The End Of The World

ot with a bang, but with a... well, a sort of whumfhfhhfhhh noise and a Marc Almond soundtrack. What were the chances?

By rights The End of the World should have had an easy ride, coasting on the record ratings of Episode One, plus trailers and a 'Next Week...' clip promising aliens galore, Russell T's personal stamp of approval, eager anticipation of a proper sci-fi story, and excellent word of mouth. Despite Ant'n'Dec's drafting in of Tony Blair to lure viewers away to ITV, no-one was really scared - if David Beckham last week couldn't win the ratings battle, a politician was never going to pull in the punters.

In the event, of course, what Episode Two was actually up against was Wednesday's shock news that Christopher Eccleston was only doing one series (predictably, and rather unfairly, splashed over the tabloid press as "Dr Who Quits After Just One Episode!"), potentially undermining the viewers interest in the series and character just as it had hit its stride. Hysterical fans, jeering pundits and bored journalists looking for something to put between "Pope not dead yet" stories all added to the fire. Suddenly the series was going to have to pull off something pretty special to justify its continued attention.

A stroke of luck, then, that it was a fantastic piece of television.

Anyone who's seen early 70s disaster The Curse of Peladon, or worse, 1987's Dragonfire, knows what happens when Dr Who tries to overreach itself. Wowed by big screen extravaganzas, it tries to do the Star Wars cantina scene on a budget, and you end up with two extras in party masks and a giant penis in a cloak. One look at a script that called for squishy blue pixies, robot spiders, humaniod vultures, alien goths, two dimensional women and a disembodied head in a pot should have had the Beeb reaching for the Big Red Cancellation Button before the coffee had got cold. And yet, in the big-budget light of the cgi-aided 21st century, suddenly, somehow, it works.

The Doctor takes Rose to the year Five Billion, to a glittery gala event marking the destruction of the Earth. Alien celebrities make brittle small talk on board a luxurious Space Platform, while something nasty in the air vents plots murder, corruption and special effects. People are killed. Things go wrong. Stuff explodes. The Doctor save the day. In a way it's Dr Who by numbers, but it's more than that... This is Dr Who as my childhood memories depict it, before the harsh accuracies of DVD re-releases spelt out the awful truth. The Space Platform really is luxurious, the celebrities really DO look alien, and the effects genuinely are special.

The main weakness of Rose, of course, was its contemporary setting and focus on the title character, and the resultant lack of full-on science fiction elements or story. This is repaid in spades in The End of the World, with its definitively futuristic location, wall-to-wall cg and no human characters other than the TARDIS crew. The visuals are, without exception, impeccable, designed to the hilt and glorious to explore. The writing is once again absolutely cracking, laden with jokes, dramatic set pieces and moments of deeper emotion, and a story that - built around the natural time-limit of the countdown to Earth's destruction - never feels rushed, but always pacey.

Acting her non-existent socks off amid the madness, guest star Zoe Wanamaker, in possibly the strangest role of her career, is having a great time in her sound-booth and is even more fun to watch. Eccleston continues to play against form both to great effect, bucking expectations of both of a distant, intellectual Doctor and an intense angry Northerner, while Billie Piper revels in Russell T's witty, playful script. Cliches of corridors and capture are neatly sidestepped, and time is spent instead on good old escapist drama, danger and confrontation - with an unusual focus, stemming from Russell's knack for writing for women, on Rose's realistic reaction to the chaos around her.

The result is perhaps the most utterly un-Wholike bit of television I've ever seen - at the same time as being exactly what it always wanted it to be. I can only hope people got past their worries about Chris leaving the series, because, with its theme of "Knowing something's going to end doesn't lessen it", this episode was the perfect antidote to all that bad-feeling. If anything, in fact, the knowledge of his going made it all the more effective.

And there are hints, here and there in the more emotional passages, of what may be to come to explain his departure... Flashes of pain... Moments of hope... Wounds of the past, and risks of the future. The trip of a lifetime.

I can't wait.