Platform One was designed to be like a "hotel for the most poshest, richest, and influential aliens in the universe", and is partly based on Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. "The End of the World" was conceived as a deliberately expensive spectacle to show off how much the new Doctor Who could do. The Doctor explains that he is the last of the Time Lords, and that his planet was destroyed in the wake of a great war. Rose, now free of the observation room, looks at the debris of the Earth and laments that she is effectively the last human being. In the elevated temperature and without moisture, Cassandra's body rapidly desiccates and ruptures. The Doctor reverses Cassandra's teleport and brings her back onto the station. This allows the Doctor to reactivate the system just before the expanding Sun hits the station and destroys Earth. Jabe sacrifices herself to hold down a switch to slow down the fan blades. The Doctor and Jabe travel to the bowels of Platform One to restore the automated shields, but it requires one of them to travel through several spinning fans. Cassandra teleports off the station as the spiders bring down the shielding on the entire station. Cassandra admits to being the saboteur: her original plan was to create a hostage situation (with herself as one of the "victims") and profit from the compensation she would have gotten, but now intends to profit from the other guests' deaths, expecting her stock holdings in their competitors' companies to increase in value after they die. However, they are robots commanded by Lady Cassandra. The Doctor determines that the Adherents are responsible for the sabotage. The Doctor and the sentient tree Jabe discover the Steward's burnt room and they are alerted to the observation room's filter Rose wakes up as the sun filter descends, and the Doctor manages to jam the filter, but cannot get her out. Rose is dragged into the observation room and locked inside with the sun filter programmed to descend. Afterwards, Rose is approached by the Adherents and the leader knocks her unconscious.
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Rose attempts to learn more from Cassandra but is disgusted by her lack of humanity and insults her. The Steward of Platform One recognises something is wrong, but is killed when the spiders lower the solar filter of his room and expose him to the powerful solar radiation. Meanwhile, the gifts brought by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme contain robotic spiders that immediately work at disabling functions on Platform One. The guests include Lady Cassandra, billed as "the last human", though she remains only a face on a large piece of skin that must be continually moisturised, with her brain in a vat below. The Doctor uses his psychic paper to pass as their invitation to the party, and he and Rose find many elite alien beings there. They have arrived in time for a party celebrating the final destruction of the long-abandoned Earth by the expansion of the Sun. They land on Platform One, a space station in orbit around Earth. The Ninth Doctor takes Rose five billion years into her future.
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The episode marked the first appearance of Cassandra and the Face of Boe, both of which would appear in the sequel episode New Earth. Studio work was recorded in the Unit Q2 warehouse in Newport from September to November 2004. Location filming principally took place in Cardiff in October 2004, with some additional scenes shot in Cardiff and Penarth in November 2004 and February 2005. The episode also features numerous intricate costumes. Due in part to the numerous SFX shots the episode used up most of the series' SFX budget. "The End of the World" is the first episode of the revival to be set in the future. In the episode, the alien time traveller the Ninth Doctor ( Christopher Eccleston) takes his new companion Rose Tyler ( Billie Piper) five billion years into the future where many rich alien delegates have gathered on a space station called Platform One to watch the Sun expand into a red giant and destroy the Earth, but the human guest Lady Cassandra ( Zoë Wanamaker) is plotting to profit from the event by fabricating a hostage situation. Written by executive producer Russell T Davies and directed by Euros Lyn, the episode was first broadcast on BBC One on 2 April 2005 and was seen by approximately 7.97 million viewers in the United Kingdom. " The End of the World" is the second episode of the first series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. List of Doctor Who episodes (2005–present)