New Earth

While not a huge fan of Russell T Davies' writing, I thought that 'New Earth' was up there with the 'The Parting of the Ways', 'Rose' and 'The End of the World' as one of his slightly better offerings. It was the first time that the new series had taken the Doctor and Rose to an alien planet as opposed to London, Cardiff or a space station and it was more akin to classic Who science fiction.

This episode was also a much better vehicle for David Tennant to impress as the Tenth Doctor than the self-indulgent and rather twee 'The Christmas Invasion'. He was more of a lead actor in his own right, as opposed to his appearance at Christmas, where I just found myself missing Christopher Eccleston. Billie Piper played a slightly more confident Rose Tyler, now more of an equal companion as opposed to the wide-eyed assistant to Christopher Eccleston's slightly more paternal Doctor. We did not actually see much of Rose in this episode. Instead, Davies treated the audience to seeing Billie Piper perform her take on Zoe Wanamaker's villainess Cassandra.

The return of Cassandra was good way of linking the second series in with the first and reminding viewers that this was the same Doctor Who. While this initally seemed like a straightforward sequel to 'The End of the World', the body-swap plot made Cassandra a slightly more three-dimensional character as she came to the realisation that it was time for her to die. Davies created an enjoyable story out of the combination of the dark plot line featuring the human plague carriers and the almost farcical scenario which had Cassandra body-leaping from Rose to the Doctor and back again. The popular culture references that Davies loves to insert into his scripts and which often serve to detract from the sense of Doctor Who's other-worldiness were kept to a minumum. I know a few other reviewers have complained that Cassandra, being from five billion years in the future would not know what a chav was. However, it is established several times that she as able to draw on the feelings and memories of the person she was controlling and knew what a chav was because Rose knew. The combination of Davies' writing, the direction of James Hawes and some nifty special effects helped to create a genuine futuristic sense to the surroundings and a pervading sense of danger which culminated in the dark scene where two of the nuns casually murdered a plague carrier begging for help. But then, I suppose it wouldn't be Doctor Who if the seemingly kindly cats weren't up to something fiendish.

The return of the face of Boe seemingly set up the long-term mystery for this series, like the 'Bad Wolf' idea did for Series One. The two scenes with the face of Boe where they talked about its knowledge of the universe helped to create the sense of a great and mysterious world going on outside the hospital set and reminded us that there are forces in the expanse of space that are beyond the Doctor. I am willing to bet that the Face of Boe was going to tell the Doctor that there are other Time Lords still alive. Then again, maybe not.

This was a good opening episode for the new series, introducing Doctor Number Ten properly and bringing back some familiar faces to make the viewers feel comfortable with the new Doctor. Thankfully, Russell T Davies usually smug and pop-culture ridden writing style was kept to a minimum making this one of his better adventures.