Previously: We met the Tenth Doctor and he was not ginger. Also the Sycorax ruined Christmas a little bit and then Harriet Jones ruined it a lot with genocide. YAY CHILDREN’S TELEVISION.
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New Earth
Kirsti: The Tenth Doctor and his Converse take charge of the TARDIS, and fiddles with various things on the console. He flicks a switch, and the engines start up, and he grins. It’s pure Tennant “OMG THIS IS MY CHILDHOOD DREAM COME TRUE” and I love everything about it. Outside, Rose hugs Jackie and Mickey goodbye and runs in with what’s clearly an empty pack on her back.
Marines: At least she’s graduated to proper goodbyes with her family now. The sadness on Mickey’s face as he watches her walk into the TARDIS and Jackie just walking away, sending her girl back into danger? I want to hug them both.
K: Same, girl, same.
Rose and the Doctor grin at each other, and the TARDIS vworp vworps away. Rose asks where they’re going, and he replies “Further than we’ve ever gone before“. My shipper brain goes straight to the gutter as they grin at each other some more.
After the credits, they emerge from the TARDIS and Rose stares. The Doctor informs her that they’re in the year five billion and change, in a different galaxy on New Earth. Have your first gold star, Ten!!
The camera pulls back to show us that they’re looking across the water at a huge city and there are personal shuttles flying all over the place. Rose is blown away by everything, including the smell. He informs her that it’s apple grass, and they grin at each other some more. She clutches his arm and tells him that she loves travelling with him. The Doctor says he loves it too, and seriously, you guys. I ship it so hard I may as well work for FedEx.
Mari: I’m giggling mostly because of how hard it seems everyone involved with this show ships it also. Even the Soundtrack Man is with you. Everything is all glowy and smiley. We might as well be in Rose’s wet dream.
Sweeney: A+ and basically, yes.
K: Agreed.
Anyway, the Doctor grabs her hand and drags her off towards the city. Elsewhere, a guy with sepia coloured tattoos all over his face watches them through Saruman’s crystal ball. He’s shocked to learn that Rose is pure human, and orders something to get closer. The something turns out to be one of the metal spiders from Rose’s first trip to the future. It watches as Rose and the Doctor sit on the apple grass, using his coat as a picnic blanket.
The tinkly orchestra tinkles Rose’s Theme as the Doctor infodumps – after the ACTUAL Earth blew up, something that Rose refers to as “our first date“, people got all nostalgic and found the planet they’re on now, which is the same size as Earth with the same air and orbit. Humans moved in, and what they’re looking at is the fifteenth iteration of New York, known as New New York for short. Rose looks at him strangely and says that he’s so different now. “New New Doctor,” he grins. The metal spider closes in. A voice off screen is all “OMFG, I KNOW THAT GIRL” and tells Sepia Tattoos to get closer and show her Rose’s face.
Rose wants to know where they’re going first, and the Doctor says they’ll investigate the city later. First they have to go to a hospital nearby, because he got a message on his psychic paper asking for help.
Mari: AND THUS ENDS THE HONEYMOON. There is still a mission, girl.
Sweeney: Always. TV characters never seem to learn that nothing good ever comes from being happy.
K: You’d think they would after literally everything turns to shit over and over again. But no.
Back in the basement, the voice off screen turns out to be Cassandra, who’s thrilled that she can finally have revenge on Rose Tyler.
Rose and the Doctor walk into the hospital, and he complains about the lack of a”little shop“, and points out where he’d put it. Rose, meanwhile, is distracted by the fact that the hospital is run by cat nuns. He tells her not to stare and heads to the lift. He asks to be taken to Ward 26 as per the note on the psychic paper, but Sepia Tattoos overrides the controls, closing the door before Rose can get in. She rushes to another lift. The Doctor yells at her to “watch out for the disinfectant“, but she doesn’t hear him. Her lift goes down where his went up. They both go through the disinfectant process, the Doctor grinning throughout and Rose screaming in surprise.
Sweeney: She grows wiser and I like her all the more for it. Good thinking, girl.
K: FINALLY.
Upstairs, the Doctor heads into the ward accompanied by a Cat Nun. He sees a patient – the Duke of Manhattan – who’s turning to stone, and tells the Cat Nun that his condition won’t be curable for another thousand years. Womp womp. Then he spots someone he knows – the Face of Boe. Another Cat Nun informs him that the Face of Boe is dying of old age, the one thing they can’t cure.
