As promised – ONE MORE POST, right before the year’s end!!!!
“I just sat there thinking, ‘Well, if I’d been trapped in a frame, as Cassandra has for a couple thousand years; if I’d suddenly got a body – and a very sexy body, with Rose Tyler’s body – I’d want to snog someone, frankly!’ And she can’t bear the Doctor! He killed her! But nonetheless; he’s there, he’s handsome... she has a bit of it. Lovely.”
-- Russell T Davies, on the kiss between Cassandra/Rose and the Doctor in New Earth.
IN RESPONSE TO THE POLLED QUESTION:
It’s a valid question. Up until now, we’ve never witnessed Lady Cassandra being even remotely physically affectionate – “I bet you were the school swot and never got kissed!” she jeers after the Doctor exposes her sabotage in The End of the World. So why then does she kiss him in New Earth?
Well, the quickest and simplest explanation would be, to paraphrase a Billie Piper song, Because She Wants To! But given that New Earth is such a happy, horny, physical story with a hospital setting that makes it very much about the body in all its shapes and sizes – old bodies, new bodies, furry cat bodies, infected bodies, stolen bodies, antibodies, body-swaps, body-horror, you name it – there’s absolutely room for Cassandra/Rose’s snogging of the Doctor to be read through this sort of hot-and-heavy lens. For there are multiple accumulating factors at play here, all leading up to the kiss. Let’s look at how they might add up and complement each other:
(NB: This is a just-for-fun post, and therefore may contain some conjecture, speculation and what we online might call 'reading into things'!)
I – IT’S BEEN A WHILE.
It’s worth remembering, first and foremost, that Cassandra hasn’t had a proper human body to call her own for thousands and thousands of years. When she and Rose first meet on Platform One five billion years in Earth’s future in Series One’s The End of the World, her Ladyship has racked up over 708 surgeries and counting in order to remain as flat and thin as possible (“Next week, it’s 709, I’m having my blood bleached!”). In fact, part of Cassandra’s story-arc is that she has existed for so long as a flattened-out, (literally) two-dimensional piece of skin bolted into a metal frame as a result of constant rounds of never-ending operations (with her eyes, mouth, and brain being the only remaining functional organs left), that she’s essentially warped and dehumanized herself on every conceivable level: bodily, morally, culturally, emotionally, psychologically, sexually – though the latter doesn’t preclude her from making a few naughty double entendres about past ex-husbands to charm the peanut gallery. And yet despite all physical evidence to the contrary, Cassandra still persists in calling herself “The Last Human”. That’s one giant, massive case of cognitive dissonance. Rose herself might’ve put it best: “You’re just skin, Cassandra. Lipstick and skin.”
II – SHE’S LONELY, AND IT REALLY *HAS* BEEN A WHILE.
Series Two’s New Earth takes place a further twenty-three years after Cassandra’s explosive (and, as it turns out, non-fatal) desiccation on Platform One. Having crudely reconstructed herself back into the same old flat-as-a-pancake skin-graft she was before (with assistance from her loyal servant Chip), she’s spent the majority of those two-plus decades skulking away in a forgotten basement beneath the New New York hospital run by the Sisters of Plenitude; all alone, surviving on stolen medicine and stewing in her own bitterness. But there’s an added tragic dimension to the mix – since Cassandra has also been rewatching old film reels of her younger, beautiful self at a drinks party for the Ambassador of Thrace when she was still fully human (Zoe Wanamaker in the flesh, wearing a glittery evening dress and a blonde Jessica Rabbit wig); seemingly on a loop, with only Chip’s fawning attentions to keep her company.
In this sense, Cassandra’s fall from grace following the events on Platform One and the secret, solitary life she’s lived thereafter are something of a sci-fi riff on Sunset Boulevard: an older, sadder, lonelier (skin) scrap of a vampy socialite, who’s still pining away for the giddy heights and lost glory days of the glamorous woman she used to be. When Cassandra and Rose come face-to-face once more, there’s several innuendoes dropped about the former’s sexuality: Cassandra’s replacement skin is strongly implied to have been taken from her arse backside (“Ask not!”), and she mentions that Chip – a cloned, slavishly devoted “pet” who “worships” his mistress – tends to her “physical needs” (“Hope that means food,” Rose deadpans in response). Chip’s own descriptions of what he does for Cassandra are also quickly cut off by Rose when they start sounding a little too… sexual (“Chip steals medicine. Helps milady. Soothes her. Strokes her…”).
