You know, if there was ever any question that the Doctor plays with time and space, it's all cleared up now. At the end of the "Christmas Invasion" special, they're standing outside the Tardis getting ready to go, in the dead of winter in the middle of all that "snow"...and in the beginning of this episode, when they're actually going, it's a lovely spring day with no spaceship-ashes in sight.

Why does the Doctor have companions? Why does he drag people away from their otherwise ordinary lives (and often into terrible danger) to whirl around through time and space with him? I think I know why. It's like all of time and space is a movie, and the Doctor has seen it all before. Watching a movie you've seen before, even if it's the best movie in the world, can get really boring--but if you have someone else watching it with you, someone who's never seen the movie before, then it's like the movie becomes entirely new to you as you see it through their eyes.

And that's what the Doctor's companions are to him--an audience. But not just for him, for the rest of the universe too. As long as he's got a young friend or two along, he can savor their amazement, and sights he's seen a thousand times before can seem entirely new to him. The Eccleston Doctor was too brisk, too serious, too ridden with survivor's guilt from his part in a time war that ended the entire rest of his race to appreciate it. He was never able to lighten up very far; the burden of his survival was always with him like a dark cloud. But the Tennant Doctor seems to have regenerated his world-view along with his body--and that's immediately apparent as soon as the credits are over and the Doctor and Rose step out onto an entirely new world, with a gloriously-rendered CGI city in plain view. Rose is awed, and the Doctor basks in it. And then it's off to a hospital complex to see the face of Boe...and also the face of Zoe, as Zoe Wanamaker returns to her role as Cassandra, the last surviving human. The funny thing is, though, Zoe actually has a lot less screen time than we realize, when we think about it after it's over.

The mind-swap/possession schtick has been done many, many times over the course of science fiction--at least half a dozen times in _Star Trek_ alone. (You could always tell when Brent Spiner was getting frustrated in his role as Data, because along would come another "Data gets possessed or otherwise just plain acts all crazy" episode to give him a chance to show off his range.) I wouldn't be surprised if it had even been done before in _Doctor Who_, as they've already done just about everything else. The thing about a good mind-swap show is, it has to make us suspend our disbelief in a rather unusual way. We have to _believe_ that this character, played by one actor, has been somehow "infected" with the soul of the other actor--and isn't just the same actor putting on a different mannerism. It's one hell of an acting challenge--and for all that people were prone to pooh-pooh Billie Piper's acting ability early on, she did a heck of a job with it here. It was easy to forget, over the course of the episode, that this was still Billie, just putting on different mannerisms--I found it easy to believe that this was the ghost of Zoe Wanamaker inside her head. David Tennant had less of a chance to show off, but he managed the trick just as well. As for the fellow who played Chip, well, I never saw him enough to know for sure, but he seemed to do a passable job for the lines he had.

It was great to see Cassandra again, even for just a little while. Like the best villains, she was painted in not entirely unsympathetic tones. Ironically, her portrayal here seemed to be almost the opposite of how she was portrayed in "The End of the World". In that episode, we saw her dedication to life, doing whatever it took to survive right down to becoming little more than a brain in a tank, as having made her inhuman--a coldly conniving rhymes-with-witch who thought little of killing off a space station full of spectators for the sake of her business interests. And yet here she was painted as much more human--looking back wistfully at the last time someone had ever called her beautiful, and being so shaken by her time in the mind of the infected zombie that even the Doctor, who had only moments before been railing at her to get out of Rose's body, reached out a sympathetic hand in spite of himself.

At the beginning of the episode, we could hate her. By the time her blackmail scheme against the cats fell through, we could love to hate her. Then by the end of the episode we found ourselves hating to love her, as she actually became for a time a sort of surrogate companion, helping the Doctor in his scheme to cure the zombies. I'm sure I wasn't the only viewer who wished she could have found another body to continue living. (Why on earth she couldn't just have had another brainless zombie body cloned for her from her own surviving tissue, I don't know.) The only thing that really struck a sour note for me about her appearance was her sudden change of heart at the end: "don't wanna die, don't wanna die, don't wanna die...oops, I'm in a body that's dying. I guess I've outlived my time and so I'll go ahead and die after all." It wasn't really believable for me that after all this time of trying to stay alive, she would suddenly decide so quickly to chuck it all. But the ending, where she gets to go back in time and die in her own arms, did provide a sort of fitting grace note to the character. And you never know, time travel being what it is, maybe we'll see her again after all. (It would have been funny if she had actually, at the last moment, left Chip's body and possessed _herself_, but that would probably have opened up too many chronologically weird and paradoxical areas.) Since this was an external intervention in Cassandra's timeline, I wonder if that would have changed Cassandra enough that she ended up as a different person? But that would be paradox, and which is why thinking too much about time-travel stories tends to give one a headache.

