New Earth

Great episode, Tennant stole the whole damn show. What an amazing Doctor he is. =^]

Twenty three years after The End of the World, the Doctor and Rose are drawn to New Earth by a psychic note, to a hospital run by cat nuns (honestly) where their miracle cures they promote. There's a couple of cast reunions, pussy lumpy lesions and coloured infusions, intimate exchanges without ablutions (several in fact) and an uprising or revolution that's the start of evolution, it's all a bit bemusing - just like chasing a ball of wool. All in a not too dissimilar story to Never Let Me Go (by Kazuo Ishiguro), though a lot more extreme, but with a happy ending, for those who survive at least.

This is an episode I skipped when I first began watching Doctor Who. Several people online suggested skipping this one, along with several others this season. So I did. However, when I got to the end of season 4, I just didn't want to let go of Tennant yet so I came back to watch this. I loved it. The city design was great. I laughed aloud at the antics involving Cassandra, The Doctor and Rose. I thought the case to be solved (wrong to be righted) was creepy but good. Overall, a solid "9" for me.

Having revamped the series to great effect with David Tennant's introduction in The Christmas Invasion, Russell T. Davies moves on to the start of the regular season with a basic Doctor Who story: fun, danger, and weird creatures. Sadly, it's a rather disappointing season premiere compared to series opener Rose.

In its own way, though, New Earth is a bit of a landmark in the revived show, in that it's the first episode that actually takes place on another planet (sorry, spaceships and satellites don't count), namely the eponymous new home for mankind, chosen as their home-world after the original Earth was destroyed (in Season One's The End of the World). Here, the Doctor and Rose have an encounter with a race of feline nuns that are able to cure a surprising amount of diseases. Inevitably, something's not quite right about it, and the situation worsens when it turns out that the villainous Cassandra (Zoe Wanamaker), presumed dead after the events of The End of the World, is actually scheming against the time-traveling duo.

Despite a steady pace and the welcome return of both Cassandra and the Face of Boe, the episode is let down by a distinct lack of the novelty that made the first season such a delight to watch. Part of the problem is that Davies usually writes with a bigger picture in mind, but in this case, notwithstanding an intriguing mystery regarding the Doctor's relationship with the Face of Boe, it just feels like a filler story thrown in to start the season.

On the plus side, as mentioned earlier, Wanamaker's bad "girl" (well, an abnormally stretched human face or whatever) is a hoot, and the Doctor/companion relationship is given plenty of room to evolve in light of The Christmas Invasion, even if the contrivance to make them kiss is rather bland, not to mention used too early in the series, as opposed to the truly touching romantic moment between Eccleston and Piper during the climax of The Parting of the Ways. Fortunately, there's 12 more episodes to prove the first season wasn't a fluke...

I thought this was absolutely amazing! I loved the first series and this is still as good as ever. A long with all the wonderful weirdness, there was humour and a scary part. i loved the "Disenfectant" part and the Lady Cassandra as Chip "Oh sweet lord, I'm a walking doodle." my favourite quote was this; "He said, he's talk to the wanderer, to the man without a home. The lonely God." Well done to Billie and David. Keep it up, you're fantastic! Me and my brother watched this together, and for the first time since he saw the Dalek's, he was scared stiff! I laughed as he hid behind the cushion but I must admit some parts made me jump as well!