In his time machine, Doctor Who (David Tennant) and Rose (Billie Piper) return to London to visit her mother (Camille Coduri), to find out the whole city (and actually the whole earth) is visited by ghosts who regularly come every noon and whom everybody seems to have accepted as dead relatives coming back for a visit - which is something the Doctor just can't accept, and soon enough he has traced the origin of the ghosts back to the Torchwood-organisation, a sinister, para military but gouvernment funded organisation that deals with alien occurences and the like (and eventually, Torchwood will be spun off into its own series, but that's besides the point).

Yvonne Hartman (Tracy-Ann Oberman), head of Torchwood, welcomes the Doctor and company with open arms - but also makes it clear that they are Torchwood's prisoners - and explains to the Doctor that they ahve found this orb that doesn't seem to exist (in our dimension) yet it's here, so Torchwood has decided to investigate it, and if the orb releases ghosts from time to time that make everyone a bit happier, all the better ...

Of course, the Doctor immediately realizes that the orb is much more dangerous than anybody imagines, and right he is, because the ghosts soon materialize for good and turn out to be the Cybermen from another dimension (see episodes Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steele), and they do what Cabermen always do: Try to take over the planet. Only this time they ahve come in full force and have materialized everywehre that counts before earth can even think of putting up its defenses ...

Of course, if the Cybermen can cross over from another dimension, so can Rose's boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clarke) and her dad (Shaun Dingwall), to support the Doctor in his fight against the invaders - which seems to be a losing battle from the start - but then out of the orb exit four Daleks, against whom even the millions upon millions of Cybermen are no match ... and the Daleks have brought reinforcements in a small container locked bya the Timelords (Doctor Who's own race) they evetnually manage to open, and soon it's millions of Cybermen against millions of Daleks, withthe humans caught in the middle.

Then though the Doctor has this plan to suck all of the Daleks and all of the Cabermen into the void between dimensions and close the door between dimensions for good - thing is, for doing that he has to send Rose, her mom, her dad and Mickey to the other dimension and will never ever be able to see them again.

Well, sometimes big sacrifices ahve to be made to save the world ...

Of course, the Doc's plan to suck the Daleks and the Cybermen into the void proves to be a smashing success, and in the end, he has even found a way to bid Rose farewell.

Freema Agyeman, who will play Doctor Who's companion in the third season is introduced here, but her role is insignificant to the proceedings. The last shot also shows Catherine Tate as The Bride, who will star in the Christmas Special The Runaway Bride.

Daleks versus Cybermen - now that sounds exciting on one hand, on the other it also sounds like a surefire miss. In all the episode of course never lives up to its promisebut is somewhat ok as a mindless sci-fi actioner with even some nice idea (like invaders disguising as ghosts and convincing the earthlings that they are their loved relatives coming round for a visit). What really brings the episode down though is the inclusion of cheesy soap opera about Rose's family reunion, which more often than not halts the plot instead of contributing to it. This in one word is just bullshit. And then there's this prolongued farewell-sequence that is nothing short of pure, unadulterated kitsch. Why did that happen ? I never heard anybody complaining that Doctor Who just isn't cheesy enough, and I'm quite confident noone ever did. Now if the soap opera bits and the farewell sequence were written any better, it wouldn't be half as bad, but they are jsut steeped int he most atrocious clich�s, which one simply wouldn't have come to expect from the man who wrote Queer as Folk. A pity !

review � by Mike Haberfelner

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