New Earth

After the two-part plot-hole riddled exercise in pompous self-indulgence that comprised the finale of season one of the new series of Doctor Who, my faith in Russell T. Davies’ scripts was, to say the least, somewhat lacking. Having rather enjoyed ‘The Christmas Invasion’, I was feeling more optimistic about the Davies-penned season two opener ‘New Earth’, but was still rather cautious; fortunately, despite some criticisms, I found myself largely relieved.

‘New Earth’ sees Russell T. Davies juggling his new Doctor, Rose, an old enemy, an old acquaintance, Cat Nuns, zombies, and two distinct subplots, as well the series’ first on-screen alien planet, within the constricting time frame of a single forty-five minute episode, and for the most part he pulls it off. To start with the last of these first, the planet in question is New Earth, and whilst it’s closely based on the old one and is, blatantly, the Welsh coastline with some CGI added, the simple fact that the Doctor takes Rose out of Earth’s space and indeed to a different galaxy automatically broadens the scope of the series in a way that feels rather refreshing. It helps that ‘New Earth’ looks rather good; the CGI is obviously CGI, but it’s easy on the eye, and the hospital exterior meshes convincingly with the studio and location work used for the interior. As for the occupants of the hospital, the Sisters of Plenitude are a far cry from the Puss-in-Boots misfortune of the Cheetah People and look great, and as Davies manages to admirably restrain himself from making cheap pussy jokes, then I shall do the same. The Face of Boe looks just as striking as it did in ‘The End of the World’ and having apparently decided to reuse the character because the creative juices started flowing whilst he was writing its profile for the Monsters and Villains book, Davies puts it to good use here. The secret that the Face of Boe will reveal to the Doctor just before it dies is suitably intriguing, although so too were the various Bad Wolf references in season one, and that turned out to be narrative- and dramatic excrement.

‘New Earth’ tangles the Doctor and Rose up in two subplots, both of which are moderately, but not wholly successful. The first of these is the secret of the Sisterhood, who it turns out have managed to discover cures for every known disease by creating large numbers of supposedly mindless human clones on which to perform laboratory tests for their various drugs and therapies. If this sounds like a thinly veiled and ham-fisted attack on the controversial topic of animal experimentation with a few pot shots at cloning technology thrown in without a great deal of thought, this is because it is. I wouldn’t mind, but Davies has nothing intelligent to say about the subject, either for or against; there is a general message that animal testing is a bad thing, but the reasons given by the Doctor, who is thrust into the position of moral mouthpiece, tend to revolve around the more specific message that if you are going to use cloned humans as test animals, it is best to ensure that don’t develop sentience and go on rampages. The rampage in question results in a blatant homage to the works of George A. Romero, which works reasonably well, as plague-ridden zombies lurch around the hospital slowly infecting and killing everyone they come into contact with. Director James Hawes does a good job of depicting the claustrophobic horror of these scenes; the pustule-covered zombies look as effective as they could do within the limitations of the episode’s time slot, and they have a certain remorselessness of purpose common to the genre. The problems with this subplot, which are admittedly fairly easy to live with, lie with the plot; the Doctor’s solution to the problem is to mix all of the Sisterhood’s cures together, reasoning that if the clones have been used to develop cures for every possibly disease, then combining the cures will free the clones from their curse. This does rather raise the question of why the Sisters have already realised this before him, and why they even bother with separate cures; the Doctor only has a dozen or so bags of coloured water around his neck when he slides down the lift shaft to confront the horde, so each must already contain a potent cocktail effective on several diseases (think carefully about the ramifications of the phrase “every disease”). It might help too if Davies was prepared to add a dose of realism by mentioning some genuine disease, but instead we get pulp science fiction rot such as petrifold regression. Given that the Sisters have measures in place to quarantine the hospital, one might also ask why they haven’t developed fail safes to stop all of the cells opening at once and rather easily, since all it takes is Chip to pull a lever, and for one of the handful of clones thus released to jam his arm into a junction box.

Mention of Chip brings me to the second subplot, which sees the return of Cassandra, last seen in ‘The End of the World’. The incessantly bitchy last human works quite well, although this is as much to do with Zoe Wanamaker’s performance as it is to the script, and her decision to transplant her mind into Rose’s body results in some of the funniest lines in the episode, including, “Oh my god, I’m a chav!” The kiss is also highly amusing, especially the Doctor’s speechless response to it, but the best aspect of this subplot is that it gives Billie Piper a chance to show off her acting skills, which turn out to be even better than I had expected; she manages to sound like Zoe Wanamaker and act like Cassandra with remarkable ease, and far more so in fact than David Tennant does. Although Tennant gets the worst lines, including “I’m beating out a samba!” and his brief verbal drag act comes perilously close to crossing the line between funny and irritating. The whole subplot falls apart at the end, firstly as Cassandra enters the body of one of the clones, and immediately shrieks, “I look disgusting!” Mere seconds later however, she’s emotionally telling the Doctor, “All their lives they’ve never been touched”, a small shift in character which might have been more convincing if this had been her first reaction. She is, admittedly, monumentally, shallow but this only makes the episode’s ending feel more forced, as she switches from callous mass murderer, extortionist and black mailer to tragic figure accepting, rather rapidly, that it is time for her to die. Personally, I’d have been more convinced if she’d abandoned Chip and leapt into the body of one the nuns. The ending, as the Doctor and Rose take her back in time to tell herself that she is beautiful, is nauseatingly sentimental. It says a great deal for the Doctor’s character that he’s willing to do favours for someone who has just tried to steal his companion’s body, but it is a bit hard to swallow. I also find myself wondering why Cassandra blames Rose, “that dirty blonde assassin”, for her apparent death in ‘The End of the World’, when it was clearly the Doctor’s doing. You’d think the man who wrote both that episode and this would know what he was doing, wouldn’t you?

But in terms of the lead character, ‘New Earth’ works very well as a season opener. Tennant, and the Doctor, is markedly less manic than in ‘The Christmas Invasion’, and having settled into the role does a fine job of it. He shifts effortlessly between comedy, whimsy, and drama, and conveys the Doctor’s anger when required with ease. As in ‘The Christmas Invasion’, he immediately feels like the Doctor in a way that Christopher Eccleston often didn’t quite manage and for the second episode in a row, Davies allows the character to be proactive and save the day through a combination of ingenuity and bravery rather than leaving it to Rose. He gets one or two dodgy lines, Davies still demonstrating a tendency to let the Doctor self-mythologize, such as when he announces that there is no higher authority, and when he rather awkwardly tells the Mayor of New New York’s bespectacled harridan, “So I’ll have to stop you lot as well then. Suits me”, but for the most part the character works brilliantly. Tennant also conveys a great deal through facial acting, especially when he confirms that Rose isn’t in her right mind by asking, “What if the sub-frame’s blocked?”

I have other criticisms of ‘New Earth’. Rose seems fine whenever Cassandra leaves her body, which is fortunate considering that one at least one occasion she’s very high up a ladder, but when Cassandra leaves her for Chip, she conveniently faints into the Doctor’s arms, which is remarkably contrived. The fey and obsequious Chip, who might as well be wearing a gimp suit, is astoundingly irritating. The most annoying aspect of the episode however is Murray Gold’s abominable incidental score which veers from pompous melodrama to forced wackiness to cloying sentiment with all the subtlety of, well, Keff McCulloch. Despite these criticisms however, and it may seem that I’m being rather harsh, ‘New Earth’ succeeds in being entertaining, engaging, and thus a suitable season opener. I suspect however, that as with Season One, the first episode will not be typical, and that the best is yet to come.