Series 2 (2006)
Episode title: Tooth and ClawFeaturing: Tenth Doctor
Companions: Rose Tyler
First shown: 22nd April 2006
Related articles: Werewolf
Guide: In the Scottish highlands, a group of hooded monks travel to the Torchwood Estate, belonging to Sir Robert MacLeish, where the monk’s leader, Father Angelo, demands possession of the house. The steward refuses and is beaten into submission by Father Angelo, before the other monks remove their cassocks, revealing red robes and displaying incredible martial arts skills to make short work of the remaining men. They take over the house, chaining everyone up in the cellar and take a large crate down, to which its contents are shown to Lady Isobel MacLeish, to which she screams in horror. The Doctor and Rose decide to visit an Ian Dury concert in Sheffield, 1979, but accidently land in Scotland, 1879 instead, where the encounter a carriage carrying Queen Victoria, forced to travel by road after a fallen tree blocked the train line to Aberdeen, which is feared to be another assassination attempt on the Queen. Using his psychic paper, the Doctor passes himself off as Dr. James McCrimmon and the Queen invites him and Rose to join her on her travel to the Torchwood Estate, a favourite of her late consort, Prince Albert, where she intends to spend the night.
Upon arriving at the Torchwood Estate, Sir Robert receives Queen Victoria, and although hinting that all is not right at the Estate, the Queen insists on staying. The Queen’s men are ordered to guard the Estate, while Captain Reynolds carries a small leather box inside which he locks in a safe, while the captive in the cage cautions the other captives to be quiet. The Doctor, Rose, Queen Victoria and Sir Robert take a tour of Sir Robert’s father’s observatory where his home-made telescope is housed. The Doctor inspects the telescope and notes that it has far too many prisms, providing greater magnification than required for simple stargazing. The Queen mentions that Prince Albert was a good friend of Sir Robert’s father, who was a polymath, and that Albert was fascinated by local folklore about a wolf. Before Sir Robert can tell the tale however, Father Angelo interrupts and takes the guests downstairs for dinner, while Rose goes off to change into more appropriate clothing. Hiding in the cupboards is one of the servant girls who tells Rose what’s happened, while the disguised monks serve drugged drinks to the guards, knocking them unconscious. When Rose and the girl go to find the Doctor, they find an unconscious guard and they are promptly captured and chained in the cellar.
At dinner, Sir Robert tells his tale about the wolf, while Rose meets the captive in the cage in the cellar. She notes his alien eyes and asks which planet he’s from, which amuses the captive to find someone with intelligence. He says that the body he is in was taken by the monks about 10 miles from the Torchwood Estate, but that he comes from a much further distance. Rose offers to take the alien home, but he expresses his desire to infect Queen Victoria and migrate into her body to begin the Empire of the Wolf. Meanwhile, upstairs at dinner, Sir Robert finishes his tale, stating that his father believed the tale as fact, and tried to investigate but were always stopped by the Glen of St. Catherine. Sir Robert even goes as far to ask whether the monks had turned from God and begun to worship the wolf instead. The Doctor notices Father Angelo staring at the full moon out of the window and chanting in Latin “lupus magnus est, lupus fortis est, lupus deus est” (“The wolf is great, the wolf is strong, the wolf is God”) and realises that the enemy is in the Torchwood Estate.
The monks open the cellar doors and moonlight shines on the captive in the cage, triggering the transformation between human form and wolf form. Rose gets the other captives to pull on the chains to try and escape, while Sir Robert apologises to the Queen. The Doctor demands to know where Rose is but Father Angelo just keeps chanting so the Doctor and Sir Robert rush down to the cellar, while Captain Reynolds interrogates Angelo, but Angelo quickly disarms Reynolds. In the cellar, Rose and the prisoners are able to break their chains just as the Doctor and Sir Robert arrives and escape, while the Doctor watches the transformation before also leaving the cellar and sealing the door with his Sonic Screwdriver. Back in the dining room, the Queen correctly guesses that the monks made the tree fall on the train line, forcing her to the Torchwood Estate before shooting Father Angelo. The women attempt to leave through the kitchen while the Steward rallies his men, the wolf breaks through the sealed door but is forced back momentarily by rifle fire. The kitchen door however is locked, and the courtyard outside is guarded by monks with rifles. The Doctor urges the men to retreat upstairs, but the Steward reckons the wolf couldn’t survive the rifle shots, before the wolf returns and kills the Steward and his men.
The Doctor, Sir Robert, Rose, Queen Victoria and Captain Reynolds try to escape through the windows but the monks outside open fire on them, forcing them to retreat further. They make for the library as the easiest room to defend, but the wolf is gaining on them. Reynolds says he will buy them time and stands his ground, opening fire on the wolf but is still torn apart while the others barricade themselves in the library. Back in the kitchen, Lady Isobel notices that the monks are all wearing mistletoe round their necks and finds some left in the kitchen, which she orders the other women to gather up, just as the Doctor finds that the walls of the library are varnished with viscum album – oil of mistletoe. The wolf is either allergic to it or has been taught to be controlled by it by the monks and leaves the library alone as the Doctor realises that Sir Robot’s father knew about the mistletoe and evidently worked to protect the occupants. Sir Robert comments that they have no weapons to fight with but the Doctor says they have the greatest arsenal available, the library itself.
Lady Isobel and the other women cook up a broth using the mistletoe while the Doctor discovers information about an item falling to Earth in 1540 near the monastery, and ponders whether a single cell survived, passing from host to host growing in strength with each generation. Queen Victoria says she would rather die than become infected, but asks that they keep something more precious safe, the Kor-i-Noor diamond, which the Queen was taking to the royal jewellers to have resized. The Doctor notes that Prince Albert kept having the diamond cut down, believing it to be the wrong shape and size, before pondering whether Prince Albert, the diamond and Sir Robert’s father are all connected. He realises that Albert and Sir Robert’s father considered the story of the wolf to be real and built a trap for it, just as the wolf crashes through the skylight. They flee the library and head for the observatory upstairs, though the wolf gains on Rose before Lady Isobel appears and throws the broth of mistletoe into the wolfs face, forcing it to retreat. Sir Robert tells his wife to go back downstairs with the women while the others climb the stairs to the observatory, but the Doctor needs time to set the telescope up but the observatory has no way of keeping the wolf out as Sir Robert’s father intended the wolf to enter. Sir Robert chooses to sacrifice himself to give the Doctor time and so he can regain some honour after his betrayal to the Queen. The Doctor sets up the telescope, which is more than just a telescope; it is a light chamber used for magnifying the moons rays. The werewolf crashes through the doors of the observatory and prepares to attack Queen Victoria, but the Doctor throws the diamond onto the floor, catching the magnified light beam from the telescope and catching the wolf, suspending it in mid-air. The wolf form retreats back to human form, and the human begs the Doctor to increase the magnification and let it go. The Doctor does so, and the wolf fades away in the moonlight.
The Doctor notices the Queen’s wrist is bleeding and asks whether the wolf got her after all but she dismisses it as a splinter from the door when the wolf entered. The next morning, the Queen dubs the Doctor and Rose as Sir Doctor of TARDIS and Dame Rose of the Powell Estate, before banishing them from the empire. The Queen decides that they should not belong in her world. The duo walk back to the TARDIS where the Doctor remarks that no one knows where the royal family contracted haemophilia in the first place, and wonders if maybe it was the lycanthropy of the wolf instead. After the Doctor and Rose leave, Queen Victoria decrees to make an institution to investigate and defend the Empire against further alien encounters, which she decides to name Torchwood, after the Torchwood Estate.