Thank you one and all for a lovely New Earth November! ❤️❤️🌹
Seriously: thank you so much for supporting, appreciating, sharing and participating. I hope you had fun!
This @newearthnovember account will stop posting now, but the page will remain up as it is, and you are more than welcome to keep tagging, messaging and contributing to it for as long as you like!
New Earth turns 20 next April! Maybe we can do something special for it on this page?
And then next November, perhaps Gridlock can have a go!
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 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 the opportunity to use Rose’s physicality for 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 her a couple more seconds to drink in 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 – who’s 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 while she and the Doctor are heading off in search of a terminal that things really start to get interesting. The Doctor (who thus far has seemingly 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 previously perved 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!
Interestingly, New Earth does kind of seem to be blorange ground zero, not just green-and-purple ground zero.
I mean, there was certainly blorange on 9's Tardis, but we're incorporating it way more overtly into the sets and lighting now. Compare some Tardis interior shots from s1:
To the opening shots of New Earth:
Green is everywhere in this ep (and is explicitly described as "the universal symbol for hospitals"), while purple is mostly limited to Cassandra-Rose's shirt
The thing with green or blue id cards getting you into the pleasure gardens (Edenic? hence the no cuttings?) is also interesting
And then in the final scene, we get our other big Purple Element besides the shirt:
Cassandra-Chip walks past a blue waterfall, then reaches past-Cassandra, who's standing by a purple spotlight. This is Cassandra's dying memory, so she goes down the Reichenbach Falls into the depths of her psyche, on the way to death and transcendence...?
Just for fun, and to celebrate 20 years of New Earth (!!!), here's a list of 20 + 6 noteworthy things about this opening salvo of 21st century Doctor Who's second series – one for each letter of the alphabet, and hey look at that, it matches the number for Ward 26!
NB: I'll go back and update some of the posts as I go along, there just wasn't time for me to finish this before the anniversary!
A is for Ask. Not.
Seriously, with regards to Cassandra's personal skin-transplant choices, just don't. Baby Got Back in Series 2 generally, but bonus points go to this and the "nice rear bumper" scene for sneaking in an extra gag right after the obvious body-swap trope of Cassandra stroking and appreciating Billie Piper's Rose's arse: she's interrupted by the Doctor calling her mobile, mistakes it for her bum having its own personal ringtone, then makes an utter fool of herself butchering the art of Cockney rhyming-slang over the phone. Rose's snazzy jiggery-pokery "Superphone" that was such a big plot-device in Series 1? Yeah, guess what: it's literally the butt of the joke now!
B is for Billie
Unquestionably. 20 years on, and her posh arch-bitchy embodiment of Zoë Wanamaker's stretched-skin socialite snob stands out as not only the very best thing about New Earth, but also some of Billie Piper's greatest unsung work on Doctor Who, full-stop. In an episode specially crafted by RTD around her talents, following a very drama-heavy Series One that was full of heartbreak and hardship for Rose, it's downright liberating to watch Billie cut loose and stretch her acting muscles by playing a completely different character for a change. Coquettish, scheming and more beautiful than ever before, her Cassandra-fied version of Rose leers and struts her way through every scene, kicking the entire episode over to her wavelength. It's such a fun performance: in changing her voice, her expression, her body-language, her wardrobe and even her walk, Piper doesn't just ape Wanamaker's waspishness – she builds on it and makes it her own, in ways both comedic and alarmingly sexy. The transformation is astonishing. She's this story's secret weapon. Heck, she even outclasses David Tennant!
C is for Chip
Another unsung performance, this one from Sean Gallagher as Cassandra's very own (pale, force-grown henna-tattooed) Igor. It's a credit to Gallagher's acting that he makes Chip not just the slavishly-subservient "pet" Cassandra dismisses him as, or the creepy "Gollum" figure Rose believes him to be: truth is, he lands somewhere in the middle. Gallagher brings so much to the character that isn't really there on the page – like his wispy Irish accent, the unblinking wide-eyed stare, or the awkward way he runs with both arms at his sides like he's made of parts that don't quite join up properly. It's such a mix: He's sweet but off-putting, innocent in his intentions yet complicit in his mistress's body theft. He fawns over Cassandra's skin as the personal caretaker of her "physical needs", bounces alongside her with puppy-dog adoration in the background while she jiggles Rose's stolen body before the mirror, whimpers in terror when he's abandoned to the plague-carriers... Despite largely being a comedy sidekick, Chip ultimately emerges as this story's dark horse: such is his devotion to Cassandra that he willingly gives up his own life to serve as his lady's final host, and it's he and Zoë Wanamaker, rather than our two beautiful leads, who share the limelight in the episode's poignant closing moments.
