Doctor Who Retrospective #2 of 10 “The End Of The World”

So, the revitalised Doctor Who was back on our screens and those viewing figures proved that it was back with a bang. No longer a cumbersome millstone around the neck of Michael Grade as it was in the 80’s but an invigorated, modern show, with great lead actors, high production standards and a sense of fun and adventure that was hard to find anywhere else in the schedules. While the previews had been cautiously optimistic the critical response was astonishing, with barely a dissenting voice to be heard amongst the praise being heaped upon it. Episode Two, “The End of The World”, was fast approaching when news came out of the BBC that the series had been renewed for not one but two further series as well as two Christmas Specials. Hard core Who fans only numbered in the hundreds (may be thousands) before “Rose” but suddenly their “little show” was watched by over ten million, and it was hard to believe.

However, just when we all really started to believe the hype, news leaked out that Christopher Eccleston was to be leaving after his first and only year in the role. The forum on Outpost Gallifrey, bookmarked by 99% of fans as their first stop (though hardly the most sane place) on the internet, went into meltdown and the forum itself was even taken off the air for a few days to allow the raving masses to get a little perspective. History now tells us that there was an attempt by the production team to keep the end of season regeneration a secret and it seemed as though that had gone a little awry. Quite a furore for a programme that was just 45 minutes old.

On screen TEOTW (there is a need among fandom to reduce episode titles to acronyms) was broadcast on 2nd April 2005 and we got to see something entirely different from the previous week’s debut. The Doctor skillfully directed the TARDIS to a number of points in Earth’s future until he got to a point where he believed Rose would be impressed, 5 billion years in the future to witness the end of our little blue/green planet. Rose seemed to suffer some kind of culture shock but the Doctor did succeed in impressing someone… the audience. Classic Who elements were revived as we met wierd aliens on board a space station, one of whom had a nefarious plan. The Lady Cassandra was a wonderfully realised CGI alien (voiced with relish by Zoe Wanamaker) who was instantly memorable enough for a reappearance the next season and an action figure of her own.
Equally though, there was new Doctor Who iconography being created. We had the first appearance of the psychic paper, another mention of the Time War, the first utterance of the term “Bad Wolf”, another surprising cameo from Rose’s mum, a beautifully incongruous scene at the end about chips, and the use of popular cultural refernces like Britney Spears on the “iPod” and the use of the mobile phone. Once again, this was a story far more about Rose than it was the Doctor. The seamless narrative from episode one to episode two meant that we could witness and, in a sense, share the consequences of her decision to travel with this stranger and the story focussed on her begining to cope with her new lifestyle. “Don’t argue with the designated driver” she thought but this was a Doctor that somehow needed to be challenged.

The other thing worthy of note is the sheer wonderful, lush feel of the whole story. Fantastic CGI, (mostly) impressive prosthetics and high production values that meant that this was the most expensive of Eccleston’s stories and you could see the value in every scene. To me it was the small details that made this story so impressive, for example, the scene with Rufallo the plumber was just a tiny cutaway that was (iirc) added late in the day to fill the episode out a little but it was so beautifully executed. And the script was just outstanding… for the life of me, I still don’t get how people can’t like Russell T Davies‘ work.

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Tags: Billie-Piper, Brittney-Spears, Christopher-Eccleston, Doctor Who, Michael-Grade, Outpost-Gallifrey, Rose-Tyler, Russell-T-Davies, The-End-Of-The-World, Zoe-Wanamaker