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Smith and Jones was the first episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series. It was originally broadcast on 31st March 2007, and saw the debut of Freema Agyeman as new companion Martha Jones.
Synopsis
On meeting the mysterious John Smith, medical student Martha Jones finds her life turned upside-down. A lightning storm sends the Royal Hope Hospital to the Moon, and Martha must cope with the fierce Judoon and a blood-sucking Plasmavore. Her ally in the crisis, the pseudonymous Smith, soon proves he is no ordinary hospital patient.
Plot
Medical student Martha Jones is walking to work when she receives a series of phone calls from various members of her family. Each is calling about her brother Leo's 21st birthday party that evening. She is interrupted by a stranger (The Doctor) who takes off his tie, smiles and says, "Like so, see?" and walks off. Bemused, she continues on. She arrives at the Royal Hope Hospital, bumping into a black leather-clad man wearing a motorbike helmet at the entrance, who ignores her. Later, getting her white coat from a locker, she receives an electric shock from its door.
The consultant, Mr Stoker, is leading a ward round including Martha. They start with Florence Finnegan, whom Mr Stoker diagnoses as being salt deficient, and continue on to the Doctor, introduced as John Smith. Martha challenges him about the events earlier that morning, but he denies being present. She wonders whether he might have a brother, but he answers, "Not any more." Martha listens to his chest and hears two hearts. He gives her a wink and she smiles back at him. Stoker pushes Martha for an analysis of the patient and suggests it is always best to start with the patient's notes. As he picks them up he receives an electric shock and Martha informs him of her own earlier shock, with the other trainees mentioning similar occurances.
Later, Martha is chatting to her sister on the phone. Martha mentions that it is raining outside, but her sister says the weather is beautiful where she is, just blocks away. She turns the corner and sees the hospital in the middle of its own storm. Martha is dismissive until her co-worker and sister both tell her that the rain is going up instead of down. There is a tremor, and when Martha looks out, she realises the hospital is on the Moon. Many of the patients and staff are scared, but Mr Stoker looks out calmly, while Florence Finnegan searches for him.
Martha and her colleague head for a window which Martha intends to open, whilst the Doctor nips behind a curtain. Martha's colleague panics, telling her that if she opens the window all the air will be sucked out. Martha calmly rationalises that that cannot be true as the window is not airtight, so it would have happened already anyway. The Doctor pulls back the curtain, now wearing a blue pinstripe suit, and tells Martha she is correct. They discuss why they can all still breathe, and the Doctor is impressed with Martha's reasoning. He asks if they have any kind of balcony; Martha tells him they have one for patients to use. The Doctor invites her to go step out onto it with him, warning her they might die. Martha calmly replies they might not, winning the Doctor's further approval. Going out on to a balcony, the Doctor demonstrates the presence of a force field around the hospital. He asks Martha what she believes is going on. She firmly believes the situation is alien interference, noting that it would have sounded crazy a few years ago, but with the Slitheen, Sycorax and Cybermen trying to invade over the past two years, it's much more believable. As she continues to refer to him as Mr Smith, the Doctor informs her of his preferred title. Martha assumes he means "Doctor Smith", but he clarifies he means just "the Doctor".
Huge cylindrical ships appear and land outside the hospital. Black armoured soldiers march out in several long lines. The Doctor identifies them as the Judoon.
As Mr Stoker looks on, Florence Finnegan enters, telling him she needs help. Mr Stoker says he does not believe he can help anyone in the current situation and reflects on his plans to retire and how he believes he will never see his daughter ever again. Florence insists he can help her, and is joined by her two Slabs, who have the appearance of motor biking couriers. Florence explains cryptically why her salt levels were abnormal, and tells the Slabs to hold Stoker as she takes out a straw and walks menacingly towards him.
The Judoon enter and begin scanning people. Their leader removes his helmet revealing a head like a rhinoceros, then issues orders in an alien language; the Judoon draw their guns. One of the trainee doctors, Morgenstern, attempts to speak for the humans, but the leader responds by shoving him against a wall and using a device in order to translate his own speech into English. He then scans the trainee, confirms him as human and marks him with a black cross on his hand. Hiding on a balcony with Martha, the Doctor says they are looking for non-humans, bad news for him. Martha does not believe that he is an alien. The Doctor tells her that Judoon are police-for-hire, and if they decide that the hospital is hiding a non-human criminal, the hospital could be sentenced to death.
The Judoon continue upwards through the building, scanning each and every human. Morgenstern insists they are only there to conduct a harmless scan on everyone, but a male patient panics and strikes a Judoon from behind with a vase, which merely shatters against the alien's armour. The Judoon leader declares the punishment for this act of physical assault to be execution. The soldiers comply, shooting the man with energy weapons that completely incinerate him. As the shocked Morgenstern tells them they "didn't have to do that", the commanding Judoon replies, "Justice is swift."
The Doctor attempts to access information from a hospital computer but finds to his frustration that the Judoon have wiped the records. He explains to Martha that he had no idea they were coming and that he had only admitted himself to the hospital because he had detected "plasma coils" building up power over the past few days. He asks her if she knows anyone who has checked into the hospital in the last week with unusual symptoms; she says that Mr Stoker would know and heads to his office. When she arrives there, Florence is still sucking his blood through the straw. Martha runs off but Florence orders one of the couriers to go after her. The Doctor meets her in the corridor and they run together to a room with an X-ray machine. The Doctor seals the door with his sonic screwdriver and tells Martha to activate the machine when he says "Now!".
