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New Earth was the first episode of series two of the revived Doctor Who, and the middle of a loose "New Earth" trilogy incorporating The End of the World and Gridlock. It featured reappearances of Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17 and the Face of Boe, both last seen in End of the World, and introduced a mystery surrounding the Face that would later be a major part of the overall story arc of series three. It was also the first BBC Wales episode to be set on an alien world (with the exception of a brief beginning scene of Rose saying her goodbyes on Earth), the entirety of series one having taken place on or in orbit of Earth.
- You may wish to consult
New Earthfor other, similarly-named pages.
Behind the scenes, it was the final appearance of Zoë Wanamaker, but it was the first time that actors Anna Hope and Adjoa Andoh worked on the programme. Principal photography was rocky enough to be remarked upon by two different sets of commentators. Its overruns and difficulties negatively impacted upon other episodes within its production block. (PCOM, DCOM: New Earth)
Series two also played host to a series of mini-episode prologues for each new episode, known collectively as Tardisodes. Tardisode 1, the first of these short preludes, led into New Earth.
Synopsis
In the distant future, an order of cat-nuns cure all illnesses, but the Tenth Doctor is suspicious of their methods. He must uncover the truth and save Rose from the vengeance of his old enemy, the Lady Cassandra.
Plot
The Tenth Doctor powers up the TARDIS as 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 Galaxy M87. Rose is delighted at the new world, the sight of the futuristic city of New New York in front of them and the smell of apple-grass. However, the two travellers are being observed by a metal 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 New New York Hospital, a hospital to which the Doctor has 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; though Rose is a bit shocked, the Doctor tells her that the cats would find her equally strange due to her "pink and yellow" colouration. Trying to find the right ward, the Doctor and Rose enter separate lifts, which drench each of them in a disinfectant liquid then blow-drys them — the Doctor is completely blasé about it, while Rose has no idea and takes a while to get used to it. Chip has overridden Rose's lift controls, diverting her to the basement. He beckons her forward, calling her by name; she grabs a metal pipe as a weapon.
In the ward, the Doctor is escorted by Sister Jatt, commenting that the hospital lacks the little shop he is so fond of. Sister Jatt lectures him on the vow that her order takes, which is to help and mend, as they pass a bed belonging to an incredibly fat man who appears to be turning to stone. The rather bossy woman with him, Frau Clovis, rebukes him for staring at the man, who is the Duke of Manhattan and is dying from Petrifold Regression. Sister Jatt is confident that he will be cured in no time, despite the Doctor's assurances that the cure for his disease won't be available for another 1000 years, and asks if he recognises any of the patients. The Doctor, with a smile on his face, responds that he does — the Face of Boe. He is being tended by Novice Hame, who tells the Doctor that the Face is dying of old age — the one thing the Sisters can't cure.
Rose explores the basement warily, and finds a film of a party of several men and a blond woman with a familiar voice. The same voice makes Rose turn to see Cassandra: a piece of skin stretched out on a frame over 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. Cassandra has found out the Sisters are hiding something, and she needs Rose's help... or rather, her body.
Using a device called a psychograft, Cassandra transfers her consciousness into Rose's mind, taking control of her body but allowing her old one to die. Cassandra is initially unimpressed with her new body — protesting, "I'm a chav!" — but changes her mind after taking a good look at Rose's curves.
In the ward, Novice Hame tells the Doctor that legend says 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 after putting a tiny bottle in her cleavage. The Doctor is amazed to discover the Duke of Manhattan in perfect health and interrogates one of the nurses, who introduces herself as Matron Casp, on how they were able to cure him, but she evades his questions and is summoned to the Intensive Care ward by Sister Jatt. They observe an unseen figure who pleads for help and are amazed that it can speak before Casp orders it incinerated. The Doctor inspects the various medicines and points out several incurable diseases to the recently arrived Cassandra, including Marconi's disease, which leaves the victim with bright red skin and should take years to recover from, and Pallidome Pancrosis which should kill the victim within ten minutes.
Cassandra's odd behaviour in Rose's body — at one point giving the Doctor a lusty kiss — raises the Time Lord's suspicions. They enter Intensive Care and discover the horrifying secret of the cures: hundreds of pods, each holding an artificially grown human being infected with a thousand different diseases, a human farm to breed cures. The Sisters kill any healthy enough to speak or move. The Doctor confronts Novice Hame, but she insists that these artificial humans are just "flesh", and that 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. Her cover blown, Cassandra reveals her identity and knocks out the Doctor with some drugged perfume.
