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"Love & Monsters" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on 17 June 2006. It is one of the more comic episodes in the series, and has relatively few scenes featuring the regular cast.

Synopsis

An ordinary man named Elton Pope becomes obsessed with a man called the Doctor and his strange blue box, joining a group of like-minded people in hopes of finding him. But when the mysterious Victor Kennedy joins the group, the fun stops and Elton discovers a darker side to his hobby.

Plot

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A young man, Elton Pope, runs towards a deserted group of factories, stopping as he sees a police box standing incongruously near them. He is about to touch it when he hears a cry coming from inside the buildings. He quickly enters, and sees a glowing door at the end of the corridor. He opens it, and a slavering alien lunges towards him…

It turns out that Elton is in his room with a video camera, narrating the story of his life and his encounters with alien lifeforms. The creature in the factory is distracted when the Doctor suddenly appears from the doorway, dangling a raw pork chop. He tells Elton to run, just as Rose runs past Elton, throwing a blue bucket of liquid at the alien, which is a Hoix. However, this serves only to enrage it, and the Doctor points out that he instructed her to throw the "not-blue" bucket. As Elton watches, the Hoix chases the Doctor and Rose around, until Rose comes up with a red bucket and chases it instead. The Doctor stops running and stares at Elton, seeming to recognise him. Elton runs out of the factory, and a moment later hears the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising.

Elton notes that it was not the first time he met the Doctor, nor the last. He shows another clip, this one taken by his friend Ursula Blake. As they shoot his former family home, he describes how he first met the Doctor one night when he was three or four years old. He was awakened in the middle of the night and went downstairs, where he found the Doctor in his living room, looking just as he is now. He tells Ursula that he does not know why the Doctor was there.

Back in his room, Elton describes to the camera how his ordinary life was transformed, first when he was in the thick of the Auton attack on London two years previously, then twelve months after that when a spaceship crashed into the Thames. Last Christmas Day, he saw the Sycorax ship above London.

The Christmas invasion prompts Elton's search for information, until he comes across Ursula's blog, where he sees a picture of the Tenth Doctor. He meets up with Ursula, who introduces him to other people who are studying the Doctor: Bridget, Bliss and Mr Skinner. They begin to meet on a regular basis beneath an old library, exchanging stories and theories about the Doctor. Elton coins a name for the group: the "London Investigation 'N' Detective Agency", or LINDA.

However, over time, the group starts to be become more of a social group. Bridget starts cooking for them, Skinner reads excerpts from his novel-in-progress, and they even form a band. It is at this point that Victor Kennedy, a fat, flamboyant man, arrives and takes over the group. Kennedy refuses to let anyone touch him, claiming he has "ecks-zeema". Elton asks him if he meant "eczema", and Kennedy replies that this is much worse: he blisters to the touch. After telling the group to stand back, Kennedy goes on to say that they have lost focus of their original purpose. He shows them a video clip of the Doctor and Rose leaving in the TARDIS, and Elton recognises the sound: the same sound that woke him up the night he first saw the Doctor.

Kennedy begins to train them in surveillance and investigative techniques, giving them information he has somehow obtained from Torchwood files and allocating tasks to each one of them. After the first meeting, he asks to have a private word with Bliss, and the others leave, not hearing her scream a moment later. At the next meeting, Kennedy tells the others that Bliss has left the group to get married.

One day, they receive news of a police box sighting in Woolwich, which is why Elton was running for the factories earlier. When he returns to the group, Kennedy is furious at Elton for letting the Doctor get away and nearly strikes him with his cane. Ursula, however, comes to Elton's defence and threatens to smack Kennedy if he does so and give him a good kick. Kennedy backs off, and outlines their next step: to find the Doctor's companion. The Torchwood files on her are lacking; the evidence having been corrupted by the Bad Wolf virus.

Armed with photographs of Rose and Elton's identification of her London accent, the group searches the city for her. Elton finds someone who recognises Rose, and in turn is pointed towards Jackie Tyler. Meeting Jackie in a laundrette, he soon becomes friends with her, becoming her personal handyman. Kennedy is delighted at the progress, and at that meeting, asks Bridget for a private word. The others, once again, do not hear her scream as they are leaving.

Eventually, one evening, Jackie tries to seduce Elton, but a phone call from Rose interrupts the mood. However, Elton comes to a few realisations: he genuinely likes Jackie, and he has romantic feelings for Ursula. He offers to cheer Jackie up by getting a pizza for them, but when he returns, Jackie confronts him. She has found the photograph of Rose in his coat and deduces that he was using her to get to Rose and the Doctor. Elton tries to explain, but Jackie, upset, says that she will protect the two of them until the end of her life, and tells him to leave her alone.

Kennedy blames Elton yet again, and Elton has had enough. He tells Kennedy that it has all gone wrong and the rest of them are leaving. Kennedy asks Skinner to stay behind, claiming he had phone numbers for Bridget. After Elton and Ursula walk out, she realises she has left her mobile phone in the meeting room. When they return, however, Skinner is nowhere to be found. Kennedy has transformed into a bloated, greenish alien creature with a Northern accent, with the faces of the former LINDA members grotesquely merged with his body. Elton dubs Kennedy an "Abzorbaloff".

