Jackie shows the
Tenth Doctor and
Rose a vaguely humanoid and luminous silhouette that momentarily appears in her flat, which Jackie insists is the ghost of her deceased father. Jackie explains that for the past two months, millions of ghosts began appearing all over the world. Humans have come to accept them and believe that they are the manifestations of loved ones. Conducting an experiment, the Doctor determines that the ghosts are in fact impressions of something forcing its way into this universe. The Doctor tracks the signal back and uses the
TARDIS to travel there with Rose and Jackie, arriving at the Torchwood Institute in
Canary Wharf. The Doctor and Jackie are taken by soldiers to see Torchwood's director Yvonne Hartman, while the TARDIS is impounded with Rose inside. Yvonne shows the Doctor the invisible breach which is the source of the ghost energy, along with a ship which came through the breach: a "Void ship", designed to exist in the space between universes known as the Void. Torchwood built
One Canada Square around the breach and conducted experiments on it, forcing it open in an attempt to harness it as a source of energy. Yvonne also reveals to the Doctor that his encounter with Queen Victoria made him an enemy of the state and was the catalyst for the creation of Torchwood. Meanwhile, Rose, masquerading as a Torchwood employee, slips out of the TARDIS, and gains access to the sphere chamber, where she finds
Mickey, also disguised as Torchwood staff. An advance guard of Cybermen subvert and manipulate three employees into initiating an unscheduled ghost shift to forcibly open the breach, causing millions of ghosts to appear across the globe before they materialise into their true form, the Cybermen. At the same time the Cybermen arrive, the sphere suddenly activates and begins to open. The Cybermen are similarly oblivious to the origins of the sphere; they simply followed its course through the breach. In the sphere chamber, Mickey explains to Rose that after a battle in the parallel universe the Cybermen mysteriously disappeared. He happened upon their means of escape and returned to his native universe with the intention of stopping them. Mickey believes that the Cybermen are in control of the sphere and produces a gun to destroy whatever is in it. Rose is horrified when the sphere opens and reveals its occupants to be four
Daleks.
Continuity The majority of this episode takes place in the Torchwood Institute, which is seen on screen for the first time. The phrase "Torchwood" originated from an anagram of
Doctor Who used to conceal the "
rushes" tapes during the filming of the first series. It was an arc word used through the majority of the second series, starting with the series one episode "
Bad Wolf". The episode's secondary plot device is the Cybermen, from the parallel universe featured in "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". The Cybermen breaking through plastic sheets is a recurring theme throughout Cybermen appearances, in particular,
The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967),
The Invasion (1968) and
Earthshock (1982). The concept of a CyberKing, mentioned by Mickey, would eventually come to pass in "
The Next Doctor" (2008). The episode is also the first in which
Freema Agyeman appears, although she is not playing the role of
Martha Jones, which she would play in series 3, but a minor character named Adeola (who is later revealed to be Martha's cousin). Russell T Davies admired Agyeman's performance as Adeola and called her back to fill the role of
companion that Piper had chosen to leave. ==Production==