New Earth

Chapter The 140th, which is reassuringly familiar.

Plot:

The newly regenerated tenth Doctor takes Rose on another trip to the year 5-billion+ era, following a message received on the psychic paper from the dying Face of Boe. After the events of The End of the World, another planet has been colonised to become New Earth. They land there, near the city of New New York, and visit a hospital run by Cat nuns. Meanwhile, their sparring partner from that previous story Lady Cassandra - the last 'pure' human, who's prolonged her life with unnatural amounts of cosmetic surgery until she is just a flap of skin and a brain - traces the TARDIS travellers, with help from a cloned assistant, Chip, and her metallic spiders. She kidnaps Rose and transplants her brain contents into Rose's using a psycho-graft, then rejoins the Doctor operating Rose's body. The Doctor's suspicions have been aroused by the Cat nun's medicine, which is centuries ahead of its time. They break in to the 'intensive care' area to find it contains cell after cell, thousands of humans being grown to be a lab rats, infected with every disease in existence. Cassandra-Rose reveals herself and tries to blackmail the cats not to reveal the grim edifice their success is built upon, but inadvertently releases all the lab rat humans, who swarm the hospital, killing everyone they touch. The Doctor manages to mix up a miracle cure and save everyone, slightly hindered by Cassandra body-swapping into him, back into Rose and even into one of the infected people at one point. The crisis over, Chip willingly lets Cassandra take his body, but it is rapidly dying; Cassandra accepts her fate, and the Doctor takes her to her last fond memory, where she dies as Cassandra-Chip, in the arms of her younger self.

Context:

The family is going through one of those phases, which happen occasionally , where they are just not interested in Doctor Who; no matter whether it's ancient or modern, regardless of Doctor or monster. Even though it was a David Tennant one, and he's very popular in our house, I could not tempt them to watch with me. So, I viewed this one on my own from the DVD (haven't invested in up-scaled blu-rays of the early new series episodes as yet, but may when they're cheaper).  

First time round:

I watched this live on its BBC1 broadcast in 2006, while also taping it onto a blank VHS tape for future re-watching. Talk about one foot in the past (and I will talk a bit more about how New Earth has one foot in its - more recent - past in due course). As a viewing experience, this had more in common with how I consumed the later 1980s stories, like The Curse of Fenric (more on that later too), than how I viewed the majority of the 21st century Doctor Who episodes. The year 2006 superficially doesn't feel that long ago to me, but New Earth came before the launch of the BBC iplayer, and before our purchase of a recorder with a hard-drive, both of which revolutionised the way television was watched. I still dutifully save each new episode to a folder on the PVR, only deleting them once I've bought a Blu-ray copy much later, but it's more out of habit than anything else: the episodes are available all year round to stream at the touch of a button.

Thinking more about those times, I realise just how long ago 2006 was - we'd only recently got broadband. We'd moved in to a new place late in 2005 (we being just the Better Half and me, no kids yet at that point), taking the opportunity to set up a more 21st century internet package. We'd only been in that place for a matter of weeks when we celebrated our first Christmas there, and watched the first ever Doctor Who Christmas special of my lifetime (The Christmas Invasion). I remember after the broadcast in the evening playing the interactive Doctor Who game Attack of the Graske, revelling in my new bandwidth. This means that the 2006 run was the first ever series I watched after leaving the dusty relics of the dial-up era behind. The ability to watch streamed content without buffering, as well as creating the circumstances where something like the iplayer would thrive, also allowed me an unimpeded watch of the "Tardisode" that went online in the run up to New Earth. These were an experiment: one short online teaser scene per story, and they were pretty unremarkable. I only remember the first few, so I may have stopped watching them altogether later on.

Reaction:

I remember at the time it was fairly obvious, and I believe it has since been put on record, that the idea for having a Christmas story at the end of 2005 was a relatively hasty addition, and had come about after the series had been mapped out. The original plan was for the first two episodes of new series 2 to therefore be a contemporary Earth invasion story with Jackie and Mickey appearing, followed by a trip to the year five point five slash apple slash whatever, to see lots of fun aliens. In other words, an exact re-run of the way the 2005 series began. You can even see the point where the 15-minutes of Christmas-themed material have been grafted on to the front of the Sycorax invasion story, after that point it ceases to be particularly Christmassy at all, and reverts to what presumably would have been the plot had it been shown at Easter. The effect this has, as was certainly intended, is to reassure with the familiar while the audience gets used to the new bloke playing the Doctor. It was lucky that they hadn't just planned the one story dwelling on the recent past, as there had been a few months elapsed since Christmas before the new series started, so any doubters - or those that might have missed the Christmas show - still got their reassurance.  It might though have pushed a bit too much responsibility onto the shoulders of New Earth - in many ways it is a slight and comic creation, a palate cleanser to sit between more dramatic or exciting episodes rather than a big explosive season opener.

