Army of Ghosts

181a - Army of Ghosts
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Production
Directed by	Graeme Harper
Written by	Russell T. Davies
Script editor	Helen Raynor
Produced by	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	Series 2, Episode 12
Series	Series 2 (2006)
Running time	1 of 2 episodes, 45 mins
First broadcast	1 July, 2006
Chronology
← Preceded by Fear Her Followed by → Doomsday

Army of Ghosts is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who which was first broadcast on 1 July 2006. It is the first episode of a two-part story. The concluding episode, Doomsday, is set to be broadcast on 8 July.

Synopsis

Ghosts have been regularly appearing across the world, people believing them to be their dead loved ones. When the TARDIS arrives at the Torchwood Institute, the Tenth Doctor and Rose are taken prisoner. They are drawn into the investigation of a mysterious sphere kept in Torchwood Tower and monstrous foes return as two universes collide.

Plot

File:Armyofghosts.jpg

"They're bleeding through the fault lines. Walking from their world, across the void, and into yours."

Rose Tyler narrates how her life changed when she met the Doctor, who showed her the universe, taking her on a journey she thought would last forever. Then came the army of ghosts, Torchwood, and the war. This is the story of how it all ended, and how she died…

The TARDIS materialises in a playground on the Powell Estate to visit Jackie Tyler. Jackie is overjoyed to see both Rose and the Doctor, but causes Rose concern when she says that she is expecting Rose's grandfather, Grandad Prentice, to come by any minute. Rose explains to the Doctor that her grandfather has been dead for ten years. However, true to Jackie's word, a blurred, ghost-like figure appears in her kitchen at ten past the hour.

Downstairs, the Doctor and Rose witness more ghosts, walking among ordinary people, who are going about their daily lives calmly despite the manifestations around them. Jackie says that the ghosts will not be around long — the mid-day "ghost shift" only lasts a couple of minutes. At twelve past, somewhere else in London a white-coated technician pulls back a huge lever and the ghosts fade away. A blonde woman, Yvonne Hartman, steps out of her Torchwood Institute office and states that they measured the ghost energy at five thousand gigawatts, and congratulates her staff.

In Jackie's flat, the Doctor watches various television programmes, which reveal that the ghost phenomenon is international, and that people have accepted it as a regular occurrence. Jackie explains that it started about two months ago. At first, there was panic, but then they realised that they were spirits of their departed loved ones. Jackie says that the ghost she calls her father smells like the cigarettes he used to smoke, but Rose says she smelled nothing. Jackie says that she has to make an effort, and the Doctor notes that the more they want it, the stronger it gets. The ghosts are using their desires and beliefs to press themselves into existence.

At Torchwood Tower, Hartman contacts Dr Rajesh Singh over the bluetooth earpieces all personnel wear, asking him if he registered any reaction. Singh replies negatively, and reports that their most sophisticated instruments have not been able to read anything off the Sphere — a large bronze globe floating above him. According to their readings, it simply does not exist. He reaches out to touch it, but an invisible barrier stops his hand.

Two Torchwood workers, Adeola and Gareth, make a clandestine romantic rendezvous. Gareth suggests a secluded location which is off-limits as it is apparently under renovation, but Adeola hesitates. However, when Gareth goes silent, she goes into the section to look for him. As she draws back a curtain, a Cyberman lunges at her and she screams.

The Doctor assembles a device to determine the ghosts' origin by triangulation. He sets up the device in the playground, while Rose monitors the energy levels in the TARDIS. At Torchwood Tower, Hartman cues for the next ghost shift, just as Gareth and Adeola return to their desks, but wearing two bluetooth earpieces instead of one, the lights on them flickering actively.

Jackie, in the TARDIS, comments that Rose has changed a lot. Jackie wonders what will happen to Rose when she is gone and if she will keep travelling, and changing, until she is no longer Rose Tyler, or even human.

