Rose

Ten years after ‘Doctor Who’ disappointed legions of fans, Doctor Who finally returned to our screens in a blaze of publicity that is almost unnerving. With Queer as Folk writer and Doctor Who fan Russell T. Davies at the helm, I was hugely optimistic about the new series for the eighteen month period between the announcement of the series return and the broadcast of the first episode, especially having read Davies’ New Adventure ‘Damaged Goods’. Nevertheless, I found myself wracked with doubt and worry about viewing figures, press reaction, public opinion, whether or not there would be a second series, whether or not the associated merchandise would be any good, what impact the series would have on the regular range of Doctor Who novels, and perhaps most importantly, whether or not it would be shite. My excitement built once more when casting news was revealed, clips started getting aired on television and I started to see photographs of amusing blue monsters with bitch tits, but ultimately it wasn’t until I sat down and watched ‘Rose’, the first episode of the new series that I was finally able to decide what I thought about the new series.

‘Rose’ is visually one of the most striking episodes of Doctor Who I have ever seen. This is largely due to director Keith Boak, who provides a narrative pace many times faster than any previous Doctor Whoepisode, a stark reminder that the series hasn’t been made by the BBC for sixteen years and that television is not what it used to be. A lot of character interaction happens during forty-five minutes, and there are numerous fast cuts between scenes, as well as various showy camera shots. The opening shot of a star field before the camera zooms in on Earth and then rushes down into London grabs the attention immediately, by dint of being rather dizzying, especially when the image on the screen comes to rest on Rose’s bedside clock. This is followed by speeded-up footage of London during the evening rush hour, none of which is new to television, but all of which is new to Doctor Who. Mercifully however, Boak has enough restraint that the episode doesn’t suffer unduly from the bane of modern television drama, very short scenes. The scene in which Rose follows the Doctor out of her house and pesters him for answers sees the pair walking towards a retreating camera, but the scene is a complete piece of work, with the pair talking throughout and no sudden cuts to other characters in different situations. We get this later of course, but the focus of the story is on the fledgling relationship between the pair and everything else remains secondary, and the direction reflects this. Also worthy of note is the early scene in which Rose finds herself surrounded by Autons in the basement, which manages to be compellingly creepy. Incidentally, it is rather ironic that given the budget spent upon the series, the Autons lookexactly like modern shop manikins and thus less alien and somehow cheaper than they used to. In time honored tradition, the episode also benefits from some nice location work, with the shots of the London Eye being especially effective in creating the much vaunted British feel for which the series is known. My only real criticism of the actual production is the often intrusive incidental score, which isn’t anywhere near as bad as the excesses of Keff McCulloch, but is still irritating. 

But what of the actual story? I would discuss the plot of ‘Rose’ at this point, except that amusingly it hasn’t got one. This isn’t a criticism as such, because the episode has another agenda upon which it concentrates, but for an episode that has an incredibly fast pace by the standards of the old series, bugger all actually happens. For the second time in the series history, an invasion of Earth by the Nestene Consciousness is used to provide a back drop for introducing a new incarnation of the Doctor, and the premise is largely identical to that of ‘Spearhead from Space’, right down to killer shop window dummies coming to life. It’s worth pointing out that the premature ejaculation of the episode onto the internet has resulted in its widespread dissection even prior to transmission, and one major criticism seems to be the deus ex machina ending involving the anti-plastic. Which can be interpreted as a nod to the deus ex machina ending of ‘Spearhead from Space’ involving the UHF transmitter; the observant will notice that in both stories, the Doctor provides the means of defeating the Nestene Consciousness, but ends up being restrained and is dependent upon the plucky new companion to intervene and save his life. 

What Davies realizes, and what Philip Segal et al sadly failed to realize, is that the best way to appeal to a new audience is to assume that the viewers no nothing. Whereas ‘Doctor Who’ opened with a strange little man in a police box flying through space reading self-indulgently ironic literature, ‘Rose’ opens with the titular (no pun intended) Ms. Tyler finding the everyday and mundane world around her slowly giving way to the weird and disturbing. Davies uses Rose in the traditional companion manner, and she is very much the point of audience recognition. And this is the primary function of the slightly plotted ‘Rose’, as the audience is introduced to the Doctor via a character rooted in reality. Rose works extremely well; bearing in mind that the last proper companion that the Doctor had on television was the spectacularly unconvincing Ace, Rose is a thoroughly believable character, a working class London shop assistant, with a rough old slapper for a mother and a uninspiring relationship with her boyfriend. Davies could quite easily have made her more eccentric or iconoclastic, but this would have missed the point; she’s deliberately ordinary, because it makes her juxtaposition with the Doctor all the more striking. On the other hand, she’s also likeable and strong enough to cope in a crisis, and contrasts nicely with boyfriend Mickey who is reduced to cowering in abject terror when faced with the Nestene Consciousness. 

The casting of Billie Piper in the role worried me immensely when I first heard about it, mainly because I’d only seen her in The Canterbury Tales, which was admittedly quite promising but wasn’t enough to stop memories of her execrable pop career making me feel queasy. In fact, she’s perfectly cast as Rose; she conveys the characters initial confusion at her encounter with Autons and Doctor in the basement of the department store in which she works, and continues to express a convincing amount of bewilderment as the Doctor continues to intrude into her life dropping bombshells of information about living plastic and dimensionally transcendental vehicles. But she isn’t stupid either; she has the intelligence to find out more about the Doctor via the internet, and despite initially dismissing Clive as a “nutter”, she doesn’t wallow in denial for long, especially as the Doctor quickly reappears, rips her ersatz boyfriend’s head off, and then whisks her into the TARDIS. There is an especially nice moment when the Doctor quickly ushers her into asking the obvious questions, and then when she chokes back a sob he gently tells her, “That’s OK. Culture shock. Happens to the best of us.” This is followed by a great moment, in which both Rose and the audience are reminded that the Doctor doesn’t automatically react like a human would, as he forgets Mickey, to Rose’s fury. Piper gets just the right amount of emotion into the line, “I’ll have to tell his mother he’s dead, and you just forgot him, again.” Crucially however, for all of the death and destruction that she either witnesses or unwillingly flirts with, Rose seems to be enjoying herself; the scene in which she swings to the rescue on a length of chain like a blonde Mrs. Peel demonstrates that she’s brave enough to fight the inevitable monsters (again, compare with Mickey, who is scratching at the TARDIS doors), and the final shot of the episode as she runs grinning in slow motion towards the TARDIS doors is marvelous. 

