Doctor Who 2001
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Audiences and critics alike found Doctor Who's first series to be a resounding success; what had once been considered a forgotten television classic was transformed into a much-anticipated drama. It was demonstrated by Russell T. Davies, Nicola Shindler, and Matthew Robinson, the newly appointed head of drama at BBC Wales, together with the help of the new BBC One controller Lorraine Heggessey and Mal Young, that Saturday night television was alive and well and that viewers were eager for more space and time adventures.
However, the Doctor Who revival hit a significant turning point in 2000, with only a few weeks left until its television debut. Executive producers Russell T. Davies, Mal Young, and Pedr James were notified at the beginning of the year by main actor Craig Kelly that he would not be reprising his role as the Ninth Doctor after his debut season concluded. This was because the first season was so tumultuous, although he did leave the possibility of a future return open.
With this, Davies and Young searched for the Tenth Doctor - they settled for Michael French, well known
for playing David Wicks in EastEnders and Nick Jordan in Casualty and Holby City. At that stage, however, there was no certainty that Doctor Who would continue beyond its season finale in November.
That changed during a meeting with the BBC's Controller of Drama Commissioning, Jane Tranter. Davies was delighted as he learnt that the BBC not only wanted a Series Two of Doctor Who, but a Christmas Special to fill in the wait for the series. Rose was a huge success which led to the BBC having more confidence that the show could do well and by the end of the Christmas special, the anticipation for the next series was high.
Davies set out planning the new series, this would be important as just like before it’d have to establish the Doctor again due to the change in actors. Davies’ plans included an opening episode with the Doctor and Rose swapping bodies, then an episode with Queen Victoria. It was also decided that one of Doctor Who’s old companions would return for an episode in the series, after a meeting Elisabeth Sladen agreed to return for Episode Three which would be written by Gary Russell. Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, Paul Abbott and Steve Lyons would write for this series.
With the Daleks being reintroduced last season, Davies decided to bring back another classic and fan favourite villain - this time the Cybermen would return in a mid season two-parter and the blockbuster finale, which would also see the departure of Rose Tyler. Since Jane Danson had told Davies that she intended to leave after the second season, the Cybermen's mid-season story would set the stage for her departure by presenting both the new Cybermen and the parallel Earth from which these Cybermen were created. Because it would be against the spirit of Doctor Who to kill Rose off, Davies had determined that it would take a huge event for viewers to accept Rose's separation from the Doctor. She would instead be imprisoned in a parallel reality, separated from the Doctor who would never be able to return.
Like last season, a loose story arc would occur with the word Voidwatch being used quite a lot. Voidwatch were mentioned last season in the Christmas Special, this season would end up focusing on them in Russell’s Queen Victoria episode and the two part finale.
The second series' filming ran from late July 2000 to February 2001, with the Christmas special shooting in March and April of that same year. Directors for the series included Joe Ahearne, James Hawes, James Strong and Graeme Harper who originally directed stories in the original run of the show.
Body Swap
By Russell T Davies
The Doctor and Rose travel to the planet Coffra, where they explore a luxury hospital called the Hospital of Evergreen Days. The Doctor and Rose then meet a worker at the hospital named Zaggit who uses a machine to swap the Doctor and Rose bodies, so the Doctor possesses Rose’s body and therefore Rose acts like the Doctor and the Doctor acts like Rose. Rose and the Doctor then discover that the hospital holds hundreds of artificially-grown humans that have been infected with diseases so the Sisters of Patience can find cures. Zaggit releases several of the humans as a distraction, but they release others and a zombie-like attack begins. Rose sprays the infected humans with an intravenous solution using a disinfectant shower, curing them. Rose and the Doctor then use the machine to swap back into their original bodies as Zaggit is arrested.
Empire of The Wolf
By Russell T Davies
The Doctor and Rose arrive in Scotland in 1879, where Queen Victoria invites them to the Voidwatch Estate. Unknown to them, the estate has been captured by a group of monks who have brought a
werewolf in hopes to infect Queen Victoria and establish an "Empire of the Wolf". The Doctor notices the trap and tries to shield himself, Victoria, and Rose from the werewolf. He learns that the estate was designed as a trap for the werewolf as it contains a large telescope which, with Victoria's Koh-i-Noor diamond and full moonlight, can kill the werewolf. Though they save her, Queen Victoria is unnerved by the Doctor and Rose's modern eccentricities and founds the Voidwatch Institute to defend Britain from further alien attacks.
