Massive Spoiler Warnings!! Those who do not want Spoilers...RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!! It's - The One Hundred and Sixty-Fourth Entry in the Charles Daniels Unauthorized Programme Guide O'Naughty Tiger Episode 1.2 - Moxx of Balhoon: The Revenge! - The Doctor explains to Rose that they can travel absolutely anywhere in the vast oceans of time and space and offers her the choice of where she wants to go for her first trip in the TARDIS. Disappointingly she chooses to go back to the previous Sunday as she completely missed the EastEnders Omnibus on BBC1 and is now horribly lost. After sitting through 3 hours of the soap, the Doctor is on the brink of losing his mind and shoves Rose and the telly into the TARDIS, taking off and arriving in the 22nd century. When Rose asks if this means she can now catch up on a full 100 years of EastEnders, the Doctor screams violently and catapults them to the New Roman Empire of the year 12,005. Rose surfs the channel listings and discovers a special 10,000 year Omnibus edition of EastEnders running on BBC1039, and the in desperation the Doctor offers to take her to a land so exciting that the inhabitants have something even better to watch than EastEnders. For this long distance travel a special device emerges from the TARDIS console - "You've got to be joking! Is that a bicycle pump?" "No! Umm...well, it's a pump of sorts....JUST NEVER YOU MIND! I'll show you something amazing Rose Tyler! Just you wait and see. But please, close your eyes for a minute. This can get embarrassing." Sometime later Rose emerges from the TARDIS to find herself in an opulent viewing gallery with a window built into an entire wall. The Doctor uses his magical wand to open the shades, revealing that they’re in a space station orbiting the Earth -- and with a flash of intense light, the sun begins to expand. "It's the year 5.5/Fiona/26. The end of the world....." (Credit sequence) Rich, elite, and terribly bored beings have made their way to a space station to witness the death of the Earth; the earth and its sun could actually survive for several billion more years, but it's become terribly unfashionable, and hope is that the space will soon be used to build a truly monumentous block of flats. The Galactic Trust, who take pride in preserving ancient planets, also take bribes from major development firms. This has allowed for the premature destruction of the planet AND created a great venue for a truly enjoyable party. As Rose enjoys a sausage roll, it begins to sink in for her that she’s about to witness the death of her home planet, and so, with suitable emotion, she enquires if anyone at the party has any red wine on offer. Meanwhile the Doctor tries, and fails, to impress the party guests with a psychically imprinted blank sheet of paper that he found as a free toy in a 50th century box of Wheetabix. Rose is somewhat thrown and embarrassed when she discovers a slice of pizza she's been holding, is actually a party guest from Alpha Sigma. She is then entirely terrified when he asks after "his pal Ted, who looks rather like a sausage roll". Rose decides to put down the pizza slice and mingle with the more bipedal guests (we can call it racism, but honestly, 21st century earthers just don't know any better). The most important guests seem to be Jabe, Lute, and Coffa, walking humanoid trees from the forests of Birmingham; the squat blue Moxx of Balhoon; the dark-hooded Adherents of the Repeated Meme; a giant head in a jar known as the Face of Boe; and the Ambassadors from the Virtual Domain of the Self-Pitying Blog. The visitors exchange gifts to symbolise peace; Jabe presents the Doctor with a picture of their god - Ozzy Osbourne; and the Moxx of Balhoon spits at Rose, because he suspects her of consuming half of his friends at the party; The Adherents hand out tiny chunks of HTML code; and the Self-Pitying Blog sits in the corner and weeps morosely. The Doctor offers the gift of air from his lungs by breathing on the other visitors, which is actually deeply rude as he's just eaten up the last of the garlic bread. Rose notes uneasily that the Doctor seems to be flirting with a tree. There is some further embarrassment experienced by the hosts of the party when they introduce Lady Cassandra O’Brien, the Last Human, and someone astutely points out that they are actually holding up a blank piece of A4 paper. After a moment of quick investigation they wheel in the REAL Lady Cassandra who is actually little more than a translucent sheet of skin with eyes, a mouth, and a rather unfortunate Meat Loaf tattoo. When the Doctor first sees Cassandra - stretched out tightly over a frame above a brain in a jar - he shouts "MORBIUS!! BUT HOW?!" But the Doctor is quickly assured by the masked surgeons who moisturise Cassandra that she is a completely different brain in a completely different jar -- and in either case, her rather unfortunate love affair with Morbius is now completely over and in the past. Cassandra offers a truly unusual set of gifts from Earth: the egg of a grizzly bear; the leg bone of a shark; and a 1950s jukebox which she mis-identifies as a blue