Harry -
"So where we going?"
"Further than we've ever gone before."
...and the TARDIS lands on a futuristic, Earth-like planet. It's the year 5,000,000,023 and this is New Earth, built in a rush of nostalgia after the original was burnt to ashes by the sun. It's not a bad knock off. The grass smells like apples, but the architecture is familiar. This chill opening scene lasts long enough for the Doctor and Rose to sprawl out and watch flying cars pass overhead. Then the psychic paper acts up, with a message telling the Doctor that someone in a nearby hospital would like to see him.
Sarah -
The first visit to an alien planet in NuWho! I hadn't thought about how Earth-bound Series 1 is until I read this factoid. The alien planet, of course, is New Earth, so maybe it's not quite a proper alien planet.
It's also David Tennant's first full episode and he finally has the opportunity to do all the Doctory things he had probably been practicing for the previous thirty years. On a side note, doesn’t Tennant look impossibly young? He’s a baby Doctor here!
Harry -
And he delivers some familiar lines right away. His very first "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." as well as his very first "I'm the Doctor." We'll be hearing those again throughout this era.
Sarah -
New Earth is one of the episodes in Series 2 that I was especially looking forward to watching again. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my memories of the story.
Harry -
This story helped get me over my initial bad reaction to the Tenth Doctor. It was great that he was way more chill here.
It's a curious start to season two, in that "New Earth" is billed as a sequel to "The End of the World".
Sarah -
Which we’re reminded of when Rose mentions the events of “The End of the World” as their first date. Oh, ick. This is going to be a long season, Old Boy.
Harry -
Yes, it's the era of the Doctor having a girlfriend. Some folks love it, others don't and I'm sure we are both among the latter.
Rather than a sequel, I found "New Earth" to be more or less a repeat of "The End of the World". The Doctor takes Rose deep into the future to see the Earth as never imagined. We meet some new aliens, in this case a curious group of patients in hospital ward 26 and their caregivers, the Sisters of Plenitude. The Doctor will rage at their moral crimes later in the story, but the first villain to be revealed, almost immediately, is once again Cassandra, the "last human" from "The End of the World". It's all very samey.
Sarah -
I remember being amused by the return of Cassandra when this first aired. This time, I found her much less charming.
Harry -
I forgot how cruel and elitist she was. Back in a new slice of skin, Cassandra has designs on possessing a full human body again, and with the help of her clone servant Chip she lures Rose to her hiding place beneath the hospital. Rose got separated from the Doctor on the ground floor. The Doctor had gone up to ward 26 and Rose hopped in the next available elevator thinking to follow, only hers was programmed to descend. After an amusing disinfectant shower scene, our friends emerge.
Sarah -
The shower scene is memorable. Rose is startled by the spray and starts feeling the walls for an off button. By the end, she’s enjoying the dry-off. The Doctor, meanwhile, takes it all in stride.
Harry -
The Doctor observes several patients who are near death, before finding the Face of Boe having a nap. One of the feline nurses is keeping him company and she shares some legends about her patient with the Doctor: how he has lived hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, waiting to impart his final secret to a lone wanderer. Gee, emotes the Doctor, that could be me!
Sarah -
If anyone should have his disembodied head popped into a tank, it’s the Tenth Doctor -- the Lonely God.
Harry -
Meanwhile, Rose comes face to flesh with Cassandra, and is tricked into stepping through a device that allows Cassandra to take over her body.
Sarah -
Apparently, Billie Piper asked RTD to let her do some comedy after all the heavy drama of Series 1, which leads us to the body swapping. Piper gives a great performance as Cassandra-in-Rose’s-body, but it’s at the expense of Rose. Cassandra playing with Rose’s body (Oh, baby, it's like living inside a bouncy castle!) is really creepy. It feels like Rose is being violated the whole time Cassandra is inside. And don’t even get me started on the kiss.
Harry -
"Goodbye trampoline and hello blondie!" Cassandra's swap into the body of a "chav" was played for humour, but it was another example of her selfishly exploiting people to satisfy her own ego and self-image. She meets up with the Doctor, who has discovered that the previously incurable patients are experiencing miraculous recoveries. They go down to the intensive care unit deep below the hospital. There, they discover thousands of pods containing infected human bodies -- test subjects for the Sisters of Plenitude. "Lab rats," the Doctor fumes, disgusted to learn that the miracle cures upstairs are coming at the expense of so many human lives.
There's a lot of rampant misuse of human bodies in this story, whether it's the hospital creating and destroying lives on a mass scale, to Cassandra kidnapping someone else's body.
Sarah -
The nurse’s decision to incinerate the conscious human in the pod is horrifying. The pod people are terrifying, but the nurses deserve everything that happens to them.
Harry -
Based on her behaviour at the pods, the Doctor sees that something is wrong with Rose.
Sarah -
I love the moment when the Doctor confronts the cat nurses about what has happened to Rose. Up until then, he’s played along with Cassandra’s game, not knowing with whom he’s dealing. He catches her out because Rose would have cared about the humans in the pods.
Harry -
Cassandra fesses up, and shoots over into his body. Cue another comedic body swap.
Sarah -
The body swapping got old really, really fast.
Harry -
This time, Tennant gets to play Cassandra for laughs. While that's going on, the pod people break loose and begin a zombie-like rampage, killing anyone with their touch. It got a bit tedious as our heroes fled for safety and Cassandra kept jumping between Rose and the Doctor's bodies.
Sarah -
SO tedious and overindulgent. Yes, we get it, they’re talented actors. Move the story along, already.
Harry -
It got worse when the Doctor realized that just by mixing all the different kinds of medicines together, he would create a miracle cure that would expel all the illnesses from the infected humans. Sure! That's how it works! If they hadn't spent so much time on having Cassandra jumping between bodies, we might have had a more credible solution to the story.
Sarah -
What a crap, hand-wavey solution.
Harry -
Medicines don't work that way, dammit!
Anyway, everyone's cured, huzzah! The Doctor pops up to see the Face of Boe again. Now awake and seemingly cheerful, the Face tells the Doctor that he will reveal to him a great secret... some other day. Okay then!
Sarah -
What the WHAT? What a fucking pointless story. It can’t seem to decide if it’s a serious story about medical ethics or a wacky body-swapping romp. What a mess.
Harry -
Time to sort out Cassandra. At first, she refuses to back down, but when Chip-of-the-weak-heart-and-short-lifespan collapses, she enters his body to live out her final few minutes. Strangely, the Doctor takes her back in time to a party, at a time before her surgical procedures ran out of control. There, Chip-Cassandra tells Human-Cassandra that she's beautiful -- a final act of self-consumed love before dying.
I guess because Chip-Cassandra was in a different body, the Blinovitch Limitation Effect did not occur. And so the story ends without a bang, just one more death, and the Doctor and Rose quietly slipping away.
Sarah -
Why, after all she’s done, would the Doctor show mercy towards Cassandra? She’s an absolute monster and doesn’t deserve this moment. At least the story is mercifully over.
Harry -
Yeah, that was so weak.
Sarah -
Best Line: The Face of Boe: “There are better things to do today. Dying can wait.”
Favorite Moment: The Duke of Manhattan's assistant issuing disclaimers after his every statement.
Lasting Image: The cat nurses.
4/10
Harry -
Best Line:
CASSANDRA-ROSE: "You're not exactly Nuns with Guns. You're not even armed."
NURSE CASP: "Who needs arms when we have claws?"
Favourite Moment: the disinfectant showers.
Lasting Image: Rose and the Doctor gazing at New New New New (etc.) New York.
6/10
Our marathon continues with Story #169: Tooth and Claw...
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