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Fire in the Sky

Doctor Who
Season 4 Episode 5
The Poison Sky

Well we're not going to pick up exactly where we left off...I mean, the Doctor isn't uselessly standing out in the middle of the road anymore. He's uselessly trying to Sonic the ATMOS underneath the Nobel family Car now.

Thankfully someone with a cooler head prevails. Donna's Mom. She takes an Axe to the windshield and breaks the glass. I 'm really glad somebody finally figured out that glass is still breakable no matter how deadlocked the doors are.

Meanwhile, back on planet Mace, he is ordering the cars to be pushed out of the building so they can secure everybody inside. We learn that ATMOS is running wild all over the planet.

And Clone!Martha takes a seat in the HQ to do her dirty work for the Sontarans.

Back at the ranch, Donna can't believe her mother owns an axe. Strangely enough, I believe it.

Ross is back! He's requisitioned an ATMOSless vehicle.

Predictably Donna's mother doesn't want her to go away with the Doctor again, because all that guy does is cause trouble. Gramps tells her to go because aliens are super cool and Donna should have some saving the world fun while she's still young.

Meanwhile Clone!Martha is downloading valuable information and uplinking it to the Sontaran forces above.

Up in the Giant Stapler, the Sontarans are preparing an attack squadron.

Rattigan is all excited about the upcoming war, veering on totally delusional.

There's a some world news footage so that we can no the gravity of the situation everywhere and not just in London. It's about as excruciating as watching actual disaster coverage, so we'll just cut to a little Ross. He drops the Doctor and Donna off at HQ and the Doctor tells him to get inside with everybody else.

Clone!Martha catches wind of the Doctor's arrival and in order to avoid suspicion finally tells Mace about the code red the Doctor relayed last week.

Pass it on, Mace. Pass it on!

Outside Donna is about to cough up a lung, but apparently all this smog doesn't affect the Doctor's special alien lung filters or whatever. He tells her to get in the TARDIS so she can ride out the storm.

Then he remembers that Donna hasn't been bestowed the great honour of TARDIS key yet. She doesn't look all that impressed.

But the Doctor is happy about the occasion.

And Donna's all, "Yeah, Yeah, that's great. Now hand it over before I choke to death." She makes it to the TARDIS before she can pass out though.

Having taken care of Donna's health and safety, the Doctor makes his way over to VanHQ, and gets all up in Mace's Face immediately. Do NOT engage Sontarans in battle he says to the man in the military uniform.

Mace wants to know exactly what the Doctor's going to be doing about it then. And the Doctor's all, "TARDIS? HELLO!"

Clone!Martha lets the Sontarans know about this new development.

And they contact #1 and #2, who are still hanging around all zombie like awaiting instructions.

The Doctor grabs Clone!Martha and off they go.

Meanwhile, #1 and #2 place some thingiess on the TARDIS and tell the Sontarans that it's ready for Transport. Sure enough it dematerializes...with Donna inside.

And Rematerializes on board the Stapler. Staal is all, "Yay! TARDIS!"

But Rattigan doesn't seem to care about the giant phonebox that just appeared out of nowhere. He's got his own plans. The Sontarans look at him like he's stupid and he teleports away.

So Donna peeps out of the TARDIS and ducks back in when she sees where she is.

Down on Earth the Doctor can taste the teleport exchange in the air with his super duper taste buds.

Then he's like, "Stuck on Earth like a regular person? Rubbish!"

The Doctor takes a pause in his little rant to wonder if Martha has contacted her parents yet about the gas. He knows.

Clone!Martha is all, "Uh, yeah, I was going to, sure. Where's Donna?"

And then the Doctor lies and tells her that Donna went home, because he knows this Martha is a clone. He says Donna is not a soldier like "You" to the Clone. Clone being a clone doesn't catch on.

Back at the castle Rattigan the Orange suited troops are aghast at the sight of London in the Fog.

Rattigan tells them to forget about all that. It's time to let them in on his big plan. Right, so he's picked out all these people, who are standing there extremely concerned about all their friends and family, to help him and they aren't even in on it? Who smells mutiny from a mile away, raise your hands.

