(722) Army of Ghosts

This is the story of how I died are the words that were used in the NEXT TIME trailer in the previous episode and it gets used in the pre-title sequence. It’s clear that this scene happens at the end of this current adventure so there’s a nice journey to be had to see how she gets there. This biggest selling point of this story is the return of the Daleks and the Cybermen in the same story at the same time. It was always a question as to who would win if these two got into a fight and this story would give us the answer. As you would expect they don’t make an appearance until quite late in the episode which is rather frustrating but more of that in tomorrows review.

This story has a lot to do in two episodes, it has to write Rose Tyler out of the show and introduce and set up Torchwood properly and also give the series the finale that would match what we got in the previous series.

The episode starts off normally enough with the Doctor and Rose arriving back on earth with ghosts appearing out of nowhere. Sadly there is a moment which didn’t bother me at the time but now it does and its when cameos appear on TV. Way back in Aliens of London we had Matt Baker on Blue Peter and Andrew Marr on the news, now we have Derek Accorah (some BS peddler), Alistair Appleton (Cash in the Attic) and Barbara Windsor (Eastenders).

One of the more interesting things about this episode is that it marks the first appearance of Freema Agyeman who becomes the third person in Doctor Who to have started out as one character and then returns but in a different role. She soon get taken over by the Cybermen and then ceases to really have any purpose in the episode. In fact so little that she is killed before the episode is over. There is one slight issue with Torchwood. Torchwood is such a powerful organisation that it doesn’t notice when the Cybermen have set up a mini-conversion base in their building. On a positive note its typical Cybermen. They start small and use whoever is around to bulk up their numbers.

Mickey returns at the end of this episode with no explanation and a new name. He also manages to sneak a massive gun into the room where the sphere is and where he is working. The security is conveniently mixed because it doesn’t spot this and the Cybermen but it can tell when someone is using Psychic paper. Billie Piper’s penultimate episode in her original run is good for her because she gets to be a bit investigative even though she’s rubbish at bluffing her way into places.

The comedy is very well placed in this episode. If only it had been like this in Love and Monsters then I would have thought differently about that story. In this episode its typical RTD and by that I mean there are occasional gags which are delivered well by David Tennant. One of the more memorable ones is when the Doctor is trying to pass Jackie off as Rose and this gives the Doctor the opportunity to make some cheap gags.

The final few minutes are the best of the entire episode. It’s when we find out what is in the sphere (although thanks to the Radio Times we knew). When the ghosts are revealed to be Cybermen there is a wonderful few moments where the music helps create a feeling that Cybermen appearing all over the world is the epic moment that it should be. I liked this episode because it perfectly entertaining in the first half and really good in the second. If you compare this to Bad Wolf then this is miles better. I am hoping that tomorrows episode ends this story in the way that it should.