Rose asks the Doctor if he can take her to see the Mona Lisa, and the Doctor thus takes her to the Oriel, a trans-dimensional art gallery built on Earth in the 37th century. The Doctor turns down a guide’s offer of headphones that will provide him with commentary on the exhibits, but after encountering a flamboyant alien artist named Cazkelf the Transcendent, Rose decides to pick up a headset to find out more about him. When the Doctor next turns around, Rose is missing, as have most of the humans in the building. The Doctor realises that they’ve been hypnotised by their headsets, and tracks them down to Cazkelf’s gallery, where the artist is using the headsets to drain their mental energy into a psychic transmitter in the centre of the room. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to nullify the effect of the headsets, and to Cazkelf’s distress, the rescue party he was expecting fails to arrive. Cazkelf explains that he crashed on Earth some time ago while wandering the galaxy, and that he built the Oriel as a psychic amplifier in order to boost the signal from his ship’s distress beacon. The Doctor agrees to take Cazkelf back home in the TARDIS, but when they arrive they find that his home planet has been destroyed, either by war or natural disaster. Shattered, Cazkelf returns to the Oriel to face the consequences of his actions, only to find his victims showering him with praise, believing that they’ve all been part of a masterpiece of performance art. Cazkelf decides to make a new life for himself on Earth, using his artistic talent to create a memorial to his lost species.

Time-placement: Rose has the same hairstyle than in Dalek. Since she wears her hairs differently in The Long Game and the story can't be set between the two, we go for a placement just before Dalek.

A woman on a cruise ship throws her wedding ring off into a protoplasmic sea. A red claw rises from the plasm, part of the sea, reaching for her. The 9th Doctor and Rose are on a yacht in a purple/red sea, the same one from the prolog. The Doctor is in a lounge chair, telling Rose when he promises her a nice place and it ends up being a rock, she complains, just as she is now when he promised her a rock and they end up in a nice place. Rose is in a space suit, all rocked up, ready for a proper alien planet, wanting to do the giant leap for mankind thing. By early 22nd century, he tells her, Mars has been cleaned up and turned into a leisure planet for the rich to sail about. He wants a grapefruit juice. There is artificial air. He adjusts it with a click for a mild breeze. The Cruise Lines had to redden the seas up, he thinks it mostly cranberry juice. No one is about the ship though and someone asks them not to move or they will shoot. Alvar's wife, Susannah, is thought of as having committed suicide by jumping ship. The woman holding Rose and the Doctor refuses to believe the psychic paper: it says he is her long lost uncle from Brazil. This is a family ship. The woman is ex wife number 7. The bride comes up the steps and needs help. Rose stays with her while 7 takes the Doctor to meet the other doctors—Latimer who makes the heart beat faster annd Godwin, who slows the heart down. And another ex wife and financial advisor. The Doctor says he is a doctor of everything they can imagine and more besides. The patient is Chambers and he is nearly 144 and he tells them to throw the Doctor out to the sea! On deck, Rose stops the bride from jumping off again but the bride splits into red protoplasm! 7 smacks the Doctor overboard.

In the red sea the Doctor sees himself, "Fantastic!" Red protoplasm smacks the nurse woman taking Rose into custody but then vanishes. This nurse is wife 14 and the bride was wife 19. 14 is called Vikki. She takes Rose to the Chambers chamber where an old wife tells them Alvar Chambers owns the air on Earth and its chemical constituents, lo nitrogen air, air with lime, and classic air, which is what they are enjoying now. The ship is surrounded by a bubble sealing the air in. The Doctor returns and tells them the sea sent him back and has something to say. They poisoned the air, coloured the sea, boiled away the rock and ash of a billion years. They let something out, something old and powerful. They had heard there was something that could replicate life in the sea, it is alive, the sea. The Doctor tells Vikki to give Chambers a kiss and when she reaches over, she turns to the red protoplasm. Rose is angry the Doctor knew this would happen. He orders them to stop the ship as it hurts the sea and orders them to their cabins, plug up the taps, the bath, anyplace water can get on board. Rose does not want to be around the Doctor since he let Vikki die to prove a point. The Doctor is not the Doctor, when Rose leaves he orders Chambers up and helps him knock the doctors down. In a mirror Rose sees her own reflection as she cannot believe the Doctor did what he did. The reflection changes into a monster—a giant mouth that leaps out and attacks her..

