Doctor Who 1x01 - "Rose"

[butterfly]

"Rose"

written by Russell T Davies
directed by Keith Boak

 

General Thoughts

"Rose" does a remarkable job of introducing the world of Doctor Who in a way that is inviting to newbies but full of treats for dedicated fans (like the Autons being a classic DW villain). The pilot episode is where the writer sets up the contract with the viewers and tells you what his/her show is going to be about. What is RTD telling us with this episode? That sometimes the plots or monsters will be silly, but the characters will always have depth. That the companion can and will save the Doctor just as much as he saves her. That the Doctor needs to be convinced to take someone along these days. That 'ordinary' people are capable of extraordinary acts. All of these things are followed through in the show.

My personal biases that will no doubt reflect the way I review whether I want them to or not are:

1. Rose is my favorite character in the entire Whoniverse (and, yes, I have seen all of the Classic Doctors and companions). I like her for many reasons, most of which can be placed in one of three categories: good qualities that make her admirable (compassion, bravery, loyalty), character flaws that give her dimension (jealousy, pettiness, recklessness), and character evolution that creates depth ('girl' to 'woman' to 'leader').

2. Slightly less relevant to these reviews: I like all of the Whoniverse companions. Yes, that's including Adric, Peri, Mel, and Grace.

3. I believe that the Doctor and Rose fall in love over the course of the first series and never fall out again, and that the canon clearly shows this (additional shipper notes: I can buy Two/Jamie, believe in an unconsummated but not unrequited Three/Jo, see Four/Romana as a 'best buddies' relationship that resembles something that we'll be getting later in the new series, find Five/Turlough pretty slashy, feel that the Eight/Grace kisses are adorable, and think that the Doctor and the Master probably had a thing going on when they were younger and that those feelings never went away).

4. I value character over plot. If forced to choose between a writer who is shaky on plot but great with characters versus a writer who is shaky on characters but great with plot, I will pick the first writer every time. I don't watch television for clever plot twists; I watch it for complex people and relationships. A plot twist is generally only good for the first viewing -- characters and the way they interact stays interesting forever and only gets more fascinating with analysis.

 

Bechdel Test

Since this is the first time I'm doing this, I'll clarify it for anyone who hasn't heard about it before. The Bechdel Test was created to judge movies using a three-part rule: 1) there must be at least two female characters who 2) talk to each other 3) about something other than a man. In order to avoid episodes passing on a technicality, I'm adding the addendum that the female characters in question must also have some level of characterization (ex. a nameless extra that Rose exchanges hellos with wouldn't count).

Rose and Jackie have five conversations in the episode that don't involve men.

First (and very briefly), Rose and her mother bid each other good-bye for the day.

After Henriks has blown up, Jackie spends a moment trying to convince Rose to talk to Debbie about selling her story regarding the explosion (Jackie speaks to both this Debbie and someone named Beth, but since it's by phone, we don't see them).

The next morning, Jackie reminds Rose that she's jobless and then they argue about the cat flap.

Rose calls her mother to warn her about the Autons.

Then she calls Jackie again after Rose has saved the world and the Doctor, though the admissibility of this conversation is debatable, as Rose's contribution is just a laugh.

That's more conversations than any male characters have together in the episode (the vast majority of the conversations are male/female; primarily Rose/male, since she functions as the lead character in the episode) -- the only actual conversation is the Doctor offering Plastic!Mickey champagne and Plastic!Mickey refusing, and there's one line where Clive's son shouts for him to come to the door because Rose is there.

"Rose" passes the Bechdel test.

 

ClothesWatch

Rose Tyler

Rose has a very relaxed 'tomboy' approach to her clothing in this episode -- she wears jeans and comfortable-looking shirts and shoes.

Her very first outfit is her sleeping gear. Rose wears soft white/light grey trackpants (or something similiar) and a sleeveless shirt that's grey with four horizontal lavender stripes. We don't see much of her second sleeping outfit except that it has a deep blue strap.

Her first 'day' outfit is white trainers, jeans, and a light pink shirt with a darker pink jacket. She carries a purse that's mostly light blue. Pink and light blue. Red and blue are very common colors for Rose -- we'll see them again later (and when S3 hits, the color meta is overpowering... red and blue, that's all I've got to say, and then the clothing meta in S4 is killer). She's mostly wearing pink with that tiny slash of blue -- red is traditionally the color of passion (heart; all those complicated emotions), both good and bad, while blue tends to represent knowledge (mind; the TARDIS). Using lighter versions of the colors gives an impression of youth.