Old Friends
By Gary Russell
The Doctor investigates an army base using his old UNIT status as Scientific Advisor after Aidan contacts him and Rose about a UFO that crashed not too far away, Rose is working undercover as someone from the Home Office. Aidan works as a cook and notices the cafeteria's chips have an adverse effect on other
members of the kitchen staff, while the Doctor notes the chips seem to make the students more intelligent. The success of General Hector Creek has aroused media attention; investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith, the Doctor's former companion, arrives at the school and discovers the TARDIS. She and her robotic dog K9 join up with the Doctor, Rose, and Aidan. Together, they discover that the General Staff are actually Kravaxes and the chips are coated with Kravax oil, intended to make the soldiers intelligent enough to decode the "Skasis Paradigm", a theory of everything, giving the Kravaxes full control of time and space. The Doctor refuses to join the Kravaxes and evacuates the soldiers. K9 detonates the chip oil container, destroying the Kravaxes, the base, and K9 himself. Sarah Jane declines the Doctor's offer to travel with him, suggesting Aidan do so instead. Departing, the Doctor gives her a brand new model of K9
The Girl In The Fireplace
By Steven Moffat
The Doctor, Rose, and Aidan arrive on an abandoned spaceship which contains several "time windows" into the life of Madame de Pompadour, known as "Reinette". The Doctor first enters her bedroom in Paris through an 18th-century fireplace when she is seven years old, and saves her from a clockwork man. On the ship, the Doctor and his companions discover more time windows into Reinette's life in 18th-century Versailles and see that the clockwork droids continue stalking her, but do not consider her "complete". The Doctor discovers that the droids murdered the ship's human crew and recycled some of their organs for use in the ship but still needs Reinette's brain to be fully functional. The brain must be 37 years old, the age of the ship; it is actually named after Madame de Pompadour. The Doctor manages to arrive at some point after her 37th birthday, and saves her from the droids, who shut down because they have no way of returning to their ship. With Reinette safe, the Doctor uses the fireplace to travel to the spaceship. When he returns, he discovers that seven years have passed, and Reinette has died. Downhearted, the Doctor and his companions depart in the TARDIS.
The New Age
By Russell T Davies
A major problem with the TARDIS causes the Doctor, Rose, and Aidan to reach a parallel universe, with no way of getting back home for 24 hours. In the parallel universe, Rose's father Pete is still alive and most of humanity wears EarPods that feed information directly into the wearer's brain. The EarPods are
designed by Tobias Straker, who is trying to give them an "upgrade" which will ultimately turn the humans into Cybermen. Though he has not received permission to do this, he has been abducting and converting numerous homeless people. Aidan is mistaken for his parallel universe self Hayden and is taken by Jake Simmonds, a member of a gang called the "Preachers" who are aware of the dangers of the EarPods. Cybermen begin attacking a birthday party at which the Doctor and Rose are posing as waiters. They, along with Pete, escape and run into Aidan and the Preachers, but the Cybermen close in on them.
Rise of The Cybermen
By Russell T Davies
Escaping from the Cybermen, the group go to Battersea Power Station, where Straker uses a transmitter to control London's EarPod-wearing population and send them to be converted into Cybermen. On the way, Hayden is killed by the Cybermen. The group splits into three smaller groups to stop the conversion. Eventually, Mrs Moore is killed and the Doctor, Rose, and Pete are captured by the Cybermen and taken to Straker, who has become the Cyber Controller. Aidan and Jake disable the transmitter on the zeppelin, freeing the humans who had not been converted. Aidan hacks Straker's database to find the code to cancel every Cyberman's emotional inhibitor and sends it to Rose's phone; the Doctor plugs the phone into the computer systems which changes the signal and sends the Cybermen into despair. They escape the exploding factory on the zeppelin and Pete cuts the ladder Straker is climbing up, sending him to his death. Aidan decides to stay and help fix the parallel universe with Jake and take care of Hayden's grandmother, as he understands Rose prefers the Doctor.
