Davros

Early life

David Gooderson as Davros

Davros was born during the Thousand Year War between Thals and Kaleds on the planet Skaro. It was a time when mercy and nobility were all but non-existent and life was harsh and grim. The use of atomic weapons and other agents of mutation had started to produce mutants known as mutos, however Davros himself was originally physically healthy and un-deformed. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)

As a child Davros claimed only his mother believed in him. Others feared him and his determination. His father wanted him to become a soldier like his elder generations. Davros was determined to become a scientist. (BFD: Innocence)

Davros had a sister called Yarvell. Davros disagreed with her ideas of a compromise with the Thals. Davros was forced into the military where he was put in charge of developing new weapons. After his mother killed his father, sister and aunt, Davros no longer had anyone that he could impress. In honour of Yavel's death he and his mother commissioned a statue to be made to house her ashes. (BFD: Purity)

Davros began experimenting with organisms and teaching them to speak. In particular the word 'Davros.' For his first experiment he used a Thal brain instead of a Kaled one. (BFA: Guilt)

Davros' early creation

Davros was grievously wounded by an attack and afterwards he needed a mobile life support system just to stay alive, let alone to move. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks) 30 seconds without his life support would have killed him. The life support system was controlled by a switch conveniently placed on his panel of buttons on his life support system. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)

Creation of the Daleks

"Today, the Kaled race is ended, consumed in a fire of war. But, from its ashes will rise a new race. The supreme creature. The ultimate conqueror of the universe. The Dalek!"

―Davros.^[src]

With his equally ruthless aide Nyder, Davros ascended to a high rank in the Kaled Scientific Elite and presided over the creation of the Daleks. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)

For more see main article.

The Doctor encounters Davros

Davros was originally exterminated by his Daleks. However, intervention by the Time Lords began a chain of events, started by the The Doctor being sent to Skaro during this time period, where Davros first demonstrated the Daleks to the Kaled Scientific Elite. The Doctor and Davros first met at this time. Davros learned of the Doctor's mission and imprisoned him. He used a lie detector to force the Doctor to reveal the details of the Daleks' future defeats, so that he could learn from them and so that his creation, the Daleks, could avoid them. (The Doctor later had this record destroyed.) (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)

The official BBC Doctor Who website specifies that there are two Dalek histories, the second created by the Time Lord intervention in Dalek development. In the original timeline, Davros was killed, but he survived in the new version of events.

"Death" and revival

"I created you. I am the master. Not you, I, I, I!"

―Davros^[src]

The Daleks eventually turned on Nyder and exterminated him. Later, they apparently exterminated Davros himself (DW: Genesis of the Daleks), but he had in fact activated a force field around his travel unit and survived in a form of suspended animation while his life support worked to regenerate him. After an unknown period of time had passed, Davros was sought both by the Daleks, now a major galactic power, and by the Doctor. The Daleks sought to revive Davros so that he might offer them a way out of their impasse in their war with the Movellans. Davros was found in the underground remains of the crumbled scientific elite bunker, and was revived. Davros opted to help the Daleks in their war against the Movellans. He devised a plan to destroy a Movellan ship but after this failed he was captured by the Doctor and escaped Dalek slaves and imprisoned in a block of ice. (DW: Destiny of the Daleks)

Leader of the Imperial Daleks faction

"I have waited a long time for this. Once the Doctor is exterminated, I shall build a new race of Daleks. They will be even more deadly and I, Davros, shall be their leader! This time we shall triumph. My Daleks shall once more become the supreme beings!"

