Rose

Dear Gary—

Now this is a Doctor Who reboot done right. It has enough familiarity for long time fans eagerly anticipating its debut, yet it embraces a fresh audience. For this it takes a couple cues from the original serial, An Unearthly Child. It introduces the Doctor as a man of mystery, and it provides a companion the audience can identify with and who can get to know the Doctor along with us. However, with its new 45 minute, single episode format and its emphasis on special effects and action, it also breaks free of old molds and updates the formula for the modern generation. This is a newly regenerated Doctor Who.

The historical importance of Rose within the context of the Doctor Who universe cannot be overstated. Instead of a rebirth this just as easily could have been a burial. The story itself almost doesn’t even matter, although it is decent enough. The show had to hit the ground running with a Doctor and a companion, and the first word out of the Doctor’s mouth is literally “Run.” Fantastic.

The Doctor and his companion(s) are the heart of the show. It is vital that they get it right. Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper get it right. The Doctor and Rose holding hands is a recurring theme throughout Rose; it is a simple way to effectively and efficiently convey the bond they share; but it would be meaningless if the actors did not inhabit the roles to the extent they do.

I’ll begin with Rose because the show does, and after all, she is the Rose of the title. Rose Tyler is an average young woman bored with her lot but nonetheless content to live out her daily routine. Keeping her grounded are her mother Jackie and boyfriend Mickey. It is important for the audience to connect with Rose, and what better way than to establish her home, family, friends; to let us in on her habits, customs, schedule. We see her as an ordinary person, our self or someone we know. She is an underachiever lacking ambition. Until the Doctor advises her to run for her life. The moment she grabs hold of his hand she is changed forever, and we are whisked along with her.

She and we are whisked along on an adventure of a lifetime because of the Doctor. He reaches out his hand; he says, “Run;” and we trust him. Rose holds on and she runs; she places her faith in him; he is the Doctor. Christopher Eccleston is the Doctor. That one moment, his first moment, is his most defining for me and one of the reasons I place him so highly in my rankings (third). Bridging the huge void in time since the last Doctor, Christopher Eccleston reaches out his hand, says “Run,” and we trust him. He is the Doctor.

And he is an obviously newly regenerated Doctor. His first chance to glance in a mirror and he checks himself out: “Ah, could have been worse. Look at the ears.” A brief and almost lost in the moment nod to lifers. (But then I have to wonder, if he is newly regenerated, how is his image as prolific throughout history as Clive later reveals; I suppose it has to be put down to that ever convenient excuse of the wibbly wobbly nature of time.)

Because there is such a wide gulf between Doctors, I love how this re-launch lends an air of ambiguity to the beloved character that is otherwise so very familiar to his loyal fans. There is an untold story of those missing years, and the show promises the slow unraveling of the obscure new layers of complexity that are currently shrouding the established mythos.

The reveal, for old fan and new, will come through Rose’s eyes.

 “Who are you?” Rose is asking the question on everybody’s mind. “Told you,” the Doctor replies; “the Doctor.” That is all. The Doctor. “Yeah, but Doctor what,” Rose persists. “Just the Doctor,” is the reply. “The Doctor,” Rose reiterates. “Is that supposed to sound impressive,” she continues. “Sort of,” the Doctor responds.

The Doctor. A world of history and of mystery wrapped up in those words.

There is a feeling of vulnerability and pain beneath the confident veneer of the Doctor. A loneliness that Rose steps into. The Doctor tries to rebuff her but she remains. Just as much as she needs him to break her free of her rut, he needs her to fill the empty abyss of his future.

The Doctor ushers Rose out of the soon to explode department store and seemingly out of his life; he trails the plastic and finds her again; he leaves the flat and she follows. She asks the questions we all are wondering; he answers and she doesn’t believe; but she sticks with him.

“Do you believe me,” the Doctor asks. “No,” she replies. “But you’re still listening,” he comments.

That is the essence of their relationship to start. He is alien; her human mind cannot accept; she persists. Rose’s quick and inquisitive mind is what draws her to the Doctor and what draws the Doctor to her.

