Review: Doctor Who 2.1: New Earth

I don't like the Tenth Doctor. I really, really don't. But, since I'm currently sunning myself in Cyprus, I think I can deal with a few episodes. Here, as Ten's first real episode, is New Earth - a sequel of sorts to Series One's The End of the World.

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Ten and Rose's "first date".

Doctor Who - Season 28, Episode One - New Earth

Of all of the new series, it's Season 28 that gets the most critical flack. And that's for one very good reason. David Tennant spent the entire season trying to find a characterisation for Ten. While his later performances would cement his character as whiny emo asshole, Season 28 instead presented him an an irreverant idiot. His smug, in-your-face relationship with Rose is one of the main pieces of evidence that supports the implementation The Doctor's continued asexuality. This should not have happened.
       New Earth is further cursed by a rather silly plot. The Doctor is summoned via psychic paper to a hospital on Mankind's home after The End of the World, and pops up to Ward 26 to visit The Face of Boe, where he is met by the hospital's Cat-people nuns. Meanwhile, it turns out the Cassandra survived the events of that episode and is now being helped by a servant, Chip, he lures Rose down to a cellar and then puts Cassandra in her body. Much idiocy ensues.
       After some fucking about by Cassandra, she uncovers that the reason why the Hospital is so brilliant is because they're testing hundreds of diseases and their cures on people specifically grown for the task. These people have now become sentient, and Cassandra releases them, allowing them to kill people with a touch - planning to blackmail the sisters. Cassandra and The Doctor escape, with the latter pissed at having his girlfriend's body hijacked, and so there's a horrendous set of scenes where Cassandra jumps back and forth between the two of them. Eventually she jumps into Chip, and this gives The Doctor time to fog everyone a miracle cure and to send Cassandra back in time for one last farewell. Cassandra, as Chip, dies in her own arms. Rose has had time for a new hairdo.
      The script for New Earth tries to replace wit and charm with dated pop-culture references, inappropriate sexual metaphors and the beginnings of RTD's prophecy bullshit. The writing is just awkward; body-jumping scenarios almost never inspire good writing (see Bodyswap as an exception) and RTD simply can't grasp the subtlties required. Either use the concept in a new way or don't use it at all. The solution is also ineffective and silly - passing on a liquid cure, composed of a dozen conflicting chemicals, via touch. Also, why did RTD think it smart that in his first episode Ten would be posessed and acting completely and utterly ridiculously?!?

Cassandra feels herself up. This is how they make good
television, people! Can't believe I've been so wrong all
these years.

     Worst of all, there are elements here that would continue to plague Tennant's era even when things got better. The most abhorrant of these is, "The Lonely God," issue, which was RTD's sudden decision that The Doctor would be the greatest thing in the Universe and have the ego to match. This was taken to such an extreme that Season Six's entire plot would surround The Doctor's efforts to fix the reputation his ego had left behind. Also, the continuation of "everything dies" really transforms into something nasty here. Last series it was an honest acceptance of death; here, Ten just tells Cassandra to kill herself because he wants her to. Then, after spending her entire life trying to avoid death, she just accepts it like that.
     New Earth is a mess filled with horrible characterisations for smug, immoral protagonists. The writing is poor, the devices used are cliché and any hope of making a serious point about anything to do with human nature or reality is completey stifled by wacky komedy hijinks. Ten's first real episode is not a good start, and, sadly, is indicative of his era as a whole.

Thanks.