This era of Who loves picking up on threads on previous shows, anyway. New Earth is only the twelfth story since the return, but it's by no means the first sequel: Boom Town continues the Slitheen tale of Aliens of London / World War Three, and Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways picks up from the the plot of The Long Game. The rationale for each of these first two 2005 sequels were different: in the latter it was writer and showrunner Russell T Davies trying to deepen the events depicted and add more of a sense of scale by constructing a lightweight mythology as a framework around the series. He does that a little bit here too, with the Face of Boe's inclusion just to set up a slightly portentous prophecy which will pay off the following year. Boe doesn't even deliver the prophecy here, just talks about it, which does make the whole plot thread seem a bit of a con. Though I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little frisson hearing dialogue like "It's said he'll talk to a wanderer, to the man without a home - the lonely God". But that wasn't the main reason for doing the New Earth story; it was more like the reason for Boom Town. The production team wanted to work with a particular actor and character again as they have more potential to exploit. In that case it was Annette Badland as Margaret Slitheen, in this it is Zoë Wanamaker as the Lady Cassandra.

This is very much Cassandra's show, but interestingly Wanamaker's hardly in it, though her performance informs the whole story - this is because of one of the more contentious aspects of New Earth: the 'body swap' humour. It's not true body swapping, of course, it's only one way - though having Wanamaker in the CGI skin frame playing the Doctor or Rose might have been fun, it would have been effects heavy, and the production team clearly want to get rid of the need for that expensive CGI as soon as possible. So, the stars of the show get to ham it up and show us their comic chops as Cassandra zaps into them throughout. I can see why it put some fans' teeth on edge, but generally, it's perfectly good, well played and doesn't in any way deflect from the drama of the piece. In places, it's laugh out loud funny ("I'm a chav!"), and you'd have to be very stony-hearted not to at least smile at Billie Piper as Cassandra as Rose doing her Eliza Doolittle cockney. Tennant is not quite so successful playing Cassandra to my mind, but he still has great timing as the Doctor. After Cassandra-Rose snogs him (another contentious moment), when he adds quietly "Yep, still got it", it's another laugh out loud moment for me.

If one sits down to watch this expecting it to be a serious, sombre piece about a horror scenario in a hospital, one is going to be disappointed, but did it ever even pretend to be thus? In another echo of Boom Town, the main Sci-fi mystery plot is just window dressing. It's broad and conceptually simple (not quite high concept, but close to it) and over very quickly. Like many other great writers, Davies does not care for withholding information from the audience; clearly, he believes the true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. The intrigue about what the Cat nuns are up to lasts for - what - five minutes? - then the real dramatic question, teased out in a wonderful moment with sympathetic cat Novice Hame's justifications, is how they can live with themselves. I remember some people online hating the ending of this plot with the Doctor mixing up a cocktail of drugs which then get sprayed onto the infected humans using the lift disinfecting mechanism. Like many other great writers, Davies finds endings hard, and this was better than the endings from his Doctor Who scripts in 2005, which sailed close to deus ex machina territory - in that he'd seeded the separate elements (including the lift, used earlier in the story as a gag) much better. It doesn't really matter, though, as it isn't the real ending.

The real ending, like the story, is all about Cassandra, and it is one of the finest moments of the series up to that point.The older Cassandra, in Chip's body, has accepted that her life must come to an end, and is brought back to a moment we've witnessed earlier, when Cassandra is a lady of a certain age, just at the point in her life where things became "such hard work". This circular but emotionally charged time travel trick is reminiscent of La Jetée (an inspiration for the film Twelve Monkeys), particularly with the little hint that in the future Cassandra models Chip on her "favourite pattern", i.e. the last person in her life who was genuinely nice to her. Wanamaker and Sean Gallagher as Chip both play it perfectly, with generosity  - and intensity - from Tennant and Piper playing the still, silent observers. Once you see that this scene is the main point of the narrative for its author, then all the other campy, rompy fun can be taken as just that, and overall the story can be seen as a winner on its own terms.

Connectivity: 

Both New Earth and Terminus take place in medical institutions harbouring a dark secret; both take the maybe tasteless approach of using a group of unwell people as a 'monster' in the story, who shamble around like zombies after fearful characters who flee so as to avoid getting infected. In both stories, everyone ends up being cured in the end. New Earth has cat people, Terminus has a dog man.