While the Doctor is trapped in a pod about to be injected with diseases, Cassandra tries to blackmail Matron Casp, demanding money to keep quiet about the Sisters' actions. Casp declines and threatens her physically with her rather vicious claws. Cassandra releases some of the plague carriers in response. One admonishes the Sisters before releasing the rest of the patients. The patients advance on the nuns, trapping Sister Jatt, who screams as one of the patients touches her face and infects her; the viruses are too numerous for her immune system to cope with and she is killed instantly. Casp places the hospital under quarantine before disappearing and the exits seal themselves, much to the confusion and fright of the staff and visitors. The patients attempt to get the people within the hospital to help them, but they cannot touch anybody without infecting them as well. 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. Rose climbs up the lift shaft with a now Cassandra-controlled Doctor, pursued by the carriers. Matron Casp tries to stop them, but is infected and falls screaming down the shaft to her death. 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. Cassandra is shocked by the loneliness of the carriers, having read the surface thoughts of the carrier she had possessed — not being able to touch or be touched all their lives.
The Doctor and Cassandra reach Ward 26, which seems to be the only place still untouched by the carriers. Frau Clovis reveals a device she is using to try and contact the people in the city to help them, but the Doctor refuses to allow it as every single disease in the galaxy is contained within the hospital and if the quarantine is breached then the whole planet will be at risk. He grabs all of the intravenous solutions, straps them to his body, then slides down the shaft to the lift car with Cassandra, where he empties the solutions into the disinfectant reservoir. He opens the doors, luring several plague carriers inward as Cassandra starts the shower. The spray drenches the carriers, curing them, and the Doctor encourages them to pass it on; they wander back out to spread the cure to the others. A new race is born: the new humans.
The surviving Sisters are arrested by the New New York Police Department, and the cured new humans are taken into care. The Doctor remembers the Face of Boe, and runs to him. No longer dying, the Face tells him telepathically that he had grown tired of the universe, but the Doctor has taught him to look at it anew. The Doctor asks the Face about his message, but is told it can wait for their third and final meeting. The Face teleports himself away.
The Doctor orders Cassandra to leave Rose's body at once, telling her to end it. In response, Cassandra sobs and tells the Doctor she doesn't want to die. Chip then appears — "a volunteer". Despite multiple protests from the Doctor, Cassandra transfers her consciousness into him. Unfortunately, his "half-life" body quickly fails, and Cassandra accepts her impending true death; New Earth has no place for people like her and Chip.
The Doctor does one last favour for Cassandra, taking her back to the party seen earlier, to the last time anyone had called her beautiful, to re-witness her life as it was in its prime. "Chip" approaches the Cassandra of the past and sincerely remarks on her beauty, before collapsing into the younger Cassandra's arms as she comforts "him". As Cassandra finally dies, the Doctor and Rose silently leave in the TARDIS, letting things end, and life take its natural course.
Cast
- The Doctor — David Tennant
- Rose Tyler — Billie Piper
- Jackie Tyler — Camille Coduri
- Mickey Smith — Noel Clarke
- Cassandra - Zoe Wanamaker
- Chip — Sean Gallagher
- Matron Casp — Dona Croll
- Duke of Manhattan — Michael Fitzgerald
- Fran Clovis[1] — Lucy Robinson
- Sister Jatt — Adjoa Andoh
- Novice Hame — Anna Hope
- Patient — Simon Ludders
- Face of Boe — Struan Rodger
Crew
| Executive Producers Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner |
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| Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources. |
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According to the DVD commentary, Sarah Davies, an uncredited production runner on this episode, was also an uncredited extra. She played one of the patients. |
References
Individuals
- The Ambassador of Thrace hosted a party Cassandra once attended.
- Cassandra refers to herself as a chav while inside Rose's body.
- The Duke of Manhattan has a butler.
Plants
- Apple-grass is growing on the hillside where the TARDIS lands.
Diseases and illnesses
- The Duke of Manhattan is suffering from Petrifold Regression.
- Marconi's Disease, from which one of the patients suffers, takes years to recover.
- Pallidome Pancrosis kills the sufferer within ten minutes.
Cultural references
- Rose refers to Chip as Gollum.
Foods and beverages
- The Duke of Manhattan offers the Doctor a glass of champagne.
Story notes
- It is implied[by whom?] that the Doctor stayed at the Powell Estate with Rose and Jackie between The Christmas Invasion and this episode.
- This is the first story of the revived series to be set on an alien planet. Ironically, the first non-Earth planet the Doctor visits in the revived series is called New Earth (all on-camera locations up to that point were either Earth or space stations or spaceships in orbit around Earth).
- This is the first Doctor Who episode to have an accompanying Tardisode. These short prelude scenes were made available online and via cellphone a week prior to the broadcast. In the case of New Earth the Tardisode consisted of a faux commercial advertising the Sisters of Plenitude's services.
- This story had the working title of 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.
