The End of the World (Doctor Who)
| 162 - The End of the World | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Cast | |||
| Production | |||
| Directed by | Euros Lyn | ||
| Written by | Russell T. Davies | ||
| Script editor | Helen Raynor | ||
| Produced by | Phil Collinson | ||
| Executive producer(s) | Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner Mal Young | ||
| Production code | Series 1, Episode 2 | ||
| Running time | 1 episode, 45 mins | ||
| First broadcast | April 2, 2005 | ||
| Chronology | |||
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The End of the World is an episode in the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on April 2, 2005.
Synopsis
Template:Spoiler The Ninth Doctor takes his new companion, Rose, on her first trip through time to the year 5 Billion. There, on a space station called Platform One, he and Rose are on hand with a group of alien races to witness the Sun expand and swallow the Earth. However, there is a saboteur and murderer on the station, in control of deadly robotic spiders.
Plot
Following from Rose, the Doctor asks Rose where she would like to go on her first trip in the TARDIS, and she selects the future. The Doctor takes her to the year 5 Billion, on a space station named Platform One orbiting the Earth. In the eons since Rose's time, the Earth has emptied, mankind having left it long ago and the planet taken over by a historical preservation trust. Although the expansion of the Sun takes thousands of years, the effects of it have been held back by gravity satellites, and the traditional positions of the continents were also maintained. Now that the money has run out, the Earth will be allowed to swallowed up by the Sun at last. Platform One is where the extraterrestrial rich of the universe will witness the end of the world, which will be in about an hour.
The Doctor persuades the Steward, who runs the station's automated systems on behalf of the Corproation that he and Rose are invited guests with a piece of "psychic paper" that makes people see what the Doctor wants them to see. The other guests arrive, including the diminiutive Moxx of Balhoon, a gigantic head known as the Face of Boe, living humanoid trees from the Forest of Cheem (whose ancestors originated on Earth) and a group called the Adherence of the Replicated Meme. Rose watches in fascination as the last living human arrives - the Lady Cassandra, who is just a piece of stretched-out skin with eyes and a mouth connected to a brain jar and needs to be constantly moisturized by her attendants. The guests exchange gifts: Jabe of the Forest of Cheem gives the Doctor a cutting; the Doctor gives her the gift of air from his lungs. The Moxx gives the gift of bodily salivas by spitting, and the Replicated Meme hand out gifts of "peace" in the form of metal spheres, even to the Steward.
Cassandra gives her own gifts: the last ostrich egg, and a jukebox (which she calls an iPod) from ancient Earth. Rose is a bit overwhelmed when the jukebox plays "classical" music - the song "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell - and leaves the hall. She has a brief conversation with one of the maintainance staff, who is investigating a plumbing blockage. Rose realizes how far she is from home, and with a man she does not even know. Rose leaves, and does not see the plumber spot some small, spider-like robots in the ducts, which rapidly grab her and pull her inside. Meanwhile, the spiders are being disgorged from the metal spheres of the Replicated Meme, and soon inflitrate the entire station, sabotaging the systems.
The Doctor finds Rose, and when Rose asks him where he is from, the Doctor brushes her questions off, getting defensive and angry. When the Doctor alters Rose's mobile telephone so she can talk to her mother in the past, another fact sinks in - her mother is long dead. A tremor shakes the station, and the Doctor observes that it was not supposed to happen. The Steward is killed when a spider lowers the sun filter in his room, exposing him to the direct heat of the Sun's rays.
The Doctor investigates the cause of the tremor, and Jabe offers to show him where the maintainance corridors are while Rose goes to speak to Cassandra. Rose finds that Cassandra has had 708 operations to keep her alive, and considers herself the last "pure" human - the others left are all mongrels. Disgusted that humanity has come to this, Rose storms off. In the corridors, Jabe quietly tells the Doctor that she scanned him earlier, and was astonished to discover what he was, and that he still even exists. She sympathtises with him for his loss and the Doctor sheds a tear. Inside the bowels of the station, they find one of the spiders.
As the station's systems continue to be sabotaged, Rose is trapped in a room with a lowering sun filter. The Doctor manages to raise the filter, but Rose is still trapped. In the main hall, the Doctor releases the spider to seek out its master. At first it focuses on the Memes, but the Doctor points out that memes are just ideas, and the Replicated Memes are droids. He deactivates them and the spider scurries over to Cassandra.
Cassandra has her attendants hold the rest at bay with the moisturiser guns which can also shoot acid. She reveals that her operations cost a fortune, and she was hoping to create a hostage situation whereby she could later seek compensation. Now she will just let everyone burn and take over their corporate holdings. Cassandra orders the spiders to shut off the force field protecting the station, then uses an illegal teleportation device to transport herself and her attendants away.
With only a few minutes left until the Sun incinerates the station and Earth, the Doctor and Jabe rush back down to the maintainance chamber. The reset switch for the computer systems is at the other end of a platform blocked by giant rotating fans. The Doctor protests that the rising heat will burn Jabe, but she insists on staying to hold down the switch that slows the fans. The Doctor makes it nearly to the end before Jabe burns up. He closes his eyes and concentrates, making it past the last fan and throwing the reset switch. The force fields come up around the station just in time, as the Earth's surface is burnt to cinders. The station's systems start self-repair.
However, several of the guests are now dead, burned as the Sun's rays burst through cracks in the windows. The Doctor is furious, and finds Cassandra's teleportation feed inside the ostrich egg, reversing it to bring her back. In the raised temperature, and without her attendants, she begins to dry out and; begs for mercy. Rose asks the Doctor to help Cassandra, but the Doctor coldly says that all things have to die eventually. Cassandra's skin stretches and tears, her innards exploding and leaving only her empty frame.
Rose is sad that in all the danger, the Earth's passing was not actually witnessed by anyone. The Doctor takes her back to the present in the TARDIS, telling her that people think things will last forever, but they don't. He reveals to her that his home planet was burnt, like Earth, in a war, and that he is the last survivor of the Time Lords. Rose says that he still has her, and he smiles as she offers to buy him some chips - they only have five billion years before the shops close.
Notes
- The story guest stars Zoë Wanamaker as Cassandra, Yasmin Bannerman as Jabe, and Jimmy Vee as the Moxx of Balhoon.
- The destruction of the Doctor's home planet and the Time Lords parallels events in the spin-off novels, notably The Ancestor Cell, and presumably happens sometime between the 1996 television movie and Rose. How the TARDIS continues to function without energy transmitted from the Eye of Harmony is not explained.
- The Doctor explains that the TARDIS's telepathic field is what gives Rose the ability to understand and be understood by the aliens.
- This episode takes place more or less in real time.
- In the documentary series Doctor Who Confidential, Russell T. Davies joked that that there would never be such an expensive episode again (because of the large amount of computer-generated special effects). The documentary also reveals that there are 203 visual effects in this episode, compared to "about 100" in the film Gladiator.
- This is the fourth time in the series that Earth has been burned by the Sun, the other occasions being The Ark in Space (sometime after the 30th Century), The Mysterious Planet (two million years from the present) and The Ark (ten million years from the present).
External links
- Episode trailer
- BBC Episode Guide factsheet
- Doctor Who Confidential - Episode 2: Aliens - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly