Revisiting Doctor Who – Series 2, Episode 1 – New Earth
The Doctor paces
around the TARDIS, pressing buttons and pulling levers. Rose bids Jackie and
Mickey goodbye, ready to leave on another adventure, further than they’ve ever
been before…
Cue title sequence…
They arrive in the
year 5,000,000,023 in the galaxy M-87, at New Earth. Cars are flying around,
and the landscape is frankly bloody amazing – I wish we had a futuristic
landscape like this nowadays, and ‘apple grass’ that smelt amazing, rather than
of cow poo. They link arms, look into each other’s arms, and tell each other
how much they love travelling together, and once we’ve wiped up the vomit
that’s just come out at them being so lovey-dovey, we move on. They’re being
watched however by someone and their toy spider robot, and they seem excited
that Rose is ‘pure-blood’.
The Doctor explains
that New Earth was founded after the original Earth was destroyed in The
End of the World in Series 1. They’re in
the city of New New York (technically the 15th of the name). Being
observed again, we hear someone who sounds awfully like Casandra from the same
episode...It IS Cassandra! I thought she’d popped? Anyway, The Doctor had a message on his
psychic paper asking him to come to ‘Ward 26’, so they’re off to the local
hospital. It appears to be full of cat people doctors, which understandably
shocks Rose, but The Doctor tells her not to stare, as her own human-pink and
yellow person will probably look strange to them. He gets into a lift to Ward
26, but Rose is too late and has to get into the adjoining one – the strange
guy helping Cassandra has control though, so The Doctor heads up, whilst she
heads down. The disinfection process that The Doctor tries to warn Rose about
takes her a bit by surprise though, blasting water at her, before drying her
off. I HATE being wet. That would be HELL for me.
Rose arrives in the
basement, only to bump into the creepy guy helping Cassandra, who says in his
best creepy voice, ‘The human child is clean’. He tells her to follow him, so
she picks up a metal weapon before doing so, which is a good move I’d expect.
The Doctor makes it to
Ward 26, lamenting the lack of a shop, but smiling when he realises that it was
the Face of Boe who called for him. Although he’s dying of old age, so there’s
no cure. Apparently he’s thousands, or even millions of years old.
Rose enters a room
where an old film is playing of a party with a lady who Rose recognises as a
younger Cassandra, who it turns out is just behind her, with her helper Gollum
Chip. She still needs moisturising.
At this point, I'd like to moan about how I'd spent another hour and a half writing up the majority of the rest of this review, only for what I'd typed not to save and I lost the entire bloody lot. However, I've noticed that my reviews seem to be getting longer and longer, and surely can't be much fun for anyone to read, and if you're anything like me it's probably the comments below the recap of the storyline that you're actually interested in, so from now on I'm going to try and shorten the recap down considerable. With that in mind, here's the rest of the recap, in very short form as I still can't find the energy to do it in detail:
Cassandra puts her mind into Rose's body, which comes across as bizarrely erotic due to Billie Piper's posh accent (or is that just me?). The doctor suspects something but doesn't realise that it's Cassandra. When they investigate the strange fact that illnesses that shouldn't be curable yet are being cured, they go in search of the reason, heading into a secret part of the hospital, where the secret is revealed - there are thousands upon thousands of human bodies kept in pods, grown specifically to be infected with every single disease, so that they can come up with the cure quickly. When The Doctor confronts some of the cat doctors, they claim that they are doing it for good, but The Doctor orders them all to be shut down, and also wants to know what they've done with Rose. Cassandra reveals herself at this point, knocking out The Doctor and placing him in a pod, but when the cat people threaten her she releases all the patients. Bye bye all cat doctors in the vicinity.
And that's where I got up to, so back on with the show.
The Doctor and Rose/Cassandra flee, and Cassandra decides that this would be a great time to try being The Doctor, freeing Rose and taking over his consciousness, in what must be one the greatest camp performances in science-fiction history. They flee up an escape shaft, as the plague victims flood the hospital. Swapping back and forth between Rose and The Doctor, she eventually has to get inside a plague victim to aid the escape, getting a hint of how lonely they are. When they finally make it back into the main hospital, it looks like the 'healthy' patients are going to try to break quarantine, so The Doctor and Rose/Cassandra flee down the lift shaft with a load of medicine bags. At the bottom they make a medicine cocktail, and then start the lift disinfection process using it, soaking them all with the antidote to their ills, which spreads amongst them, curing everyone. The Doctor's pretty excited that he got to play at being a doctor. I just can't help but wonder why he didn't change into dry clothes immediately.
