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.