Down in the Basement of Don’t Go In There, Rose finds a old school reel-to-reel video playing. It’s playing footage of Cassandra when she still had a body. Rose realises who it is just before the Cassandra we know and love says “Peekaboo!” behind her. Rose tells her to stay away, and to keep Sepia Tattoos – who Rose calls “Gollum” (which is a much better nickname. I HATE it when that happens…) – away too. Cassandra tells Sepia Tattoos to moisturise her, because obviously.
Mari: I like that we got from the Cat Nun saying that you can’t cure old age to Cassandra being all, “I’M BACK Y’ALL.”
Sweeney: Same – that was a fun little bit of almost segue magic.
K: Apparently only the Doctor can stop Cassandra.
Rose is all “Wait, how the fuck are you alive?” on account of she saw Cassandra explode into leather. Sepia Tattoos says that Cassandra’s brain and eyes survived, and Cassandra says that she’s now inhabiting skin taken from the back of her body. And then this happens, because obviously:
Rose: “So you’re talking out of your ar…”
Cassandra: “Ask not!”
Tee hee.
Sepia Tattoos tells Rose that he smuggled Cassandra into the hospital and steals medicines to keep her alive. Rose is all “Uh, you know there are millions of humans on this planet, right?”. Cassandra pooh-poohs that, calling them “mutant stock“. Rose informs her that those humans have evolved, while she’s stood still. Cassandra watches the still-playing film footage, and informs Rose that it was the last time anyone told her she was beautiful. She randomly changes the subject, saying that the Cat Nuns have a secret and she wants to whisper it to Rose. Rose laughs and backs away. Bolts of light shoot out and grab her hands. “Activate the psychograft!” Cassandra says. A cage of light descends around Rose, then a blob of energy floats from Cassandra and lands on Rose’s head.
Sepia Tattoos switches off the system and Rose collapses. “Moisturise me…” she says. Sepia Tattoos rushes off to get the moisturising bottle while Cassandrose comes to terms with having a body again. Then she stands and looks at herself in the mirror. “Oh my God. I’m a chav!” she says in horror, sounding more upper class than regular Rose.
Sweeney: I dug the way Billie Piper played this little shift, too.
K: Ward 26. Cat Nun tells the Doctor that sometimes she can hear the Face of Boe singing ancient songs in her mind. This is one of those lines that’s hilarious when you can see the future. Sorry, Sweeney…
Sweeney: Rude.
K: You’ll get there one day, Sweeney Snow.
He asks if he’s the only visitor, and she confirms that he is, before saying that there’s a story that before the Face of Boe dies, he’ll impart a big secret to one who’s like him – a wanderer, the last of his kind. The Doctor looks thoughtful and the zoomy cameraman gives us a delightful close up of David Tennant’s freckles.
Basement. Cassandrose bounces excitedly in her new body before noticing that her old brain has died. Cassandrose says it’s totally fine because she has a new body now. Also, she can access Rose’s memories. She gets ranty when she realises that the Doctor has a new face, because clearly he’s a hypocrite. Just then, Rose’s phone rings. Cassandrose puts on a terrible Cockney accent to tell the Doctor that she’s on her way up to the ward.
The Doctor hangs up because he’s just spotted the Duke of Manhattan celebrating – he’s been cured, a thousand years early. A Cat Nun smugly informs the Doctor that they cured him with “the tender application of science“. The Doctor’s all “No, but seriously. HOW??” She claims it’s a secret remedy, then gets called away by another Cat Nun, who whispers to Matron Cat Nun that she’s needed in intensive care because a patient is awake. This is apparently unacceptable, and the Cat Nuns scurry away. The Doctor watches them thoughtfully.
Basement. Sepia Tattoos pleads with Cassandrose not to go, because the Doctor might be dangerous, but she says she might need his brain given that the Cat Nuns are up to something. She fluffs her hair and tucks some perfume down her cleavage before heading towards the lift. Meanwhile, the two Cat Nuns are in a place filled with green glowy pods. It kind of reminds me of the place Mulder rescued Scully from in the first X-Files movie?? IDK. Anyway, the green glowy pods contain patients. They open the pod of the patient in question and we see the patient’s lumpy diseased hands reach into the frame as he begs for help. The Cat Nuns marvel at “its” ability for speech and briefly discuss a new medical text before shutting the pod again. Matron Cat Nun orders her offsider to incinerate the patient. Cat Nun pulls a lever, the pod flashes white and the patient screams himself to death.
