The Doctor giggles, the energy tickling his hands. Tom's Dad appears behind him with his hands in his pockets, suspicious. "What's your game?" The Doctor spins around to look at him: "My... um... Snakes and Ladders? Quite good at... Squash. Reasonable..." Tom's not impressed. "I'm being facetious, aren't I? There's no call for it."

Rose and Kel walk along together as Kel reiterates how the cars keep dying, which is driving the council nuts: "They've given this street the works, renamed it... I've been tarmacking every pothole..." He's proud of the work he's done: "And all that is because that Olympic Torch comes right by the end of this close. Just down there. Everything's got to be perfect, ain't it? Only it ain't." The old lady, Maeve, appears and starts talking crazy: "It takes 'em when they're playing." Rose asks what it is, and just then Trish -- the little girl Chloe's mom -- looks out from her front door. Maeve keeps talking: "Danny, Jane, Dale...snatched in the blink of an eye." The Doctor arrives, backing away from Tom's very violently suspicious dad. "I'm a police officer! I've got a badge, and...and a police car! You don't have to get -- I can prove it! Just hold on..." While he fishes around for the psychic paper, Tom's dad explains that there has been a bunch of cops around all week, and that the Doctor's unlike them. Tom's dad has no idea. The Doctor points at Rose: "See, look! I've got a colleague! Lewis." She gives him a wink like the coppers do, I guess, and Tom's dad notes that Rose looks less like a cop than the Doctor does. "Training. New recruit. It was either that or hairdressing." She grins up at him instead of punching him in the balls. He finally finds and brandishes the psychic paper at Tom's dad: "Voilà!"

Trish joins the group, wondering about what the Doctor will be doing to investigate. "The police have knocked on every door," Maeve says. "No clues, no leads, nothing." Tom resists the idea of a snatcher, even though he's clearly freaked out, and says that kids just run off sometimes. "Saw it with my own eyes. Dale Hixon in your garden, playing with your Tommy, and then," poof, "Right in front of me, like he was never there! There's no need to look any further than this street. It's right here amongst us." The Doctor tries to chill everybody out, but one of the neighbors points at Kel: "There's been all sorts like him in this street, day and night." (This really is "The Idiot's Lantern," isn't it? I love this show, but in this case I think it's just a really obvious plot that two decent but maybe hurried or lazy writers decided on.) Kel protests that he's doing it to get ready for the Olympics, and Tom's dad notes that the council's certainly taking its time. The Empire of the Wolf. Kel speaks over the Doctor, calling these attacks slander, and everybody yells and freaks, and Maeve finally yells at everybody to stop pretending to be blind: "It's evil!" Trish gets worried. The neighbor who accused Kel doesn't believe in evil, but Kel's still pissed: "Oh no, you just believe in tarmackers with sackloads of kidnapped kiddies in their van..." Another neighbor says that's not what she's saying, and everybody screams and yells for just pages and pages. Finally, the Doctor shouts: "Fingers on lips!" He puts his finger to his lips and glares at all of them; one by one they obey. It's fairly funny. The Doctor: "In the last six days, three of your children have been stolen. Snatched out of thin air, right?" Maeve gestures for permission to speak: "Look around you. This was a safe street 'til it came. It's not a person; I'll say it if no one else will." Chloe watches, from above. "Maybe you're coppers, maybe you're not. I don't care who you are. Can you please help us?" Rose spots Chloe up in the window; down below, in the doorway, Trish sees Rose notice her daughter and quickly hurries inside.