Army of Ghosts review, part two

Yvonne Hartman was another piece of RTD's broadbrush satire, targeted at modern managerialism. Yvonne believes in trying to know all her staff by their first names, defines her objectives and focuses on them assiduously; but she doesn't have enough insight into people to notice that her staff are starting to display an efficiency that exudes a lack of humanity, and ignores dangers and imperfections in her plan when they threaten the achievement of her target. This style of management is bundled up with a peculiar British neo-imperialism; whereas UNIT researched and fought for humanity, Torchwood have been scavenging for Britain.

This eighteenth-century historian finds the secret history of 'Torchwood' fascinating, for its echoes of eighteenth-century fears of 'secret influence' and that behind the official government, responsible to parliament, there existed an administration 'behind the screen' answerable only to the monarch. These anxieties, whipped up by Horace Walpole, Edmund Burke and others, were most evident in the early decades of the reign of George III. Here we have Queen Victoria establishing Torchwood by royal charter - presumably secret - and the said body remaining true to its version of Victorian values ever since. Doctor Who again emphasises its modernity by endorsing a caricatured version of the past - the Victorian political elite included its Gladstones, and no doubt more radical critics of Empire, as well as its arch-colonialists - but Yvonne's imperialism is marked by so great a hostility to the 'alien' that inevitably leads the audience on to make comparisons with the Daleks.

The converted humans were very well presented, and tied into this season's pervasive theme of the betrayal of love. Abi and Gareth's workplace tryst was well-written and performed, but it was somehow appropriate that their ersatz woodland bower, wrapped in plastic as it was, turned out to be a place of permanent steel-clad sterility rather than bearing the promise of fertility. The decision to make cyber-organics white might be a nod to the androids of the Alien films but is almost certainly governed by the notorious Mary Whitehouse-offending scene in 'The Tomb of the Cybermen' episode four.

That's all for now as I have to go shopping again - in this heat, which according to my car reached 36C this afternoon, the bread has gone mouldy very quickly, and I'm regretting not thinking to put it in the fridge - but there might be a part three later.

Army of Ghosts review, part three

I beamed when I saw that Raji's assistant Samuel was in fact our long-lost Mickey. During the build-up to the season, I'd expected to see him back in these episodes, but after the Who industry had said its goodbyes to Mickey and Noel Clarke during the 'Rise of the Cybermen'/'The Age of Steel' publicity round, I had wondered if we had said our final goodbyes. I still would have liked a further episode with Mickey on board the TARDIS between 'The Girl in the Fireplace' and 'Rise of the Cybermen', but Mickey's return makes his character arc much more satisfying.

This Mickey is a fanatic; what remains of his love for Rose is a poor second to his desire to wipe out the Cybermen. He seems to present himself in superhero terms: 'Mickey Smith. Defending the Earth' - and the line, thankfully, is delivered without a hint of irony. This Mickey is potentially more dangerous - and Jackie probably won't recognise him as the Mickey she knew, just as she doesn't recognise Rose as her daughter. Again, it looks as if the series is proposing that too much involvement with the Doctor ultimately brings you no good - which worries me a little because, taken to extremes, this line of argument could persuade viewers to stop watching the series. If this series was the trip of a lifetime, this series has been one where Rose has assumed she has seen it all; perhaps she has stopped learning, or she is learning the wrong lessons from her experiences - to continue borrowing from the trailer dialogue, she hasn't "thought again"; perhaps, like one Outpost Gallifrey poster has suggested, her 'death' is a metaphor for some great emotional trauma which will change her outlook on life permanently.