The episode opens with a shot of the Earth, and a voice-over from Rose saying that this was where she was born, and it's where she died. The big question is how she can have died yet still be able to talk, but that question doesn't get answered in this episode, although I suppose it's worth remembering that the Beast did say Rose would die in battle.
Rose goes on to say that for the first nineteen years, her life was normal, until she met the Doctor. We see a montage of shots, some old and some new, featuring the Doctor (both the Ninth and Tenth incarnations) and Rose.
Rose thought that she would stay with the Doctor forever, but then the army of ghosts came, as did Torchwood and the war. The scene changes to Rose standing on a deserted beach, and her voice-over says that this is the story of how she died.
The TARDIS materialises close to the Tyler's flat, and Jackie is overjoyed to see the Doctor and Rose again. She then tells Rose that she has a surprise of her own. Rose's grandfather, Jackie's father, is coming to visit.
Rose tells the Doctor that she thinks Jackie's lost it, as her grandfather died ten years earlier. Rose asks Jackie if she's aware that he's dead, and Jackie replies that she is.
Jackie checks her watch and announces that it's ten past and Rose's grandfather is coming. In the middle of the kitchen a humanoid figure appears, although all we actually see is a silhouette.
The Doctor and Rose head outside where they see “ghosts” everywhere, and everyone seems to be treating them as normal. Jackie says that the midday shift only lasts a few minutes and that they'll fade soon.
In a room somewhere else, a person pulls a lever. The ghosts disappear and the Doctor, Rose and Jackie return to the flat.
In the room with the lever, a woman comes out of an office, which is separated from the rest of the room by a glass partition. The glass partition has the words “Torchwood Institute” written on it. The woman, whose name is Yvonne, congratulates everyone, saying that they measured the ghost energy at five thousand gigawatts.
In Jackie's flat, the Doctor flicks through the TV channels, and finds references to the ghosts everywhere, including in an episode of Eastenders. The Doctor asks Jackie when it all started, and she tells him that it was about two months earlier. The ghosts appeared without warning, and everyone panicked until they realised that the ghosts weren't there to harm anyone.
Rose asks how Jackie knows that the ghost that appeared in her kitchen really is who Jackie thinks it is, and Jackie replies that she just knows. The Doctor tells her that it's a psychic link. Jackie wants her father to be alive, but in reality she's wishing him into existence, and the ghosts are using that to pull themselves into the world.
Rose asks what the ghosts are then, pointing out that they're still definitely people. The Doctor says that they may not be, saying that the ghosts are pressing themselves into the surface of the world, and a footprint doesn't look like a boot.
At Torchwood, Yvonne approaches one of her employees, a woman named Adeola. Adeola is played by Freema Agyeman, who would go on to play Martha Jones in the third seasons. The similarity of the characters ends up being explained as them being cousins, but I'm not aware of any real life cousins who look identical.
Yvonne asks Adeola if there's any sign of the power loss, and Adeola replies that it must just have been a glitch. Yvonne contacts a scientist named Rajesh who is in another room.
He tells Yvonne and R&D came with a new spectrometer, but it said the same things as all the other machines. According to the machines, a large sphere which is suspended at one end of the room can't exist, despite it clearly being there.
Adeola sends a message via an instant messaging program on her computer to Gareth, one of her co-workers. Adeola suggests they go and get coffee, which Gareth agrees to.
Separately, the two of them make excuses to Yvonne and leave. Yvonne comments to her staff that Adeloa and Gareth think that no one has noticed.
Gareth leads Adeola to a deserted corridor where renovations are happening. Plastic sheets have cordoned off an area, and Gareth disappears behind them, Adeola following a moment later. She doesn't find Gareth, but pushing the plastic aside comes face to face with a Cyberman.
The Doctor sets up some cone devices outside the TARDIS and connects them to a cable which he then attaches to the TARDIS console. He gives Rose some instructions and then waits for the next ghost shift.
At Torchwood, Yvonne urges everyone too make the next shift a good one. Adeola and Gareth return, and no one notices that they're now both wearing two earpieces rather than just the one that everyone else is wearing. As the scientists pull the levers, the new earpieces start flashing rapidly.
A ghost appears within the triangle of cones the Doctor has set up. He puts on a pair of 3D glasses and watches the ghost while Rose and Jackie monitor things inside the TARDIS.
In Torchwood, an alarm goes off. Yvonne asks Matt, another Torchwood employee, what's wrong and he tells her that something's interfering with the ghost field.
