9.1: Rose
In which Doctor Who joins the war on terror by blowing up a department store.
Broadcast: March 2005
Watched: June 2021
“The only reason it fixed on you is because you met me.”
I think the first point I suspected this might actually be quite big is when I was out the night before it was on, and my very-much-not-a-fan friend Signe was quoting the “lots of planets have a north” bit at me.
The thing that really struck me about this viewing is the scene where Rose sees into the TARDIS. It’s in a junkyard, the minute she’s inside the lighting and the mood changes entirely... more than anything else here it’s a direct lift from An Unearthly Child.
The odd thing watching it now is not how different it is from what came before – we know that – but how it doesn’t really work like any episode that follows it either. We’ve got used to thinking that half a dozen episodes since the show came back act as jumping on points and have a certain amount in common... but I think Rose is the oddest of them. The zooming in from space, the music, the energy of that montage... I don’t think it’s just that it’s doing a job others won’t have to, it also has a cartoon-y tone that The Eleventh Hour, say, doesn’t.
It has a very simple structure – Meet Doctor, Meet Doctor Again, Research Doctor, Get Rescued by Doctor, Help Doctor Defeat Aliens. Feels incredibly linear. (The fact that they find the secret base by Rose saying “Is that the secret base” is hilarious.) But it’s very well constructed to make you buy into the idea that at the end of the episode they’d choose each other, and it’s very big – the invasion is out there, it starts and ends with things going bang. Even the “hey look it’’s the London Eye” thing is sort of a mission statement that this isn’t going to be The X-Files, everything will happen in public.
Eccleston is never quite like I remember him being. Last time I watched this season I was surprised at how funny he was. This time I’m surprised by how still – I’ve got used to Tennant, Smith and Whittaker bouncing around the place I suppose, but Ecc’s brilliant while being understated. Interesting that a) he can fly the TARDIS, and b) tries to negotiate with the Nestene Consciousness – both switches from the old show when a) no, mostly, and b) they’re definitely monsters.
The weirdest thing, though, is that, in the middle of the War on Terror, a few months before 7/7, the first thing he does is blow up a department store.
Other things:
“She read a website about the Doctor, and she’s a she?” How times change.
Talking of which – Routemasters, Rose has to go to Mickey’s to use the internet? How times change.
I am now older than Camile Coduri is here, but my brain refuses to accept it.
The Auton Mickey effects are gross. I’d forgotten the bit when the headless auton rampages.
In RTD world, CEO means “chief electrical officer”. Weird.
There’s a strong implication that if the camera didn’t cut away we’d have seen Clive shot in the face in front of his wife and kid. Which might be one of the most horrible things in the whole of Doctor Who.
The dummies in wedding dresses trying to kill Jackie are hilarious.
Rose being heroic while Mickey cowers – not to mention his being terrified of the TARDIS – feel like important character notes.
It also feels important somehow that Robert Holmes – one of the most important writers on the original show – gets a credit on the first episode of the revival, somehow.
Honestly - the single best moment in this episode (and I'm not sure that Davies ever quite topped it anywhere in his run) is Rose in the 'junkyard' going into the TARDIS for the first time. And we don't see it. We see her face, her reaction, and then how she runs outside, stares at the Police Box, circles it and *only then* does the camera follow her inside. It's an astonishingly good sequence that never gets old. (And yes, then there's the really clever tonal and atmospheric shift that follows from that, which makes it even better.)