Rose recalls the Doctor telling her she could fill her life with work, sleep, or go anywhere with him. She tells him she has to look after this lump: Mickey. Rose looks at a bride picture. Someone appears to have left her…with a baby. She hears the TARDIS. TARDIS appears again in her living room and the Doctor pops out, "Did I mention it travels in time?" Rose tells him she cannot, she has a daughter now named Susannah. He says fantastic and offers that Rose just dump her. The Doctor tells them he won't face the life forms in the universe alone any longer…he won't. Rose won't go and he vanishes. Susannah is gone. The Doctor steadies Chambers and they go to see what wife 2 is doing in the engine room. If the ship stops completely they won't be able to start it again. Chambers or the thing in him tells 2 her husband never loved her. The Doctor destroys controls. 2 crawls into Alvar's opening jaw for him to eat her! At a grocery store, Rose asks the returned Doctor what he did with her daughter. He calls her companion 57, he gives his companions numbers. He is not sure what happened. She might have gotten married to an alien guard or stayed on some planet to lead some rebel group. Rose is older now and tells him her name was Susannah or was it Vikki? The Doctor says, "I think you need a Doctor." He asks her to be his number 58 but she spurns him. Wife 7 comes to Rose, her face strange since the host, the real woman, tried to smash the mirror to get free of the thing controlling her. The thing in 7 makes 7 start to strangle Rose. The Doctor is with Rose who is so old she needs a walker. He's trying to get her to come with him in time and space. She tells him to go to hell. She throws the walker at the window and it smashes. Suddenly they are in the TARDIS and the Doctor knew Rose would find him. This thing played a reflection of her life. Something in the sea is hungry in every reflective surface. It wants to be real. As of now it is unformed. He tells Rose to stop it before it spreads to the whole universe. Using the sonic screwdriver will interfere with it using the bubble around the ship. The Doctor is inside the reflection. Rose breaks free and the others attack her on deck. Despite the fake Doctor trying to use her love for the Doctor against her, Rose trusts the Doctor and his plan. The thing tells her sometimes they are one,sometimes many, sometimes they don't exist at all. The thing in the fake Doctor tells Rose they kill people's bodies and get only an hour out of it . It tells rose to look deep into its eyes. Two Doctor Nines meet in a cartoon world with a cartoon squirrel. Rose falls through scenes of Vikki's birthday and the other wives. A little cat called Fuzzy, a gun toting sociopath. Susannah's grave stone. 7 asks Rose to put her back in her dreams. She liked it there. The others are all free, Susannah is a skeleton now and dead. She says her father lured them here after finding something in the sea that could replicate life. It broke down his body. Rose sees a neon sign that says Way Out. Even though some of the wives say the loved Alvar, they leave him. The Doctor tries to make a deal with the thing that looks like him that goes in to the TARDIS. He will give himself to it if it does not hurt anyone else. The Doctor uses the fact that the TARDIS is part of him to fool the thing that looks like him. Signs lead Rose and the others on.

The Doctor explains that the reflections depended on a stable image refracted through air so he got them into one body and change what the air was doing. They are still out there somewhere waiting…never alive…they canâan't be dead or killed. Maybe it means the human race will start treating Mars with a bit of respect. Poke things you don't understand you might get your fingers bit off. The Doctor gets the ship going. Chambers is gone. Rose tells the Doctor that poking at things they don't understand is all they ever do, she and him. "Yeah but we're good at it."

London 1500’s. There’s violence, death and disease. Watching it are two higher beings looking of a feast. They scour around until they find a sick man by the name of Robert Greene on his deathbed writing about Shakespeare, as he does it he curses. The beings contact Greene. They persuade him to join them 400 years into the future where he lands right in the middle of modern day London. Greene attempts to talk to the people but something puts them off him.

Meanwhile in the TARDIS, the Doctor notices something. The TARDIS is jolted around violently but the Doctor manages to get it under control again. As the TARDIS materialises, the locals oblivious, Greene runs off melting a bus stop on his way. Rose and the Doctor follow after him and Greene runs into a bookshop. He walks up to a shop assistant and enquires if there are any publications written by Robert Greene available. The assistant checks and then hands Greene a small book. Greene is annoyed that this is all the shop has of his works and then enquires about Shakespeare. The assistant then talks about Greene being responsible for everyone’s knowledge of Shakespeare and shows a whole shelf of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. The anger inside Greene grows as the beings look on when he just lashes out and destroys the bookshelf, just as the Doctor and Rose arrive. The Doctor picks up the book and it turns out to be a copy of Greene’s only successful play: Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Greene runs away.

The Doctor and Rose follow Robert Greene, who’s seeing to the destruction of London including a film premier of The Taming of the Shrew, which features a bunch of A-List Celebrities. After much more carnage the Doctor and Rose catch up with Greene. Greene is glowing with negative emotional energy. The Doctor walks up to Greene and orders the alien intelligence inside to come out. They comply and appearing are two grotesque aliens as the Doctor says “Well, take a look at THEM!”

Two alien beings have left Robert Greene’s body. The Doctor tells them to leave but they taunt him instead. They and Greene leave whilst the Doctor and Rose make for the TARDIS. The Doctor explains that the aliens are called Shadeys and the Time Lord defences put up against them are failing. The pair go back in time to London in 1592 where at a near by theatre Shakespeare is preparing for a performance of one of his plays. Rose and the Doctor leave the TARDIS, Rose in period costume. The Doctor stands outside the TARDIS whilst Rose goes after Shakespeare. Rose makes contact, after being assured by the Doctor if it were Marlowe he’d do the same for her! She initially is turned away but says she’s been sent by the Queen. Convinced, Shakespeare takes Rose back to his home, to Doctor telling Rose that it’d be easy.

Meanwhile to Doctor goes outside and as he quotes a bit from Richard III he’s dragged inside by a bunch of actors thinking he’s their Richard. However at Shakespeare’s house the bard realises the Queen isn’t waiting for him in there and attempts to chat Rose up instead. However this is short lived as the two discover Robert Greene to be waiting for them with the Shadeys. Greene attempts to destroy Shakespeare but Rose drags the playwright outside before anything happens.

The Doctor in the meantime is at the theatre playing King Richard III when Rose, William Shakespeare, Robert Greene and the Shadeys arrive. Shakespeare however attempts to remove the Doctor from the stage but the Doctor is more interested in confronting Greene, telling him that if he destroys Shakespeare the Shadeys will use the negative energy to destroy the world, and then he won’t be remembered at all. The Doctor continues attempting to persuade Greene but Shakespeare interrupts and has a go at Greene. Then however, the bard has to pulled away as Greene flares up again. Rose then walks up to Greene and talks to him. Once she finishes she walks away, Greene pausing for thought. Suddenly Greene banishes the two Shadeys away and he is returned to his original location.

Back at the Rose Theatre, Shakespeare is walking around and ranting whilst the time travellers return to the TARDIS. The Doctor contemplates on life and being forgotten when Rose tells him: “Nope. No way. Nobody’s EVER going to forget you!”