001 Rose
The original run of Doctor Who ran from 1963 to 1989. That’s 26 years. Or, as I like to put it, a freaking long time. How, then, do you reintroduce a show to the general public that had, let’s be honest, been the subject of many a joke regarding cheap costuming and sets, lots of running down corridors, and a vast supply of imagination? It’s a lot of work, and while Rose can be explored as a stand-alone story, I would argue that a view that tries to do only this is to somewhat naively simplify what this 42 minutes of television had to do. It is far more interesting to explore what Rose set out to do, and whether it manages to pull it off.
I’m going to start by talking about the companion because, as the title would suggest she is definitely the main focus of this episode. In the original run, the companion was, from the outset, designed as the audience identification figure – the character with whom we as an audience could rely on to ask the Doctor questions about what was going on. Due to the context in which the show was made, however, these women and young girls tended towards the screaming useless pretty thing that seemed to be particularly unfazed by what happened around them, and took everything in their stride. In short, for much of the run, they were a bit rubbish.
In this story, Russell T Davies has taken us back to what the companion was originally designed for – the audience identification figure. As such, much of this story sets out the everyday life of Rose Tyler, a young girl working in a shop. Her life is averge – and really, that’s the point of her. She is an everyman, designed to be recognisable to everyone watching. She has a family – a mother that is as annoying as our own, and a boyfriend that it is a bit of an idiot, but really quite loveable. For her, then, to get caught up in the action of an alien invasion, makes the whole story just that bit more real. And as science fiction has a tendency towards the unreal, this step is something that should be applauded.
Even though the characterisation of both Rose and the Doctor are done with fairly broad brushstrokes here, we know enough about Rose Tyler for now. Full credit to Billie Piper, who is genuinely excellent as Rose Tyle – it is as though she was born to play this role. She is, at the beginning of her journey, a blank slate, but one that is easily identifiable. The Doctor, on the other hand, is a completely different matter.
For a main character, the Doctor remains fairly mysterious to us here. He is a man who runs in and out of Rose’s life, and so does the same in our own view. Indeed, the episode is as much about the Doctor as Rose, but as we learn more about him, we seem to understand him less and less. Even Clive – the man who appears to be a caricature of a real-life Doctor Who fan, the man who is in awe of the Doctor – doesn’t understand him at all. The element of time travel is introduced early, but we don’t know if it’s the same man in all these places, or if it is different people, as Clive says. Rose’s inability to understand him forces her to ask him questions, and so slowly, we begin to see that maybe he isn’t as dangerous as Clive would have us believe.
It is interesting to note that, here, the Doctor is willing to do almost anything to defeat this threat to Earth. He has anti-plastic, and is willing to use it. Ignoring the terrible name for this McGuffin, it is important to note that, this early on, it is clear that the Ninth Doctor is somewhat troubled by something. He is very willing to kill this alien entity to protect the planet. His personality is clearly defined from this one action, and is perfectly pitched. Here, the Doctor is an angry man who is willing to go to great lengths to ensure the people he protects are safe.
In Rose, the alien threat are pretty generic. The usual ‘take over the world for our own nefarious purposes’ kind of thing. But they are important, too – their threat to the Earth is useful in showing us both the characters of Rose and the Doctor. For those people who were fans of the show before, the Autons are. And actually, as returning characters go, they’re doing pretty much everything they did before – they don’t need a big trupeting return because, really, right from the beginning, they were a bit rubbish. I mean, why did they want to take over the world in Spearhead From Space anyway? Don’t get me wrong, Spearhead From Space is a thorougly excellent slice of original run Doctor Who, but it’s hardly the greatest alien threat of all time. Shop dummies. Really? Though, they are perfect for the first episode – they’re iconic enough to stick in people’s mind, and they tick all the fan boxes that some people think are necessary. Perfecto.
It’s a tricky thing, a restart of a popular series. Indeed, this case is probably almost unique in television history – even Star Trek had to create a whole new ship to restart it’s mythology. So it is hard to judge it based solely on what makes good Doctor Who. Not that we should be excusing it for being a bit rubbish just because it’s the first one. And it’s ok – we don’t have to. Taken completely out of context, this story stands up as good Doctor Who – not great, but solid. As a pilot for a restart of a series that would quickly become the flagship of BBC, though – that’s a different story. In the goals it set out to achieve – introduce a new Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS, while still trying to cling onto those loyal rabid fans that argue over window sizes – it succeeds with flying colours in each one. It is one of the best “not pilots” I’ve ever seen. Thank God the rest of the world agreed with me.