Deeper Thoughts:

Not not-not-not-not-not not-not-not-not-not not-not anything to do with New Earth: BFI Showman and Curse of Fenric screenings, November 23rd 2019. The concept of this blog is to watch the stories in a random order. So, whenever a new box set comes out, and there is a tie-in BFI screening, I use a chance factor to decide whether I will blog a story from the set or not, and if so which one. When the season 26 set was announced earlier in the year, I'd already just watched and blogged The Curse of Fenric, and previously had covered Battlefield and Ghost Light; this meant only one story from the set remained, the finale, Survival. I flipped a coin, heads meaning I'd blog Survival; but, it came up tails. The recent BFI event was worth writing about, though, and I didn't want to wait until another Sylvester McCoy story came up as that might be months. As New Earth didn't spark off any deeper thoughts, it may as well go here. It is a little bit apt too, as many people during the course of the day in NFT1 did cite the theory that aspects of the final few Sylvester McCoy stories (introducing a more capable companion who became more the focus of the plots, filming on council estate tower blocks) gave rise to the style of the series when it returned in the 21st Century.

Chris Chapman, centre of stage

A growing band of fan friends is regularly attending these events, but when I arrived after getting an eye-wateringly early train up to the Big Smoke for a Saturday, it was only to meet one to begin with: Chris. He and I were the only two who could get there early enough to watch a late addition to the BFI's Saturday schedule: a screening of Showman, the feature length documentary on 1980s Doctor Who producer John-Nathan Turner. It was less packed than normal, probably mostly to do with the early hour, but maybe also the more niche aspect of the piece. The audience did though contain a number of people interviewed, including Peter Davison. An introduction came from director Chris Chapman, who explained that they has only intended at first to do a 50-60 minute film, but  were gathering so much good material that they lobbied for additional budget to take it up to the 80-90 minute mark, and were given the go ahead. It's definitely a worthy investment: a great albeit tragic narrative arc, and some very affecting sequences.

"Dick!!!"

There was only the briefest gap in between the end of Showman and the start of The Curse of Fenric, so we hastily sought out the rest of that growing band of fan friends in the throng: David, Trevor. Dave, Tim and Alan joined me and Chris for the main attraction. Things started with Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy doing their customary quiz, where any audience member that thinks they know the answer to the fiendish trivia questions has to "Shout for Dick" and Fiddy comes to them with roving microphone and prize. After asking the audience to practise shouting "Dick" at the top of their lungs, Justin joked that it was appropriate as it was close to panto season, only for a large group behind us to shout back "Oh No it isn't!". I love Doctor Who fans.  This quiz was notable as for the first time ever - despite usually knowing most of the answers - I actually shouted for Dick. I already have the new Series 4 box set, but I couldn't sit by while person after person got the director of Survival wrong (it's Alan Wareing, by the way). It didn't make any difference, as Dick took his microphone to someone else no matter how loud I shouted, and someone else got the prize I didn't care about, and the kudos that I did. Never mind.

L to R: Johnson, Briggs, Fiddy 

In advance of the screening, Justin spoke to writer Ian Briggs. Following on as it did from the Showman screening, the interview's first question was inevitably about John Nathan-Turner. Briggs had spent quite a bit of time with him - they were the two that stayed in the hotel longer, as they weren't needed immediately on location - and confirmed he was as 'larger than life' as he appeared in the interviews of the documentary, and the loss when he died in 2002 was heartbreaking: "Those who knew him really really miss him; [Doctor Who] survived because of him". Briggs also talked about how spoiled he'd been getting to work on Who as his first TV job, and how it compared unfavourably to his later gigs on shows such as Casualty and The Bill, where the show was not writer-led and writers weren't encouraged to think big and put all their hearts into a script. He talked about how much he enjoyed creating the character of Ace, and how - once he'd written the character's debut story Dragonfire, and the final decision was made to keep her on as a regular - he'd written a brief character outline for future writers, and added a note to script editor Andrew Cartmel reading "It feels like I'm giving up my only child - please look after her". I'd never seen Ian Briggs interviewed before, and he came over as passionate and thoughtful.