D is for Doctor
Appropriately enough, since we're in a hospital setting! Given he spent most of his introductory Christmas episode asleep (before waking up to OWN the last ten minutes), this story works as a solid-enough showcase for David Tennant in his first proper outing as our New New Doctor. Intriguingly, there's actually a bit of a raw, unformed quality to the Tenth Doctor here, like Tennant is still settling into the role. It's notable that both Cassandra and the cat-nun conspiracy/infected zombie outbreak have him on the back-foot for most of the story, which only makes it all the more satisfying when he takes charge and saves the day at the end.
It's a pretty good showcase. Right from the off, Tennant doubles down on The Christmas Invasion's assertion that his Doctor is very much a man of action, leaping into the fray like a slightly demented Errol Flynn. He dashes up and down the hospital, gives two big Doctor-y speeches – one angry, one joyful – he gets snogged, he gets possessed, he has a ball with the disinfectant, he teases Cassandra to "live a little" before their adrenaline plunge down the lift-shaft. Even if he can't hope to compete with Billie Piper in his scant couple of moments cranking up the camp to frankly irresponsible levels as Cassandra. (Yes, it's a total of 2 short scenes and about 3 minutes of screen-time in a 45-minute episode. Anyone who tells you that "Tennant spends most of his first full episode possessed" is wildly and deliberately over-exaggerating.)
E is for Ending
Now not the climax, mind, where – in one of those convenient quick-fix plot solutions RTD has been accused of overly relying upon to wrap up many a 45-minute adventure – the Doctor spreads a panacea cocktail of intravenous space-medicines among the diseased and (in a very Jesus-heals-the-sick moment that feels like Russell is trying to out-do The Doctor Dances) magically cures everyone in one fell swoop. (Rusty does this again in Doomsday by the way, vanquishing the Daleks and the Cybermen with two giant levers and a bunch of sci-fi background radiation "void-stuff" that you can only see with cardboard 3-D glasses. But weirdly, that solution doesn't get nearly as much grief!).
(Famously, New Earth was paired on a double-bill with Gridlock during the Doctor Who: Lockdown live-tweet watchalongs back in 2020 when we were all stuck at home at the height of the COVID pandemic without any human contact. What that says about its current place in our post-pandemic times is anyone's guess, but surely there's room to be more forgiving about a touchy-feely infection story where everything is solved by the power of hugs?)
But no, not that. That's all plot. The actual ending to the story – and the emotional truth behind New Earth, so expertly hidden that it only reveals itself in the final moments – is that despite what the Doctor so jubilantly proclaims ("Life will out! HA!"), you can't fight nature. You can't preserve life at any cost. Sooner or later, it all catches up with you.
Whilst the previous angsty (9th) Doctor told Cassandra that "everything has its time, and everything dies," as he coldly watched her dry out and explode, here his preppy replacement (10th) Doctor takes her back (in Chip's dying body) to the last night someone called her beautiful. Turns out it was she (encompassed inside Chip) who told her younger self that (encompassed inside Zoë Wanamaker). And thus, long before Steven Moffat has got his showrunners on, things get all... timey-wimey!
After dominating all the broad-strokes, overripe frivolity of the past 40-odd minutes, Tennant and Piper are relegated to being silent, solemn observers as they cede the screen to guest-stars Gallagher and Wanamaker. It's here that New Earth shifts into something stark and genuinely moving, in what has to be one of the finest sequences of the entire RTD-era. The body doesn't matter anymore, now: instead we're just watching two people (who technically are the same person, past and future) share a delicate, contained moment of acceptance and grace. Just gorgeous.
