DOCTOR WHO, SERIES 1 EPISODE 1:

ROSE

Doctor: Ninth (Christopher Eccleston)

And introducing...Rose

April 2023

Christ. I do love this show.

Rose is something like the third or fourth (or fifth?) pilot that Doctor Who’s had, after An Unearthly Child and Spearhead from Space and the ill-fated TV movie, to name a few. And just like those other three, I do love it quite a bit. It’s very good. (Well, okay - maybe the TV movie wasn’t, I haven’t seen it in years. But the other two are.)

Just like Spearhead from Space, modern-day London faces an invasion from the Autons. Just like An Unearthly Child, we’re introduced to the strange Doctor and his traveling police box via a normal, everyday person—Ian and Barbara in 1963, Rose Tyler in 2005. And it’s a damn fine start to the new show.

Rose is a very, very good introduction to Doctor Who’s core conceit to a modern audience. From the point of view of a normal woman, you get this strange man popping up all through history; you get conspiracy and alien invasions; you get a blue box that’s bigger on the inside. It conveys this sense of twin wonder and fear extremely deftly. I’m fairly certain that Rose is the first episode of Doctor Who I ever actually saw, when I was very young and my parents were introducing me to the show. I was terrified by it and the episode after it, and so thus we shifted back 30 years to the Tom Baker stuff, which seems fair. And it is scary stuff—we fully see the Autons kill a man! With their guns! Which are in their hands! But it’s also very, sort of, schlocky—the Autons have always been a fairly easily done monster: just dress some people up in shop dummy masks and have them walk woodenly. But it’s a very effective monster in 1970 and it’s a very effective monster in 2005: it’s telling that despite only making 3 major appearances in the show, they are one of the most memorable alien species, because it makes you want to point at them and go “wow what the hell!! wouldn’t it be freaky if that happened!”

There’s hints of more, here, too, more than was ever in the original show—mentions of The War, and the Doctor being unable to save the Autons’ home planet. It’s enough to make a viewer want to come back for more.

Christopher Eccleston is simply excellent as the Doctor and I’m always a little disappointed he had the shortest tenure of any actor (who isn’t Paul McGann). Every time he shows up on screen I want to yell and laugh and throw my hands in the air, even though he is also kind of a dick. And Eccleston is very good at that balance.

Billie Piper is also wonderful as Rose Tyler: the whole first five minutes are a montage of a regular day in her life, from waking up in the morning groggy to spending her lunch break with her boyfriend to the end of the day at her dreary job in a department store. Mickey Smith is a character we’ll be seeing more of later, but we don’t get a huge amount of him here: what we do I’m by and large fine with. He’s a bit of a little shit, but Rose is also a bit of a little shit, so it feels like they fit together. It does feel a little unfair of the narrative to treat him rather poorly for what is essentially just a reasonable reaction to being kidnapped by aliens, but I suppose it also has him saying “just leave him!” about the Doctor and, in comparison with Rose and the Doctor, he doesn’t really shine in any way. I feel largely the same about Rose’s mother Jackie, in that we’ll see more of her later and she will get more of a chance to shine, but she maintains (if I recall correctly) largely the same sort of vibe throughout.

It’s also interesting to note how the revamped show starts with an alien invasion episode. On the one hand, it’s very well done, it keeps us grounded in reality, and allows us an “in” from a present-day regular person; on the other, it already starts by differentiating the world of Doctor Who from ours. This world has already seen an invasion! By aliens! In the streets and stuff! I don’t know, I wonder about what people ended up thinking about it. In the end, though, it really doesn’t matter.

Overall Thoughts:

Rose is a really excellent on-ramp to Doctor Who, especially to modern Doctor Who. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in watching any of the early part of the new show. Or, frankly, as an on-ramp to Doctor Who in general. It left me wanting more! Maybe that’s partially because it’s a much shorter runtime than the stories of the original show. Next time: The End of the World!