Beyond Chip and his (ahem) “services” to his mistress, the episode seems to posit that after years and years of desperate, isolated loneliness – during which she’s likely replayed those same images of herself on “the last night anyone told [her] she was beautiful” over and over again – Cassandra is haunted with a profound nostalgic yearning for the life of the blonde, beautiful woman she once was in the past. (“After that it all became... such hard work.”) When she subsequently abandons her trampoline skin-form and steals Rose’s body as her own, her reasons for doing so are manifold: an opportune chance to exact petty revenge on Rose after the two became arch-enemies on Platform One; appropriating a healthy, fully-mobile, physical 3-D vessel for herself that will help her investigate the Sisterhood’s sinister doings more capably; not to mention yet another excuse to prolong her own absurdly long life in a way that fits her twisted definition of existing as “the Last Human” inside a body of “pure-blood” human stock.
But the film of the drinks’ party also tells an important part of that story: after all this time, Cassandra’s aching to relive the glitz and glamour of her old celluloid self – or at least the ideal of what such beauty meant to her. She clings to that past ideal; of being young and flirtatious and desirable again, surrounded by admiring suitors, the talk of the town, the life of the party. In terms of available substitutes, Rose’s youthful blonde body is the only candidate that fits that bill, and the Doctor represents the closest thing she might have to a suitor (more on that later).
Speaking of Rose’s body…
III – ROSE IS *HOT*.
Well she just is, isn’t she? Most noticeable in Cassandra’s possession of Rose, besides humanizing her again, is the knock-on effect it has on reawakening her own long-lost sexuality. Though she can’t quite get over her own snobbish hatred for Rose as a person (“I’m a chav!” ; “Look at me! From class to brass!”), it’s clear from Cassandra’s first few moments in front of the mirror that the curviness of her new form is a source of glee. She unzips Rose’s jacket, bounces her boobs in delight (“Ooh... Curves! Oh-ho baby, it’s like living inside a bouncy castle!”) and shamelessly feels up her bum. Twice.
She’s even got Chip on hand to join in the excitement. Having made himself (perhaps unwittingly) complicit in Cassandra’s body-theft by luring Rose down to the basement under false pretenses so that he might help his mistress achieve THE ultimate surgery procedure via the psycho-graft transfer – a “surgery of the mind” if you will – Chip’s role post-Rose-possession is comparable to that of a passive, enabling onlooker; or possible voyeur. Presumably as he was always conditioned to do, he dutifully indulges Cassandra’s vanities; inflating his lady’s ego with compliments (“The mistress is beautiful!”), jiggling up and down alongside her before the mirror, and watching from afar as she coos, ogles and gropes away at herself. From Cassandra’s perspective, Chip isn’t much more than an afterthought, since she’s far too busy appreciating her new T&A looks to pay him any attention, and no longer needs his constant moisturizing. Yet she does feel validated by his praise (“Absolument!”), and is clearly glad to have an audience for her fondling, even if it’s just an audience of one. That’s gotta be a nice self-confidence boost, especially after spending so many years being flat...
IV – THE DOCTOR IS *HOT*.
Well he just is, isn’t he? A quick perusal of Rose’s surface-memories reveals to Cassandra that the Doctor also accompanied Rose to the hospital, and has since changed his physiognomy. At first, it’s a bit of a shock to her: this slim, fresh-faced (“foxy”, as she’ll call him later) new version with his pinstripes and sideburns doesn’t look or sound anything like the big-eared Northern bloke in a leather jacket who once condemned her to death on Platform One. Cassandra even angrily misconstrues the Doctor’s recent regeneration as him resorting to the same plastic surgery he and Rose once castigated her for (“That man… He’s the Doctor. The same Doctor with a new face! That hypocrite!”). The unexpected presence of this boy-faced new Doctor in the hospital also represents an affront to Cassandra’s own narcissism – not for nothing does she steer Rose’s body straight back to the mirror for another look at her reflection and ponder making some improvements of her own: “I must get the name of his surgeon! I could do with a little work…”. As ever with someone like Cassandra, though, vanity and self-loathing are fickle friends, and her interest soon turns inward and prurient again once she sees things from another angle – this particular angle being Rose’s “nice rear bumper.”
