Rose

I could do my absolute best to consider Russell T Davies’ ‘Rose’ objectively, but that would be silly, and I would almost certainly meet with failure. I’m far too much in love with Doctor Who, or at least the idea of Doctor Who, to think about this as anything other than a new and special part of myself. So this can’t rightly be considered a ‘review’, since it’s impossible for me to separate myself from the thing in question. Instead, I’m obliged to tell my story.

For a start, I knew too much. A six-second trailer, and I had to go for a lie down. I’d already memorised the ‘falling through space’ sequence long before I had the opportunity to see it in context. And aside from not knowing precisely how the narrative would fit together, I pretty much knew what would happen, thanks to spoilers, speculation and the knowledge that the whole concept, and its associated iconography, had to be squeezed into forty-five minutes of screen time. The cynic in me would say that watching ‘Rose’ was merely a matter of joining the dots, so it’s fortunate I’ve decided to silence him.

What I’ve come to realise, over the fortnight preceding ‘Rose’, is how important the whole ethos of Doctor Who is to me. It’s hardly consistent, except perhaps in its ‘Britishness’, but the show’s multiple aspects – the horror of death, the secular sense of wonderment, the idea that one should ‘never be cruel or cowardly’, the desire to live your life in an interesting fashion – are what I’m working with here, in this life. It’s such a crucial part of my upbringing, I can’t imagine going forward without it.

So what’s important to me, and it’s the reason why the new series had me giggling to myself in the shower last week, is not that He’s coming back, but that He’s been away for so long. He hasn’t, of course, but suddenly it seems like that, because there’s a difference between reading Blood Heat on the train, and trying not to bend the spine of the book, and having the Doctor suddenly bounce into everyone’s lives, not just mine, every Saturday night. On television.

And that’s why it was so important that Davies and Billie Piper (and, to a lesser extent, Christopher Eccleston), got Rose right. She was at least as important as the Doctor, and thank Verity, she worked. A beautiful person leading a dreary life, and immediately the Doctor’s best friend. It’s necessary, I think, that the Doctor-friend (she’s no companion, and definitely not an assistant) dynamic has the suggestion of ‘fate’ scribbled on it somewhere, and that’s the episode’s first big success. The Doctor and Rose have a destiny together; that much was clear from the moment she dragged him playfully through the front door of the house. Rose’s TARDIS entrance is the flipside of the same coin, and played beautifully, as are her subsequent tears and the Doctor’s warm-yet-alien reassurance: ‘It’s OK.’

Attention to the wonderful Piper does Eccleston a massive disservice, of course. His awareness of what is required, and how much he can get away with, is masterful, and the Doctor of ‘Rose’ is a great stride forward for the character. His laughter with his new best friend and his dismissal of Mickey might seem too much like Russell T Davies ticking the boxes marked ‘human’ and ‘alien’ in his masterplan, but these are inevitable flaws for an episode with so much to do, and Eccleston has an unprecedented lightness of touch (unless you were witness to 2004’s Electricity).

Keith Boak’s job, it seems, was to make Doctor Who look like television drama for the twenty-first century, and this involves a corruption of sorts. ‘Rose’ was basically shiny and restless, leaping hyperactively from one jazzy shot to the next. This isn’t good for tension, and the Autons were not as scary as they might have been with a more patient approach to editing, but for the generation of kids we hope were watching, this might, sadly, have been necessary. Visually, ‘Rose’ was never less than interesting, even if there were often too much superficial goings-on, without the depth that would give the show a helpful suggestion of realism.

Murray Gold’s music suffered in exactly the same way, being incredibly ostentatious, and occasionally drowning out the dialogue. It was brash, too exciting for its own good, and incredibly appropriate. The episode had such a frenetic pace, it didn’t require such urgency in its incidental music, but it didn’t jar, because this is the kind of music video-style of television that we – and Doctor Who – are dealing with here. What’s true is that with a budget of millions, Doctor Who can’t yet risk being as downright weird as it once was. Hence the quasi-orchestral theme, relentless pace, and CGI. This is 2005, and the new Doctor Who is, in many ways, a child of the movies.

Thankfully, we’re still on a budget, and Rose having her face menaced by an amputated plastic arm is a fantastically cheap moment, superbly conceived. The hungry wheelie bin works less well, if only because of its ill-judged belch, and Noel Clarke’s obvious struggle with the illusory CGI. And the writing’s rooted in the great Doctor Who tradition of solving the problems of the universe by having a chat with a gooey blob on your doorstep. The difference between ‘Rose’ and ‘The Horror of Fang Rock’, which the climax pays homage to, is that this is so bloody loud, we can hardly hear the Doctor single-handedly conjuring up a whole new mythology for us to deal with. ‘I fought in the war!’ he screamed, and across the UK thousands of fans started to invent their own stories. This kind of half-explanation is exactly what Doctor Who’s so good at. It’s there in ‘An Unearthly Child’, Damaged Goods, and now ‘Rose’. This is just the beginning, and we can excuse the first show its lack of narrative substance. There just wasn’t enough time. Next week, it should slow down, and actually tell a story worth telling. As it stands, ‘Rose’ was the best trailer ever made. He’s come back to save the world, and yes yes yes, it needs saving.