―Davros.^[src]

The Humans decreed an indefinite sentence of suspended animation, during which time Davros retained full consciousness. After 90 years, the Daleks, led by the Dalek Supreme, liberated Davros from his prison ship in space, and revived him once more. They believed that he might help them to find a cure for the virus with which the Movellans defeated them: a virus that attacks only Dalek tissue. Under the pretense of discovering the cure, Davros began experimenting on Daleks to bring them under his control. The Doctor, now in a new incarnation, attempted to kill Davros during this time, though he ultimately lacked the resolve to do so directly. His treachery discovered by the Dalek Supreme, Davros released the Movellan virus onto the prison ship, effectively killing all the Daleks on board. The virus then began affecting Davros, who promptly fled in an escape pod before Stien caused the station -- and the prison ship -- to explode. (DW: Resurrection of the Daleks)

Davros at this point almost took his own life. He met the Doctor and tormented him as he would not kill him. (BFA: Davros)

Davros in the Crucible. (DW: The Stolen Earth)

Davros, however, survived, and set himself up as "The Great Healer" on the planet Necros and lured the Doctor there. Using the bodies of the dead at Tranquil Repose, Davros created a new race of Daleks with white and gold livery, who would later be called "Imperial Daleks". The new faction was totally loyal to him. The Supreme Dalek's forces arrived on Necros -- having been brought there by Tranquil Repose's disgruntled staff -- and captured him to put him on trial. (DW: Revelation of the Daleks)

For more background on and an account of the war that followed between Dalek factions, see Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War.

By the time of his attempt to recover the Hand of Omega from 1963 Earth he called himself the Dalek Emperor (of the Imperial Daleks only). Apparently, he had lost most of his organic body, and was completely encased within an Imperial Dalek-like shell, though his head and upper body still appeared to be at least partially Kaled. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks) Apparently killed by a supernova started by the Hand of Omega, he survived by escaping in an escape pod (again) and lived to confront the Doctor in his eighth incarnation.

Davros found himself teetering on the edge of sanity when he encountered the Eighth Doctor on Earth, which he had taken over with a virus. At this time, Davros's Dalek personality was very nearly dominant. At the end of the story, Davros becomes the Emperor of the Daleks, his mind fully turned into Dalek. Presumably he may have been encased in the Emperor Dalek casing in "The Evil Of The Daleks" and the explosions resulting from the Dalek Civil War restored his "Davros" personality, however this is only speculation. Davros possibly managed to shift his consciousness into a clone body which enabled him to participate in the Last Great Time War. (BFA: Terror Firma)

After this, Davros went on to be the commander of the Daleks in the Time War, only to supposedly die during the first year of the conflict (despite the Doctor's efforts to save him) at the Gate of Elysium, when his command ship flew into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. However, Dalek Caan broke the War's time lock and saved him from death. Davros then rebuilt the Dalek race by using a large number of his own cells, turning each one into a new Dalek, leaving his internal organs and skeleton exposed (under his jacket). Davros called these Daleks his "children". (DW: The Stolen Earth)

Return

"Welcome... to my new empire, Doctor."

―Davros.^[src]

After Davros was rescued by Dalek Caan and had finished creating his new army of Daleks, he used his Dalek Flying Saucer known as the Crucible to travel the universe and "steal" planets. These planets were then put around the Crucible. Earth was the final planet to be taken by Davros and his New Daleks. They took the planets to the Medusa Cascade where he and his Daleks awaited the arival of the Doctor in a pocket of time 1 second out of sync with the rest of the universe. Davros used advanced technology to hack into the wavelengths of the Subwave Network and talk to the Doctor, explaining to his nemesis how he had survived. (DW: The Stolen Earth)

It quickly became apparent that Davros had once again become a slave to the Daleks rule who placed him under guard within the Vault on the Crucible as part of a deal he made with the Supreme One. This arrangement required Davros to build a Reality bomb powered by the Crucible and the 27 planets in the Medusa Cascade which would destroy all of existence leaving the Daleks the sole inhabitants of the universe. However, his plan failed due to the intervention of the Doctor and Donna Noble who destroyed the Dalek race once more leaving Davros on a burning Crucible. Before leaving in the TARDIS, the Doctor offered to save Davros but the creator of the Daleks refused stating that he named the Doctor the destroyer of worlds, after which he was engulfed in flames. (DW: Journey's End)

Creations

"Supreme Dalek? Ha! That is a title I shall dispute most vigorously, I created the Daleks. It is I who shall control their destiny, I am the Supreme Commander!"