The Idiot’s Lantern
By Mark Gatiss
The Doctor and Rose land in London in 1953 on the day before Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. The Doctor befriends teenager Tommy Connolly, whose grandmother is hidden because she lacks any facial features and has no brain activity, a phenomenon that is common with those who have purchased television sets sold cheap for the coronation from Magpie Electricals, owned by Mr Magpie. Rose, investigating the shop, finds that Mr Magpie is under the influence of an entity known as "the Wire", a fugitive who has converted herself to an electrical form and is using the televisions—and intends to use the upcoming coronation—to consume enough minds to rebuild its body; she takes Rose's face as well. In discovery of this, the Doctor is outraged and foils the Wire's plan with a device he creates, and those whose minds and faces were consumed are returned and London can safely watch the coronation.
Ocean Base One
By Paul Abbott
This story would see the Doctor and Rose land in Ocean Base One, Humanity’s first underwater base where the Doctor and Rose would discover that everybody is low on resources and are scared of the dark as something is waiting for them. The Doctor and Rose would try to help them but the room the TARDIS landed in is deadlocked, it’s here more people go missing and end up dead as they are seen outside the base in the ocean but the villain is never seen and it’s in the dark, the story ends with the Doctor trying to get a tunnel door open as the lights start to go out.
You Can’t Hide
By Paul Abbott
The Doctor, Rose and the crew escape apart from two people who are killed and it’s by this point the Doctor suggests they split up. The Doctor and his team go to the control centre where the Doctor is hoping to keep all the doors open and deadlock it so nothing can close it where they also set an self destruct timer and Rose’s team try to focus all the main electricity on the lights so they don’t go out, all of them reunite and try to make back to the TARDIS but only the Doctor and Rose make it and they leave in the TARDIS as the base explodes.
Love and Monsters
By Russell T Davies
Elton Pope, Ursula, and three other people who have had encounters with the Doctor, form a group called LINDA to discuss these encounters, but their meetings soon become more social. One day a man known as Victor Kennedy interrupts a meeting and reinvigorates LINDA's purpose to locate the Doctor. Later, two members of the group mysteriously go missing, and one day Ursula and Elton return to the meeting room, where Kennedy reveals himself to be an Abzorbaloff, who has absorbed the other three LINDA members. Ursula receives the same fate and the Abzorbaloff corners Elton, but the TARDIS appears and the Doctor confronts the Abzorbaloff. He discovers that the Abzorbaloff's cane is a field generator and Elton breaks it, destroying the creature. The Doctor manages to preserve Ursula in a paving slab, which Elton takes home.
The Fires of Vulcan
By Steve Lyons
Arriving in Pompeii on 23 August 79, the Doctor became convinced that he was destined to live out the rest of his days on Earth when the TARDIS was lost in an earthquake. Rose, unwilling to give up, managed to locate the TARDIS and prove to the Doctor that the fact that his TARDIS had been found buried in the ruins of the city didn't mean that they were trapped on Earth. Allowing the TARDIS to be buried in ash, the Doctor piloted it to the same spot nearly one-thousand-and-nine-hundred years later, allowing it to be discovered by UNIT and setting in motion the events which had unfolded since their arrival in Pompeii.
Army of Ghosts
By Russell T Davies
Judy shows the Tenth Doctor and Rose a vaguely humanoid and luminous silhouette that momentarily appears in her flat, which Judy insists is the ghost of her deceased father. Judy explains that for the past two months, millions of ghosts began appearing all over the world. Humans have come to accept them and believe that they are the manifestations of loved ones.
Conducting an experiment, the Doctor determines that the ghosts are in fact impressions of something forcing its way into this universe. The Doctor tracks the signal back and uses the TARDIS to travel there with Rose and Judy, arriving at the Voidwatch Institute in Canary Wharf. The Doctor and Judy are taken by soldiers to see Voidwatch's director Yvonne Hartman, while the TARDIS is impounded with Rose inside. Yvonne shows the Doctor the invisible breach which is the source of the ghost energy, along with a ship which came through the breach: a "Void ship", designed to exist in the space between universes known as the Void. Voidwatch built One Canada Square around the breach and conducted experiments on it, forcing it open in an attempt to harness it as a source of energy. Yvonne also reveals to the Doctor that his encounter with Queen Victoria made him an enemy of the state and was the catalyst for the creation of Voidwatch.
