The Day Glasgow Stood Still is a variation on the classic 1951 film, The Day The Earth Stood Still, with a bit of Independence Day thrown in. The arrival of a huge space ship over Glasgow causes panic, evacuation, suicide. Even the Torchwood team aren’t entirely sure what to do. Indeed, with absolutely no information about the ship or its crew, they don’t even know what they SHOULD do. The first question is whether the aliens are hostile. If so, they quickly realise they have only one desperate option – a weapon of mass destruction last seen destroying the Sycorax ship at Christmas, 2005. Jack and Owen share the same qualms about that.

Of course, it is a variation on a familiar trope. Two well known films using the aliens coming to Earth trope have already been quoted. You can also add the benign aliens like Starman and ET, or the refugees of Alien Nation, and the hostile ones like the Visitors in V. It’s been done any number of different ways. My take on it was to have no explanation at all of why the ship was over Glasgow – or at least not in the main part of the story.

It works ok as it is, leaving the question open. But after writing it, I thought of three good alternative endings using three different visitors to the Hub. I left it to the readers to decide which they liked best. Generally, the one The Doctor explained seems most popular.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still_%281951_film%29