―Davros.^[src]

Most notable of Davros' creations is the Mark III travel machine, which then became known as a Dalek. Davros also experimented with other Dalek forms, such as a Dalek able to walk over rough terrain known as a Spider Dalek. (EDA: War of the Daleks)

Davros also created an Imperial faction of Daleks to counter what he saw as a Renegade faction of Daleks, as well as the cybernetic Juggernauts by combining Human components and DNA with the robotic Mechanoids. (BFA: The Juggernauts)

Personality

"Yes... yes. To hold in my hand a capsule that contained such power... to know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes - I would do it. That power would set me up above the gods! And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!"

―Davros when asked by the Doctor if he had the power to unleash a deadly viral plague, would he use it.^[src]

Davros had a sound mind early in his life. Brilliant and driven, he relentlessly experimented to find the final form of the Kaled people. Davros was a cool and sadistic person; it was his ability to command and delegate that was most forceful and cold. While his conversation with the Doctor following his awakening (DW: Destiny of the Daleks) suggests that he may have survived the extermination attempt through forethought, it does still seem to have made Davros more bitter than he had originally been.

Physical characteristics

Davros was originally seen by the Doctor sitting upright in a movement and life support chair resembling the base of a Dalek. His Kaled body was similar to that of a human a blue eye in his forehead replaced his lost eyesight allowing him some semblance of sight. He had only his right hand, which he used to operate various controls on his chair. These in turn could perform various functions from controlling doors, the Mark III travel machines, to his own life support system.

On Necros, Bostock fired a gun which destroyed most of his right hand and thus his independent operability. (DW: Revelation of the Daleks) For a short time after, his hand was replaced with a claw (DWM: Emperor of the Daleks) and finally replaced with a prosthetic substitute of future human design (BFA: The Juggernauts), though its first appearance on screen was in (DW: The Stolen Earth) He was capable of firing electric shocks from his mechanical hands allowing him to ward off attackers and stun them. (DW: Revelation of the Daleks) & (DW: Journey's End)

Sontarans

The Sontarans Return in 2008

The Sontaran Stratagem

When the Sontarans (or one of them) returned in The Sontaran Experiment, the impact was diluted by the mask redesign, and when they returned again in The Invasion of Time their lisping incompetent cockney leader pretty much finished off any credibility they might have had. Their final full TV appearance in The Two Doctors saw them back in the hands of their creator, the great Robert Holmes but for one reason and another this wasn't exactly their finest hour.

What's interesting is that the Sontarans have been recycled more than any other villain after the Daleks and Cybermen, and despite being loved by fans, never really had the main stream impact to become the third "famous" baddie. They do have some imprint on the public at large, as Billie Piper famously described them as looking like a poo in a spacesuit - which is fair enough really - and Christopher Eccleston rather unconvincingly listed them as one of his childhood favourites when he was interviewed on daytime TV soon after being cast as the ninth Doctor, however he later revealed he had never watched the show as a child.

Beyond their four canon appearances, they also appeared in a Jim'll Fix It programme in a mini adventure called A Fix with the Sontarans and they also featured in the impressive Dreamwatch/Reeltime fan releases called Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans and Mindgame. They also appear in the spoof video Do You Have A License To Save This Planet?

The Sontarans were created by Robert Holmes in 1972 in a story format which was then quite rare - the pseudo-historical story, whereby a realistic historical setting was intertwined with a futuristic alien presence. Their next story was by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, their third by Graham Williams and Anthony Read before finally Robert Holmes returned to writing for his creations.

The Time Warrior

Cast of	The Time Warrior
Doctor Who Sarah Jane Smith The Brigadier Commander Linx Irongron Bloodaxe Edward of Wessex Lady Eleanor Hal the Archer Professor Rubeish Meg Eric Sentry Robot Knight	Jon Pertwee Elisabeth Sladen Nicholas Courtney Kevin Lindsay David Daker John J. Carney Alan Rowe June Brown Jeremy Bulloch Donald Pelmear Sheila Fay Gordon Pitt Steve Brunswick Dudley Long

We first meet the Sontarans in the middle ages, somewhere been the year 1189 and 1199. The Sontaran Linx arrives on Earth in his distinctive three-quarter sphere spaceship as a Commander of the Fifth Army Space Fleet of the Sontaran Army Space Corps. He plants his white S-branded flag and claims Earth for his own people.

The third Doctor only seems to recognise the Sontarans indirectly - he remarks that Linx's attitudes seem Sontaran, but he wasn't sure until Linx identified himself. It is as if the third Doctor had only read about Sontarans but never even seen them, but when Linx asks if the Doctor has met his race before, he does reply "Unfortunately," so the Doctor's other remarks are very out of place. When and where the Doctor first meets a Sontaran only becomes further complicated in the sixth Doctor story The Two Doctors (see below).

Sontaran Technology

Although Linx has access to crude time-travel technology in his ship, it is never suggested that Linx has traveled through time to reach 12th century Earth, hence we discover that the Sontaran race is far more advanced than the human race and has been at war with their sworn enemy the Rutans for millennia. The first piece of their advanced technology we see is a translator which allows Sontaran Linx to speak in English. His second useful technological tool is his weapon which can be used as a cutting torch, stun gun and mind control device. Linx also has a chair with skull cap which allows him to keep a prisoner at a work place which will deliver an electric shock should he try to escape. The inside of Linx's Sontaran Spaceship is pictured on the right.

We learn all the key facts about the Sontaran race during the story. Their bodies are short and powerful, with muscles designed for load bearing on a planet with a very high gravity. If we were to guess Linx might weigh an unlikely maximum of 20 stones then for him to weigh the 'several' tons which the Doctor estimates, then his homeworld must have a gravity of around 20 times that of Earth! Perhaps the Doctor is exaggerating somewhat as a planet of 20G is unlikely to allow the evolution of anything upright like a human, although it might account for an evolutionary path without the luxury of a slender neck! Linx is also disparaging of the human race's two genders, and he suggests that the system be changed.

The Sontarans are a militaristic race, reveling in glory and relishing confrontations. Linx is intelligent and although slightly manipulative in his eagerness to get the job done, he is honourable and not needlessly sadistic or murderous. In fact, Linx is one of the least violent villains in Doctor Who history as he arrives quite peacefully, strikes up an alliance with the local humans and ultimately he only kills one person in the whole story, and even that is only when attacked. Naturally he attempts to kill the Doctor a couple of times, but thankfully he doesn't try especially hard.

Earth is considered strategically significant to the Sontarans and Commander Linx is on a reconnaissance mission in their long conflict with the Rutans.

Sontarans are susceptible to an attack on their Probic Vent (pictured right), which is a small tube on the back of their necks. It is not explicitly stated at this stage that Sontarans are clones, however we learn that at their military academy there are hatchings of a million cadets at each muster parade.

As mentioned, Linx is not especially evil, and although he doesn't treat his slaves particularly well, his worst crime is damaging the time line by providing Irongron with more sophisticated weapons than the period should have. However there have been numerous instances where human evolution has been spurred on specifically by alien intervention - not least in The Daemons, but also with the meddling of The Monk who amongst other things allowed Stonehenge to be built using an anti-gravity lift. So whereas the Doctor once insisted to Barbara in The Aztecs that the course of history was already set in stone, we are now presented with the idea that history is fluid and any messing about in the past will create a different future. It's an inconsistent rule in Doctor Who because you have the likes of Pyramids of Mars where the Doctor flits forward to 1980 to show the consequences of them abandoning their battle, and on the other hand, there's The Visitation which shows that if aliens hadn't landed on Earth, key events such as the Great Fire of London would never have happened.

The Sontaran Experiment

The next time the Doctor meets the Sontarans is in the far distant future after solar flares had cleansed the surface of the Earth. In The Sontaran Experiment the Doctor finds his old enemy trying to determine the weaknesses of the human race so that an invasion can be effective.

