New Earth

The Doctor and Rose find themselves 23 years after the events in THE END OF THE WORLD on the planet New Earth. The Doctor has received a message from the Face of Boe and they travel to a hospital run by Cat Nuns where he is a patient. The Hospital seems to be able to cure everything and everyone. Meanwhile, Rose gets separated and finds herself at the mercy of the bad old trampoline herself – Cassandra, who did NOT die on Platform 5 apparently. As Cassandra implements her plan, the Doctor finds himself facing the terrible secret of the Cat Nuns and we find that there is a terrible price to making the sick well.

On the plus side, this episode is very fun and witty. The dialogue is top notch and very fun to listen to. David Tennant falls into the role of the Doctor with ease giving the character a much more energetic and manic Doctor than Eccleston gave us. Billie Piper is absolutely brilliant with what the story does to her character. It’s her best performance yet. And of course Cassandra is just a great, wonderful character and it’s good to see her back. The Special Effects are amazing and the make-up on the Cat Nuns is perfect. Or should I say purr-fect? Okay, I’ll stop.

On the negative, there are so many things going on that the plot falls by the wayside in many places. I had the same problem with this that I had with THE LONG GAME. I think the story concepts are bigger than the 45 minute time frame allows them to be. GAME had a great concept with a piece of meat controlling the populous through the news and there was a resistance to that which the never explore in depth, NEW EARTH with the concept of killing one creature so another can live, also not explored. But am I asking too much from a 45 minute episode? Maybe. At least those concepts are out and we can talk about them, which is something that the new series has that Big Finish does not have – commentary on social and societal issues. But when all is said and done, this is a really good episode. It is scary, funny and thought provoking. It’s good Doctor Who. It's good television.