Doctor Who: 1x02 "The End of the World"

Welcome to the second episode review for Fandom Approved, Bechdel Tested.  I’ll be starting with a rewatch of Doctor Who.  In each review, there will be spoilers for the episode reviewed and all previous (obviously); any spoilers for future episodes will be highlight-to-read or under a “Read More” bar.

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DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE TWO: “THE END OF THE WORLD”

Ok.  I’ve gotta say that on my very first watch, I nearly stopped at only a few minutes into this episode.  And I’m so glad I didn’t.  I think the episode really hit its stride when Cassandra is introduced, and I think this episode introduced me to the morality play that is Doctor Who much more than the first episode, in which everyone’s self-righteous and yelling at each other, did.

Doctor Who: 1x02: “The End of the World” Written by Russell T Davis

The Summary:

Picking up where last episode left off – with Rose running onto the TARDIS to join the Doctor in seeing the universe, for those with a crap short term memory – the Doctor brings Rose to the future, around the year five billion, after doing a bit.  They do a lot of bits.  Anyway, the place the Doctor brings Rose to is Earth – or technically a space station/observation deck orbiting Earth while it burns/dies from the sun expanding.  Which is kind of a dick move.  Rose gets totally freaked out at aliens who have come to watch the death of her home planet for fun – or “art,” which is a really interesting subject I wish I had time to talk about (maybe in the comments) – and she especially freaks out over the “Last Human,” Lady Cassandra, who is merely a flap of skin with just lips and eyes and who can still talk despite the lack of vocal chords.  It’s quickly revealed, at least to the audience, that The Adherents of the Repeated Meme (why the hell isn’t that a thing on Tumblr?) is sabotaging the space station!  It actually turns out it was Cassandra – since a meme is just an idea – who is confident she will escape any prosecution by turning it into a civil rights circus in the courts.  Of course, a lady-tree named Jabe sacrifices herself so the Doctor could save everyone and then kill Cassandra, the second of which is probably more unusual than the first.  In the end, the Doctor explains what happened to Gallifrey, and they go for chips in contemporary London.  This episode marks the first appearance of the Face of Boe and of the Bad Wolf meme.

The Women:

Rose, Jackie, Lady Cassandra, Jabe, Raffalo

The Conversations:

1. Raffalo and Rose: After running away from the other aliens for being too alien, Rose chats with an alien plumber who is only allowed to speak when given permission.  Now that she’s not surrounded by the richest rich people in the universe who are watching the Earth burn for entertainment, Rose bonds somewhat with Raffalo.  But most of their conversation is Rose realizing that she just jumped into a blue box that’s bigger on the inside than the outside to fly through time and space with a man she knows nothing about, which is, you know, valid.  Unfortunately, I’m gonna have to give the rating: 0

2. Jackie and Rose on the phone: Despite being five billion years in the future, the Doctor fixes Rose’s phone so she can call home to her mother.  Jackie and Rose have a cute mother-daughter chat that reassures Rose (for a little while at least) that this time-travelling-and-meeting-aliens thing is really something she can handle.  The rating: 1

3. Cassandra and Rose: In a scene that solidified for me that Doctor Who is something I wanted to watch, Rose confronts Cassandra about what humanity really is.  The rating: 2

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:

“'Cause you're not human. You've had it all nipped and tucked and flattened till there's nothing left. Anything human got chucked in the bin. You're just skin, Cassandra. Lipstick and skin.” – Rose Tyler (to Cassandra)

As I said previously, this episode really solidifies the morality play nature of Doctor Who (in New Who), and I think it’s at least partially this line that does it. Of course, it carries an unfortunate implication regarding the “natural” versus the “unnatural” woman. But I think the intended idea, and one that still gets across marvelously, is that humanity is change and progress and evolution and that trying to hold humanity back from that strips us of our humanity, in all senses of the word, and that trying to adhere to the “natural” state of humanity makes you “unnatural” – overall, an important message for a few social and political movements I could think of (remember that one of Cassandra’s main issues with other humans is their “breeding” practices).

The Tally:
Episode 1x02 Total: 3
Series 1 Total: 6.5
9th Doctor Total: 6.5
Rose as Companion Total: 6.5
Russell T Davis Era Total: 6.5