The Torchwood machines power up, and the ghosts begin to appear as before. The Doctor traps a ghost within his device, looking at it through 3-D glasses (probably as a piece of self-parody rather than for any scientific reasons) and demanding to know where it comes from. As he adjusts the controls, Torchwood picks up the signal, and Hartman orders the ghost shift closed down. The Doctor has managed to locate the energy source required for the ghosts' appearance but Torchwood has also traced the interference to the Powell Estate. A CCTV camera picks up the TARDIS, and Hartman recognises it. The TARDIS dematerialises, with Jackie an unwilling passenger. Hartman, seeing this, realises the Doctor is on his way, and runs off excitedly.

The TARDIS materialises in a Torchwood Tower loading bay, and is surrounded immediately by armed guards. Telling Jackie and Rose to stay inside, the Doctor emerges with his hands raised. Hartman rushes in and to the Doctor's surprise, begins to lead the squad in applause. Hartman greets him warmly, and seems to know a good deal about him: including the fact that he travels with a companion. The Doctor reaches back into the TARDIS and pulls Jackie out, introducing her as "Rose", who unfortunately stared into the heart of the time vortex and aged several decades. Rose stays hidden in the TARDIS, watching them through the scanner.

Hartman welcomes the Doctor to Torchwood, bringing him around and showing him the advanced technology they have captured from alien ships and reverse engineered, all in the name of protecting the British Empire. She explains the Institute's motto: "If it's alien, it's ours," demonstrating it by carting the TARDIS away to a corner of the basement.

Adeola lures another worker, Matt, over to the work area, where she tells him to go towards a mysterious red light. He vanishes behind a plastic curtain and screams, returning to his post later with an extra earpiece. Meanwhile, Hartman reveals that the Doctor was written into the original Torchwood Foundation charter in 1879 as an enemy of the Crown. After his encounter with Queen Victoria and the werewolf, the Queen created the Torchwood Institute to keep Britain great and protect it against the alien horde. The Doctor is their prisoner, but will be kept comfortable; they hope to learn a lot from him.

Hartman leads the Doctor to the room with the Sphere, which the Doctor studies with the 3-D glasses before identifying it as a Void ship, a hypothetical craft for travelling through the nothingness between parallel universes. That space was called "the Void" by the Time Lords; the Eternals called it the Howling; others call it Hell. Singh asks how they can get into the Sphere, and the Doctor tells them that they should send it back where it came from.

Hartman explains that the Void ship came through and the ghosts followed in its wake. She shows the Doctor where it came through, opposite her office; when they fire particle engines at the spot, the breach opens. They detected the spatial disturbance as a radar black spot years before, and built Torchwood Tower to reach it, hoping to harness its energy. The public at large know the skyscraper as Canary Wharf Tower.

The Doctor berates Hartman for trying to make the breach bigger, and warns her to cancel the next shift. He explains that when the Sphere came through, it cracked the surface of this dimension. The ghosts have been bleeding through the fault lines, walking from their world to this one. However, too many ghosts and the surface will shatter. When Hartman insists on going through with the shift anyway, the Doctor abruptly changes gears, casually sitting to watch it happen. Hartman, disconcerted, stops the countdown, conceding that it may be prudent to get more intelligence. However, once they go into Hartman's office, Adeola, Matt and Gareth restart the countdown.

Meanwhile, Rose leaves the TARDIS and picks up a stray laboratory coat, making her way down to the room with the Void ship. When Singh questions her, she tries to bluff her way with psychic paper; however, all Torchwood personnel have received basic psychic training and he sees it as blank paper. Singh calls for security and tells his assistant Samuel to check the locks. To Rose's surprise, "Samuel" is Mickey, who signals Rose to keep quiet.

Hartman notices the ghost shift programme powering up, but despite her orders, the three workers continue their work. As the power rises, the Void ship activates, shaking the whole room. The Doctor recognises that the workers are being controlled through the earpieces; he apologises, and disrupts the signal, killing all three of them. Hartman picks up one of Adeola's earpieces, and to her disgust sees a long string of nerve tissue dangling from it, which means it was connected straight to her brain. The ghost shift is at ninety percent.

