Review - New Earth

Back into the swing of things again with the new Doctor, this time taking a trip far into the future to meet an old enemy on New Earth.

Season 2, Episode 1 - New Earth

We get very early hints at the villain in the form of the spiders from The End of the World. Just to be safe we're also given a verbal reminder by The Doctor talking about Earth burning. Of course this leads to a very early reveal of Cassandra and her new attendant, Chip.

Of course this early reveal is a bit of a fake-out, because whilst Cassandra is up to no good, she is clearly not the main issue here.

The Sisters of Plenitude were a solid set of Agent Goons, set up nicely as the sort of villains that think they're doing good. Of course there are all sorts of subtle moral questions at play here, and it's funny because I can sort of sympathise with the Sisters here. I suppose it depends on how you feel about things like cloning and animal testing.

It's a perfect excuse to see Angry Doctor though.

I like how they worked in an explanation on how the clones can communicate. It may have been a bit half baked, but it was worked in naturally and didn't really need to be expanded any further. The clones themselves were yet another "move forward slowly and menacingly" Zombie-like type of Monster Goon. 

Grrrr! Arrrrgh!

The Doctor's eventual solution seemed a little glossed over and was rather simple. I get why the disease would be instantly transferred on touch, but why was the cure also transferred? The cure liquid was somehow strong enough for the residual amounts transferred by the brush of a hand to be effective on those heavily infected clones, but used on the patients it took days to work? Hmmmmm.

Cassandra's ability to disembody and possess a new body was similarly glossed over. Was that a side-effect of the Psycho Graft? Why didn't she just possess a Sister and get the info she needed that way? I suppose inhabiting a non-human body would probably have been distasteful for her. Didn't stop her possessing The Doctor though.

A good chunk of this episode was devoted to re-establishing The Doctor as a love interest for Rose. It seemed they had decided by about mid-Season-1 that the relationship was platonic (apart from that bizarre kiss cure at the end of The Parting of the Ways) but now he's looking younger and hotter, seems Rose is back on the Hunka hunka burning Doc train. First we see poor Mickey getting played again:

"I love you."

"See ya."

Then we've got all of Cassandra's teasing and In-Who-Endo when she possesses The Doctor. Of course Cadsandra herself gets in on the action:

To be fair, if you'd been a flap of skin for a few hundred years,
you'd probably jump whomever was handy.

The Doctor's reaction to it is a weak, "I've still got it." Now that's a classic line and was played well. Sadly it doesn't fit The Doctor at all. There is clearly a strong push to make this relationship romantic from early on.

Cassandra's end this time around was much better though, much more Doctor-like than Nine's murder through inaction. It was a good way to end the episode. Not quite enough to fully salvage it though. Ultimately there wasn't much to this episode beyond setting up the Doctor / Rose romance. I could really take or leave this one.

5/10

Can we fix it?

Of course the first thing I'd do here is ease up on the romance. The subtle hint with Rose not reciprocating Mickey's "I love you" was enough. All of Cassandra's teasing and The Doctor's reaction to the kiss can go. The kiss is fine, but The Doctor should push Rose away and be all, "What the hell are you doing?" This behavior from Rose should be as much of a clue something has happened to her as her not caring about the clones.

I'd add a bit more explanation to how The Doctor's cure worked. This would involve a bit of an expansion to the explanation of how the clones work. Essentially the clones are infected with everything and their modified immune systems are producing huge amounts of antibodies for all their diseases. In order to ensure the clones stay sick (and continue producing antibodies) they all have one specially designed cancer that somehow draws the antibodies into special tumours around the clones' necks and faces, where they are syphoned off by the Sisters of Plenitude to give to patients.

The Doctor determines that curing this "keystone cancer" will allow the clones' immune systems to distribute the antibodies and cure them. After some thinking and tinkering and mixing of cures, the overall solution plays out the same way with The Doctor adding a line about how the cure will be taken up and replicated by the clones and excreted from the skin once the tumours are no longer collecting it, meaning it can be passed on by touch. Once their immune systems have destroyed all of their multitude of illnesses they return to normal.

Just a little extra depth to make the ending easier to swallow. It'd still not be a favourite, but they can't all be, can they?

Review - The End of the World

Continuing on with the retro reviews, we move on to The End of the World, or as I like to think of it, Let's See How Far This BBC Budget Will Stretch.

Season 1, Episode 2 - The End of the World

After the solid, if Companion-heavy relaunch episode Rose, we see the sow start to find it's feet in more ways than one. There is clearly more money invested here, with lots of costumes and better CG effects. The aliens in this episode seemed reasonably well thought out; a definite step up from some of the ones seen later in The Rings of Akhaten. The effects on both the Spiders and Cassandra were certainly much better than the old Wheelie Bin of Death from Rose.

We saw a bit of Hunka hunka burning Doc with Jabe, but it was expressed that he had been "intimate" by giving her air from his lungs, so maybe we can let that slide. Rose didn't seem to know whether to treat The Doctor as a boyfriend or a boy friend. At one point she's ribbing him over his kind-of-sort-of-flirting with Jabe, the next she's referring to him as a bad date. I think I'll put the latter down to just playful joking.

The scene where Rose essentially takes a step back and realises she's run off with a stranger was good, and set up the later argument and The Doctor's eventual sharing of his past. Whilst a good development of their relationship, I still feel this was a bit glossed over or rushed though. Sure, The Doctor shared some hints at his past, but he's still a virtual stranger to Rose.

There was a nice "Red-shirt" moment with Raffalo the plumber. The only way it could have been better was if she mentioned being two weeks from retirement. Still, you need someone to die to show things have just gotten serious, and it's better if they are a bit more of a fully fledged character.

When things did get serious though, we hit one of my pet hates. Why does the computer have to repeat everything multiple times? We don't need an audio cue that the sun filter is descending every five seconds. The burning line of sunlight moving down from the top of the screen does well enough. It would have been better said once each time something changed. If it had to be repeated a warning to exit the room would have made more sense. A tad picky, yes, but it's one of those things that annoys me.

The Sonic Screwdriver was again mostly only used to open doors or panels. The Doctor actually shoved it into the guts of the machinery at one point, which I liked. It makes it feel much more like a tool than just randomly waving it over the panel, which makes it feel like a magic wand. Even when he upgraded Rose's phone he actually put something into it, rather than just wave the Screwdriver at it.

The spiders had a great design. They had a real Golden Age Sci-Fi look to them. You'll note The Doctor didn't use the Sonic Screwdriver to disable or reprogram them, which I suspect he would have done had this episode been made in recent years. The spiders were a solid Monster Goon; numerous, clearly threatening, but easily dealt with in themselves.

That awesome retro-futuristic look

The Adherents of the Repeated Meme were a good red-herring villain and the reveal of Cassandra as the big bad was reasonably well executed. Having seen this episode before, it's hard to judge objectively though, as of course I already knew the twist, but I don't think it was telegraphed too badly.

The Doctor's callousness in letting Cassandra dry out and explode (why explode?) was out of place. At the very least I could see him preferring to have Cassandra tied up in court and disgraced (if possible) than let her die quite horribly, no matter how many trees she inadvertently caused to catch fire.

Rose's emotional turmoil when essentially faced with her own mortality was well played. The ending was sweet, even if there was maybe a bit too much intimacy between The Doctor and Rose for people who had effectively known each other a few hours. There had been a lot of sharing, so I suppose some closeness is to be expected, but in the end I was left feeling sorry for poor Mickey again.

Overall, a better balance between Doctor and Companion than the previous outing, but in the end felt a bit boring. Perhaps there was too much focus on developing that relationship between The Doctor and Rose than telling the story at hand.

7/10

Can we fix it?

Again, not a lot to fix here, and what I'm about to say will just be slight niggles. First and foremost, The Doctor should have listened to Rose when she asked him to help Cassandra. Having him come to his senses and save her would be much more Doctor-like that essentially torturing her to death with the throwaway line, "Everything has to end". It also would have made her return in New Earth easier.

This would also mean that Cassandra wouldn't explode. I mean, why? Why does drying out cause her to explode? And it was a sloppy explosion too. When she was drying out. How does that even work?

Why?

I'd have liked to have seen Rose still be a little wary of The Doctor at the end. She'd heard about his past, and seen his ability to do good, but she'd also glimpsed his darker side when he was prepared to let Cassandra dry out, and was frankly a bit of a jerk about it. After he revealed his past, Rose should be feeling more open to him, but not to the point of walking off arm-in-arm to get chips.

Other than that, yeah, it's a weaker story, but still entertaining.