Written by: Russell T Davies
Directed by: James Hawes
I was going to rewatch this, but reading @ 's rundown soured the memory of it a bit. It’s an episode I’ve watched a bunch, and it has some elements I really like:
- The cat nun nurses, terrific makeup, crazy concept!
- The face of Boe, another wild and well executed idea.
- Cassandra! Probably the most iconic
trampolinerecurring villain in the early show. Even now, fans post cookies and embroideries in her likeness, even though she’s visually and thematically horrible! - Let’s just add the Duke of Manhattan, too. What a throwaway character. And I like how his neck grates when he moves.
- And I like Chip, for some reason. In this bonkers rogues gallery, he’s just a dude in scrubs with some paint on his face. Somehow that, a silly gait and the earnest, wide eyed acting is enough.
The allure of the body swap has worn off the more I watch this, though. Not a lot of actors can pull it off, much less so when the person they’re impersonating is Zoë Wanamaker at her peak of campiness.
By now when I think back on this episode, I remember Billie Piper complimenting her own arse, and skip to the one with the werewolf instead. Oops, spoilers for next week’s throwback discussion!
This is honestly not a terrific story as a whole — VS has already pointed out the biggest pratfalls — but at least it’s so full of wacky characters and running away from human guinea pigs, you won’t have time to say “that’s not how medicines work”.
The face of Boe
I neglected to mention him. Cool concept, great…puppet? Prop? But it bums me out that the Jack Harkness connection never really gets explored, and thanks to John Barrowman, never will.
the Duke of Manhattan
Definitely memorable. I actually paused to see whether the actor had played another character - I was thinking of Dorian - but nope.
Chip
A goofy, thankless role, played to perfection by an overqualified performer.
We may both rag on the silliness and threadbare stories in this show, particularly in this episode — but I don’t need any more detail on Jack Harkness turning into a giant head in a fish tank. You die and revive enough times, that’s the end result 🤣
I think that’s the sort of gaps that could never be filled satisfactorily on screen. They’re much better as a space where viewers’ imaginations roam wild instead.
It’s funny, I kept mentally comparing this one to “The Beast Below”, which is a similarly madcap re-introduction episode…but I fucking love “The Beast Below”. I guess it comes down to execution.
In terms of wall to wall far out aliens, Earth’s future, Rose all giddy traveling with a new Doctor, and of course Cassandra, my mind went to The end of the world, but that was probably too in the nose.
I quite agree about The beast below, also a companion’s first space jaunt, right? And boom, Amy get to walk away from Omelas, but it’s future UK in space. Can we just stick to Moffat episodes?
“New Earth” is…fine, I suppose?
It delves into familiar territory for Davies - he seems to have an affinity for the banality of evil, with societies taking a theoretically-well-intentioned turn into darkness. Unfortunately, I think it’s handled better in episodes like “Turn Left” or even Torchwood’s “Miracle Day” (which I remember enjoying the one and only time I watched it, which I know is a very unpopular opinion).
For all the talk about DW being a low-budget show at heart, the makeup and production design were frequently top-notch, even back then. It’s really the VFX end of things that lagged behind the rest of the industry. The cat people in particular look great in this one.
Cassandra’s back! Uh…yay? Probably not who I would have picked as a returning series one antagonist, but here she is, talking out of her ass. I don’t think she’s used particularly well here - her motivation to uncover the secrets of the hospital is unclear (maybe I missed something), and her human supremacy goes largely unacknowledged in favour of some basic classism.
And of course, much of the fun of the episode involves Cassandra possessing Rose and the Doctor. Piper and Tennant do fine with this individually, but they do not seem to be playing the same character to me. Overall, Tennant’s seems to be more authentically Cassandra, but even he is upstaged by Sean Gallagher at the end, when Chip is possessed.
I don’t really know how to feel about the final scene where Cassandra dies in her own arms. I know it’s meant to be touching, but she’s also a vain murderer, so there’s an upper limit to how much I care about any of this.
The test subjects in the hospital vaccilate between intelligent and mindless zombies as the plot requires, and the resolution of spraying disinfectant all over them is pretty convenient, even for this show.
A pretty middling episode all in all, and I don’t think it’s a great introduction to this new incarnation of the Doctor for anyone who missed “The Christmas Invasion” some four months earlier.
Oh man, was there a four month gap between the christmas special and this? And people moan about “Space babies” being a poor season opener…