Not you. Put your hands down.

Back at the VanHQ the Doctor has reappeared and Mace welcomes him back to the fight. I guess he hasn't noticed that the TARDIS plan didn't work at all.

The Doctor admonishes Mace about all the fighting talk again.

This is Captain Price. She reports that the gas is at 60% density and people start dying at 80%. The Doctor wants to know who the heck she is. She tries to salute him but he's all, "How many times do I have to tell you people not to do that?"

Mace is preparing a nuclear strike and the Doctor quickly usurps his power so he can open up peace talks with the Sontarans...or at least find out what they're really up to.

Calling all Sontarans. Blue light special in aisle 10.

Donna hears the Doctor while in the TARDIS, but before she can get to the screen, this Flashes by. Rose Tyler. I wonder what she wants?

Anyway, Rose is gone in a flash, and we're back to Donna calling fruitlessly for the Doctor.

The Sontarans say Hi.

Mace thinks they look like Trolls and the Doctor's all, "Nice Diplomacy, dude."

The Doctor then makes himself comfy and calls them Cowards. Mace is like, "Your Diplomacy is soooooo much better."

The Doctor wants to know what's up with all this poison gas. There is no honour in gas.

Or maybe their intent isn't to unleash poison gas but something else. The Doctor wants to know what.

but Staal is not the type of criminal master mind who is going to reveal the plan.

The Doctor figures that they are losing the war. The Sontarans are not pleased because the word lose is not in their vocabulary. See: Staal the undefeated.

Mace wants to know what war the Doctor is talking about. Apparently the Sontarans and some other people known as the Rutans have been at war for 50 thousand years. The Doctor is not pleased with all this bloodshed.

All this talk of violence and bloodshed has got the Sontarans all hot and bothered so they start chanting again.

The Doctor's eyes are about to roll right on out of his head as he changes the channel momentarily. Mace tries to shut the Doctor down during the break.

But he'd rather listen to Staal than listen to Mace right now, so he changes the chanel back to where the Sontaran's have finished they're little chanting.

Staal is like, "Don't laugh at us...We Got your TARDIS"

Then he starts Code talking to Donna. He wants her to get her phone out.

Donna gets it. She's not stupid...but she doesn't know who she's supposed to call. The Doctor never gave her his secret Doctor phone number. Not that it matters, I'm sure if she dialed it the secret Martha batphone would start ringing in the TARDIS right next to her.

The Doctor bluffs that he has a TARDIS remote controller and Staal has it moved off somewhere "Out of Range"

Donna's a little stressed about being caught up with these aliens and not knowing what to do with the Doctor's secret phone plan.

Meanwhile, at Castle Rattigan, the man in question lets his minions in on his little plan. All their little experements that they have been working on have all been leading towards "Planet Fall."

The short of it is that for helping the Sontaran's Rattigan has been promised a planet of his very own that he can use to repopulated the human species in any way he chooses. He chooses to repopulate it with uber-geeks.

Unfortunately for him the Geek squad thinks this is totally insane.

This one doesn't care about some stupid alien planet. She's off to go find her brother, whom she told to put ATMOS in his car. So she's worried about him.

So Rattigan pulls a gun on her, and he starts waving it around and he thinks they're all ungrateful for his awesome vision or something.

Clearly the last bit of sanity has departed.

And So do his minions.

Rattigan is left all by himself so he can stomp his foot and rant about how clever he is. If nobody is there to hear you does that really make you clever?

Back in TARDIS HQ Donna has found someone to phone. She's calling home, if only to hear her families voice one last time.

Mom harrasses her for a bit

Thankfully Gramps is there to take hold of the phone.

He's all irritated because the Doctor is not there to protect Donna like he said he would last week. Donna tells him not to worry. The Doctor will fix everything. But she doesn't look to sure about that.

In fact she's in tears.

Back at Van HQ The Doctor and Martha are discussing the contents of the gas. He knows it's not just poison...it's for something else, but he can't put his finger on it.

And Mace is ready to nuke the Sontarans. Clearly this is against the Doctor's wishes since he's been going on and on about how much he dislikes guns and fighting for two weeks running.

