Army of Ghosts is an episode that I continually seem to underestimate. Every time I watch it, it surprises me in a different way, whether it be through noticing a cameo of a former presenter of the Australian version of Play School, to the fact that the Torchwood Institute is built around the frightening notion of attempting to bring back the British Empire, even down to the fact that they refuse to use the metric system. But these are all hidden details in what is, at heart, a frightening story about love.
It begins with Rose and the Doctor coming back to see Jackie. But it's painfully obvious that Rose is different, she's been absorbing the Doctor's personality as she's been spending more and more time with him and falling more and more in love with him. And it's becoming worrying for Jackie, because she's seeing someone who was once perfectly normal and likeable gain all of the arrogance of the Doctor, blustering into things and laughing at the TARDIS console. There was a scene at the start of Rise of the Cybermen where the Doctor and Rose made Mickey feel uncomfortable, both in a mental and physical sense. And whilst other programmes would do the expected thing of having them develop as characters from that point, and overcome their deficiencies, Russell T Davies makes the brave decision to instead increase their deficiencies. This is seen in the scene where they are smugly moving about the TARDIS console whilst Jackie looks on with a state of worry for the people that they have become.
What Davies has done is taken the audience to the point where it's becoming painfully obvious that the Doctor and Rose need to get a hold of themselves. And whilst there are still some who see this as a touching love story, you can't help but avoid the fact that the story is still building up to some tragic event that has to occur for them. And that tragic event is explored wonderfully in Doomsday.
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