Rose

I must admit that my heart was racing as we fast approached a brand new series of 'Doctor Who', all the way through Graham Norton's dire 'Strictly Dance Fever' and even through to the opening credits I was terribly excited! What a fantastic moment when the theme tune kicked in coupled with the lovely visuals of the Tardis in flight. This new slant on the theme tune is very good, but I did prefer the 'TV Movie' version, just because it felt more dramatic and had more louder musical punches through it. 

The opening shot of the moon then the Earth hurtling towards the screen as we entered through the atmosphere was a perfect intial shot. But it did take a while to adjust to this new 21st century version of 'Doctor Who'. We see Rose herself first climbing out of bed, then seing her mum, going to work at 'Henricks', meeting and fooling around with her boyfriend, and then back at 'Henricks' again at closing time in the space of one minute, whilst in the middle of all this, the rest of London is in super-fast mode, and the incidental music feels overdone. Things do start to pick up and yet slow down a bit in pace when Rose goes to the basement, and we see spare shop dummies moving, this feels more like 'Doctor Who' now. 

Although, blink and you would have missed Christopher Eccleston's first appearance and word as the Doctor...I did! His hand pops out from nowhere grabs Rose's hand as the shop dummies draw closer, and says "Run", and then we see them running down a corridor being pursued by the nasties, something very much a running theme within past 'Doctor Who' adventures, so nice to see that legacy continued.

Eccleston does take a while to get used to, certain traits are identifiable as Doctorish, although others such as how he reacts to Rose's mum are certainly very different to the norm, as indeed they must, otherwise it would get laughed off the screen. I did find Noel Clarke's acting as Mickey to be a bit questionable, although when he got swallowed up by the bin I found that to be highly ammusing and visually well achieved even if it did look computerised. Billie Piper though is the star of the opening episode, as Rose she really makes her a very strong believable character, and as the episode is named after her that is rightfully the case.

Doctor Who fan Clive was an interesting feature, but it was a shame to see him written out of the series so soon, as he had the makings of being a good returning character. Although that particular scene was the highlight of the episode seeing the shop dummies come to life in the shopping precinct and wreaking havoc, however, this didn't last too long and was over far to quick in my view. Nice scene at the end though with the Doctor giving Rose the chance to travel with him, and then having a brief preview of next weeks episode tagged on at the end was a nice new feature and very welcoming.

Overall then I would say this was a reasonable start to new 'Doctor Who' , I don't think it could be much else, with so much hype, and so many introductions having to be made in the first episode, it's surprising that there was any sort of coherent story at all. Yes, the plot is fairly straight forward and yes the anti-plastic thingy is very convenient, but you couldn't really have it any other way. After several more viewings the story has grown on me, and it must be noted that rarely has 'Doctor Who' visually looked so impressive. There are a number of classic moments that stand out, inparticular the shop being blown up near the start of the episode, the Doctor's 'Earth spining' monolgue, and as stated the Autons (brief) invasion.

One thing I did greatly miss was the regeneration, I can understand why it clearly wasn't there, as it would have meant being another extra explanation to have been squeezed into the action-packed forty five minutes, and also it would have probably not made any sense to a new audience, and yet so much was introduced to the audience in the first few minutes that I don't think it would have mattered if we had seen the Doctor's distorting and changing face thrown into the mix anyway! I still feel that the Doctor's first introduction to the audience did feel a bit rushed and a bit low-key. Maybe a dramatic regeneration would have been a more startling and visually stunning opening, I think you could even have got round it by not even re-hiring Paul McGann! Russell T Davies is certinly a good and intelligent enough writer that he could have pulled it off and still kept nostalgic fans and new fans happy and none the wiser. Rose stumbling across the Doctor convulsing in mid-regeneration would have been much more of a dramatic and disturbing opening!

Anyhow 'Rose' as it ended up was a fairly good episode, and Eccleston looks like he's going to become a great Doctor, so all in all things look pretty rosy...if you pardon the pun! 7/10