Yvonne orders the shift terminated, and the scientists pull the levers back to their original state. The ghost within the Doctor's trap disappears.
Matt is able to determine the location of the interference. He patches into the CCTV network, and the TARDIS appears on his screen.
Matt asks if it's “him”, and Yvonne replies that it is. The two of them watch the TARDIS dematerialise, and Yvonne says that he's coming. Inside the TARDIS, Rose informs the Doctor that Jackie is still onboard, which horrifies him.
The TARDIS materialises in a storage area in the Torchwood facility, and it is quickly surrounded by armed soldiers. The Doctor steps out of the TARDIS with his hands raised.
Yvonne enters the storage area and starts clapping. The soldiers join in the applause.
Yvonne welcomes the Doctor and asks where his companion is. The Doctor reaches into the TARDIS and pulls out Jackie, claiming that she's Rose.
Yvonne leads the Doctor and Jackie into a much larger room filled with alien artefacts. She explains that they're in the Torchwood Institute, whose purpose is to retrieve anything of alien origin that arrives on Earth and find some way of making use of it.
Yvonne shows the Doctor some of the artefacts they have gathered, and he then asks her about the ghosts. She tells him that they'll get to them in time, but there is an itinerary.
Just then a truck drives past, carrying the TARDIS. Yvonne says that if something is alien then it's Torchwood's, and the Doctor replies that they'll never get inside it.
Rose peers out of the TARDIS door as it's driven past the Doctor. He nods at her and then looks away. She walks over to his coat and takes the psychic paper out of a pocket.
In the room with the levers, Adeola sends a message to Matt, asking if he wants to see something good. She stands up and leaves, and he follows.
As Yvonne leads the Doctor along a corridor, he remarks that he's never heard of Torchwood in all the times he was on Earth. Yvonne explains that he's the enemy. He was named in the Torchwood Foundation Charter of 1879 as an enemy of the Crown.
The Doctor remembers that the house where he encountered the werewolf was called Torchwood, and Yvonne tells him that Queen Victoria created the Torchwood Institute with the intention of keeping Britain great and fighting the alien horde. When the Doctor asks if his being the enemy means that he's a prisoner, Yvonne replies in the affirmative.
Yvonne takes the Doctor and Jackie to see the sphere. Jackie comments that the sphere feels wrong, and Yvonne says it has that effect on everyone. Rajesh explains that according to their instruments the sphere doesn't exist as it weighs nothing, gives off no heat or radiation and has no atomic mass.
The Doctor looks at it through his 3D glasses and says that it's a Void Ship, a vessel capable of travelling through the space between dimensions, which the Time Lords called the Void. Rajesh asks the Doctor how they get in there, and the Doctor says that they don't. What they should do is send it back.
He asks how the sphere got there, and Yvonne says that it came into the world and the ghosts followed in its wake. The Doctor demands to be shown.
Adeola leads Matt to the plastic sheeting. She tells him to go behind it, and we hear the sound of a drill and Matt's screams.
Yvonne takes the Doctor to the room with the levers and says that the sphere came through a hole in the world. It's not currently active, but when they fire particle engines at it, it opens up.
The hole is six hundred feet above sea level, and so they had to build a skyscraper to reach it. Jackie looks out of a window and realises that they're in Canary Wharf.
The Doctor criticises Torchwood for not leaving the hole alone, but rather making it bigger. Yvonne says that it's a huge source of energy, which the Doctor will see at the next ghost shift. The Doctor tells her to cancel it.
He takes out his sonic screwdriver and makes a crack in the glass partition separating Yvonne's office from the rest of the room. He continues talking holding the screwdriver against the glass as he talks, and the crack grows.
The Doctor says that when the sphere came through it made a hole in the world and the entire surface of this dimension splintered, which is how the ghosts got through. But there's a problem if too many ghosts appear, which he demonstrates by lightly touching the glass, which shatters completely.
Yvonne refuses to cancel the ghost shift, so the Doctor pulls up a chair to watch, seemingly not going to take any action. Adeola counts down, but Yvonne stops the shift a the last moment, and says that it makes sense to get as much intelligence as possible. Yvonne goes into her office, while Adeola, Gareth and Matt exchange glances and then begin to type.
Rose leaves the TARDIS and walks down a corridor. She spots someone in the distance and follows them. The person she's following disappears around a corner and Rose hears the sound of a door opening and closing.