The distinctive small three-quarter sphere ship appears once more but the Sontaran within, this time named Styre, has a number of differences to their previous appearance. It is made all the more odd that Sarah seemed to consider this second alien totally identical to the first one that she met. However Sontaran Styre had much lighter skin, thicker lips on a very broad mouth, a wider nose, and more pronounced forehead and cheek bones. He also had five fingers instead of the distinctive three which Linx had had and is lacking whiskers.

His costume too was slightly different, with the helmet having undergone a slight redesign with narrower but taller eye-slits and a dappled finish, instead of the brushed metal of the previous style.

Field Major Styre is a member of the Sontaran G3 Military Assessment Survey and is answerable to his direct superior The Marshall and ultimately the Grand Strategic Council who rules the Sontaran military system - which could arguably mean they rule the entire Sontaran race.

We learn a little more about the probic vent on the back of the neck as Harry goes into Styre's ship to remove part of the Sontaran's body-recharging system (called a terrulian diode bypass transformer). It is revealed that Sontarans can feed on pure energy. Being a cloned race, we also get to see that Styre's superior, The Marshal, is identical in appearance, except for two large discs which appear on his collar (above right).



The Invasion of Time

When the Sontarans returned for the season fifteen finale they were taking on the ultimate challenge - invading the homeworld of the Time Lords, Gallifrey. It's an interesting fact that the Doctor's homeworld wasn't named as "Gallifrey" until the first Sontaran encounter in The Time Warrior, and they remain the only alien aside from the Daleks to even consider mounting an assault on the Doctor's native planet.



We learn no new information about the Sontarans in their third outing except the size of their army numbers in hundreds of millions and they can clone a million new soldiers every four minutes. In this story we finally see more than one Sontaran on screen at the same time, and they have three fingers on each hand as they did in their debut story. The leader of this group, called Stor, has a helmet which bears a bold version of the insignia first seen on Linx's helmet where it was made up of dots. Stor's helmet has the largest eye-holes so far seen, and bears a very thick rim which differs to his troops.

The probic vent has changed slightly, becoming a larger fixture with a wide slit conveniently just wide enough to accommodate a well-aimed knife from Leela.

The physical form of the sontarans in this story is once again different to their previous appearance, showing that although they may breed by cloning, this does not make them all identical. Perhaps their genetics technology is sophisticated enough for them to make modifications to their bodies for different environments, or perhaps there is a core of ethnically diverse Sontarans back on their homeworld which acts as a template for the rest of the race. In this form, some bristles are present on their eyebrows, but their mouths are narrow like a human's.

Stor who leads the attack on Gallifrey is not the most fear-inducing of aliens. Lumbering, slow-speaking, gullible, possessing a lisp and drifting into an odd cockney accent from time to time, he leads a bunch of the most stupid aliens ever to attempt an invasion, one of whom famously falls over a sun lounger. Not the finest hour of these monsters.

The Two Doctors

The Sontarans' final appearance in the classic Doctor Who series was in The Two Doctors, a story which featured both Patrick Troughton and Colin Baker. This is an added complication to the fact that Jon Pertwee's third Doctor seemed never to have directly encountered Sontarans before however in The Two Doctors, the second Doctor meets them, and what's more he still recognises them! Therefore we can only assume he has read about them, or encountered them in either his first or second incarnation.

Sontaran ships are seen flying in space and unlike earlier stories these ships are fully spherical, rather than having a flat base. Maybe the lower sections can retract into a flat surface for landing?

The Sontarans in this story are represented by Group Marshal Stike of the 9th Sontaran Battle Group and Varl, a somewhat farcical double-act who come across like stuffy colonial British army men, rather than the tough, no-nonsense warrior first seen in Linx. Their heads, although domed, wobble as if there is a normal neck under their loose metal collar. Combined with their tall stature, these are the Sontarans arguably at their most disappointing, and furthest from Robert Holmes' original vision, despite them being back in the hands of their creator.