Cassandrose walks into ward 26, boobs first. (M: Accurate.) The Doctor starts dragging her around to all the patients, talking about how their diseases should be impossible to cure but they’re all on the mend. He wants to find out how the Cat Nuns are doing it. Cassandrose drops some more Cockney rhyming slang, and the Doctor’s all “…the fuck?”. She makes an awkward excuse, then grabs him and kisses him, leaving him baffled.
The Doctor and Rose head down a flight of stairs that I’m 90% sure is the same set as where they fought the Nestene Consciousness in the (new) pilot. They end up in the green glowy pod place, and the camera pulls back to reveal that it’s basically an entire skyscraper full of pods. It reminds me of the Galactic Senate from Star Wars, to be honest. The Doctor sonics open a couple of pods to find crusty looking people inside. Cassandrose asks what’s wrong with them, and he says they’ve been infected with every disease in the galaxy. They’re not patients. They’re lab rats, designed to help the Cat Nuns cure All The Things.
The Face of Boe’s Cat Nun appears and says it’s for the greater good. Obviously, this is all I can think of:
The Doctor is disgusted, but she says they’re not real people. They were grown by the Cat Nuns to cure the gazillion diseases humans brought to New Earth, and she says that he should look at all the happy humans for proof that they’re doing good. He says life is worthless if this is the price. She asks why he gets to make that decision, and he replies “I’m the Doctor. And if you don’t like it, if you want to take it to a higher authority, then there isn’t one. It stops with me“, which is one of our first moments of Dark!Ten.
Mari: I tried to think of moments like this that Nine had, where he was all, “I’M THE DOCTOR, BITCHES.” The one that sticks out to me is when he drops the nickname Oncoming Storm. Point is that this episode seems to be doing a lot in terms of upping the Doctor’s… cred? Our understanding of him? Here he refers to himself as the last authority and earlier in the Face of Boe legend as the Lonely God. Calm down, show.
Sweeney: This all reminds me of CrAngel.
K: Awww, CrAngel. It’s been long enough that I remember him with the rose coloured glasses of nostalgia!
The Doctor then wants to know what the hell they’ve done to Rose, and the Cat Nun is confused. The Doctor says that Rose would care about the dying people, where Cassandrose has just been grossed out. Cassandrose looks shifty and starts acting seductive before admitting who she is and spraying the vial of perfume in the Doctor’s face. He collapses, unconscious. The Cat Nun is confused and goes to get Matron Cat Nun. Cassandrose pulls out a cable and grins as an alarm sounds.
The Doctor wakes up inside a glowy green pod. Cassandrose sasses that the patients are topped up with new diseases every ten minutes, and he’s got about three minutes left. Matron Cat Nun appears, and Cassandrose demands money in exchange for not telling New New York how all its diseases get cured. Matron Cat Nun is all “LOL NOPE”, and Cassandrose sasses that they can’t stop her because they have no weapons. Except she forgot the part where they’re cats. Matron hisses and her claws pop out. (M: What is even happening?) (S: I LAUGHED FOREVER AND EVER AND I’M STILL LAUGHING. Also: “cats will eat you” tag time!) (K: This is definitely one of those “just go with it” Doctor Who moments.) Cassandrose shrugs and orders Sepia Tattoos to go to Plan B, which is opening a row of glowy green pods.
The Doctor stumbles out with the diseased pod people, and yells at Cassandrose not to touch them. She and Sepia Tattoos run away. Matron makes some more mental notes about her lab rats as a pod person says that they understood what was being done to them, and they’re going to end it. He shoves his hand into a socket and gets electrocuted, but the doors to all the pods burst open.
Mari: That’s terrible wiring, Cat Nuns! You were asking for trouble.
K: Cassandrose and Sepia Tattoos scream, and the Doctor rushes after them. The pod people close in on Matron’s offsider, who dies screaming. Matron runs to a phone and puts the hospital under quarantine. Shutters slam down across the doors and windows.
Cassandrose, Sepia Tattoos and the Doctor keep running. Out in the main hospital, a woman goes to get in a lift only to find it full of pod people. They reach out, asking for help and she screams as she gets infected.
Mari: Blah, blah, blah small budget on this show but COME ON. THIS WAS TERRIBLE. If you have a small budget, don’t overcommit. Someone should’ve seen this and gone, “nope.”