The consciousnesses of Skinner, Bridget and Bliss are still present in the Abzorbaloff's body. The creature reveals that his intention is to absorb the Doctor and his knowledge as well. Ursula demands that the Abzorbaloff give his victims back, but he absorbs her instead, Ursula's face appearing on the monster's chest. Elton begs him to let Ursula go, but the Abzorbaloff replies that the process is irreversible. Able to read the creature's thoughts, Ursula tells Elton to run, as she can sense that he is next.

Elton runs, but the Abzorbaloff eventually corners him in a blind alley. Just as the monster is about to touch Elton, the TARDIS materialises, and the Doctor and Rose step out. Rose, however, is here for Elton, demanding to know why he upset her mother. The Abzorbaloff threatens to absorb Elton if the Doctor does not submit to him. From his research, he knows the Doctor will not let an innocent man die. The Doctor tells the monster not to mistake his "sweet" and "passionate" nature for being nice, and says the Abzorbaloff can do what he wants — but the others may have something to say about that.

The absorbed LINDA members realise that together, they can affect the Abzorbaloff's body, pulling him apart from the inside. As the creature struggles, he drops his cane to the floor. Ursula tells Elton to break the object. He does so, and the Abzorbaloff cries out in agony, dissolving into a gooey puddle. The Doctor explains that the cane created a limitation field; without it, the Abzorbaloff himself is being absorbed by the Earth. As Elton watches, the last remnant of Ursula says good-bye as she too is absorbed into the pavement.

Rose comforts the distraught Elton, and the Doctor finally reveals why he was in Elton's house all those years ago. An elemental shade that had escaped from the Howling Halls had taken residence in the house. The Doctor stopped it. He was too late to save Elton's mother, who was killed.

Speaking into the camera, Elton notes that the Doctor might be wonderful, but things get destroyed when he touches them, even for a second. He wonders about Jackie, and Rose, and when they will pay the price. However, the Doctor did one last favour for Elton: with his sonic screwdriver, he managed a partial reconstruction of Ursula. She is now just a talking face in a slab of pavement, but that does not matter to Elton, as he loves her.

Concluding his story, Elton muses about the expectations of ordinary life: getting a job, getting married, getting a house, having children. But the real world is much stranger than that; it is so much darker, madder, and so much better.

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Rose Tyler — Billie Piper
• Elton Pope — Marc Warren
• Jackie Tyler — Camille Coduri
• Victor Kennedy/Abzorbaloff — Peter Kay
• Ursula Blake — Shirley Henderson
• Mr Skinner — Simon Greenall
• Bridget — Moya Brady
• Bliss — Kathryn Drysdale
• The Hoix — Paul Kasey
• Mrs Croot — Bella Emberg

Cast notes

• Totally Doctor Who presenter Barney Harwood appears as an extra in this episode wearing a red hat, when Elton asks an old lady where Rose lives, and also during the flashback to when Elton sees the spaceship crashing into Big Ben from "Aliens of London".
• Russell T. Davies cast Peter Kay after Kay wrote a fan letter to him in praise of the new series. Kay was originally to play Elton Pope, but he felt that the role was too similar to roles he had played in the past, such as Eric Gartside in Coronation Street. Consequently, he got back in contact with Davies and asked if he could stretch himself as an actor and play the villain, and Kay was cast as Victor Kennedy/the Abzorbaloff.
• Actress Bella Emberg previously had uncredited roles in the Third Doctor serials Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Time Warrior.
• This is not the only time Shirley Henderson and David Tennant have appeared together. They both were in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (film) as Moaning Myrtle and Barty Crouch Jr respectively.