whale, the largest living creature in Earth history. The alien guests begin to mingle as the jukebox/blue whale plays Soft Cell’s Tainted Love, and Rose, overwhelmed, finally succumbs to nausea and rushes out of the hospitality zone. Jabe takes a quick scan of the Doctor, but it takes the scanner quite a while to identify his species -- and when it finally does, the scanner accuses Jabe of playing a practical joke on it and shuts itself off. Rose finds her way to a small side room, but as she watches the expanding sun through the window, a small blue woman in a maintenance worker’s uniform arrives. The woman remains uncomfortably silent when Rose addresses her. Rose wonders why the little blue woman seems so tense and uncomfortable around her, and then Rose quickly realises that no progressive, beat you over the head with a fish, statement has yet been made about the openness and beauty of human tolerance and sexuality in this episode. Rose roughly and passionately grabs the little blue woman by the shoulders, leans in close to her, and then administers serious tongue. The little blue lady coughs in surprise, and tries to clear her throat. "Wow miss! I'm used to people not giving me permission to speak. But they don't usually do it by licking my tonsils." Rose stands back and is deeply embarrassed. "Oh, no. This was supposed to be a racial tolerance scene..." "I think so miss." "Not an inter-racial lesbian sequence then." "Don't believe so, Miss." "Oh, alright. Sorry about that. Just, umm, get on with whatever it was you were doing then. Don't mind me." "Oh thank you Miss. If you don't mind I'll just be brutally murdered by robotic spiders now Miss." "OH NO! GO RIGHT AHEAD!! Umm...wait, murdered by robotic spiders?" The little blue lady is viciously murdered by robotic spiders. Rose quickly leaves the room, hoping to forget the entire ordeal. The Doctor eventually finds Rose sitting alone in a viewing gallery. Rose admits that she’s having trouble dealing with so many aliens; the events from the party keep playing through her mind and she realises that it's possible that she ate at least 15 of the guests, and perhaps drank one if that wasn't actually an Orange Fanta she had. The Doctor looks intensely into the distance, "The Last of the Great Philosophers of the Gagrahoon, the only intelligence in the universe known to be naturally carbonated. What a sad end." When Rose asks the Doctor where he’s from, he immediately says Grimsby. Rose calls him on this, and he admits he's lying, but he evades answering the question again. Then Rose asks why the aliens are all speaking English. The Doctor calmly explains "Oh that! I just monkeyed around with your brain! You just think they're speaking English!" Rose is deeply upset that her perceptions have been altered without her knowledge or permission. The Doctor doesn't understand her anger and retorts - "Hey! I had to go to night school for 13 weeks to learn how to do that! And I did really really well. I almost got a B!" Frustrated, she presses him for answers, demanding to know who he is, where he’s from, and if he has the proper licences needed to fly a TARDIS. But the Doctor loses his temper and refuses to speak to her. Realising that it's not a good idea to piss off the only guy who can give her a ride home, Rose drops the subject entirely. The Doctor, now calmer, explains to Rose that he used to run a successful cellphone cloning con on a million different inhabited worlds; he takes her cell phone and sticks a magical sonic doohickey in the back slot -- and, to Rose’s surprise, orders a pizza to be delivered. Rose asks if she can use the cell phone to call up her mother and the Doctor grudgingly gives it back to her. Rose dials up her mom and is at first thrilled to hear her voice, but soon all her mother says is stuff along the lines of "When are you going to get a proper boyfriend with a good job? When are you going to go to get off your arse and do A levels? When are you going to go see the doctor about that awkward rash?" Rose hangs up the phone abruptly and as she puts the phone away it occurs to her that her mother has been dead for five billion years; this helps her cope a little! Meanwhile, in his private office, the Stewart is cooking chicken nuggets through the rather unsafe method of lowering the defensive sun filter slightly. When a robotic spider sneaks into the room and raises the sun filter all the way the results are truly horrifying and yet smell eerily delicious. The room fills with the blazing, unfiltered light and 4,000-degree heat of the sun...both the nuggets and Stewart are more than ready. The Doctor sniffs the air in curiosity "An awkward stench, as if someone placed a mortuary right next to a chippie..." Before the Doctor can investigate, his new girlfriend Jabe interrogates him about his wife/partner/concubine/prostitute/ pet human. The Doctor, wanting to avoid awkward questions from Jabe, abandons Rose to be knocked unconscious and dragged away by the Adherents to the Repeated Meme. On their way to the main computer complex, Jabe asks the Doctor why he's chosen to visit Platform One as it witnesses the destruction of