had featured a design-a-monster competition, which had attracted record numbers of entries. The normally reclusive Patrick Troughton had helped judge it, but in character as the Doctor only.

RTD decided that Series Two would also feature a link-up with Blue Peter in the form of another design-a-monster competition. This time, however, the winner would actually get to feature in the series itself.

Among the runners-up were a football-inspired alien and a creature named "Sad Tony", who looked a bit like a weeping clown. (David Tennant appeared in the BP studio to announce the winner, and was going to call it live on air as "Sad Tony" - just to see what RTD would do with such a character).

The real winner was the Abzorbaloff, created by 9 year old William Grantham of Colchester, Essex.

This looked like a large green sumo wrestler, and was unique in that it absorbed people, whose faces could still be seen emerging from its flesh.

What young William had neglected to tell anyone was that he had envisaged the creature as being the size of a double-decker bus. This was simply ignored.

To play the Abzorbaloff comic Peter Kay was cast, after he had written to RTD to express his admiration for the 2005 series. He helped work out the idea that the alien spoke with his own Lancashire accent, whilst his human alter-ego Victor Kennedy had a posher voice.

As the alien is large and green it was decided that he looked a bit like a Slitheen, so RTD decided to have him come from the twin planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius. As this had a long, complicated name, he jokingly called the twin world Clom.

The framing device for the episode was Elton Pope who, with his friends in LINDA, represented the sort of fandom RTD favoured. Elton would narrate much of the story in the form of a video diary. His experiences with the Doctor ranged from childhood to more recent events - allowing for the use of clips from Rose, Aliens of London, and The Christmas Invasion, plus specially shot re-enactments of the Auton attack.

An earlier draft had a much older Elton, whose mother had been killed by a plastic daffodil (Terror of the Autons) and who had witnessed the Skarasen attack on London (Terror of the Zygons).

Interestingly, the music references in this story, of which there are many, imply an older character, with Elton named after Elton John and his favourite band being the Electric Light Orchestra.

LINDA was inspired by one of RTD's earlier children's projects - Why Don't You...?. Then it had been the "Liverpool Investigations 'N' Detective Agency".

In order to track down the Doctor, Victor Kennedy has computer files from Torchwood, which have unfortunately been corrupted by the Bad Wolf virus. At one point he is seen reading a newspaper which mentions a certain politician named Saxon.

This means that this episode includes references to the story arcs for the first three series. This is the very first reference to Mr Saxon. If you consider that Clom will be one of the missing planets, we actually have all four of RTD's season-long story arcs referenced.

RTD enjoyed writing for the character of Jackie Tyler, and felt that actress Camille Coduri was somewhat underused. There was to be a lengthy gap between Jackie appearances (in the two Cyberman double parters), so he decided that a further function for Love & Monsters would be to show what happens to the family and friends of the companion when they are left behind. The series had never really touched on this before.

Elton would try to track down the Doctor through Rose by making friends with her mother. In the process, he actually becomes very fond of her and resents having to lie to her - only for her to find out what he's up to anyway. She shops him to her daughter, which is where the Doctor and Rose finally engage with the story proper. There had been one earlier scene (the one with the Hoix, which was unconnected to the main narrative) but the Doctor and Rose only really feature in the scene in the alley where the Abzorbaloff threatens Elton. Tennant and Piper were making The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit at the time. 

The Hoix was made up of left-over bits of monster costume in Neil Gorton's workshop.

The Hoix sequence, with characters running back and forth, was inspired by the Scooby Doo cartoon series.

This episode is generally regarded as a 'Marmite' one - that being a foodstuff which people either really love or really hate. As a rough rule of thumb, LINDA types tend to like it, whilst Victor Kennedys hate it. Stupidly, some people object to it because the Doctor and Rose aren't in it enough - missing the whole point of the episode entirely.

Next time: the series attempts to make an ordinary suburban street scary - only to fail miserably...

Inspirations: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit

 

For its first series back in 2005 Russell T Davies elected to keep the focus on Earth and on human beings. Every episode was set on Earth or, in four cases, in Earth's orbit.

The reason for this was that RTD was afraid that the casual viewer would not be able to empathise with overtly alien creatures - but could do so with people who were recognisably like us.

(He referred to aliens as "Zog, from the planet Zog"). 

As well as this lack of empathy / identification with their inhabitants, alien worlds had always been hard to realise on TV budgets. A lot of the sci-fi series of the 1990's were filmed in Canada for financial reasons, and had a tendency to always depict similar locales, such as a distinctive pine forest area. You'll spot it in the X-Files, Stargate and other shows.

Doctor Who, from The Savages in 1966 onwards, had tended to use quarries or similar (clay or sand pits) as alien planets - to the point that it became cliché (especially when Blake's 7 was using the exact same locations for its alien planets at the same time). It was joked about that whilst Douglas Camfield was filming Beau Geste in one sand pit, Doctor Who and Blake's 7 were just round the corner in the same location - that the Foreign Legion soldiers would run around a bend and come face to face with Servalan or the Daleks.

RTD wanted to avoid these clichés for as long as possible, until the series was well established, and the viewing audience more accepting of what they were being shown.

The first two thirds of Series 2 maintained the Earth connection, but eventually it was time to feature a totally alien world - and the only way to do it was to pay a visit to a quarry.

Rather than film the location in broad daylight, however, RTD elected to have it filmed at night, and to have it feature as a subterranean part of the planet - so that it did not look like the old cliché (even if it was one).

The alien servitors in the Sanctuary Base were originally going to be Slitheen. However, a new race was then decided upon (being a much more practical costume to film around) and so the Ood came into being. They were inspired by the Sensorites, who first appeared in the series in 1964 in the story of the same name.

The most famous image of the Sensorites was the one featuring a pair of the creatures, which appeared in the Doctor Who Monster Book of 1975.

Until Doctor Who Weekly launched, this would have been the only image of a Sensorite most fans would have known. Compare with the Ood: 

Both have a large bald cranium. The Sensorite beard is replaced by the tendril / fronds of the Ood, and the translator ball is inspired by the Sensorite telepathic communicator.

The connection to the Sensorites will be reinforced in Series 4 when it is explained that the Ood planet is in the same region of space as the Sense-Sphere, and has a similar name structure.

Another inspiration for this pair of episodes is Pyramids of Mars. Not only is Gabriel Woolf employed to voice the Beast, after portraying Sutekh, but the Beast is said to be an incarnation of the Devil, as Sutekh was also supposed to be. In both cases we have a Devil-like figure who claims to be the inspiration for Devil-like figures on other planets. As such, we could also add in a link with The Daemons here. A number of other planets do get mentioned - ones which are supposed to have a Devil in their mythology. One is Skaro - a Kaled god of war - and another is Draconia. 

