1. Rose - Rose Tyler

Rose Tyler strikes me as the freshest of companions. She’s, quite frankly, a failure. I wouldn’t want to hang out with her, honestly. A nineteen year old has no A-Levels because of a boy, works a crappy shift at a department store and lives at home with her mum on an estate. She admits that she has no prospects.

One of the stand-out moments of The Parting of the Ways is:

“But what do I do every day, mum? What do I do? Get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, eat chips and go to bed? Is that it?”

Unlike Ace, she represents a different movement. Ace was intentionally a punk and a troublemaker, a 17 year old who was kicked out of sixth form for blowing stuff up in Chemistry. Rose never intends to be a troublemaker, she just doesn’t know what to do in the vastness of life. It’s routine.

This is the greatest example of escape. She might not be a refugee from some alien world, but she needs somewhere else. The Doctor offers her that. Even when they depart on Bad Wolf Bay, her life has been changed for the better. She now has a purpose: having saved the world with the Doctor several times over, she will now defend the Earth on her own, with her family, but having been changed.

She’s not beautiful, either. There’s no expensive BBC wardrobe change every episode. She dresses in worn-through red hoodies, white vests and blue jeans. She has no purpose in life and as such no need to be pretty.

Let’s compare that to the other New Series companions. Jack has a purpose, travelling across time himself. Martha Jones has strong prospects, studying to be a doctor (although later episodes will see her working for UNIT.) Donna Noble might just be a “temp from Chiswick”, but she represents a more middle class family and has had a string of decent, office careers. Amy Pond is similarly young, but comes from an idyllic northern village and has a good boyfriend, a nurse, and again we see her grow up from a 19 year old to a 21 year old about to be married, to someone in their late 20s who finds a happy life in the past and a publishing contract. Clara Oswald grows from a carer into a teacher. A pretty decent career if you ask me; each episode she appears, lit nerd that she is, in a different kind of dress, a different pair of shoes.

Rose Tyler never got that. Rose was a little more plausible for the audience. She lived in grey council estates. Something different. But she showed us that it doesn’t matter where she comes from. I might be inclined to not really be friendly with her. She’s the type who would have probably going to the party and kissed all the boys. But all that stuff doesn’t matter, because underneath she still has a heart. She’s a caring person who the Doctor can channel his emotion to and can defend the universe’s (supposedly) last Dalek. Rose might not have much but she has a soul.

Diversity Watch

·         The Doctor flicks through a gossip magazine. “He’s gay and she’s an alien.”

·         In the restaurant, a couple are attacked by Auton Mickey. The woman looks as if he’s going to scream; actually it’s the man who lets out a rather exaggerated scream. A nice subversion there.

Time War Watch

·         The Doctor notes the Nestene lost its protein planets during “the War”. The Doctor says that he’s an alien, but his Time Lord heritage isn’t clear. At this point, we don’t know what conflict this was, but the Doctor says to the Consciousness:

“I fought in the war. It wasn't my fault. I couldn't save your world! I couldn't save any of them!”

·         There’s a false sense of events. “Any of them” could just as easily refer to the “protein planets” connected to the Nestene, rather than the double meaning of half the universe and, of course, Gallifrey.

VFX Watch

·         A wheelie bin sucks up Mickey and burps. (The burp wasn’t in the original script.) This is terrible.

·         “Honey / Sugar / Babe” I don’t know who did the editing on this, but this is so unreal that it really does jump out. It stretches the façade of him being an Auton posing as a human; his plastic appearance looks so fake that Rose should have been scared.

·         Mickey’s head is inverted. The CGI looks hilarious.

·         The best CGI in this episode was probably the VFX of the aerial descent to Earth. Even looks like something off Google Maps, with a few changes here and there.

Introduction

Like with most eight year olds in 2005, Doctor Who affected my life dramatically. Football was never my thing but Doctor Who was. It's spawned a life-long obsession which has led me to meet numerous stars, four Doctors, make friends. Write, create, listen to audios and read books. I've never been someone for rewatching. Once it's watched, it's watched. A second viewing can bring something new to the table - but generally, a text is designed to be understood under one reading. But things have changed a lot since then. As an A-Level student almost a decade later, I am not the same person. Even if one discounts puberty, maturity etc., so much has changed in the years since.


So, 51 years after the series launched. 9 and a half since it revitalized itself to a new generation - and subsequent generations. New waves of parents have been showing it to their kids - and I'm sure some of those parents were teenagers in 2005 who now have children of their own to introduce the show to.


I've given myself a task. Rewatch the first series of Doctor Who and write about it. My aim is to balance critical views with the context of the show, and personal reflection and anecdotes. It's been a long time, but bits of each episode still stick with me. I wouldn't have understood all the humour or the subtext or the context of every episode, but it's left a mark. And who knows, maybe I'll move through the rest of the RTD tenure in the process too? I love Davies, I love Moffatt. They all bring something different to the table.


Fantastic, or is it allonsy?