- ‘Rose’
Writer: Russell T Davies
“Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!”
The BBC revived Doctor Who in the spring of 2005. Although not totally out of the blue, the choice to revive a sci-fi series that had dissipated some sixteen years previously, not with a bang but a whimper, was a bold one, to say the least. Russell T. Davies, who served as the showrunner from the revival until Tennant’s departure, had quietly been lobbying for the BBC to bring back the show for some years.
Despite the frankly mind-boggling risk that the BBC took in dredging up a television show nobody had really paid much mind for the better part of two decades, the series premiere, ‘Rose’, pulled in 10.81 million viewers, a staggering figure even by today’s standards.
Rose starts by giving us something no other Doctor Who companion was ever given to any real extent: A life without the Doctor. We see a nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler stuck in an entirely relatable nine-to-five grind. The episode starts with a frantic montage of Rose’s daily life, right from the moment she wakes up. A claustrophobic portrayal of modern life, from busy shop fronts to the bustling streets of London. In all of this, however, remains a sense, an inert feeling that something isn’t quite as normal as it appears. This makes itself all too apparent when Rose finds herself confronted by talking mannequins, later revealed to be the Autons, a classic Who villain faded from memory. In many ways, this is the perfect villain for Doctor Who’s return, an enemy from the past every bit as forgotten as the Doctor himself.
Yet, when the Doctor grasps Rose’s hand and tells her to run, it feels as if the show never stopped. Steven Moffat himself, show-runner of Doctor Who from 2010 until 2014, said that he viewed ‘Rose’ as the perfect re-introduction to Doctor Who. Stylistically, he believed that the tonal shift from McCoy’s final story to Eccleston’s first allowed viewers both old and new to fully appreciated the new era of the Doctor’s story. As the Doctor leaves Rose, telling her to run for her life, we feel certain that Rose and the Doctor are bound together, and the Doctor’s return to Rose’s flat the following morning feels less like a surprise, and more like destiny.
On a narrative level, my feelings for ‘Rose’ fluctuate greatly. While I feel the Autons as an enemy are a great choice, the Doctor’s near-death at the hands of the Nestene Consciousness (if not for Rose’s intervention) feels as if Rose’s narrative importance peaks too early. Where else can you go if Rose has already single-handedly saved the most important man in the Universe? On the other hand, however, it serves as a reminder of a fact that is and has always been true about the Doctor. Without his companions, he can never hope to succeed. He needs them as much as they need him.
Eccleston, despite his own opinion of his performance, hits every dramatic and comedy beat with equal perfection and gravitas, and this episode sees him in one of his best performances as the Doctor. The dynamic between Jackie, Rose’s mum and Rose feels natural and fluent, making her life outside of the Doctor feel less like a tacked-on attempt to flesh out the character, and more like a genuine backstory, providing some much needed consequences for those left behind, those the Doctor doesn’t take, those who don’t get to see the universe in all its beauty and majesty.
In short, ‘Rose’ serves as a near-perfect introduction to Doctor Who, providing the familiar feeling of wonderment and danger that Classic Who prided itself on, fixing many of the narrative elements surrounding the companions of old. While I do feel that the stakes are raised far too high for the first episode of a series, not to mention the first episode of a TV show dead for 18 years, I can still appreciate the point being made: The Doctor’s life constantly leads him to danger, and despite his genius intellect, his two hearts, his death-altering regenerative abilities, his near-indestructible time travelling machine that’s staggeringly bigger on the inside, he is nought more than a man with a past. A past that he can never hope to overcome on his own. He needs Rose every bit as much as he needed every companion before her, and her saving him from literal danger serves as a metaphor for what The Eleventh Doctor would tell Clara a millennium later. The Doctor is scared, and he will always need someone.
And that someone is Rose.
8/10
Joe Porter 