Grab Bag Reviews: "Rose"

Brace yourselves people, this is going to be a long one....

This was the first episode of the new series when it launched in 2005. I've already covered the fall of Doctor Who in 1989 HERE and I've covered the roots of the 2005 new series HERE so there isn't much more to say by way of background. Therefore... on to the review!

The Plot: Young Rose Tyler has a working class life -- living with her mother and working the sales floor at a department store. Then, one night, all that changes. She has a run-in with living store mannequins, meets a strange man in a leather jacket, and watches as the department store is blown up.

The universe isn't done with Rose Tyler yet though and strange events spiral around her... events which keep coming back to the mysterious man in the leather jacket. A man known only as... the Doctor. Rose doesn't know it yet but she's in for the time of her life.

My Take: One can see producer Russell T. Davies' vision for the new Doctor Who right from the start; right form the very name of the episode: "Rose". No other companion ever got a story named after them. And it is Rose's story. In fact, that is one of the complaints to be had here -- this story isn't really about the Doctor, it's about Rose.

This was all part of the change that RTD had for the show; he wanted to emphasize ordinary people who find it in themselves to be extraordinary or to find the extraordinary in the mundane. He tried to combine that philosophy here with the traditional companion role of being the audience stand-in -- the bridge between the audience and the Doctor -- but it comes out skewed. In the past we have met the Doctor (or a new incarnation of him) alongside the companions. With "Rose", however, we see him only through her eyes. This actually ends up kind of limiting the Doctor.

Christopher Eccleston chose to do only one year of the series and I've seen a number of fans sadly say that just as they were really getting to know Eccleston's Doctor he was gone. The thing is, this isn't a fault of Eccleston's performance, to me this is the fault of the scripts. We, as the audience, take so long to really get to know the Doctor because we're only allowed to know him through Rose. It's a weakness of the format which starts here. Later seasons and series would not have as much trouble because they had the benefit of building on what had gone before.

There were also complaints over the decision to put Eccleston's Doctor in more modern dress. It's true that the later seasons of the Classic series got carried away with the quirkiness of the Doctor's outfits (*cough*ColinBaker*cough*). In fact, there is a great bit in the recent series 5 story "Amy's Choice" in which the villainous Dream Lord says: "If you had any more tawdry quirks you could open up a tawdry quirk shop. The madcap vehicle, the cockamamie hair, the clothes designed by a first year fashion student; I'm surprised you haven't got a little, purple space dog just to ram home what an intergalactic wag you are." which seems to sum up the history of the show's costumes. Putting Eccleston in modern clothes was supposed to emphasize the modernity of the series. It also pushed Eccleston harder to get the Doctor across. By that I mean that the Doctor's quirky and/or anachronistic clothes were always a shorthand way of showing audiences how 'odd', 'crazy', and/or 'alien' the Doctor was. It helped sell the Doctor as 'not from around here'. Eccleston didn't have that to fall back on and so he had to sell the Doctor's alienness with words, inflection and mannerisms. It was a bold move and a part of me applauds it but it shows up another place where "Rose" falls down on the job.

There are some great lines of dialogue and they are delivered excellently by Eccleston. Many of them have become modern classics -- quoted and re-quoted time and again by fans -- but aside from this there isn't much there to show us the Doctor as a being who is truly alien in his thoughts and perceptions. We, as the audience, don't really get to see the Doctor figuring things out or being so very, very clever. For example, the Doctor waves around the bomb which will destroy the department store -- he's already built it. He waves around the vial of Anti-Plastic which can destroy the Nestene Consciousness -- he's already whipped up a batch. Heck, from the very start of the story he already knows that it's the Nestene Consciousness behind it! We don't get the tension or the insight of seeing him puzzle things out and cobble together solutions.

The one area where the script really does do Eccleston justice is with the new, harder edge to the Doctor. Past incarnations have been arrogant and dismissive of humanity but Eccleston delivers a kind of cold, faintly sneering edge to his arrogance. This, combined with his actions at the climax, gives viewers their first hints that this version of the Doctor is 'walking wounded' -- scarred by war and loss. This is a Doctor we've never seen before. This is a Doctor with new vulnerabilities.

