The Stolen Earth DVD NTSC Region 1 14-episode box set DVD PAL Region 2 14-episode box set DVD PAL Region 2 3-episode volume

(Doctor Who Story No. 203, starring David Tennant) written by Russell T. Davies directed by Graeme Harper produced by Phil Collinson music by Murray Gold 2 episodes: The Stolen Earth (46 min.) Journey's End (63 min!) Story: The Earth has vanished from its proper orbit, as have 24 other planets across the universe, and the Doctor and Donna consult with space authorities to try to find out where they went and why. Meanwhile, the Doctor's allies on Earth band together to fend off an attack by some of his oldest and deadliest enemies.... What is Project Indigo and the Osterhagen Key that Martha Jones is put in charge of by UNIT? What secrets of the future does the abomination in the heart of the enemy lair continue to conceal? And what dark truths from the Doctor's own soul will be revealed as all things come to the end?

DVD Extras (box sets only) include:

• Episode One audio commentary by David Tennant (The Doctor), writer Russell T. Davies, and executive producer Julie Gardner.
• Episode Two audio commentary by Tennant, Davies, and Catherine Tate (Donna Noble).
• Doctor Who Confidential featurette: Friends and Foe (13 min.) with Tennant, Davies, Billie Piper (Rose), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek Voices),
  all four Dalek Operators, director Graeme Harper, and producer Phil Collinson.
• Doctor Who Confidential featurette: End of an Era (24 min.) with Tennant, Tate, Davies, Harper, and others...
• David Tennant's Video Diaries (16 min.) with Tennant, Tate, Piper, Briggs, Harper, Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith),
  John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Freema Agyeman (Martha), Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith), and Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler).
• "The Journey (So Far)" special retrospective featurette (31 min.)
• Deleted Scenes with alternate ending (3 min.) - introduced by Davies
• Trailers & Promos

The style of writer Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who season finales has been well-established over the previous three years, and this one does not fail to follow suit, while escalating in ambition and in the number of threads drawn into the mix. The elements in this patchwork quilt range mostly between decent and excellent, producing a far higher quality product than either "Bad Wolf" (the season 27 finale) or "The Sound of Drums" (the season 29 finale). Although the jury may continue to debate whether or not this story is truly better than "Doomsday" (the season 28 finale) for some time to come, I think it's safe to say that both the stakes and the excitement level are higher in this story. Oh yes. Welcome to the second BIG winner in the Doctor Who Season 30 box set.

I must confess that the opening moments had me worried about all the old mistakes haunting us yet again, starting off with the TARDIS ploncked on the overused England Earth location, with the camera rolling just a second too late to catch a good materialization effect, suggesting textbook cheapness. But, Earth is where one logically finds the most semi-regular and spinoff characters which Davies wants to incorporate into this big finale, and we spend significant time on other planets and in other areas of space previously only described (countless times) in dialogue, AND the TARDIS certainly makes up for many of its earlier missed opportunities this season by delivering a lot of satisfying movement effects. Not sure how the Earth can get nabbed without the TARDIS getting nabbed along with it, but whatever.... the sequence still looks good. In the end we really can't complain much today. Our fourth alien planet story in a row, sixth within the season. It came late, but the production team finally got their settings balanced correctly. Hooray.

This story's plot has only one real reason for existence: to facilitate the largest Doctor Who character reunion party since "The Five Doctors" (story no. 130) while still disguising it as an adventure. One can then go down the list of guests and story elements to figure out which were good ideas and which weren't.

Bringing back Sarah Jane Smith has to be one of the best moves, as Elisabeth Sladen manages to do the character better justice here with her limited screen time than she managed back in "The Five Doctors". Partly it's because she's in a good new place in her life, helped no doubt by having further developed on her own spinoff for a full season instead of being brought in under Jon Pertwee's Doctor's wings. Through her, K9 gets a brief and welcome cameo, while new characters like Luke and the computer "Mr. Smith" (too many unrelated Smiths and Jones's in the Whoniverse for this to be a good or original character name) are completely extraneous bafflements to those who aren't invested in her spinoff show.