Continuity

• This episode is set two years after "Rose" and new footage of the Auton attack is seen here featuring Elton Pope. New footage featuring the Slitheens' ship from "Aliens of London" and the Sycorax ship from "The Christmas Invasion" is also included in this episode, again shown through Elton's experience of these events. In the episode commentary, Russell T. Davies notes that in an early draft, Elton had been witness to more events in Doctor Who history: in this draft, Elton's third birthday party was evacuated because of the Dalek invasion of Shoreditch, his mother was killed by a plastic daffodil, and Elton also witnessed the Loch Ness Monster rising from the Thames. Prior to the revival of Doctor Who, Davies had considered pitching this story idea to Doctor Who Magazine as a comics story. Davies had also considered making the viewpoint character of the story a woman but felt that he had had already had enough focus on female guest characters that season.
• During the Auton attack scene, the logo of Henrik's department store can be seen both on Elton's shopping bags and on the taxi which almost runs him over. Henrik's was the department store at which Rose used to work, which was destroyed at the beginning of "Rose", but was seen to have re-opened in "The Christmas Invasion".
• Jackie informs Elton that her friend Mickey is now gone, a reference to his departure in "The Age of Steel".
• The Doctor once again says, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," this time to Elton, regarding his inability to save his mother. The words have been used before in the 2006 series, by the Doctor in "New Earth", "The Age of Steel" and "The Impossible Planet"; by the President in "Rise of the Cybermen"; and Mr Magpie in "The Idiot's Lantern".
• Victor Kennedy's pictures of Rose include stills from the episode "Rose", as well as two of her entering 10 Downing Street in "Aliens of London" in which the Ninth Doctor can also be seen, albeit from behind. Bridget also mentions "different forms of the Doctor, which come and go", referring to previous incarnations.
• Kennedy mentions that "Rose's Torchwood files are strangely lacking" because they were corrupted by the "Bad Wolf virus". "Torchwood" is a recurring phrase in the 2006 series, as "Bad Wolf" was the previous year; this is the first explicit mention of "Bad Wolf" in the 2006 series. This line was included to establish why Torchwood do not know what Rose looks like in "Army of Ghosts", as explained by writer Russell T. Davies on the MP3 audio commentary available on the bbc.co.uk website for that episode.
• The copy of The Daily Telegraph that the Abzorbaloff reads has the headline "Saxon leads polls with 64 per cent". Russell T. Davies observes this in the commentary, saying, "Look at the headline. That's all I'm going to say." This is the first appearance of the name of "Mr Saxon", a feature of a story arc in Season Three of the series.
• Rose remarks on the Abzorbaloff's resemblance to the Slitheen — the Abzorbaloff states that he comes from Clom, the sister planet of the Slitheen homeworld Raxacoricofallapatorius.
• In "Time Crash", The Fifth Doctor mentions LINDA.

Production

• According to Doctor Who Magazine #370, this episode had the working title of "I Love the Doctor". In the episode commentary/podcast, Russell T. Davies states that the story originally began as an idea for a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.
• Unlike the vast majority of Doctor Who stories, "Love & Monsters" has only nominal appearances by the TARDIS crew.
• The Elton character was originally supposed to be a woman, but Davies changed it to a man, since such strong female characters as Lady Cassandra and Sarah Jane Smith were already in the series.
• The creature that Elton sees at the start of the episode is credited as the "Hoix". Davies notes in the commentary that the name was invented only after the episode was shot and a name was needed for the credits.
• The Abzorbaloff is a monster designed by nine-year-old William Grantham of Colchester, Essex for a "Design a Doctor Who Monster" competition held by Blue Peter. The first prize for the competition was to have the monster appear in an episode of Doctor Who. William was (according to Phil Collinson in the commentary) disappointed with the rendering of the monster because he had envisaged it being "the size of a double-decker bus."

Trivia

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• Elton John appears in a video clip on Elton Pope's video diary.
• The scene where Elton watches the Doctor and Rose flee from the Hoix has them running back and forth through a series of doors lining a long hallway, a set-piece characteristic of classic cartoon or comedy series such as Scooby-Doo, The Benny Hill Show, or in the Three Stooges shorts. Later in the episode, Elton remembers the LINDA band playing an ELO song perfectly, where earlier we had seen their actual far-from-perfect version. In the commentary it is noted his memory may not be entirely reliable, so whether events in the episode happened the way he remembers them is debatable.
• As noted in the commentary, the acronym "LINDA" was previously used on the British children's television programme show Why Don't You?, which featured the "Liverpool Investigation 'n' Detective Agency". Russell T. Davies worked on the series for some years.
• Elton, a fan of Jeff Lynne and his Electric Light Orchestra, dances to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", which is later used as incidental music. LINDA also perform ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down", and the song "Turn to Stone" appears during the montage of Elton in Jackie's house.
• Kennedy uses an Apple PowerBook G4 to display clips of the Doctor and Rose.
• Jackie plays Il Divo's Spanish cover of "Unbreak My Heart" when she is trying to seduce Elton.
• The Stephen King quote which Elton mentions ("Salvation and damnation are the same thing") is from The Green Mile. The actual quote reads: "Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation."

Broadcast and DVD release

• The overnight viewing figures for this episode's original broadcast were 6.22 million, a 38.3% audience share and the highest rated programme of the day. Its final audience figure was 6.66 million making it the 15th most watched programme of the week.
• This episode was released in the UK, together with "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit", as a basic DVD with no special features on 7 August 2006.
• The title of the French version of this episode is simply "L.I.N.D.A.".

References

1. Andrew Pixley (2006). "Love & Monsters". Doctor Who Special Edition #14 — The Doctor Who Companion: Series Two: 81.
2. Lyon, Shaun (2006-06-28). "Love & Monsters Final Ratings". Outpost Gallifrey News Page. Retrieved 2006-07-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
3. Elliot, Benjamin (October 18, 2006). "This Week in Doctor Who". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• TARDISODE 10
• "Find me that Girl" - episode trailer
• Episode commentary by Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson, and Susie Liggat
• "Love & Monsters" episode guide on the BBC website
• "Love & Monsters" episode homepage
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• Template:Tv.com episode

Reviews

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• Love & Monsters review at Strange Horizons

• Misplaced Pages articles with plot summary needing attention from December 2007
• Articles with trivia sections from January 2008
• Tenth Doctor episodes