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Synopsis
In the year five billion and twenty-three, after the destruction of the Earth, the Doctor takes Rose to the New Earth. There, in a hospital facility, the feline Sisters of Plenitude can cure any disease, but in the basement an old enemy of the Doctor is out for revenge.
Plot
As the Tenth Doctor powers up the TARDIS, Rose says good-bye to Jackie and Mickey at the Powell Estate. Although Jackie and Mickey sadly watch the TARDIS fade away, inside the ship Rose is all smiles as she asks where they are going next. The Doctor tells her that they are going further than they have ever gone before.
The TARDIS materialises on New Earth, in the year five billion and twenty-three. Following the destruction of Earth, Humanity became nostalgic and settled a new planet with similar gravity and atmosphere in the Galaxy M87. Rose is delighted at the beauty of the new world, the sight of the futuristic city of New New York in front of them and the smell of the apple-grass. However, the two travellers are being observed by a robot spider controlled by Chip, a small, pale man with multiple tattoos. Chip takes his orders from Lady Cassandra, who is still alive and recognises Rose.
The Doctor and Rose head for a large hospital building, the Doctor having been summoned by a telepathic message displayed on his psychic paper: "Ward 26, Please Come". The hospital is run by humanoid feline nuns belonging to an order called the Sisters of Plenitude. Trying to find the right ward, the Doctor and Rose enter separate lifts, which give each of them a disinfecting shower. However, Chip has overridden Rose's lift controls, and diverts her to the basement. He beckons her forward, calling her by name, which rouses her suspicions.
In the ward, the Doctor is escorted around by Sister Jatt. He observes that the patients all have diseases which are supposed to be incurable, but yet the Sisters are able to cure them. However, the nuns are evasive about what precisely is in the coloured solutions that are given to the patients. The Doctor then recognises who it must be that has called him here — the Face of Boe. He is being tended to by Novice Harne, who tells the Doctor that the Face is dying of old age.
Meanwhile, Rose explores the basement warily, and finds an old projector showing a film of a party, with several men surrounding a blond woman with a very familiar voice. That same voice makes Rose turn to see Cassandra, looking just as she did: a piece of skin stretched out on a frame above a brain jar. Cassandra had been reconstructed from another piece of her skin, and Chip (a force-grown clone devoted to Cassandra) smuggled her into the hospital, where he has been tending to her ever since. However, Cassandra has discovered that the Sisters are hiding something, and to find out what, she needs Rose's help... or rather her body. Using a device called a psychograft, Cassandra implants her consciousness over Rose's own, allowing her own brain to die.
In the ward, Novice Harne tells the Doctor that legend has it that the Face has lived for thousands, perhaps millions of years and that he will give his dying message to a wanderer without a home. The Doctor realises that he fits the description in the legend, but says nothing. Below, Cassandra reads Rose's surface thoughts and discovers that the man with Rose is the Doctor, with a new face. She goes to meet him.
"Rose's" odd behaviour raises the Doctor's suspicions, especially when she kisses him passionately and later shows anachronistic knowledge of the hospital's computer systems. With her help, however, they enter Intensive Care and discover the horrifying secret of the cures: hundreds of individual pods containing artificially grown Human beings infected with a thousand different diseases, a Human farm to breed cures. If they become healthy enough to speak or move, the Sisters kill them. The Doctor, in a rage, confronts Novice Harne about this, but she argues that these artificial Humans are just "flesh". It was necessary to cope with the influx of patients and diseases. He demands they reverse what they have done to Rose, not realising that it is Cassandra who has taken over. "Rose" knocks out the Doctor with some drugged perfume.
While the Doctor is trapped in a pod about to be injected with diseases, "Rose" tries to blackmail Matron Casp, demanding payment to keep quiet about the Sisters' actions. When Casp declines and threatens her physically, "Rose" releases some of the plague carriers. They, in turn, release the rest, and the zombie-like mass of them start to lurch through the hospital, infecting and killing anyone that touches them almost instantly, with Sister Jatt the first to die. After failing to find a way out through the basement, the Doctor demands Cassandra release Rose, threatening her with the sonic screwdriver. Cassandra transfers her consciousness to the Doctor instead. The "Doctor" and Rose climb up the lift shaft, pursued by the carriers. Matron Casp tries to stop them, but is infected and falls down the shaft, screaming. Cassandra transfers herself to a plague carrier so that the Doctor can use the sonic screwdriver to unseal the lift doors, then jumps back into Rose. "Rose" is momentarily shocked and moved by the loneliness the carriers feel, not being able to touch or be touched all their lives.