It’s notably after this new development, and her ensuing phone-call with the Doctor (during which she amateurishly but successfully passes herself off as Rose with some clumsy Cockney, which probably emboldens her further), that Cassandra adopts a new look of her own – refashioning Rose into a more sexualized version of herself so she can play the role of the scheming seductress. Is she jealous? Is she trying to compete? Whatever the case, it suddenly becomes a very femme fatale-coded affair; with Cassandra aiming to be all charming and disarming, hoping to use her newfound womanly wiles (plus a somewhat limited grasp of the Doctor and Rose’s relationship) as instruments in her vendetta against the man she holds personally responsible for wronging her in the past – and in true femme fatale fashion, eventually ends up ensnaring him into a deadly trap. She even hides a strategically-placed, feminine-coded “weapon” on her person that she plans to overpower the Doctor with.
V – SHE’S GOT THE HOTS FOR HIM.
Now obviously, Cassandra still deeply loathes the Doctor and Rose, blaming the pair for her previous violent downfall on Platform One. But there’s something to be said about the thrill of deception, and holding power over someone you hate (literally in Rose’s case; figuratively in the Doctor’s case) which suggests she might also have come to view this decorative new version of him – if not a strictly sexual object per se, then certainly as a tasty, desirable bit of eye-candy. Sure, she’s all too happy to kill him later; but until then, why not have herself some fun along the way? And if we’re talking revenge being served cold, then what better method than literally becoming Rose so she can get back at the Doctor? Especially if the same Doctor who was once her judge, jury and executioner now looks this:
It helps that the Doctor’s youthful change in appearance is built up to Cassandra incrementally: first she catches a glimpse of his handsome new visage through the distorted red-lens of her metal spider when Chip uses it to spy on him and Rose on the planet’s surface; then she presumably sees him in Rose’s mind; then she hears his voice over the phone, and then she finally gets to see him up-close, in the flesh, through Rose’s eyes in Ward 26. And let’s face it; from a lady’s point of view, the sight of a dashing, slightly scruffy-looking young man with freckles, walking around wearing tight pinstripes and brainy (sexy) specs is gonna be just… OOF.
When we next cut back to Cassandra following her brief phone-call with the Doctor as “Rose” , she’s visibly grown much more comfortable in her stolen, sexy new body; to a point where she now feels confident enough to flaunt her newly-acquired assets. Between scenes, Rose’s appearance undergoes a significant (and seductive) overhaul: her long-sleeved blue jacket has been removed entirely; in favor of the louder, more vibrant purples of the short-sleeved patchwork blouse she’s wearing underneath. Said blouse has been unbuttoned by Cassandra to show some cleavage, with the folded-back shirt lapel (not to mention the outline of Billie Piper’s Wonderbra being very noticeable through the fabric!) only adding to an overall impression of “bustiness”. These sexed-up new stylings are either rooted in the vulgar, slatternly subjective way that Cassandra sees Rose and how she wears her clothes, or are based off her own shallow beauty-standards of how a sophisticated woman should look (Probably a bit of both). Rather fitting, in any case, for a formerly sentient piece of skin to have the driving conceit behind her hasty new makeover simply be…well, to show more skin.
Not that any of it’s ever quite specified in Russell T Davies’ script (which just has the simple, punchy stage direction, “Rose giving her hair a good zhuzh, Chip watching.”), but on a subtextual level, this second sequence of Cassandra’s mirror-gazing has all the makings of a newly sexually-confident young woman tarting herself up for a date, or getting ready for a night out on the town. A lot of this is down to Billie Piper’s performance, but everything is certainly coded as being a lot more… “hot-and-bothered” than before: Cassandra dramatically re-enters the frame with a gasp as she straightens up to face the mirror again, with Rose’s hair looking a lot more disheveled and volumed in this particular instance than its usual Series 2 sleekness. There’s actually a slight breathlessness to Cassandra’s dialogue throughout – as she takes in her unruly, unbuttoned reflection and determinedly fluffs Rose’s hair to her liking while she quotes an “Old Earth saying” to Chip about not trusting nuns, nurses or cats.
It could be that the reason why Cassandra’s so short of breath in this scene is simply due to a case of nerves, or the excitement/novelty of pretending to be Rose? Perhaps she’s just in a hurry, or quickly thinking up her next move as she anticipates having to face the Doctor again? And since she already said she was “on [her] way” upstairs over the phone as “Rose” mere moments ago, perhaps she’s now feeling pressured to keep to that time-frame, because she knows he’s currently expecting her?
VI – OR PERHAPS SHE’S JUST FEELING A LITTLE *HORNY*?
