The End of the World

 

Aired on 2nd April 2005

Written by Russel T. Davies

Produced by Phil Collinson

Directed by Euron Lyn

Synopsis

To impress Rose, the Doctor takes her five billion years into the future to see the sun expand and swallow the Earth. They arrive on an orbiting space station. 

Rose is concerned about the planet, but the Doctor reassures her that all the humans have left it so it's ok for it to die, in fact, the station is hosting a party of the rich and influential who have all come to see it sent off.   

A blue skinned steward turns up and is angered because the Doctor and Rose are apparently gate crashing, but the Doctor flashes a bit of "psychic paper" at him and convinces the steward that it's his invitation.

Rose and the Doctor go and meet the other guests including the Moxx of Balhoon, the Face of Boe, living trees from the Forest of Cheem (their leader being called Jabe), Adherents of the Repeated Meme..

 and the last human - lady Casandra O'Brien.  

The lady is quite unusual as she's nothing more than stretched skin over a frame with a brain in a jar.

Rose is a bit overwhelmed and runs off. As she's out in the corridors she meets a janitor who is investigating a blockage. She's kind to her, but goes off to wander the station.  When she's gone, the janitor finds a host of mechanical spiders that attack her and drag her into the air vents.

The Doctor finds Rose and calms her down. He modifies her phone so she can call home whenever she wants. He is talking with her when the station shudders. He goes off to investigate, meeting Jabe who offers to accompany him.

Elsewhere, the panicking steward is killed by the same spiders who come out of the vent and lower the sun protection visors to his room.

Whilst travelling through the bowels of the station, Jabe says she's astonished to see a Time Lord alive, referring to something bad that's happened. The Doctor is moved to tears but blocks the emotion and continues, accepting her condolences. Not long after they capture one of the spiders. 

Rose likewise meets with Cassandra, but is disgusted by her arrogance so insults her and tries to leave, but is knocked unconscious by the brotherhood of the Meme. She wakes up in a viewing room with the sun visors going down. 

She screams for help and the Doctor hears her, rescuing her just in time.

They go back to the main hall and the Doctor releases the spider, telling it to go back to it's master. The thing goes to the Adherents of the Repeated meme, but the Doctor says that the Meme is just a repeated idea and reveals that the Adherents are all in fact robots which he summarily de-activates.  He instructs the spider to go to it's real master and it goes to Casandra.

Casandra, holding the other guests off with her assistants "acid" shooting moisturising guns, she explains that her cosmetic operations cost a fortune so she hatched a plan to fake being held hostage and ransom some money. Now with that foiled, she opts to teleport away whilst letting the other guests burn.

With the station about to fail and they all get burned to a crisp, the Doctor goes with Jabe to reset the computer terminals.  He has to go through some whirling fans. He could never do it, but Jabe elects to hold down a button that will slow the fans, despite the rising heat burning her to death. He honours her sacrifice and makes it through the fans to reset the computers and saves the station.

Returning to the hall, the Doctor finds a way to bring Casandra back and the heat from the air stretches her skin to the point where she ruptures and rips herself apart.

Going back to the TARDIS, Rose comments that she's sad nobody watched the Earth die. The Doctor reveals his home planet was destroyed also in a war, and that he's the last of the Time Lords.  They cheer each other up and return to the console room, ready for another adventure.

Trivia

• This episode has the most visual effects shots to date. It stands at a whopping 205 effects, where for comparison, Gladiator only had 100!  Understandably, most of the budget went on this, and Russell T. Davies said it's unlikely to be beaten in that regard

• Davies said he was inspired to write Casandra from watching all the skinny actresses attend the academy awards

• in the scripts, the janitor, Raffalo gets a more grizzly death and Rose phones her mum as she's about to be burned to a crisp as the visor lowers

• This is the first instances of the series aspects - Bad Wolf and the Great Time War. they go on to become major plot points

• This is also the first instance of the use for Psychic paper. Obviously a plot device to get things going and not bog down in proving credentials

The Review

After a solid start, it's difficult to follow up. Russel T. Davies manages it though with a logical progression in showing Rose the absolute possibilities of where they can go. 

The story is equal parts fun and intelligent, focussing on the ridiculousness of the aliens, just as much as it does with the reality of Rose's difficulty in coming to terms with the loss of the Earth and the death of her loved ones, as well as the apparent mangled corruption of what's left of her race. 