Sweeney: Hardly the first time someone should have stepped in with the, “Nope,” button, but yes, agreed.
K: Still better than Classic Who.
Cassandrose runs towards a lift, but the Doctor yells that they’re shut down. She leads him towards the Basement of Don’t Go In There. Sepia Tattoos gets cut off from them, and Cassandrose has no fucks to give because he’s only a clone. Sepia Tattoos sad pandas because his mistress is leaving him, and jumps down a waste chute as the pod people close in.
Cassandrose and the Doctor end up trapped in her lair, and he orders her to leave Rose’s body. She mopes that she has nowhere to go, but he has no fucks to give and threatens her with his sonic screwdriver. “You asked for it…” she replies before floating out of Rose’s head and into the Doctor’s. Rose is horrified when she realises, while Cassandra’s pretty on board with the idea. David Tennant is clearly having a blast, and may be channelling Barty Crouch Jr a little bit.
K: Seeing actors struggling not to break character is one of my favourite things.
Pod people break through the door, and Cassandoctor panics. Rose takes charge, and they start climbing a ladder up the lift shaft. In ward 26, patients barricade the doors. Down in the Star Wars Senate, Sepia Tattoos locks himself in a green glowy pod. In the lift shaft, Rose tells Cassandra that if she gets out of the Doctor, he’ll be able to come up with a plan. Cassandoctor eyerolls. Matron grabs Rose’s ankle and hisses that the good name of the Cat Nuns has been destroyed and it’s all their fault. Cassandoctor eyerolls again and snaps “Go and play with a ball of string.” A pod person grabs Matron’s ankle and she screams as she’s infected, then lets go of the ladder, plummeting down the lift shaft to her death.
Rose yells at Cassandoctor to climb faster as a voice informs us that the quarantine level has been increased. The doors on the top floor won’t open. Rose tells Cassandoctor to use the sonic screwdriver, but Cassandoctor is all “Ew, no. Plus IDK how”. Rose tells Cassandra to jump back into her so the Doctor can open the door. She does so, and the Doctor immediately yells at Cassandra to get out of Rose’s body again. She jumps back into the Doctor.
Cassandrose collapses on the floor, and starts talking in shock about how lonely the pod people are and how all they want is to be held, touched. The Doctor offers her a hand up and sonics their way into ward 26. The Duke of Manhattan’s assistant charges at them, and the Doctor insists that they’re not infected. She tells him that she thinks they’re the only ones left, and she wants to break the quarantine to call in a specialist team. The Doctor yells that they can’t let the diseases get out and orders Cassandrose and the Face of Bose’s Cat Nun to gather up all the IV bags of cures.
Everyone scurries around grabbing IV bags. Cassandrose attaches the bags to the Doctor’s suit, and the Doctor sonics open the lift doors. He jumps to the lift cables, and attached a round metal thing to the cables. Cassandrose is all “The fuck are you doing??” and he tells her to join him. He needs another pair of hands, and also there’s a difference between being alive and living. He suggests, with accompanying eyebrows, that she should live a little.
Just then, some pod people appear. Annoying Assistant locks the doors to the ward, and Cassandrose is trapped. She squeals and jumps, landing on the Doctor’s back. He presses a button the round metal thing and they hurtle down the lift shaft, stopping just above the lift. The Doctor yells at Cassandrose to pull a lever when he tells her to. He starts ripping open IV bags and dumping the contents into a big plastic bucket on top of the lift.
He jumps down into the lift itself and sonics the doors open. The pod people start to walk towards him. The Doctor tells Cassandrose to pull the lever. The disinfection cycle starts as the pod people walk into the lift. The Doctor jumps with excitement and yells at the pod people to pass it on. The orchestra tinkles with feels as disinfected pod people wander through the lobby healing others with a touch. The Doctor helps Cassandrose down, and she asks if he’s killed the pod people. He says that’s her way. “I’m the Doctor, and I cured them!” he says. A pod woman hugs him. Legit, girl.
Sweeney: I was surprised there weren’t more hugs. But also relieved for the Doctor’s sake because that would have been awkward and supremely uncomfortable.