I have to wonder, given the Doctor's speeches about how it's Cassandra's time to die and so forth, whether he will be quite so sanguine when he comes to the end of his own final regeneration. After all, some of the Doctor's past adversaries have been Time Lords who were out of Regenerations--the Master for one, and his own accuser in the Trial of a Time Lord arc (which was in fact _himself_ at the end of his regenerations) for another. But I can't imagine the BBC wanting to let the show end for the sake of a little thing like running out of regenerations.

I have to admit to being very impressed by the makeup effects for the cat people. I've often wondered what anthropomorphic felines would look like in live action (being a bit of a furry fan), and this episode of Doctor Who shows them off very well. I'm still not sure how much of it was makeup and how much was CGI, but they looked very believable and real, not just like people wearing furry masks. I would have rather liked to see more of them than just this episode. Perhaps, like the Slythene, they might return at some future time. It would be a pity if they didn't.

The Face of Boe continues to be an enigmatic presence in the series. I wonder if he was always intended to be thus; he started out as just a big animatronic face in a tank, appeared a couple more times in the series, but now...he's still a big anamatronic face in a tank, only much more mysterious. And the third time he meets the Doctor will be the last time. Like the Doctor, he is the last of his race--and although he had been dying, the Doctor's actions in saving all those clone humans somehow revitalized him and showed him there was still more to see in the universe. So, in the end, the Doctor acted for the Face of Boe much as his own companions have done for him.

The storyline of "New Earth" moved along at a very rapid pace--perhaps too rapid. There was so much story-stuff to fit in, what with two different sets of villains, a Matrix-like chamber full of clone zombies, the return of the Face of Boe, and so on, none of the ideas really had room to get fully-fleshed out, or even necessarily properly explained. This episode might have done better as a two-parter, with more explanatory and exploratory material stuck in. The solution to the zombie problem felt a bit rushed and deus-ex-machina, not to mention a trifle silly and unscientific in its execution. And then the ending with Cassandra dying in her own arms was a perhaps a trifle over-sentimental. But in the end, that's kind of what _Doctor Who_ is all about, so I suppose I can't knock it too much.

“New Earth” requires a couple of viewings. Before moving on, I suggest that viewers looking for an objective opinion on the story are best to give the episode a repeat look. Why? Because there is a great deal going on, arguably a little too much for a 45 minute slot, but personally I would rather a Who episode brimming with ideas than the old fashioned four episode story that consists of the Doctor running back and forth up and down wobbly corridors.

“New Earth” is a tale that combines a heavy mixture of storylines and ideas. We are introduced to a future planet and society that in turn opens up a curious medical mystery. We have the welcome return of the Face Of Boe who is preparing to pass on a major secret to the Doctor. Another past character pops up in the form of Cassandra who is back from the dead plotting revenge. On top of all this, we have new humans; deep dark experiments breaking out unleashing havoc. With a rather large dabble of mind swapping to boot; it’s a busy story.

The story is the first new televised Doctor Who to be set on a different planet. The opening shots of New Earth are beautiful and the use of outside location combined with computer imagery gives the future planet a very honest and believable ambience.

The hospital is nicely designed, using a mix of studio, CGI and Cardiff architecture to create this key location. Like the planet itself, it works well. The lower levels may slap ardent fans with memories of the Nestene lair in “Rose” because, well, that’s what it is. Personally I’m okay with location reuse. As a Doctor Who fan I’m used to a lot worse and Blake’s 7 used the same area of the same quarry a good 4-5 times through the series. Veteran fans can’t grumble, the location is redressed and works well within the context of the story. In the end, that’s what is important.