L to R: Fiddy, Ayres

What was then shown was a spruced up version of the 2003 extended feature-length omnibus Fenric. My more detailed feelings about the story are here. Of the added scenes, one thing that stood out was in the scene about thought experiment The Prisoner's Dilemma; this version extends the doctor's line as broadcast by five words as highlighted: "Based on a false premise, don't you think, like all zero sum games". Now, The Prisoner's Dilemma isn't a zero sum game, that's the whole point of it; so, it's irritating (probably only to me, mind) that a mistake avoided in the original has been reintroduced in the newer version. Watching with an audience usually highlights more comedy than you notice when watching alone, but even with that boost the sombre Fenric doesn't have them rolling in the aisles. The only big (and probably unintentional) laughs were for all Janet Henfrey's lines as Miss Hardaker. I hadn't seen it as quite as 'large' a performance before, and it did seem a little unfair, but I'm glad people got their yucks where they could! Mark Ayres was interviewed by Dick once the story finished, and went into the history of the various special edition versions of the story. Far too much material was shot than could be used, and the eventual broadcast version was cut and rearranged mercilessly. Ayres - who as the composer of the show worked closely with director Nick Mallet and knew his original planned edit - had the idea in the early 1990s of making a VHS omnibus version which reinstated the material and put everything back into script order. John Nathan-Turner, who worked on the VHS range at the time, wasn't sold on the idea, and the half-way house episodic and slightly extended version was the result. Finally, in 2003, the DVD version was made, which fulfilled the original intention. MArk said that he resisted the temptation to "do a George Lucas" and, apart from upscaling it to HD, has only made two or three minor adjustments.

As is usual, there followed a compendium of clips from the box set's Value Added Material, and it all looks great: the marvellous trailer in full, and excerpts from Behind The Sofa, the Writer's Room and the Fenric Making Of. Best of all was the edit of all the funniest bits from the archive studio and location footage. Similar snippets were assembled for previous box set previews at the BFI, and it would be nice to have these selections available on the discs as well as the longer, full archive footage extras. The big Q&A with Ace actor Sophie Aldred and script editor Andrew Cartmel followed. They were both as engaged and informative as you'd expect, with Justin and the audience's questions covering a wide range of topics. They were also asked about Nathan-Turner. Cartmel said that "John took a chance on people - sometimes it went wildly right, sometimes it went wildly wrong"; Sophie said that he was instinctive, but that his instincts were usually on the money. Cartmel added that John had something of a love hate thing going with Doctor Who: he had been offered other things, but turned them down, perhaps because he couldn't give up his "mini-Walt Disney empire". He would sit in his office, not able to stop himself reading bitchy fanzines, even though it was making him miserable. The BBC never cared about Doctor Who, which meant they could get away with much (like Fenric's soviet communism over Christianity sedition, which an audience member highlighted), but it also led them to think that nobody else cared either. According to Sophie, Sylvester McCoy is still really surprised meeting people that like his Doctor.

L to R: Cartmel, Aldred, Johnson 

Sophie talked of her wonderful on screen chemistry with Sylv ("Funny that, as I can't stand him!" she joked at first), and put it down to them being similar: neither had gone to drama school, they both had the same political leanings, had both done the Working Men's Club circuit early in their career, and even shared the same birthday. She commended his enormous generosity as the leading man, in letting her be the focus of stories. This allowed the character to flourish to the point where she became the template for the companion in the new series, and was big enough to have had her own spin off show (someone suggested this in the room and it got a long round of applause). There were quite a few anecdotes about the making of Fenric: Sophie thought it was a gift for her, as she got to do everything: fall in love, seduce a soldier, be rude, fighting, running... She even got to do her own stunts, including diving into the water at the end. The lines the two vampire girls had about it being warm in the water were cruelly funny as "Lulworth Cove is the coldest place in the world". Both Cartmel and Aldred had experienced JNT's stunt casting of people they'd never heard of but whom John worshipped (Stubby Kaye and Dolores Gray were the names mentioned) but both agreed Nicholas Parsons was fantastic in the role of Fenric's haunted vicar. After one take of Ace climbing over the roof onto the side of the church that focused a bit too much on her derriere, there was a call of "Cut!" followed by JNT saying "Merry Christmas VT.

There was so many other goodies that I haven't got time to cover in detail. For example, towards the end, Sophie talked about recently meeting Russell T Davies, how she'd been hesitant to contact him at first but he'd replied to her message within a few minutes with "Squeeee!". When they'd met, he'd wanted to hear all about... John Nathan-Turner. That brought the event full circle. Previous BFI events have sometimes turned into a collective appreciation of one person - Patrick Troughton at The Power of the Daleks, say, or Douglas Adams at Shada - this one was closest to that for JNT, and it's about time he got some love, quite frankly. The screening was rounded off with a couple of trailers (including the new Jodie Whittaker one) followed by the customary cocktails in the BFI bar afterwards. On Doctor Who's 56th anniversary, it was nice to raise a glass and think about JNT, and everything he did for Doctor Who.

In Summary:

New Earth is great, Showman is great, The Curse of Fenric is great; it's almost Christmas, and all is happy (at least until Friday 13th December, anyway).