Plot: The Doctor takes Rose on her first trip to the year 5.5/apple/26; five billion years into her future. There they land on a space station named platform one, where the rich and the powerful have gathered to watch the day that the sun finally destroys planet Earth.
Now that the revived show's pilot is done and dusted, Russell T Davies is ready to show New Who's audience what the program can do in terms of its visuals (this episode supposedly sports the highest production budget in the show's history). Or more importantly, this is the episode which is ready to reveal to its audience, what New Who is capable of doing in the 21st century.
The opening moments of this episode - where the Doctor shows off what his Tardis is capable of - is a rather enthralling moment for this revival. As our mad hero toggles with switches, jabs at buttons, and yanks numerous levers; he enthusiastically informs Rose of where his mysterious vessel is taking the two of them. He hurtles forward in time to the twenty second century, followed moments later by the year 12,005 (the age of the New Roman Empire).
Neither of these periods are depicted on screen, however there's no need for them to be. Their existence in this story are only there to serve as nuggets of dialogue to flare up the imagination and give the viewers an idea of just how diverse this series can be when it comes to episode locations. Plus the special effects budget is momentarily being held back; saving itself for the following time period that the two of them will momentarily arrive at.
Episode two is set on a space station which orbits the Earth during the year 5 billion AD. Our planet is no longer inhabited by life forms and the sun is hastily brewing into an apocalyptic supernova.
Whilst the pilot episode was an introduction to the Doctor, his Tardis and his new companion, episode two is a secondary introduction to the series. In fact, I like to view episodes one to three of series one as the introduction trilogy; as each episode exhibits three distinct and important characteristics to the show.
Whilst episode one focused on how stories set in the present day can use elements of the ordinary to create monstrous villains with murderous motives (a theme that is embedded throughout the entire history of this show), episode two exhibits what a story set in the far future is capable of achieving.
It is a story filled to the brim with vibrant spectacle. The sets are slick and flashy; the alien characters are larger than life in their appearance (and plentiful in their numbers) and the special effects are vivid in colour and grandiose in their audacity.
Aesthetically, this episode is bold and beautiful in its appearance; more so than ever before. This is what distinguishes New Who from the old. No longer is this a show with a limited budget, actors wrapped in tinfoil suits and wobbly sets. It is now a blockbuster television series which throws everything that it can possibly get its hands on at its audience; over nourishing them with liberal servings of SFX eye candy.
This jazzy TV blockbuster vision of the show fits rather comfortably into the contemporary historical time frame of this new era. The classic series often told its stories over a 25 minute serial format; spanning between four to ten episodes per story. Classic Who was more like a weekly science fiction/fantasy serial that relied on cliffhangers to build dramatic tension and grip its demographic. Yet in the 21st century, viewers are more accustomed to fast paced, self contained stories.
This is not an insult on modern audiences (I am, after all, a member of such a demographic). It is just that viewing habits have changed dramatically since Doctor Who was last on the air; and this mini-movie approach to the show's episodes was a wonderful move for the show's revitalization.
Many people will disagree with me of course. That is the one major dilemma with Doctor Who fans. There are so many opinions on what the show should be and how the show should look. This is one of the main reasons why it took it so long to make its way back on to the airwaves. The show has gone through countless visions and production teams over the past half century that there have been many different formats to the show (the 45 minute run time actually appeared briefly in the mid 80s; during the Collin Baker era. However back then the show was loosing steam and then producer, John-Nathan-Turner, feared that this jump in episode length was the reason and quickly flicked it back to its 25 minute serial time slot. This failed to revive the mainstream viewings and a few years later, the show was axed).
The fact that Doctor Who has been changing and evolving throughout its entire lifespan means that there are now fans from all kinds of different eras; generating a dozen different schools of thought on which era suited the show most fittingly.
What's more interesting about Doctor Who during this 21st century period, is just how much it differs from other mainstream sci-fi/fantasy spectacle. Whilst many big budget stories take a more dystopian angle, Doctor Who goes for a more colorful and vibrant tone. It is camp, lively and doesn't seem to give a hoot about these facts. This is what makes this series what it is. It can be dark and philosophical when it wishes to be, but at its heart it never takes itself too earnestly.
When I first started watching this back in 2005, I had a hard time accepting this. Today, however, the flamboyant and over the top approach is one of the reasons why I love it so much. It is rarely afraid to be what it knows it is. It is insanely brave and incredibly self-aware; which is why I believe the 2005 revival became such a gargantuan success upon its arrival.
Whilst the aesthetics of The End of the World were top notch, however, the story itself was actually a rather flavorless experience.
The plot adopts the stance of a whoddunit thriller (establishing Doctor Who as a format which can leap between sub-genres on a weekly basis). Whilst the plot moves by without too many outstanding flaws, the whole execution of the episode comes across as rather lazily written and never seems to be able to be all that engrossing or exciting.