Daemos is also mentioned, though it seems a bit of a stretch to say that a planet of Devil-looking beings were influenced by someone Devil-looking by coincidence. Possibly the Beast caused them to have their horned demon appearance in the first place, and they would have evolved quite differently if left to their own devices.

Coincidentally, the BBC were very cautious when it came to making The Daemons, for fear of upsetting the Church. Likewise, great care was taken with Matt Jones' story, for fear of upsetting Christian Fundamentalists, especially in the US. As it was, there were complaints about the name "Satan" appearing in the title of the second instalment. This from people who ban Hallowe'en and probably think Harry Potter promotes Satanism.

The notion of using the Slitheen had come about because this story was originally going to come much earlier in the series, and be a very cheap one - hence recycling of existing costumes.

Some ideas for the image of the Beast which were not used included a creepy little girl, a creepy old man, the BBC Test Card girl, and a great big eye. The latter had, of course, already been used in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy to symbolise the Gods of Ragnarok, and creepy girls / old men had featured in Torchwood. (The idea of the Doctor encountering a god / devil type figure from the dawn of Time is very Virgin New Adventures).

The Mill, who provided the CGI for the series, came up with a Black Hole which was based on the known science of the time. Though technically realistic, it didn't look very impressive on screen so RTD asked them to come up with something closer to what the general public might think a Black Hole looked like - a "whirlpool"-shaped one such as the one in the Disney movie The Black Hole.

The final look of the Beast was based partly on Tim Curry's villain in Legend, and a character from 2000AD's Slaine comic.

Scientists unwittingly unleashing a great evil after decoding an ancient script reminds us of films such as John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. As here, the Devil is extra-terrestrial in origin.

Next time: a story about fandom which has greatly divided fandom...

Inspirations: The Idiot's Lantern

 

As a historical story, albeit from the more recent past, the inspirations for this are obvious - events surrounding the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and television of the 1950's. The two go hand in hand.

It also has something to say about Fascism, still a very recent threat in early Fifties Britain.

The title comes from something people who looked down upon it once said about television. It was believed that it would brainwash people, and prove addictive. People would stop listening to morally uplifting, educational radio or reading books.

Writer Mark Gatiss originally intended the hook for this story to be a song, so events would have had more of a focus on Rock 'n' Roll music. The alien threat would have attacked its victims via an "earworm" - i.e. a catchy tune which you can't get out of your head.

When this idea got dropped and the focus moved to television, it meant that the music angle had to go, as 1953 was too early for Rock 'n' Roll. There is a ghost of this in the story as broadcast as the Doctor is supposed to be taking Rose to New York to see Elvis Presley perform on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Instead the TARDIS arrives in North London in the year of the Coronation.

Muswell Hill was selected as you get a view of Alexandra Palace from there, and it was local to where Gatiss resided.

One error in the finished programme, however, is that the view from Muswell Hill towards the Palace has been reversed.

The Palace was opened in 1873 to act as a North London counterpoint to the Crystal Palace in South London. By 1900 it was already under threat and was saved when the neighbouring local authorities banded together to purchase it as a community resource.

It was in 1935 that the BBC first leased part of the building, and the following year it became the UK's first television broadcasting centre. Initially two different TV transmission systems were operated side by side, on alternate weeks. One was John Logie-Baird's 240-line system, and the other Marconi-EMI's 405-line system. In 1937, the latter was the one to be adopted.

When TV closed down over the war years, the transmitter was used to jam enemy aircraft navigation systems.

When TV returned after the war, it was seen by very few households. Many people were happy with radio and did not like this brash new arrival; TV sets were expensive, and coverage was patchy outside London. It would take a big televised event to get more people watching. That would be the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. 

Whilst the event did lead to greater interest in television, with increased sales, the cost still kept the numbers down overall. People who had TVs were encouraged to allow friends and neighbours into their homes to watch their set. Why buy a set when you could pop next door and see the big day?

Mr Magpie, who has been enslaved by the alien Wire, is needed to help feed the creature. The more sets there are out there, the more she can feed. This is why he is selling them cheaply. There was a limit to the number of people who can view a shared TV set, and the national coverage still remained patchy.

The Wire arrives on Earth in the middle of a thunderstorm. The TV aerials on Florizel Street are shaped like swastikas - hinting at the fascist nature of the alien. We are less than a decade from the end of the war against Fascism. Eddie Connolly fought in this war, but he needs his son, Tommy, to remind him why the war had to be fought and won. The Doctor at one point compares events with Stalin's Russia, and we do have Eddie denouncing his neighbours - and even his family members - and the authorities abducting people off the streets. At the time, the general public would not have seen much difference between Fascism and Communism, both being seen as non-democratic totalitarian regimes. Neither played cricket, so each must be as bad as the other.

It is only hinted at in the finished programme that Tommy is gay. Gatiss may be basing him on aspects of himself, though he was a child of the 1960's rather than the 1950's. Gatiss does have a great love of the period, however. 

He had recently taken part in a live remake of The Quatermass Experiment, and had written a Virgin New Adventures novel which featured a Quatermass-like figure - Nightshade.

The Wire, as played by Maureen Lipman (who lives close to "Ally Pally" as the Palace is known, and so was able to film her sequences in the actual venue itself on a single day) is based on the likes of Sylvia Peters - a presenter who dressed in a posh frock to do her introductions and continuity announcements, and who spoke with a very RP English accent (Received Pronunciation). RP used to be called "BBC English".

Florizel Street, where the Connollys live, is the original name for Coronation Street - the long running ITV soap.

Another Doctor Who connection with Ally Pally is that once the main TV production had moved to other venues, including the new Television Centre at Wood Lane, the Open University moved in. This provided a lot of work for future VFX Department figures such as Mat Irvine. They would be called upon to make models to illustrate the various OU programmes.

Some people have spotted a Sapphire & Steel inspiration for this episode, especially the image of people with no faces. A S&S story had featured creepy photographs of a man with no face appearing in other people's pictures. Creator of S&S, PJ Hammond, was coming aboard Torchwood at the time.

Others think the inspiration includes the 1981 children's animated series Willo The Wisp. Narrated by Kenneth Williams, this had a villain named Evil Edna - a witch who lived in a television set. It had been revived in 2005, now narrated by James Dreyfus.

Inspirations: Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel

Parallel universes. We've only ever seen one in the series up until this point - the alternative Earth in Inferno which was destroyed by Prof. Stahlmann's drilling project. Interestingly, the Doctor did not exist in that universe - and there is no sign of another one of him in this story, despite everyone else having their mirror selves. 

The implication has always been that the Doctor is totally unique to this universe. (More recently, Chris Chibnall has decided that the Doctor originates in a parallel universe, coming to ours as a child, and so they would no longer exist in that other universe).

This hasn't stopped certain pathetic individuals trying desperately to make every single Doctor Who story canon, including all the comics since the 1960's, the novels and the audios. The only way you can possibly do this is to resort to the lazy and unimaginative shortcut of alternative universes.

