The End of the World (Doctor Who)

162 – "The End of the World"
Doctor Who episode
"Welcome to the end of the world."
Cast
Doctor Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companion Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)
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	1,2
Series	Series 1
Running time	1 episode, 45 mins
First broadcast	April 2, 2005
Chronology
← Preceded by "Rose" Followed by → "The Unquiet Dead"

"The End of the World" is an episode in the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who that was first broadcast on April 2, 2005.

Synopsis

The Ninth Doctor takes his new companion, Rose, on her first trip through time, 5 billion years into the future. 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, someone is planning to sabotage the event with deadly robotic spiders.

Plot

Following "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 5.5/Apple/26 (five billion years in her future) onto 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 the National Trust. Although the expansion of the Sun takes millions of years, gravity satellites held the effects back, and the trust also restored the "classic" positions of the continents on Earth. Now that the money has run out, the Earth will be allowed to be 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 occur in about an hour. The station has automated systems and is staffed by blue-skinned humanoids.

On encountering the Steward, who manages Platform One, the Doctor persuades him that he and Rose are invited guests by using a piece of "psychic paper" that makes people see what the Doctor wants them to see. The other guests arrive, including the diminutive Moxx of Balhoon, the Face of Boe, living humanoid trees from the Forest of Cheem (whose ancestors originated on Earth) and, from Financial Family Seven, a group called the Adherents of the Repeated Meme. Rose watches in fascination as the last living human arrives — the Lady Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen, who is just a piece of stretched-out skin with eyes and a mouth, mounted on a frame and connected to a brain jar. The skin needs to be constantly moisturised by her attendants. The guests exchange gifts: Jabe of the Forest of Cheem gives the Doctor a cutting taken from her grandfather; the Doctor gives her the gift of air from his lungs. The Moxx gives the gift of bodily salivas, and the Adherents of the Repeated 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 an "iPod" (a Wurlitzer jukebox) 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 a station plumber, Raffalo, who is investigating a blockage. At first she is comforted by the familiarity of Raffalo's matter-of-fact, working-class manner. But when Raffalo explains that she is from Crespallion, which is part of the Jaggit Brocade, affiliated to the Scarlet Junction, in Complex 56, Rose realises how far she is from home, and with a man she does not even know. Rose leaves, and does not see Raffalo 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 gifted by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme to the various guests, and soon infiltrate the entire station, sabotaging its 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 phone so she can talk to her mother in the past, another fact sinks in — her mother is long dead. The Doctor jokes that if Rose thought the telephone call was amazing, she should see the bill. Suddenly, a tremor shakes the station, and the Doctor observes that it was not supposed to happen. The Steward, investigating the cause of the tremor, 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 also starts to look into the tremor, and Jabe offers to show him where the maintenance 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 who left "intermingled" with other species and she considers them all mongrels. Her 709th operation, to bleach her blood, is next week. Disgusted that humanity has come to this, Rose insults Cassandra and storms off, only to be met by the Adherents, who knock her out.

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 genuinely sympathises with him, putting a hand on his arm, and the Doctor is briefly moved to tears. They then continue to the bowels of the station, where they find one of the spiders. Jabe captures it with a liana, a long, vine-like appendage which she usually keeps hidden out of courtesy.

As the station's systems continue to be sabotaged and, as a "traditional ballad" — Britney Spears's "Toxic" — plays on the jukebox, Rose wakes to find herself trapped in a room with a lowering sun filter. The Doctor hears her cries for help and manages to raise the filter, but Rose is still locked in. Returning to the main hall, the Doctor releases the spider to seek out its master. At first it focuses on the Adherents of the Repeated Meme, but the Doctor points out that repeated memes are just ideas, and the Adherents are remote-controlled droids. He deactivates them and the spider scurries over to Cassandra.

Cassandra has her attendants hold the others at bay, saying that the moisturiser guns 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 Earth and the station, the Doctor and Jabe rush back down to the air-conditioning chamber. The restore 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 the wooden 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 catches fire and burns. 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 explodes into cinders. The station's systems start to self-repair.

However, several of the guests are now dead (including the Moxx but not the Face of Boe), burned alive as the Sun's rays burst through cracks in the windows. The Doctor is furious, and after finding Cassandra's teleportation feed inside the ostrich egg, reverses it to bring her back. She quickly regains her poise and starts taunting the Doctor, saying that he cannot do anything about her. However, the Doctor calmly notes that he has transported Cassandra back without her moisturising attendants. In the raised temperature, she begins to dry out. Cassandra begs for mercy and Rose asks the Doctor to help her, but the Doctor coldly says that every thing has its time, and every thing dies. Cassandra's skin stretches and tears, her innards exploding and leaving only her brain tank and 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 burned like Earth, but 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.

Cast

• Doctor Who — Christopher Eccleston
• Rose Tyler — Billie Piper
• Steward — Simon Day
• Jabe — Yasmin Bannerman
• Moxx of Balhoon — Jimmy Vee
• Cassandra — Zoë Wanamaker
• Jackie Tyler — Camille Coduri
• Raffalo — Beccy Armory
• Computer Voice — Sara Stewart
• Alien Voices — Silas Carson, Nicholas Briggs

Cast notes

• Cassandra is a CGI creation voiced by actress Zoë Wanamaker. Writer Russell T. Davies revealed that Cassandra was inspired by the appearance of various female celebrities at the Oscars. He said, "It was horrific seeing those beautiful women reduced to sticks. Nicole Kidman struck me in particular." Wanamaker reprised the role of Cassandra in the 2006 series' first episode, "New Earth." See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.