Let’s be frank: imagine, for a moment, that in the space of just a few minutes, you’ve left behind centuries and centuries of immobile, literal flatness and jumped into the hot, bouncy body of a twenty-ish young woman that’s not only raging with hormones but positively abuzz with thoughts of this dishy new new Doctor. Now that you’re reinvigorated with a brand-new lease of life and stolen sense of self, you’ve been able to (re)discover so many long-forgotten physical sensations that you’d been deprived of for ages (with plenty more to look forward to). You like what you see in the mirror; you’ve checked out the goods; you’ve even copped a feel or two... of course you’re then gonna GO FULL TITS OUT take off a layer so that you might look/feel a bit more attractive in your new skin! The luxury of it all must surely be liberating for Cassandra; especially if it allows her the opportunity to show off what she’s got. So it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to assume, either, that she might be feeling ever-so-slightly turned-on – either by her (or Rose’s) thoughts about the Doctor, or by the simple fact that she’s now rocking this blonde, bodacious new bod'.
Among the many ideas at play in New Earth is a juxtaposing point about TOUCH: that, deep down, Cassandra is really just as desperate and touch-starved as all the test-tube human plague-zombies who have been isolated by the cat-nurses in the hospital’s Intensive Care unit. This theme of touch goes on to emerge as one of the prevailing motifs across the whole of Series 2, in ways both big and small. Whether it’s the werewolf lycanthropy and mistletoe allergies in Tooth and Claw; the Krillitanes’ own oil being toxic to them in School Reunion; the Cybermen (already sealed inside cold, unfeeling suits of cybernetic armor) and the Ood both killing through deadly electrical touch; the Abzorbaloff in Love and Monsters – who doesn’t like to be touched “literally or metaphorically” – devouring anything it comes into contact with…
And of course, the Tenth Doctor and Rose – two very photogenic, physical people whose decidedly more tactile, touch-feely relationship of hugs and hand-holding finds itself under a constant threat of separation: whether it’s by choice, circumstance, geography, other relationships or alien interference, and eventually entire parallel dimensions.
But this touching motif is also true in a very basic, literal sense of the word – because, if one is paying any sort of attention throughout the episode...
VII – CASSANDRA. CANNOT. STOP. *TOUCHING HERSELF*.
Seriously. Watch closely and you’ll notice it’s a defining character-tic in Billie Piper’s possessed performance: falling back time and again into that same “default” pose of single-folded-arm preening and upright Cassandra-daintiness; with the fingers of her left-hand often casually resting in the crook of her right elbow – her other forearm lifted up so she can fiddle with Rose’s hair, her lips, her chin, her neck, etc. Touching, toying, fingering... all with the air of someone who’s still getting used to having human feminine features again, and simply can’t get enough of them.
More pertinently, during Cassandra/Rose’s scenes in the cellar, she’s visibly caressing parts of Rose’s stolen physique that are commonly recognized as erogenous zones in the female body; whether it’s her neck, her throat, her hips, her chest… When Rose’s mobile phone rings and interrupts Cassandra right as she’s in the middle of stroking her bottom (and humming approvingly!), the crude gag is that she initially mistakes its ringtone as originating from Rose’s actual ass – but who’s to say that the unexpected vibrations of the “primitive communications device” in her back pocket didn’t also, um… heighten the sensations?
Naughtiest of all, however, must surely be Cassandra requesting a spray-bottle of poison-perfume off Chip before leaving the basement, which she conceals between Rose’s breasts with a performatively dainty wince:
“Ooh!”
IRL, this can be chalked up to Billie Piper’s acting choices, putting her own personal spin on the script-directions and playing up various aspects of her Cassandra-performance for comedic effect. In-universe and in-character though, Cassandra uttering this kind of suggestive noise even as she stuffs her special knockout spray in Rose’s cleavage could be read as further evidence of her arousal. Especially when one considers the, um... sensitive nature of such an intimate hiding-place.
The previous scene already established that Rose has pockets to store her phone in, so Cassandra is doing this deliberately. She chooses to stash her drugged concoction in Rose’s bosom (with all the taboo, transgressive, titillating connotations an area like that can carry) simply because she now has the freedom to do so, and it’s precisely the kind of brazenly risqué gesture Rose herself would never dream of. Having successfully invaded her host’s mind and body, Cassandra is now claiming even further ownership by going so far as to invade Rose’s personal privacy – confident in the knowledge that Rose can’t stop her, Chip won’t stop her, and the Doctor isn’t around to stop her. She’s in total control, getting off on her stolen sex-appeal and relishing using Rose’s physicality to her own advantage. Having Chip there to watch her jam things down Rose's blouse probably only adds to the general frisson.
