Rose

‘Hello, Rose. I’m the Doctor. Now run for your life!’ And so with those words, a new chapter in the Doctor Who canon begins. Almost a decade ago, when the TV movie aired and Paul McGann similarly declared that he was the Doctor, I boasted in a fanzine editorial that Doctor Who was back, bigger, better and bolder. Of course, the TV gods conspired to put Doctor Who back to rest before that somewhat idle boast could ever be validated!

I’m more mature now and less inclined to exaggerate, but after seeing Rose (and also The End of the World), I feel optimistic about the new program and its future beyond this year. It appears that Russell T Davies and the production team were very conscious of the importance of introducing the Doctor, Rose and the TARDIS in the first episode without alienating average television viewers (who after all are critical to the program’s success) and were not prepared to repeat some of the fundamental mistakes of the TV movie.

As much as I adored the drama and stylish direction of the TV movie, not to mention Paul McGann’s performance, it is easy to say in retrospect that perhaps the film's greatest failing was that it commenced with the assumption that the audience was already familiar with the characters of the Doctor, the Master and the TARDIS, not to mention the concept of regeneration and the overall mythos of the Time Lords. Nine years later, it seems the new Doctor Who production team has heeded the lesson. Rose tells the story largely from Rose Tyler’s perspective and it is a great introduction not only to the Doctor, but also a fantastic way of introducing friends or colleagues to the program without overloading their senses with the program's mythos.

Rose nevertheless crams in a lot for a first episode of Doctor Who: a new Doctor, a new companion, a revamped TARDIS and, for the first time since the 1970s, the Nestene Consciousness and the Autons. In someone else’s hands, this could have been a disaster, but by telling the story from Rose Tyler’s perspective, we first and foremost get an entertaining episode of television. Russell T Davies knows when to inject the right moments of quirkiness and humour (for instance, the attack of the disembodied Auton arm!), when to introduce elements of mystery and fascination (Clive’s conspiracy theory that this mythic Doctor has been seen throughout the centuries) and when to project menace and a sense of impending doom (the recreation of that classic Seventies moment when the Autons, disguised as shop window dummies, spring to life).

Although the episode is titled Rose and the bulk of the story and the action is seen from Rose’s eyes, it is also a great introduction to the new Doctor. Christopher Eccleston took absolutely no convincing that he was the Doctor. His contemporary look in production photos (compared to the Doctor’s traditional taste for Edwardian finery) initially threw me some months ago, but that is more than made up for in his performance. He manages to perfectly convey many contradictory features of the Doctor’s character: his sense of mischief (posing as a waiter in the restaurant scene between Rose and the ersatz Mickey), his naivety and innocence (failing to recognise the flirtatious advances of Rose’s mother!) and his timelessness (his speech about how he can feel the Earth’s rotation through the solar system and how insignificant one’s place can almost be to the size of the cosmic forces surrounding them was a gem of a speech). Russell T Davies clearly deserves some credit here for writing such a great part for Eccleston (particularly for the latter speech), but it is Eccleston who brings Davies’ dialogue to life and has us hooked from the moment the Doctor first appears. It is just such a great pity that Eccleston has already decided to move on!

Billie Piper also is a pleasant surprise as Rose. When she was first announced as the companion, I felt the same scepticism that many fans once felt about Bonnie Langford’s casting as Melanie. In Billie’s case, her past as a Britney wannabe seemed all the more ominous. However, to her credit, Billie has defied those expectations. She plays the part with zest and attitude, just what we would expect of a strong-minded 18-year old woman who is a little down on her luck in terms of her career aspirations (and with such an insipid boyfriend to boot!). She is easily identifiable amongst younger viewers and there is no doubt that for even older viewers, she symbolises our own desire to escape the shackles of our menial lives and take a trip around the galaxy in the TARDIS. It helps Billie enormously that Davies wrote her character to be independent and streetwise from the outset, but no amount of good writing can disguise the on-screen chemistry that Billie develops with Christopher Eccleston almost immediately; their banter and exchanges as the Doctor and Rose is delightful to watch.

