Partners in Crime (TV story)

"The fat just walks away."

- The Doctor

Synopsis
Donna Noble is determined to find the Doctor again – even if it means braving the villainous Miss Foster. But when the alien threat escalates out of control, can Donna find her Time Lord before the march of the Adipose begins at last?

Plot
Donna Noble is walking down a street on the way to Adipose Industries, as she is investigating them on their weight-loss drug. The Doctor is doing the same but they fail to see each other as they do different things at the same time. They are in a conference room posing as Health and Safety when a reporter starts asking Miss Foster what this drug does; she fails to tell her and the meeting ends. The Doctor and Donna ask different employees for customer addresses.

Donna goes to a woman named Stacey Campbell's house while the Doctor goes and interviews a man called Roger Davey about his use of the drug. Roger tells the Doctor that his burglar alarm keeps going off at 1:10 AM. While Donna is talking to Stacey, Stacey tells Donna that she has lost a lot of weight and can't wait to dump her boyfriend. So Stacey goes to the bathroom only to find that her stomach starts moving and a tubby piece of fat comes out her body. Donna while down stairs is fiddling with a capsule-like necklace with the end shaped like a pill. As she turns it another fat thing comes out of Stacey's body. As Donna plays with the necklace more of Stacey's body explodes into more pieces of fat and she dies. Donna breaks into her bathroom and as an Adipose waves to her it jumps out the window. Miss Foster senses it via her computer and she scans the CCTV with her henchmen only to find a reporter from earlier called Penny Carter. The Doctor senses what has happened to Stacey and runs up to her house only to find nothing there. He then runs off to the TARDIS. Donna cancels Stacey's cab and goes home only to find her mother nagging at her so she goes off to see her grandfather Wilfred Mott who is gazing at the stars at the allotments. He says to Donna to find the right man as she talks to him about missing the trip with the Doctor. The Doctor is in the TARDIS and talks to himself about the Adipose (He is thinking he has got Martha with him only he realises that he does not).

The next day Donna takes the car to Adipose industries only to be criticized by her mother because she needs the car for going out. Donna hides in the toilets and the Doctor hides to investigate. All day Miss Foster is looking for Penny Carter who is hiding in the same toilets too. Donna thinks that she has been caught but it turns out to be Penny, who is then tied up. Donna follows only to find that the Doctor is also watching Miss Foster. He spots Donna watching through the door and mouths to her and she mouths back. They are both unaware that they are being watched by Miss Foster and everybody in her office. Miss Foster asks her two henchmen to get them and they chase after Donna, but she runs up to the roof. Handily for the Doctor he was on a pulley for the window cleaner; he pulls himself up to rescue Donna. As they get in, he locks the roping device with the sonic screwdriver so that he can get down. But to his surprise Miss Foster has a sonic pen with which she sends them down flying as she cuts the rope with it. Donna almost falls but the Doctor climbs up a rope and squeezes into a window. He then goes down a floor to Miss Foster's office, only to find that Penny is locked in there. He opens her window with his screw driver and saves Donna.



Miss Foster then uses a device (possibly another sonic pen) which opens a sliding door to reveal an Inducer, which along with her capsule helps her to begin the birthing process of one million Adipose from her customers' bodies. Meanwhile the Doctor breaks into a secondary Inducer, hidden inside a cupboard, with his Sonic screwdriver. There he manages to temporarily disable the process by unscrewing his capsule and attaching it to a wire connected to the Inducer. While he is doing this Donna tells the Doctor that he looks older. She also asks if he's still on his own; he replies that he had this friend called Martha but he ruined her life but she's fine, he also says that Rose is still missing. Miss Foster notices he has tried to hack into the system and increases the power to double strength on her Inducer. The Doctor realises he can't save them and is really upset, that is until Donna pulls out her capsule from her jacket pocket and the people's lives are saved. Miss Foster's plans have failed but she says that one million Adipose will have to do and calls upon the Nursery Ship to take them home. The Doctor listens to an incoming signal from the Adiposian family that identifies Matron Cofelia as a criminal for breeding on a Level 5 planet. The Doctor runs onto the rooftop to try and save her and Donna suggests blowing up the Adipose, but the Doctor replies that they're just children and can't help where they came from. Donna says that Martha must have done him good and hes says, with arrogance, that she fancied him. He offers Matron a hand but she refuses just as the tractor beam switches off and she falls to her death; the Adipose leave the planet and zoom off into space.

