Doctor Who: Rose (2005)

REVIEW

WARNING: Contains serious spoilers!

Rose had two very important tasks to achieve, neither of them particularly easy. It first of all had to assure long-term Doctor Who fans that the new production team weren't out to drastically mess with the established format. And more importantly, it had to ease new viewers into the Who universe with the minimum of fuss, viewers who in some cases will never have seen the BBC version of Doctor Who on television before. That it succeeded is hugely impressive - that it did it so well is just flat out marvellous. It isn't perfect (we'll come to that in a moment) but it is a very good, solid start to a new era in the history of the longest running genre TV show ever.

The long-term fans should already have been heartened by the presence of so many talented Who fans among the production team, most notably executive producer and head writer Russell T. Davies. Encouragingly, Davies spoke during production of his willingness to abandon any elements of the show he felt didn't work but stressed that the core iconography would remain untouched.

And that's exactly what he's done with Rose. This isn't the total overhaul that some were dreading; it's a reboot, with the operating system upgraded, but essentially it's the same old Doctor Who we all knew and loved. One man and his time / space machine incongruously disguised as a British police telephone box has adventures with a single female companion - that's when the show was at its best and it's exactly what you get here.

Davies playfully tips the wink to the show's army of fans with a few crafty in-jokes (the first time we see The Doctor, he and his new companion run down a corridor - it's like he was never away!) but the quality of his writing is such that they never intrude. That great bête noir of 1980s Doctor Who, an over-reliance on continuity, has been well and truly shown the door and that's just as it should be - there are some lovely touches for the fans (there's a hint that The Doctor has only just regenerated, for example) but there are also plenty of obscure references to a war, something called "the Shadow Proclamations" and The Doctor's inability to save the Nestene's homeworld, all of which suggests that Davies is setting up a new continuity for a new iteration of the show, which can surely be no bad thing.

The new version of Doctor Who was always going to stand or fall on two things - the strength of the writing and the quality of the acting. Davies is one of British television's most respected writers so there was never really any doubt that the scripts he wrote for Who would be something special. The first thing you'll notice about Rose is its pace - it moves like greased lightning, barely pausing for breath as it hustles viewers through the thinnest of plots (one of the episodes great weaknesses) that exists only to introduce the characters and set up the relationships. The plot is disappointing, but then after the startling opening episode, the plot for the An Unearthly Child (23 November 1963 - 14 December 1963) was nothing special and the show did rather well after that was shown. In Rose, the plot is just there to allow audiences to meet and greet the new Doctor and Rose and get involved with a third Auton invasion of Earth - though neither of the first two attempts, chronicled in Spearhead From Space (3 January 1970 - 24 January 1970) and Terror of the Autons (2 January 1971 - 23 January 1971) are mentioned, nor are the Autons actually referred to as such anywhere in the episode. Where Davies's script really triumphs though is in the dialogue - there are more notable quotables in this 45 minutes than in most entire seasons of the first incarnation of the show!

It's also a very knowing script - conspiracy theorist Clive shows Rose some photographs of The Doctor in the past, the first of which is him at the John F. Kennedy assassination, news coverage of which delayed broadcast of the first episode of An Unearthly Child. The Clive scene also takes time to poke gentle fun at online Who fans - Clive's wife is amazed to hear that his latest visitor is female: "She? She's read the website about The Doctor? She's a she?"

Davies goes to great pains to keep technobabble from intruding into the script and cannily gives viewers just enough information to keep them satisfied. When Rose makes the obvious comment about the TARDIS being bigger on the inside, The Doctor simply says "yes." And that's all we need. No explanations, no bullshit technobabble. Just "yes." Same for the explanation of how it works - he simply tells Rose that it disappears from one place, reappears in another and she "wouldn't understand it." Wonderful...

The acting too was never really going to be in doubt and neither Christopher Eccleston nor Billie Piper disappoint. Eccleston is magnificent as The Ninth Doctor, cannily combining elements from all previous incarnations - the playful joie de vivre of McGann; the darker, more manipulative edge of McCoy; the occasional brashness of Colin Baker; the vulnerability of Davison; the magisterial eccentricity of Tom Baker; the sprightly clowning that suddenly turns to deadly earnestness of Troughton; and the mystery of Hartnell. It's a fantastic performance that should once and for all disprove the myth that Eccleston is a gloomy, miserable Northerner only good for heavy drama.

