Because when you think about it, little happens in "The Stolen Earth" beyond moving all the pieces into position. The Earth disappears before the credits even roll, and everything else involves getting everyone to where they'll need to be for the cliffhanger. Still, it's really quite exciting seeing not just Martha Jones and Rose Tyler, but also Sarah Jane and Luke and what's left of the Torchwood team -- and being familiar with the spin-off shows does give these guest appearances more impact.198 It's genuinely exciting to see Sarah Jane's attic and the Torchwood hub on Doctor Who -- and it provides a nice sense of interconnectedness among the three shows, rather than the one-way street it had been.
But because we're tying in three shows, Russell T Davies has to devote quite a bit of time to each one, to give just enough detail for those viewers who haven't been watching all three shows to know who these people are and what's going on. That does take up a lot of time, and while the process is hurried along by the return of former PM Harriet Jones, who has them all talk to each other via her own version of Skype, it still does slow things down. Fortunately, Davies has realized that this would happen, so he keeps interspersing these sequences with waves of Daleks attacking the planet while the Doctor and Donna pop off to the Shadow Proclamation (which is, oddly, an organization rather than an announcement) to work out that various instances of planets going missing are related. "Someone tried to move the Earth once before. Long time ago," the Doctor recalls in what's most likely a reference to The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
But, because there's so much maneuvering involved, it does take a while before things get started, but once they do, they hardly let up. After Harriet Jones gets everyone talking (except for Rose, who's frankly a bit bitchy when she sees and hears about Martha), we get Harriet exterminated, the Doctor and Donna involved in the action on Earth, and an onscreen confrontation between the Doctor and Davros. Davros, it seems, fought in the Time War but was pulled out by Dalek Caan (last seen "emergency temporal shift"-ing in "Evolution of the Daleks"), and has now devised some new plan that involves 27 planets. They've done a really good job with Davros in terms of make-up and design -- other than a robot hand, he basically looks the same as he's ever looked, and Julian Bleach turns in a great performance which recalls the control of Michael Wisher's turn in Genesis of the Daleks. Even if all he gets to do in this episode is basically sit there.
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| The tenth Doctor regenerates. ("The Stolen Earth") ©BBC |
So "The Stolen Earth" is an episode that spends an awful lot of time in a holding pattern, waiting for everyone to get to where they need to be, but thanks to some great direction from Graeme Harper and a script that keeps moving, you still find yourself entertained. It's not perfect (the return of the joke of Harriet Jones introducing herself to everyone isn't funny, and there's the aforementioned jealousy Rose displays -- and why is evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins talking about astronomical topics?), and there's an awful lot depending on how well "Journey's End" goes, as this has given us almost nothing in terms of actual storyline -- but as a Part One "The Stolen Earth" is a very solid effort indeed.
198 In fact, one of the main factors for my deciding to include the spin-offs in this marathon was knowing that this story was coming up.