| NEW EARTH by Russell T Davies |
| Story 12 Synopsis: The Doctor takes Rose to the year 5 billion and 23, to visit a hospital. He received a message for help on his psychic paper. Inside, he and Rose get split up. He finds his contact on Ward 26 - the Face of Boe. Rose meets another old face, Cassandra, and gets possessed by her. She joins the Doctor, who is marvelling that the Sisters of Plentitude, who run the hospital, are curing incurable diseases but won't explain how. He and Rose investigate, and find a hidden chamber with millions of people kept in pods, infected with multiple diseases. The Sisters grew them to test cures. The Doctor demands they stop, and put Rose back to normal. They deny having changed her, so Cassandra admits who she is. She tries to blackmail the Sisters, but it fails, so she unleashes all the plague victims. She and the Doctor keep ahead of the victims, and make it back to Ward 26. He collects all the curatives, and mixes them all together into a disinfectant, then douses himself in it, and cures the victims in a chain reaction. Cassandra is allowed into a new body, but finds she is dying. The Doctor thinks the Face of Boe has a message for him, but he is told they'll meet again. The Doctor and the restored Rose allow Cassandra one last request, taking her back to tell herself in the past that she was beautiful. |
| Review:- It's the future, and things are looking good. But maybe too good to be true..? The Doctor and Rose set off for the great unknown, or not that unknown given that the Doctor seems to be an expert again. The history of the far future must be of some interest to him... as with their last trip to this time zone in The End of the World, they meet two old faces, Cassandra and the Face of Boe. Boe seems on the way out, and there is a convenient legend that suggests he has a special message for the Doctor. Meanwhile, Rose gets split up from her friend and swiftly zapped by her old enemy, the Last Human. This leads to a very brief intrigue as Cassandra takes over Rose's body, and does very little with it. It is nice that the viewer realises the Doctor is aware that something is wrong when he gets her to show off knowledge she couldn't possibly have. This whole companion-under-the-influence routine is not terribly new, and here is not all that effective, given its brevity. But both are soon on the case of this week's baddies, the Sisters of Plenitude. It transpires that the Sisters' patients are mysteriously getting cured, despite it being impossible. They claim it to be faith, and since the Doctor spends most of his time debunking any faith element he can, he looks for the truth. It turns out to be a convenient hidden room containing thousands of people. Firstly, the perspective here is breath-taking, though why anyone would build a room that size and keep it hidden is beyond me. Not to mention that the Sisters have covered all the walls with their little life-pods containing their dark secret - subhumans grown specifically to test cures on. This is apparently the source of their magic cures, although it doesn't make much sense. Anyway, this is soon irrelevant, as all the suffering victims are released, and embark on a strange lurching conquest, that's actually just the need to be touched. Some have complained that this whole zombie-esque sequence is not very original. In fact, it reminded me of The Green Death, in a way, and how many shows are original anyway? Whatever, it allows for a few minutes of frantic chasing, and Cassandra hopping from body to body. This gets very silly when the Doctor orders her to leave Rose's body, then becomes ineffective when she goes into his body. Finally, back in Ward 26, the Doctor rules out all alternatives before trying a desperate and somewhat far-fetched plan to cure all the sick. This basically involves mixing all remedies into a big tank, and then spraying himself with it, before touching the sick and healing them. This is perhaps even more contentious than the whole experimentation-to-find-cures aspect. Blatantly playing God, the Doctor simply bestows his magic touch and saves the day. Cassandra then decides to quit instead of living, and is allowed back in time to allow her to be the last person to tell her she was beautiful, something she mentioned soon after meeting Rose earlier in this episode. I got the impression that this might have been nudging history out of joint - why would this moment lead to her becoming so arrogant? Perhaps we will find out... Finally, the Face of Boe also regained his zest for life, and dematerialised, before telling the Doctor that they would meet one final time. On the whole, I rather enjoyed this story, although it has many faults. |
| Disclaimer: I have watched this story. |