Of course the question remains, what about the Doctor? I was no more expecting Christopher Eccleston to be cast as the Ninth Doctor than I was Paul McGann to be cast as the Eighth back in 1996, but whereas I could immediately see McGann in the role, I couldn’t begin to imagine how Eccleston would step into the role. The answer it seems is in rather manic style; the Ninth Doctor is barking mad. From the moment that he offhandedly pulls Rose to safely, casually tells her, “Wilson’s dead”, and then plants a bomb in the middle of London, he grabs the attention. There are one or two moment during the episode when Eccleston is slightly too mannered (his delivery of “Run for your life” sounds extremely self-conscious), but he seems to become increasingly comfortable with the role as the episode progresses. At times he has enormous charisma, so that when he says to Rose, “They want to overthrow the human race and destroy you. Do you believe me?” she replies “No” and he points out, “But you’re still listening”, it’s easy to understand why. Eccleston’s grasp of comedy is also surprisingly good given his dramatic background; he does a better-than-should-be-possible job of attacking himself with a plastic hand, and delivers the line about the transmitter in a deadpan enough fashion that it makes the looming presence of the Millennium Wheel in the background genuinely amusing. In addition, Eccleston’s Doctor is undoubtedly one of the most manic, energetic to date, typified by Eccleston’s mad grin such as when Rose asks him “Is it always this dangerous?” and he cheerfully replies, “Yes it is.” Davies’ script gives us a Doctor whose mania is also punctuated by moments of real passion, and Eccleston conveys this well also; his impassioned defense to the Nestene Consciousness’ accusations is that of a man who is haunted by guilt (“I fought in the war! It wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t save your world, I couldn’t save any of them!”). The Doctor’s arrogance is also worth mentioning; he seems to delight in baffling Rose, firing rapid explanations at her and knowing full well that she won’t be expecting them (“Is that alright?”), and patronizing humanity on several occasions. I also like the fact that he says of the unarguably hostile Nestene Consciousness, “I’m not here to kill it, I have to give it a chance”, suggesting that whatever it might have done, he would at least like to try and find a peaceful solution. He is also utterly dismissive of the realistically traumatized Mickey (“He’s not invited”). At the end of the episode however, we see a more welcoming side to him; when Rose points out, “You were useless in there, you’d be dead without me”, he admits, “Yes I would. Thank you” and he has the air of a hopeful little boy seeking a playmate when he invites her to join him. There is a hint in ‘Rose’ for the long term fan that the Doctor has recently regenerated, as he inspects his face in a mirror in Rose’s house; if this is the case, it might be that the Ninth Doctor calms down as the series progresses, but as things stand, he’s at least as fast-paced as the direction. Nevertheless, he’s a captivating character. 

Of the other aspects of ‘Rose’, a few things should be mentioned. There is a seam of what is often described as post-modernism running throughout the episode, from the media awareness of the Doctor’s “He’s gay and she’s an alien” line to the nod to compensation culture, with Rose’s mum trying to persuade her to make a claim for trauma. Perhaps the most obvious sign that ‘Rose’ is set in the twenty-first century is the fact that she immediately searches for information about the Doctor on the internet (and Clive’s wife’s surprise that one of the readers of his website is female did not go unnoticed Russell!), and the use of the Doctor as a semi-mythical figure in human history is something that has previously been used with some success in the novels. Criticism has been leveled at the burping wheelie bin and the disembodied hand, but both of these raised a chuckle. Rather less forgivable is the Auton Mickey, largely due to the execution; it beggars belief that Rose takes so long to notice that Mickey is acting oddly when she returns to the car, especially as he looks like he’s been smeared with Vaseline and is grinning like an imbecile. This in turn leads to the restaurant scene, and whilst I love the Doctor posing as the waiter, the rest of the scene doesn’t hold up to scrutiny; if the Auton wants the Doctor dead, why doesn’t it use it’s wrist gun, and if not, why not? And why does it become so disorientated when the Doctor rips its head off, given that it’s a solid lump of plastic and none of the other Autons have proper eyes anyway? Mention of Mickey brings me to the guest cast; I enjoyed Mark Benton’s likeable performance as Clive, and he brought a sufficient amount of gravitas to the memorable line, “He has one constant companion… death”. As Rose’s Mum, Camille Coduri is adequate if unspectacular and she does get an inherently irritating role anyway (and why is she using a hairdryer when her hair looks dry already?). But the real weak link is Noel Clarke, who is utterly appalling as Mickey for at least the first half of the episode. He gets a bit better once Rose finds Mickey gibbering in the lair of the Nestene Consciousness, but for the most part his delivery is rather, as it were, plastic. 

Overall then, ‘Rose’ is flawed, but an interesting start to the new series, and one that has tremendous promise. Mention of the mysterious War, in which the Doctor apparently fought, smells to me like an intriguing plot thread to be picked up again in future episodes. And although I wasn’t wild about the idea of having a pre-end credits teaser for the following episode, it certainly whet my appetite for the next episode...