Now to the other spinoff, which ropes in the Torchwood gang. Their leader Captain Jack Harkness is a welcome addition to the story, being a proper Doctor Who character. Actor John Barrowman is now comfortably settled into his role, continuing the good vein he was in at the end of season 29 and being miles better than his initial appearances in season 27. Curiously, it seems to be a rare thing for Davies' to write a Doctor Who finale without him. The rest of the Torchwood gang seems to be a lot smaller in numbers than advertised - is this a needless spoiler showing who survives that series' latest adventures? Even at reduced numbers, one doesn't get enough of any of them to really get a sense of who they are or what they're about... and I have to say that taking precious screen time to show Gwen phoning some unknown off-screen friend or family member is a real waste of.... precious screen time.

Martha Jones is also back, which is a decent decision. While the character is enjoyable in her own right, she also gets some of the most intriguing plot action all to herself. Bringing back UNIT with her seems logical.... but the lack of recurring UNIT faces makes the exercise not really worth putting on screen. Managing neither old faces like the Brigadier, Benton, Yates, or Sullivan, nor the newer ones like Colonel Mace, Captain Price, Sally Jenkins, Major Blake, or Captain Magambo, we get instead yet another roster of completely brand new faces.... again. The production team seem to think they've done something wonderful and exotic by showing New York's branch of UNIT..... yeah, not so much. I'll have the teleportation from New York to London to Germany though - it beats the airlines and airport line-ups anyday. Martha even comes complete with her mother.... and yawn.... and Davies has gone too far again.

Donna's family members are still the current domestic semi-regulars, so they too are in this one, more for colour and perspective than anything else during the story proper. But of course, we'll take more of Bernard Cribbins' Wilfred Mott any day, and he continues to put a special charm into all his scenes here, whether important or not. Good show.

Of course the production team think the really big excitement is in bringing Rose back.... NOT! I could've done without that character's return. Granted, Billie Piper's Rose proves interesting, useful, and well-acted in the previous story "Turn Left", but she really has nothing to do here except shoot one Dalek early in the story, and distract the Doctor into foolishness a bit later on. Really nothing that other characters couldn't do better.

Is the roster full enough yet? No, why not pile on Rose's mother and her local hero Mickey Smith as well! Of course I'll have a return of Mickey any day, as this is the one character who makes Rose's violation of the parallel universe banishment worthwhile. Of course because actors Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri are known to be as "thick as thieves" it's not surprising that they show up together. It doesn't seem to be as logical for Camille's character to tote a gun into a war zone 'cause she's just got to find her daughter.... indicating yet again that the show has become too domesticated since 2005. Jackie Tyler should at least look as though she'd been through some kind of worse Dalek-infested hell in her own world to make her motivation believable.... and who'd want to do that to Pete's World? Sadly, Mickey doesn't have as much chance to show as much of his charm as we'd like, but still gets a bit in here and there. Jackie also gets a few choice humour moments in herself. Good to have you back, guys.

Our cast of characters wouldn't be complete without the Daleks. Granted, we've probably seen more of them over the last four years than warranted, but since this story actually delivers the kind of massive scale operation and critical events that past Dalek stories made us feel like we'd missed, it becomes the most worthwhile Dalek story of the bunch. Good one. Not to be done with recurring characters, we get some amongst the Dalek ranks, including Dalek Caan from "Doomsday" and "Evolution of the Daleks" (story no. 186), and at long last the cult favourite Davros himself. Most worthwhile. New actor Julian Bleach recreates the role faithfully, managing to incorporate traits of past Davros actors Michael Wisher and Terry Molloy, and convince us that we're watching the exact same character all over again. Nicely done. If only the team had approached the Master with the same respect last year. Even more good reason to bring Sarah Jane Smith back: she at least is someone in the Doctor's ranks whom Davros can recognize and feel nostalgic about.