The Doctor traces the control signal to the work area and he and Hartman rush there, not hearing Singh's communication about the Void ship, whose existence is beginning to register on Singh's instruments. The doors seal, locking them in, but Mickey, more confident than he once was, assures Rose that they have beaten them before and they will beat them again. At the work area, the Doctor, Hartman and two soldiers investigate, and are quickly surrounded by the advance guard of Cybermen.

Mickey tells Rose that the Cybermen were nearly beaten on the parallel Earth but they somehow escaped, finding a way to this world. However, so did Mickey, despite the Doctor's pronouncements that it was impossible. The Cybermen lead the Doctor and Hartman as prisoners back to the breach, where they kill the technicians trying to shut the programme down. A Cyberman with black handlebars on its helmet — the Cyber Leader — orders the ghost shift be increased to one hundred percent.

All around the world, the ghosts shimmer into full existence, revealing themselves to be Cybermen. Worldwide panic ensues as the Cybermen march across the face of the planet, killing people and breaking into homes. Hartman calls it an invasion, but the Doctor notes it is too late for that — it is a victory. In the Void ship room, the Sphere begins to open up. Mickey pulls out a large rifle from its hiding space and aims it at whatever is coming out.

The Doctor asks the Cyber Leader about the Void ship, claiming that the Cybermen do not have the neccessary technology to build one. The Cyber Leader confirms that the Sphere is not theirs and they do not know its origins. It broke down the barrier between worlds, and they merely followed.

As Singh, Rose and Mickey watch in horror, a Dalek Supreme, flanked by three bronze Daleks, emerges from the Void ship. The black Dalek approaches the three humans; it announces the location as Earth, that lifeforms have been detected, and gives the order to exterminate…

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Rose Tyler — Billie Piper
• Jackie Tyler — Camille Coduri
• Mickey Smith — Noel Clarke
• Yvonne Hartman — Tracy-Ann Oberman
• Dr Rajesh Singh — Raji James
• Adeola — Freema Agyeman
• Gareth — Hadley Fraser
• Matt — Oliver Mellor
• Peggy Mitchell — Barbara Windsor
• Indian Newsreader — Hajaz Akram
• French Newsreader — Anthony Debaeck
• Japanese Newsreader — Takako Akashi
• Weatherman — Paul Fields
• Police Commissioner — David Warwick
• Eileen — Rachel Webster
• Japanese Girl — Kyoko Morita
• Housewife — Maddi Cryer
• Himself — Derek Acorah
• Himself — Alistair Appleton
• Herself — Trisha Goddard
• Cyber Leader — Paul Kasey
• Dalek/Cyberman Voices — Nicholas Briggs
• Dalek Operators — Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg, Stuart Crossman, Anthony Spargo, Dan Barratt, David Hankinson

