EXT. WASTELAND – DAY
As far as the eye can see, caked silver sand bakes under a yellow sun. The rest of the sky is black. Intermittent streaks of glass embedded in the sand reflect the sun's rays, like swaths of crystalline paint. A dusty brown boot steps deliberately forward. Under foot, the silver sand crunches and splinters into shards.
The owner of the boot kneels down and we see that it is the Doctor, his face stern and solemn. He reaches into his breast pocket and removes the sonic screwdriver. He uses it to scan a leaf sized flake of ground he picks up from the cratered debris around the impression left by his boot.
The Tardis cockpit hovers nearby, appearing in the shape of a minivan-sized hover dome. A sliding hatch on the side of it is open and we can see inside, which is how we know it's the Tardis. Next to it, Rose shields her eyes from the sun and glare of the mirrored reflections as she follows the horizon of the barren wasteland.
ROSE
This is Philadelphia?
DOCTOR
What's left of it.
The Doctor crumbles the flake in his hand. The dust and fragments make a CLINGING sound as they fall from his hand and back to the ground. He stands and points west.
DOCTOR
Actually, your mother's apartment is just over there, about a kilometer. At least, it was, around twenty-thousand years ago. Seems a distant memory, now.
ROSE
Did an asteroid hit us or something? Like with the dinosaurs?
DOCTOR
No, this is something different. Every living thing on Earth is dead; every human, animal, plant, insect, and microbe. This planet's been eaten. Even the atmosphere is gone. The only reason we can breathe is because the Tardis is protecting us.
ROSE
What could eat a whole planet?
DOCTOR
Only one thing I know of could do this; a world ender, also known as a world eater, for reasons that should be fairly obvious.
ROSE
Wait, I know what that is. Where do I know that from?
She thinks.
ROSE
The Independence from Declaration. That's what the Human Sons and Daughters of Liberty Movement stole from the Cybermen ship. But you said that wasn't supposed to happen.
DOCTOR
It wasn't. And neither was this. This should be the middle of a prosperous time for the Earth, still very much in the early stages of your kind's development and expansion into the cosmos. You're supposed to be thriving, learning, growing. You're supposed to be wide-eyed and youthful, a race who looks to the future and sees endless possibilities and wonders to explore and experience. You're not supposed to be dead.
The Doctor marches toward the Tardis. Rose follows.
ROSE
So, what's the plan? What do we do?
He stops at the Tardis door to take one last look around.
DOCTOR
We find out who did this... and we kill them.
The Doctor heads inside, but Rose hesitates, clearly taken aback by his matter-of-fact intentions.
DOCTOR (O.S.)
You coming?
She takes one last look around, then enters the Tardis, closing the door behind her. We hear the ethereal gears grinding as the Tardis vanishes from existence.
-OPENING CREDITS ROLL-
-To be Continued...-