Thoughts on New Earth

I have to say I was very disappointed in Davies' writing in the Doctor Who episode, New Earth. Davies introduces a fantastic and complicated plot but just cannot continue it through to the end. It feels rather like he is trying to cover a four inch stab wound with a small band-aid. You just cannot wrap up the deep issues this episode brings up with the weak ending he gives us. I don't think Davies has the sophistication to pull this story off.

For those of you who haven't seen New Earth but for some odd reason are reading this anyway, it's about a future Earth where a group of "nuns" grow thousands of pseudo humans in order to inject every known disease into them so they can cultivate catch all cures.

Well, right off the bat we see the story-line start to fall apart. We are told that the the flesh (the nuns refer to the infected as flesh) carry every known disease simultaneously. Yanno, I'm no doctor but I have this tiny sneaking suspicion that no living organism can survive having every single known disease at the same time. Setting aside any real diseases of today (because it could be argued that these are "future disease") let's examine what we are presented with by the writer. In the hospital ward we have a man who's body is turning into stone, which apparently is a slow and painful process while next to him is a another man with a disease which we are told kills you in under ten minutes. How can the flesh have both these conditions when they clearly are at odds with each other? I suppose it could be argued that they host every known disease but only express a few, (bubonic plague by the looks of it) but I feel as if this is a cop-out argument anyway. Unless I am missing something, if your main plot point is completely inconceivable, that's just bad writing.

Settings aside the argument that Davies spends way too much time on Rose's side story and not enough on the main plot, we come to my second big disappointment of this episode, Casandra. She spends the entire episode fighting to stay alive and then, mysteriously, decides it's time to die. Why? Did I miss something? How did she change so quickly? Davies loves to do this to us. On Waters of Mars Brooke spends every moment since she discovers her tragic fate, trying to survive. Then, quite mysteriously, when she is saved she turns around and kills herself! Why? We are not given even the slightest indication by Davies that she has changed her mind let alone why she has done so. This is bad writing, pure and simple.

As a small side, Casandra mentions that Rose is genetically 100% human but that line is wasted because that idea is never brought up in the story. Instead we have a five minutes scene of Rose basically feeling herself up. -.- I like Rose, I really do, but Davies concentrates on her too much and makes her too romantic toward the doctor while Moffet makes her kinda.. well.. unattached. Poor Rose.

My third and final point, the ending. After introducing a complicated issues with huge moral implications Davies wraps it up very weakly. The flesh escape and the Doctor (I don't blame you poor man...err time lord) mixes up every known antidote together (of which there are ten mind you) and sprays them over less than six infected people who, in turn, touch each other and magically pass it along to the other, oh I dunno, ten thousand people!? Really? C'mon Davies! Come on man! You gotta do better than this! I mean, you have no choice! This is bad writing. This is worse than fan fiction! Are the nuns going to be punished? How will society feel about these less intelligent human race? Are you going to address anything that matters other than Rose!?

I would have written this episode completly differently. There must be some consequence to the actions taken by the nuns. I would have ended with the doctor having to burn down the locked hospital or maybe having the flesh spread to the outer city kill everyone but themselves but then, like the nuns wanted, create a race of people immune to everything. There should be, there has to be something to learn. There has to be something to take away.