F is for Firsts
Among other things, it's a story of many firsts! The first episode of Series 2; David Tennant's first TARDIS adventure; our first (onscreen) alien planet, even if it's basically Earth 2.0; the first of the Tenth Doctor's recurring kisses; the first instance of the "little shop" running-gag; the first of many "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry"s, the first invocation of "The Lonely God"...
G is for Gaze, Female
There's actually something pretty seismic happening in New Earth when it comes to our perception of the Doctor. David Tennant’s charm and good looks make the Doctor seem dateable for the first time. It's no surprise that he and Rose are flirting and skipping about the apple-grass at the start, reminiscing about chips. And when Cassandra inhabits the Doctor, she articulates the change in him pretty well. “Ooh, he's slim... and a little bit foxy!” she purrs, confirming what we in the audience can already see. But then she calls Rose (and us) out: “You've thought so too. I've been inside your head. You've been looking. You like it.” So there you go: we've positioned the Doctor, for the very first time, as a potential suitor. That stripey brown suit of his? It’s made of boyfriend material.
Cassandra's invitation for Rose, and for the audience, to view the Doctor as desirable, as a sexual object, is a first (with the possible exception of the TV Movie). We take it for granted now that the Doctor can actually be a love interest, since David Tennant, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi have all had regular squeezes, but it's easy to overlook what a shift this was for the program at the time. Even though the Doctor's interest in Rose, sealed with a big time-vortex-y smooch, was already clearly signposted back with Christopher Eccleston's Doctor, Tennant is the first Doctor you'd want to randomly snog, as Cassandra does, because he happens to be there and you can. He’s the one we can safely admit to ogling.
And because the perving and snogging and associated fascination is led by Cassandra and Rose, the argument can be made that it’s actually a female gaze that New Earth is celebrating. No wonder so many female viewers joined the show when Tennant began his TARDIS tenancy! It’s not just that Tennant's cute – it’s that we were, for the first time, invited to notice that the Doctor's cute. “Do you like Doctor Who now?” “Yes, because the new Doctor is hot.” (note: VALID).
All of which leads us to a peculiar inversion regarding Cassandra. She was originally created by RTD as a reaction to how women are viewed and how they react physically to that. Here, she ends up reversing that gaze onto the Doctor: once he was her judge, jury and executioner. Now he’s her toyboy. It’s a very new world indeed!
H is for Humor vs. Horror
Specifically, the body-kind (POST TO FOLLOW)
I is for Ideas
So many ideas! (POST TO FOLLOW)
J is for Jatt
Martha's mum! Francine Jones! (POST TO FOLLOW)
K is for Kiss
Well, duh! Possibly the most meme'd, gif'd, screenshotted, fanfic'd about Doctor Who kiss out there – of course this was gonna be on here! On year on from the kiss of life at the end of The Parting of the Ways, here we continue the trademark RTD1 tradition of stirring up fan circles, setting the Internet forums ablaze and pissing off all the right people by having the Doctor and the companion lock lips at least once a season – ostensibly for plot-motivated reasons (It's not really Rose, but Cassandra test-driving her new body full of hormones), but also cos they're two really sexy people and we really wanna see them snog. (Can you hear Steven Moffat taking notes?)
Arriving so soon after you've closed out your first season on the Doctor's beautifully romantic sacrifice to save Rose, in a hard-earned payoff that saw Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper's special sizzle of a chemistry reach its emotional zenith, the great big smackeroo that Rose (Cassandra) suddenly plants on the Doctor is unceremoniously chucked out as a tee-hee "gotcha!" gag. Playful, passionate and never brought up again. Almost like, "yep, we know these two are hot, we know what you want, here you go, moving on!"
Clearly some of us didn't, though, cos it doesn't help that this moment is actually quite steamy EXTREMELY FUCKING HOT, with Billie purposefully overdoing it on the hip-grinding and heavy breathing, and it can't help but stand out amid a broader hotbed of sexual tension within the episode: one that's largely tied up with Cassandra being really horny (There's actually a post about that elsewhere on this blog!), but will also go on to inform a lot of that tactile, close-quarters frisson we'll see between the Tenth Doctor and Rose in other stories like Tooth and Claw, The Idiot's Lantern, Fear Her et al. Now that the kiss is out of the way, everything else between the two them is made all that more palpable and... vivid.
