"The End of the World" is an episode in the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who that was first broadcast on April 2, 2005. It features the Ninth Doctor and Rose arriving at a space station in the year five billion where they plan to witness the destruction of Earth. But shortly after their arrival, several people are killed and the Doctor has to work fast to prevent the destruction of the space station by the expanding sun.

The Doctor takes Rose to five billion years into her future in the TARDIS, landing on "Platform One", a space station in orbit around Earth; the earth has long since been abandoned and under the National Trust, but as money has run out, it is about to be destroyed by the expansion of the Sun, only presently held back by gravity satellites. The Doctor uses "psychic paper" to pass as their invitation to the party, and he and Rose find many elite extraterrestrial beings there to celebrate the end of the earth in the protection of Platform One's automated shields. The guests include Lady Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen, simply a face on a large piece of skin that must be continually moisturized, mounted on a frame with her brain in a jar below it, who calls herself the last human in the universe.

The guests exchange gifts as part of the celebration (including Lady Cassandra's gift of a Wurlitzer jukebox, calling it an "iPod"). Rose is overwhelmed by the strange beings and customs as well as how distant she is from home, and leaves to an observation room to collect her thoughts. The Doctor follows her, and tries to cheer her up by allowing her to call her mum Jackie after altering her mobile phone to be able to work over the distance in time; this however only serves to depress Rose more.

Meanwhile, the gifts brought by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme, small metallic spheres, are revealed to contain robotic spiders that immediately work at disabling functions on Platform One. The Steward of Platform One recognizes something is wrong, but is killed when the spiders cause the solar filter of his room to lower, exposing him directly to the powerful solar radiation. The Doctor goes to investigate with the help of Jabe, a humanoid plant being from the Forest of Cheem, and discover the Steward's death and the spiders.

Rose attempts to learn more from Lady Cassandra but only gets more upset over Cassandra's arrogance, and walks away, only to be knocked out by members of the Meme. She wakes up in an observation room, the solar shield slowly lowering, and calls for the Doctor to save her. The Doctor finds he can stop and raise the shield, but cannot unlock the observation room, and so turns to the various guests.

The Doctor uses a spider that he captured to determine that while the Meme released them, they are only empty shells, and that the real controller is Lady Cassandra. Cassandra admits to this, and was planning to use the situation as a hostage crisis to get money to pay for her repeated operations, but now will simply let the assembled guests die, then profit from the stock increases of their competitors when they are dead. Cassandra transmats to her ship as the spiders bring down the shielding and the gravity satellites are turned off ; The direct radiation causes the solar filters to strain and crack, killing several of the guests from the intense radiation exposure, and leaving Rose to scurry to find some shelter within the observation room.

The Doctor and Jabe travel to the bowels of Platform One where the system to restore the automated shields is located, though it requires one of them to travel through several spinning fans. Jabe recognizes the Doctor as the last Time Lord after The Time War, and sacrifices herself to hold down a switch to stop the fan blades, allowing the Doctor to reactivate the system just before the expanding Sun hits the station and destroys Earth.

Similar to 0 things you like: