The TARDIS crew take a holiday, but The Doctor encounters an enemy he thought long since dead. A plan to build a nuclear power station in Cardiff City disguises an alien plot to rip the world apart. And when The Doctor dines with monsters, he discovers traps within traps.
NOTES
In this episode, The Doctor and Rose finally begin to notice the Bad Wolf signs, as The Doctor points out that the name of the Mayor’s nuclear power station scheme is the Blaidd Drwg Project, which is Welsh for “Bad Wolf.” A clear image of the power station name can be seen on a poster in the official Doctor Who website under the Boom Town Gallery, listed as More Posters, and the front and back pages of Western Mail.
During this episode, the official Doctor Who website had an image of the TARDIS in a wasteland Cardiff. When hovered over, the phrase”BAD WOLF” appeared painted on the front of the TARDIS. When clicked, you were taken to the newly updated Bad Wolf Website.
The most interesting clues from this website can be found in the Disclaimer section, where (if one highlights the bottom of the page) the message”Rose Are you there? Are you getting this? You’ve got the point, haven’t you? Rose…?” appears, and the Revelations section, where the “Big Bad Wolf” (as sung by the French Chansons), is unexpectedly interrupted halfway through playing with a difficult to understand reading. The reading is of William Blake’s”The Sick Rose.” O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. William Blake was previously met by the Seventh Doctor in the New Adventure NovelThe Pit
This is the last time Rose sees Mickey before The Parting of the Ways. The Doctor claims to have visited Raxacoricofallapatorius and then 14th-century Kyoto, Japan, before ending up on the Game Station in Bad Wolf, however, it’s possible that he’s referring to a different visit to Raxacoricofallapatorius or that it took longer than expected to reach the planet, in which case there’s still room to fit in further adventures for the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Jack between Boom Town and Bad Wolf.
The idea of needing a time rift to recharge the TARDIS is new. The Original Series was generally vague about what powered the TARDIS, although The Edge of Destruction suggested the energy source, whatever it was, essentially lived directly under the console. The 1996 movie asserted that the TARDIS was somehow linked to the Eye of Harmony — the captive nucleus of a black hole from which all the powerof the Time Lords devolved (introduced in The Deadly Assassin), which in turn would suggest an almost limitless energy source. With the Time Lords gone, however, it’s highly likely that the Eye has been destroyed orotherwise rendered inaccessible.
As is routine for post-2005 Doctor Who, a NEXT TIME trailer for the next episode is shown at the end of the episode