VIII – THE DOCTOR IS *RIGHT THERE*; AND IT REALLY, REALLY, REALLY *HAS* BEEN A WHILE!
Her touching and clothing adjustments complete, all the visual/auditory/sensory stimuli Cassandra has been receiving while inside Rose ends up getting a further workout once she finally emerges onto Ward 26 (actually, struts might be the better word; since she’s still putting her stolen body through its paces). The overall fussiness in Cassandra’s walk and demeanor here – with details like smoothing down Rose’s hair; performing a little shrug-y squaring of the shoulders as she rounds the corner boobs-first to better foreground the cleavage now displayed by Rose’s low-cut top – give off all the signs of someone who’s anxious to make an impression.
And speaking of impressions, it’s here that Cassandra gets her first in-person impression of the man who’s occupied her and Rose’s thoughts down in the basement – the Doctor. He’s busy examining IV-drips when she enters and doesn’t spot her right away, which allows for a couple more seconds of that aforementioned vision of a tasty-looking man in glasses and a stripey brown suit made of boyfriend material.
It’s here, too, that Cassandra gets to experience a bit of the Doctor and Rose’s dynamic for herself. After she manages to correctly gauge their level of familiarity to each other by acknowledging him with a cheery grin, the Doctor – too caught up in the mystery of the hospital to notice anything’s amiss – immediately draws Cassandra into close proximity to him, placing his hand on her lower-back, and shows her around the ward in full investigation-mode to observe the various patients. Exactly as he would with Rose.
Cassandra (wisely) stays silent to keep up appearances; playing along by folding Rose’s arms, smiling when she needs to, letting the Doctor do all the talking as he fills her in on his findings – but you can catch her sneaking a lingering glance at him while he’s busy describing the red man who’s undergoing treatment for Marconi’s Disease. The Doctor acting all sotto during this one-sided conversation, leaning in to mutter to “Rose” about the miraculously-advanced treatments the cat-nuns are administering to supposedly-terminal diseases, only reinforces the sense of intimacy between them.
It’s when Cassandra’s earlier description of the Doctor to Chip as “dangerous and clever” ends up being confirmed as she and the Doctor head off in search of a terminal that things really start to get interesting. The Doctor (who thus far has taken no notice of his companion’s very un-Rose-like mannerisms and cleavage-revealing wardrobe) grows almost immediately suspicious once he picks up on the questionable Cockney accent she’s using to imitate Rose. A caught-out Cassandra has to hastily explain away her sudden voice-change as “just larking about”, but she then follows it up with a bit of flirting – once again asserting her own sexuality over Rose’s in a way that explicitly calls attention to both her and the Doctor’s bodies. “New Earth… new me,” she purrs sultrily, eyeing the Doctor up and down, while also trying out a hands-on-hips, I’m-sexy-and-I-know-it pose that’s purposefully intended to draw his gaze to the contents of Rose’s unbuttoned top. (Once again, Billie Piper’s Wonderbra is working overtime here!)
This subtly hearkens back to a previous loaded-but-humorous moment between the Doctor and Rose earlier in the episode – right before the two find themselves separated in the hospital foyer when Chip overrides the lift controls. Having seen her react rather strongly to the Sisters’ feline physique, the Doctor gently chides Rose’s shock by contrasting their cat-like appearance with her own – “Think what you look like to them, all… pink and yellow.” – following up his rather awkward choice of words with a brief distracted once-over of her chest before pointing out where best to put the missing little shop. Rose, for her part, seems more offended by the “pink and yellow” remark itself rather than the Doctor momentarily (accidentally?) checking her out.
But because Cassandra was first made aware of the Doctor’s “newness” back when she accessed Rose’s thoughts down in the basement, it’s entirely feasible she’s now drawing from this past lived-experience between them on purpose so she can milk it for all it’s worth, and even tease the Doctor with it. Her meaningful eye-contact and sexually-charged gestures in Ward 26 are like an ironic re-enactment of the earlier Doctor/Rose scene in the lobby – only this time with a much more confident and coquettish Rose, her jacket gone, her buttons undone; making a deliberate point of inviting the Doctor to stare at her tits ogle her. (Amusingly enough, the Doctor’s own nonplussed reaction both times is the one element that doesn’t differ in either exchange).
