Sunday, 21 September 2014

Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways

Series 1, Episodes 12 & 13/13: 2 x 45min episode, 11th & 18th June 2005, Writer: Russell T. Davies, Director: Joe Ahearne, Producer: Phil Collinson, Script Editor: Halen Raynor, Executive Producers: Russell T. Davies, Mal Young & Julie Gardner

Ooh, recap - Satellite 5, the Doctor bringing down the Jagrafess and putting things "right". 

100 years later...  


The Doctor wakes up in a futuristic version of reality TV shit-fest, Big Brother.  


The robotic voice of Davina McCall summons him to the diary room and asks him not to swear. 

Mark Walker@Mark_Walker 'you have got to be kidding' - too right!


Probably still the best of Murray Gold's attempts at the theme, I think. Haven't liked the last couple. Hope the next is better! I seem to be in the minority thinking the 2014 version is actually okay. 

Rose wakes up on the floor. Heavy night was it? 


Rose is stuck in The Weakest Link, with an android Anne Robinson. Anne-Droid, geddit? 


The Anne-Droid has no nose! How does it smell? Like a corny rip-off! 


Kosmic Kris@KosmicKris  my heart sank when I saw this - but actually it worked really well :)



Captain Jack wakes up in a makeover show and is soon naked. Actually a bit on the slow side for Johnny B. 


Mark Walker@Mark_Walker   it's those sort of contemporary references that will date it more as time passes


The Doctor tries to jog his memory with a bit of help from Lynda with a Y. 

They'd just escaped Kyoto in 1336, when... 

"Well, here's the latest update from the Big Brother house. I'm getting out. I'm going to find my friends, and then I'm going to find you."  


There's a control centre - if not an intelligence - overseeing all the televisual guff on offer... 


Think that's the first actual mention of Torchwood there... 

Instead of being decked out in dark trousers and a white top, the makeover has Jack in... dark trousers and a white top. 

The Anne-Droid burns Rose on being jobless, and gives her some smack talk about hair dye. In this version of the game the Weakest Link gets disintegrated. Need to introduce this for PMQs.  

Mark Walker@Mark_Walker the sinister change of tone with the disintegration works well to balance out all the previous cheese

And in Big Brother, contestants get "evicted" from life. I approve. 

Mark Walker@Mark_Walker  but most depressingly Big Brother is still going!

Behind the scenes, we see the Controller, suspended in a web of wires and circuitry, part of the system... 

The Doctor is outraged, but Lynda explains people don't choose to be on BB, they're drafted without a say... 

Jack avoids having his "face off" by plucking a gun out of... ahem, nowhere. 

Turns out the games are run by the Bad Wolf corporation... Rose starts to rumble that this is all connected... 

The Doctor calls their bluff & evades disintegration. Promising to keep Lynda alive, he escapes... 

..and finds that all the games are taking place on Satellite 5. 

Love the list of murderous games Lynda reels off. Half expected Monkey Tennis to be in there... 

The Controller is a wonderfully eerie creation. 

The Doctor learns that it was his own actions is The Long Game that allowed this world into being, 100 years of hell... 

The Doctor & Jack are reunited. Jack says hello to Lynda. "To you that's flirting." 

The Doctor hacks the system to track Rose down; she's down to the last 2 in the Weakest Link... 

People were so sure Paterson Joseph was going to be the 11th Doctor... 

Rose loses and is disintegrated... 

Jason McLaughlin@jangomac72 for a few minutes there I actually thought they'd killed her off. If they did that now you wouldn't be fooled at all 

Lol, the 1st fake death of the new series, the start of a slippery slope!


The crushed Doctor is captured and sentenced to imprisonment on the lunar penal colony... 

..not for the 1st time! Lovely little call back to Frontier In Space there. 

The Doctor & Jack don't waste much time before breaking out & they're soon holding the TV Centre at gunpoint... 

The Doctor soon hands his gun over though. 

The programmers have noticed all is not as it should be too. The station is broadcasting some sort of signal... 

"Do I look like an out of bounds sort of guy?" Great line for Jack. 

Jack finds the TARDIS while the Doctor tries to get some sense out of the Controller... 

The Controller brought them there to help defeat her masters, the ones behind the game station... 

But before she can name them, she's transported away...  

Jack has made an important discovery; no one is actually being disintegrated, just transmatted across space... 

..meaning Rose is still alive. She's aboard a ship, with a familiar sounding electronic heartbeat... 

The Controller is blasted with a familiar energy weapon... it's all too obvious who her masters are now. 

The Doctor cancels the cloaking signal, revealing 200 Dalek ships, with half a million Daleks... 

The fleet commander skypes the Doctor and tells him to back down or Rose will be exterminated. 

His response? "No." 

Kosmic Kris@KosmicKris the look on Eccleston's face is sublime. All the pain and hurt realising that the time war had failed, in one expression! 




He tells the Dalek he's coming to rescue Rose and destroy them. The invasion begins... 

Ooh, who's that voice in the next time trailer? We'll find out in a minute! 

The Daleks order Rose to predict the Doctor's next move. Good luck with that. 