K: He gushes excitedly about the new sub-species of humans that he’s just helped to create, ending with “Life will out!“. Obviously, this is all I can think of:
Later, the LOLPD arrive. An announcement informs us that all new life forms are to be taken into care, and that all Cat Nuns will be arrested. The Doctor suddenly remembers the Face of Boe, and he and Cassandrose run back up to the ward. The Face of Boe is awake now, and tells the Doctor telepathically that he WAS dying but the Doctor made him see the universe anew and now he’s going to go and explore it for a while more. The Doctor mopes because he wants to hear the big secret. The Face of Boe says he’ll see the Doctor again, and when he does, the truth will be told. The Face of Boe vanishes, and the Doctor is kind of impressed.
Then he turns on Cassandrose, and tells her that she has to leave Rose’s body. Cassandra fake cries that she doesn’t want to die and he has to help her. He coldly says that he can’t. Just then, Sepia Tattoos rushes up. He volunteers his body as a vessel for Cassandra. The Doctor insists that she can’t because Sepia Tattoos has his own life, but it’s too late. She transfers, and Rose collapses in the Doctor’s arms. They greet each other with adorable grins of relief.
The Doctor tells her/him that he’s going to take her/him to New New York where they’ll build her/him a new piece of skin and she can stand trial. But Cassandra Tattoos is all “LOL NOPE” because Sepia Tattoos was only a clone with a half life, and now they’re dying. S/he’s totally flippant about it at first, then collapses. The Doctor offers to take her/him to the city, but Cassandra Tattoos says that s/he understands now that he’s right – everything dies, and it’s okay. The Doctor says there’s one last thing he can do for her/him.
The TARDIS vworp vworps to a party, and it’s the party that Cassandra was watching footage of earlier. Cassandra Tattoos stares at her/his past self with astonishment, and thanks the Doctor. He tells her/him coldly to go and not look back. Rose wishes her/him good luck. Cassandra Tattoos walks up to Past Cassandra and and tells her sincerely how beautiful she looks. Past Cassandra is startled, but looks feelsy. Cassandra Tattoos collapses, and Past Cassandra yells for people to get help, cradling Cassandra Tattoos as s/he dies.
Look, I know this episode is kind of stupid and a giant ball of contrivance from start to finish. But I don’t care. I love everything about it. It’s Rose and the Doctor getting to know each other again, and it’s perfect that two of the characters from their first non-Earth adventure together crop up again here. And both David Tennant and Billie Piper did a brilliant job of Cassandra’s mannerisms and speech. So yeah. 10/10 would recommend.
Mari: Yeaaaah… I totally remembered during the course of this episode that I hard core struggled with the beginning of season 2. At the time, I thought it was the loss of Nine and that may be a little part of this but this episode is rough. Not terrible, but just sort of all over the place. Firstly, I don’t even think it’s a service to Ten and Rose because she spends most of the episode out of her body. We basically see them properly together for like five minutes and the whole time it’s just goofy grins and such. That isn’t selling (or establishing) their relationship in any meaningful way.
I was pretty okay with this episode but it really went downhill as we neared the end. I think there was some sort of message they wanted to give about reaching out and touching people, and thus had people cured of every disease ever by reaching out and touching people. BOOOOOOOO. Lame. 0/10 would not recommend this plot device. There is nothing about the science of having 10 IV bags cure everyone that makes me want to buy that resolution. On top of that, any such message of that sort gets lost with the body swapping and Cassandra just kind of hanging out in this hospital basement for whatever reason and then the entire idea of the human lab rats, etc.
Additionally, David Tennant’s performance is SO BIG. I’d forgotten this, I guess, and it’s kind of jarring to have just gone from Nine to Ten, but holy moly this guy takes up so much room with his performance. At times, it’s so perfect. Example: when the Face of Boe disappears and he’s giving the line, “That is enigmatic! That–that is–that is textbook enigmatic!” that’s just so cute and quirky and great delivery. Other times, though, it’s a bit too much. I mean, these plots are kind of silly anyway, so when you inject so much silliness into the Doctor, it kind of felt… slapsticky. It takes some getting used to and really that’s what I remember. I couldn’t quite get used to Ten for a few episodes.
The good was that there is obviously chemistry between Rose and Ten, that it’s a shame they didn’t use the first episode to dig into. NOT romantic chemistry, mind you, but just, if this is the new Doctor, what would their first adventure be like? Well, we have yet to answer that question. Also,Billie Piper did a really good job as Cassandrose and… that’s about it.
K: *whispers* 10/10 would recommend.
Next time on Doctor Who: It’s Kirsti’s all time favourite episode and if anyone hates on it, she will probably cry in S02 E02 – Tooth and Claw.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