The Doctor and "Rose" reach Ward 26, which seems to be the only place still untouched by the carriers. The Doctor takes all of the intravenous solutions and straps them to his body. Together with "Rose", he slides back down the shaft to the lift car, where he empties the solutions into the disinfectant reservoir. The Doctor opens the doors, luring several plague carriers inward as "Rose" starts the shower. The spray drenches the carriers, curing them. The Doctor encourages them to pass it on, and they wander back out to spread the cure to the others.
The surviving Sisters are arrested by the New New York Police Department, and the cured New Humans (as the Doctor calls them), are to be taken into care. At that moment, the Doctor remembers the Face of Boe. No longer dying, the Face tells the Doctor telepathically that he had grown tired of the universe, but the Doctor had taught him to look at it anew. The Doctor asks the Face about his message, but he enigmatically replies that it can wait for their third and final meeting. The Face then teleports away.
The Doctor now orders Cassandra out of Rose's body. Cassandra transfers her consciousness to Chip instead, but his cloned body begins to fail, and Cassandra accepts her impending, true death; the New Earth has no place for people like her and Chip. The Doctor does one last thing for Cassandra, taking her back to the party seen earlier, to see herself when she was still beautiful. "Chip" approaches the Cassandra of the past and tells her just that, then collapsing into the younger Cassandra's arms as she comforts "him". As Cassandra finally dies, the Doctor and Rose silently leave in the TARDIS
Cast & Characters
- The Doctor — David Tennant
- Rose Tyler — Billie Piper
- Jackie Tyler — Camille Coduri
- Mickey Smith — Noel Clarke
- Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen - Zoë Wanamaker
- Chip — Sean Gallagher
- Matron Casp — Doña Croll
- Duke of Manhattan — Michael Fitzgerald
- Frau Clovis — Lucy Robinson
- Sister Jatt — Adjoa Andoh
- Novice Harne — Anna Hope
- Patient — Simon Ludders
- Face of Boe — Struan Rodger
Crew
To be added.
Notes
- The first story of the revived show to be set on an alien planet.
- This is the first Doctor Who episode to have an accompanying TARDISODE.
- This story went under the working title The Sunshine Camp.
- Immediately after the episode, a commentary for the episode, featuring David Tennant, Russell T. Davies and Phil Collinson, was made available on the official website for viewers to download and listen to alongside the repeat. The same thing was done for The Christmas Invasion.
Ratings
New Earth - 8.0m (38.6%)
Location Filming
- The exterior shots of New Earth were filmed on the Gower Peninsula.
- The hospital scenes were filmed inside the Wales Millennium Centre which appeared in the previous series episode Boom Town. When the Doctor asks about the shop and points to where he would put it, he points to the location of the centre's own Portmeirion shop.
- The exterior shots of the lift car as Rose descends to the basement are reused footage from Rose.
Continuity
- There have been several planets called "New Earth" in Doctor Who: the planet where Sarah was told she was being taken to in a spaceship in Invasion of the Dinosaurs; a planet from the Fourth Doctor comic strip story Doctor Who and the Iron Legion (Doctor Who Weekly #1-#8); the homeworld of the Sixth Doctor novel companion Grant Markham and the setting of the Virgin Missing Adventures novel Time of Your Life by Steve Lyons; and the New Earth Republic, a future Earth colony and the setting of the Past Doctor Adventures Synthespians™ by Craig Hinton
- The Sisters of Plenitude are not the first feline aliens to feature in the series. A race of Cheetah People appeared in the Seventh Doctor serial Survival
- The ailment that the Duke of Manhattan is dying from, Petrifold Regression — a disease that turns its victims to stone — is also mentioned in The Stone Rose.
- The Bad Wolf car park graffiti shown in The Parting Of The Ways reappears at the outset of the episode, though faded.
Discontinuity
To be added.
References
Individuals
Plants
Diseases
Technology
See also
Public Releases
According to Doctor Who Magazine #366, this episode will be released as a "vanilla" DVD with The Christmas Invasion, reportedly on May 1, 2006