This story doesn't just bring Series 4 to a conclusion, it draws a line under much of the Russell T Davies era. It also acts as a sequel of sorts to much older stories...
As far as the current season goes, we have explanations for the bees going missing, and for the lost planets. The bees are actually alien in nature and have abandoned the Earth in advance of it being removed from its orbit. Earth has joined the other missing worlds in the Medusa Cascade - brought here by the Daleks.
The Daleks had previously plotted to move the Earth in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The Doctor mentions having experience of moving planets, and may be referring to this story - but he might also be recalling the roving Mondas (The Tenth Planet).
The Medusa Cascade had previously been mentioned by the Master in Last of the Time Lords. The Doctor had sealed a rift there.
Rose was seen to have returned from "Pete's World", where she had been trapped since the events of Doomsday, in Partners in Crime, and had been glimpsed on TV screens in The Poison Sky and Midnight, before revealing her work with Torchwood to cross the void in Turn Left.
Pompeiian Petrus Dextrus had foreseen her return in The Fires of Pompeii.
Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith follow Rose to our Earth. They had also been trapped on "Pete's World" at the conclusion of Doomsday. Mickey's grandmother - seen in Rise of the Cybermen - has now passed away. Apparently this was to allow the character to appear in a third series of Torchwood, had it followed a conventional episodic pattern.
The Doctor traced the Earth after a visit to the Shadow Proclamation - an organisation first mentioned in Rose, but referred to in several later stories as some sort of galactic lawmaker.
Working there, as law enforcers, are Judoon, who were introduced in Smith and Jones.
That was Martha Jones' first appearance. She was seen to have joined UNIT in a trio of Torchwood episodes (Reset, Dead Man Walking and A Day in the Death) and in The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky.
UNIT still employ the aerial aircraft carrier Valiant, but it is attacked and apparently destroyed by the Daleks here. It first appeared in The Sound of Drums, and was last seen in the Sontaran two-parter.
Dalek Caan is present on the Crucible. It is the last surviving member of the Cult of Skaro - introduced in Army of Ghosts / Doomsday, and last seen in The Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks. It had fled New York via an emergency temporal shift, and we learn that it ended up back in the Time War.
It is locked in a vault with Davros. Sarah Jane Smith recognises his voice before she even sees him, having encountered him on Skaro in Genesis of the Daleks. She had previously met the Daleks on the planet Exxilon in Death to the Daleks.
The Doctor had come back into Sarah's life after the events seen in School Reunion, and the character now had her own spin-off series (The Sarah Jane Adventures). This introduced her adopted son Luke. Mention is made of Clyde and Maria. The latter was to leave the series at the beginning of SJA series 2, whilst Clyde Langer was a regular companion to Luke and Sarah throughout all five series.
K-9 is also seen in Sarah's attic base. She had acquired K-9 Mark III in the spin-off K-9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend - an event confirmed by its appearance at her home in The Five Doctors.
Davros had survived extermination by his own creations and had been resurrected in Destiny of the Daleks. Imprisoned on Skaro and taken to Earth to stand trial, he had later been freed by the Daleks in Resurrection of the Daleks, but had then been captured and taken back to Skaro for trial in Revelation of the Daleks. On that occasion, he had lost his remaining hand - but in The Stolen Earth we see that he has an artificial one. Davros had later managed to stage a coup on Skaro and become Emperor (Remembrance of the Daleks). He appeared to have sacrificed the remainder of his old body to become the Emperor. It may be that the Daleks brought him back in the form which had successfully beaten their Supreme in order to help them in the Time War, in the same way that the Time Lords had brought Rassilon back in his younger, warrior incarnation.
In this story, the Daleks are once again ruled by a Supreme. This rank of Dalek was first seen in The Dalek Invasion of Earth when it was simply known as the "Black Dalek". The Dalek Supreme is the first red Dalek we have seen outside of the Peter Cushing Aaru movies - despite The Dalek Book claiming that Daleks could not see the colour red.
Like Sarah, Captain Jack Harkness recognises the voice of the Daleks when they intercept their radio messages. He had encountered them in Parting of the Ways when they had exterminated him. Rose, in 'Bad Wolf' form, brought him back to life - inadvertently making him immortal.
Jack is seen with Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones at the Torchwood Hub in Cardiff. Mention is made to them only recently having lost colleagues Tosh and Owen (killed in the Torchwood Series 2 finale Exit Wounds).
Torchwood was the first of the new Doctor Who spin-off series, its location in Cardiff deriving from The Unquiet Dead, which had established that a space / time rift ran through the city. Rose recognises Gwen as looking identical to servant girl Gwyneth who she had met in Victorian Cardiff, and the Doctor explains the similarity as a side effect of the rift.
Martha already knows Jack from her Torchwood episodes, as well as from Utopia and The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords.
Then, the Master had obtained from Jack the Doctor's severed hand - which he lost fighting the Sycorax leader in The Christmas Invasion. The Doctor retrieved it after the Master's apparent demise, which is how it came to be back in the TARDIS to become part of the Metacrisis Doctor.
The Metacrisis explains the Ood reference to the Doctor-Donna (Planet of the Ood).
The Doctor and his old companions are brought together on-line by Harriet Jones. You know who she is. First seen as a lowly backbencher in Aliens of London / World War Three, the Doctor knew that she would one day become Prime Minister. He did not realise that he would bring her down, causing her to be forced out of office after she destroyed the retreating Sycorax spaceship (The Christmas Invasion). (By forcing her out, the Doctor inadvertently opened the door for Harold Saxon - the Master - to become the new PM in The Sound of Drums).
She has employed the Subwave Network to contact everyone - technology funded by the Copper Foundation. This was established by Mr Copper - an inhabitant of the planet Sto who had been one of the few survivors from the spaceship Titanic, which almost crashed onto London (Voyage of the Damned). The Doctor had helped him set up home on Earth, with a fortune in local currency.
Finally, Davros taunts the Doctor with reference to all the people who have died trying to help him - allowing for a set of clips from stories covering all four of the RTD series.
Donna's fate - to forget everything which she had learned through contact with the Doctor, so a death of her new personality rather than a physical one - was hinted at by River Song in Silence in the Library, and Dalek Caan, amongst others. She reverts back to the person we first met in The Runaway Bride.
The TARDIS has always had a six-sided control console, and here we see it being operated by half a dozen people. It travels smoothly - as though this is the only way it can work properly. Since 2005, the TARDIS has been seen to travel erratically, throwing its passengers around - despite the fact that it has always had a hexagonal control console, and travelled perfectly smoothly from 1963 - 1989 with just the Doctor at the controls.
Next time, Cyber-steampunk...
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