Their eye-bristles have gone and this time their only hair is on their chin. Their mouths are once again wide as in their second appearance. They carry the normal trademark wand as well as large cumbersome assault rifles.



As well as their "Achilles Heel" of their probic vent, this story also demonstrates that Sontarans are vulnerable to coronic acid, however there can't be many organic creatures who can happily survive a bucket of acid being thrown over them so this isn't really a weakness specific to Sontarans. We discover that Sontarans have green blood.

War with the Rutans

The Sontarans are defined almost entirely by their endless war with a race called the Rutans, also known as the Rutan Host who hail from the planet Ruta III. The conflict has raged for so long that neither side can remember how it started however Linx calls the war a "struggle for freedom" so there is the suggestion that the Rutans started out as oppressors and it spiraled from there, but this could just be Sontaran propaganda.

We know that between the 12th century and the 20th century the solar system went from being an area of little interest in the war, to encompassing the domination of the Rutans which is said to include the whole of our Milky Way, however the Rutans were starting to lose the war. This was the information given in the Rutans' only appearance in the TV show, in Horror of Fang Rock.

We learn that they are shape-shifting creatures whose natural form resembles a large, green, luminous jellyfish. They are intelligent and although amphibious are capable of considerable movement out of water including the ability to climb walls. They generate a lot of bio-electrical power and, similarly to their warring counterparts, they can feed off pure energy.

The war with the Rutans showed no sign of abating in the year 13,000 which was the setting of The Sontaran Experiment.

Although Robert Holmes created the notion of the Rutans when he created The Sontarans, it was Terrance Dicks who fleshed out these foes both in Horror of Fang Rock and the spinoff Shakedown. In his own novelisations he added supplementary information about The Great Mother being the repository of the Rutan gestalt intelligence without whom "the Host" i.e. all other Rutans would collapse.

Further Adventures of the Sontarans

The Sontarans and Rutans appear together for the first time in the Dreamwatch/Reeltime fan video Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans, written by Rutan aficionado Terrance Dicks. Both aliens were used under license of the estate of Robert Holmes who is down as the creator of the Rutans, even though Terrance Dicks was the man responsible for establishing almost everything we know about them.

The Sontarans in Shakedown are led by commander Commander Steg and this time the overhaul in their design was due to copyright reasons.

The potato-head creations appear again in a spinoff once again penned by Terrance Dicks, called Mindgame. In this simple set-piece a Sontaran is imprisoned with a Draconian and a human. The Sontaran looks very much like Linx from their debut story, with a lot of extra wiring around his metal collar.

The Sontaran Stratagem

These popular aliens return in series four of the new series of Doctor Who with Christopher Ryan (who previously appeared in The Trial of a Timelord) playing their leader General Staal in episode four, The Sontaran Stratagem. His diminutive stature suits these monsters who were originally supposed to be short, unlike their later portrayals.

The new series Sontarans present quite a departure from the previous design but still remaining faithful to their stocky, militaristic concept. Their uniforms have taken on a graphite blue hue with giant shoulder pads and accentuated muscles. They carry gigantic weapons similar to in their final TV apperance The Two Doctors.

Midnight

Episode Location: Midnight, a diamond, "alien leisure planet"
Aliens/Enemies: Unknown
New Characters: Sky, Professor Hobbes, Dee Dee Blasco, Biff & Vale Cane, Jethro, Hostess
Gadgets Used: Unknown
Episode Objective: To visit the diamond glacier, and then to survive and escape the knocking on the bus.

A sapphire waterfall on the planet Midnight: this enormous jewel, the size of a glacier, reaches the Cliffs of Oblivion, and then shatters into sapphires, falling a hundred, thousand feet into a crystal ravine. But Donna Noble would prefer to sunbathe back at the Leisure Palace, so the Doctor boards the shuttle bus to the waterfall, alone...

Except, he's not alone for long.