The Doctor materializes the TARDIS around Rose. And a Dalek, which Jack blasts to pieces. 

Jack explains that the Daleks just vanished & the Doctor explains that this was the result of the Time War. 

The Doctor steps out (albeit within a forcefield) to taunt the Daleks. He wants to know how they survived the war...  

"THEY SURVIVED THROUGH ME!" It's the Dalek Emperor! 

I still prefer the Evil of the Daleks design, but the Emperor here is still pretty impressive. 

The army of the Daleks have been created from cells harvested from dead contestants. 


Rose thinks this means the Daleks are half human. "Blasphemy!" 

The chat with the Emperor is going nowhere so the Doctor takes the TARDIS back to the game station. 
Humanity will have to make a last stand at the game station. Did someone say base under siege? 

The Doctor's plan is to transmit a deadly Delta wave to fry all the Daleks but he doesn't have the Moment... 

Jack organises the remaining humans to defend the station, and kisses Rose and the Doctor goodbye. 

The Doctor shares a moment with Rose, then seems to have an idea but he's tricked her; she didn't need to hold that control down, he's just sent her & the TARDIS away. 

A recorded hologram of the Doctor activates and tells Rose this has to be The Parting Of The Ways... the TARDIS must die... 

The hologram tells her to have a fantastic life, as the TARDIS arrives back in London. She's home. 

The Dalek Emperor is skyping again, he wants to know if the Doctor is prepared to wipe out all life on Earth... 

Jack encourages him to stick to the plan. 

The Emperor denies all knowledge of Bad Wolf... 

Back home, Rose is reunited with Jackie and Mickey. And chips. 

Here come the Daleks... 

In a nearby playground, Rose sees some giant letters scrawled all around... "BAD WOLF". 

The Daleks enter the station and start exterminating their way upstairs... bullets don't work on them. 

Rose is set on vandalising the TARDIS console to communicate with its heart... 

But the Daleks aren't only after the Doctor, they go down too, to wipe out all the humans there. 

Rose is getting nowhere with her vandalism so takes a break to whinge at Jackie. 

Jackie comes good in the end, but don't ask what she had to do to get that recovery truck. 

The programmers are exterminated, leaving Jack on his own... 

The Daleks start to cut their way to Lynda, but look behind you... 

Brilliant, chilling stuff as the Daleks appear in space and silently exterminate Lynda from outside...  

Full credit to RTD (and Jo Joyner of course) for making you care what happens to Lynda. 

Rose tears open the heart of the TARDIS and looks into the vortex, sending the TARDIS hurtling back... 

Jack is the last man standing. "Exterminate!" "I kind of figured that." Wow, has a companion really died? 

The Emperor Dalek claims to be immortal & hails the Doctor as "the great exterminator!" 

Believing he wiped out the Time Lords with the Moment, the Doctor can't bring himself to end life on Earth. 

"You will be exterminated!"

"Maybe it's time..." 

But super-Rose arrives, wielding god-like powers from the time vortex to divide the Daleks' atoms. 

"The Time War ends... " 

Rose resurrects Jack, but the power of the vortex is burning her brain, so the Doctor sucks it out of her with a kiss. 


The Doctor expels the vortex energy back into the heart of the TARDIS... 

He picks up the collapsed Rose and leaves in the TARDIS, abandoning Jack... 

The Doctor isn't making sense... the energy he absorbed from the vortex has damaged his cells too much and he's about to regenerate. 

Mark Walker@Mark_Walker which also doesn't make sense - causes a Timelord to regenerate, but Rose, a human, survives 

James Cooray Smith@thejimsmith We know from Boom Town that the heart of the Tardis gives you what you want; this Doctor wants to die. 


M.R. Michael@The_Cybermatt Or alternatively, he wants Rose to live. 


James Cooray Smith@thejimsmith Both, dear boy. Both. 

Mark Walker@Mark_Walker bit depressing, but suppose that could be it, what with the post Time War guilt and all. 

James Cooray Smith@thejimsmith Like Margaret Blaine he gets a chance to start again as a new person. Redeemed & renewed. 

Mark Walker@Mark_Walker We'll go with that, then! 

He tries to explain to her ("Time Lords have this little trick, it's sort of a way of cheating death..."), but she's just not getting it... too late now. 

Famous last words: "Before I go, I just want to tell you, you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you know what? So was I."  

One of the best regenerations ever that. 

 And here's Tennant, new teeth and all! "Barcelona!" 


Regeneration. Always an unbeatable cliffhanger! 

Jason McLaughlin@jangomac72 Controversially I never took to Eccleston but Tennant won me over straight away with "New teeth!" I think I was still sulking cos McGann hadn't returned, especially once it was announced Eccles was only doing 1 series!!


Eccleston was always a bit awkward in the role, to be fair I guess that was sort of the point of his Doctor, but he would have had to have changed after this series if he'd stayed, and I'm not convinced he really could've played it much differently.

Kosmic Kris@KosmicKris Eccleston's series was close to perfection and this was the perfect ending! What a finale! Sublime! 

TTFN! K.
Next Time... The Christmas Invasion

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