New Earth

For other uses, see New Earth (disambiguation).

168 – "New Earth"
Doctor Who episode
The Doctor and Rose arrive on New Earth.
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Companion Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)
Others Camille Coduri – Jackie Tyler Noel Clarke – Mickey Smith Zoë Wanamaker – Cassandra Sean Gallagher – Chip Doña Croll – Matron Casp Michael Fitzgerald – Duke of Manhattan Lucy Robinson – Frau Clovis Adjoa Andoh – Sister Jatt Anna Hope – Novice Hame Simon Ludders – Patient Struan Rodger – Face of Boe
Production
Writer	Russell T Davies
Director	James Hawes
Script editor	Simon Winstone
Producer	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	2.1
Series	Series 2
Length	45 minutes
Originally broadcast	15 April 2006
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → "The Christmas Invasion" (episode) "Attack of the Graske" (interactive episode) "Tooth and Claw"

"New Earth" is the first episode of the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first broadcast on 15 April 2006. It is a sequel to the first series episode "The End of the World", and brings back its villain who was thought to be destroyed, Lady Cassandra, as well as the mysterious Face of Boe. Set in the year five billion and twenty-three after the destruction of Earth in "The End of the World", the Doctor and Rose arrive on the New Earth and enter a hospital run by half-alien cat-like nuns called the Sisters of Plenitude, who have been hiding a gruesome secret.

Plot

The Doctor uses the TARDIS to take Rose to the farthest point he's ever taken her, to the year five billion and twenty-three in the M87 galaxy. Humanity, after the destruction of the Earth, settled onto a very Earth-like world, called "New Earth", and Rose admires its beauty. The Doctor is summoned to "Ward 26" in a hospital in New New York through his psychic paper, and while he travels to the Ward, gets separated from Rose. In the Ward, the Doctor meets several humanoid feline nuns of the Sisters of Plenitude who are overseeing the patients, all who have incurable maladies but are somehow being cured by the Sisters. The Doctor recognises the Face of Boe, who reached out to "the Lonely God" in order to give him a message before he dies of old age.

Meanwhile, Rose is brought to the basement of the hospital, where she is escorted by Chip to meet Lady Cassandra, who has survived from her previous encounter with the Doctor and has been watching the two since they arrived. Chip has been using the hospital facility to care for Cassandra, but Cassandra is suspicious of the methods used in the hospital and requires Rose's help. Rose is tricked into stepping into a "psychograft" machine that allows Cassandra to implant her mind into Rose's, leaving her old "body" to die. Examining her new appearance, Cassandra is initially disgusted by Rose's body, but notes the pleasing "curves" and soon decides she is attractive enough. She is able to access Rose's thoughts, and learning of the Doctor's new form, goes to meet him as "Rose".

The Doctor is almost immediately suspicious of "Rose"'s actions, such as kissing him passionately or having knowledge of the advanced computer systems, but is more concerned on how the hospital can cure the incurable. He and "Rose" discover that the hospital houses hundreds of pods containing artificially-grown humans, referred to as "The Flesh", forcibly inflicted with numerous diseases, such that the Sisters can discover their cures. The Doctor accuses the Sisters of the atrocity, though they insist it was necessary to deal with the influx of patients. The Doctor believes that Rose's current actions are also a result of being a test subject and orders her affliction to be reversed, but "Rose" suddenly knocks him unconscious using a perfume gas hidden in her cleavage, and locks him inside one of the pods. "Rose" then approaches the lead Sister, Matron Casp, demanding payment for her to keep quiet about the hospital secrets, and when she is refused and threatened physically, releases the Doctor and some of the humans as a distraction, but the infected humans further release the others, and a zombie-like attack begins, with those infected trying to attack patients, visitors and staff alike.

