Doctor Who/Recap/S28/E01 New Earth

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< Doctor Who‎ | Recap‎ | S28
The Sisterhood are up to something. Remember that Old Earth saying? Never trust a nun, never trust a nurse, and never trust a cat.
—Cassandra

The Tenth Doctor, mostly recovered from his regeneration trauma, heads off for more adventures! He takes Rose to visit New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York, not only to continue showing her the universe but also because he got a message from there on his psychic paper. Rose is enjoying her bouncy, chatty "New New Doctor".

The message leads the Doctor to a hospital run by cat nuns. But that's not even the strange part. There's a guy who's turning into stone, but even that isn't the strange part. Among all the Cat Girls and the people Taken for Granite, what's peculiar is that the hospital is too far ahead of its time: they have cures for diseases that haven't been cured yet.

The Doctor is on the case! In the ward, he and Rose meet the apparently dying Face of Boe, the oldest being in the galaxy. Face is dying of old age, which is the only thing the cats cannot cure.

Rose, meanwhile, meets Lady Cassandra (remember her?), who wants her body. Literally. She snatches Rose's body and mind, and quickly realizes that (a) Rose likes the Doctor! (b) the Doctor is hot! and (c) a good old-fashioned makeout session is called for! The Doctor doesn't mind at all.

So the Doctor and Cassandra!Rose stumble upon the source of the cats' medicines—a secret colony of artificially grown people, who are held prisoner and infected with everything in order to manufacture cures for everything. The clone-people get out, the Doctor figures out that Rose is not quite herself, and Cassandra is forced to switch back and forth between the bodies of the Doctor and Rose during the ensuing chase. While David Tennant camps it up as Cassandra (and Billie Piper tries very hard to keep a straight face), Cassandra at one point ends up in the body and mind of one of the sick, and has a massive Villainous BSOD when she feels what it's like to really suffer.

The Doctor gets baptised by the nuns with a panacea cocktail and, with a touch, disinfects the clone-people in a scene that would make Jesus Christ himself jealous. It's not the last time the Doctor will be a Messianic Archetype on this specific planet. Cassandra goes into the body of her dying servant, where she finally dies in her own arms through a bit of foreshadowed time-travel. The Face of Boe, meanwhile, decides that he could stick around for a bit longer after all, and promises to get back to the Doctor later on that big-important-secret-to-be-imparted-to-the-Doctor-at-the-time-of-the-Face's-death thing.

Tropes

  • Alas, Poor Villain: Despite her having soared over the Moral Event Horizon long before she even appeared, Lady Cassandra gets a surprisingly well-written death scene. Becomes an actual Tear Jerker when you realise the Fridge Brilliance behind it: when Chip!Cassandra expired before her, she was the only person trying to save him/her, shouting for people to try and help only for people to back away from her and not do anything. Not only did this tarnish her reputation as an upper class lady (nobody ever called her beautiful again after Chip), but it was the start of her conviction that people could only rely on themselves. She finally realised that she was wrong about this when the Doctor commended her on helping to cure those artifically created humans, and it was this which helped her accept her long-delayed death. Not to mention that despite her snobbery, she never did forget that Chip's face was that of the last person to ever compliment her.
  • Blackmail: Attempted by Cassandra against the Matron.
  • Body Snatcher
  • Camp Gay: Cassandra!Chip has the mannerisms.
  • Catfolk
  • Corpsing: Watch Billie Piper's face during the "Goodness me, I'm a man!" scene.
    • Watch it here—quality's poor, but it seems to be the only version up.
    • To be fair, you'd kind of have to have a will of adamantium to not corpse if that was happening right in front of you...
  • Curse Cut Short:

Lady Cassandra: At last, I can be revenged on that little--
cut to Rose and the Doctor
Rose: Bit rich, coming from you.

    • Similarly:

Lady Cassandra: That piece of skin was taken from the front of my body. This piece is the back.
Rose: *laughing* Right, so you're talking out your--
Cassandra: Ask. Not.

"Ooh, he's slim...and a little bit foxy. You thought so too. I've been inside your head. You've been looking...you like it."

  • Evil Is Hammy: Billie Piper and David Tennant have a grand old time camping it up as Cassandra!Rose and Cassandra!Doctor respectively.
    • In fact, Russel T. Davies says this came about because Billie Piper wanted at least one episode where she got to be funny.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Normal Rose hardly ever provides this much Fan Service. "Nice rear bumper..."
  • Gender Bender
  • Genre Savvy: When Rose gets sent to the wrong floor and is told to follow by someone who shouldn't know her name, she has the good sense to pick up a spare metal rod as a weapon just in case.
    • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Rose's above-mentioned good sense doesn't do her muck good because when Cassandra invites Rose closer, she instead backs off because only an idiot would take a villain at her word. Cassandra planned for this and actually placed her booby trap behind Rose so she backed right into it
  • A God Am I: "I am The Doctor. If you don't like it, if you want to take it to a higher authority, there isn't one. It stops with me."
  • Grand Theft Me
  • Lower Class Lout: Cassandra invokes the "snob calling someone a chav" version towards Rose while engaging in Grand Theft Me.
  • Magic Plastic Surgery: Cassandra seems to think the Doctor's new face is due to this.
  • Man, I Feel Like a Woman: Let's take stock: Cassandra is born a boy, becomes a woman at some point, then reduces herself to a strip of skin trying to fend off death, then spends this episode jumping around being Billie Piper, David Tennant and a couple of other people. "Goodness me, I'm a man!"
  • Not Herself: Rose
  • Our Zombies Are Different: the clone-people.
  • People Farms
  • People Jars
  • Post-Kiss Catatonia: The Doctor after Cassandra-in-Rose's-body snogs him.

(squeaky) Yep. Still got it.

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