They would have it that there are multiple Doctors running around parallel universes.

For myself, I simply don't regard stuff that hasn't been seen on screen as canon, until the TV series says otherwise.

When it came to bringing the Cyberman back into Doctor Who, it was always Russell T Davies' intention to hold them off until the second series, as the first would be concentrating on the Daleks. Note how he came up with a totally new monster - the Spheres - when it looked like they might not get permission to use the Daleks, rather than substitute the Cybermen or another already established race like Sontarans or Ice Warriors.

There weren't the same issues with permissions as with the Daleks - RTD shared the same agent as the one who handled the estate of Gerry Davis, co-creator of the Cybermen.

The Cybermen have one of the most complex back stories ever - far more complicated than the Daleks, who have more than one origins story. The Cybermen change their appearance in almost every story, and their home planet (Mondas) got destroyed in their very first story, meaning they had to devise a new home planet (Telos).

RTD decided that it would be far easier for newer members of the audience to start afresh and give the Cybermen a brand new origins tale, rather than try to fit things into their convoluted history.

For a writer he gave this project to Tom MacRae. New to the programme, he had been taken under RTD's wing and was being mentored by him. Davies had named a character in The Long Game after him.

A starting point for the story was the BF audio Spare Parts, by Marc Platt. This was a Fifth Doctor Cyberman origins tale, set on Mondas. Very little was taken - only the sequence where the Doctor and Mrs Moore encounter a damaged Cyberman who is remembering who she was.

Despite this being a new version of the Cybermen, there are some nods to the creatures' past. A subsidiary of Cybus Industries is International Electromatics - the company owned by Tobias Vaughn in The Invasion.

When John Lumic gets upgraded, it is to become the Cyber-Controller. The Cyberman Controller had first appeared in Tomb of the Cybermen, and had returned in Attack of the Cybermen.

Both of these Controllers had enlarged craniums, indicative of a larger brain. Here, the Controller has a transparent cranium, exposing the brain to view.

Ever since their first appearance, the Cybermen had stated that they did not have emotions, which they saw as a weakness. Here the Cybermen have an emotional inhibitor built into their bodies, and strong emotions can actually kill them. We saw how strong emotions could be used as a weapon against them in The Invasion, via Prof. Watkins' Cerebretron Mentor teaching device.

One very big difference in this new story is the way in which Cybermen are created. In the classic era of the programme, they were built piece by piece, through the surgical replacement of limbs and organs of flesh and blood with those of plastic and metal. The brain was surgically altered and conditioned at the same time. This was seen most graphically in Attack of the Cybermen, and we saw Toberman gain Cyberman limbs in Tomb of the Cybermen. 

In this story, however, the body is discarded wholesale. The brain is simply removed and placed into a Cyberman body, like it was a suit of armour.

This idea of the brain being like a SIM card that could be placed into an upgraded body formed later drafts of the story. The first drafts had focussed more on the Spare Parts scenario of a dying world where people had to augment their bodies or die. Taking the obsession people had with getting the latest upgrade of their mobile phone or gaming device, MacRae came up with the idea of "Body Swaps" establishments - a play on the Body Shop health and beauty chain. In this draft people would willingly be agreeing to become Cybermen. RTD did not think that people would willingly give up their humanity so this was dropped.

This story also acts as a sequel of sorts to 2005's Father's Day. That episode revolved around the death of Pete Tyler, Rose's dad. On this parallel world, Pete is still alive, and the various schemes he had in this life have actually worked out for him - making him a successful businessman. Rose's mother Jackie is therefore also rich.

Ever since he first met him, the Doctor has called Mickey Smith "Ricky". Mickey's mirror self is actually called Ricky. A coincidence, or did the Doctor know something? Probably the former as the Doctor clearly knows nothing of this other Earth.

One of the plans for these two episodes was to write Mickey out of the series, but then have him return for the finale. Noel Clarke was informed of this plan as early as March 2005, just as the series was being relaunched.

Having John Lumic confined to a wheelchair draws obvious parallels to Davros, creator of the Daleks. This was never intended. It is untrue that Lumic was wheelchair-bound because actor Roger Lloyd Pack broke his ankle just before filming. The character was always to have been in a wheelchair.

Originally there were two Lumics - father and son. The elder was in a wheelchair and dying. The son, Jacob, was the one desperate to save his father by any means, which included the creation of Cyberman bodies. He himself had Cyberman components through having experimented on himself.

From a design point of view, the team went with Art Deco, which had flourished in the years between the two World Wars. The look of the new Cyberman helmet was actually inspired by the Chrysler Building in New York.

The interwar years were also the golden age of the zeppelin, and their presence allowed for an instant reveal that this was not the same London the characters new.

Pete Tyler uses the codename "Gemini" when communicating with the Preachers. This was originally going to be Janus - the Roman god associated with doors and gates, usually depicted as having two faces. The month of January is named after him, as it is a time of looking back over the old year and forward to the new. "Janus" indicated that there were two sides to Pete. Gemini, on the other hand, is the astrological sign represented by twins Castor and Pollux. This doesn't work quite as well.

There is a Torchwood on the parallel Earth - we hear Pete ask a friend about it at Jackie's birthday party.

It is said to be her 40th birthday - as this was the 40th anniversary of the Cybermen's first appearance in 1966's The Tenth Planet.

When deciding on their plan of attack on Battersea Power Station, the Doctor mentions access points "above, between and below". This is a reference to The Five Doctors, and the three ways into the Dark Tower - 

"To Rassilon's Tower we go,

Above, between, below..."

Next time: a story that is hardly one of Mark Gatiss' crowning achievements...

Inspirations - The Girl in the Fireplace

Russell T Davies had read up on Madame de Pompadour when he was preparing Casanova, and thought she would make a great guest character in a Celebrity-Historical Doctor Who story. This idea went to Steven Moffat.

The main source material for her life came from the biography written by Nancy Mitford, first published in 1954, and republished in paperback in 1995.

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was born in December 1721. Her father was forced to flee France when she was four years old, following a scandal over unpaid debts. Her legal guardian became a man named Le Normant de Tournehem, who may well have been her biological father.

Between 5 and 9 she attended a convent school and it was after leaving this that her mother took her to a fortune teller who predicted that she would reign over the heart of a king. This led to her nickname of Reinette - little queen.

She excelled in art, literature, gardening and many other interests, and was reputedly able to memorise entire plays.

Aged 19 she married the nephew of her guardian, and four years later she became mistress to King Louis XV. She had for some time been frequenting the Paris salons, and so came within the sphere of Versailles. She and Louis met on 25th February 1744 at a masque ball, at which the King was dressed as a Yew Tree. She was Diana the Huntress.

Within a month she was established as the King's official mistress.

In 1755 she was able to influence the French court to make peaceful overtures to their old enemy Austria.

Suffering from poor health for several years, she contracted TB and died in 1764, aged 42.