The Doctor bins the sonic pen and Donna drags him off to the TARDIS. Once there she unpacks her belongings from her car (which is just a few feet from the TARDIS). The Doctor warns that it is a hard life but accepts her saying that he just wants a mate; she takes this literally and says that he is just an alien streak of nothing. Donna then takes her car keys and puts them in a bin on Brook street, 30 yards from the corner. She then tells a girl with blonde hair to tell her mother: 'that bin there'; it turns out the girl is Rose Tyler and she has just missed the Doctor hoping to catch him at the event. She walks off down the street and disappears. Donna tells the Doctor to materialise two and a half miles "that way" to say goodbye to her Grandad; he cheers her on.

Cast

 * The Doctor - David Tennant
 * Donna Noble - Catherine Tate
 * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
 * Miss Foster - Sarah Lancashire
 * Sylvia Noble- Jacqueline King
 * Wilfred Mott- Bernard Cribbins
 * Penny Carter - Verona Joseph
 * Stacey Campbell - Jessica Gunning
 * Roger Davey - Martin Ball
 * Craig Staniland - Rachid Sabitri
 * Claire Pope - Chandra Ruegg
 * Suzette Chambers - Sue Kelvin
 * Taxi driver - Jonathon Stratt

Story notes

 * This episode is dedicated to Howard Attfield, who passed away shortly before he was to resume playing Donna's father, Geoff Noble.
 * This episode is broadcast much earlier at a 6.20 timeslot. It is also fifty minutes long rather than forty five, as the TV listings state it is from 6.20 to 7.10.
 * A certain shot shows an army of Adipose in the streets of London, this was extremely complex and took the CGI team (The Mill) more time than most shots used for the series to complete. They used the software call Massive, which was created and used by Weta Digital, who created all CGI for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
 * A scene was shown the day before airing on GMTV, showing The Doctor and Donna Noble on a suspended window washing platform breaking in while Miss Foster cuts the cable with her sonic pen.
 * Pointing a sonic screwdriver and a sonic pen at one another creates a sonic feedback in the surrounding area.
 * The Doctor says he's met 'cat people' before, he may be referring to the cat people he met in New Earth and Gridlock, or during Survival.
 * In The Fires of Pompeii the planet Pyrovillia also has gone missing similiar to the Adipose Breeding Planet.Important in The Stolen Earth

Ratings

 * 9.1 million viewers

Myths and rumours

 * It was rumoured that Miss Foster was The Rani. (This turned out to be false)
 * Rose's fading away at the end of the episode indicates that there may be an unstable linkway between Earth and Pete's World. The way Rose fades away echoes that of the guerillas and the Ogrons in Day of the Daleks where those who came from the 22nd century faded away and returned to their own century a short time after arriving in the 20th century. It is also similar to the way the Doctor fades away at the end of Doomsday. While she disappears a short sound similiar to the Tardis dematerialising is played.
 * Due to their appearance, the Adipose are said to be the cloning incubation of the Sontarans.
 * In The Fires of Pompeii the planet Pyrovillia also has gone missing similiar to the Adipose Breeding Planet. This was initially the subject of rumour as one of the possible arcs for Series 4 (which turned out to be correct).
 * The initial appearance of Rose, coupled with later references, led to speculation as to whether this really was the Rose last seen in Doomsday and not an alternate timeline/dimension version, or an impostor; the possibility of her being a Time Lord in disguise (much as Romana took the form of Astra in Destiny of the Daleks) was also floated.

Filming Locations
to be added

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * When Miss Foster cuts the first cable, she is clearly cutting the one on the Doctor's side of the cradle. However, it is the cable on Donna's side that snaps.
 * The building Miss Foster stands in front of when she is giving the speech is the same building Jack got pushed off by John in the Torchwood episode Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Partners in Crime plays in London, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang in Cardiff. (Which is common as both shows have a similar nature and design team!)
 * The character Stacey Campbell is credited as Stacey Harris.
 * The credit, VFX Supervisor - Barney Curnow, should read: On Set VFX Supervisor - Tim Barter.
 * After the Doctor has zapped the guards with the electricity when they come out the cuboard their dead bodies have gone.

Continuity

 * Donna declined the Doctor's offer to travel with him in The Runaway Bride.
 * Wilfred Mott is Donna's Grandfather who appeared in Voyage of the Damned as the Newspaper dealer.
 * This is the first episode since Doomsday that Rose Tyler has appeared as a present character.
 * The effect of pointing the sonic pen and sonic screwdriver at one another is remarkably similar to an effect of a sonic device in TW: Fragments.
 * First reference to disappearing bees. Although intended as a storyline reference, this is actually a real-life concern in the early 21st Century.
 * The Tenth Doctor novel The Eyeless by Lance Parkin presumably takes place between this episode and the previous episode, Voyage of the Damned.

DVD and other releases

 * It will be released on the Series 4 boxset DVD in November 2008.
 * It was released on vanilla DVD Series 4 Volume 1 along with The Fires of Pompeii and Planet of the Ood on June 2nd 2008