The hospital is put into quarantine as the Doctor, "Rose", and the remaining Sisters try to flee the lower levels. To help their escape, Cassandra is able to jump her mind between other bodies, including one of the infected humans, before jumping back to Rose, and learns that those humans feel a strong sense of loneliness of not being able to touch or be touched. Eventually, the Doctor and "Rose" reach Ward 26 and grab all the intravenous medical solutions. Emptying them into a disinfectant shower, they are able to spray the mixture onto a group of the infected humans, who within moments become cured of their diseases. The Doctor encourages them to go and spread the cure to the other infected people, and soon, the attack is over. The police arrest the surviving Sisters, while the Face of Boe, who has also been cured, tells the Doctor that the message for him can wait until they meet for the third and final time, and then teleports away.

The Doctor now orders Cassandra out of Rose's body. Cassandra transfers her consciousness to a willing 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 decides to do one last thing for Cassandra, and takes her back to see herself on the last night someone had called her beautiful. "Chip" approaches the Cassandra of the past and tells her just that, and collapses into the younger Cassandra's arms as she comforts "him". As the older Cassandra finally dies, the Doctor and Rose silently leave in the TARDIS.

Cast notes

• Adjoa Andoh returned to Doctor Who in five episodes of Series 3 and the final two episodes of Series 4, as Francine Jones, mother of Martha Jones. She also played Nurse Albertine in the audio play Year of the Pig.

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 the serial Invasion of the Dinosaurs; a planet from the Fourth Doctor comic strip story Doctor Who and the Iron Legion (Doctor Who Weekly #1-#8); a planet in the New Earth system colonised by humans in the year 2380 in the comic strip story Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom (DWW #27-#34); 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 spin-off novel Synthespians™ by Craig Hinton.
• This episode is set twenty-three years after the events of the 2005 episode "The End of the World", and thirty years prior to the events of the 2007 episode "Gridlock".
• Originally, Davies intended the Face of Boe to impart his message upon the Doctor in this episode; when he discovered that a third series was definitely to occur, Davies quickly decided to delay Boe's message for a year. This is one of several plot and thematic details (including whole episodes) that Davies chose at a rather late stage of development to move from series two to three, also including the 2006 Christmas special, "The Runaway Bride".
• The giant "BAD WOLF" graffiti written on a paved public area of Rose's estate (seen in "The Parting Of The Ways") is still visible, though faded, at the start of the episode.
• 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 Tenth Doctor Adventures novel The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner.
• According to Russell T Davies on the episode commentary, Cassandra's earlier self bases Chip on the man who had praised her beauty at the party — Chip himself. Where the "pattern" for Chip comes from in the first instance is thus unclear, creating an ontological paradox.
• Also in the commentary, Tennant noted that the TARDIS has moved since "The Christmas Invasion". He speculates that there might have been many off-screen adventures, or (observing that it no longer seems like Christmas in the introduction) perhaps that the Doctor "lived there for a bit".

Production

• In a feature in the Radio Times (issue dated 8 April-14 April), Russell T Davies said of "New Earth", "I promised Billie [Piper] an episode in which she'd be funny. So episode one of the new series is very much based around comedy for Billie."
• The exterior scenes on New Earth were shot at Worm's Head on the Gower Peninsula on 26 September 2005.^[1] The hospital basement scenes were recorded at Tredegar House in Newport. The location for the pods containing the human specimens was a disused paper mill previously used as the base of the Nestene Consciousness in "Rose".
• The hospital scenes were filmed inside the Wales Millennium Centre, which appeared in the previous series episode "Boom Town" and is a common fixture in the spin-off series Torchwood. 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".
• The producer's and director's credits have been amended slightly since "The Christmas Invasion", so that now the credit is in lower case and the name of the crewmember is in capitals. This was the result of a suggestion from Doctor Who Magazine editor Clayton Hickman, who felt the previous arrangement had made the job seem more important than the crewmember.
• The theme music in the closing credits features the reinstated bridge, or "middle 8", which was absent from the 2005 season and last heard in "The Christmas Invasion". The "middle 8" would continue to play over the closing credits from this episode on.

