Story #168 - New Earth (2006)

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...

Story #158 - The End of the World (2005)

Harry -
If "Rose" confirmed to us that the Doctor, his companion(s) and the TARDIS could be brought back in the twenty-first century, then "The End of the World" confirmed to us that Doctor Who's production values could also be brought into the twenty-first century. 

Nowhere was that more evident than in the veritable creature cantina of characters who rolled out shortly after the Doctor and Rose landed on Platform One. 

"Representing the Forest of Cheam, we have trees, namely, Jabe, Lute and Coffa.

"From the solicitors Jolco and Jolco, we have the Moxx of Balhoon. 

"From Financial Family Seven, we have the Adherents of the Repeated Meme. 

"The inventors of Hypo-slip Travel Systems, the brothers Hop Pyleen. 

"Cal Spark Plug... Mister and Mrs Pakoo... The Ambassadors from the City State of Binding Light. 

"From the Silver Devastation, the sponsor of the main event, the Face of Boe. 

"And last but not least, our very special guest. Ladies and gentlemen, and trees and multiforms, consider the Earth below. In memory of this dying world, we call forth the last Human. The Lady Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen."

Take that, Star Wars and Star Trek! This collection of colourful characters has gathered on Platform One to witness the expansion of our sun, and the final destruction of the planet Earth. Oh my word but I love stories that hit you with incomprehensible measures of time. The Doctor and Rose have travelled to the year five billion!


Sarah -
We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? It’s the best collection of aliens since Mavic Chen’s council in "The Daleks’ Master Plan", but much less homespun.


Harry -
Now there's a crew that should make a comeback.


Sarah -
I was so happy to have Doctor Who take us through space and time right off the bat! It’s great fan service to those of us who needed reassurance that this was still proper Doctor Who, while not weighing the story down with continuity for new viewers.


Harry -
It's as if RTD spent 16 years plotting out how he'd bring it all back.


Sarah -
Probably longer than 16 years.

The episode continues immediately from the end of "Rose", as the Doctor invites Rose to choose how far into the future they want to go. They goad each other into going farther and farther in time, until they find themselves at the end of the world -- five billion years in the future.


Harry -
The year five billion!

So much has changed, yet so much remains the same. This observation platform is available only to the rich and privileged, who paid their way to see the Earth's final moments. The Doctor and Rose join the party after he flashes the psychic paper on camera for the first time. (In my personal head canon, previous Doctors have used it to make their way into places with seemingly no resistance from others, like when the First Doctor waltzed right into WOTAN's headquarters to deal with the war machines.)


Sarah -
I’m comfortable with that retconning.


Harry -
After RTD shows us that class systems will persist to the Earth's final day, he then throws some conspiracy and greed into the mix as well. If it weren't for the characters with blue faces, the story would be as contemporary as anything.

But... people here have blue faces. And bug eyes. And cuttings of their grandfather -- who was a tree -- to give as gifts. Rose becomes overwhelmed by the sight of Cassandra and the other guests, and dashes from the room to take it all in.

It's easy from this side of the screen to think "oh wow, it would be cool as hell to be there," but I'd probably feel the same unease if I were in Rose's place.

I'd also feel extreme unease if I noticed the tiny spider droids spreading out across the platform. I cannot stand spiders.


Sarah -
I appreciate Rose’s reaction, which I think is completely appropriate in this situation. It’s a lot to take in. Still, even in her distress, Rose is defined by her compassion. Her kindness to Raffalo is above and beyond anything the blue-faced aliens have come to expect.

Sadly, Raffalo doesn’t survive long after her encounter with Rose. She’s the first victim of the spider droids, with the Steward as the second. It really doesn’t seem like a good idea for the sun shield decent to be a one-button control does it?


Harry -
The most important life preserving system on the entire platform is less complicated to operate than a Venetian blind. Crazy!


Sarah -
Things don’t much go better for Rose, who is knocked out by the Adherents after an altercation with wafer-thin Cassandra, who considers herself the only pure human alive. Rose wakes to find herself in a room with lowering sun shields -- and we know where that’s going.


Harry -
Facing imminent, spectacular death, Rose proves that the Doctor chose well. She keeps her cool as the walls above her sizzle and burn. Instead of panicking or screaming, she ducks for cover and encourages the Doctor to get a move on.


Sarah -
Meanwhile, the Doctor is on Jabe’s radar. She’s shocked to discover he’s a Time Lord and expresses her sympathies for his loss. It’s a touching moment and another hint about the Doctor’s backstory.


Harry -
Again, RTD dropping just enough information to leave the viewers wanting to know more.

Jabe is my favourite character in this story. Not only fascinating to look at, but also someone the Doctor respects and doesn't mess around with. No wonder, she sacrificed herself in the chamber of giant fans so that he could prevent the entire platform from being destroyed.


Sarah -
Jabe is awesome! Doctor Who has a long history of “guest companions” who make a strong mark in one story. Jabe is definitely a standout in that group. 

Not to obsess on the design elements too much, but I have to point out that it’s probably not a best practice in architecture to put the reset switch on the far side of a series of deadly fans.


Harry -
Worst space platform ever.

While Jabe's demise was tragic, Cassandra's was less so. Unmasked (?) as the conspirator who held everyone for ransom in order to finance her future operations, she shows absolutely no remorse until her skin begins to dry up. Even then, her outburst is entirely self-centred as she demands that someone moisturize her. When no one does, she literally bursts apart. So much for the last human.


Sarah -
Later, Cassandra! 

As we discussed with “Rose,” one of the key changes RTD made in bringing the series back was to put the companion at the center of the story. In "The End of the World", Rose’s story carries as much weight as the Doctor’s and both stories are fairly intense. 

Rose is confronted by mortality not only when she is nearly killed, but also when she witnesses the deaths of others. Mostly importantly, she realizes that her own mother is long dead, along with everyone else she knows -- and her entire planet. I love the moment when the Doctor takes her back to present-day Earth, reminding her that nothing lasts forever. It’s reassuring both for Rose and the viewer.

After the death of Jabe, the Doctor tells Rose about the destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords. It feels like she’s the first person he’s told about the Time War in this incarnation and the moment gives the Doctor a vulnerability that the previous Doctors never had. Like a good friend, Rose reminds him that he still has her, and offers to buy him some chips -- with only five billion years to go before the shops close.

Did you catch the first Bad Wolf reference when The Moxx of Balhoon commented to the Face of Boe that the situation on the platform was "the Bad Wolf scenario?"


Harry -
It was almost lost in all the noise, but I heard it.  On first broadcast in 2005 it probably went right by everyone watching.

So, in the first story of this new era, the groundwork was laid as we met Rose and the Doctor, saw the TARDIS and the sights of London. In the second story, the Doctor showed Rose just how far and how fast the TARDIS could travel, and oh what sights she could see. In the third story, we will get our first pseudo-historical, and a timely Christmassy one at that. Shall we see what this Mark Gatiss bloke has in store for us?

Best Line: "Stop wasting time, Time Lord."

Favourite Moment: the parade of alien guests entering the hall.

Lasting Image: the Doctor and Rose gazing down at the Earth as it burns.

7/10


Sarah -
Best Line: Rose walking over to confront Cassandra: “Quick word with Michael Jackson.” 

Favorite Moment: The Doctor navigating the fans.

Lasting Image: Cassandra.

7/10

Our marathon continues with Story #159: The Unquiet Dead...