"Doctor Who" Finale Part 2: “The Stolen Earth”

Jack figures it must be the Rift. Because around here they always blame everything on the Rift. It’s like, “Hey, Jack, did you use up all the toilet paper again?” “Nope. It must have gone lost in the Rift.” Jack asks Gw-anto if they’re OK …

Ianto: No broken bones. Slight loss of dignity. No change there, then.

Heh. Oh, Gareth. We’ve missed you so much. Why can’t you join the cast of Brothers & Sisters so we can see you every week all season long? Preferably with your shirt off.

Gwen, naturally, has to be all Chicken Little/drama queenie about it, declaring that the whole city — no, all of South Wales! — must have felt that tremor. Jack goes out to investigate. Meanwhile, with Tosh gone, it falls on Ianto to tap away randomly at the computer looking busy and make foreboding pronouncements. “Bigger than South Wales,” he says.

We cut to Ealing, London, where Sarah Jane gets up from the floor of her disheveled home. She finds her teenaged son, Luke, and checks to see if he’s all right. And she observes that pre-tremor, it was day, and now it’s suddenly night. That can’t be good.

Even though I vaguely know who these characters are, I have to admit I don’t watch their show. With so much on TV these days, I make it a rule not to watch anything that doesn’t feature sex and/or violence and/or people making asses of themselves in reality competitions.

Anyway, it looks like this show features an irritating know-it-all computer named “Mr. Smith,” who’s got this smug voice and this big plasma screen. He’s like KITT meets TiVO. He tells Sarah Jane to look outside.

Outside the Noble House. Donna’s Gramps comes out swinging a bat and threatening to kick some green alien ass. He warns Sylvia to stay inside, since the aliens “always want the women.” I think in this case, they might make an exception. She gapes at the sky and tells him to look up.

Then we cut quickly back to Sarah Jane, Jack, and Martha, all looking up and going, “That’s impossible.” Yeah, well, so is a police phone box that’s as big as a Dunkin’ Donuts inside. Not to mention can travel through space and time. I don’t care what’s going on with the sky. At this point, given all the stuff they’ve each experienced with the Doctor, they should really be a bit more open-minded.

Back to the milkman, also gaping at the sky. There’s a flash of light behind him. And then we see Rose, but they film her that way where the camera swoops down from above, and she lifts her head up as the camera zooms toward her, and it makes her look totally badass. It’s freakin’ cool. You can film anyone this way and they’ll look badass. They could have done it with Angela Lansbury on Murder She Wrote and she would have looked badass.

To complete the bad-assness, Rose cocks this serious weapon she’s carrying and announces, “Now we’re in trouble. It’s just the beginning.”

The camera pans back up and we see that a bunch of planets are in the sky and perilously close to Earth. It’s definitely a creepy idea. Only the way it’s been executed looks like one of those new age-y paintings featuring supernovas and dolphins you see in stores selling crystals.

Opening Credits. Interesting how all of the people who have been the Doctor’s companions get top billing. But the companions to the companions are demoted to “and the rest” status. Gareth definitely needs a better agent. And I happen to be available.