As if all that isn't enough, we pile on the Judoon. Sweet sweet move! And unlike their look-somewhat-alikes the Sontarans, we get to see them in outer space, in their own realms of influence, subordinate to a new and cool looking race of aliens. THIS is what the show has been so begging for for so long. The Doctor and Donna have a good section of story to deal with here as well, getting the perspective of the galactic community at large (finally!), and working through a good sci-fi mystery. Brief mention of Callufrax Minor(r) is a dead give-away / homage / nod to the Douglas Adams story "The Pirate Planet" (story no. 99) from which this tale's sci-fi premise was partially pinched. I loved "The Pirate Planet". It's worth pinching from.

Still not done with the roster. Back comes Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister. Yes, we all know who she is. Her presence is welcome, and thankfully she is far more proactive and together than in her previous story "The Christmas Invasion" (story no. 171) when faced with a Doctor-less situation. The story beat she commands is still far less than brilliant. In the midst of a massive action Dalek story, our heroes struggle with the challenge of.... a video conference call? You can tell this is written by a modern cell-phone / blackberry addict. The only truly good part here is ensuring that Rose is unable to join in, complete with her rising insecurity and a humorous comment from Bernard Cribbins. Hehehe. Don't claim you were in the TARDIS first either, Rose dear; that honour goes to Susan, Sir Ian Chesterton, and Barbara. And they'll have a salute. Plus, Sarah Jane deserves to smack you if she hears you trying to pull rank like that.

The Doctor and Donna certainly have an interesting journey just to get to the scene of the main action - fair enough. But one of the big problems with cramming such a large cast into a single story, and trying to give each of them their own moment and significant thing to do, is that the Doctor suffers with not enough to do. Once on the scene, he merely acts like a ninny rushing towards Rose. Not surprisingly, he immediately regrets his foolishness.

And thusly, we find ourselves building to one of the most mindboggling cliffhangers in the show's history, and certainly the best one for season 30. Was David Tennant's era about to come to a premature end? Not having yet seen "Time Crash" when I first viewed this, my best guess was that this was somehow the vehicle to add Peter Davison's Doctor to the roster. How sweet that would have been. Two David Tennants aren't quite as exciting, but are still cool. Oh yes.

"We will discover it together...."

Our regular original Doctor has very little to actually, proactively DO in the final episode leading up to the climax, although he does at least get to spend a lot of quality time with Davros and Dalek Caan. A worthy consolation, but still a consolation. Their exploration of each other's character has not been this good since "Genesis of the Daleks" (story no. 78), and thankfully does not go as badly off-key as in "Resurrection of the Daleks" (story no. 134).

One is tempted to wonder about Davros's grand plan in this one. Does it not on the surface seem to be as ridiculous as that of the infamously unwatchable Professor Zaroff in "The Underwater Menace" (story no. 32), simply destroying the world for no good reason? Has Davies turned one of the program's best villains into a copy of one of its worst? It's hard to maintain such a criticism though. The seed of the idea for what happens here can be traced right back to Davros's first appearance, and that idea was actually put to him by the Doctor as a test of character. He stated then that he would do it, and now here he is with the means.

The science behind the "reality bomb" is a bit limited and primitive though. There's more than an electrical bond holding atoms and matter together. If you get really deep into quantum mechanics and metaphysics, you'll find that thought itself is a more basic building block in the universe, and there is a unified field of intelligence underlying everything making atoms possible. We expect the Daleks can't, without changing their own nature to stay sane, ever possibly make themselves aware of the nature of this field of intelligence being alive, because they can never escape from it nor exterminate it nor dominate it. Even as the structures of human beings are taken apart in this story, the law of conservation of life says that their conscious intelligence now continues on disembodied wavelengths. Even Douglas Adams saw a variation of this in 1978 when he included the means of the creation of the Mentiads in "The Pirate Planet". The reality bomb certainly won't make the Daleks the only form of life left in the universe. Like most villains, Daleks still have whacking great flaws in their philosophies and plans. Doesn't make them any less deadly though.