Before they leave New Earth, The Face of Boe promises to meet The Doctor one last time and tell his secret then. There's also the matter of Cassandra being in Rose's body still. Cassandra leaves Rose to be in Chip's body, but as he only has a half-life, his body begins to fail. Cassandra/Chip refuses any extra medical aid, saying it's time that she died, and as one last act of kindness The Doctor taken her/him back to a party that she attended in her younger days, when she wasn't a sheet of skin. Cassandra tells her younger self how beautiful she looks, before dying. The Doctor and Rose leave in silence.
At this point, I'd like to moan about how I'd spent another hour and a half writing up the majority of the rest of this review, only for what I'd typed not to save and I lost the entire bloody lot. However, I've noticed that my reviews seem to be getting longer and longer, and surely can't be much fun for anyone to read, and if you're anything like me it's probably the comments below the recap of the storyline that you're actually interested in, so from now on I'm going to try and shorten the recap down considerable. With that in mind, here's the rest of the recap, in very short form as I still can't find the energy to do it in detail:
Cassandra puts her mind into Rose's body, which comes across as bizarrely erotic due to Billie Piper's posh accent (or is that just me?). The doctor suspects something but doesn't realise that it's Cassandra. When they investigate the strange fact that illnesses that shouldn't be curable yet are being cured, they go in search of the reason, heading into a secret part of the hospital, where the secret is revealed - there are thousands upon thousands of human bodies kept in pods, grown specifically to be infected with every single disease, so that they can come up with the cure quickly. When The Doctor confronts some of the cat doctors, they claim that they are doing it for good, but The Doctor orders them all to be shut down, and also wants to know what they've done with Rose. Cassandra reveals herself at this point, knocking out The Doctor and placing him in a pod, but when the cat people threaten her she releases all the patients. Bye bye all cat doctors in the vicinity.
And that's where I got up to, so back on with the show.
The Doctor and Rose/Cassandra flee, and Cassandra decides that this would be a great time to try being The Doctor, freeing Rose and taking over his consciousness, in what must be one the greatest camp performances in science-fiction history. They flee up an escape shaft, as the plague victims flood the hospital. Swapping back and forth between Rose and The Doctor, she eventually has to get inside a plague victim to aid the escape, getting a hint of how lonely they are. When they finally make it back into the main hospital, it looks like the 'healthy' patients are going to try to break quarantine, so The Doctor and Rose/Cassandra flee down the lift shaft with a load of medicine bags. At the bottom they make a medicine cocktail, and then start the lift disinfection process using it, soaking them all with the antidote to their ills, which spreads amongst them, curing everyone. The Doctor's pretty excited that he got to play at being a doctor. I just can't help but wonder why he didn't change into dry clothes immediately.
Before they leave New Earth, The Face of Boe promises to meet The Doctor one last time and tell his secret then. There's also the matter of Cassandra being in Rose's body still. Cassandra leaves Rose to be in Chip's body, but as he only has a half-life, his body begins to fail. Cassandra/Chip refuses any extra medical aid, saying it's time that she died, and as one last act of kindness The Doctor taken her/him back to a party that she attended in her younger days, when she wasn't a sheet of skin. Cassandra tells her younger self how beautiful she looks, before dying. The Doctor and Rose leave in silence.
Series 2 is up and running, and it's an interesting start. Visiting New Earth far in the future is exciting, as is seeing all the aliens in the hospital. The main theme of the story, breeding humans to have supposedly never learned to feel anything so that others can be cured is one of those that can inspire great debate (think of the argument of whether animals should be tested on to develop cures for humans and it's basically the same thing), as you can understand where the cat doctors are coming from, although it's clear really that they're wrong. It's this, along with the chemistry between Tennant and Piper that is already developing marvellously, that make up the episode's strongest points.
