Eat the Rich - "The End of the World"
Anything's Better Than Beans on Toast
The boys open with a spirited debate over British breakfast cuisine — bacon sandwiches (hold the L), the horrors of black pudding, and whether beans on toast is a crime against food — before landing where the title points: the actual end of the world. Episode two of series one keeps the momentum going for Jim, who finds his enjoyment running right alongside where he landed on Rose. It's still Doctor Who… and yet it isn't. The humor is dialed up, and RTD's preachiness is starting to creep in — though, the hosts agree, with a subtlety he won't always bother with down the line.
A Hard Left Turn (That Cost a Fortune)
Where Rose stayed grounded on Earth, this one is a deliberate spectacle — RTD's calculated move to prove the revived show could be big, cinematic, and ambitious. The catch: it devoured a huge chunk of the entire series' effects budget in one go. The hosts weigh whether it was worth it (they think The Mill's work largely holds up even now), tour director Euros Lyn's first Who assignment, and share the very funny story of how a certain wizarding blockbuster filming nearby forced a creative solution for staffing Platform One.
The Tree at the Heart of It
For all the spectacle, both hosts land on the same standout: Jabe, the tree-woman, written and performed so well she becomes a fully realized character — and, the hosts only half-joke, a better companion than Rose. You almost wish the Doctor had left with her. Then there's Cassandra, the "last human," stretched thin and obsessed with staying thin and dainty — Zoë Wanamaker turning RTD's little satire of vanity into the episode's most memorable creation. Jim's stated takeaways from the whole affair: eat the rich, and for heaven's sake, age gracefully.
A Doctor Who's Changed
The biggest talking point: what the Doctor does to Cassandra, and what it tells us about who this incarnation has become. The hosts dig into how far it departs from the classic Doctor's "I'm giving you a chance" restraint — the man who used to let villains undo themselves — and which past Doctors, if any, might have been capable of the same. It only lands as hard as it does because of what comes right before it: a single tear, and the raw juxtaposition RTD so clearly engineered. And underneath it all, the reason finally starts to surface — the quiet, devastating reveal of what the Doctor has lost.
Rose, Five Billion Years From Home
The hosts praise an honest, modern beat classic Who never gave us: Rose calling her mother on a jury-rigged phone that reaches across five billion years, only to realize she's talking to a ghost — everyone she knows long dead and gone. It's science-fantasy of the highest order, and it grounds the dawning, very real panic of a girl who kissed her boyfriend, hopped in a box, and is now very far from home with a man she doesn't know. That tension — and the argument that finally drags the truth out of him — is the heart of the episode.
New Furniture, New Mysteries
First appearance of the psychic paper (which Rose rightly needles him about). A TARDIS console that's suddenly all hands-on wheels and levers — the hosts chew on why the old girl seems to have gotten harder to fly, and whether that's the war showing. Plus a detail John caught for the very first time about which color the vortex turns depending on your direction of travel, the delightful "classic Earth" gag with the continents put back, a first whispered mention of a certain Bad Wolf, a silent face in a jar worth keeping in mind, and the term "jiggery-pokery," which Jim would like it known he has always loved.
One More Thing
Jim's just back from Disneyland (he looked for the Doctor Who ride; no luck) — and, more excitingly for the fandom, his pilgrimage to a certain famously Who-haunted English village is now locked for May, passport application and all.
Coming Up Next:
Saturday (Main Feed): Rose — our mainstream audience finally starts digging into New Who, with the review you've already heard here.
Monday (Patreon Exclusive 193): Music, the Memory TARDIS, the comics A Life of Matter and Death and Fire and Brimstone, plus a Big Finish review of Project Lazarus — part two of the trilogy, with another twist.
Friday (Patreon): Episode three — The Unquiet Dead. The Doctor proves the TARDIS goes backward as well as forward by taking Rose to meet Charles Dickens at Christmas. Plenty to unpack in Mark Gatiss's first script for the series — and the first story not from RTD's pen.
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