As for it wiping out all parallel universes at once.... well, that's a bit hokey as well. I'd be very hesitant to claim that any region of space like the Medusa Cascade could somehow access them ALL. Many maybe, but not ALL. Probably only a small percentage in fact. Remember what thrives to create them in the first place: a function of thought within the unified field of intelligence that structures the universe in the first place, otherwise known as the act of choice. In Davies' own words from his season finale two years previous, "Every single decision we make creates a parallel existence, a different dimension..." How many different decisions are made simply in the course of this story, with all its different characters? Millions. Billions! Or more, perhaps. The Daleks probably win in some of them. They probably lose in many others. All those parallels coexist out there. How many Reality Bombs were successfully detonated in some of those parallels, and do they wipe out the universe we follow in this story? I think not.

"Exterminieren!"

Musically, the gamut is packed into this adventure until it becomes something of a Murray Gold's best Doctor Who hits collection, with pieces pulled from all of the last four years, plus of course a few brand new compositions for this particular story thrown into the mix as well. Of the new material, the track titled "Davros" on CD may well wind up being the one most associated with this story's main plot, being a tastefully weird synthesizer piece used often throughout. "A Pressing Need to Save the World" has been heard in snippets and alternate arrangements throughout season 30, but this story probably gives us the biggest and longest intact helpings of it. Cool. Of course track 26, "Song of Freedom", backs the strongest emotional visual of the story's conclusion and is a shoe-in for becoming a fan favourite. "The Dark and Endless Dalek Night" is okay when simply orchestral, but adding the choir takes it over the top into silly holy Dalek worship from behind the sofa, and tries so hard that it can't end up being anything but overly hard-hitting, with no real subtlety or excellence. Murray tends to write at least one completely tasteless track each year as well - this year's stinker is called "Hanging on the Tablaphone", which sounds like the epileptic fit caused when a junkie struggles hard to get their frantic fix of cell-phone use and ends up giving a music synthesizer diarrhoea, all while thinking that it's macho. This one definitely should have been left off of the CD in favour of some of the Sontaran musical gimmicks. Though it may be a bit difficult to tell while seeing double and even triple during the climax, our good original Doctor is not very instrumental in turning the tables on the Daleks and their plans. He's virtually played prisoner the whole episode, very reminiscent of the end of the first Dalek story in both its William Hartnell TV version and its Peter Cushing theatrical release. However, he does seem to get his fair share of things to do in the lengthy clean up, tackling one problem after another whether it be a technological challenge or a character interaction. Very well done, and honestly, it's hard not to be satisfied with the results here. Graeme Harper does brilliant work directing the whole show, bringing the right level of excitement and emotion to nearly every scene. It is well worth noting that, while complying with the BBC's insistence to make the end credits 25 seconds shorter, and thus whip by so fast that they become almost unreadable, the production team at the same time produces a 63-minute episode for a 45-minute time slot. I don't know how much of this episode the British audience saw, but the Canadian CBC chopped off a good 20 minutes of it for its broadcast. Not that that mattered too much since the Region 1 DVD box set was released several weeks earlier. I only tuned back in to see what they would chop. The final episode probably could have been further improved by cutting a few things. Many of the goofy looks that Tennant and Piper flash at each other are cringe inducing and can go. The CBC wound up cutting about 50% of the Bad Wolf Bay scene, and I think their version actually plays better. Reopening and reliving the whole ending of "Doomsday" is a dumb idea, and naturally the producers fail to make things any better with this repeat. Except perhaps that the original Doctor is leaving her of his own choice this time. The copy Doctor might be a nice way to have a naturally aged David Tennant reappear on the show long after his real Doctor has regenerated into other forms; but it's too sad to see him reduced to idiot Rose's boytoy instead. Why not just have original Doctor dump her properly, not mincing words. Leave the question of what might have been said last time unanswered, and unrevisited. Perhaps this new ending is a bit better for the Doctor's proactively leaving Rose, but really not worth it. His exchange with Jackie over her new baby's name is the best part of the scene.

