The End of the World (episode)

The End of the World was the second story of Season 35 of Doctor Who. It was written by Russell T Davies, directed by Brian Grant and featured Michael French as the Doctor and Laurie Holden as Sammy Thompson.

Synopsis
The Doctor takes his new companion, Sammy Thompson, to the year 5,000,000,000 to see the sun expand and destroy the Earth. The observation deck space station, Platform One, is holding an event with the richest beings of the time observing the Earth's destruction, but mysterious metal spiders gifted by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme to the other guests are secretly infiltrating and sabotaging the station.

Plot
The Ninth Doctor takes Sammy five billion years into her future. They land on Platform One, a space station in orbit around Earth. They have arrived in time for a party celebrating the final destruction of the long-abandoned Earth by the expansion of the Sun. The Doctor uses his psychic paper to pass as their invitation to the party, and he and Sammy find many elite alien beings there. The guests include Lady Cassandra, billed as "the last human".

Meanwhile, the gifts brought by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme contain robotic spiders that immediately work at disabling functions on Platform One. The Steward of Platform One recognises something is wrong, but is killed when the spiders lower the solar filter of his room and expose him to the powerful solar radiation. After Sammy insults Cassandra, the Adherents follow her and knock her unconscious. She regains consciousness in an observation room where the solar filter drops. The Doctor gets the filter back up but cannot get her out.

The Doctor determines that the Adherents are responsible for the sabotage. However, they are robots commanded by Lady Cassandra. Cassandra admits to being the saboteur: her original plan was to create a hostage situation (with herself as one of the "victims") and profit from the compensation she would have gotten, but now intends to profit from the other guests' deaths, expecting her stock holdings in their competitors' companies to increase in value after they die. Cassandra teleports off the station as the spiders bring down the shielding on the entire station. The Doctor and the sentient tree Jabe travel to the bowels of Platform One to restore the automated shields, but it requires one of them to travel through several spinning fans. Jabe sacrifices herself to hold down a switch to slow down the fan blades. This allows the Doctor to reactivate the system just before the expanding Sun hits the station and destroys Earth.

The Doctor reverses Cassandra's teleport and brings her back onto the station. In the elevated temperature and without moisture, Cassandra's body rapidly desiccates and ruptures. Sammy, now free of the observation room, looks at the debris of the Earth and laments that she is effectively the last human being. Back in the TARDIS, The Doctor wonders about the future of his home planet Gallifrey, and imagines what it would be like for him to be the last of the Time Lords similar to what he and Sammy had witnessed.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Michael French
 * Sammy Thompson - Laurie Holden
 * Steward - Simon Day
 * Jabe - Yasmin Bannerman
 * Moxx of Balhoon - Warwick Davis
 * Cassandra - Zoë Wanamaker
 * Raffalo - Siwan Morris
 * Computer Voice - Sara Stewart
 * Alien Voices - Silas Carson

Crew

 * Created by Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson and C.E. Webber
 * Executive Producer - David Renwick
 * Writer - Russell T Davies
 * Producer - Susan Belbin
 * Script Editor - Steven Moffat
 * Director - Brian Grant
 * Director of Photography - Geoff Harrison
 * Production Designer - John Asbridge
 * Visual Effects - Orange Tree VFX
 * Make-Up Designer - Vanessa White
 * Casting Director - Andy Pryor
 * Music - Julian Stewart Lindsay
 * Costume Designer - James Baylan
 * Edited by - Mark Lawrence
 * Original Theme Music - Ron Grainer
 * Title Music - Julian Stewart Lindsay
 * Title Sequence by Mike Tucker

Memorable Quotes
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Development

 * The story was conceived as a deliberately expensive spectacle to show off how much the new Doctor Who could do for the Paramount Deal. Platform One was designed to be like a "hotel for the most poshest, richest, and influential aliens in the universe", and is partly based on Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
 * Russell T Davies had also initially intended to have the last humans escaping the doomed Earth aboard massive space arks; similar arks appeared in (DW: The Ark). This was dropped when the complexity of the character of Cassandra was fully realised during development.

Pre-Production
To be added.

Production
To be added.

Post-Production
To be added.

Reaction

 * This episode received a 7-Day Viewing Figure from BARB of 9.13m viewers. It ranked at 31st over the week.


 * Arnold T Blumburg of the magazine Now Playing gave "The End of the World" a grade of "A-", praising the spectacle as well as the performances of French and Holden and their developing characters. However, he felt that the climax suffered from pacing issues.
 * SFX called it a "brave episode to air so early, but it works", praising the way the alien concepts were reminiscent to the earlier seasons. However, the reviewer wrote that "the full drama of the event is never quite captured" and "the murder plot...never quite takes flight, but it provides the framework for some brilliant scenes".
 * In Who Is the Doctor, a guide to Chapter Two of the show, Graeme Burk described "The End of the World" as "sheer, unadulterated fun", particularly praising the emotional connection that was built between the Doctor and Sammy. Burk felt that there could have been more of a build-up to the Cassandra revelation, but commented that "a lot of the success of the story" was due to her.
 * Burk's co-author Robert Smith added that the episode allowed French to shine by offering the Doctor a wide range of emotions. Despite their positive reviews, Burk and Smith noted that the switch at the end of the hallway with giant fans was "contrived" and "silly".
 * In 2013, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times felt that the episode had everything to be expected from Davies' stories for Doctor Who: boldness, camp, and emotional and character drama.
 * The A.V. Club reviewer Alasdair Wilkins gave the episode a grade of B+, noting that the episode was not concerned with plot, but it succeeded in character moments and reintroducing Doctor Who for the Paramount Deal.

Story Notes

 * The majority of the series' effects budget was used up for this episode because the story required more CGI effects than any other story. A sequence in which the viewing gallery tilted on its axis had to be dropped due to the expensive budget. At the time of broadcast, it featured the most extensive use of CGI yet seen on Doctor Who.

Continuity

 * Sammy asks why all of the aliens seem to speak English, as did previous companion Sarah Jane Smith. (DW: The Masque of Mandragora)
 * The Doctor witnessed Earth's end when the planet was trailing smoke as it headed towards the Sun during the 57th segment of Time, approximately 10,000,000 years into the future. The last humans left on Earth had evacuated the planet because of the increasing danger that it would fall into the Sun, fleeing to planets such as Refusis II (DW: The Ark) and Frontios. (DW: Frontios) Cassandra alludes to this, noting "they say mankind has touched every star in the sky."