I felt that this was a huge problem for this episode, and it was the point where I started to think that maybe this show really wasn't for me. I like to be dazzled by well-crafted special effects, but if the series was going to be this bland for the following twelve weeks then I really couldn't see myself getting anything more out of it.
The red herring villains (interestingly named the Adherents of the Repeated Meme) are rather sinister looking in their design, but once again, there is seriously nothing exciting about them. They spend the entire 45 minutes hobbling around looking sinister, without really doing anything at all. They are there to look a bit sinister, and that is their only purpose.
Even though the episode's main villain is an interesting character, she still comes across as far too one dimensional for my liking; possessing far too many cliched villainous motives (although her past does sound rather interesting, however the sparkly references and faint nods to her off screen past simply left me wanting to see those stories more so than the one that they spent all this money on telling).
The premise itself is nauseatingly basic as well. Someone is trying to have the observation deck destroyed along with planet earth, leaving it up to the Doctor to save the day. Our energetic hero makes a couple of buddies (including a lady tree named Jabe), swans about for 45 minutes and eventually puts all to right.
But then in fairness, there are some rather pleasant moments during this episode too.
For one thing, I do like the way that Cassandra - the last 'pure blooded' human in existence - is portrayed in some scenes. Her views on how she perceives 'sub-humanity' (humans who have extraterrestrial ancestors) as nothing more than a race of mongrels was a perfect nod in the direction of many bigots who belong to our species in reality. I am of the opinion that no matter what happens in our society in the future, the narrow minded humans of our species will always find some group of people to discriminate against and belittle. Seeing as all races, sexual orientations, genders and other minorities no longer exist in The End of the World, Cassandra has moved on to express her prejudice attitudes by discriminating against every other life form that isn't herself.
Then there's also the marvelous moment in this episode where pockets of history are distorted and lost to the natives of the year 5 billion. They believe that Ostriches had a fifty foot wing span and blew fire from its nostrils; that a jukebox was in fact an iPod; and that Britney Spears and Softcell were once among the greatest classical composers of human history.
This scene is totally bonkers, but it is one that I can not help but find bizarrely plausible if mementos of our race ever do manage to make it that far into the future of the universe. History is jaded and rewritten through misunderstandings all of the time; meaning that if any knowledge from 21st century earth did survive for this period of time, then information gaps would surely be rather plentiful in numbers.
Another lovely part of this episode is the introduction to the story arc, as the Doctor finally admits to Rose that his planet burnt into oblivion during a great time war; making him the last of the time lord race. This great war was actually mentioned very briefly in the pilot episode during the climax, however it was only a whisper of a comment which had more or less no context or explanation whatsoever. It is only now that we have come to understand, as an audience, that our hero is a member of an endangered species.
Not all that much is revealed about this great time war during episode two, however it is at this point that many audience members who were once viewers of the classic era will know that something rather colossal has taken in the events preceding the the new series.
When the show went off the air back in 1989, the time lords were still very much alive. When Doctor Who The Movie came out in 1996, The Doctor's home world was also still standing tall. All the novels and audio spin offs which filled the gaps between new and old Who also included the time lords (one novel did chronicle the destruction of the Doctor's home world, however we soon learn that such a story has no connection to the new series story arc... Although I don't really want to go into all of that off screen business right now, as that will just confuse the shit out of everything; particularly for myself).
During the time that Doctor Who was no longer apart of BBC One's Saturday tea time schedule, so many spin off stories came out that the entire show's cannon became chaotic and immensely complex to follow (even some avid fans admitted to having difficulty keeping up with some of the arcs).
The time war arc is a technique used by the show's head writer - Russel T Davies - as a technique to help attempt to build a bridge between the classic and the new era of Doctor Who; a bridge which allows many viewers to step blissfully over these thorny and complicated concepts cluttered up the anthology of the Doctor's story during the 1990s (more on this later).
The End of the World also uses its plot to deepen the relationship between Rose and the Doctor. She doesn't completely trust him yet. She's angry, confused and scared of this new world which she has so suddenly found herself apart of.
The Doctor, meanwhile, is hiding something from her (which transpires to be the time war which I was previously harpering on about) hindering her from knowing who this man, who she spontaneously ran off with, really is. Trust is not yet a part of this relationship paradigm, but seeing as Davies has decided to go down the dramatic character development rout for this new version of the show, such bonding still has the potential to happen.
Doctor Who's second episode is a visual treat for both old and new viewers. It's a bright, bombastic piece of cinematic television which does not appear to be afraid to show off its sparkling persona to the mainstream masses. Though the episode's story itself does not contain the same level of quality as the aesthetic production values, this story does pave way to a story arc and character arc which reassures its audience that there's much more to come in the remaining eleven episodes of series one (there is also a third plot arc set up during this episode - which is done so through the mention of the words "Bad Wolf" - however I shall discuss this when I come to review episode three).
It's a far from a perfect episode, and despite it lowering my attention span for this series to a point where I was on the verge of giving up, the arcs and promise of something grand kept me clinging on for another week. Well done Davies, but this really was a close call.
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