In fact, he handles the lighter moments with more aplomb than anyone might have expected. He rattles out Davies' witticisms and one-liners with real style and a somewhat manic, boyish grin. His funniest moment is definitely his fantastically misplaced pride in the TARDIS's appearance. When asked by Billie what a police public call box is (21st century teenagers won't have seen one as they're rarer than hen's teeth in Britain now), he announces: "It's a telephone box from the 50s - it's a disguise!"

But his finest moment in Rose comes when he confronts the Nestene Consciousness in its lair beneath the London Eye. He runs the gamut of emotions in a performance that should just about convert any doubter - from the brash confidence of his initial approach ("I am talking!" he bellows when the Nestene dares to interrupt him), though mild embarrassment and discomfort when a pair of Autons discover his hidden vial of "anti-plastic" and finally on to outright panic when the TARDIS is wheeled in, scaring the Nestene and triggering the very invasion The Doctor was so desperate to avoid. It's the highlight of the episode and suggests that The Doctor is in safe hands.

He's an odd Doctor, this Eccleston incarnation, given to dismissing humans as "stupid apes" and apparently showing no concern for anyone not directly involved in what he's doing, yet he's also clearly very lonely and vulnerable (witness the marvellous look of hurt on his face when Rose initially refuses to accompany him in the TARDIS). He's got a mysterious past involving this war he mentions several times; he's a man of action, quite happy to completely devastate entire department stores just to blow up an Auton relay station; he's also very much what Eccleston hinted he would be in the lead up to the show, a man clearly very much in love with life despite events that seem to have clouded his recent past. Eccleston's manic grin and quirky changes of mood would have made Tom Baker proud!

Billie Piper suffered a credibility problem with some fans thanks to her short-lived career as a pop singer and her marriage to much-disliked radio and TV personality Chris Evans. But anyone who saw her turn in The Miller's Tale episode of The Canterbury Tales (2003) or her outstanding performance in Bella and the Boys (2004) would already have been aware that she was a young actress of considerable talent. And that's exactly what shines through in her performance as Rose - she plays her as a feisty, likeable young woman who we just know isn't going to take any shit from The Doctor and who's quite willing to leap into the thick of the action when required instead of tottering away on a pair of unfeasible high heels screaming. Indeed it's her actions in saving The Doctor that seems to be the catalyst for his inviting her to join him on his travels.

Piper gets two of the best moments in Rose - the unveiling of the new TARDIS control room set (Rose runs into the TARDIS, looks around, then flees in terror without the audience initially seeing what she's looking at!) and the very final shot, a fantastic slow motion run back into the same TARDIS, a huge grin on her face as she abandons her going-nowhere life on Earth for a new life of adventure and time travel.

The chemistry between Eccleston and Piper is good too - their characters genuinely seem to like each other, The Doctor drawn to her up-front honesty and inquisitiveness while she's fascinated by his other-worldliness and outright strangeness. They look set to be a great pairing.

As previously noted, not everything about Rose works. Murray Gold's music is often intrusive and inappropriate, though his remix of the classic theme tune is actually rather good. When the episode was leaked to the Internet a couple of weeks before broadcast, many fans were aghast at the amount of humour (which makes one wonder what show they'd been watching for the previous 40+ years) and although a lot of it is very funny, there are some moments of slapstick that seem odd and out of place. Chief among these - and the one moment that caused more controversy over Rose than any other - is the now infamous burping wheelie bin. To be fair though, Davies was aiming the show at a family audience and was keen to get kids back on board so a certain amount of child-friendly gags were to be expected.

More damaging was the hopeless performance by Noel Clark as Rose's boyfriend Mickey. He doesn't convince for a single second as his normal self, let alone as his Auton replica and he is the weakest link in the acting chain.

But these are fairly minor niggles and there are so many great moments to compensate - the fabulous reveal of the TARDIS interior and Rose's tearful reaction to the "culture shock" she suffers when she see it; the winning performances; The Doctor's inability to see the London Eye when it's right behind him and his response when the penny drops ("Fantastic!"); Rose's daredevil rescue of The Doctor at the climax; The Doctor's final, successful attempt to lure Rose aboard the TARDIS - "By the way, did I mention it also travels in time?". Rose isn't the greatest Doctor Who ever - it isn't The Tomb of the Cybermen (2 September 1967 - 23 September 1967), The Talons of Weng-Chiang (26 February 1977 - 2 April 1977) of Caves of Androzani (8 March 1984 - 16 March 1984). But is a very good way to ease back into the world of Doctor Who and is 45 minutes of pure, unadulterated fun that will have you grinning like a loon before the end credits roll. If this is the worst the new series will get, then the rest should be incredible...
KEVIN LYONS

Last Updated: 15 October, 2008