- According to David Tennant on the audio commentary, Billie Piper wore a wonderbra and a slightly different shade of lipstick in the scenes where Cassandra was in Rose's body. He also mentioned that Billie kept on wearing the wonderbra for a bit longer after Cassandra was no longer possessing Rose.
- The words "bitch" and "arse" are implied, although not actually said. In both cases, the character (Cassandra and Rose, respectively) is cut off in her dialogue and the words are implied by the next word in the script. Cassandra, when talking of Rose, calls her "that little..." and then the scene cuts to Rose whose first words are "a bit rich". Later, Rose tells Cassandra she is "talking out of [her]..." and Cassandra interrupts, "Ask not!"
- When Cassandra takes over the Doctor's body she references to some parts that have been "hardly used", a reference to the perceived asexual nature of the Doctor. This may also refer to the fact that this is a new (regenerated) body, and that he hasn't really had a chance to "use" most of the parts very much at this point.
- The scene showing Rose kissing the Doctor was featured in one of the trailers and raised a stir in fan circles, despite the "kiss" shared by the Ninth Doctor and Rose in The Parting of the Ways. Ultimately, we learn it's actually Cassandra doing the kissing while possessing Rose. Rose and the Doctor never do kiss on screen in that fashion, though Rose will eventually kiss the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor in Journey's End.
- Although it is widely stated that Rose has met the Face of Boe twice, the only times she was in his presence in this episode was during the periods where Cassandra was possessing her body, and he teleports away before Cassandra takes over Chip.
- This episode marks the first appearance of a running joke about the Tenth Doctor's love of the "little shops" found in hospitals and museums.
- This episode marks the first use of the recurring phrase "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" in the series.
- Stock footage from Rose is used at one point.
- When the wall drops, the sound made is recycled from the movement of the Daleks.
- Russell T Davies explains during the audio commentary that in the original script, the Face of Boe was going to die in this episode and the only way for the Doctor to cure all the diseased was to kill them all. But then he read Steven Moffat's introduction segment in The Shooting Scripts book, in which Moffat good naturedly mocked Davies by stating he "creates interesting characters and then melts them". This made Davies decide to have them all survive instead.
Ratings
- 8.62 million viewers
Filming locations
- 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 (so-called because it sells the unique Portmeirion china produced in the Welsh resort village of the same name that was once used as a filming location for The Masque of Mandragora).
- The exterior shots of the lift car as Rose descends to the basement are stock footage recycled from Rose.
Production errors
- When the camera zooms out when Rose is captured and Cassandra is about to "go" into Rose, the psychograft disappears, but in the next shot of Rose, it is there again.
- Before the Doctor and Rose/Cassandra open one of the booths behind the Doctor there is an empty booth. In the next shot there is clearly one of the Flesh occupying it.
- At 5.30 Rose enters the right hand lift but at 6.20 she leaves the left hand one.
Continuity
- There have been several planets called New Earth:
- The planet (which turned out to be fake) to which Sarah was told she was being taken in a spaceship (TV: Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
- A planet invaded by the Daleks (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom)
- The homeworld of the Sixth Doctor's companion Grant Markham (PROSE: Time of Your Life)
- The New Earth Republic, a future Earth colony. (PROSE: Synthespians™)
- The Seventh Doctor previously encountered another race of feline humanoids, the Cheetah People, (TV: Survival) as well as the Second Doctor who met the Cat-People. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People)
- The ailment from which the Duke of Manhattan is dying, Petrifold Regression (a disease that turns its victims to stone), is also mentioned in PROSE: The Stone Rose. Amy Pond thinks she's suffering from a similar condition caused by the Weeping Angels. (TV: The Time of Angels)
- The Bad Wolf car park graffiti is present, though faded, when Rose is saying her goodbyes. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
- Cassandra references her last encounter with the Doctor and Rose, during which she was thought to have died. Rose also reminds the Doctor they had chips together. (TV: The End of the World)
- Cassandra believes it to be hypocritical that the "same Doctor" she met on Platform One has a "new face", believing him to have undergone plastic surgery. Later in his travels, when the Tenth Doctor first encounters Jack Harkness, he asks if he'd gotten work done on his face, only for Jack to sarcastically reply with, "You can talk!" (TV: Utopia)
- The Doctor will again encounter Novice Hame and the Face of Boe on his next visit to New New York, several years later. (TV: Gridlock)
DVD releases
- This episode was released as a "vanilla" DVD with The Christmas Invasion.
- New Earth was also released as part of the Series 2 DVD box set.
- This story was also released with Issue 8 of the Doctor Who DVD Files.
Footnotes
- ↑ The title "Frau" appears to be misspelled in the credits. In dialogue, she is clearly named Frau Clovis.