Doctor Who: Rose (2005)

Writer-producer Russell T. Davies - at once an acclaimed creator in mainstream TV the BBC needs to be in business with and a fat gay Doctor Who fan - has single-handedly had the clout to get his favourite show back on, albeit through BBC Wales and over the dead body of returned bigwig Michael Grade. He works hard to reinvent the franchise for the new millennium, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the last revival (the Paul McGann TV movie) and brings back the key elements of the 1963-1989 show without being strangled by fanboy backstory. Oddly, this first episode could easily have starred McGann - Christopher Eccleston's youngish, casual, slightly Northern Doctor ('lots of planets have a North') is a reading that McGann could have stretched to, and Eccleston has the advantage of not making his debut in a regeneration story (he looks in a mirror and comments on his ears, but any explanation of how the previous Doctors relate to this one is left for the future).

Indeed, the first episode goes back to an approach unused since An Unearthly Child - we meet an ordinary person, Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) - who works in a department store the Doctor blows up. She has no idea who the Doctor is or how vast and strange the universe is, and gets involved in what seems to be an already-ongoing story. The point, of course, is to get the Doctor and Rose together in the TARDIS, so the actual adventure is almost a B-plot. Davies has chosen to revive an old foe, unseen since 1971 but well-remembered - the Autons (never called that in dialogue), living plastic shop-window dummies animated by 'the Nestene Consciousness'. When Rose ventures into the basement of the shop and is menaced by the dummies that come to life, the Doctor pops in (his first line, 'run!') and gets on with the business of thwarting an invasion already underway and which he somehow knows about (there's a mention of 'the war', which suggests a plot strand to be picked up later) then pops off again, leaving Rose with a plastic dummy arm we know will come eventually to life (but not before several gags with people pretending it's strangling them). Rose trots back to a life that includes a middle-aged but glam Mum (Camille Coduri) - who makes a gentle pass as the Doctor, who backs off like a kid, though he's eager to get close to the bosomy babe Rose for only subliminally sexual reasons (he really is interested in her mind!) - and black boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clarke) who is soon swallowed by an evil plastic rubbish bin that spits out an Auton duplicate.

Investigating the odd stranger on the internet, Rose finds a nutter website 'Doctor Who?' that leads her to an enthusast in conspiracy theories who shows evidence that the Doctor has shown up throughout history - at JFK's assassination, dissuading someone from boarding the Titanic, at Krakatoa; this might have been a chance to refer to other incarnations, but Davies takes a different tack by using this bit to establish this Doctor, even suggesting (if we assume Eccleston is only just regenerated) that these interventions will be in the future. The Doctor and Rose run about London in a very McGann way, perhaps rushing too much to get to the climax (this really could use more than 45 minutes), leading to a nice bit as Rose sees something blatantly obvious that the Time Lord, looking for deviousness, misses - that the transmitter for the Nestenes is the London Eye. The Autons come to life and break through shop windows, recreating a famous bit from Jon Pertwee's first story but also because it's a cool, creepy idea - expanded here with child dummies and brides; however, they have guns in their hands not because it makes sense (here, the Nestenes are animating pre-existing plastic objects rather than creating purpose-built bodies) but because it's part of their image (a fanboy touch).

Perhaps signalling a new m.o, the Doctor faces down the Nestene Consciousness - a big blob of angry CGI plastic with something of a face - and tells it off for 'a clear case of invasion' in violation of a galactic treaty, but doesn't come on vindictive ('I'm not your enemy') even though he has a convenient vial of blue 'anti-plastic' which Rose knocks into the blob to wipe it out when the Autons don't take kindly to the intervention (the Nestene recognises the Doctor as a Time Lord). While this is serial-style runabout, with a ludicrously perfunctory monster-killing mcguffin and cutaways to the Autons rampaging in London that seem rushed (the conspiracy theorist is apparently killed, but out of shot - Davies is trying to make something that can be watched by kids at 7.00 in an era which would never allow the things that used to go out at 5.15), the point is Rose getting involved. She senses how alien the Doctor is by the fact that first he doesn't tell her her boyfriend is dead and then doesn't tell her he might be kept alive, upsetting her twice because he hasn't explained things, and is the recipient of several sense-of-wonder speeches and gets to travel in the TARDIS as it hops purposefully about contemporary London (she doesn't know what a police box is - an irony since Britons only know what they were because of Doctor Who). At the end, she decides to stay with her boyfriend, who just responds with terror to the whole adventure, but has second thoughts when the TARDIS rematerialises a few moments after departure and runs to join the Doctor.

It keeps the Ron Grainer theme (albeit still not learning the lesson that the 1963 arrangement was best - as later versions mixed in disco, this has a touch too much techno) and the box, but otherwise kicks off as if it were a completely new show, aimed at people not born when Sylvester McCoy was cancelled while acknowledging that it's not in a way calculated to bring the old-timers on board, with sophisticated adult elements ('that's not going to work,' says the Doctor, perusing Heat, 'he's gay and she's an alien') that play to grown-ups who remember how it was but have different demands of drama these days. Missing, as yet, is a certain wistfulness to go along with the hectic chases, and it's still a question if pop diva Piper can sustain being viewpoint character - she's too gorgeous to be credibly 'ordinary' and of course not as skilled a performer as Eccleston, who has an easier time in this episode popping in and effortlessly dominating than she does carrying the whole show. An oddity of the new Doctor's accent is that, whereas the neutral RP tones of earlier Time Lords seemed to count as alien everywhere, this incarnation can go anywhere in the universe and throughout time and be a perfect alien … except Salford.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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