Rose's main outfit for the episode consists of a grey shirt that is cut at the sleeves to show her bra straps and another pair of jeans. When she goes to leave the building, she puts on a gray-and-purple jacket and the color of the purple is very similar to the color of the Doctor's jumper.

The Doctor

The Ninth Doctor's stripped down look is quite a contrast to the previous Doctors. He's the mysterious man in the leather jacket. Specifically, it's a very battered and worn black leather jacket that really does make him look like he's been through a war or an apocalyse. Underneath this, he wears a purple-red jumper. It's a dark color, like the color of a deep bruise on the skin.

Other Clothing Notes

In a very distinct contrast to Rose's sleepwear, Jackie lounges around in a short pink dress robe, however when we see her dressed in her day clothes, we see her in both a striped sleeveless shirt outfit reminiscent of Rose's sleepwear and then a pink shirt with a blue jacket and jeans.

Mickey dresses in jeans and t-shirts, very casual and young.

 

Themes and Arcs

The Doctor as Myth (aka 'The Lonely God')

"The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, he's there. He brings the storm in his wake. And he has one constant companion -- death."

Clive is our first look at someone who has bought into the myth of the Doctor. Notably, Rose dismisses him as a nutter after he brings up this particular view of the Doctor. This description just doesn't fit the man that she's met and laughed with. She's aware that the Doctor is a dangerous man, but she does not view him as an untouchable legend. Rose is a humanizing element on the Doctor from the very beginning of their association. Very little 'Doctor as Myth' happens while Rose is in the room (this is particularly interesting to watch in S2) and when it does appear, she tends to immediately puncture it, as she does in this episode with "you think you're so impressive".

This particular exchange sums up Rose's point of view on the whole thing:
Rose: "So, what you're saying is - the whole world revolves around you?"
The Doctor: "Sort of, yeah."
Rose: "You're full of it!"
The Doctor: "Sort of, yeah."

Rose refuses to see him that way and the Doctor likes that about her.

Words and Phases of Note

The Shadow Proclamation is invoked by the Doctor to try to convince the Autons to leave peacefully.

 

Reoccurring Characters

Rose Tyler

Rose is the main character of this episode (appropriately enough). She's the person that the story follows -- we don't see what the Doctor gets up to in her absence. And what we're being introduced to here is a character at the start of a journey. Rose is young, has a childish if pleasant relationship with her boyfriend, and is working a dead-end job where she's unhappy. Her character introduction is completely fabulous -- when we first meet her, she has bedhead and she's in an insanely pink and cluttered room where the walls are covered in photos of friends (and we see her with some of her girlfriends a little later on). Rose herself has blonde hair with dark roots and she takes public transport. We are not supposed to read her as 'high-class'. When she's working at her job, her boredom practically leaps off the screen.

She hears a strange noise and stumbles into a world that she's never known before, where the mannequins move and people die and... there's this man. Her guide into the unknown. One of the things that I love about Rose is that she's always thinking. Here, we see her attempt to construct reasonable scenarios that can explain what she's seen so far: maybe it's Derek playing a practical joke or maybe it's students being silly.

After she meets the Doctor, her previous world is destroyed (he blows up her job, the thing that was making her so miserable and bored). When the Doctor leaves her the first time, he leaves the hand with her (and that ensures their later meeting). When she's back with her mother, we see Rose absolutely turn down the notion of making money from what happened to her. The reasons that Rose wants more out of life have nothing to do with money.

When the Doctor leaves her the second time, he gives her this absolutely beautiful speech about feeling the turn of the Earth and, this time, Rose can't let it go. She heads right over to Mickey's (clothing cues tell us that it's the same day), looks up the Doctor, emails Clive and heads right out to meet him.

She seeks out more information on the Doctor and ends up with a plastic boyfriend. Rose not figuring out that Mickey is plastic indicates two important things: a) she still thinks in terms of her old world where people don't get turned into plastic and b) she does take Mickey for granted. She dismisses most of what Clive says about the Doctor, but repeats to Plastic!Mickey that the Doctor is dangerous. This notion of the Doctor's life being 'not safe' is something that comes up frequently. And Rose expresses again her frustration at the low quality of the jobs that she can be expected to find with her education level and skillset.

When the Doctor runs into her again (chasing Plastic!Mickey), she shows her quick thinking by smashing the fire alarm and yelling at everyone to get out.

This time when the Doctor leaves, he invites Rose into the TARDIS and she gets introduced to another piece of 'his world'. She then notices that the Eye of London fits the description of the transmitter that the Doctor is looking for and is also the person to spot where they'll enter the Nestene Consciousness' lair. Rose listens to what the Doctor says, notices what's going on wherever she happens to be, and learns very quickly. When the Doctor gives the Nestene his big speech, we can see how closely Rose is listening to it.

