New Earth

It feels like such a long time since we first met David Tennant’s tenth Doctor properly in “The Christmas Invasion,” and even then we were only really given fifteen minutes or so to see what he could do. I have to say I’m incredibly impressed with him and “New Earth” gives him the opportunity to play the Doctor on so many different levels. For example, we see him calmly and softly talking to the dying Face of Boe; we see his ready wit and charm as he bangs on about the hospital not having a shop and warns Rose to watch out for the disinfectant; we hear his utterly flat and emotionless voice as he discovers the Sisters’ sentient lab rats and most importantly of all, we see the anger burning his eyes as he threatens the Novice.

“I’m the Doctor and if you don’t like it… if you want to take it to a higher authority there isn’t one! It stops with me!”

“New Earth” begins with a short pre-credit sequence just to re-enforce to viewers all that Rose is leaving behind at home, and it doesn’t seem like any time at all before the Doctor and Rose are laid on a hillside in the galaxy M87 in the year 5,000,000,000,023 talking about how much they love travelling with each other and how they had chips on their first date at the end of the world! Brilliant! Outside the mind of Douglas Adams, where else could you have a scene like that? Russell T. Davies need only use a few carefully selected words to sum up just who the Doctor and Rose are and just exactly what they do. A 5-year old kid who has never seen or heard of Doctor Who (and I’m very happy to say that’s not likely these days!) could tune into this episode and ‘get it’ within just a couple of scenes. In the same vein, casual viewers (let’s face it… there must be a regular audience of about 7 million of ‘em) could just flick over to BBC1 and be back into these characters within the blink of an eye. Superb writing.

This episode also reminded me just how incredibly fast the show is nowadays. The pace is absolutely frenetic; Chip, “The End of the World” spiders, Cassandra and the Sisters of Plenitude are all established within five minutes of the episode’s start! Were this the classic series, it would be the remit of the first two or even three episodes just to introduce these characters and we would have to dutifully while away hours of our lives watching the Sisters shiftily skulk about until the Doctor finally uncovers their evil machinations. Cassandra, for example, wouldn’t even be revealed until (at the earliest!) the Part 1 cliffhanger. I couldn’t believe some of the early reviews that were posted on Outpost Gallifrey that said the episode was too fast. I mean, how can it be? If it makes sense (which it does) and it’s entertaining (which it undoubtedly is) then where is the problem? It took Russell T. Davies just two lines of dialogue to set up the shady goings on in the hospital – one from Cassandra to Rose, and the aside between the two Sisters about one of the patients being conscious! Personally, I’d rather sit and be thoroughly entertained for forty-five minutes than to merely be mildly entertained for over a hundred.

I was also pleased that Davies had opted to finally send the Doctor and Rose right out there into the universe; to a new planet in another galaxy. I had very few complaints about the first series, but the one thing I would have liked to have seen was an alien world. Well, this time around it happens in the very first episode, and it’s absolutely beautiful. New Earth successfully combines the essential elements that make our Earth what it is (for Earth, read Britain) – green grass, rocky shores, blue sky – but it also has just that hint of the fantastic; those huge moons and planets in the skyline, the futuristic city of New, New York. Moreover, we weren’t show it for long – it wasn’t necessary. A few quick snapshots of the vista were all that was needed to establish the episode’s setting; for the most part it was a very traditional studio-based corridor romp.

From the start “New Earth” set itself up to be a sequel to “The End of the World”, and although it reused so many characters and elements from that story (even the incidental music) the episode was different enough to be fresh and entertaining. Aside from the new Doctor (which in itself makes the whole thing a brand new ball game), Davies used Cassandra very differently. The whole ‘body swap’ notion is one that is constantly done to death in science fiction, and why? Because it works! It creates tension, humour and it’s a brilliant storytelling device. It’s also, I cynically noted, a way to do Cassandra on the cheap! Billie Piper really excelled herself in this episode. When Cassandra took over her body, I had to really listen to make sure that Zoe Wanamaker hadn’t overdubbed the lines as it sounded so much like her.