It is a little difficult to judge the new program’s production values on the viewing of one episode (especially as the events of Rose are set in contemporary times), but the direction of Rose is slick and tightly edited, and the series looks great on film. It has a more natural, organic feel, compared to the combination of film and video sequences which Doctor Who was traditionally renowned for. The visual effects provided by the Mill (both for the title sequence and for the Nestene Consciousness) are so good that you really take them for granted (a good sign really because in a series such as this the effects should be never be so impressive Star Wars-style that they distract the viewer from the intrigue of the storytelling). It will be interesting to see, though, how the Mill realises the program’s demands when the Doctor and Rose travel to other worlds (although we see some promising signs in the subsequent episode The End of the World).

However, if the TARDIS interior is a sign of what we might expect to see of alien environments and possible futures, then again there is good cause for optimism. The design of the console and interior seems to pay homage to all the TARDIS sets that have gone before. Most notably, the design echoes the feel of the grand TARDIS set from the TV movie, but the interior police box double doors are also strongly reminiscent of the double doors used for the TARDIS interior in Peter Cushing’s Doctor Who and the Daleks as well. The metallic walls peppered with the customary TARDIS roundels also remind me of a TARDIS design that Doctor Who Magazine adopted in its comic strip for a time during the Nineties (which perhaps isn’t a surprise either as one of the men behind the concept drawings for the TARDIS interior is Bryan Hitch, an award-winning comic book artist on DC’s The Authority. Perhaps the interior is also a homage to fellow artist Lee Sullivan’s work on the DWM comic strip!).

That’s enough about the bells and whistles ... ‘What about the story?’ (or lack thereof) I hear you ask. I suspect that ‘older’ hardcore Doctor Who fans will pick holes in the storyline and bemoan the series’ new 45-minute, single-episode format (to the traditional 25-minute, four part tales of old). I can foresee some of the older fans accusing the series of being more ‘Doctor Who-lite’ in terms of storytelling and whinging that the latest Auton invasion is so secondary to the plot that they could almost have been any generic monster. Some fans are also likely to ask all sorts of mind-boggling silly questions like ‘Why was the Nestene Consciousness hiding in a sewer under the Thames?’ – in effect attempting to put things into context when it isn’t necessary! It really doesn’t matter. The episode is entertaining enough to hold its own without going into these finer details and as an introductory episode to a brand new series, it shouldn’t be expected to. It’s likely that the storylines will get more sophisticated as Rose, ‘our Earth point of view in space’, becomes more acquainted with the Doctor’s world. What most works about the episode is its quirkiness. Davies works a lot of humour into the drama very successfully (for instance, witness Rose’s reaction when she first enters the TARDIS while escaping the Auton replica of her boyfriend!) but not at the expense of the drama itself.

I also personally don’t think that the series’ new format will limit the potential for innovative stories and broader characterisation (as more cynical fans will attest). The single-episode stories (such as Rose) are more likely to be character-driven tales, while the double-episode stories (such as Aliens of London/World War Three) will be more action-orientated (although Rose also has its fair share of action for one episode, as we see with the opening sequence in the department store!). Indeed, some of the best examples in the runs of other series such as the various Star Trek and Stargate series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville and even Who’s one-time stablemate Blake’s 7 have been character-driven single episode stories. I doubt Doctor Who will be an exception.

Doctor Who is at least back for the time being. Bigger, bolder, better? I’m not prepared to make an audacious statement at this early stage, but I think I have better reason to be optimistic about the good Doctor’s future exploits now than I ever had any reason to when Paul McGann's Doctor briefly graced our TV screens. Let’s hope the average viewer will embrace the new Doctor as warmly as Rose does in the episode and as the fans undoubtedly have.