Music by Murray Gold "Davros", "Song of Freedom", "The Dark and Endless Dalek Night", "A Pressing Need to Save the World", "Hanging on the Tablaphone", "The Doctor's Theme Series Four", "Corridors and Fire Escapes", "The Greatest Story Never Told", "Turn Left", "Midnight", "Life Among the Distant Stars", and "The Rueful Fate of Donna Noble" are available on: Audio CD - Doctor Who: Original Music from "Series 4" (2008) More info & buying options "All the Strange, Strange Creatures", "The Dream of a Normal Death", and alternate versions of "Donna's Theme" and "Evolution of the Daleks" are available on: Audio CD - Doctor Who: Original Music from "Series 3" (2007) More info & buying options "Seeking the Doctor", "Harriet Jones, Prime Minister", "Rose in Peril", "Hologram", "Rose's Theme", "The Daleks", "The Impossible Planet", and alternate versions of "Doomsday" and "Song for Ten" are available on: Audio CD - Doctor Who by Murray Gold Silva Screen SILCD1224 More info & buying options

Not appearing on the CBC broadcast at all are the goodbyes to the extended companions from our universe: Sarah Jane, Jack, Martha.... and Mickey. I love the fact that Mickey is back with us now, while Rose is banished once again. Now Mickey can appear in UNIT stories or in the spinoffs. Life is good. If Mickey joins the Torchwood gang as a regular... I'm going to have to start tuning in!

Donna's fate deserves the lengthy screen time it gets, and is probably the most emotional of all the goodbyes in this story.... as it should be. Mind you, I neither endorse nor believe in the effectiveness of Timelord memory-wiping. First of all, it smacks of a lack of honesty. As for its effectiveness, truth will out every time, from the soul if it has to when the brain's got nada left. So, not the greatest design on an end for Donna, but very well executed and very moving. Bernard Cribbins does his best work of the story during this sequence; you can see his subtle disapproval and disappointment in his daughter's behaviour while he attempts to hold it in while in her presence, then afterwards he is sure to share his own feelings with the Doctor. What a lovely character, and nice that he is the last person the Doctor gets to talk to in this adventure.

And there you have it. Another season of Doctor Who comes to a close with a climactic epic blockbuster of a story. And if I had to decide right now, I think this one manages to inch ahead of "Doomsday" (the season 28 finale). Time will tell if that judgment holds. I do think that "Silence in the Library" (story no. 200), "The Impossible Planet" (story no. 178), and "Rise of the Cybermen" (story no. 176) are better, more focused stories. But that really doesn't take away from the achievement here. "The Stolen Earth" is excellent, enjoyable entertainment. I dare you to try to watch this one without feeling the excitement.

International Titles:

Deutsch: "Die gestohlene Erde"

1. Die gestohlene Erde
2. Das Ende der Reise

Magyar: "Az ellopott Föld"

1. Az ellopott Föld (első rész)
2. Az utazás vége (második rész)

Français: "La Terre volée"

1. La Terre volée
2. La Fin du voyage

Русский: "Украденная Земля"

1. Украденная Земля
2. Конец путешествия

Italiano: "La Terra rubata"

1. La Terra rubata
2. La fine del viaggio

Season 30 Rankings:

DVD NTSC Region 1 14-episode boxed set for the North American market: in the U.S. in Canada	DVD PAL Region 2 14-episode boxed set for the U.K.	DVD PAL Region 2 3-episode volume U.K. format only

Note: The full season sets contain commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and other extras. The smaller volumes only feature the plain episodes.

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