New Earth was the first episode of Series Two of the revived Doctor Who, and the middle of a trilogy also containing The End of the World and Gridlock. It featured reappearances by Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17 and the Face of Boe, and introduced a mystery surrounding the Face that would later be a major part of the overall story arc of Series 3. It was also the first BBC Wales episode to be almost entirely set off Earth.
- For the titular planet, see New Earth.
Behind the scenes, it was the final appearance of Zoë Wanamaker, but it was the first time that actors Anna Hope or Adjoa Andoh had 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)
Synopsis
In the distant future, an order of cat-nuns cure all illnesses, but the Doctor is suspicious of their methods. He must uncover the truth and save Rose from the revenge of his old enemy, the Lady Cassandra.
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 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 because 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. Trying to find the right ward, the Doctor and Rose enter separate lifts, which drench each of them in a disinfectant liquid. While the Doctor enjoyes his shower, Rose is unprepared for it, and as a result screams constantly while the liquid comes pouring down apon her head, soaking her clothes. It also turns out that Chip has overridden Rose's lift controls, diverting 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, 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 Hame, 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 Hame 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.
Cassandra/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 Hame about this, but she argues 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/Rose reveals her identity and knocks out the Doctor with some drugged perfume concealed in her cleavage.
While the Doctor is trapped in a pod about to be injected with diseases, Cassandra/Rose tries to blackmail Matron Casp, demanding payment to keep quiet about the Sisters' actions. When Casp declines and threatens her physically, Cassandra/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 Cassandra/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. Cassandra/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 Cassandra/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 Cassandra/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 Cassandra/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
- 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 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.
- Novice Hame, Sister Jatt and Matron Casp are part of the Sisters of Plenitude.
- The Face of Boe sends a message to the Doctor via the psychic paper.
Plants
- Apple-grass is growing on the hillside where the TARDIS lands.
Diseases
- Petrifold Regression is a disease the Duke of Manhattan was suffering from.
Hospital
- The Doctor says to Rose that he doesn't like hospitals they give him the creeps, this may be a reference to the fact the seventh incarnation died in a hospital.
Story notes
- 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 were either Earth or space stations in orbit around Earth, and there is a short scene on present day Earth).
- Rose's comment when she steps out of the TARDIS, that she'll never get used to standing on an alien planet no matter how many times she does so, is also somewhat ironic from the viewers' perspective, as she has never actually done so on screen prior to this. It is not a continuity error, however. Prior conversations in previous episodes have referenced that the Doctor has taken her to at least one or two alien planets before this off screen, and she had also travelled to other planets in several novels by this point.
- While other alien planets have been shown since this episode, it is still the only time that the first episode of a series has taken place on another planet (excluding the Moon in DW: Smith and Jones).
- This is the first Doctor Who episode to have an accompanying Tardisode. This 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 DW: The Christmas Invasion.
- The words 'bitch' and 'arse' are implied, although not actually said. In both cases, the character (Cassandra and Rose, respectively) is cut off in their 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 moving parts "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.
- The scene showing Rose kissing the Doctor was featured in one of the trailers and raised a stir in fan circles. Ultimately, we learn it's actually Cassandra possessing Rose doing the kissing; Rose and the Doctor never do kiss on screen in that fashion, though Rose will eventually kiss the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor in DW: Journey's End.
- Although it is widely stated that Rose has met the Face of Boe twice, she actually did not meet him in this episode, because the only times she was in his presence was during the periods where Cassandra was possessing her body.
- Adjoa Andoh, who plays Sister Jatt, went on to play Francine Jones in DW: Smith and Jones and later episodes of series 3 and 4.
- 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.
Ratings
- New Earth - 8.0 million viewers (38.6% of the audience share)
Myths
to be added
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 DW: 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.
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 DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs (which turned out to be fake); a planet from the Fourth Doctor comic strip story DWM: The Iron Legion; the homeworld of the Sixth Doctor novel companion Grant Markham and the setting MA: Time of Your Life; and the New Earth Republic, a future Earth colony and the setting of the PDA: Synthespians™.
- The Sisters of Plenitude are not the first feline aliens to feature in the series. A race of Cheetah People appeared in DW: 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 NSA: The Stone Rose. Amy Pond thinks she's suffering from a similar condition caused by the Weeping Angels in DW: The Time of Angels.
- The Bad Wolf car park graffiti shown in DW: The Parting of the Ways reappears at the outset of the episode, though faded.
- Cassandra last appeared, and was thought to have died, in DW: The End of the World.
- Novice Hame and the Face of Boe reappear in the episode DW: Gridlock, which is also set in New New York on New Earth.
Timeline
- This story occurs after DWM: The Lodger
- This story occurs before DWAM: Which Switch?
See also
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 boxset.
- This was also released with Issue 8 of the Doctor Who DVD Files.