The End of the World by: Russell T. Davies and directed by: Euros Lyn

 

“The End of the World” stars Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler with Zoe Wannamaker as Cassandra, Yasmin Bannerman as Jabe, and Camille Coduri as Jackie Tyler.  It was written by: Russell T. Davies and directed by: Euros Lyn with Helen Raynor as Script Editor, Phil Collinson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and Mal Young as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Saturday 2 April 2005 on BBC One.

 

The second episode of the revival of Doctor Who was always going to be a difficult task, just as difficult as bringing the show back.  With the way “Rose” is setup as fully set on modern day Earth, dealing with an alien invasion, the second episode has to sell to the audience the premise of time travel with either the aliens of the universe or a historical setting.  Russell T. Davies slotted himself to pen the second episode, allocating it and the following episode to the second production block, writing a tale that by necessity used the budget primarily on makeup and effects for the aliens, contrasting the more human Autons in “Rose”.  Davies had the title “The End of the World” in the original pitch document for the series as the second episode, leaving the episode with an almost perfect premise for the second episode.  The Doctor takes Rose on her first proper trip in the TARDIS, 5 billion years into the future on the day the Earth is to be destroyed and alien representatives from several corporations and interest groups coming to watch the destruction.  There is nobody left on the planet, humanity having spread throughout the stars, and it’s essentially a tourist attraction closing down which is this beautiful idea of the rich enjoying the spectacle of a planet’s destruction.  The premise helps ground the audience in the setting before future episodes can go into different directions with planets, paralleling the final three episodes of An Unearthly Child which take the initial TARDIS team far back into the past to introduce the time travel concept with a similar grounding.

 

“The End of the World” however does fail in the fact that many of its alien designs are wasted on a single episode, mainly being in the background shots for the entire episode and having no lines of dialogue.  This sadly will become a trend with the revival of Doctor Who where great designs and ideas will be relegated to one episode which sadly means there isn’t as much time for them to make an impact on the audience, unlike the classic show as the serialized format meant aliens and monsters would have multiple appearances built in.  There’s actually a lot stuffed into “The End of the World” done very well in terms of worldbuilding, Davies’ script being a wry indictment of the rich and powerful gathering for the spectacle, though that is largely used for the setting and the villain reveal of the episode.  Sadly Davies doesn’t use it to the fullest due to the 45 minute episode length meaning time by necessity had to be devoted to Rose’s development as a character.  This is the episode where Rose has to become acclimatized to time travel and Billie Piper honestly steals the show in this episode, taking the material and genuinely running with it.  Rose is allowed to deal with the fear and uncertainty, a very human reaction to be taken aback by the aliens and then questioning everything about her situation.  The choice to travel was made on an impulse leaving her mother and boyfriend behind, both traumatized.  Murray Gold’s score is also perfect as underscore.  Camille Coduri as Jackie Tyler appears for one small, but crucial scene where Rose gets to call her mother and just have a normal conversation.  These little conversations and moments are beautiful and necessary, but they are sadly at the expense of the worldbuilding that is also integral to Doctor Who with the first episode to suffer from 45-minute syndrome.  45-minute syndrome is an informal term coined by Doctor Who YouTubers including Stuart Hardy to describe the main issue of the non-serialized revival to not live up to the potential of the premise due to a lack of time.

 

While Rose certainly isn’t on her own in the episode, there are large sequences where we are focusing on the Doctor discovering what is going wrong on Platform One, being paired with Jabe, a tree from the Forest of Cheem played by Yasmin Bannerman.  The mystery is simple and has a simple solution that fits incredibly well, it’s guest Lady Cassandra, the last human played by Zoe Wannamaker, killing the guests in a money making scheme also rooted in her anti-alien racism/xenophobia, but this allows the audience something important.  Davies is allowed to establish the Doctor is on his own in the universe, the Time Lords are dead.  The words Time Lord are only spoken three times in the episode, keeping the Doctor still mysterious to the general audience and those not familiar with classic Doctor Who as well as not revealing exactly how they died so all viewers can have that mystery to follow.  Eccleston also gives this genuine sadness to his performance as the Doctor while masking it in humor.  Bannerman also clearly has the potential to be a companion in the role of Jabe, though sadly she perishes, but Bannerman would appear in Big Finish Productions as New Adventures companion Roz Forrestor.  Wannamaker as the villainous Cassandra is also a villain with a lot of potential that sadly isn’t quite explored to the character’s fullest potential.  Partially due to the restrictions on the computer generated effects that give her four minutes of screen time, though Wannamaker is camp which helps.  Leaving all of these things on the table means that with “The End of the World” there is a lot to be desired.  Euros Lyn was the director assigned to this second production block and his direction work is great.  Much of the episode is shot on location and the blending of sets, models, and CGI environments, while lower budget and aging in some aspects, still look amazing.  Lyn uses a mix of practical and computer generated imagery incredibly well and would return for several episodes, becoming one of the prolific directors of this era of the show.

 

Overall, “The End of the World” is not a perfect episode.  It’s an episode that I am genuinely conflicted on.  There are individual scenes, especially with Eccleston and Piper together and separate moving their characters forward, that are genuinely brilliant.  The setup is perfect, the plot is simple enough to be done in a 45-minute episode, but the problem comes with the fact that Davies’ script neglects some genuinely important worldbuilding elements and any character that isn’t slated to die, leaving several with either a name or species name at best.  The climax of the episode is also quite messy, with the danger just feeling weird with the Doctor having to jump through giant fans.  It’s an episode that does what it needs to do, but leaves the viewer wanting something despite elements that should come together perfectly.  6/10.