Continuity

• The new TARDIS console has a rather thrown-together appearance and includes the use of a bicycle-pump like mechanism, identified as a "vortex loop" in "Attack of the Graske" (2005). Some earlier serials have stated that the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey is the power source for the TARDIS. If it were destroyed along with Gallifrey, this may imply a certain amount of bodging was done to overcome the problem.
• The Doctor explains that the TARDIS's telepathic field is what gives Rose the ability to understand and be understood by the aliens. This concept was first introduced in the Fourth Doctor serial The Masque of Mandragora (1976), described by the Doctor as a "Time Lord gift" he shares with his companions.
• The concept of a Doctor-supercharged communications device first appeared in The Three Doctors (1972–73), where the Second Doctor modifies the Brigadier's radio telephone to allow him to contact his men through interference generated by antimatter. The Doctor also gives the Brigadier a "space-time telegraph" which he uses to summon the Doctor to assist with the events of Terror of the Zygons (1975). In the "unofficial" animated webcast Scream of the Shalka (2003), the Doctor uses a mobile phone that is part of the TARDIS to communicate with the outside world even while falling into a black hole.
• This is the fourth time in the series that Earth has been burned by the Sun, the other occasions being sometime after the 30th century in The Ark in Space (1975), two million years from the present in The Mysterious Planet (1986) and ten million years from the present in The Ark (1966).
• The other guests attending Platform One, as announced by the Steward, include the brothers Hop Pyleen, inventors and copyright holders of hyposlip travel systems from the exalted clifftops of Rex Vox Jax; the cybernetic hyperstar Cal "Sparkplug" MacNannovich (plus guest); the avian Mr and Mrs Pakoo; the chosen scholars of Class Fifty-five of the University of Rago Rago Five Six Rago; and the Ambassadors from the City State of Binding Light (oxygen levels must be monitored strictly at all times in the Ambassadors' presence).
• In conversation with the Moxx of Balhoon, the Face of Boe mentions the "Bad Wolf scenario." On the BBC's Bad Wolf website, it was listed as "the classic bad wolf scenario". (The subtitles of the DVD release give the phrase as "bad-move scenario", but this is probably an error.) The phrase "Bad Wolf" is a recurring theme in the 2005 series.
• The Steward informs the Doctor that teleportation is banned under "Peace Treaty 5.4/Cup/15" (presumably the name of the treaty followed by the year it was enacted). How exactly this dating system works is never explained.
• The Doctor tells Jabe that he was once on another "unsinkable" ship and wound up clinging to an iceberg, an apparent reference to having been on the RMS Titanic when she sank. Which incarnation of the Doctor did this is not specified, although the Seventh Doctor was on board the Titanic in the Virgin New Adventures novel The Left-Handed Hummingbird by Kate Orman (which is of uncertain canonicity). He did not, however, wind up on an iceberg in that story. In the Fourth Doctor story The Invasion of Time (1978), the Doctor claims that he "wasn't responsible" for the disaster. In "Rose", Clive, a conspiracy theorist, shows Rose a photograph of the Ninth Doctor with "the Daniels family of Southampton", on the eve of their scheduled voyage on the Titanic. For an unspecified reason, they canceled their trip and survived. At the end of "Last of the Time Lords" the Tenth Doctor and the TARDIS are hit by the bow of the Titanic, which smashes through the TARDIS's walls.
• The Doctor pilots the TARDIS to two time periods before its eventual arrival five billion years in the future: the year 2105, which he claims is slightly boring, and the year 12005, which he calls the New Roman Empire. The Doctor previously visited the 22nd century in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
• The Face of Boe is revealed to be from the Silver Devastation, which is where Professor Yana reveals he is "from" in the episode "Utopia".

Production

• According to the DVD commentary, many of the Platform One interiors were filmed at the Temple of Peace in Cardiff, Wales. Sets were also built and painted to match the Temple's marble interiors.
• 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 CGI special effects). Both Cassandra and the robotic spiders — other than an inactive one — are completely CGI generated creatures. The documentary also reveals that there are 203 visual effects shots in this episode, compared to "about 100" in the film Gladiator.
• The "iPod" (a Wurlitzer jukebox) that Cassandra unveils plays "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell and later "Toxic" by Britney Spears. "Toxic" was not actually released as a 7" 45 rpm vinyl single. The production team mocked up a 7" single for use in the episode.
• Jabe's scan of the Doctor displays an animation by Drew Berry of translation, a process wherein a protein molecule is synthesised according to the genetic code carried by messenger RNA. A production sketch of the scanner drawn by Matthew Savage shows a scan of the Doctor indicating nine different DNA samples — one for each incarnation.

Broadcast

• This episode begins with a cold open, which from here on became a standard feature. This is a first for the series, which previously used pre-credits teaser sequences sparingly in special episodes such as the post-regeneration Castrovalva (1982); the 20th anniversary special, The Five Doctors (1983); and the 25th anniversary story, Remembrance of the Daleks (1988).
• According to a March 2006 interview with Russell T Davies, he requested for this episode to be broadcast back-to-back with "Rose", but the request was given to the BBC too close to transmission. However, the American Sci-Fi Channel did run the two episodes consecutively.

External links

• The End of the World on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki
• "The End of the World" episode guide on the BBC website
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• Template:Tv.com episode
• Doctor Who Confidential — Episode 2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Reviews

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