There’s a strong likelihood that Rose’s own unspoken hormonal feelings for the Doctor might have had their own part to play here, too. (Cassandra even calls Rose out on the matter later on after she takes over the Doctor’s body – “You’ve been looking… you like it!” – whilst the pair of them are standing in the exact same basement where she herself had previously been perving over Rose’s curves!) An earlier scene meant to very, very clearly showcase the blossoming romance between the Doctor and Rose sees them relaxing together in the apple-grass with New New York on the horizon, and is expressly framed to make the moment as Capital-A ROMANTIC as possible. They’re not just two time-travelers soaking up the sights: lounged out like that sharing the Doctor’s coat, they could just as well be a pair of eloped lovers cozily enjoying their blissful honeymoon, or a young couple snuggling in the sunshine after a picnic! The Doctor, who’s busy rattling off the many “New’s” that make up the 15th iteration of the City of New York, suddenly catches Rose staring at him and biting her lip: “You’re so different,” she smiles affectionately. “New New Doctor,” he jokes back.
It’s hardly an accident, then, that the Doctor’s response to the flirty smirks and stares of the Cassandra-possessed Rose coming on to him here in Ward 26 is to simply laugh it all off by repeating his “New New Doctor” quip from earlier. Either he’s completely misreading her advances, or he’s not totally clueless, has indeed picked up on some of the signals “Rose” is giving out and is presently trying to defuse the sexual tension with a feebly rehashed attempt at post-regenerative humor.
The “New New Doctor” line, however, is one that Cassandra also happened to be privy to – having overheard it herself when she was spying on the pair of them via Chip’s metal spider-spy – and out of all the possible catalysts, this is the memory which prods her into making a move. “Mm, aren’t you just...” she murmurs sultrily, right before she suddenly launches herself at the Doctor, grabs hold of his face and then...
The Kiss itself plays out as a frenzied, furious, passionate SNOG – something Cassandra’s evidently been itching to do ever since she first became three-dimensional again. But it’s also one she initiates spontaneously; more of a surprise spur-of-the-moment thing than any carefully pre-meditated action. It’s possible she finds all this newness of bodies and Doctors quite exciting, having only had the pleasure of inhabiting Rose for such a short time. But if we’re going with the reading that Cassandra has her own lustful urges and sexual frustrations – which have been building up inside her over centuries, likely mixing with Rose’s own thoughts and feelings, churning away unsatisfied for so, so, so long until she finally has a proper human body to experience them in – then surely the great big smacking kiss is a gratifying form of release, a chance for Cassandra to just decide what the hell, and ACT on those impulses in a way that Rose never would? Is there such a thing as a hate-snog?
Because BOY, does she give it her all: four breathlessly prolonged seconds of clutching fingers, ruffling of hair, pressing of boobs, grinding of hips, smooching of lips and sucking of face (But no tongues, according to David Tennant and Billie Piper behind the scenes!).
Reading their body-language afterward when she releases him: the Doctor is left speechless, staring; stunned rigid (though he’s ultimately quite chuffed, boasting “Yep, still got it.”). Cassandra, meanwhile, is positively breathless – panting hard, heavily flustered, even a bit self-conscious about what she’s just done. Licking Rose’s lips, she combs her hair back behind one ear and stutters feebly about a terminal as she attempts to finish off their conversation like nothing happened. Then she walks off, with a deep ventilating “Phew!” of an exhale, absently rubbing the back of Rose’s neck with one hand like she’s trying to calm herself down.
Yep. You can *bet* she enjoyed that. Of course, there’s still her revenge to think about, and the hospital’s secrets; and finding out what the Sisters are up to; and on top of that she still has the Doctor to deal with; no doubt using the chloroform perfume stowed in Rose’s bra. But for now, at least as far as Cassandra is concerned, this Lady’s particular itch has been scratched!
Something that was obvious in the show that people forget is that Ten did not refuse to tell Rose he loved her. He was in the process of saying it and ran out of time. It wasn’t the kind of thing he could spit out quickly. I also wholeheartedly believe he needed her to say it first. The Seventh Doctor told Ace that unrequited love was among his greatest fears. It’s something he wanted to say for a while. “If it’s my last chance to say it”. He’s wanted to say it. The words were not something he denied her on purpose. Not even with Tentoo were they denied to her. He knew Tentoo would say them to her and he made sure to mention he had the same thoughts and everything as him. He knew if he let Tentoo do it that she’d choose what he thought was a better version of himself for her to have. He LOVED her. He wanted to say it. He just never got the chance. And ever since, she’s been the only romantic love he has wanted so badly to say it to.