(Oh, and the kiss WAS scripted, by the way. Sorry!)
L is for Lifts
The problem and the solution to this story's conflict. (POST TO FOLLOW)
M is for Makeup
(POST TO FOLLOW)
N is for Novice Hame
(POST TO FOLLOW)
O is for Octane
(POST TO FOLLOW)
P is for Photogenic
Befitting an episode so preoccupied with the concept of looking (and liking it), New Earth is very, very aware of the fact that David Tennant and Billie Piper are two very, very pretty people. Not for nothing does it have our two attractive leads frolic together in a picturesque outdoor setting within the first 5 minutes, get soaking wet (twice, in Tennant's case), touch each other, touch themselves, all while commenting on the hotness of each other's bodies...
Oh, and KISS.
I mean: Those many close-ups of David Tennant's freckly face. Billie Piper walking around in a low-cut purple top. David Tennant looking all windswept. Billie Piper with an up-do at the end. David Tennant in brainy specs. Billie Piper's Wonderbra. A damp David Tennant in shirt-sleeves...
Need we say more?
Q is for Quotable
Seriously. Who says it's all the critical darlings of Doctor Who that get all the best lines?
R is for Rose
Does the trade-off to Billie Piper playing Cassandra for an episode mean that Rose is largely absent from most of the narrative?
Well... yes and no: much as it's easy to say that's the case, here's a post which argues that it's actually a little more nuanced than that.
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 constantly 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 new 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 style, 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 new decorative 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… 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, boy-faced new new Doctor. Now 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 feel liberating for Cassandra; especially if it allows her the opportunity to show off what she’s got. So it’s not 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 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 more 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 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 stimulations Cassandra has been receiving while inside Rose get 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 roll 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; 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 glance at him while he’s 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 willfully intended to draw his gaze to the contents of Rose’s unbuttoned top. (Once again, Billie Piper’s Wonderbra is working overtime!)
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 stand in the exact same basement where she herself was previously 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 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 picked up on some of the signals “Rose” is giving out and is presently trying to defuse the sexual tension with an 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 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 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!).
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, combing her hair back behind one ear and stuttering about a terminal as she makes a feeble attempt to finish off their conversation as though nothing happened. Then she walks away, with a deep ventilating “Phew!” of an exhale, absently rubbing the back of Rose’s neck 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, as far as Cassandra is concerned, this Lady’s particular itch has been scratched!
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 constantly 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 new 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 style, 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 new decorative 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… 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, boy-faced new new Doctor. Now 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 feel liberating for Cassandra; especially if it allows her the opportunity to show off what she’s got. So it’s not 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 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 more 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 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 stimulations Cassandra has been receiving while inside Rose get 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 roll 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; 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 glance at him while he’s 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 willfully intended to draw his gaze to the contents of Rose’s unbuttoned top. (Once again, Billie Piper’s Wonderbra is working overtime!)
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 stand in the exact same basement where she herself was previously 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 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 picked up on some of the signals “Rose” is giving out and is presently trying to defuse the sexual tension with an 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 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 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!).
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, combing her hair back behind one ear and stuttering about a terminal as she makes a feeble attempt to finish off their conversation as though nothing happened. Then she walks away, with a deep ventilating “Phew!” of an exhale, absently rubbing the back of Rose’s neck 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, as far as Cassandra is concerned, this Lady’s particular itch has been scratched!
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 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 the opportunity to use Rose’s physicality for 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 her a couple more seconds to drink in 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 – who’s 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 while she and the Doctor are heading off in search of a terminal that things really start to get interesting. The Doctor (who thus far has seemingly 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 previously perved 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!
So. There we go. New Earth November is officially over. Thank you all again for being there and joining in the fun.
But! There are actually still 2 MORE POSTS to come at some point later this December, just to honor the two winners of the polls that everyone voted in:
A post about David Tennant's FRECKLES being The Most Photogenic Thing In Closeup!
(here's a taste, from School Reunion:)
AND...
An in-depth analysis exploring Why Does Cassandra/Rose Kiss The Doctor? (Through the lens of: "Because he's hot, she's got the hots for him, and it really HAS been a while…") 🥵