I have special love for the steward, and the Moxx of Balhoon who seems to come straight out of Hitchhikers with his gift of bodily saliva!

This was ambitious and at times feels grand in scope but it pulls it off very well, even managing to stick in the fate of the Time Lords along the way. There are bits of this if there's any criticism that do tend to drag, with half an hour to kill before "Earth Death" and the bits where Rose is moping about do get a bit tedious. 

Overall, another solid effort and something that was a great follow up to the first episode. I can easily see why people would continue to watch, although for the more adult of us, some of the aliens did come across as a little childish and not as threatening as maybe we were hoping for. This would not get any better in the next few episodes of this season (see Aliens of London).

Rating

7 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

6 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Carnival of Monsters

• Utopia

• Voyage of the Damned

• The Rings of Akhaten

Rose

 

Aired on 26th March 2005

Written by Russel T Davies

Produced by Phil Collinson

Directed by Keith Boak

Synopsis

Rose Tyler has the typical life of a teenager in London. She works in a department store, has a boyfriend called Mickey, and of course, plays the lottery.  She has to take the stores lottery money to the caretaker, Wilson, at the end of the shift.  However, what makes this day different to all the rest is the fact that Wilson can't be found. Instead, she's attacked by moving shop dummy's. 

The dummy's surround her, but she's rescued by a strange man who tells her to "run". 

They get to the lift and the man pulls off one of the dummy's arms as it reaches in to grab him. 

Rose passes the attack off as students which the man says is not the case, in fact tells her Wilson is dead. He passes Rose the arm, holds up a bomb, tells her he's going to destroy a relay beacon, introduces himself as The Doctor, then tells her to run for her life. Rose does as she's told and is shocked when the entire upper floor of the department store is blown up.

It seems Rose is in a flat with her mum, Jackie. Her mum fusses about the explosion, using it as an opportunity to try and get compensation. Mickey comes around and is worried, but Rose sends him off to watch the football, saying she's fine. She asks him to throw the plastic arm away, which he does on his way out.

The next morning however, the arm comes back, scuttling in through the cat flap.  The Doctor is not far behind it, tracking it's whereabouts. Rose passes him off as an inspector wanting to know about the explosion. As Rose is making tea, the arm attacks the Doctor, choking him. 

He disables it with his sonic screwdriver and then cheerily leaves.

Rose chases after him, demanding to know who he is. He warns her to forget him, but she won't accept it, so he tells her he's here to stop some living plastic from starting a war that would result in the destruction of the human race so they could have the planet. 

He then gets into a mysterious blue box and disappears. 

Intrigued, Rose goes to see Mickey and does some research on the internet, tracing the sightings of the Doctor. She finds an add from a man in London called Clive that seems to know a lot more. 

Rose and Mickey visit Clive (Mickey reluctantly waits in the car). Clive shows Rose examples of how the Doctor has been sited through time and says ominously that death follows him. 

Whilst Rose is inside, Mickey sees a moving bin and when he investigates it, it sticks to him and sucks him inside, creating a facsimile of him. 

Rose believes Clive is nuts and invites the fake Mickey to go and get some pizza. At the restaurant, Mickey questions Rose about where the Doctor is, but is acting very weird. The Doctor shows up and confronts the Auton Mickey. It's hands turn into slabs and it attacks, but the Doctor defeats it by pulling off it's head - a fact that horrifies Rose. They run off and lock the Auton behind a door but it begins to break it down. Rose wants to break a padlock on a gate and run for it, but the Doctor shows her to the blue box. 

Rose enters it and is astonished at the size of the inside. She questions him, finding out he is an alien, the box can move places and there's an alien race called the Nestene Consciousness controlling this plastic. 

The Doctor uses the head to trace the signal it's sending out but loses it just before finding the source as the head melts.

They get to the River Thames and look around for a large dish type transmitter - Rose works out that they're using the London Eye for this purpose. Together, they run across Westminster Bridge and find the Nestene's lair under the Thames.

Rose is relieved to find the real Mickey alive, but chained up down there. 

The Doctor meanwhile asks to parley under the terms of the Shadow Proclamation. The Nestene agrees, but soon becomes aggressive as it finds the TARDIS and uncovers the fact that the Doctor is a Time Lord. The Doctor is agitated and tries to apologise profusely as he's seized by the Autons, telling the Nestene that he's not like the others and he didn't destroy their planet.