Rose approaches the door and then holds the psychic paper up against a scanner. The door opens and Rose walks into the room with the sphere.
Rajesh asks if he can help Rose, and she says that she's from personnel. Rajesh asks to see her authorisation, and she hands him the psychic paper.
Rajesh tells her that everyone at Torchwood has a basic level of psychic training and that the paper is blank. He calls for security, and asks his assistant Samuel to check the locks on the door.
Samuel turns around and Rose sees that Samuel is actually Mickey. Unseen by Rajesh, he puts his finger to his lips and then gives Rose the thumbs up.
Yvonne asks the Doctor who built the sphere, and he replies that he doesn't know but it must have been the ghosts. Their conversation is interrupted by a message from Rajesh, who informs Yvonne about Rose. The Doctor initially denies any knowledge of Rose, but admits the truth when Yvonne threatens to have her shot.
The sound of the ghost shift starting up can be heard, and Yvonne goes to investigate. Gareth, Adeola and Matt are typing away at their keyboards, and don't pay any attention to Yvonne's instructions to stop. The levers move of their own accord, despite attempts to physically stop them, while in the sphere chamber, noises start coming from the sphere.
The Doctor examines Adeola's earpieces and says that he's seen it before. He uses his sonic screwdriver on them and she, Matt and Gareth scream and collapse on their desks, dead.
The Doctor tries to stop the ghost shift from the computer but is unable to do so. He says that there's a remote transmitter somewhere, and he can track it with his screwdriver.
Rajesh tries to tell Yvonne that the sphere is active, but no one answers him. The doors to the chamber seal automatically, and Mickey tells Rose not to worry as they've beaten them before and they'll beat them again.
The Doctor's tracking of the signal leads him to the area with the plastic sheets. The Doctor says that he knows what's going on, and then he, Yvonne, and two armed guards are surrounded by Cybermen.
The sphere continues to give off noises, and Mickey tells Rose that they had the Cybermen beaten but then they escaped. The Cybermen found a way into Rose's world, but Mickey and his associates were able to follow. He tells Rose that he doesn't know what's in the sphere, but whatever it is, it's dead meat.
The Cybermen take the Doctor and Yvonne back to the rift chamber, and after shooting a couple of people dead, they increase the ghost shift to 100%. Ghosts start appearing all over the world on a scale not seen before.
Jackie asks what the ghosts have to do with the Cybermen, and the Doctor tells her that the ghosts are Cybermen. As he says this, the ghosts start to solidify, revealing their true nature.
In the streets, people panic. Not just because of the appearance of the Cybermen, but also because they start killing people.
Yvonne says that the Cybermen are invading the whole planet, and the Doctor replies that it's not an invasion, it's a victory. He notices a computer screen which states that the sphere has activated.
In the sphere chamber, the sphere stops shaking and starts to open. Mickey reaches below a counter and retrieves a massive gun.
The Doctor asks the Cybermen how they created the sphere as they don't have the technology to do so. He gets a very worried look when they tell him that the sphere is not theirs, and they only followed it.
In the sphere chamber, the sphere stops opening and its occupants emerge. Mickey and Rajesh don't recognise them, but Rose does – they're Daleks.
Quotes
Jackie: You're always doing this. Reducing it to science. Why can't it be real? Just think of it, though... all the people we've lost - our families coming back home. Don't you think it's beautiful?
The Doctor: I think it's horrific.
The Doctor: I like that. 'Allons-y'. I should say 'allons-y' more often. 'Allons-y'. Watch out, Rose Tyler! Allons-y! And THEN, it would be really brilliant if I met someone called Allonzo. Because then I could say, 'allons-y, Allonzo'!
Rose: Doctor, they've got guns.
The Doctor: And I haven't. Which makes me the better person, don't you think? They can shoot me dead, but the moral high-ground is mine.
The Doctor: So, you find the breech, probe it, the sphere comes through. Six hundred feet above London, bam. It leaves a hole in the fabric of reality. And that hole, you think, "Oh, shall we leave it alone? Shall we back off? Shall we play it safe?" Nah, you think "Let's make it bigger!”.
Yvonne: Well, if that's Rose Tyler, who's she?
Jackie: I'm her mother.
Yvonne: Oh, you travel with her mother?
Jackie: He kidnapped me.
The Doctor: Please, when Torchwood comes to write my complete history, don't tell people I travelled through time and space with her mother...
Jackie: Charming.
The Doctor: I've got a reputation to uphold!