Taking the character of Reinette, Moffat added elements such as the Clockwork Droids, which were inspired by the Mechanical Turk. This chess-playing clockwork automaton was constructed around 1770. It was demonstrated all over Europe and the Americas until 1854 when it was destroyed by a fire. Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin were among those whom it beat at chess.

It was later revealed to have been an elaborate hoax, having someone hidden inside the base of the machine. 

The hidden accomplice could not see what his opponents' moves were, but the board was magnetic, and he could see the moves that were being made from metal pieces on its underside.

Despite its dubious background, the Turk actually led to the creation of the power loom, by Edmund Cartwright, who was inspired by its supposed mechanics. Its creator - Wolfgang Von Kempelen - wrote a book on speaking machines, inspiring Alexander Graham Bell to patent the first telephone.

The Turk has also inspired a number of horror and science-fiction tales - such as Edgar Allan Poe's Von Kempelen And His Discovery, and Ambrose Bierce's Moxon's Master.

Moffat's other big inspiration is something about which he seems particularly obsessed - The Time Travellers Wife. In May 2022 HBO screened his adaptation of Audrey Niffenneger's 2003 novel. It was previously filmed in 2009. Moffat's version has not been widely applauded. 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 44% on Metacritic. What people dislike about it is the very thing which attracts Moffat - the timey-wimeyness. There's clever-clever, and there's clever-smarta**e, and this is definitely clever-smarta**e.

Niffenegger heard later that Doctor Who had featured an episode based on her work, and she liked it when she saw it - so much so that she has her main characters watching it on TV in a later novel (Her Fearful Symmetry).

Moffat would later take the concept and use it again to create River Song.

The spaceship is shaped like a key, suggestive of the access points into the various stages of Reinette's life.

The revolving fireplace was a real thing - used by the wife of one of Louis' courtiers to meet her lover.

When the Doctor says that he is the thing monsters have nightmares about, this is taken from Paul Cornell's Virgin New Adventures novel Love and War. And Lance Parkin's The Dying Days. And Moffat's own short story Continuity Errors.

"I could have danced all night", sung by the Doctor, comes from the musical My Fair Lady.

The Doctor is looking for is zeus plugs. They were one of the items which the Doctor used to repair the TARDIS in The Hand of Fear when Sarah Jane Smith had to leave.

Being John Malkovitch (Spike Jonze, 1999) also has someone following the life of the titular actor waiting for him to reach a particular age.

Moffat himself described this episode as "Tom's Midnight Garden... with sex".

There is no mention of "Torchwood" in this episode - because Moffat claimed he was never asked to include it.

Next time: Parallel Earth. Parallel Cybermen. How to bring back a classic monster, without bringing back a classic monster...

Inspirations - School Reunion

 

School Reunion's main objective was to show what happened after a companion had left the TARDIS. How difficult was it for them to adjust to life back on Earth, if they managed to readjust at all? How does a companion from today compare with one from the past?

Russell T Davies had always wanted to ensure that people knew that the revived series was a continuation of the series which had run from 1963 to 1989. (The semi-autobiographical character of Vince in his Queer As Folk did not regard the 1996 movie as canon - suggesting that he didn't himself).

Dalek had shown the head of a Cyberman from Revenge of the Cybermen, and the same story had seen the Doctor refer to Davros, though not by name. RTD did not want the nods to the past to be too full on, at least for the first series, as it might alienate new viewers.

Doctor Who was now well established in its second series, so these nods could be more up front.

It was decided that a companion from the classic era would be brought back, to act as a comparison with Rose - showing how much they were the same, and how much they were different.

The obvious candidate was the person whom most agreed was the best ever companion - Sarah Jane Smith, as played by Lis Sladen. As well as her own nostalgic presence, she had the added benefit of owning a version of K9.

This had come about in A Girl's Best Friend - pilot for the K9 & Company spin-off series which never happened. Sarah Jane Smith found a box waiting for her when she moved into her aunt's home - a box containing K9 Mark III, which had been left for her as a present from the Doctor.

This spin-off was made canon when The Five Doctors depicted Sarah as owning K9, interacting with it just before being abducted and transported to Gallifrey.

RTD had actually considered having K9 appear in the first series, long before he thought of bringing Sarah back.

Ironically, a problem with School Reunion is that it seems to have forgotten that The Five Doctors ever happened.

The way it is written - and played - more than suggest that this is the very first time that Sarah has met the Doctor since the ending of The Hand of Fear. Sarah talks about the place where the Doctor had left her - how it was Aberdeen rather than South Croydon. (The TARDIS has been to Aberdeen before, according to Underworld). One explanation for this is that all the companions had their memories wiped by Rassilon after he sent them home - except that the Doctor also acts as if this is his first sight of Sarah since leaving Kastria.

Originally the story was not going to have a school setting. Instead, Whithouse went for an army base as the background for what was initially titled "Old Friends" and later "Black Ops".

Aliens were taking over the minds of the local villagers in order that they might build them a weapon.

RTD wanted the Doctor to start off as an investigator - which would bring him into contact with investigative journalist Sarah.

RTD suggested that the location be moved to a school as this was something children could connect with. He loved the idea that they might think their teachers were really disguised aliens. His own 1990's series Dark Season had a school setting.

Mickey Smith was introduced to the narrative as RTD was about to have him temporarily join the TARDIS crew, prior to staying on an alternative Earth.

Before it settled on its final title, Whithouse had renamed it "Friends Reunited" - after the then popular social media platform that allowed people who studied together to reconnect.

There are topical comments about the quality of school meals, which were a big issue championed by chef Jamie Oliver at the time.

One scene sees Rose and Sarah in jealous, combative mood, trying to out impress each other. 

Sarah mentions Daleks (Death to the Daleks and Genesis of the Daleks), mummies (Pyramids of Mars), robots (Robot, The Sontaran Experiment), anti-matter monsters (Planet of Evil) and dinosaurs (Invasion of the Dinosaurs). 

Rose counters with ghosts (The Unquiet Dead), Slitheen in Downing Street (Aliens of London), gas mask zombies (The Empty Child), the Emperor of the Daleks (Parting of the Ways) and werewolves (Tooth and Claw). 

Sarah trumps Rose with the Loch Ness Monster (Terror of the Zygons).

This is the second story in a row in which the Doctor impersonates someone - but then the running order of the first four stories of this series were in constant flux until late in the day. 

Here he is pretending to be teacher John Smith - a name first given to him by the person he impersonated last week, Jamie McCrimmon. Needing a name for his unconscious friend, Jamie took it from a piece of medical equipment in the second episode of The Wheel in Space. The Doctor adopted it for himself from Spearhead From Space onwards. Sarah would have heard him use it in her first story - The Time Warrior.

This week's Torchwood reference comes in the scene of Mickey in a cyber-cafe, when access to certain sites is denied by the organisation. This had featured in the story's "Tardisode".