“New Earth” is definitely one of Davies’ funniest scripts, and whilst it might not have anything like the dramatic weight of “The Parting of the Ways” or “The Christmas Invasion,” it’s incredibly entertaining… and filthy! Rose’s scene with Chip and Cassandra has to hold the series record for the most double entendres ever; it had me in stitches! I also really like the little details in there, for example, how Rose picks up a pipe as soon as she realises that she’s not where she’s meant to be. She’s learning. So is Davies – I bet there isn’t a ‘Dad’ in the country who wasn’t grateful for his “Curves! It’s like living inside a bouncy castle… nice rear bumper!” scene. Move aside Peri, we have a new champion… well, nearly! I don’t think any story will ever manage to top “Planet of Fire”…

It’s also very effective how the writer kills two birds with one stone as it were. Once again, very economically with just one line he establishes that Rose is still alive inside Cassandra and that as Cassandra has access to Rose’s recent memories, she knows who the Doctor is. There’s even a laugh to boot with the “he’s changed his face! The hypocrite!” gag – not many writers could do all that with such few words.

And then, of course, we come to the kiss, and just like all the Captain Jack stuff in “The Parting of the Ways,” it’s a load of fuss about nought. It’s not even Rose who kisses the Doctor; it’s Cassandra! She been living as a piece of skin for who knows how long, so it’s no real surprise that she’s a bit frustrated! Moreover, it felt very natural and in keeping with the light-hearted nature of the episode, and even gave David Tennant a chance to further demonstrate his versatility as an actor. It’s evident that the tenth Doctor has a ready wit and is generally very funny in a “I’m cool” sort of way, but the kiss gave Tennant a chance to be funny in more of a slapstick manner with his incredibly high-pitched “Yep… still got it”, the straightening of the tie and the puzzled (but not appalled, I noticed – he loved it!) look he had on his face. Being the Doctor though, he’s back on the ball almost instantly and he knows that this isn’t Rose. Her lack of interest in the lab-rat patients that they discover is the final nail in the coffin.

Most of Davies’ Doctor Who stories seem to have some sort of statement to make, never more noticeably than in “The Christmas Invasion” with all the Harriett Jones / Belgrano stuff. In “New Earth,” he uses the hot topics of cloning and medical experimentation to form the basis of his story. Such issues are wonderful fodder for Doctor Who because the Doctor is such a profound, unwavering moral force. In this episode, for example, one the one side of the fence sit the Sisters of Plenitude, who would argue that their experiments are for the greater good, and on the other side of the fence sits the Doctor, who basically says “bollocks, it’s not reet!” And then, just for fun, we have Cassandra in the middle who just wants to live forever and make a fat pile of cash into the bargain! With such interesting issues explored, Davies is in a way going right back to the show’s fundamental tenets of educating as well as entertaining, albeit a bit cynically. The year 5 billion and it’s the 21st century all over again!

I only have one real gripe with “New Earth,” there is just one scene towards the middle of the episode that I thought was a bit weak. Cassandra has knocked the Doctor out with her perfume, and has him locked up, ready to give him every disease in the book as revenge for ‘murdering’ her in “The End of the World.” I didn’t like the way how the Doctor didn’t escape, he just sort of got swept up in events as Cassandra is forced by the Sisters to go to “Plan B” – it was a bit too fifth Doctor for my liking. Especially in an early episode, I felt the Doctor needed more to do to win the audience over, as it were. Instead, he gets to mince about with Cassandra in his head – “ooh baby! I’m beating out a Samba!” – saying things that I found amusing but are really gonna wind some fans up – “so many parts… and hardly used!” – although in his defence, when he’s in control of his own body he’s tough. He steadfastly refuses to help Cassandra escape – “Give her back to me!” - in the end forcing her into the body of one of the lab-rat people, setting up the story’s conclusion.

