Dan Owen reviews

Episode 2: "The End Of The World"

Director:

Euros Lyn (Cutting It, Casualty)

Screenplay:

Russell T. Davies (Bob & Rose, Casanova, Children's Ward, Cluedo, Doctor Who, The Grand, The House of Windsor, Linda Green, Mine All Mine, Queer as Folk, Revelations, The Second Coming, Springhill, Touching Evil)

Cast:

The Doctor: Christopher Ecclesto
Rose Tyler: Billie Piper
Steward: Simon Day
Jabe: Yasmin Bannerman
Moxx of Balhoon: Jimmy Vee
Cassandra: Zoe Wannamaker
Jackie Tyler: Camille Coduri
Raffalo: Beccy Armory
Computer Voice: Sara Stewart
Alien Voices: Silas Carson

Continuing immediately after last week's premiere episode, "The End Of The World" has The Doctor transporting Rose to Platform One - a space-station orbiting the Earth five billion years in the future, where powerful aliens have gathered to watch the planet's imminent destruction...

Episode 2 is a blessed relief after the daft excesses of the first episode, although it still contains too many childish jokes that detract from the drama.

Eccleston manages to reign in his mugging to camera (most of the time) and his Doctor is given a few moments of unforgiving directness - most notable in a late scene when, against Rose's wishes, he allows an alien to die because "everything has its time".

The plot for "The End Of The World" - revolving around sabotage of the space-station using robotic "spiders", is fairly basic - although the arresting premise keeps the viewer interested enough to see how it all pans out.

More successful is the slant on Rose's situation - as she's having doubts about being whisked away from her family by a relative stranger. In one touching scene, The Doctor enables Rose to make a phone call to her mum, and we realize it's the first time a Doctor Who companion has ever actually pined about the life they leave behind. Of course, quite why The Doctor can't just promise to send Rose back in time to the moment she left after so-many years of adventuring is never discussed!

Technically, "The End Of The World" is a marked improvement in terms of visual effects. The show, based on this evidence, is capable of attaining special-effects that wouldn't look out of place on an early episode of Babylon 5.

The make-up for the various aliens is generally very strong, too - particularly the blue alien Moxx Of Balhoon. Of course, the great triumph for the episode (and perhaps the entire series) is the wonderful Cassandra; the last human, who is now little more than a piece of skin stretched across a frame.

Sadly, the incidental music to the series continues to be painful to watch, and detracts from moments of jeopardy. Tellingly, the music isn't as dominant as it was last week, so hopefully it's being phased out entirely before our ears start to bleed!

Despite encouraging visuals, the story again lets the side down. There really isn't enough going on to justify the 45-minute runtime, although this does mean audiences get their first tantalising taste of the series' mythology - including The Doctor being "outed" as a Time Lord by sexy tree alien Jabe (Yasmin Bannerman), and his admittance that the Time Lords have all been killed in a war - leaving him alone in space and time. This revelation opens up many questions, which hopefully will become part of an ongoing mystery this series. My money's on The Daleks being the aggressors...

Overall, Episode 2 is definitely a step in the right direction. I would still have preferred a more serious "re-imagining" of the series, but the creators seem adamant that aliens spitting in your face as a greeting, and ending the world to the tune of Britney Spears' "Toxic" is the way to go.

Still, Billie Piper continues to impress as Rose - simply by being believably teenaged in the situations she's presented with - and Christopher Eccleston can hopefully begin layering his grinning Doc with more subtlety now the tragic back-story to his character has been revealed.

Next week - Doctor Who travels back in time to Victorian London, in the first episode not written by Russell T. Davies...

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Review copyright © Dan Owen, 2005.