002 The End of the World

If you had a super-dooper time machine, where would you take your latest squeeze for your first date? Where better than the day of the natural destruction of her home planet. Right?

After the success of Rose, a simple introductory story, the best thing Russell T Davies could have done was to immerse us, the audience, into the world of Doctor Who. And for the most part, this means crazy looking aliens, a murder, a crazed villain out for their own good, and a general sense of danger. The End of the World satisfies on all of these fronts.

Despite the glossy production values (and how beautiful is this episde? I mean, really really beautiful. The space station, the aliens, the shot of the Earth crumbling – oh! Amazing!), this is a pretty simple story that gets by on being somewhat of a pastiche of a murder mystery. Its all kind of feels like Agatha Christie in space – the Doctor and Rose are the outside detectives, the Steward is the butler (which is why he didn’t do it), and the aliens are the rich upper-class guests who all have something to hide. And actually, this theory stands up rather well throughout the whole thing. Even down to the red herring of the Adherece of the Repeated Meme, riffing off the idea that all evil aliens are dressed in black robes and have deep gravelly voices.

Speaking of aliens, the villain of this piece, Cassandra, is a nasty piece of work. She is a caricature of all that Davies sees wrong with our celebrity culture – she is shallow, bitchy, and more concerned with her own appearance and looks than anything else. What makes this all the more disturbing, though, is the undercurrent of unpleasant racism spouted ffrom the mouth of Cassandra. Her insistence that she is the last remaning ‘pure’ human is actually the more disturbing part of her motivations, and I would have loved to have seen Davies push this angle further. I understand that the remit of Doctor Who is not to go into the depths of modern problems, but even a little more here would have been a nice touch.

The only problem I have with Cassandra is the motive she gives for destroying Platform One. While I understand that money is a simple and normal motive for crime, I don’t buy that all she wants it for is more surgery. It seems a little flimsy, and I’d like to have seen something a little more meaty as her reason for wanting all this money. Maybe that’s just me, though.

Once again, Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper are in fine form. The Doctor is clearly pleased with himself, showing off all the wonders of the universe to his new friend, while Rose is clearly out of her depth, despite her brave face. Rose’s anger (or maybe just frustration) at herself is evident here – all of a sudden, she realises what she has done. She’s gone off with an alien about whom she knows nothing, and is surrounded by strange looking creatures, and a piece of skin claiming to be the last human. And so she fires up at the Doctor (quite rightly, I think), who simply wants to revel in the newness of everything, and demands he tell her some important facts. This is perfectly Rose – she is thoroughly impressed and in awe of this strange man, but is perhaps sometimes afraid to admit it, and so gets angry at him when he does something a little bit wrong. Even though he usually doesn’t know what’s gone wrong.

Splitting the two main characters up in Doctor Who is a trick as old as the programme itself, but here, Davies uses it to full effect. Usually, this split allows two sub-plots to cohabit peacefully, and to some extent, this is true here. The Doctor goes on a fact finding mission, while Rose takes a look around, allowing a little world building on the side. But what is best about this split is that it allows the two chraacters some time apart, to develop on their own. Rose is allowed to interact with a real, live alien – and gives her some room to breathe, and realise the full implications of what she is actually doing. Similarly, the beautiful interaction between the Doctor and Jabe is perfectly pitched, and we see, for the first time, some glimpse into the background of the Doctor – and we are on the road to understanding something of his character and motivations.

Apart from some nice character moments for the two leads, this is not the greatest Doctor Who story. It is not a particuarly complex or unique in what it is trying to do for the genre. But as I mentioned, the character bits work perfectly, and works as a nice companion piece to Rose.

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