earth. The Doctor explains to Jabe that they are all in serious life-or-death trouble as a murderer is on the loose and there is nobody around to help them. This is, of course, absolutely horrible and yet he feels oddly excited by the prospect - "Call it a fetish if you like." Jabe agrees that the Doctor seems a little too excited by this. She wonders what kind of person enjoys seeking out trouble; perhaps a moron. Jabe admits that she knows who and what the Doctor is -- and that she understands just how much he’s lost. The Doctor, struggling not to sneeze, begins to tear up. At that moment, Cassandra remote-detonates all of her robotic spiders - she didn't mean to; she just depressed the wrong button on her Evil Spiderbot Remote control Unit. The explosions rip through the mainframe, taking out computer control and shutting down the station’s force fields. Cassandra and her surgeons then teleport out, leaving the others, who, bluntly put - are fucked. The party takes a downbeat turn as the guests clue in on the fact that they are all going to die horribly when the sun explodes. Some of them question the sanity of planning to be so near a stellar explosion in the first place, but the vast majority just sink further into depression - doubly so for the Ambassadors from the Virtual Domain of the Self-Pitying Blog. With no hard evidence, but somehow deeply convinced that there must be a manual reset switch, the Doctor takes Jabe back to the computer complex. Unfortunately, the designers of the space station ALSO designed incredibly complex video game levels. This section of the station is modelled after a particularly vicious level in which giant, deadly sharp, fans spin wildly above a catwalk which provides the only access to the reset switch which your character needs to trip to survive and advance forward to kill the boss. And to make it even worse, you can't save on this level! The Doctor makes a hazardous dash forward through the rotating fan blades, as Jabe wildly punches buttons on a gamepad so fast and furiously that the friction generated causes her to burst into flames. With only ten seconds left to complete the level, the Doctor calms himself down, closes his eyes, and steps forward -- passing safely between the blades. He then pulls the reset switch and orders the computer to reactivate the shields, and it does so just as the Earth is struck by the outer atmosphere of the sun and explodes. The timing of all of this is just too damned cliche to be believed. Rose makes her way to the reception hall, where she finds that the Moxx of Balhoon, amongst others, has been reduced to ashes. The Doctor returns alone, he angrily picks up Cassandra’s “grizzly bear egg” and smashes it open, revealing the teleportation feed she used to beam herself through the 5,000-degree heat outside Platform One. When the Doctor reverses the feed, Cassandra materialises back in the reception hall. Initially shaken, she recovers her poise and challenges the Doctor to try charging her with murder. The Doctor explains that he has no interest in dealing with legal systems. He approaches Cassandra, folds her in half, and places her in a spiral notebook which he returns to an inner pocket in his leather jacket. Rose is annoyed - "You can't use the last living human as scrap paper!" "Oh yeah? Why not? I just have to remember to write on the side without the unfortunate Meat Loaf tattoo." Later, as the survivors depart, the Doctor finds Rose watching the Earth’s remains float past the viewing window. In the final moments, everyone was too busy trying to save themselves to look outside, and when the Earth’s long history came to an end, nobody was watching. The Doctor leads Rose back to the TARDIS and takes her back to 21st-century London, where she sees people walking down the street, living their ordinary lives and taking it all for granted -- something Rose will never do again. The Doctor finally admits that his home planet was destroyed in a war; he is the last of his people, the Time Lords, and he travels alone because he is deeply sad and can never get a date. Now he’s shown Rose just how dangerous those travels can be. After a moment, Rose makes her choice: she’ll keep travelling with the Doctor, but first she wants to catch up on the latest EastEnders. The Doctor groans, "You'll never follow it all, they'll be making episodes for another five billion years." Book(s)/Other Related - '"I QUIT!" The Christopher Eccleston Years (Opps! YEAR!)' "Billie Piper In Sex Scandal with The Moxx of Balhoon!" - As Reported by The Sun, 31/03/2005 SFX Magazine Issue 129 complete with large, glossy paper poster of Billie Piper kissing Jabe Links and References - Cassandra was apparently romantically involved with Morbius after meeting him at a "Brain-In-A-Jar Singles Night Out" Untelevised Misadventures - The Doctor has regenerated, Gallifrey was destroyed, the time lords are dead, and the Doctor has been deeply traumatized... nope...we didn't miss much! Groovy DVD Extras - Interactive Menus Dialogue Disasters - ---- Rose: But he was ALIEN and I ate him. As a snack. Doctor: Yeah. Rose: Okay. ---- Dialogue Triumphs - Doctor: You think