Natural disaster laid waste to their world, turning soil to ash and leaving the people sterile. Mirroring the Flesh-Technology fromParallel 59, the Fleshsmiths manipulate living organic tissue as a building material. They have encoded a destructive enzyme into the Channel 400 broadcasts that will break down flesh into a transmittable form. They await the ratings boom where nearly everyone alive is watching the Doctor. At this time, they plan to trigger the enzyme thus breaking down each viewer to his or her constituent atoms and beaming them to the Fleshsmiths to be used as parts.
Perpetual life comes from spare parts of living flesh.
The fates of characters are also quite intriguingly handled. Greg Ashby, a freelance reporter who befriends Ace, becomes the living sculpture of his own inner pain, spurned as he was by love. His end is melodramatic and provides a call to action. The Doctor, of course, has plotted his way through the entire affair and it comes to no surprise that the end is quickly resolved, in an expected albeit an interesting way. The one thing the Doctor did not plan on was the fate of his companion.