Outside references

• New New York is also the name of the city in the animated series Futurama. This is one of the two Futurama 'similarities' in Doctor Who, the other being the space replica of the RMS Titanic, which appeared in "Voyage of the Damned". It is also used in Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake.
• The "universal hospital symbol" is a green crescent strongly reminiscent of traditional Islamic symbols, but the Sisters of Plenitude wear uniforms drawn from Roman Catholic nuns.
• Cassandra uses the UK slang term chav, although she is unable to mimic Rose's accent properly, instead making attempts at Cockney rhyming slang.
• Rose refers to Cassandra as "Michael Jackson" as she did in "The End of the World". She refers to Chip as "Gollum".
• The term New Earth is also used by Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to describe the second earth created, which was written by Douglas Adams who wrote for Doctor Who.

Broadcast and DVD release

• Overnight ratings for the episode peaked at 8.3 million viewers in the UK,^[2] with a final rating of 8.62 million, making it the ninth most watched programme of the week. The episode achieved an audience Appreciation Index of 85.
• 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, as it was for "The Christmas Invasion".
• This is the first Doctor Who episode to have an accompanying TARDISODE.
• The Canadian English-language premiere of Series 2 on CBC, consisting of this episode, took place on 9 October 2006. It concluded with an extended version of the "Tooth and Claw" trailer from the BBC broadcast; the revised closing theme was not heard in the broadcast and it was also the first episode to be broadcast without a specially taped introduction featuring one of the lead actors. The episode had previously aired on 29 August 2006 in translation on the French-language broadcaster Ztélé, under the title Une nouvelle Terre.
• This episode was released together with "The Christmas Invasion" as a basic DVD with no special features on 1 May 2006, and as part of a second series boxset on 20 November 2006. This release included an audio commentary by Julie Gardner (Head of Drama for BBC Wales), director James Hawes and visual effects producer Will Cohen, recorded before the story aired. This commentary was also made available as an MP3 on the BBC Doctor Who website.^[3]
• Copies of the DVD from the complete Series 2 set distributed to Netflix customers contained an error: at the 32-minute mark, the playback switched abruptly to a scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Netflix has pulled the disc from their inventory while they work out the issue with the BBC; this only seems to have affected Netflix copies.^[4]

Reception

Ahsan Haque on IGN rated the episode 7.2 out of 10, concluding, "Although this was an entertaining episode, it did not have the dramatic impact of the previous episode. Overall, "New Earth" featured more than a few interesting moments, such as the scenes with the Doctor and the Face of Boe, and Billie Piper's performance as the Casandra-possessed Rose was hilarious; but the zombie attack felt quite out of place for a Doctor Who episode".^[5]

References

1. ^ "Walesarts, Worm's Head, Rhossili, Gower". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/arts/sites/doctor-who-wales/alllocations/gower-worms-head. Retrieved 2010-05-30. 
2. ^ "Doctor Who attracts eight million". BBC News. 2006-04-16. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4914294.stm. Retrieved 2007-01-21. 
3. ^ "BBC - Doctor Who - Sound Downloads". BBC Doctor Who website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/sounds. Retrieved 2007-01-21. 
4. ^ Bement, Jeremy (2007-01-20). "Netflix needs the Doctor". Outpost Gallifrey News Page. Archived from the original on 2007-01-20. http://web.archive.org/web/20070120214406/http://www.gallifreyone.com/news.php#newsitemEEyAFVyZyEtXLNYxVc. Retrieved 2007-01-21. 
5. ^ Haque, Ahsan (2006-10-02). "Doctor Who: "New Earth" Review". IGN. http://tv.ign.com/articles/736/736698p1.html. Retrieved 2011-08-15. 

External links

• New Earth (TV story) on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• TARDISODE 1
• Episode commentary with David Tennant, Russell T Davies and Phil Collinson (MP3)
• "New Earth" episode homepage
• "New Earth" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "New Earth" at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• "New Earth" at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• "New Earth" at Outpost Gallifrey
• "New Earth" at TV.com
• BBC's "New Earth" image gallery
• New Earth as Planet Name in Science Fiction
• "New Earth" at the Internet Movie Database

Reviews

• "New Earth" reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• "New Earth" reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide