A double episode season finale featuring the long anticipated departure of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper)
The double episode Army of Ghosts opens in near-monochromatic washed out colour; Rose Tyler is standing on a rock staring out to sea; she says in voice-over; "This is the story of war on Earth...this is how I died."
The TARDIS materializes close to home, to Jackie Tyler's delight. While they've been away, Jackie tells them, Grandad's been in touch. Rose frowns. "But Grandad's dead."
"Its the ghosts," Jackie says. "They'll be here any minute now."
The ghosts are everywhere; in Paris, Bombay, as well as London and New York.
The Doctor is concerned, and traps a ghost to examine it. He identifies the site of a power surge and triangulates it, unaware that even as he tries to study it, he too is being tracked. The TARDIS has been identified and Torchwood's cameras zoom in on the Powell estate, even as the TARDIS dematerializes.
It re-emerges within a warehouse stuffed full of alien artifacts. He emerges to find a squad of soldiers with their weapons trained on him. A woman steps forward and begins to applaud, encouraging the others with her to do the same.
"Welcome to Torchwood," Yvonne (Tracey-Anne Obermann) tells the Doctor. Leading him through the warehouse of artifacts, she tells him, "If it alien, it's ours."
Rose has stayed behind in the TARDIS. as a precaution, and seeing the Doctor led away at gunpoint, decides to wait until they've gone. Taking the psychic wallpaper, and donning a white coat, she goes exploring. She sees a familar figure and follows it to a room in which a perfectly featureless sphere hovers.
Upstairs, the Doctor sees the source of the power surges. Torchwood have opened a crack in the fabric of the universe and are using it to generate power. The Doctor warns them that they are endangering the world, but unknown to any of them, three of the operatives have already been captured and brainwashed into serving the cybermen.
The operatives turn on the power and the Doctor and Yvonne are unable to stop them. Meanwhile, downstairs the sphere has started to open. As the crack opens further and further, the ghosts again start to appear all over the world, and as the crack reaches a critical point, the ghosts step through and are revealed as cybermen. Army of Ghosts crecendoes with the sphere opening to reveal the Daleks.
Doomsday is the story of humanity's fight back, aided by Mickey and the alternate Pete Tyler (from Rise of the Cybermen), and of the choice that Rose and the Doctor have to make. The ending is truly heartbreaking, and a fine ending to an uneven series.