it'll last forever. The people, and cars, and concrete. But it won't. Then one day it's all gone. All of it, except for EastEnders. ---- Rose: What happened? Doctor: There was a war and we lost. A lot. ------------------------------------------------------------ Viewer Quotes - "This story was deeply insensitive to those members of society, who through no fault of their own, have deeply embarrassing Meat Loaf tattoos. When is society going to move on, and progress to a point where these individuals can live their lives in peace?" - John "Bat Out Of Hell" Stevenson (2005) "Watched Doctor Who tonight. They made fun of bloggers. I would have been upset but I was already too dehydrated from crying about having to live in this damned house with my parents, like I do every night. My boyfriend doesn't understand me. He tried to climb on top of me in public again. That's so annoying. If he didn't give me so much marijuana, I'd probably be really upset at him. I talked to Roger about it, but he didn't understand me either. No one understands me. I hate this world. It's just terrible. I wrote some poetry about it, but I won't share it here." - The Wilted Rose, Livejournal (2005) "Do you think these were the same blue people as from Star Trek The Next Generation? I'm going to write a fanfic starring Riker about it." - Adamis Tonis (2005) Russell T Davies Speaks! "I got to live my dream of creating a character with a distinct look, a wonderful design that immediately betrays the attitude and tone of the character, hyping him up, getting him press coverage, and then doing sod all with him. I spent half the budget for this episode just marketing the Moxx of Balhoon, getting him on magazine covers, in tv commercials, getting him seen at Hollywood parties and in strip clubs...and then just put him on screen for fifteen seconds, and made sure he had nothing at all to do with the plot. I even worked overtime to make sure he had no memorable lines and no one could even imagine a way to justify the expense. This wasn't just style over substance, this was STYLE WITHOUT SUBSTANCE!" Christopher Eccleston speaks! "I think everyone knew by the time we made episode 2 that I was going to go. You have to understand, I got the first script in the mail and I was SO EXCITED, I couldn't wait to enjoy the quality writing of Russell T Davies. And so I opened it up and the first word of the script was "London". LONDON. I mean, I was so terrified of received pronunciation that I decided to quit then and there. I looked later and it started "London - A typical day, we see people go about their lives in the sprawling metropolis, sped up like scurrying ants, unaware of the larger and more fantastic universe around them." And that's a good start. But, I just couldn't deal with that word, LONDON. It's terrifying." Rumors & Facts - The first episode, Mickey, had secured an audience greater than the BBC had been expecting - "To be honest with you, we would have been happy with 3 viewers, with a margin of error of 4. We'd have honestly been happy with -1 viewers. If our programme had actually just killed someone, we'd be thrilled." On the basis of the success of episode 1, Head of Drama Jane Tranter did not hesitate in commissioning both a Christmas special and a second season - "I didn't hesitate because I thought 'Great! Everyone was really curious about the first episode and tuned in. I better commission a second season and a Christmas special right away before the ratings tank next week as people hear how crap it was.' I wasn't being too terribly optimistic." Just hours later, however, it was learned that while the new Doctor Who series would continue beyond its initial thirteen episodes, and Billie Piper would return as Rose Tyler, Christopher Eccleston would be running away from the role with the determination and intensity of a man on fire. Initial BBC reports, apparently released to head off a leak to the tabloids, suggested that Eccleston was too lazy to put up with the gruelling recording schedule, had feared becoming too associated with the role of the Doctor, and had been approached by Tom Baker who was at the time only wearing his trademark scarf and reportedly commented to Eccleston "You aren't the Doctor until you wrestle this scarf off my naked body." On April 4th, however, Tranter admitted that the BBC had not consulted with Eccleston before preparing the press release, and that the reasons cited for his decision were inaccurate -- except for the report about Tom Baker which apparently was true and was currently being investigated by the Metropolitan Police. Apparently the police were fully aware of the situation as both Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann had reported similar incidents in the past -- although Peter Davison and Colin Baker have never made themselves available for comment on this issue. Tranter apologised to Eccleston for the misattribution, as well as not following through on a promise to keep his encounter with Tom Baker a secret. As had so often been the case in the past, controversy once again stalked Doctor Who behind the scenes, even as the programme flourished on television.