Price counts down.

Clone!Martha has something up her sleeve.

Staal admires Earth's bravery, stupid though it may be.

Skorr is down on Earth with his troops. When did he get down there? I forgot. In any case he's there to protect the operative...Clone!Martha.

The Doctor stresses out about the Nukes.

Mace watches the nukes go online silently.

Price hit's One and then the grid goes off-line.

The Doctor eyeballs Clone!Martha, who's trying to behave all innocently.

The Doctor wonders why the Sontarans would do such a thing as nukes are particularly innefective against thier defences. He asks Clone!Martha her opinion and she's all, "Why would I know?"

The Sontarans are on the attack!

Cut to Ross, who we haven't seen for a while...can I just pretend this scene doesn't happen please?

Back at Van HQ the Doctor warns Mace not to engage the Sontaran's in battle, and Mace tells the troops to fire at will.

The Guns don't work of course, and the Sontaran's mow right through these guys.

That leaves Ross to relay the news.

Even though he's trying to hide Skorr manages to shoot him too. And a million fangirls go into mourning. We liked Ross!

Back at Van HQ Mace tries to call Ross using his code name, but he's a tad on the dead side...the Doctor's angry and let's Mace no that the guy had a name.

Then the Doctor screams at him to get his troops out of there for goodness sake.

And Mace is all, "Alright then, I suppose a retreat is in order."

The Sontarans run rampant throughout the the warehouse shooting anything that moves. Skorr is spouting ridiculous cliches all over the place like: This isn't WAR this is SPORT!!!

#1 and #2 report for duty.

I'm not quite clear on this but right after this guy passes by he turns around and fires two shots from his laser gun. SO did he just execute #1 and #2 also? Boo. All my UNIT friends are dead now, and we're left with Mace and Price and Martha, who's somewhere in a basement getting her brain juiced for memories.

Anyway, since the Doctor doesn't like this situation he feels the need to majorly insult poor old Mace here and says he wishes the Brigadeer was still around. (which is another old reference which I know nothing about.)

Though he does say "No offense." So Therefor Mace is not allowed to take offense. Instead he's all, "Too bad the Brig is stuck in Peru, fine man that he is, so you're just stuck with me then"

Price announces that the grid is back on line.

And Clone!Martha puts the kibosh on that idea really fast.

UNIT figures out that they have a rat. Gas is at 66% and rising.

Speaking of Rats. Here's one now. He's reporting for duty, and is sad to say that all his fellow geniuses didn't share his vision and decided not to fly off into outer space with him.

Staal is like, "Darn, no target practice today. Hahaha!"

Rattigan is now faced with the bad news reel:

A. The Sontarans were using him to get the ATMOS Installed in the cars.

B. There is no Planet for him to repopulate.

C. He has no friends.

D. And he's not as clever as he thinks.

Staal is going to zap him right then and there but he manages to teleport himself back home before that happens.

Staal is just like, "Whatever" Then he deadlocks the teleports closed and goes back to his Earth taking over business.

Back on Earth, Rattigan curls up into the fetal position and weeps. (Checking My sympathy meter: Nope. Still on empty.)

The Doctor figures out that the Sontarans are fighting for something inside the factory that UNIT has provided them. Something precious that they need to keep hidden.

And Mace figures out how to get the guns to work.

The Doctor tries to tell Mace that they can't be fought, but Mace isn't listening to the Doctor anymore.

As soon as he is alone the Doctor calls Donna.

She's happy to hear from him, but she's not so happy that she is his secret weapon, or that the TARDIS doesn't really have a remote control.

The gist of it is that Donna has to go outside and re-enable the teleport systems.

Donna's a little bit worried about the Sontarns outside.

The Doctor knows this is a difficult thing to ask to put her in this life threatening position, but she's the only hope left.

She doesn't think she can do it, since she can't mend a fuse properly but the Doctor gives her a little pep talk.

Donna peeps a Sontaran standing gaurd.

What to do now?

The Doctor explains the Neck Button.