Trivia

• The story was produced in the same block as Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel.
• The opening of the episode, with the zoom down onto Earth, is the same as seen in Rose and The Christmas Invasion. The Ninth Doctor makes an appearance at the start of the episode, in a flashback to Rose.
• The majority of this episode takes place in the Torchwood Institute, which is seen on screen for the first time. The institute's logo, a series of hexagons in the shape of the letter T, also receives its first showing.
• This episode features a number of cameo appearances by British television personalities, namely Alistair Appleton, Derek Acorah, Trisha Goddard and Barbara Windsor (as Peggy Mitchell), in the form of snatches from television broadcasts.
• In this episode, Appleton presents a show entitled Ghostwatch which provides updates about the ghosts' actions. Ghostwatch was the name of an infamous spoof ghosthunting documentary broadcast by the BBC in 1992. The tie-in website for the Doctor Who version of Ghostwatch can be found here.
• In her cameo appearance, Goddard is seen interviewing a woman who is in love with a ghost. In a similar appearance by Goddard in the "romantic zombie comedy" Shaun of the Dead, she interviews a woman who has married a zombie.
• A clip of the popular British soap opera EastEnders features in this episode, in which Peggy Mitchell (played by Windsor) confronts the ghost of Den Watts, a character killed by Chrissie Watts, who was played by Tracy-Ann Oberman. She orders the ghost to get out of her pub. In addition to Windsor and Oberman, Raji James has also appeared in EastEnders. The character of Den Watts had already "returned from the dead" (at least figuratively) when he returned to EastEnders after an absence of 14 years.
• Rose asks if the ghosts might be related to the Gelth from The Unquiet Dead; the Doctor replies negatively.
• As the Doctor sets up the triangulation equipment to locate the ghosts' point of origin, he sings a line from the theme tune to the film Ghostbusters. The equipment he is carrying bears a more than passing resemblance to the proton packs used by the film's protagonists.
• Torchwood traces the Doctor's interference signal to the Powell Estate at postcode SE15 7GO. This is a fictional postcode, but London SE15 is Peckham and Camberwell, London. The postal code is the same given for Rose and Jackie's address (Flat 48, Bucknall House, Powell Estate, SE15 7GO) in the Doctor Who Annual 2006.
• Jackie Tyler travels in the TARDIS for the first time, albeit accidentally.
• According to the downloadable commentary for this episode, the Egyptian sarcophagus seen briefly in Torchwood's storage facility is a reference to the Fourth Doctor serial Pyramids of Mars.
• An article in The Sun claimed before the airing of the episode that Adeola (Freema Agyeman) might become a companion of the Doctor. However, in the episode Adeola is converted into a drone of the Cybermen and is eventually euthanised by the Doctor.
• When describing the Void the Doctor says that the Eternals (seen in the serial Enlightenment) "call it the Howling". An elemental shade is said by the Doctor in Love & Monsters to have escaped from the "Howling Halls".
• Jackie realises that Torchwood Tower is actually located within One Canada Square, better known as Canary Wharf Tower, a skyscraper in central London and the United Kingdom's tallest building. The rift through which the Cybermen enter is said to be 600 feet (183 metres) above sea level. Canary Wharf is actually 771 feet tall, so the spatial breach would have been positioned around Floor 40.
• The shot of One Canada Square is taken from the opening credits of The Apprentice (UK).
• Rose uses the psychic paper to get through the door of Void ship room. How the psychic paper can affect an electronic lock is not explained.
• On euthanizing Adeola and the other humans controlled by the Cybermen, the Doctor says, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." This expression has been used numerous times in the 2006 series, mostly by the Doctor, in the episodes New Earth, The Age of Steel, The Impossible Planet and Love & Monsters. Mr Magpie also said this to Rose in The Idiot's Lantern.
• The commentary reveals the idea of the Cybermen breaking through plastic sheets came from their "history of breaking through polythene", as occurred for example in Tomb of the Cybermen.
• David Warwick, who plays the Police Commissioner, previously appeared as Kimus in the Fourth Doctor story The Pirate Planet (1978).
• Mickey delivers the line "Mickey Smith, defending the Earth!" The tie-in website "Defending the Earth!" is written from an in-universe perspective by Mickey.
• A Cyber Leader is seen for the first time in the new series. While not actually called a Cyber Leader on-screen, the Cyberman who gives the orders is sporting the trademark black handles and receives a credit as "Cyber Leader".
• The Void ship bears some similarities in appearance to the the artefact from Michael Crichton's novel Sphere.
• To keep the appearance of the Daleks secret, the final scene (with the Sphere opening) was removed from all preview tapes handed to the press and replaced with a title card reading "FINAL SCENE WITHHELD UNTIL TRANSMISSION".
• A Black Dalek is seen for the first time in the new series. In the original series, all Black Daleks seen from The Chase onward were known as "Dalek Supremes". A similar Black Dalek appeared at the BAFTA Television Awards 2006.
• This is the first time since The Five Doctors that the Cybermen and the Daleks have appeared in the same story. The producers of the original series had wanted to produce a story with the Cybermen and the Daleks together in 1967, but Dalek creator Terry Nation refused permission.
• For the first time on a BBC broadcast, the credit With thanks to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation appears. This credit has been standard on international broadcasts since Series 1.
• Preliminary overnight viewing figures for this episode were at 7.66 million viewers, with an audience share of 43.2%.
• According to Doctor Who Magazine #366, this episode will be released with Fear Her and Doomsday as a basic DVD with no special features.

External links

• Episode Commentary by Russell T Davies and Matt Savage. (MP3), BBC