And when her moment comes, Rose is ready. She looked at the situation around her -- trapped Doctor, Auton holding anti-plastic, chains on walls -- and came up with a workable solution that saves both the Doctor and the planet. She's clever, this one. And Rose with an axe is always an automatic win.

The Doctor

The Doctor tells Rose in a careless voice that he 'might well die in the process' of stopping the Autons. The Doctor is suffering from a major case of survivor's guilt, as we see when he desperately tries to defend himself to the Nestene Consciousness ("I couldn't save your world. I couldn't save any of them!"). Then he meets Rose. We don't know exactly how long the Doctor has been in this form, but we do know that he either didn't bother to look into a mirror until after he'd met Rose or that he just didn't care about what he saw until now. We get a quick look at some of his traits and abilities in the not-quite-a-conversation that he and Rose have in her flat: he affirms that both aliens and gay people exist, he can read really quickly, and he checks other people's mail to find out their names.

The Doctor is also very big on making sure that his enemies are given a chance to break away and leave without a fight. He doesn't want to kill if he doesn't have to, but he has that insurance just in case.

 

Continuing Relationships

Doctor/Rose

Our first glimpse of the Doctor is of him taking Rose's hand and telling her to run. This sets the stage for much of their future relationship.

He takes her hand and holds onto it until they reach the (relative) safety of the elevator. Rose is baffled by the situation and then the Doctor is quickly thrown a bit off his guard by Rose when she impresses him with her logic (wrong though it is). We see his first Rose-directed smile here. Then she brings up Wilson and that dumps the Doctor right back into remembering all the death that fills his life. His first impulse after that is to immediately hustle her out of danger and yet he never takes back the plastic hand -- this manages to sum up the primary conflict of the Doctor/Rose relationship. Even as he strives to keep her safe, he's placing her in danger and drawing her back in, sometimes by choice and sometimes unconsciously.

Once back at home, Rose instinctively protects the Doctor by not mentioning him to Jackie. She doesn't want him to get into any trouble, even though she barely knows him.

They meet up again the next day because the Doctor is tracking the hand that he gave to Rose (and yet he's surprised to end up at her flat -- willful denial, anyone?). When he tries to leave, she hauls him into the flat, surprising him yet again (she does that a lot). She wants answers and she's not letting him go until she gets some. The hand attacks Rose and the Doctor saves her and looks over for her to be impressed... and instead she smacks him with the plastic hand and is put out by his puns.

The Doctor tries to escape down the stairs, but Rose was just assaulted by a plastic arm and now she really wants some answers. She threatens to tell people what's going on because the Doctor said that would get people killed, but the Doctor is unfazed by this threat: he's taken Rose's measure. He saw how she reacted to Wilson's death and has figured out that she cares about people and won't knowingly and willingly put them at risk.

As they continue talking, we see how delighted the Doctor is to relax with someone. He can let his guard down a little and tease. She keeps on asking questions and posing theories ("Like... radio control?") and he checks in on her to see how she's handling this shift in her worldview. It's quite a sweet moment. He's always doing that with her -- looking at her and asking (out loud or just with a glance), "Will this be the thing about me and my life that's going to be strange enough and alien enough to make you want to walk away from me?"

She asks again who he is, so sincerely, and he smiles in this beautiful and almost hopeful way. Then he gives her poetry. He wraps up a piece of himself in lovely words and hands it to her. He takes her hand again, not to pull her away from danger but just to share this moment and this feeling with her. He wants her to know him.

He then tries to recover from his momentary vulnerability by telling her to forget him but the look on her face makes it clear that she's not going to be able to do that. She's going to figure him out.

When they run into each other yet again, he has to figure that something more is going on. She impresses him by pulling the fire alarm and so, this time, it's him following her -- she runs off and he runs after her. And when they get to the alley, he invites her into the TARDIS. Once she's inside, he explains to her what he's doing while he's setting up the head and then he turns and asks her where she wants to start (asking questions, I assume). When she gets upset, his response to her is a very gentle and understanding, "That's okay. Culture shock. Happens to the best of us." Then she reveals that she's concerned about Mickey and his plastic head melting and the Doctor has to turn to deal with the problem. Immediately after this, he's much snippier with her than he's been earlier, possibly thinking about how he'd been so absorbed in her that he'd missed getting as close to the signal as he could have. He turned away from his work to deal with Rose's possible emotional issues.