The return of Cassandra is a surprisingly welcome one. Moving Cassandra away from the living skin trampoline allows the character to be reused without rehash; she isn’t just back for more of the same, she’s back to cause havoc in an entirely different way. This time Cassandra is jumping bodies in the hope of finding a new vessel for her snobbish persona. Given how well this works in context to the story, I can forgive Mr Davies for using such an old sci-fi clichй. The mind swap truly injects new life into an old character. Furthermore her reintroduction serves as a bridge the series divide for the new audiences, reminding them this is still the same show and operates as strong comic relief to a rather visually nasty story.

The mind swap also gives Billie Piper and to a lesser extent, David Tennant, something new to play with. Wisely, the mind swapping is kept mostly with Piper; the tenth Doctor needs space to expand on his own without too much mind control interference. However, when the Lady Cassandra possesses the Doctor, Tennant doesn’t shy from the chance to have some real fun.

Piper is excellent as Cassandra, and it’s nice to see her getting a chance to have some laughs. Piper has proved she can do drama on several occasions in Series One, but aside from acting as a humour foil, she never got a really proactive comic role. In “New Earth” Piper is virtually flawless. You really believe she’s Cassandra and it’s rare to see such versatility in young TV actresses, being they are so often picked for the aesthetic than broad acting ability. Once again, I must doff my hat to Miss Piper, from her shallow pop star roots she has come far.

“New Earth” has a script full of both comedy and drama that should keep the casual and ardent fan watching. The supporting cast give a solid performance, and the make-up throughout the episode is exceptional. The feline Sisters of Plenitude look super and it’s a pity that the TARDIS doesn’t actually work because a bit of time travel back to 1989 could have done wonders for the Cat People in Survival.

So let’s look at the new fangled Doctor. Not quite as show stopping as he was in “The Christmas Invasion”, Tennant’s Doctor is a little more subdued in comparison. Probably a good thing in retrospect as there is always a danger of the show being suffocated if it’s lead man hogs the spotlight. Tom Baker’s era suffered from precisely this problem in the later years of his tenure.

Nevertheless, Tennant has the chance to portray some comedy, drama and serious Doctor energy throughout the episode. His character retains those elements quintessential to the Doctor; he’s compassionate, eccentric, dynamic and heroic. As with his seventh and ninth regenerations, he has a nasty temper when people cross his ideology and he is still willing to risk his own skin if it will saves others. Certainly a more charming Doctor than the more sorrowful ninth Doctor, and not as in control as the seventh. He has the sparkle of the forth and the dashing dynamic of the fifth. He’s a good mix of what’s come before with a dab of something new. Tennant is very different to Eccleston yet unlike previous regenerations, say between Baker and Davison or Troughton and Pertwee, the character of ‘The Doctor’ feels less challenged. He’s a different man once more, yet he retains far more consistency than many of the previous transitions.

So what’s wrong with “New Earth”? First off, let’s dispel some fan criticism. In “New Earth”, there is what some people would call ‘serious plot holes’, which to me, can be translated as ‘aspects of the plot which aren’t explained because they really aren’t that important’. Strangely, we still live in a time where sci-fi shows are meant to punctuate every last aspect of the plot. People are still looking for the “What’s going on Doctor?” or “What is it Doctor?” or “What are you doing Doctor?” type of explanations. The frustrating thing is, that any fiction that creates such a futuristic Earth is all made up anyhow. Any explanations that are forthcoming are no more than technobabble, yet for some reason, fans still feel cheated without it. “How do the drug compounds work?” “How does mixing the drugs make them more potent?” “How did Cassandra move her essence from one being to another?” It all boils down to needless babble, wasteful babble and dull, dull techno babble. We are told what the drugs will do in the same way we used to be constantly told that “reversing the polarity of the neutron flow” would remove a force field. We know Cassandra can jump bodies, we also know such a feat is physically impossible, so why do we need to have it made pseudo-factual by some technowaffle? We don’t need to waste valuable story time with superfluous explanations, yet if the fans don’t get these answers they condemn the story. After years of complaints about excess technoyawn from Star Trek, I’d hoped fans would have moved on from expecting explanations at every corner - clearly not.