The courier comes in and the Doctor scorches it with radiation, absorbs the excess and expels it into one shoe, which he then discards. Discovering that his sonic screwdriver has been destroyed in the process, he expresses regret at first, but then throws it away.
Martha tells the Doctor about Florence and he says that because she sucked Mr Stoker's blood and assimilated him, she will register as human when the Judoon scan her. He explains to Martha that Florence Finnegan is a Plasmavore, a blood-sucking alien. He hurries to find her before the Judoon but it is too late; she has already been scanned and marked as human.
The Judoon see the Doctor and scan him. He registers as non-human and they think he is the Plasmavore. They try to execute him but he escapes with Martha. Meanwhile, oxygen levels are decreasing and Martha's co-worker is giving extra oxygen to a patient. The Doctor tells Martha to give him time to find Florence, then kisses her and runs off, leaving a startled Martha in his wake. The Judoon catch up with her and begin scanning her. They identify her as human, but with traces of non-human DNA (from the kiss).
Meanwhile the Doctor finds Florence tampering with an MRI device. Reverting to his cover story, he pretends to be just another amazed human who has no idea what is happening. She orders her remaining Slab to hold the Doctor while she explains her plan. She says that she will overload the MRI device, frying the brains of everyone in the hospital and half the population of Earth, leaving her free to escape the Judoon because she is safe in the room. The Doctor tells her they are doing secondary scans, so she sucks his blood to defend herself against it. He falls to the floor, apparently dead.
Meanwhile, the Judoon have confirmed Martha is human, and march to the MRI lab. Martha is shocked to see the Doctor dead but realises he sacrificed his life to save them. She scans Florence, who now registers as alien having assimilated the Doctor's blood. The Judoon charge her with the murder of the child princess of Patrivolde Regency Nine. Florence proudly admits her guilt, then orders her minion to attack the Judoon; they swiftly dispatch it and eradicate Florence too, but not before she can activate the overload. The Judoon detect the problem, but declare their duty fulfilled and swiftly withdraw. The oxygen is nearly depleted and the magnetic overload is approaching critical state.
Frustrated, Martha tries to resuscitate the Doctor herself, eventually thinking to apply pressure to both his hearts. He awakens and unplugs the machinery. Martha passes out and the Doctor picks her up, crying for the Judoon to save them as they take off. It starts raining again and the hospital is transported back to Earth where Martha's sister Tish is waiting. Martha watches the Doctor leave and sees him head toward a strange blue box, but while she is distracted by her sister both the Doctor and the box disappear.
At Leo's party, the family are arguing over Annalise (Martha's father's girlfriend), who mocks Martha's claims of having been to the moon and cites the publically released cover story (involving everyone in the hospital being drugged in a conspiracy). The argument spills into the street, increasing in animosity as Martha's mother vents her resentment toward Annalise, but Martha spots the Doctor. She follows him around the corner, to see him standing before the blue box, whereupon he introduces himself as a Time Lord and the box as the TARDIS. He then offers her a trip to thank her for her help, but she tells him she does not have the time – she cannot go off into space with him, she has to go into town the following morning and pay bills. He informs her that his ship is also a time machine. She does not believe him. The TARDIS dematerialises and rematerialises; the Doctor steps out, holding his tie. Martha realises that this accounts for their encounter earlier that day.
She then cautiously enters the TARDIS and is amazed that it is bigger on the inside. The Doctor talks about Rose, saying that they were "together" and that she is now "with her family", but says Martha is not replacing Rose; he is just going to take her on one single trip to thank her for saving his life. She flirts with him, saying, "You're the one who kissed me." He assures her that it was a genetic transfer, and she explains that she is not remotely interested – she only goes for humans. As he turns away, though, she looks quite sadly at the floor. The Doctor powers up the TARDIS. As the TARDIS flies through the time vortex it begins to shake violently, while the Doctor and Martha shake hands over the console. The Doctor says, "Welcome aboard, Miss Jones!", to which she replies, "It's my pleasure, Mr. Smith!"
Cast
Production crew
References
- DW: New Earth - In this episode, the Doctor is delighted that the Royal Hope Hospital has a shop. He says that he "loves a shop." This is a reference to New Earth, where he laments the fact that that hospital does not have a shop, saying that every hospital needs a shop.
- DW: Rose - The Doctor's way of persuading Martha to join him is almost identical to that he used on Rose. Both seemed unsure at first, and both were persuaded when told that it travels in time.
- Bram Stoker and Vampires - The head of the hospital is called B. Stoker. This is a reference to Bram Stoker, the author of the Dracula novels about vampires. In this episode, the character is attacked by a creature with vampire-like qualities.
Story notes
- The title of this episode alludes to the last names of Martha and of the Doctor, using his usual alias of John Smith. It may also be a reference to the comedy duo of the same name or the Western television programme Alias Smith and Jones. In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Eight Doctors, the Eighth Doctor's new assistant Samantha Jones pointed out the same coincidence with their names.
- Swansea's Singleton Hospital was used to represent the hospital for location filming.
- In the book Doctor Who: The Inside Story, a piece of concept art by Peter McKinstry shows a concept sketch "burnt out" sonic screwdriver. The book came out some time in advance of the airing of the episode.
Ratings
This story premiered with an overnight average of 8.2 million viewers, with 9.11 million during the last ten minutes.
Myths
Location filming
Continuity
Discontinuity
Plot Holes
- If Galactic Law prevents the Judoon from searching for their fugitive on Earth, why doesn't it prevent them from stealing an entire hospital?