Re: US Viewer Finally Sees "The End of the World" [Spoilers]

On 22 Mar 2006 08:34:23 -0800, powrwrap@xxxxxxx <powrwrap@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Finally Saw The End of the World

And there's a few points you've missed...


Here is where the mechanical spiders start emerging from the spherical
gifts that were previously handed out to everyone. This is where the
tension is supposed to start, but oddly, it doesn't, at least not
with this viewer. Now we see these spiders crawling all over the space
station. I guess we're supposed to wonder what they are doing and who
sent them, but really, we already know they are there to sabotage and
that Cassandra sent them. Amazingly the controller of the space station
nonchalantly watches one of the spiders crawl all over his desk and
then watches as it presses a button which lowers the sun screen
protecting the station from the blazing heat of the sun.

I think this is actually an important scene for establishing the
mindset. The steward just doesn't have it in him to comprehend that
anything so serious could go wrong, so he's caught totally off guard.
He sees the spider crawl out, and, like Rafaelo, his brain just isn't
set up to accept that this means DANGER!, so he watches it, with a
healthy dose of "don't lose your composure; wouldn't be proper," until
it's too late. It's only after the spider lowers the sunscreen and he
discovers that he can't raise it again that actual panic sets in.


With this evidence they go back to accuse the perpetrator (gee, I
wonder who it is?) and find that Rose is locked a sun room. (Stupid
companion!) Cassandra is revealed as the villain and her motivations
revealed. Pay attention now, boys and girls, this is the PLOT. She
wanted to use the spiders to create a hostage situation and sue the
space station for compensation but when that plan failed, she went to
her backup plan of torching everyone on the station intending to have
her shares of ownership in her rivals companies skyrocket when they
die.

Ummm... a couple of problems here, RTD. First off, her original plan
was never put into motion. She went directly to removing the sun
screens and torching everyone. Second, even if she did create a hostage
situation, wouldn't it take years to collect on any litigation and
perhaps wouldn't she be found out? Third, when the CEO's of
company's die off in weird accidents the value of the stock usually
takes a nose dive. Oh well, so much for the villain's motivation.

But her plan *was* put into motion. She hasn't removed the sunscreens
and torched everyone yet -- she's torched the steward, effectively
seizing control of the station, and she's had a go at offing Rose, who
slighted her personally and who, close as she can tell, isn't an
anybody and won't be missed. What she's done is the equivalent of the
bank robber running in and shooting the security guard to let everyone
know he's serious.

Had the Doctor not uncovered everything, her next step would be for
the Cloaks of Evil to announce that they were taking everyone hostage,
the steward was dead, and they were all prisoners. It's not until
*after* the Doctor exposes her that she sets off the spiders, and the
*real* carnage begins.

The other thing you've misunderstood is that she doesn't have shares
in the *attendant's* companies -- what she says is "I've got shares in
*your* rival companies." That is, she's bought up shares in the
competitors to Boe, the trees, Jelko and Jelko, etc. When the
attendants die, their own companies will take a nose dive, and their
rivals -- in which she is invested -- will get a major bump.


The Doctor breaks into the main computer room, the CPU of the space
station (BTW, it looks nothing like the innards of HAL from 2001: A
Space Odyssey) where we see the mother of all CPU cooling fans. At this
point I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Laugh, because RTD
still has a sense of humor and is showing us some of the cheesy effects
and sets from the old series, or cry because this is a ridiculous
attempt to finally inject some tension into the flaccid, non-existent
plot. I decide to cry because it turns out the control to raise the
force field is at the other end of a long catwalk, a catwalk that has

Again, you've made a small mistake: this isn't the CPU of the station,
it's the core of the *cooling system*. That's why the fans are there.

I don't dispute that having big fan blades in a 4 millionth century
space station (for the sake of "retro") is a bit of a plot
contrivance, but it makes substantially more sense in light of it
being a *cooling system*, and not a CPU room.

those three gigantic fan blades whirring within a foot of it. As the
space station heats up due to the lack of sun screens and force fields,
the fans speed up, and then for some reason the manual controls for the
fans can't be manually controlled (at least not by the tree lady).

Though contrived, this isn't an unreasonable way for the manual
override to work. These things are designed to keep the *heat of an
exploding star* from destroying the station. If you want to turn it
off while *a star is exploding*, I think it's a reasonable safety
protocol to ensure that someone has to actually stand there and
*manually* engage the *manual* override.

The Doctor is going to have to dodge his way past the spinning fan
blades and turn the force field back on. Ahh...I guess it's time for
tension. (Apparently it would take too long to go back out into the
hallway, walk around the CPU room and enter another door giving free
and easy access to the force field control panel.)


Again, it's a cooling system. Which means that those fans are in the
middle of a long shaft. Going around them requires going all the way
around the space station.


Q. Why is it that the Doctor allows Cassandra to die for her attempted
murder of some alien dignitaries, yet in the previous week was trying
to negotiate with the Nestene Consciousness who only wanted to destroy
the entire Earth and murder everyone on the planet?


There is a very important moral difference between *allowing* someone
to die and killing them (A lot of people feel differently about this
morality, but it's been fairly standard Doctor Who morality for
decades The tvtropes.org folks call this "Karmic Death"). Cassandra
is killed by her own actions. The Doctor is the catalyst, but he does
not actually kill her, nor does he even lift a finger to stop her from
doing anything that might be within her own power to save herself. He
doesn't try to help her, but she hasn't given him any reason to.
.