Army of Ghosts

Well, that was one to raise the hairs on the back of the neck! As he did last year, RTD provides a penultimate episode that leaves me thinking “how the hell are they going to get out of that?”. I hope this year the ending is more satisfactory. If it proves to be so, this could be another story to go down in history as a true great – and we’ve already had at least two of those this year.

OK, so I had an inkling that the Daleks were going to make an appearance, and if the Cybermen broke through from their universe then I expected Mickey to follow. But both were handled cleverly. No, I didn’t notice that it was Mickey working in the sphere room until Rose saw him.

As for the mysterious sphere itself, I did realise the colouring in the room was rather like the Daleks from last year, and the sphere could almost be an enlarged ball from a Dalek case. So no mystery there for me, but even so it was quite hair-raising when the three Daleks emerged at the end of the episode.

But I am getting away with myself. Early in the story there was humour, as the “ghosts” appeared and the Doctor went ghostbusting. But it was handled well, even the scene from East Enders and other TV programmes. Perhaps RTD has learned how to package the humorous moments, for example I have no fondness for East Enders but I laughted out loud.

It was almost a Pertwee moment with the Doctor rushing out with his ghost detecting cones, and surmising that they might not be ghosts at all but that people just wanted them to be. With horror it slowly dawned on me that the ghosts might be Cybermen, I think there’s even a hint of cyber voice.

In the Torchwood Tower when the Doctor stops the “ghost shift” by gleefully telling Yvonne to go ahead and pulling up a chair from which to watch, I almost felt the script was very typical of Tom Baker at his best. But David Tennant handles it differently, with a zeal that even Tom didn’t have. That is why Tennant really is the Doctor in a way that Chris Eccleston wasn’t.

Oh the scene with the polythene in the building zone, quite terrifying. Graeme Harper knows how to pull off a frightening scene for sure! As it becomes clear that the Torchwood office employees have been taken over by the Cybermen, who have already broken into our dimension our attention turns to the sphere…and when the Cyberman states it is not theirs, the look on the Doctor’s face is wonderful.

So the sphere opens, and the Daleks are revealed. How will our friends get out of this one? Lets hope this time nobody swallows any magic dust and wishes the baddies away.

9.5/10