The Doctor's "Physics, physics, physics... so where were we?" comes from John Cleese's teacher in The Meaning of Life, trying to interest bored schoolboys in learning about sex.

Next time: The Time-Traveller's Mistress...

Inspirations - Tooth and Claw

Unlike last year, we aren't expected to try and second guess what this season's story arc might mean - "Torchwood" is pretty much explained in this, only its second episode.

It is a house in Scotland where the action for this episode takes place. Following these events, an organisation will be set up to combat the Doctor, should he or any other alien ever threaten the British Empire, and this house gives it its name.

Tooth and Claw is this year's Celebrity-Historical story. Queen Victoria is both the celebrity and the person who gives her name to the historical period. Russell T Davies had decided that there would be one Celebrity-Historical in each season.

As the 2005 series had featured ghosts and zombie-like beings, and the classic series had featured many different sorts of vampire (from a robot Dracula to the Hsemovores), he elected to include a werewolf. This is mainly because VFX house The Mill said they they would love to attempt one. The prosthetics outfit, Millennium Effects, really wanted to have a go, but RTD went for a CGI version.

Werewolves had only featured once before in the series - the character of Mags in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Oddly, she hailed from the planet Vulpana - from the word 'vulpine' meaning fox-like, rather than something lupine. (The Primords in Inferno looked like wolfmen, but this was the director's decision, ignoring that they should have been ape-like if they were a genetic throwback).

The story had to be very much written around the availability of CGI shots of the wolf - they could only afford so many - which is why we often see scenes from its point of view, or simply hear it off screen.

The pre-credits sequence featured some martial arts monks, clad in scarlet costumes. This was inspired by the 2000 film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

The inclusion of the Koh-i-Noor diamond as a plot device came from producer Phil Collinson.

The diamond, after which so many Indian restaurants have been named, was discovered hundreds of years ago - the date lost in the mists of time. The name comes from the Persian for "Mountain of Light". There is a mention of it in 1526, when it was already quite old. In its time it has been part of a bracelet as well as a throne, before ending up in a crown as part of the Crown Jewels. When shown at the Great Exhibition the public were very disappointed with it, which is why Albert embarked on a recutting programme.

Prince Albert had it cut in London, and the Aberdonian jewellers mentioned in this story are fictitious.

Before RTD decided to write the story himself story, it started life as a commission to someone else (identity not recorded). They came up with a story involving Jack the Ripper-style murders in the environs of Buckingham Palace. The killer would prove to be Queen Victoria herself, who was a kind of vampire - the result of infection by an alien insect. This version had no diamond or werewolf.

The change of writer meant that this story was pushed back to the second recording block of the series, and for some time it was going to be the opening story, with Girl in the Fireplace second. These two stories plus School Reunion got swapped around a few times before setting down as the second, third and fourth stories.

The title of this story derives from "Nature red in tooth and claw", a line from the 1850 poem In Memoriam, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This was a favourite piece of Queen Victoria, which she claimed gave her great comfort after Albert had died.

RTD toyed with calling it "Empire of the Wolf". 

At one stage the Queen was going to be killed by the werewolf, thus creating the parallel universe in which "Pete's World" was to be found, tying in with the forthcoming Cyberman stories.

Rose is made a Dame. This is an anachronism, as Dames weren't created until 1917. Also, the monarch would not have used the words she uses when knighting them - they're just what the viewers would have expected to hear. This is the first time that the Doctor has been knighted by a real monarch - the last time it was the robot Kamelion masquerading as King John in The King's Demons.

In The Curse of Peladon, the Doctor couldn't recall if he had been to Victoria's coronation, or if it had been Queen Elizabeth's. He fails to confirm this here when confronted by her.

The Doctor uses the name of one of his former companions here, rather than his usual John Smith. He claims to be Dr. James McCrimmon. Jamie McCrimmon, played by Frazer Hines, was companion to the Second Doctor. He also claims to hail from the town of Balamory. This is the name of a BBC TV programme for younger children which ran between 2002 and 2005. It was filmed in Tobermory, on the island of Mull.

The Doctor mentions studying medicine under Dr Bell at Edinburgh. Surgeon Joseph Bell (1837 - 1911) taught Arthur Conan-Doyle, and from him he got the notion of an analytical detective... The Doctor had earlier recalled studying under Lister at Glasgow in The Moonbase, though we know that Lister wasn't there in 1888 when the Doctor thought this happened.

Throughout the Hartnell period, and in some later stories such as The Ark in Space, he always insisted that he was not a doctor of medicine.

Next time: Friends Reunited...

Inspirations - New Earth

 

Russell T Davies was pleased with the positive response from fans and critics alike towards The End of the World in the 2005 series. He decided that another visit to the year 5 Billion was called for for the next series, and actually considered making this an annual event. (It would be back for the third series, but not for the fourth).

One of the highlights of the 2005 story had been Cassandra, as created by VFX house The Mill, and voiced by Zoe Wanamaker. Despite the character being killed off, he was determined to find a way to bring her back. A twin sister was briefly considered, before they settled on it being the same character. Whilst the skin had been destroyed, the brain had remained intact.

With a new Doctor starting out, it was important to have a bridge between the 2005 series and this one, so that younger viewers in particular would know that this was still the Doctor.

An issue in 2005, however, had been the expense involved in bringing Cassandra to life - both time and money. This is why RTD decided to have her mind leave her body fairly early on, and to inhabit those of Rose and the Doctor.

Another character whom RTD wanted to see used again was the Face of Boe. The prop had been very expensive to build, and yet had hardly featured. It had survived the events of Platform One, so was available for a return. The effects team made improvements to the animatronics, to make the face more animated. RTD intended that the Face would die in this episode, giving the Doctor the final cryptic message "You are not alone...". On learning that a third series had been guaranteed by the BBC, RTD decided to defer this.

The dying Face had helped to prompt the hospital setting.

RTD had always found hospitals to be slightly creepy locations. He had previously noticed this when writing for the CITV series Children's Ward. 

Michael Crichton had written a book called Coma, filmed in 1978. This saw people with minor ailments in a hospital being used for illegal organ transplants for rich people. Stories such as this had also featured in TV series like The X-Files, so there was a history of hospitals being settings for scary happenings.

Originally it was going to be a hospital on a totally alien planet, but he was still reluctant to have the series lose its connections with Earth and with human beings. A TV audience would connect with human characters, but not so much with totally alien characters. The 2005 series had been set entirely on or above Earth.

Making the setting New New York simply allowed the dialogue to play around with the word 'New' - New Earth, New New York, New x15 York etc.

The notion of the nursing staff being cats derived from RTD's opinion that cats were somewhat sinister, in that you could never work out what they were thinking. Making them nuns allowed for savings on masks, as their faces would be covered apart from three speaking characters. 

