I forgot these were happening again. Tennants first run is a pretty good one, though upon rewatching this episode isn’t the best opener.

Thoughts for this episode:

• Within the episode plot, there’s some good stuff here. Lots of opportunity for angry doctor. It’s a good exploration of the ethics of the lab. It has to be vulnerable people who already have incurable diseases who help to test our new treatments. They’re effectively slaves in the episode but in the real world can you truly consent if you’re being offered something when you’re in a vulnerable position? Much less when being taken advantage of by for profit pharma companies funding the studies. The whole ethics thing might have been more impactful if we had seen a progression from something obviously harmless like single-cell brains or cultured meats (that we actually have right now), stepping slowly up to full life forms, as then there’s some ambiguity about where exactly you should draw the line.
• However, the actual logic of the entire hospital doesn’t make much sense if you think about it for more than a few seconds. The disinfection scene is amusing but it makes no sense. The solution of mixing a literal solution of different medicines feels like it can’t possibly work. Nor really did having lifts going to a basement people know nothing about - particularly a hospital that has hidden a whole load of secret stuff would surely have spotted it. And the footprint of the whole hidden lab seems bigger than the hospital itself.
• I am not a fan of the hospital set designs. The reception for the hospital looks like an airport check in desk. The wards don’t look much like hospital wards either. The CGI in the ladder and lift shafts during the “zombie chase” has not aged well at all.
• I wonder if they knew what they were doing with Bo at this point in the storyline. The idea of a silent watcher following humanity is a nice contrast compared to the doctor’s often quite obvious interventions. I don’t think it really meshes with who Bo ultimately is revealed to be, though. The general effects and his (their?) design are nice. The melody and themes used with the Bo meeting is really nice.
• As most of you already commented, the rose mind swap bit is quite awkward to watch, doesn’t really land for me. It’s good the doctor immediately clocks something is wrong, though he probably should have acted sooner. The swap isn’t much better in the doctor.
• The design and acting of the various cat nurses is really creepy and well done. Ditto the infectious pustules and scab effects, very offputting. The idea of a “petrification” disease is weird, but cool.
• The circular ending is a really nice way to round off the episode and humanise cassandra’s character - time travel used well here.

Two stand out lines this episode: “You’re talking out your arse” and “Who needs arms when you have claws”

I was going to rewatch this, but reading @ 's rundown soured the memory of it a bit. It’s an episode I’ve watched a bunch, and it has some elements I really like:

• The cat nun nurses, terrific makeup, crazy concept!
• The face of Boe, another wild and well executed idea.
• Cassandra! Probably the most iconic trampoline recurring villain in the early show. Even now, fans post cookies and embroideries in her likeness, even though she’s visually and thematically horrible!
• Let’s just add the Duke of Manhattan, too. What a throwaway character. And I like how his neck grates when he moves.
• And I like Chip, for some reason. In this bonkers rogues gallery, he’s just a dude in scrubs with some paint on his face. Somehow that, a silly gait and the earnest, wide eyed acting is enough.

The allure of the body swap has worn off the more I watch this, though. Not a lot of actors can pull it off, much less so when the person they’re impersonating is Zoë Wanamaker at her peak of campiness.

By now when I think back on this episode, I remember Billie Piper complimenting her own arse, and skip to the one with the werewolf instead. Oops, spoilers for next week’s throwback discussion!

This is honestly not a terrific story as a whole — VS has already pointed out the biggest pratfalls — but at least it’s so full of wacky characters and running away from human guinea pigs, you won’t have time to say “that’s not how medicines work”.

“New Earth” is…fine, I suppose?

It delves into familiar territory for Davies - he seems to have an affinity for the banality of evil, with societies taking a theoretically-well-intentioned turn into darkness. Unfortunately, I think it’s handled better in episodes like “Turn Left” or even Torchwood’s “Miracle Day” (which I remember enjoying the one and only time I watched it, which I know is a very unpopular opinion).

For all the talk about DW being a low-budget show at heart, the makeup and production design were frequently top-notch, even back then. It’s really the VFX end of things that lagged behind the rest of the industry. The cat people in particular look great in this one.

Cassandra’s back! Uh…yay? Probably not who I would have picked as a returning series one antagonist, but here she is, talking out of her ass. I don’t think she’s used particularly well here - her motivation to uncover the secrets of the hospital is unclear (maybe I missed something), and her human supremacy goes largely unacknowledged in favour of some basic classism.

And of course, much of the fun of the episode involves Cassandra possessing Rose and the Doctor. Piper and Tennant do fine with this individually, but they do not seem to be playing the same character to me. Overall, Tennant’s seems to be more authentically Cassandra, but even he is upstaged by Sean Gallagher at the end, when Chip is possessed.

I don’t really know how to feel about the final scene where Cassandra dies in her own arms. I know it’s meant to be touching, but she’s also a vain murderer, so there’s an upper limit to how much I care about any of this.

The test subjects in the hospital vaccilate between intelligent and mindless zombies as the plot requires, and the resolution of spraying disinfectant all over them is pretty convenient, even for this show.

A pretty middling episode all in all, and I don’t think it’s a great introduction to this new incarnation of the Doctor for anyone who missed “The Christmas Invasion” some four months earlier.