“I’m the Doctor and I cured them… pass it on!”

After a lot of running about in corridors being chased (Doctor Who heaven!) the Doctor and Rose / Cassandra reach the relative safety of the top floor of the hospital. The Doctor’s solution to the situation is very much in the style of the “anti-plastic” get-out in “Rose”, here the Doctor quickly cooking up a cocktail of different intravenous cures and showering the lab-rats with it using the ‘disinfectant shower’ introduced at the start of the episode. This got absolutely torn to shreds in the initial batch of reviews on Outpost Gallifrey; much to my amusement someone even called it “weak science.” They are watching a TV show about a man from outer space with two hearts and thirteen lives who travels around the universe in a phone box fighting monsters (who for the most part are suspiciously humanoid) and they nit-pick about him administering a cure which is meant to be delivered intravenously as a shower! I mean, come on! It’s magic, innit? He’s the Doctor. He’s nearly a thousand years old. A bit of medical jiggery-pokery is nought to him; he’s a Time Lord! For all we know it could have been the saliva that he secreted when he opened the bags of cures with his mouth that cured these people!

If Russell T. Davies and co. listen to such trivial complaints (though I’m sure they’re to sensible to) Doctor Who will end up going the way it did in 1989. It’s like I said earlier; I’d much rather watch 30 seconds of the genius Doctor create an almost magical cure from whatever he has to hand than watch some scientist quietly shuffle about in a lab for ages tediously coming up with a cure the boring sciencey way! This is Saturday night prime time!

The resolution of Cassandra’s story gave the episode quite a touching ending. Having taken over the willing but dying body of Chip, her loyal ‘half-life’ clone, Cassandra is finally prepared to die. Her experience in the body of one of the lab-rats, privy to their intense suffering, had somehow changed her, and so the Doctor allowed her the privilege of visiting herself in the past (at the last moment she can ever remember being happy) and dying in her own arms, a very sombre ending to a very upbeat and amusing episode. Oh, for those of you that want to nit-pick – where are the Reapers, hm? It’s lucky that moment didn’t happen to be a “weak point in time”…

On a side note, I found the Face of Boe scenes very interesting. Just as it was in the first series, the first hint of the show’s mythology in series two is incredibly well done, the Novice’s dialogue is almost poetic. “… he will speak these words only to one like himself. It is said he’ll talk to a wanderer… to the man without a home. The lonely God.” It was also quite an event in itself to have the Face of Boe speak; I think that they got his ‘voice’ just right – very soft, very wise… nothing too over the top. What this big ‘secret’ is exactly is something which I’m sure will be widely speculated about until he meets the Doctor for the “third and last” time. I loved the Doctor’s childish reaction to being told that it will have to wait – “Oh! Does it have to!” Fantastic stuff.

Here’s my theory on it, if anyone is interested. “… the man without a home. The lonely God” made me think about how the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, and as the penultimate episode is entitled “Army of Ghosts”, maybe some of them survived the Time War, for some reason the secret of their survival known only to the Face of Boe. I’m sure that when this ‘secret’ is revealed in the next 12 weeks (or perhaps even next year) I’ll look like a complete idiot, but still…

In all, David Tennant’s Doctor had without question the best opening story of all the Doctors with “The Christmas Invasion,” and so “New Earth” inevitably suffers from that ‘difficult second album’ syndrome. It’s not that it wasn’t good, it’s that people wouldn’t give it chance to be. It’s light and it’s fun, it happens fast and it’s over quick. Tennant and Piper are both phenomenal, and Russell T. Davies’ writing is right up there with them. For me, he could single-handedly run Doctor Who forever… unless he regenerates the Doctor into a woman. Then he’s dead.

Seriously though, “New Earth” has been the best thing on TV since “The Christmas Invasion” and I don’t see any reason why this series shouldn’t be every bit as good as the last, if not better. Remember the slating “Rose” got and look how well things turned out there...