It’s a pity that there are such wasteful demands on the show as it’s real focus is the drama, not the sci-fi pokery. Television and it’s audience are slowly learning that no matter how much we move fiction into future or onto other planets, the drama always remains contemporary. Only be being contemporary in it’s dramatic elements can a story create the audience empathy it requires. Nowadays, science fiction dialogue and plots are trying less and less to be “out of this world” fearing sounding silly. I far rather that Cassandra and her ilk use contemporary terms like “chav”, offer dialogue with relevance to contemporary satire or play 21st century pop music than continually attempt to create new sci-fi jargon. It’s those pop culture and topical elements that help give the series a stronger rapport with a greater audience. I don’t mind people not liking this writing approach, but it’s a pity the writer gets attacked for “terrible writing” when it’s simply using a specific writing technique.

While I appreciate sci-fi does have a more natural requirement for explanation than contemporary drama, I don’t think it needs to waste valuable character and plot time explaining what makes no sense anyway. With Buffy, Battlestar Galactica and now Doctor Who moving in this direction in the sci-fi genre, fans need to move on too. It’s not just perceptions of sci-fi that are changing, it’s sci-fi as a whole. We are no longer being spoon-fed – get used to it.

That said, there are still a few glitches here. The Rose and Doctor connection is laid on a little thick for my taste. Not an objective criticism for as we all know, sexual tension sells to mainstream markets and it’s mainstream interest which justifies budget. Doctor Who exists comfortably because of mainstream support, not fan loyalty. Personally, I found the dialogue outside the TARDIS a little icky but I know I just have to like it or lump it – it has to be there for the shows continual broad success.

Also in regards to such mainstream contexts, Rose does spend an awful amount of time touching herself in front of a mirror. Certainly, this works within the context of the plot but does feel a little ‘for the dads’ and that is an element of ‘old Doctor Who’ I hoped we were moving past. Most likely this was simply a character requirement to the episode, but it did feel slightly overdone and Piper has had a large makeover for this season. I just hope there is no attempt to move Rose into sex symbol territory. Keeping mainstream interest is one thing, but I’d hate Doctor Who to lose the dignity it has created for itself.

That said, such “show concerns” from fans like myself are amusing mocked by the writer, who seems to enjoy adding references that seem there just to irritate our anal fandom. Such references to certain Doctor body parts being “hardly used” are bound to create fury by purists. Good on you Davies, keep on pushing the boundaries. Doctor Who should never be safe, no matter how much many fans would like it to remain within certain boundaries.

Another minor gripe is the music, some of which is a return to the “End Of The World” motif. It’s not bad at all, but a little heavy at times. This has always been a problem in the new series, feels it could be pushed back a bit in the mix.

On the first watch of “New Earth” I was a little dissatisfied. There is a lot going on and as such it does sometimes feel as the story is screaming for some space to expand certain scenes. The contagion’s final cure in the finale feels a little rushed. The episode made a big issue of the amount of human containers opened in the basement, yet we see only a roomful of humans cured and that doesn’t give the impression of how fast this cure must be spreading through the diseased humans. It’s not a major issue, but the episode suffers from a few similar minor quibbles that on a first viewing seem bigger than they actually are.

Overall, this was a nice journey into the future and proof the show has come far from “Rose”. It’s not perfect; it’s a little over crammed with plots and ideas which in turn do take a slight toil on the pacing, but in comparison to the old show, it’s still miles out there in terms of script, production and drama. A good watch, an even better second viewing, this is far better than some of fandom will admit to. This is good New Who and while I fear for it’s critical success, with the media looking for a time to knock down what they’ve spend a year to build up, I think the production can be proud of this entrance into the second series. Well done – ignore the old school thinking from the sci-fi community and keeping moving forwards. My grandfather always used to say things were better in the old days and now I fear, it’s turn for my generation to start declaring the same.

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...

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.

If the last series began by riffing on early Jon Pertwee then this one began by mainlining the Douglas Adams era. Idiosyncratic english space opera at it's unashamed best. I also detected some of Warren Ellis's deadpan 'so-preposterous-it-must-be-true' sci fi gigantisms (to wit-"what kinds of disease? "All of them"). It's great to see that this show- which only a few short years ago was little better than a dusty antiques fair populated by curious, ageing fans- has been reborn so wonderfully.

