Lady Cassandra O'Brien dot Delta 17 claimed to be the last pure bred human, and so was a guest on Platform One in the year 5 Billion to witness the final destruction of the Earth. Born a boy in Texas, she had grown up in England. After transitioning to a woman, she became obsessed with her appearance and embarked on hundreds of surgical procedures to improve her looks - resulting in her becoming a piece of skin stretched on a frame, with eyes and mouth, and with her brain held in a jar. She married several times, outliving all of her wealthy husbands.
She arrived on the Platform with attendant nurses, whose main job was to keep her permanently moisturised. She brought gifts of an ostrich egg (which she believed to have been a beast like a dragon), and a Wurlitzer juke-box, which she thought was an i-pod.
Desperate for funds to finance her next cosmetic operation, she hatched a plan to engineer a hostage situation on the Platform. She employed the Adherents of the Repeated Meme to distribute metal spheres to her fellow guests, inside each of which was a robot spider programmed to commit acts of sabotage. When it appeared that the Platform would be destroyed, she opted for a back-up plan, having invested heavily in the competitor firms of those aboard. She transmatted off the Platform, but the Doctor reversed this and brought her back. Without her attendants, the heat in the station caused her to dry out and she burst apart.
A faithful servant named Chip, who was a short-lived clone, salvaged her brain and eyes, and connected them up to a new body made from another piece of her skin. He hid her in the basement of the hospital on New Earth. She spent her time reminiscing about her earlier life, and plotting to discover the secrets of the cat-like Sisters of Plenitude who ran the hospital. Her robot spiders alerted her to the fact that Rose and the Doctor had arrived on the planet and were coming to the hospital. She tricked Rose into going to the basement and employed a psycho-graft to transfer her mind into Rose's body. Her own body and brain died. She pretended to be Rose and helped the Doctor discover what the Sisters were up to - growing cloned humans to use as laboratory guinea-pigs. They carried many virulent diseases, and Cassandra released them. At one point she transferred herself into the Doctor. On another occasion she entered one of the clones, and was shocked by the loneliness she felt there. When forced to vacate Rose's body and accept her inevitable demise, Chip stepped in and became a willing host for her. His life had been almost over, however. The Doctor took her to visit her earlier self, when she still had a humanoid body. She had based Chip on the last person ever to tell her she looked beautiful - which proved to be her future self.
Played by: Zoe Wanamaker. Appearances: The End of the World (2005) and New Earth (2006).
- According to a BBC reference book (Monsters and Villains), Cassandra was born Brian Edward Cobbs.
- Wanamaker was making a number of appearances in the Poirot TV series at the time these episodes were filmed, so only had limited time to record her dialogue, and to have motion capture done on her facial features in order that the Mill could animate her.
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