The End Of The World

I liked Rose. I really did. I didn’t love it – perhaps if I’d watched it ten more times in the week leading up to the second episode, I’d have ended up adoring it… or analysing it to death, like so many of those who downloaded Rose weeks before its initial broadcast. But I knew this was not the way to properly view this new series. I watched Rose once on broadcast, with my family, then a second time alone in the dark. So I had the regular-viewing-audience experience, and the obsessive-fan experience. And that worked quite well. So I decided to do the same thing with each following episode.

So, The End of the World. The pre-titles sequence worked more effectively than I expected – that’ll teach me. I was dreading the line about “the year Five Billion” – a Fifties sci-fi idea if ever I’d heard one. (Of all the dumb luck – the Earth explodes in exactly Five Billion AD?) But then the line changed. Regenerated, if you will. It wasn’t Five Billion AD. In its place, a very clever line that immediately restored my faith in the writing skills of Russell T. Davies. I sighed with relief.

Once the episode got properly started, I began to feel… comfortable. A space station, a gaggle (or whatever) of aliens, murders, intrigue… this was the Doctor Who I grew up with. The Moxx of Balhoon, for instance, looked, spoke and acted like a classic Who monster, despite his regrettably small role. And of course it was contemporary. Just as Sarah Jane’s hairstyle was contemporary. And Dodo’s taste in clothes. Et cetera. I loved the contemporary style, even more than in Rose. Surprisingly, the songs worked, as did the jabs at beauty therapy and the National Trust.

The Doctor and Rose are finally getting to know each other – as Rose points out, she hardly knew the Doctor when she jumped onboard his ship. But now they’re bonding. They’re bickering, they’re bantering… they’re slowly becoming friends.

Some of these scenes were golden, the stuff great Who – and great television – are made of. I especially cite the short scene between Rose and the blue cockney vertically-challenged plumber. (I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed writing that description.) And the scene between the Doctor and Jabe, where – in my second viewing, at least – I saw a tear fall across the Doctor’s face. Wow. This wasn’t what I expected. I can’t imagine Tom Baker’s Doctor weeping. Or even the slightly wet Peter Davison. But then again, neither of their Doctors saw their home burn. This is a war-ravaged Doctor, a Doctor who let Jabe sacrifice herself because he’s now truly learned about the nature of survival. A Doctor who destroys Cassandra because, as he puts it, “everybody dies”. And all his family, all his friends… they’re all gone.

Thankfully, he has Rose. And she tells him so in a beautiful, poignant end rivalled only by the end of Survival, all those years ago. “Somewhere else the tea’s getting cold”? That’s as may be, Professor, but Rose wants chips.

So I liked Rose. It was quite good. But I really liked The End of the World. It was very good. The fact is, this is real Doctor Who. A space station, a whodunnit, the Doctor and his companion arguing, an “ensemble” finale with practically the entire cast, a comic-book villain, a big explosion… this is Doctor Who.

Don’t believe me? Did you even see those corridors?