First off- Bille Piper. Bi-liee Piper. Dang! Ding-a-Dang! One almost despairs at how good she is, because it means that surely she's destined for bigger (would it be offensive to say greater?) things, and soon. Horny teenagers throughout the nation will doubtless have fumbled frantically for the record button during the scene where Cassandra inhabits Rose's body and starts examining her new figure. Those of us older but with the mind of a horny teenager and a little patience will wait sweaty handed for the dvd. Ripping my mind from the gutter and fixing my sights firmly on Ms Piper's art- ART I said! She was the best thing about the last series and she's the best thing here, plain and simple. It's high camp all the way when the evil Cassandra posesses the Doctor's body, utterly convincing character acting from line to line when she takes Rose for a joy ride. Which is not to slight David Tennant in any way, shape, form or thought- if Christopher Eccleston was this generation's Jon Pertwee, Tennant may well be the new Tom Baker. The wide eyes full of intergalactic boggle, the grand canyon grin adding Tardis-like dimensions to Tennant's elfin face. All Bakerisms to a man. An effortless comedian one moment and mysterious, star weary eternal the next. I'm very excited.

Secondly (secondly? Thirdly, surely), the effects. Shallow I know, but...is it now boring to say that mainstream sci fi on the telly has to compete with the likes of (repeat after me in Dalek tones) Buffyangelstargatestartrek? Well yes, but the first bite is with the eye so to speak, and what a banquet New Earth was. You could practically SMELL the apple grass! New New York was Coruscant from the Star Wars designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Jack Kirby. Alien races have taken a few leaps forward since the last series (I was never keen on the porridgey Slitheen) and the Cat Nuns are creepy patrons of a stark, futurist hospital. Brilliantly though, the imagery is rightly second fiddle to the characters and the plot. There return of old face Cassandra and big face the Face of Boa signal that the new Who is creating it's own mythos whilst honouring the old, which is more than I could have ever wished for. A shame Cassandra had to be killed off though- imagine her teaming up with Sil, or even the Master! Fans, start your fanwanking. A fine set up for the future series which, if it mirrors the last one, will get better and better with each episode. The trailer for round two has me salivating- Werewolves! Warrior Monks! With Queen Victoria! In Scotland!

Vworp Vworp!

So Doctor Who is back, after months of waiting with baited breath, countless news reports and a build up that not-surprisingly outshone the new Wembley Stadium, the very first episode of Doctor Who Series 2, graced our screens.

Unhampered by the dulcet tones of Graham Norton the episode got off to an interesting start, with Rose saying another goodbye to Jackie and Mickey. The arrival on New Earth is to be honest a bit rushed, infact that plagues the episode throughout and really brings back some of the rather upsetting faults of 'Rose' form the previous season.

The only real thing that really made me cringe in this episode was the stomach-churning relationship between the Doctor and Rose. It just seemed to tacky and with a bit of luck won't develop much further. Fair enough character development is essential to television programmes these days it seems but one can't help but feel the Doctor-Rose 'love' relationship is undermining the programme and the main action. By all means let them travel the universe and have a laugh but all this mushy luvvy duvvy nonsense is...well...nonsense.

Despite this the rest of the episode is enjoyable. The Cat Nurse seemed a little spare to the plot at times, but it was wonderful to see Cassandra back, especially in human form. Chip is an interesting addition to proceedings and the mutants at the end of the episode might seem a bit cliche but are harmless enough (if you get my drift).

The drama could have done with a bit more time to develop but other than that it was an enjoyable romp, which started off the new series well. David Tennant seems to be finding his feet well and holds the episode up nicely. Billie Piper delivers a hilarious performance as the Cassandra-possessed Rose (and David Tennant's attempt is none too bad either)

The ending is a nice wind down moment and Zoe Wanamaker is wonderful in the final few scenes. The pathos is played well and David Tennant's last look at the unfolding scene is a good way to finish. The trailer for next week looks to be a good return to the more sinister and spooky side of Doctor Who, and with this episode a pretty much firm starting block (perhaps the humour could have been played down a little) the new series looks to be just as good as the first.