"Rose would care" – some observations on character work in New Earth
Although Billie Piper is very much front-and-center for much of New Earth – this being, in part, a comedy episode that's specially tailor-made for both her and David Tennant to stretch their acting-muscles – a perhaps inevitable trade-off to all this body-swapping means that Rose’s character is largely out of action during a lot of the narrative, quite literally "tucked away" to make room for the physical embodiment of Cassandra. If you break it down, Rose herself gets about 10 minutes screen-time at the start of the episode, roughly 3 minutes in the middle and a scant couple of minutes at the end, and spends the rest of it being possessed. As such, the drama/comedy in New Earth can be seen as something of an inverted "fun-house mirror" answer to The Christmas Invasion; with the Doctor now being the one to find himself in the similarly-unenviable position of having to cope in a crisis without Rose (or, alternatively, with a vampy, campy diva version of Rose) at his side.
Even so, RTD’s script does manage to sketch out a sufficiently condensed, Cliff-Notes' version of the character so that Rose – along with all her strengths and flaws – still leaves a short, sweet, strong-enough impression. Right from the off, we're reminded of her selfish side, as she pointedly returns Mickey's goodbye kiss but not his "love you", before dashing off all smiles to her handsome new Doctor in the TARDIS. Once again, there’s a taste of Rose’s awe and wonder at discovering new horizons (“Oh, I’ll never get used to this. Never! Different ground beneath my feet! Different sky!”), as well as her quick-thinking under pressure, when she and the Cassandra-possessed Doctor have to make a quick ladder-escape that then leads to a vertical, body-swapping chase sequence (“Ladder! We’ve gotta get up!”; “Use the sonic screwdriver!”; “Cassandra, go back into me, the Doctor can open it!”). And we even get something of a catty, Doctor-ish mean-streak to Rose during her brief reunion with the flat 2D version of Cassandra at the start: she might take the moral high-ground on the value of things like change and human evolution, but she also isn’t above cracking a couple of snide sex jokes at Cassandra either, just for kicks and giggles...
But absence does make the heart grow fonder, doesn't it? And if Rose and Cassandra's only other shared scene together, back in The End of the World, already established how diametrically-opposed these characters were to each other – in their appearances, their class background, their wildly different definitions of humanity – the added wrinkle (sorry) of watching Rose literally become Cassandra in New Earth relies on the combined strength of both Billie’s performance and Russell’s writing having to "up the ante" even further, in a sense: playing up everything that’s vain and shallow (and very pointedly, un-Rose-like) about the character, while everything "Rose Tyler" more or less disappears. We still have to get a sense of who Rose is as a character in the story, even while Billie is busy playing a completely different character.
Indeed, from the Doctor’s perspective, there’s quite a few screamingly-obvious giveaways out-of-character moments involving Rose’s behavior that might suggest to him that she’s Not Herself; namely:
Showing up conspicuously late to Ward 26; long enough for the Doctor to assume she’s gotten lost, ask Sister Jatt to make inquiries at reception and eventually phone her up himself to find out where she’s got to.
Her posh voice and faux-Cockney accent. Yes, imitating colorful rhyming-slang over the phone might come across as playful or endearing, but doing it in person is just, um… a bit odd. And it doesn’t sound anything like South London Rose.
Her noticeably quieter demeanor when she finally rejoins the Doctor in Ward 26; mutely following him around and giving little to no explanation for why she went missing earlier. Also, her being uncharacteristically overconfident once the two of them have discovered the dark, sinister entrance to Intensive Care: she’s the first to stride inside, leading the way forward in a way that’s far more “jeopardy-friendly” than usual, even for someone like Rose.
Her sexed-up, seductive change of wardrobe: notably, returning to the Doctor’s side sans blue jacket, but with busty purple blouse and Wonderbra'd cleavage. Quite the fashion-statement to make around your New New Doctor!
Um, SNOGGING THE DOCTOR OUT OF THE BLUE?!? Even though initially, he kinda puts that down to his own irresistible charm…
Mincing, coquettish, sultry body-language: she’s suddenly daintily folding her arms, swinging her hips about like a seductress and generally carrying herself with an air that’s very smirky, flirty, and haughtier-than-thou.
Seriously advanced technical know-how: Rose, who’s usually out of her depth with off-world space stuff like cat-nuns and automatic disinfectants, unexpectedly knows the ins-and-outs of complex computer technology that’s meant to be billions of years ahead of her own time, and even takes to bossing the Doctor around about it. “Search the sub-frame”, indeed!
