(711) New Earth

It is perhaps the best thing to start the Tennant era with The Christmas Invasion because New Earth isn’t the strongest story of the series. I would be surprised if this story was in the top three at the end of the series. I have never been a huge fan of this story but I have never understood why until now. I think that it’s the comedy is misplaced. I have commented how RTD has done well with slipping in comedy in places that it shouldn’t work but on this occasion the comedy really doesn’t work and as a result I find the whole episode doesn’t work.

The comedy seems to come from Cassandra being in a different body. She starts off by being in Rose’s body leading to a bit where Rose kisses the Doctor and then she moves into the Doctor’s body and jumps a few more times. It is fun seeing David Tennant and Billie Piper play amusing versions of themselves. Cassandra/Rose referring to herself as a chav is still funny and seeing Tennant play a camper version of himself. The scene where the Doctor and Rose kiss is something that was clearly a big selling point because it featured in the trailer at the end of the Christmas Invasion but its not 1996 its 2006 because very little drama was raised as a result.

What’s quite amusing is that Adjoa Andoh plays Sister Jatt and goes on to play Martha Jones’ mother. The cat people seem nice and pleasant at first but they have a hidden secret. Their secret is that they have a huge lab with people infected and bred with every disease so that treatments can be found. The cat make up is very good and must have been expensive because only three of the cat people’s faces are seen, the rest are covered up. I think that more time could have been spent on what the cat people’s motives were and the Cassandra stuff could have been shelved.

The Face of Boe makes his second appearance and he’s dying. He doesn’t really add much to the story apart from telling the Doctor that they will meet a third and final time and he will reveal a secret. To be fair I don’t see much reason for why the Face of Boe would be there and why he would need to make another appearance in the show. He worked well in The End of the World but in this he doesn’t add anything to the story.

The Doctor saves the day in truly spectacular fashion by using every vaccine to cure everyone that has been infected. Also that’s not the final thing that happens. The final thing is when the Doctor does something nice an allows Cassandra (who has now got inside Chip) to go back in time and tell herself that she is beautiful. It’s a nice ending I suppose and it is pretty much the end for the character.

This isn’t as bad an episode as I thought. It’s not great by any means but I think that after the previous episode this wasn’t the right time to be trying this time of episode. I think that it’s one of the weakest episodes since The Long Game so that’s a good run of episodes that the show has been in. Watching the trailer for the next episode just makes me want to watch it now but I must be disciplined.