There is a bit of a creepy side to the Doctor, however, that I actually didn't notice the first few times I watched the episode. The Doctor essentially forces Rose into the TARDIS. When being chased by the Nestene duplicate of her boyfriend the Doctor could have easily helped Rose to escape and told her to lie low for a few days until things were all clear. But no, instead he leaves her with two choices -- enter the TARDIS with him or face a raging Auton. And don't try to tell me that he was trying to keep Rose safe. He, himself, admitted that the Autons were after him and he was going to confront them. Was she really any safer with him? It really comes off as... well.... as I said -- creepy. The Doctor has already made up his mind that he wants Rose to travel with him and he manipulates her into it.

"Rose" would also set a pattern in which companions were "wrong", "broken" or "needed" the Doctor to fix them or make them something more. In the classic series there was generally nothing wrong with the companions and in many cases they had quite nice lives with budding careers which they put on hold to travel with the Doctor. But here the audience is pointed out at every turn that Rose doesn't have much of a future. No college education, no chance for career advancement where she was working, facing an uphill battle to find a new job and a mother and boyfriend not likely to push her to become more out of fear that she might end up thinking herself "too good" for their way of life. Enter the Doctor to take her away from all of that. Similar themes would be explored in nearly every companion after this. Which really gets annoying after a while.

As for the performances -- well, everyone involved turns in a good performance given what they have to work with in the script. Some characters are little more than broad stereotypes and you know exactly what they will say and how they will say it before they do. If there is a misstep among the cast it is Noel Clark's who just seems uncomfortable in the role of Mickey, Rose's boyfriend. He never seems to settle and there is always a sense that you really are just watching someone act rather than disappear into the role.

Overall, "Rose" is important in relaunching the series. It was yet another evolutionary leap forward for a show that has been making such leaps for decades, A new series for a new generation and I have to admit that the special effects and lighting are wonderful here. The music sadly drowns out the dialogue in some places though. There is also a lovely refurbishing of an old Doctor Who villain in the Nestene Consciousness and it's Autons and one still gets a shiver when hearing the old, familiar sound of the TARDIS dematerializing with the new effects.

"Rose" isn't ideal -- it has flaws as a story in general and it has some deep flaws as a Doctor Who story specifically. It should not be missed, though, because everything the new series is builds from here (or in some cases builds in opposition to what comes here). There are some good ideas and concepts which balance the bad and as long as you don't think about the plot too much it passes muster and is entertaining.

Grab Bag Reviews: "Father's Day"

And now for something completely different.... We're spinning into 2005 for the "new" series for this one folks!

In many ways it all began at the end... In 1989 Doctor Who was cancelled just short of 30 years on the air. The show had been floundering for quite some time -- bleeding viewers and being perceived as increasingly insular -- a show that was done by fans for fans... only. In the last season things had begun to make a turn around but it was too little, too late.

Producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner had remained in the role from 1980 until right to the end although he was beginning to tire of things. What kept him around was the knowledge that no one else wanted the position and if he left the BBC would take the opportunity to cancel the show. As it turned out his fears were realized anyway. There were those at the BBC who hated the show and were looking for ways to get rid of it and when the viewing numbers finally dipped too low the axe came down.

Considering how long the series had ingrained itself in the public consciousness, though, the franchise refused to die completely. All of the surviving Doctors and most of the surviving companions were rounded up for a charity special in 1993 called "Dimensions in Time" and there was a joint United States/British TV movie production in 1996 which it had been hoped would revitalize the franchise and bring in American money but it failed. In 2003, for the 40th anniversary of the show, the BBC created a special 'webisode' -- a flash-animated, nearly full-length story with a stellar voice cast which included Derek Jacobi as the Master and Richard E. Grant as the Doctor. It had been hoped that the story, "Scream of the Shalka", might revive interest in a live-action revamp of the series but it, too failed. There was, however, hope on the horizon.

Russell T. Davies was coming off some critically acclaimed successes for the BBC and had garnered enough clout to pitch his next desired project... he wanted to revive Doctor Who. Davies had grown up on the show and missed it's presence and he had an idea for shaking things up and re-introducing the series without completely throwing away everything that had gone before.