He is immediately impressed when they first meet and Rose assumes the attacking store mannequins are students playing a prank. “To get that many people dressed up and being silly, they got to be students,” she reasons. “That makes sense; well done,” the Doctor compliments despite it being wide of the mark. Her human mind is still trying to make logical sense of the alien nature of the happenings around her, and the Doctor respects that.

“Really, though, Doctor. Tell me, who are you?”

Rose’s doggedness rewards her with this poetical response from the Doctor:

 “Do you know like we were saying about the Earth revolving? It’s like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the Earth’s turning and you just can’t quite believe it because everything looks like its standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go . . . .”

It is a beautiful non answer that defines the Doctor like no other.

“That’s who I am,” he concludes. “Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.”

But this answer haunts her, and eventually Rose’s quest leads her to Clive. The whole Clive aspect of the story is a bit shaky in my opinion. “He’s a nutter,” Rose ultimately concludes, and that about sums him up. His website of intrigue and tissue of nebulous proof is unlikely. The picture of the Doctor witnessing the Kennedy assassination screams of photoshopping, and the ancient hand drawings are suspect. I cannot believe that this Clive person actually has stumbled upon evidence of the true Doctor, especially such a short-lived persona of the Doctor. This entire section of the episode rings false; as false as Clive’s claims. Nevertheless, Clive is a fascinating character brought to life for a fraction of screen time only to meet an expediently ironic demise.

The Autons (unnamed in this serial) and the Nestene Consciousness are the villains of the piece and the means of Clive’s untimely death. Last seen in the Pertwee years (Spearhead From Space and Terror of the Autons) they are the perfect monsters to shepherd in this new era. Rose is all about the Doctor and Rose and their budding relationship; to have an iconic antagonist on the scale of the Daleks or the Master or the Cybermen would take away from this dynamic. The Autons and the Nestene Consciousness provide the necessary nostalgia without distracting from the focal point of the story.

They also provide the necessary fright factor. Let’s face it, mannequins coming to life and crashing through plate glass windows would cause a panic in any crowd.

However I do have to question the final outcome. The deep, dark, mysterious Doctor is ineffectual when it comes right down to it. He arrives armed with diplomacy and anti-plastic, which is commendable, but a couple of plastic dummies are able to incapacitate him with little trouble. “You were useless in there,” Rose rightly accuses. “You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me.” Rose, with her bronze in gymnastics, knocks the Autons and the Doctor’s anti-plastic into the vat with the controlling Nestene. Now I would think that with a little Venusian Aikido the Doctor could have done just the same, but instead he stands wide eyed and useless while Rose swings through the air in her feat of derring-do.

But as I said, the plot is secondary; the establishment of the Doctor/Rose connection is the main point of Rose, and in that regard, having Rose save the Doctor (as well as the world) is eloquently symbolic. The Doctor reaching out his hand to Rose is this scarred and tortured Doctor grasping for a lifeline.

“I don’t know, you could come with me,” the Doctor offers to Rose as he prepares to leave. “You could stay here, fill your life with work and food and sleep, or you could go anywhere.” He lays the choice clearly out before her.

The Doctor was rendered uncharacteristically helpless by the Autons, but here is where Rose displays a character flaw that I find more troubling. Rose is a thoroughly self-centered person. “Oh, suddenly the entire world revolves around you,” the Doctor had charged earlier in the episode, putting his finger on her egotistical bent. Later, an obviously plastic Mickey who is behaving oddly to say the least is completely overlooked by his self-absorbed girlfriend. And now, here at the end as the Doctor offers her adventures beyond imagining, she at first declines because she decides that her loved ones cannot do without her. But when the Doctor points out that the TARDIS can travel in time as well as space, she basically tells Mickey ‘Thanks for nothing’ and decides that she can do perfectly well without them. Now I don’t think this was necessarily intended, but that is the way I read it.

Some minor defects in an otherwise wonderful revamp.

I am excited to be embarking on this new epoch, Gary and I send this out as ever in hope . . .