The look of the secret "Intensive Care Unit" was inspired by the interior of a Borg Cube from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

It was originally planned that all of the patients would be killed by the Doctor at the conclusion, put out of their misery as they were so infected he could do nothing to save them. It was felt that this was too depressing, and so the cure-all was devised. This was inspired by the conclusion to The Doctor Dances, where the Doctor could claim that everybody lives. RTD had read comments by Steven Moffat that he (Davies) would create likeable characters only to kill them off, and so he determined to disprove this here.

Chip was originally going to be a dwarf character.

Once in Rose's body, Cassandra considers herself a Chav. This was a British, especially English, word for a young loutish individual, working class, who liked to dress in designer clothing (real or imitation) and ostentatious jewellery (flashy gold). Cassandra-Rose attempts to speak Cockney rhyming slang. Whilst many Cockneys are Chavs, not all Chavs are Cockneys.

One of the illnesses which the Sisters claim to be able to cure is Hawtrey's Syndrome, at least in the short "Tardisode" prequel to this episode. Writer Gareth Roberts took this from the Carry On... actor's biography which was sitting on the shelf above where he was working.

Inspirations - The Christmas Invasion

It's the first ever Christmas Special - as opposed to a normal run episode broadcast on 25th December, like The Feast of Steven - so the main inspirations here are many of the traditional Christmas trappings. 

Whilst these have happy connotations, associated with gift-giving and family get-togethers, Russell T Davies subverted them for the benefit of an action adventure story - finding ways of making them threatening. In this he was following in the footsteps of Robert Holmes, who had often subverted supposedly safe things to turn them into threats (most noticeably in Terror of the Autons).

As far as the secular Christmas goes, the main figure is Santa Claus. Many people wishing to raise money at this time of year dress up as him, as well as those giving out gifts to children in a variety of settings - from hospital wards to department stores. With a heavy hooded costume and big bushy white beard, the wearer is easily concealed, so it made a perfect disguise for one of this story's villains. These are the Roboforms, or Robot Santas. So disguised are they that we don't actually get to see what lurks underneath the beard and costume.

The Roboforms first appear as a brass band. Salvation Army brass bands are synonymous with Christmas, issuing well known Christmas Carol music.

However, these Santas have weapons disguised as instruments.

At one point they are described as "pilot fish". The naucrates ductor are small black and white striped fish which feed on the parasites which attach themselves to sharks, rays and sea turtles, as well as their leftovers. They get their name from the fact that it used to be thought that they led bigger fish towards sources of food.

In The Christmas Invasion, the Roboforms have come specifically for the Doctor's regeneration energy and the Sycorax are coming to attack anyway, so they aren't actually acting as "pilot fish" at all.

Santa is an amalgam of St Nicholas, Father Christmas and the Dutch Sinterklaas.

The name 'Santa Claus' is a corruption of Saint Nicholas, a 4th Century Greek bishop who was known for his gift giving. He was martyred and his relics are now split between Bari and Venice, and he is the patron saint of both Amsterdam and Moscow.

Father Christmas derives from Tudor England, where he was a bearded figure in either red of green gown. It was as a man garbed in green that he was portrayed in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, translated as the Ghost of Christmas Present. He represented good cheer, feasting and revelry.

With the Reformed Church of England no longer celebrating saints' feast days, St Nicholas' Day on the 6th December was dropped, and Father Christmas was now associated with the 25th of the month.

The 6th December remained the day for gift giving in the Netherlands, however, where the Santa figure is known as Sinterklaas. He is often represented as a bishop figure, in orange robes.

The notion that the traditional Santa Claus we know today is an invention of the Coco-Cola company is not true. They did use the image heavily from the 1930's but another drinks company was already using the image 15 years earlier, and the white bearded, red suited Santa was already featuring in Edwardian images.

The main villains of this story - the Sycorax - also wear red velvet costumes, mirroring the Santa costume.

Another Christmas tradition which Davies includes is the Christmas Tree. The Roboforms plant - no pun intended - a killer remote control one in the Tyler flat.

It was Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria, who popularised the Christmas Tree in England, it having been a popular tradition in his native Saxe-Coburg. The first known Royal Christmas Tree was that of the German Queen Charlotte in 1800.

They are supposed to be erected on the first day of Advent, and taken down on Twelfth Night.

In ancient times, people used to decorate their homes with a wreath of evergreens in mid-winter, as a symbol of eternal life, such as during the Saturnalia of the ancient Romans.

Whilst trees were often decorated with sweets and ribbons, it was Martin Luther who is said to have first added candles - the forebear of the Christmas Tree lights which can be a modern bane.

The Doctor defeats the Sycorax leader with a satsuma. It is traditional to include a small fruit such as a satsuma in a Christmas stocking. In this fight sequence the Doctor seems to suggest that Arthur Dent, the main protagonist of Douglas Adams' The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, exists as a real person in the Doctor Who world.

The notion that Time Lords continue to regenerate for 15 hours may have been included to help explain Romana's try-out of multiple bodies in Destiny of the Daleks, a sequence written by Adams.

The Sycorax are named after the mother of Caliban, from Shakespeare's The Tempest. The character does not appear in the play. Sycorax was a malignant witch who used to live on the island where Prospero dwells, but she died before he arrived. She was the mother of Caliban, and had been responsible for imprisoning Ariel in an oak tree. Prospero uses his own magic to free Ariel, and to enslave Caliban.

The first glimpse of the Sycorax at UNIT HQ shows four of them in a diamond shaped pose - imagery borrowed from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody video.

The modus operandi of the Sycorax is based on Voodoo, especially in the way they zombify people.

The look of their masks was based on the skulls of horses.

Beagle 2, the ill-fated British lander despatched to the surface of Mars, was the inspiration for the Guinevere probe - the equally doomed mission to Mars in this story. Both factual and fictional probes came a cropper at Christmas. Guinevere collides with the Sycorax spaceship, whilst Beagle 2 crash-landed on the Martian surface when its parachutes failed to deploy as planned.

Finally, Harriet Jones' destruction of the retreating Sycorax spaceship was inspired by the sinking of the Argentine warship General Belgrano during the Falklands conflict. It was torpedoed by a Royal Navy submarine whilst it was outside and moving away from the exclusion zone which the UK government had imposed around the islands.

"Torchwood" are said to have been the ones who fired the weapon - setting this organisation up as the story arc for Series 2.

Next time: New Doctor, New Earth, New New York...

Story 177 - Army of Ghosts / Doomsday

In which the Doctor and Rose return to the Powell Estate to visit Jackie. She tells Rose that her maternal grandfather is due to visit shortly - but he has been dead for some years. However, just as Jackie predicted, a shadowy figure materialises in the kitchen. The Doctor discovers that these apparitions are appearing a couple of times a day all over the planet, and are all over the media. People are presuming they are the ghosts of dead loved ones, but the Doctor suspects that something is trying to break through into this world from some other dimension. Returning to the TARDIS, with Jackie in tow, he sets up a device to monitor a ghost when it next materialises so he can trace the source. His actions are noticed by Torchwood, the organisation behind the "ghost shifts". They use CCTV to spot the TARDIS, and boss Yvonne Hartman realises that the Doctor will be on his way to them. A couple of her employees - Adeola and Gareth - sneak off for a romantic tryst in a section of their building which is closed for refurbishment. They are attacked, and return to their posts seemingly devoid of emotion. Adeola lures another colleague - Matt - to the same location, and he too returns changed.