So Donna grabs a TARDIS hammer. I think the TARDIS troubleshooting manual goes something like this: To fix any and all TARDIS issues, whack it with a rubber mallet.

Anyway, the TARDIS hammer does the trick.

The Doctor explains what Donna's looking for: A circular panel with two back to back 'F's.

But first she has to get through a door with a wierd three fingered panel. Donna wonders how she's going to open it. You've got three fingers, says the Doctor.

I actually thought she was going to have to drag the unconscious Sontaran over to get it opened, but it turns out she only has to make Spock fingers and then she's on her way!

The Doctor proclaims Donna's brilliance.

Mace has returned to VanHQ in the meantime, so the Doctor has to go deal with him and his shoot'em up ways.

Mace throws the Doctor a gas mask and orders everybody into position.

Back on the Stapler, Donna runs into some Sontarans.

But she manages to hide in a corner until they march past so they don't see her.

Mace tries to impress the Doctor with his big gun, but the Doctor's all "Are You my Mummy?" Which is hilarious actually.

Mace doesn't know what he's talking about and tries to get him to pay attention. He's got bullets that won't swell and get stuck in the chamber like the copper ones.

The Doctor is not impressed. How are bullets going to work when there's all this smoke?

Mace is all, "Thanks for nothing. I'm in charge now."

And he gives a rousing speech to his troops. There shall be fighting! He's going to show those aliens what the human race is capable of.

Which is frankly, scary.

There's a loud noise and everybody ducks for cover.

It's the Valiant!!

The smoke's cleared! Now what do you think of THAT idea, Doctor?

Brilliant.

the valiant lasers a hole in the top of the factor.

Which knocks out a few Sontarans.

The Troops head in with thier steel Jackets and show the Sontarans what they're really made out of.

The Doctor tells Donna to hang on a few more seconds. He's got something precious to find. Clone!Martha is intermittenly exterminating the nuclear launch as the Doctor leads her to undisclosed areas of the factory.

He leads her right to the basement where Martha: Original Recipe is out cold. there are no Sontarans to be found gaurding this area...which was basically their entire objective here. They just can't resist getting in on the action.

Orginal recipe Martha has been located!

Clone Martha pulls out a gun, but the Doctor is not impressed. She's proud of her nuclear launch stopping ways, but he's not impressed with that either...he didn't want them to nuke the stapler.

Clone!Martha wants to know when he knew she was a clone. He knew she was a stinky clone right from the start, and a Captain Jack reference too. Yeah!

The Doctor figures out that the only thing keeping the clone alive is Martha and her memories, so he's going to turn the memory sucking machine off and return original recipe Martha to her holy awesome status.

Martha gasps awake and tries to give the Doctor the low down, but he's already figured it out. Poor Martha, clueless, having woken up several hours after all this stuff went down.

The Doctor remembers that Donna is waiting up in the stapler for further instruction and she's none too pleased about the delay, what with Sontarans prancing about. He heads to the teleport to do sonicy things to the circuitry

Meanwhile Martha spots her clone, and it's gotta be weird coming face to face with yourself.

And back on Earth Mace finds Skorr alone in a hallway and commands him to turn around so they can do battle face to face.

Then Mace shoots him.

SKkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkooooooooooorrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's okay though, because he liked it. Heh. As for Mace, I'm afraid I'm starting to like him despite the whole getting private Ross hotness killed.

The Doctor Sonics.

The Marthas have a heart to heart, about Martha and her awesomeness. What else would two Martha's have to discuss? Clone!Martha is envious of Martha's promising life, and Martha's bummed because she has to watch herself die.

Martha manages to get the clone to tall about the gas too. Clone!Martha really hates the Doctor by the way. Haha.

The Doctor realizes that it's clone feed and whacks himself in the head because he totally should have thought of that already. Duh. The Sontarans are planning on using the Earth as a breeding ground for clones.

Clone!Martha dies and Martha takes back her engagement ring because: Martha Loves Tom! Believe it, or not!

Mission Donna complete.

Just in time for the Sontarans to catch her in the act.

Luckily the Doctor has finished his sonicing just in time too and teleports her back to Earth before she gets lasered.