Here, too, we have Rose continuing to be less than impressed with him, specifically with his lack of compassion when it comes to Mickey. This clearly strikes a sore spot in the Doctor, as he has an immediate defensive reaction. But then she asks about the TARDIS and he can't help but smile when he answers. It's hard for him to stay irritated with her.

When they're running toward the Nestene lair, he instinctively reaches out his hand for Rose to grab onto and we see her grinning -- she's having fun, doing this. Once they get down into the lair, the Doctor keeps glancing back at Rose as they make their way inside and he also takes out a moment to explain to her what the Nestene is.

His face when Rose spots Mickey and races down to him is fascinating -- he looks so exasperated. He has absolutely No Time for Mickey and Rose's relationship ("keep the domestics outside"). Once the situation turns potentially deadly, his one concern is that Rose get out of there (he has apparently forgotten Mickey's existence again). And she doesn't. They look at each other and then Rose saves the day.

And he's there to catch her and, once again, we see her smiling as she gets into the TARDIS. She likes this life. She's met the Doctor's brand of 'dangerousness' and she enjoys it.

The Doctor sees a kindred soul in this girl and invites her along. When she tells him 'no', you can see it hit him, and after he's left, you can see the weight of regret on Rose. That life was so much bigger than what she had, but she turned it down and now this is what she's left with... Mickey and dead-end jobs and eating chips and never doing anything that matters. Not for the rest of her life.

Then he comes back for her and she smiles and... runs off into her future.

Rose/Mickey

Rose and Mickey's relationship is very childish, with poking and gross-outs. They meet up for lunch and they do clearly adore each other -- Mickey shows off for Rose and she laughs, he teases her. There's a lot of play violence in their relationship -- they push each other around, Rose tries to trip him, etc -- but it's all in good fun. When he hears that her job has blown up, he does rush over to comfort her, but he also tries to 'subtly' maneuver her so that he can comfort her in a place where he can also watch the sports match. He's very verbally protective of her when they go over to Clive's, warning her against internet lunatics and giving both Clive and the random neighbor glares. After they are shown the danger that the Doctor's life can hold, he literally clings to her leg, unable to adjust. She says 'no' to the Doctor the first time because she thinks that Mickey needs her. And she leaves because she wants more than what he can give her. Their relationship is fun and nice and sweet... but it doesn't make her heart pound.

Rose/Jackie

It's obvious that they love each other. When Rose leaves to go to work, she kisses her mother goodbye on the cheek. Jackie does worry about Rose after the explosion and is very worried about her after the Autons have attacked and then gone. Rose's first concern on thinking that the world is ending is to call her mother to try to warn her. But they do take each other for granted and treat each other with a certain level of exasperation and a lack of mutual understanding. Jackie can't (or doesn't want to) understand why Rose feels the need to reach for more than what she has, why Rose isn't content to settle. Jackie's journey is about understanding Rose and learning that, sometimes, you do get that second chance.

Doctor/Mickey

Right now, Mickey thinks that the Doctor is a terrifying 'thing' and the Doctor thinks that Mickey is pathetic and unworthy. The only direction for their relationship to go is up.

Doctor/Jackie

We see the Doctor's casual callousness in his conversation with Jackie, as well as her flirty nature (that Rose inherited). It's actually a cute sign of things to come, as the Doctor and Jackie's relationship pretty much does consist of them taking the piss out of each other.

Mickey/Jackie

They don't appear to have much of a relationship at this point in time, mostly tolerating each other because of their attachments to Rose.

 

General Squee

Billie Piper

She so completely and perfectly inhabits Rose. Also, probably no review will pass by that I don't mention how unbelievably stunning I find Billie (especially when she smiles). Billie is just utterly gorgeous and she makes Rose such a warm and inviting character, a perfect best friend.

Christopher Eccleston

Brilliantly done. It would actually be hard for me to overdo the praise for Chris and Billie -- they are that good.

Special Effects

I adore the TARDIS traveling through the time vortex. It's one of my favorite effects. I love that the colors actually mean something and that it's even loosely based in science.

Murray Gold's Score

I love the remix of the theme that Murray gives us -- it's definitely the theme of the past shows, but he's updated it in marvelous ways. It's high-energy and attractive, with a tiny bit of an edge. I find all of the music in this episode really lovely.

All the Rest

Clive is a very well-done character. Interesting writing and very good acting. Also, the glass panels on either side of his front door each contain a stained-glass rose and his shed is blue (inside and out).

This show also effectively uses silhouettes several times -- in this episode, it happens when Rose is approaching that door where she's about to meet her first Autons.

And that's "Rose" and my longish review on it. This story was one-hundred percent Rose's... it's in "The End of the World" that the Doctor starts to be a Point of View character as well.