Who Review: New Earth

So, you want to see Doctor Who Series 2 but don't want to fork over the money for another DVD box set and have an ethical code against obtaining it illegally? Cool, because you probably can weld it together from a bunch of DVDs you already own. For example, take Revelation of the Daleks, add in a dash of Dead End, mix in the inane possession subplot from somewhere, sprinkle with Soylent Green, and voila.

Let's recap: the proper way to introduce a new Doctor is not to have him lie on his back for half the episode (Castrovalva, "The Christmas Invasion), it is not to give him amnesia (The One With Paul McGann), and it is not to have him act horribly out of character (The Twin Dilemma). Unfortunately, the psycho possession subplot requires just this. On the plus side, several lingering shots of Billie Piper's cleavage (or maybe that was just me; okay, add The Secret Diary of a Call-Girl to the list at the top).

Cat people, ooh, arr, because nobody would accept an average human as the villain (cf. The Caves of Androzani). And the ending is junk science. The zombies were infected with 1,000 diseases. The Doctor randomly mashes about 10 serums together, has Cassandra!Rose do something - like that lever function is ever explained... this is Nu Who's Awful Formula at its absolute worst: fart around for 40 minutes and then neatly wrap everything up implausibly. Yeah, Buffy did that occasionally, but at least they had the grace to pretend to take it seriously. (Side rant: count the episodes in Buffy or Angel, starting with "Witch"and ending with "You're Welcome," where the people actually doing the fighting are saved by someone doing magic off in a different room. It was old by the end of "Becoming, Part II." At least "Origin" had the decency to do it with some gravitas.) Also, the little -

-bit rich, coming from you...

Yeah, hiding your swear words like that? It was an antique piece the first time you did it, and it was just sad the second.

But the possession subplot's there to mask one (sadly) clever thing in the writing. Just as The Edge of Destruction saw everyone act out of character as a means of reconfiguring the Doctor from "jerkass grandpa" to "kind old wizard man," this is the episode where Rose starts as Billie the Dalek Slayer and ends as the Clingy Girl Who Gets Left On the Beach. Ugh, 12 more episodes of this. At least the next one's got some awesome music, and the one after that has Anthony Stewart Head.

I bashed up The Mysterious Planet a bit extra for not being the kick in the pants the show desperately needed, and I guess I'm going to do that here as well. Because this farce somehow was made as a season opener and not buried away in the middle somewhere with "Love and Monsters," I'm giving it a 3 out of 10. Series 2 has its moments; this is not one of them.

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