The TARDIS is back in the alley.

Martha keeps blocking the nuclear launch with her phone and they all pile into the teleporter and head off to Castle Rattigan...I have to say, I wish they made teleporters now, it would make travel so much easier.

And Rattigan has his gun out too, but the Doctor just grabs it and throws it away. Not impressed.

Hey, Martha gets to wear the coat! Donna complements her on it and Martha says she feels like a kid in her dad's clothes. They all have walked past Rattigan like he doesn't exist. His self esteem is now at -25 and dropping.

Up in the Stapler Staal doesn't care that Donna escaped. He tells one of his lackeys to turn up the smog and behold the clone world!

Which looks an awful lot like Ganeymede. What? I did a report on Jupiter in grade school. Leave me alone.

The clone feed is starting to permeate the houses as evidenced by Donna's mom and gramps.

Meanwhile, Rattigan has nothing better to do now than to join with the forces of good and feel like an idiot.

The Doctor explains that the clone feed is volotile and the Nukes would have set fire to the atmos....Nevermind. Short story: Rattigan built an alien air converting machine for his new planet and now the Doctor's going to use it to burn all the gas out of the sky.

Staal prepares the clones for launch.

The Doctor calibrates.
And then he sets the sky on fire.

He's crossing his fingers in hopes that this will work. Somehow I don't find that reassuring.

Donna and Gramps watch, Mace and Price watch, the Valiant watches, and Staal (with one gnarly eyebrow hair. Yick!) watches as the Earth's atmosphere becomes engulfed in flames which slowly dissipate into nothing as the gas burns away. Blue skys all around.

Mom and Gramps hug!

Mace looks at Price, Price looks at Mace

And she totally lays one on him. Who needs Unresolved sexual tension anyway?

Team Doctor rejoice!

but the Doctor knows as well as anyone that the battle may be won, but not the war. The Sontarans are going into full on destruction mode.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has run to the teleport and starts saying his goodbyes:

Donna, thanks for Everything.

Martha, Ditto

and Luke Rattigan, Do something clever with your life.

His idea is to take the Air burning machine up to the Stapler and explode the Sontarans from the inside out.

Donna and Martha are not pleased. They don't want him to sacrifice himself and suggest a time delay, but the Doctor's not willing to do that. He has to give the Sontarans a choice.

And then he's gone leaving Donna to clutch at her hair.

Martha looking stunned, and Rattigan standing around in the background.

Up in the stapler the Doctor has his hand on the detonation button and the Sontarans are pleased.

They really don't care about having a choice whether or not to die because they're not afraid of death. I'm not quite sure why he thought they might surrender, or just leave.

The Doctor keeps warning them that he's going to push the button but he doesn't do it.
The Sontarans just start war chanting again.

and Rattigan does his sonicing the old fashioned way...with his hands.

The Doctor threatens, the Sontaran's chant.

The girls wonder what Rattigan is up to.

Doing something clever with my life he says. Damn you Rattigan. Why'd you have to go and redeem yourself? Off he teleports.

He replaces the Doctor. The Sontaran's fate falls right into the hands of the guy they betrayed.

This stops the chanting cold, because what has Rattigan got to loose?

Sontar-HAH! he chants and whacks the red button.

The Stapler explodes.

And the Doctor finds himself back at Castle Rattigan.

Martha is happy to see him.

Donna is happy to see him too. She shows it by punching him in the arm.

Back in Chiswick Donna's Mom has given up driving and the neighbor symbolically removes the ATMOS sticker from her car, aaahh, back to poluting the environment, just the way it should be.

Anyway, Donna and Gramps are in the kitchen listening to Mom go on about how everybody is walking and playing outside now that they're afraid of cars.

Gramps still thinks it's a good idea to keep all this a secret.

He tells her to go and see the stars with the wonderful Doctor and bring a bit of them back for him. You know, I think it's that time of month because this scene totally made me cry. Anyway, I wish Donna would bring him back a snowglobe from Raxacoricofallapatorius or something, surely there must be an alien world out there with a souvenir stand?