Companion - None
Baddie(s) - Flying mostly metallic stingray/shark things that are not named
First off you have to love a thief who replaces the item stolen with one of these:
Drawing attention by "squeak squeak squeak" of its waving arm.
So a thief (of course a cute girl who is pert in her opinions) steals a chalice of some sort and grabs a double decker bus to escape. And the Doctor, of course, joins her on the bus while tracking down mysterious emanations called Rondium particles. He keeps wanting the little dish to go round.
Then the little dish goes round and he's much happier. But it goes much rounder and gets all excited and the bus is transported to another planet. All while one woman (with a very clearly Welsh accent) hears voices in her head about voices screaming. The bus crashes to a halt in a desert on what is clearly a new planet because of the three suns. "Call it a hunch, but I think we've gone a bit further than Brixton."
CHRISTINA: "And what's your name?"
THE DOCTOR: "I'm the Doctor."
CHRISTINA: "Name, not rank."
THE DOCTOR: "I'm the Doctor."
CHRISTINA: "Surname?"
THE DOCTOR: "The Doctor."
CHRISTINA: "You're called 'The Doctor'."
THE DOCTOR: "Yes I am."
CHRISTINA: "That's not a name. That's a psychological condition."
And then he tastes the sand to figure out where he is.
Why is he always putting things in his mouth????
He says it "tastes like... never mind." And then tries to distance himself from it. He then proves that they drove through a hole in space and time by throwing sand through the "door in space." But he then explains that they can't simply go through the door because the "bus came through but we didn't." The guy who went through gets reduced to a walking skeleton.
Cops on the earth side call U.N.I.T. as a result.
The apparently psychic woman named Carmen states that the doorway was not an accident but made on purpose. She states that death is coming "riding on the wind and shining." Of course everyone freaks out. And The Doctor tries to distract everyone with what keeps them on earth, what moves them each day. "Food and home and people." It's a great vignette on appreciating what is in our daily lives, even the things we consider not that special.
So they try to figure out where they are, how to get the bus back through the wormhole (working to protect them as a giant Faraday cage) and what danger is on its way. The Doctor rigs a cell phone to be able to call through the wormhole and gets put through to the U.N.I.T. commander on site after navigating through the automated call router "I hate these things."
The commander puts The Doctor in contact with their local genius and he says "We'll see about that." when told that he will be talking to him. When Malcolm, the genius, gets so excited about seeing the Doctor, the commander tells him that "We all want to meet him and we will one day, but you know what that day will bring." Ominous foreshadowing.
So the genius states that he's measuring oscillations that he calls "Malcolms" and the Doctor asks him to clarify that he's actually named a unit of measure after himself. Malcolm states that it never did "Mr. Watt any harm."
Insert random insectoid alien. And of course the Doctor speaks their language. Kind of funny watching David Tennant make those weird clicking and gasping noises. The aliens are called "Tritovores" which is not very creative in my opinion since flies (which they resemble) are typically detritovores. But I guess that helps them to remember the name of the race. "They feed off what others leave behind... from their... behind."
They discover that the cities, oceans, people and wildlife all turned to sand in less than a year.
Meanwhile Malcolm calls the Doctor and lets him know that the wormhole is growing and now has a diameter of four miles. The folks on the bus call to let him know that while fixing the bus, they ran out of fuel and to add to the bad news, the probe sent out from the Tritovore ship reaches the shiny storm and sends back images of what look like rays with shark mouths and the backs of horseshoe crabs all mixed together.
Their speed and numbers and size create the wormhole as they move. The Doctor starts smiling at the beauty of the design of the creatures. When asked why he is smiling by Christina, he says "The worse it gets, the more I like it."
Then he tries to get the crystal from the crashed Tritovore ship and when she asked how it will power a bus, he replies that it will be in a "super clever outer spacey way."
She calls him "spaceman" and he states that he had a friend once that called him spaceman. He finds out that Christina is a thief and he reveals to her that he also stole his "little blue box" from his own people. To which she replies "good boy."
One of the shark whatsit creatures was stuck in the Tritovore ship and it promptly chased Christina and ate both remaining Tritovores. She and the Doctor take the crystal to the bus to power it. He tosses the crystal into the desert and places the clamps on the wheels of the bus. But in order to get it to meld with the bus, they have to use the gold cup that was stolen by Christina.
She states it's over 1000 years old and worth 18 million pounds. She asks him to be careful. He says "I will be" and proceeds to beat it with a hammer. MUAHAHAHAHA
Of course, the U.N.I.T. commander is telling Malcolm to close the wormhole and he refuses until the Doctor gets through. She pulls rank and a gun on him because she wants to protect every man, woman and child on planet Earth. Malcolm refuses to close the wormhole, even in the face of the gun.
The bus flies through the wormhole followed by three of the creatures. The wormhole gets closed and the UNIT group is firing on the three creatures with everything they have. Finally killing one of them, but aided by the Doctor who wheeled the bus around and bashed one in the head.
And the nice thing is that everyone else survived.
Christina tries to run away with the Doctor in order to avoid prison. She tries her best to convince him to take her with him and he refuses because "People who've traveled with me and I've lost them. Lost them all. Never again." This is reflecting the time in which he isolates himself.
The psychic woman mentions that he needs to take care of himself because his song is ending and that it is coming through the dark and he will knock. Four times.
To which he makes this face.
It all ends with happy happy music because he sonics Christina's handcuffs to let her have a chance to escape. Which she does. In the flying bus.
