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PRODUCTION INFO

Name

The End of the World

Series 1

Episode 2

First Transmitted

2 April 2005

Final Ratings

7.97m

BOXSET RELEASE

DVD RELEASE

GALLERY

The End Of The World

End Of The World

The End Of The World

CAST

Regular Cast

Christopher Eccleston (The Doctor), Billie Piper (Rose)

Guest Cast

Simon Day (Steward), Yasmin Bannerman (Jabe), Jimmy Vee (Moxx of Balhoon), Zoë Wanamaker (Cassandra), Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler), Beccy Armory (Raffalo), Sara Stewart (Computer Voice), Silas Carson (Alien Voices)

CREW

Written by	Russell T. Davies
Directed by	Euros Lyn
Produced by	Julie Garner and Phil Colinson

SYPNOSIS

The Doctor takes Rose on her first voyage through time, to the year Five Billion. The Sun is about to expand, and swallow the Earth.
But amongst the alien races gathering to watch on Platform One, a murderer is at work. Who is controlling the mysterious and deadly Spiders?

PLOT

The Doctor asks Rose where she would like to go on her first trip in the TARDIS. She asks to go one hundred years into the future, but when they arrive, The Doctor says the 22nd century is boring. They travel again, this time to 12005, the time of the New Roman Empire. Again, they move on without leaving the TARDIS as Rose cannot believe his explanation. Finally, to impress his new companion, The Doctor takes Rose to a space station orbiting Earth five billion years in the future. As they watch in amazement, the Sun expands partially — “Welcome to the end of the world”, The Doctor tells Rose as she looks on forlornly.

The Doctor tells Rose that Earth has long been empty of any kind of life. Mankind left it long ago and the planet was taken over by the National Trust. They have used gravity satellites to hold the effects of the Sun back, but the money has run out. Earth will be swallowed up by the Sun at last. The rich and powerful of the universe will witness the end of the world, which will occur in about half an hour. The Doctor tells Rose that he has no intention of saving the planet. The station has automated systems and is staffed by blue-skinned humanoids.

On encountering the blue-skinned Steward, who manages Platform One, The Doctor persuades him that he and Rose are invited guests by using a piece of psychic paper that makes people see what The Doctor wants. The other guests arrive, including the diminutive Moxx of Balhoon, the Face of Boe, living humanoid trees from the Forest of Cheem (whose ancestors originated on Earth) and, from Financial Family Seven, a group of hooded aliens known as the Adherents of the Repeated Meme. Rose watches in horrified fascination as the last living human arrives — the Lady Cassandra O’Brien.Δ17, a piece of stretched-out skin with eyes and a mouth, mounted on a frame and connected to a brain jar. The skin needs to be constantly moisturised by her attendants. The guests exchange gifts. Jabe of the Forest of Cheem gives The Doctor a cutting taken from her grandfather. The Doctor gives her the gift of air from his lungs. The Moxx gives the gift of bodily salivas, and the Adherents of the Repeated Meme hand out gifts of “peace” in the form of metal spheres, even to the Steward.

Cassandra gives her own gifts: the last ostrich egg, and an “iPod” (actually a jukebox) from ancient Earth. Rose is a bit overwhelmed when the jukebox plays “classical” music — the song “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell — and leaves the hall. The Doctor receives a call about the TARDIS’ parking place and is given a ticket telling him where it is being moved. Elsewhere, Rose has a brief conversation with a station plumber, Raffalo, who is investigating a blockage. At first she is comforted by the familiarity of Raffalo’s matter-of-fact, working-class manner, but when Raffalo explains that she is from Crespallion, which is part of the Jaggit Brocade, affiliated to the Scarlet Junction in Complex 56, Rose realises just how far she is from home, with a man she does not know. She leaves and does not see Raffalo spot small, spider-like robots in the ducts, which rapidly grab her and pull her inside. The spiders are being disgorged from the metal spheres gifted by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme to guests. They soon infiltrate the entire station, sabotaging its systems.

The Doctor finds Rose. When she asks where he is from, he brushes off her questions. When The Doctor alters Rose’s mobile phone so she can talk to her mother in the past, another fact sinks in — her mother is long dead. The Doctor jokes that if Rose thought the telephone call was amazing, she should see the bill. Suddenly, a tremor shakes the station, and the Doctor gleefully observes that was not supposed to happen. The Steward, investigating the cause of the tremor, is killed when a spider lowers the sun filter in his room, exposing him to the direct heat of the Sun’s rays.

The Doctor starts to look into the tremor and Jabe offers to show him where the maintenance corridors are, while Rose goes to speak to Cassandra. Rose finds Cassandra has had seven hundred and eight cosmetic operations and considers herself the last “pure” human — the others who left “intermingled” with other species and she considers them all mongrels. Her next operation, to bleach her blood, is next week. Disgusted that humanity has come to this, Rose insults Cassandra and storms off, with the Adherents following her. They find Rose in the corridor and the leader hits her in the head, knocking her unconscious. The leader then grabs Rose’s leg and drags her away.

In the corridors, Jabe quietly tells The Doctor that she scanned him earlier, and was astonished to discover he exists. She sympathises with him and the Doctor is briefly moved to tears. They continue to the bowels of the station, where they find one of the spiders. Jabe captures it with a long, vine-like appendage.

