Spoiler-Alert!
This article contains heavy spoilers for the second episode of the first season (New Who) of Doctor Who.
About the plot
Following the events of the previous episode, Rose and the Doctor are in the TARDIS, with endless possibilities ahead of them as a destination. When Rose wishes to see the future, the Doctor takes her five billion years further, to a space station from which Earth can be seen. In the meantime, the sun has completed its life cycle and will burn up and destroy the earth in a short time. Humanity has long since left its planet and scattered and evolved all over the galaxy.
To celebrate the end of the Earth, an exclusive farewell party is to take place on board the space station, to which the doctor invites himself and Rose with the help of the mind-manipulating paper. The other guests include the face of Boe, Jabe (the emissary of the trees) and Cassandra O’Brien, who calls herself the last (pure-blood) human. However, Cassandra is now only her skin with face stretched into a frame. In order not to dry out, she has to be constantly moistened.
Rose, meanwhile, is overwhelmed by what she sees: the aliens, the space station with its technology and the impending end of her world. From this perspective, everything she knew and every person in her life is already long dead and lost. Her own life suddenly seems insignificant. She becomes homesick. The doctor notices her despair and allows her to call home to the past. But that doesn’t seem to help either, because now she wonders who this doctor she is travelling with actually is. After all, he hardly reveals anything about himself.
Suddenly, however, the situation changes and the apparent peace is disturbed. The steward in charge of the festivities is murdered by tampering with the radiation shield of his office. Subsequently, a similar murder attempt is made on Rose, but she is saved by the Doctor at the last second. Now he wants to find out who is behind the attacks. Jabe supports him, she seems to have an idea of who and what the Doctor actually is.
They are able to find out that small, spider-like robots were used for the sabotage. The person or persons responsible must also be on the space station. With the help of the robots, the Doctor can expose Cassandra as the assassin. Her plan: destroy everyone on board the station and profit from its demise as the sole survivor. After this revelation, she teleports away.
Now, however, the station is in trouble and the heat shields threaten to fail in the face of the exploding sun. When the situation seems almost hopeless, Jabe sacrifices himself to help the doctor and save the station. Now that everyone else is safe again, the Doctor finds Cassandra’s teleportation device and retrieves it. He makes her pay for what she has done by – despite Rose’s objections – allowing Cassandra to dry out and burst in a flash due to the temperature.
Back in 2005 London, the Doctor finally reveals to Rose who he is: the last surviving Timelord. His world has long since passed away. Rose, however, makes it clear to him that he is not alone and invites him for fries.
In accordance with the title of the episode, one of the major themes dealt with is finitude. What else should the destruction of Earth, our home planet, confront us with? Rose’s reaction at the beginning of the episode makes this abundantly clear. Just a moment ago, she was thrilled by the idea of seeing the future with the doctor and discovering the new for herself. And then, when she finds out where he has finally led her, the shock follows. The end of the world is really no destination for a first date.
Live, she can witness how everything she has ever known is dying. And not even then is she allowed to witness this end of the world with the respect it deserves. Instead, she becomes embroiled in Cassandra’s machinations and threatens to lose her life herself in the face of the burning earth. Who would have thought that in such a distant future, at the farewell party of planet Earth, one would end up having to worry about an attempted murder?
Unlike some others, however, Rose can be saved – she would not die here and now. Thus a death has been prevented, but it has not been defeated. While attention is no longer focused on the end for which the great and the good have gathered here, it is nevertheless happening. The earth is burning up, although simply no one is watching. Everyone is busy with their own lives, so that the end of the world is simply forgotten. The earth dies alone and carelessly.
ROSE: The end of the Earth. It’s gone. We were too busy saving ourselves. No one saw it go. All those years, all that history, and no one was even looking.
From the transcript of “The End of the World” (NW S01E02)
Just because you’re not paying attention doesn’t mean the end won’t come. We all know this one truth. Finitude is a very human theme, as the doctor promptly points out. At the same time, however, it also opens up a perspective, a horizon that transcends the finitude of the individual and looks at humanity as a whole. For even if Cassandra would vehemently deny it, humans have nevertheless survived. They have transcended the boundaries of their home planet, spread throughout the galaxy, evolved. Humanity survives.
DOCTOR: (…) You spend all your time thinking about dying, like you’re going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible, that maybe you survive. This is the year five point five slash apple slash twenty six. Five billion years in your future, and (…) this is the day the Sun expands. Welcome to the end of the world.
The fact that humanity is changing and expanding is a perspective that should certainly be a reason for hope, even joy, for people, if they are not inclined to a similar racism as Cassandra. At least from the point of view of an immortal being like the Doctor, who literally sees entire civilisations rise and fall and for whom it is easy to see the big picture, this is desirable. Individual destiny, however, recedes into the background. In humanity, the individual human being is transcended and thus becomes a being that can transcend the limit of finitude.
CASSANDRA: Soon, the sun will blossom into a red giant, and my home will die. That’s where I used to live, when I was a little boy, down there. Mummy and Daddy had a little house built into the side of the Los Angeles Crevice. I’d have such fun.
From the conversation between Rose and Cassandra
ROSE: What happened to everyone else? The human race, where did it go?
CASSANDRA: They say mankind has touched every star in the sky.
ROSE: So, you’re not the last human.
CASSANDRA: I am the last pure human. The others mingled. Oh, they call themselves New humans and Proto-humans and Digi-humans, even ‚Humanish, but you know what I call them? Mongrels.
But this perspective is of little help to the individual in the face of the despair that finitude can cause. Each individual is not only part of a larger whole and a species, but in itself already a being of unsurpassable value, as is shown again and again throughout the series. Thus, dealing with the individual, personal dimension of mortality is also a necessity in dealing with human finitude. When Rose can no longer bear the solemn atmosphere due to the end of the earth, she withdraws. The doctor follows her, sensing her despair. As she looks through a window at her planet for perhaps the last time, just before chaos breaks loose, she realises that everyone she has known, her family, her home will not exist forever. Each of us knows this, but as always when confronted with dying, the realisation takes our breath away. Although Rose could return at any time if she wished, she is very lonely at this moment. She asks the Doctor to reveal something of himself, but he is not yet ready to do so.
Instead, he allows her to call her mother in her own time. A small uplift in the emotional rollercoaster that both the Doctor and Rose experience: Rose in the face of the end of her homeworld and everything she has known, and the Doctor because he has already experienced all this, his own homeworld having been destroyed long ago. At the beginning they had been full of anticipation of a new adventure, but instead they were confronted with fear, sadness and loneliness.
At the end (of the episode and of the world), mutual understanding, compassion and hope pave the way: the last scene is a particularly important one in the entire story arc. Here the themes of finitude and emotion combine when the Doctor reveals to Rose that he is the last of his kind. And now that Rose has had a brief glimpse of what it is like to be the last of her kind, she could understand how lonely the Doctor must feel. After all, Rose is the one who shows him that even though his world has been destroyed, he has someone who is there for him.
Memorable quote from this episode:
JABE: I don’t know, but the maintenance duct is just behind our guest suite, I could show you and your wife.
DOCTOR: She’s not my wife.
JABE: Partner?
DOCTOR: No.
JABE: Concubine?
DOCTOR: Nope.
JABE: Prostitute?
ROSE: Whatever I am, it must be invisible. Do you mind? Tell you what, you two go and pollinate. I’m going to catch up with family. Quick word with Michael Jackson.
(Rose goes to talk to Cassandra.)