The Doctor allows himself to be captured by Torchwood troops, along with Jackie, who has been brought along by accident. The Doctor pretends that she is Rose, prematurely aged. He sees that Torchwood have a lot of captured alien technology, which Yvonne claims is to be exploited in order to make Britain great again. She explains how the organisation detected a strange anomaly in the sky above East London, and so built a skyscraper around it so that it could be examined. Jackie identifies their location as the tower of Canary Wharf. Something came through the anomaly - a large bronze sphere which is impossible to analyse as it gives no readings whatsoever. Investigating it is Dr Rajesh Singh. At the same time, the ghosts began to appear. Torchwood are manipulating these, making them appear when they open the anomaly. They believe that it will act as a power source. The Doctor identifies the sphere as a Void Ship - designed to exist in the gap between universes. Rose emerges from the TARDIS and dons a lab coat to look around. Spotting a familiar figure, she follows him to the Sphere chamber where Dr Singh captures her. The person she was following is Mickey Smith, who is posing as one of Singh's assistants.

The Doctor convinces Yvonne to cancel the next "ghost shift" as every time the anomaly is opened it is destroying the fabric of this dimension. It is through the cracks forming that the ghosts have arrived. Adeola, Matt and Gareth carry on with the shift, however, under the control of someone else. The Doctor discovers that they have been converted, with alien implants in their skulls. The anomaly opens, and the ghosts start to become corporeal. They are Cybermen. At the same time, the Void Ship suddenly becomes active. Rose and Mickey see it begin to open. Mickey believes that it contains some sort of Cyberman leader, escaped from the parallel Earth he had settled on. However, it actually houses a quartet of Daleks, who have a Dalek-shaped machine with them. These Daleks, one of which has black livery, have names - Sec, Caan, Jast and Thay. They refer to the machine as the Genesis Ark. They demand information, and Singh volunteers to give this. The Daleks drain his mind, killing him in the process.

Meanwhile, the Cybermen have invaded the entire Earth. The Doctor learns of the Daleks' arrival when a pair of Cybermen are despatched to investigate the Sphere chamber. They try to offer an alliance, but the Daleks refuse. Yvonne and Jackie are taken away to be converted. Two figures suddenly materialise in the control room - one of whom is Jake Simmonds. He destroys the Cyber-Leader and its troops, freeing the Doctor. He then uses a transportation device to take the Doctor back to the parallel Earth - arriving in their version of Torchwood. The Doctor is reunited with Pete Tyler. He learns that the Lumic Cybermen were defeated but not destroyed. One day they vanished, and it was realised that they had crossed over to the other universe. The parallel Torchwood had invented devices that could transport people across the dimensions. The Doctor insists that Pete and Jake return with him to help defeat the Cybermen. Pete is resistant, until the Doctor mentions Jackie is there. She, meanwhile, had been able to escape when the Cyber-Leader was destroyed - as her guard was upgraded automatically to become the new Leader. Yvonne was not so lucky, and has been converted.

The Doctor offers to help the Cybermen deal with the Daleks. He goes alone to the Sphere chamber and is reunited with Rose and Mickey. The Daleks are identified as the Cult of Skaro - a clique created by the Emperor during the Time War to think beyond normal Dalek logic and so defeat the Time Lords. They reveal that the Genesis Ark is not of their making. It is captured Time Lord technology, and needs a time traveller to activate it. The Cybermen attack, and in the confusion Mickey touches the machine - bringing it to life. The Daleks take it to the main storage room, whose roof opens. The Genesis Ark floats up into the sky. The Doctor and his friends rush upstairs to see what happens, and on the way Jackie gets to meet Pete when he saves her from some Cybermen. The Cybermen follow, but one of their number rebels and stops them - the converted Yvonne Hartman.

The Ark opens, and thousands of Daleks emerge. It was a Time Lord prison capsule, bigger on the inside. The Daleks and Cybermen begin fighting each other, massacring the humans who get in their way. The Doctor has been observing events using 3D spectacles, and finally has his friends ask him why. He has noticed that everyone who has passed through the Void has been soaked in a form of radiation. If he opens the anomaly fully, everything tainted will be sucked in - but that will include all of them. Everyone must retreat to Pete's World - including Rose. She refuses to leave the Doctor.
Once everyone has left - including Jackie - the Doctor and Rose open the Void. Daleks and Cybermen are all sucked in, along with the Ark. The Cult of Skaro escape by triggering an emergency temporal shift, transporting themselves through time. Rose loses her handhold and is pulled towards the breach, but at the last moment Pete appears and transports her to his world. The Void closes forever - trapping Rose on the parallel Earth.
Some weeks later, she starts to get dreams which call her to a beach in Norway. She travels there with her father, mother and Mickey. The Doctor appears - sending an image of himself through the last hole in the breach before it closes. It transpires that the location is known as Bad Wolf Bay. The Doctor is about to tell Rose how he feels about her when the connection is broken. He has little time to grieve, however, as a woman in a wedding dress has suddenly appeared in his TARDIS...

The two part finale to Series 2 was written by Russell T Davies, and was broadcast on the evenings of 1st and 8th July, 2006.
The Torchwood story arc finally plays out - though we already knew very early on that it was an organisation devoted to using alien technology in defence of Britain, and was antithetical to the Doctor. It is a direct sequel to the earlier two part Cyberman origins story, reintroducing the parallel Pete and Jake Simmonds. Graeme Harper directed all four episodes as one big recording block - so the finale was in the can long before earlier episodes.
Davies had to find a way of separating Rose from the Doctor without killing her, and so trapping her forever in a parallel universe seemed like a good option. Killing her off was out of the question, as too many young viewers identified with her and travelling in the TARDIS had to remain a positive experience. Davies makes sure that her mother is with her, and both her parents are reunited in a sense. The nice, down to earth Jackie gets to have a rich, successful Pete, and Rose has potential boyfriend material in Mickey.
This time round, the Cybermen have a Cyber-Leader - with black markings on the handle bars. We discover that when one is destroyed, leadership downloads into another unit. The Cybermen now have guns built into their forearms. When it comes to fighting against Daleks, they come off second best.
Terry nation had always fought against any kind of Dalek- Cyberman team up. It had been suggested back in 1968, but got vetoed, and we got The Wheel In Space instead. It came close in 1973, when the Cybermen were to have had the Ogron role in Frontier in Space.