As the station’s systems continue to fail and, as a “traditional ballad” — Britney Spears singing “Toxic” — plays on the jukebox, Rose slowly wakes up and realises that she is in a room with a lowering sun filter. The Doctor hears her cries for help and raises the filter, but Rose is still locked in. Returning to the main hall, he releases the spider to seek out its master. It first scurries over to Cassandra and then veers towards Adherents of the Repeated Meme. The Doctor says that a “meme” is just an idea and reveals that the Adherents are robots as they collapse to the floor. He then sends the spider out to find who was controlling them and it goes directly to Cassandra.

Cassandra has her attendants hold the others at bay, saying the moisturiser guns can also shoot acid. Her operations cost a fortune and she was hoping to create a hostage situation while pretending to be one of the victims herself and later seek compensation. Now she will just let everyone burn while the shares in the guests’ rival companies Cassandra holds will triple in price. Cassandra orders the spiders to shut off the force field protecting the station, then uses a teleportation device to transport herself and her attendants away.

With only minutes until the Sun incinerates Earth and the station, The Doctor and Jabe rush back to the air-conditioning chamber. The restore switch for the computer systems is at the other end of a platform blocked by giant rotating fans. The Doctor protests the rising heat will burn the wooden Jabe, but she insists on staying to hold down the switch that slows the fans. The Doctor makes it nearly to the end before Jabe catches fire and burns. He closes his eyes and concentrates, making it past the last fan and throwing the reset switch. The force fields come up around the station just as the Earth explodes into cinders. The station’s systems start to self-repair.

Several of the guests are now dead, incinerated as the Sun’s rays burst through cracks in the windows. The Doctor finds Cassandra’s teleportation feed inside the ostrich egg and reverses it to bring her back. She starts taunting The Doctor, saying that he cannot do anything about her. However, The Doctor calmly notes he has transported Cassandra back without her moisturising attendants. In the heat, she begins to dry out. Cassandra begs for mercy and Rose asks The Doctor to help her, but The Doctor coldly says that everything has its time and everything dies. Cassandra’s skin stretches and tears, her innards exploding, leaving only her brain tank and empty frame.

Rose is sad that in all the danger, Earth’s passing was not actually seen by anyone. The Doctor takes her back to the present in the TARDIS, telling her that people think things will last forever, but they don’t. He admits his home planet was burned like Earth, but in a war. He is the last survivor of the Time Lords. Rose says he still has her, and he smiles as she offers to buy him some chips. They have only five billion years before the shops close.

NOTES

The story begins with a brief re-cap of the last week’s episode similar to many American shows, however unlike most American shows there is no voice over announcing “previously on Doctor Who”. The footage from Rose simply begins the episode. Discounting the TV Movie, this marked the first time a Doctor Who episode had started with a pre-credited sequence since Remembrance of the Daleks in 1988, unlike the original series, which used the device rarely, it would become standard practice for the series from here on out, with very few episodes made without a teaser (the exceptions are usually series premieres).

A BBC logo is placed on the bottom of the screen when the recap finishes and this episode begins at this point the corporation had not yet established the practice of showing the logo during the opening credits.

Russell T Davies, who created Cassandra, has said on multiple occasions that he was inspired to create Cassandra upon viewing skinny Hollywood actresses at the academy Awards. On 2 April 2006, the Sunday Mirror quoted Davies: “It was horrific seeing those beautiful women reduced to sticks. Nicole Kidman struck me in particular. Nicole is one of the most beautiful women in the world. But she looks horrifying because she’s so thin. It’s like we’re killing these women in public. We watch while you die.” Rose -“Wait hold on. They did this once on Newsround Extra” – Newsround is a news program on BBC 1 and CBBC aimed at providing news for children. Newsround Extra is an extended version of this concept which concentrates on a single issue or subject. A newsround reporter was on set watching as this scene was filmed. His report can be read here on the newsround website

A minor milestone occurs when The Doctor utters the phrase”What the hell is that?”, the first time the character has the minor curse phrase. This marked a slight loosening of The Doctor’s use of language in the revived series, although in light of the show’s family-friendly tone The Doctor has never said anything stronger than “hell” and “damn.”

The scene between Rose and Raffalo was a late addition, added because the episode was underrunning. This is the first time The Doctor has actually been seen to shed a tear. The Doctor tells Rose that his planet was destroyed before its time, as the result of a war which they lost. The term Bad Wolf is mentioned for the first time, the Moxx of Balhoon stating “Indubitably, this is the Bad Wolf scenario.”This is the first appearance of Lady Cassandra O’Brien.?17 and the Face of Boe, who later appear on New Earth. Cassandra mentions how there are many species out there that describe themselves as “Human-ish,” likely referencing the many Near-Human races that happen to be about. Cassandra most likely assumes that Rose is one of these Near-Humans upon meeting her.

The Doctor upgrades Rose’s phone into the Superphone. He later does this for Martha Jones (42) and Donna Noble. (The Poison Sky)

According to Russell T Davies, Cassandra was worked on for “many many months” and costed a “fortune”. The Moxx of Balhoon was originally going to be animated, but this changed to a “glove puppet” and then a full rubber suit when it was desired he be “chunkier”. Jimmy Vee had done similar parts before, although the actor said it was hard filming in the costume, which took three hours to put on. Jabe was originally more tree bark-like in the face, but it was decided that she be a Silver Birch instead.

In the year 12,005 there is a New Roman Empire. Jabe’s people are descended from the tropical rainforest.