One of the biggest changes was to get rid of the serial format. No longer would the show be four half-hour episodes or two 45 minute episodes. Now it would be a standard 45 minute, single story per episodes (except in cases of the occasional two-parter). This change would help to sell the episodes to overseas markets -- particularly America where this was the standard format for sci-fi, action-adventure, and drama series'. Davies also gave the Doctor a new, tragic backstory. No more gabble about the Time Lords on Gallifrey because there had been a war and the Time Lords were all destroyed along with the planet. This now drove a new characterization of the Doctor. Additionally, Davies drove old fans a bit crazy by routinely refusing to tell exactly what had happened during this "Time War". It was mentioned but very little was, and still is, known about it. Davies also made the decision to break with the past and rather than calling this Season Twenty-Seven as if it were picking up where the show left off he instead decided to start over and 2005 became "season 1" of the "new series".

Davies also snagged some well-known faces for the main parts -- Christopher Eccleston was known for dramatic turns in movies like Trainspotting and Billie Piper was a pop star and growing actress. The result was a new smash hit.

And now... "Father's Day"

The Plot: Companion Rose Tyler's father died when she was still a baby -- killed by a hit and run driver, dying alone in the street. Now Rose asks the Doctor for a favor -- to take her back in time and allow her to see her father, to be there when he died and keep him from dying alone.

Hoping to allow Rose to have a little closure, the Doctor agrees but things go wrong when Rose impulsively decides to save her father instead! Now time has been ripped and changed, the Doctor finds that the TARDIS is gone and the mysterious Reapers have appeared -- monstrous creatures who are the universe's clean-up squad. They will destroy whoever and whatever gets in their path until the rip in the universe is sealed. But the rip cannot be sealed except with the life of Rose's father. Can the Doctor find a way of saving reality or will Rose have to face heartbreak again?

My Take: Okay, let's get this out of the way first... For the cult who believes that Rose Tyler was the be-all, end-all of Doctor Who companions; who think that she was the best thing ever... I hate Rose. I really didn't start out that way (unlike some) but as I watched the episodes I found her character thoughtless, lacking empathy, and too big for her own britches. There.

Russell T. Davies' era on the show had a theme of "ordinary people being extraordinary" and that is fully on display here in Paul Cornell's script. When Peter Tyler lives Rose defends her actions by saying her father is an ordinary guy it's not like he's going to be responsible for World War III but the Doctor counters that one ordinary person is living who should not be and that is the most important thing in the world. Later on, huddled in a church with a soon-to-be-wedded couple the Doctor asks them how they met. Upon hearing a rather everyday story of catching a cab after leaving a nightclub at 2:00 AM he enthuses that with all the things he's seen and done he's never had a story like theirs and their relationship is an extraordinary thing. In truth, it would be easy for these "ordinary-extraordinary" moments to overwhelm the story and come off as eye-rollingly cheesy but all of the actors involved here -- particularly Eccleston -- turn in nicely balanced performances.

Cornell's script also beings in a nice theme of "The stories we tell ourselves" as Rose confronts the truth behind the picture she has in her imagination of her father. That Rose's image of her father and mother's relationship has been shaped by the stories her mother told and it never occurred to her that her mother may have idealized that life to comfort herself after the loss. Rose even turns around later and spins her father yet another idealized version of his life to keep him from learning that he should have died. It is the life, the father she dreamed of having but Pete Tyler is a pragmatist who knows what Rose is struggling to learn... that parents are human too.

The story does fall down a bit, though, in that in order to move things alone to the finale it calls for Rose to do something monumentally stupid -- something that she was warned very seriously NOT to do by the Doctor. Also, despite the fact that the CGI monsters in the new series are an improvement over the rubber masks and hand puppets of the old days, the Reapers here have not necessarily aged well even with the passage of only five years.

The story is also a bit of a departure in being one of the few (if any) scripts I can think of where the Doctor not only doesn't save the day, he's not even really remotely involved in saving the day. This episode is a showcase for the character of Rose Tyler. Despite that, I think this is probably one of the best stories for Rose in the first season of the new series. She displays quite a bit more empathy and understanding and she learns some powerful lessons here and Billie Piper does a very nice job at conveying that to the audience.

Overall, "Father's Day" is one of the best stories of the new Season 1 and well worth looking into... even if you hate Rose Tyler.