No real reaction to the Doctor’s ongoing “little shop” comment. To be fair, she didn’t really respond to it before either, down in the hospital reception, although she did have a look at where he was pointing at…
But while the Doctor does pick up on most of these suspicious signs almost immediately – because, as Cassandra herself states, he’s “dangerous and clever” and cleverly, dangerously keeps them to himself until a more decisive moment arises – the one detail he chooses to actually comment upon, aside from her change of voice; the singular defining trait which RTD’s script understands as being so key to Rose’s character that he carries it over as character-continuity from the first series and actually has the Doctor spell it out to Novice Hame (and us in the audience who weren’t paying attention!) under an angry, mistaken assumption that it’s the cat-nuns who are responsible; the single absolute quality which makes Rose more human than Cassandra, the self-proclaimed “Last Human”, will ever be, is...
Her compassion.
ROSE.
WOULD.
CARE.
Remember, New Earth seems to be asking us, this is Rose Tyler we’re talking about. The Rose Tyler we’ve gotten to know so well over the course of Series 1:
Who was disgusted by Cassandra’s racist talk of “pure humans” and “mongrels”, and appalled by the dodgy morality of allowing the Gelth to inhabit corpses.
Who, just like her mother, isn’t afraid of speaking her mind to anyone that rubs her up the wrong way.
Who often appears profoundly uncomfortable with the notion of privilege founded on distinctions of class or wealth, and has no time for the rituals of hierarchy.
Who instinctively took exception to people like Henry Van Statten or the Forest of Cheem woman Jabe, that reveled in their own fantasies of social status and discussed her as though she wasn’t there.
Who was visibly shocked when told she had to give lowly Platform One plumber Raffalo permission to speak, was similarly shaken by servant-girl Gwyneth’s low expectations in the employ of Mr. Sneed; and lifted downtrodden street-urchin Nancy’s desolate spirits with a hopeful glimpse of a post-Blitz future.
Whose empathetic nature allowed her to step in and comfort those in distress, like Harriet Jones, or even put in a gentle plea for the Doctor to help a stricken Cassandra, in spite of all her murder and deception beforehand, once Cassandra found herself on the wrong end of her own sabotage.
Whose gentle, misplaced sympathy for a lonely battle-scarred Dalek nevertheless reawakened the virtues of pity, empathy and humanity inside an equally lonely, battle-scarred Doctor who was spiraling from the staggering trauma and losses he suffered in the Time War.
And who, despite the fact she was personally feeling lost and alone and utterly defeated after the Doctor’s new change of face at Christmas, still made the brave decision to step up before the Sycorax and speak on behalf of the whole of Planet Earth in his absence. Cos “someone’s gotta be the Doctor...”
Once she takes over Rose’s body in New Earth, Cassandra shows little regard for Chip’s possible bereavement at losing the flat, skin-form Cassandra he used to care for (“The brain-meat expired! My old mistress is gone…” “But safe and sound in here.”) and even less consideration for the fate of her host, whose body she has no qualms about objectifying (“It’s like living inside a bouncy castle!”) and whose own suppressed self, we later learn, is slowly being crushed to death inside her own head (“But what of the Rose-child’s mind?” “Oh… tucked away.”).
In Intensive Care, Cassandra’s gut-reaction to witnessing the horrendous, lifelong suffering of the plague-carriers is one of complete apathy, callousness; even revulsion (“That’s disgusting. What’s wrong with him?”). She asks questions like Rose might do (“How many patients are there?”), but her curiosity is more one of morbid fascination, solely predicated on how she can potentially exploit these horrors to her own benefit (“Just to confirm… none of the humans in the city actually know about this?”). And of course, her only concern is for herself (“What about us? Are we safe?”).
That’s the difference the Doctor sees the clearest, and hears the loudest:
David Tennant answering the question: When returning to Doctor Who, what did you bring to the table that was different than the previous time you played the Doctor?
Mum sent me this and we need to know from fact check doccy who tumblr. This is fake right? Yall have seen paul recently at cons is this from the power of the doctor or is this how he looks now?
I don't know jaes tumblr but they went to a BF con this month right? And mosche did too? Did jelly? GUYS HELP I NEED TO KNOW THIS IS FAKE BEFORE MY HEART LEAPS INTO MY THROAT
Jenna Coleman attended the Billie Piper & Jeremy Langmead birthday party in London yesterday, and was pictured with Jamie Childs, Billie Piper, Bel Powley, Richard Madden, Gemma Chan, and Douglas Booth, among others.
Doesn't need saying? @electrolight91 - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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