As all of the Daleks had been wiped out in the previous series finale, we are introduced to the Cult of Skaro. They escaped destruction in the Time War by hiding in the Void Ship. Dalek Sec is the black one. Davies makes sure he doesn't paint himself into the corner this time round by having them transport themselves away through time - so available for a rematch.
As well as linking to previous stories, these two episodes set up a lot of what is going happen over the next two series.
Davies also elects to link the closing seconds into the forthcoming Christmas Special - rather than dwell on the grieving Doctor and Rose. This was intentional - to show that the adventure always continues.
A relatively small guest cast for a big two part finale, as most of the characters are returnees. Dr Singh is played by Raji James, and Yvonne Hartman is Tracy-Ann Oberman - best known for an Eastenders role, which gets referenced in Army of Ghosts.
Of note amongst the junior cast is Freema Agyeman as Adeole, since we are going to see a lot more of her soon. Matt is Oliver Mellor, who was in Coronation Street for a number of years, and Gareth is Hadley Fraser. There is another rare, at this stage, appearance by an actor who had appeared in the Classic Series. The chief of police is David Warwick, who had been Kimus in The Pirate Planet.
We have a number of "celebrity" cameos - I use the term loosely - in the sequence where the Doctor channel hops to learn more about the ghosts. There's Barbara Windsor banning the spectre of Den Watts from the Queen Vic pub, and medium Derek Acorah claims they are putting him out of business. The "Ghostwatch" programme is hosted by real TV presenter Alistair Appleton. We also have Trisha, with someone on her talk show claiming to be in love with a ghost. Note the explosion at the Burberry factory in her audience. Chav-tastic.
And introducing Catherine Tate as the bride...

Episode endings:

1. The ghosts start to move into formation and are revealed to be Cybermen, whilst Rose and Mickey watch as the Sphere opens and a group of Daleks emerge and float down towards them...
2. The breach has been closed. The Doctor stands alone in the TARDIS, tears in his eyes. As he prepares to move on, he suddenly sees a figure standing in the ship, wearing a wedding dress. Cue "What?", "What?" "WHAT!?"

Tardisodes:

1. A newspaper reporter tries to sell his editor a story about an organisation named Torchwood. The editor asks him to bring in some evidence . He does so some time later - such as Queen Victoria's involvement and the destruction of the Sycorax spaceship. The reporter is dragged away by a pair of mysterious men, and the story spiked. We then see the reporter in a strait-jacket, shouting that Torchwood exists, and that he knows about the ghosts...
2. A news reader announces a state of emergency. Footage is shown of troops battling Cybermen. The newsreader then calls on people to flee for their lives, including her own family if they are watching. The studio comes under attack by Daleks...

Overall... It's a Russell T Davies series finale, so there's lots to love as well as a great big Deus ex Machina to sort things out at the end. Personally I think it is one of the better series finales. A fantastic cliffhanger to episode one, and pieces fit together as Rose and her family are sent off into a new life, with resolutions for Jackie and Pete - and potentially Rose and Mickey. It rates in the top 50 of the DWM 50th Anniversary poll, and the ending to Rose and the Doctor was judged the most emotional romantic farewell ever in a Channel 4 programme. Such a pity RTD went and spoiled the ending - though plans for Rose's return in Series 4 were already underway when this was first broadcast.
Things you might like to know:

• Episode titles were initially considered as "Torchwood Rises", and "Torchwood Falls". 
• The "Tardisodes" get discontinued after this, which is a shame. We will later get the odd prequel once Steven Moffat takes over.
• We will see some of the aftermath of the Battle of Canary Wharf in Torchwood Series 1, when it is revealed that Ianto Jones was present and tried to save his partially converted girlfriend Lisa.
• Harriet Jones is the President of the UK in Pete's World. She clearly doesn't get a chance to usher in a golden age in our universe, so perhaps the Doctor has experienced more of Pete's World than we have seen.
• Producer Phil Collinson wanted it to be Mickey who saved Rose from being sucked into the Void at the conclusion - showing that he still loved her even if she no longer loved him. Exec-Producer Julie Gardner argued for it to be Pete, to show that he had accepted her as his daughter.
• As mentioned, Tracy-Ann Oberman was well known for Eastenders. She had played the wife of "Dirty Den" Watts, and had been responsible for murdering him - hence the in-joke of his appearance in the Queen Vic as a ghost. What the Cyberman would have thought about being confronted by Barbara Windsor, lord only knows.
• And yes, dialogue had already shown that Eastenders was a TV programme in the Doctor Who universe, but this puts the top hat on it. Dimensions In Time can definitely be written off from the canon. Hooray!
• A few BBC spoilers before this was broadcast. The Radio Times had featured an article about Neil Gorton's team several weeks before - and in the background to a photo of him was a Cyberman head with black Cyber-Leader handle-bars - though none had appeared in the Rise of the Cybermen two-parter. A trailer for the second half of the season had also shown a clip of a Cyberman bursting through plastic sheeting - again absent from the earlier story. These let us know that the ghosts were going to be Cybermen, and not the Gelth as some fans had speculated.
• The BAFTA ceremony that Spring had also featured an appearance by a Dalek on the red carpet - and it was a black one. The same trailer that had shown us the Cybermen were coming back also showed people being killed with the Dalek extermination effect.
• It was widely believed that the Genesis Ark was going to contain Davros - partly because of its design but also due to that name.
• Broadcast coincided with the World Cup latter stages, so the Radio Times had two cover variants to collect - a Cyber one and a Dalek one, with the monsters holding footballs.
• The Ghostbusters bit is quite naff - but that was a thing you already knew.
• The Eternals, from Enlightenment, get a mention. They have a name for the Void - the Howling.
• The Doctor informs us of his liking for "Allons-y" for the first time. It will become a crucial plot point in a later story, and he will also get to meet an Alonso to say it to soon.
• Watch out for the guy who gets on the bus behind Rose in the opening medley. The camera set up inside sees him sit immediately behind her, but the next shot from out on the street shows him seated further back.
• And the alien planet with the manta rays was filmed on Bad Wolf Bay - that rock formation is going to become incredibly familiar - using stock CGI elements already created by The Mill.
• The Egyptian sarcophagus at Torchwood is indeed supposed to be a reference to Pyramids of Mars. 
• The spaceship found at the base of Mount Snowden will get another mention in David Tennant's final story, as it was from this that the Immortality Gate was salvaged. In the SJA story featuring Matt Smith's Doctor, UNIT have a base at the foot of the mountain.
• The Fall of Arcadia is mentioned. We will later get to see that this is actually the second city of the Time Lords on Gallifrey, and we will get to witness it as well.
• As mentioned above, this finale was filmed along with the other Cyberman story, so the last story filmed for Series 2 was the Impossible Planet two-parter. David Tennant had to be sneaked out of the wrap party to film the concluding sequence with Catherine Tate, who had been smuggled to the studio in Cardiff.