The ending is a bit of a let down, to be honest. Cassandra goes from complaining and whining whilst in Rose's body, to sudden acceptance in Chip's, and it's a bit too abrupt a chance to be believable. Still, they had to end the episode somehow I suppose, but I've seen much stronger finishes. It's still a good episode, with excellent humour in places, but I'm not desperate to see it again soon.
In terms of the characters, when Rose links arms with The Doctor after their arrival on
New Earth, and tells him how much she loves travelling with him, it’s pretty
obvious again what her heart is really saying. His reply that he does too,
whilst less than obvious than Rose’s declaration, marks the start of the real
path down their romantic link, which will culminate in the finale, Doomsday. Well, it’ll truly reach a
conclusion in the Series 4 finale, Journey’s
End, but that’s the meta-Doctor, so doesn’t count here. It’s a
controversial move for many fans, having The Doctor and companion fall in love,
but it’s only with hindsight that we really recognise it on his part at this
point. Cassandra in The Doctor's body spells it out at one point, as she comments on how she knows that Rose thinks The Doctor is foxy.
The episode has some hilarious moments, as we've come to expect at this point. Having lost half of my review, I can't pinpoint all the classic moments, but there are plenty. What I can remember are little snippets, such as Cassandra (in The Doctor's body) declaring that 'no matter how difficult the situation, there is no need to shout! whilst they are being chased by the plague victims, or her horror as she realises 'I'm a chav!' when she first goes into Rose. It's classic modern Who humour, and it's carried on perfectly from Series 1. Both Piper and Tennant as Cassandra are wonderful. Whilst Piper plays her as being very seductive (seriously, there's something incredibly sexy about it all), Tennant goes for the giddy excitable side, which is a wonder to behold.
The episode has some hilarious moments, as we've come to expect at this point. Having lost half of my review, I can't pinpoint all the classic moments, but there are plenty. What I can remember are little snippets, such as Cassandra (in The Doctor's body) declaring that 'no matter how difficult the situation, there is no need to shout! whilst they are being chased by the plague victims, or her horror as she realises 'I'm a chav!' when she first goes into Rose. It's classic modern Who humour, and it's carried on perfectly from Series 1. Both Piper and Tennant as Cassandra are wonderful. Whilst Piper plays her as being very seductive (seriously, there's something incredibly sexy about it all), Tennant goes for the giddy excitable side, which is a wonder to behold.
This is such a small thing, but it’s one bit that I’ve
always loved about the Tenth Doctor – when The Doctor first gets into the
hospital lift without Rose, he shouts down to her a few times to watch out for
the disinfectant, which she mishears each time, so he just says ‘Oh, you’ll
find out…’ to himself. Whenever I think of Tennant’s portrayal, a large part of
it is taking up by him talking to himself like this, so it’s great to see it back
so early on. Wasn’t that a lovely little point to talk about? I think so.
In another small aside, Mickey gets a kiss goodbye (on the lips!) for a change, but still no return to his ‘I love you’ from Rose – poor lad.
David Tennant has already slipped into the role brilliantly, displaying lots of the characteristics that make him one of the most popular Doctors of all time. No matter how great Ecclestone was, he's already forgotten now.
Hats off to Billie Piper once more - her performance as Cassandra is excellent fun, and she shows her acting chops well when Cassandra has just returned to her following being in a plague victim's head - the despair she feels is obvious.
In another small aside, Mickey gets a kiss goodbye (on the lips!) for a change, but still no return to his ‘I love you’ from Rose – poor lad.
David Tennant has already slipped into the role brilliantly, displaying lots of the characteristics that make him one of the most popular Doctors of all time. No matter how great Ecclestone was, he's already forgotten now.
Hats off to Billie Piper once more - her performance as Cassandra is excellent fun, and she shows her acting chops well when Cassandra has just returned to her following being in a plague victim's head - the despair she feels is obvious.
How Does It Fit Into The Series As A Whole
The Face of Boe says that The Doctor will meet him one final time, and reveal his great secret. This will happen in Series 3 - ill resist posting a spoiler.
Overall
It's not the greatest episode, but there's a strong moral conundrum to debate, and Tennant and Piper are playing off each other wonderfully, with great performances as Cassandra in turn.
7/10
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