Meanwhile, Rose, masquerading as a Voidwatch employee, slips out of the TARDIS, and gains access to the sphere chamber, where she finds Aidan, also disguised as Voidwatch staff. An advance guard of Cybermen subvert and manipulate three employees into initiating an unscheduled ghost shift to forcibly open the breach, causing millions of ghosts to appear across the globe before they materialise into their true form, the Cybermen. At the same time the Cybermen arrive, the sphere suddenly activates and begins to open. The Cybermen are similarly oblivious to the origins of the sphere; they simply followed its course through the breach.
In the sphere chamber, Aidan explains to Rose that after a battle in the parallel universe the Cybermen mysteriously disappeared. He happened upon their means of escape and returned to his native universe with the intention of stopping them. Aidan believes that the Cybermen are in control of the sphere and produces a gun to destroy whatever is in it. Rose is horrified when the sphere opens and reveals its occupants to be four Daleks.
Doomsday
By Russell T Davies
In the Voidwatch Institute's sphere chamber in One Canada Square, four Daleks known as the Cult of Skaro have emerged from the Void ship, along with the Genesis Ark, a prison ship built by the Time Lords to imprison the Daleks. The Cybermen who took control of Voidwatch confront Dalek Thay, offering an alliance. It declines, killing two Cybermen. The Cyber Leader declares war on the Daleks.
A strike team takes the Tenth Doctor to the parallel Earth to meet with Pete Tyler. The Doctor theorises that millions of Cybermen coming through from the parallel Earth to the Earth in the Doctor's universe is beginning the process that will lead to both planets falling into the Void. The Doctor explains that Pete is dead in his universe, but Pete's wife Judy is alive.
The Doctor explains that if he opens the breach and reverses it, anyone who has travelled between the
two separate worlds will be pulled in, including Rose, Aidan and Pete. The Doctor sends them along with Judy to the parallel Earth. Rose jumps back to help the Doctor. The Doctor and Rose open the breach and hang on to magnetic clamps as the Cybermen and
Daleks are pulled into the Void, but Dalek Sec escapes using a temporal shift. Rose loses her grip and starts to fall towards the Void, but at the last second, Pete transports Rose back to the parallel Earth as the breach is closed.
Some time later, Rose has a dream where she hears the Doctor's voice calling her. Rose, her parents, and Aidan follow the voice to a remote bay in Norway where the Doctor sends a holographic message through one last small breach between universes. Rose breaks down in tears and tells the Doctor that she loves him; before the Doctor can finish his reply, the breach seals completely and the Doctor's image disappears. In the TARDIS, a mysterious woman in a wedding dress appears in front of the Doctor.
The Runaway Bride
By Russell T Davies
Lance, a worker at a security firm once owned by Torchwood, slowly and secretly poisons his fiancée, secretary Penny Carter, played by Sarah Parish, with Huon particles over the course of six months to use Penny's biology as a catalyst to awaken the children of the omnivorous Empress of the Racnoss, hibernating at the centre of the Earth. The reaction of the particles causes Penny to appear inside the TARDIS. The Tenth Doctor attempts to return Penny to her wedding, but they miss the ceremony. The Empress uses the Huon particles inside Penny and Lance to wake her children up, and feeds Lance to her children by dropping him down a shaft under the River Thames leading directly to her children. The Empress attacks humanity with her Christmas star shaped spaceship. The Doctor requests he finds the Racnoss another world for them to peacefully exist. The Empress declines the request, and the Doctor uses explosive baubles to flood the shaft with water from the Thames. The army kills the Empress with tanks and artillery after all her energy is used up. The Doctor invites Penny to travel with him, but she declines, suggesting that he needs someone to keep his temperament in check.
And that concludes Series Two of Doctor Who, overall the second series was a success and many praised the performances of French and Danson and there was also praises for the episodes with Doomsday being praised as one of the best television finales of all-time.
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