Day 711: New Earth

I'm never quite sure what to make of this episode. Every time that I watch it, I always slightly look forward to it, because there are several good things within the story. And yet, the final result always leaves me feeling slightly cold.

I think that it's because of one key factor: David Tennant. He's fantastic in the role here, again, bringing energy, intensity, and empathy (this episode marks the first instance of him saying "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry" in the series, incidentally). But the episode is clearly structured around him and his performance as the Doctor, in an attempt to show off this new Doctor and get people excited for him. And it works, because he's fantastic in the role, but to an audience viewing the story in hindsight, they're already familiar with the character, so there's not much to get them involved as well. To put it more succinctly, there's no real replay value to this story.

But it's not explicitly bad, and it does at least attempt to do interesting things. Cassandra's return is intelligently handled, treating her with a clear character development as she goes from comic relief to a slightly tragic figure. Similarly, the general conceit of the story focussing around breeding people as testing grounds for diseases, whilst thoroughly disturbing, is all too plausible. But aside from these points, there's not much that will get me to enjoy New Earth. Maybe they'll shine for me the next time I watch it. At the very least, it does have one of the funniest performances in all of Doctor Who's history...