'The End of the World' Story Code 1.2 by Russell T. Davies

"Everything has its time. And everything dies." - The Doctor

Having joined the Doctor on his travels in the TARDIS, Rose asks to travel in time into the future. The Doctor rises to the challenge, taking Rose forward five billion years, to the year 5.5/Apple/26 – the time when the sun finally explodes and destroys the planet Earth in its fiery wake. Arriving on the observation deck of the travelling space station Platform One, the Doctor and Rose manage to convince the vessel’s Steward that they are amongst the wealthy guests who have come to witness the Earth’s destruction. Amongst the many alien attendees that the two time travellers meet are the beautiful Jabe, and her fellow Tree People from the Forest of Cheem; the squat blue creature known as the Moxx of Balhoon; the Adherents of the Repeated Meme; Cassandra O'Brian, the last human being, who has had so much plastic surgery she is merely a piece of skin stretched over a metal frame; and the event's sponsor, the Face of Boe from the Silver Devastation. Each delegate gives their fellows a generous gift; however, the silver globes given out by the Adherents conceal small robotic spiders, which rapidly infiltrate Platform One and then kill a maintenance worker. Rose is overwhelmed by the presence of so many aliens and the imminent end of her world, and she and the Doctor soon fall out over a heated argument; when Rose attempts to make up, the Doctor responds by dabbling with her mobile phone, enabling her to call her mother back in the year 2005. Just then, a tremor runs through the station. Elsewhere, a spider shuts down the sun filter for the window of the Steward’s office, flooding the room with searing heat and burning the official to death. While the Doctor and Jabe investigate the cause of the tremor, Rose talks to Cassandra, but she soon becomes angry at the ‘woman’s’ attitude towards the purity of the human race. The Doctor and Jabe discover that the spiders are responsible for the sabotage that is threatening the integrity of the station. Rose is knocked out by the Adherents, who lock her in one of the observations rooms and then deactivate the room’s sun filter; Rose is about to be burnt to death by the sun’s intense rays when the Doctor arrives and reactivates the shield; however, he is unable to open the doors and release his companion. By reprogramming one of the spiders so that it returns to its masters, the Doctor exposes the Adherents as those responsible for the sabotage; however, the Adherents are merely robots under the control of the real villain: Cassandra. It seems the wealthy ‘woman’ had intended to make it appear that she and everyone else were being held hostage, so that she could then claim a fortune in compensation. The Doctor’s interference forces Cassandra to resort to her back-up plan: by killing every one of the fabulously rich guests on the station, her investments in rival companies will enable her to make in a killing on the stock exchange. Cassandra remotely detonates her spiders, and the explosions cause Platform One’s shields to drop; as the heat rapidly begins to rise, Cassandra and her aides teleport off the station. The station’s hull begins to give out, letting in the intensely hot rays of the sun; the main computer then announces that ‘Earth Death’ is only minutes away. The Doctor and Jabe race against time to find the station’s restore switch, only to find that it is located at the other end of the ventilation chamber - separated from them by several huge and deadly fan-blades. Jabe is able to slow the mechanism down, enabling the Doctor to slip between the blades, but the rising heat soon proves fatal to the tree-woman, and her wooden body is swiftly reduced to ashes. With just one second to spare, the Doctor reaches the switch and reactivates the shields, just as the sun’s flames consume the Earth in a huge ball of fire. While the surviving guests nurse their wounds, the Doctor finds Cassandra’s teleportation feed and reverses its polarity; Cassandra materialises back in the main chamber, where the heat in the room causes her skin to dry out and explode in a mass of gore. Some time later, Rose contemplates the destruction of her home world, mourning the death of everyone she ever knew. To reassure her, the Doctor takes Rose back to modern-day Earth, where she once again experiences the sights and sounds of countless human beings living their day-to-day lives. The Doctor confides to Rose that his home planet was also destroyed, when his people lost a violent war - he is now the last of the Time Lords, forced to travel alone. Rose reassures the Doctor that he is not alone – after all, he has her to travel with.

Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who), Billie Piper (Rose Tyler), Simon Day (Steward), Yasmin Bannerman (Jabe), Jimmy Vee (Moxx of Balhoon), Zoe Wanamaker (Cassandra), Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler), Beccy Armory (Raffalo), Sara Stewart (Computer Voice), Silas Carson (Alien Voices)

Directed by Euros Lyn
Produced by Phil Collinson
Executive Producers Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner and Mal Young
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1):
2nd April 2005 @ 7.00 pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Ninth Doctor, Rose and Jackie

*First appearance of the Face of Boe

*Bad Wolf sightings: The Moxx of Balhoon mentions 'Bad Wolf' twice in conversation with the Face of Boe: in the first instance, he remarks that "this looks like the Bad Wolf scenario to me..."; in the second, he states "This is definitely the Bad Wolf scenario. I should have foreseen...".

*Cassandra's choice of classical music is 'Tainted Love' by Soft Cell; also heard is 'Toxic' by Britney Spears