The Auton's find a vial of anti-plastic in the Doctor's coat, but he assures them he wasn't going to use it. The Nestene doesn't believe him and prepares to kill him. It starts up invasion plans by awakening every mannequin in London that begin to rampage the public, harassing Jackie Tyler and unfortunately killing Clive in front of his own family.

Rose saves him by  swinging down on a chain and knocking the Auton's into the molten form of the Nestene, releasing the vial of anti-plastic onto it. The poison kills the Nestene and sets off a chain reaction. 

The Doctor ushers Rose and Mickey into the TARDIS and takes them away from the site, materialising into an alleyway. He offers Rose the chance to come with him, but not Mickey. 

Rose refuses at first, but finds it impossible to resist as the Dcotor says the TARDIS can also travel in time.

She kisses Mickey one final time, then races into the ship.

Trivia

• This is the first time in the new series we get to see the TARDIS interior - it's drastically different than previous incarnations and is referred to a the "coral desktop theme" by fans

• We see the Sonic Screwdriver re-introduced for the first time since The Visitation. It brings with it all the old problems, but it's a nice return

• This is one of the only episodes in the new series to feature the titles before the episode.  From this point on, there's a teaser opening sequence before them

• None other than Nicholas Briggs made his debut here as the voice of the Nestene Consciousness.  He would go on to be crowned as the definitive voice of the Daleks and the Cybermen, but this was far from his first involvement with the series.  Indeed, he had been one of the ones who led the charge in keeping the Doctor Who dream alive by making independent spin offs in the 90s and is a founding member of Big Finish audios.

•  This is also of course, the start of Russel T. Davies' tenure on the show as Producer.  He also wrote Doctor Who novels in the 90s and also made a children's show very much in the vein of Doctor Who called Dark Season. He in turn would pull in his fellow writers from Big Finish and Virgin books to write episodes

•  And of course, we need to mention Christopher Eccleston, who was chosen by Davies to take the Doctor in a whole new direction and have a fresh start. 

•  The original episode underran by some minutes, so they added the scene where the Doctor explains things to Rose whilst walking.

• The underground base of the Autons was actually a disused mill in Cardiff. It had to be cleaned out because it was so old, so scenes were shortened - if all had run to plan, we would have seen an additional Auton Mickey in that scene

The Review

And so, after a failed attempt at an American hybrid TV movie, a god-awful abomination combined with the set of Eastenders that I refuse to acknowledge (although John Nathan-Turner wanted it to have a proper production code to follow on from Survival and make it Canon), and one rather purposefully hilarious attempt for Red Nose Day, Doctor Who is finally back on British TV!

So, why did this one succeed where the others failed?  I think there's a lot of truth to the fact that this story picked up on the idea that you don't need an "origin" story to be successful on a first episode.  This one perfectly picks up on the Doctor's mystery and really manages to re-capture that fantastical element that hasn't been seen since the very first episode in 1963. It does this by showing us the Doctor popping in and out of Rose's life and giving him somewhat of a mystical James Bond persona. It makes us WANT to know more, and when she meets that bloke in his house and he says death follows this bloke she's met, it just adds even more to it.

This even goes into the TARDIS - measure it against the massive exposition we saw in the TV movie about it compared to the Ninth Doctor's rather clipped explanation of "disappears here, reappears there". It gives us just enough explanation to keep going and very effectively drip feeds us information if we're totally new to it, and allows pop culture to fill in the blanks for the rest of us.

The Autons are nice to see, but none of them are particularly scary or effective, they're there for that added bit of nostalgia, but at least they're relevant to the plot and their use of killing that bloke is a sledgehammer to us - showing there's a real threat and highlighting his words - it is dangerous to know the Doctor.

Micky, facsimile aside, is also great, and Billie Piper proves everyone wrong about her acting talent. Both characters have totally believable reactions and there's even bits of humour worked in.

All in all, the only thing to make this absolutely top notch would be to have cut down on the CGI with the wheelie bin and weird copy of Micky. The rest is bang on and a great start to the new series.

Rating

8 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

7 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• Spearhead from Space

• Terror of the Autons

• The TV Movie

• Love and Monsters