There's Sky Silvestry, a businesswoman in her 40's, strong, but quiet.The shambolic Professor Hobbes, full of enthusiasm;
His young assistant Dee Dee Blasco;
Biff and Vale Cane, a nice couple on their holidays;










Their 18-year old son Jethro, a bit of a goth, sullen, moping;
And the Hostess, on duty in the aisle.
All of them are aboard the Crusader 50 shuttle bus as its sets off for the planets big attraction.

This episode is the biggest kept secret of the series! And the less you know before watching it, the more you'll enjoy it.

Its largely a Donna-lite
Its the "low budget" episode.
Features the line "Chicken or beef"
Its the 50th episode to be filmed of New Doctor Who

Donna only appears for the first 2 minutes and last minute. She decides to stay by the pool whilst The Doctor goes on a 4 hour shuttle journey to visit a remarkable sapphire waterfall. But, while Donna is sunbathing and not getting into copious amounts of trouble, bad things are install for the Doctor.

"Writer Russell T Davies takes a beautifully simple concept and turns it into something filled with menace and terror. It's a story that looks at different parts of the Doctor's personality, especially his never ending curiosity, while at the same time showing the risks and danger that that brings.
It also highlights, with Donna not around for most of the story, how important his companion is to him. But the most terrifying part is how it explores how human beings respond when they're under intense pressure."

(Lizo's review)

Donna: You be careful
The Doctor: Taking a big space truck with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight... what could possibly go wrong?!

Ooh! Foreboding words there!
But of course the Doctor needs to settle himself in and have a quick chat to the hostess:

HOSTESS: Enjoy your trip.
THE DOCTOR: Oh, I can't wait! Allons-y!
HOSTESS: I'm sorry..?
THE DOCTOR: It's French, for let's go!
HOSTESS: Fascinating.

Apparently we will hear another Allons-y and a Malto Bene at some point in the episode.









And theres the irony kicking in. What could go wrong?
Well... that for a start...

Looks like the shuttle bus is having a bit of difficulty there. So now our little team of tourists are trapped on a tiny bus in the middle of no where.

Well, at least the Doctor keeps his head.

"We're going to get out of here I promise"

So now what? Stuck on a bus in the middle of nowhere with only a strange man to rely on? No wonder tempers are raised.

Doctor: If we're going to get out of this, then you need me!
Vale: Oh, like you're so special

Hostess: Two people are dead!
Doctor: Don't make it a third!



Apparently theres a point in the episode which only works if the Doctor is alone. The affection between the Doctor and Donna shines in the couple of minutes they are together at the start and end of the episode.

But, moving on from that, the knocking begins. The knock-knock-knocking on the outside of the bus...

Sky: What the hell is making that noise?

Vale: Its trying the door!
Hobbs: There is no "it"!

Sky: What is it? Just tell me what the hell it is?!

"It's coming for me!"

"Get out of there!"

So, according to some review or other "Only Sky seems to know the truth – but as paranoia turns into a witch-hunt, Sky turns the Doctor's greatest strengths against him, and a sacrifice must be made..."

And who is this mysterious Sky, who apparently knows something or other? Well apparently whatever it is that is making the knocking manages to possess Sky... and "terrible things are said"


Lesley Sharp, interviewed on "Loose Women" said that at the end of the episode there won't be a lot left of Sky Silvestry

And although we know theres an alien threat, we don't know what it actually is. But we do know that its effecting the Doctor.



Some lucky people have already seen this episode, and the feedback they give, while sparse, is constantly rewarding. They say Tennant is amazing, and someone kindly gave away this info:

• The first 10 minutes has a lot of humour
  
  
• In the early part of the episode, The Hostess uses a very funny line when talking to the passengers
  
  
• Rafaella Carra (Italian singer) appears "in all her glory" as part of the in-shuttle entertainment package (briefly replaced by Rose)
  
  
• "Doctor, Doctor" is briefly mouthed by someone, via a monitor, but the Doctor doesn't see the message (Rose)
  
  
• Klicks
  
  
• Fear and paranoia reign supreme. Someone must make the ultimate sacrifice. By C=O's recollection, 10 people are aboard the Shuttle when it leaves. By the end only 6 are left.