YMMV / Doctor Who S27 E2 "The End of the World"

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The fact that religion is banned on Platform One is meant as a good thing by Russell T Davies, who sees it as they have Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions. However it could easily be seen as discriminatory, the fact they feel the need to ban it shows there must still be religion, not that there is no religion. Would the Doctor still be fine with this if Platform One had banned atheism?
  • Perhaps a light-hearted indication of the fantastically varied interstellar creeds, observance of which in a "maximum hospitality zone" could cause contention. For example, might practise of the Church of the Tin Vagabond involve some sort of communal telepathic chanting which could prove disruptive to someone with ultra-sensitive telepathy?
• Awesome Music: Murray Gold's score. "Rose's Theme" perfectly captures the awed poignancy of seeing, in an unfathomably distant future, the floating remains of the shattered Earth. "The Doctor's Theme", with its weary wistfulness and eerie distance, just as aptly evokes a lonely, traumatised walker of eternity.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Ninth Doctor's Wham Line about him being the last of the Time Lords, his people implied to have been wiped out in-between events of the classic series and the revival can come across as this with the debut of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor who as a child survived the Rwandan Genocide with his family fleeing to Scotland when the actor was only one-year-old.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Jabe tries to figure out Rose's relationship to the Doctor, she tosses out various possibilities, ranging from wife to concubine to prostitute. Since leaving Doctor Who, Billie Piper has played prostitutes in Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Penny Dreadful.
  • The fact that RTD managed to blow most of the money for special effects is this, considering that the classic series is (in)famous for not having much of a special effects budget to begin with!
• Memetic Mutation: Moisturize Me^Explanation A phrase Lady Cassandra frequently uses to remind her aides to remoisturize her, given that she's simply a sheet of skin that'll fall apart if she dries out too much. The repetition of the phrase and her distinctive appearance let to Whovians on Tumblr frequently reblogging any images that resemble Cassandra with the words "moisturize me."
• Special Effects Failure: A scene where the Doctor pulls a robot arm off the Adherents does look quite fake.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Platform One. To this day it remains one of the most effects-heavy episodes of the series, and it holds up pretty well. The shot of the Earth being destroyed by the expanding sun stands out in particular. Unfortunately, there's a downside to this: RTD's inexperience with effects-heavy shows caused him to blow most of the budget for the entire first series on this one episode.