Spoiler-Alert!
This article contains heavy spoilers for the first episode of the first season (New Who) of Doctor Who and very heavy spoilers for the continuation of the series. Our tip: Read only after you have reached NW S08E01 (Era of the 12th Doctor)!
About the plot
The episode begins, how could it be otherwise, with Rose, a 19-year-old who lives with her mother Jackie in London. Rose works in a department store and has a normal day ahead of her, or so it seems. When her shift ends and she is about to leave the building with everyone else, she is reminded that she has not yet handed in her lottery money, so she makes a last-minute trip down to the basement to the office. There the unthinkable happens: the mannequins that are stored here attack her! Just when there seems to be no way out for her, he appears, the doctor. He saves them without explaining too much, but he seems to know what he is doing. They escape from the building and the Doctor advises Rose to get away from the building quickly, which she does. Just then the department stores’ suddenly explodes.
Rose rushes home. In her hand she still has an arm from one of the mannequins. Arriving at her destination, she asks her concerned friend Mickey, who has heard about the explosion, to dispose of the arm. The next morning, the doctor appears at her home just as abruptly as when they first met, because a signal has brought him here. And indeed: the doll’s arm is still alive and has gained access to the flat! With the help of his sonic screwdriver, however, the doctor manages to render him harmless once and for all. Afterwards, the doctor disappears again without explaining anything.
Rose, however, can’t forget the strange man who said such confused things and starts investigating. She finally finds someone on the internet, Clive Finch, who has probably been looking for the doctor for a long time. Together with Mickey, she goes to see him. Once there, Clive explains to Rose that the doctor has always appeared in different eras and always looks exactly the same, never older or younger. And death always accompanies him.
Mickey, who had been waiting in the car, meanwhile had an unpleasant encounter with the plastic. When Rose leaves Dave’s house, a duplicate of Mickey is now waiting for Rose, which she doesn’t notice, but she does notice that he is behaving strangely. When the two are about to have lunch in a pizzeria, the doctor reappears and reveals Mickey to be a mannequin.
The Doctor then joins Rose in a search for the source of the living plastic. To do so, he takes her to the TARDIS, a blue police emergency cell. But the outer appearance is deceptive, the emergency cell is only the camouflage of his indescribably highly developed means of transport. It is much smaller on the outside than on the inside. Within the blink of an eye, the TARDIS, following in the plastic’s footsteps, takes them both to another location within London. Rose, finally, is the one in the London Eye who recognises the amplifier of the signal that triggered what happened. Rose and the Doctor therefore go to the sewers below London. There they find the real and alive, if very frightened, Mickey. Also living down there is the Nestene Consciousness, which controls the plastic. It apparently wants to take over the entire planet in order to get its hands on the raw materials; the only thing standing in the way of a successful invasion are the humans. Therefore, at this moment, the Nestene consciousness sends out a signal that brings all of London’s mannequins to life. These attack humans all over the city.
With the help of Rose (and a weapon called the “Anti-Plastic”), after a failed attempt to end the conflict peacefully, the Doctor finally manages to defeat the creature and prevent the hostile takeover of the planet.
The Doctor is impressed with Rose. She has shown that she is brave and smart and that she has a good heart. Finally, he makes her an incredible offer: he offers her to travel with him, through time and space. And although she hesitates at first, as she would have to leave her mother and Mickey behind, at least temporarily, she can’t help but agree. What adventures would await her out there?
To call Rose the successful start of one of the greatest series of all time is enough to make you question your own sanity. Plastic mannequins try to take over London. Fear the plastic arms! But wait, the Doctor has the perfect weapon: anti-plastic! Not only do they find particularly trashy opponents in the episode, it’s also never really clear what their purpose is in attacking. But: it is a beginning, a sneak peak at what is probably the greatest adventure and the greatest potential of the science fiction world.
What to expect from the prelude to a new generation of Doctor Who? One thing is certain: expectations were high; after all, Classic Who has achieved cult status. People were even so curious and excited that the script was only treated under the name “Torchwood” (an anagram that would later become the title of a spin-off series) so that it would not be recognised and leaked for what it was. So it comes as a surprise when the Doctor doesn’t even appear as a protagonist in this first episode. Instead, it seems we have to get to know (and love) the Doctor as much as Rose does, over time.
And he doesn’t make it easy for us: the Doctor appears in this episode as a real muddlehead. He suddenly appears, pulls Rose along with him and then disappears just as quickly as he came. There is nothing to suggest that we are looking at the main character of a series spanning many seasons. His confusion and often delayed understanding of obvious facts (like before the London Eye) makes for a few laughs and thus already hints at the unique combination of jerk and genius that always distinguishes the Doctor.
DOCTOR: Anti-plastic. But first I’ve got to find it. How can you hide something that big in a city this small?
From the transcript of “Rose”
ROSE: Hold on. Hide what?
DOCTOR: The transmitter. The Consciousness is controlling every single piece of plastic, so it needs a transmitter to boost the signal.
ROSE: What’s it look like?
DOCTOR: Like a transmitter. Round and massive, slap bang in the middle of London.
DOCTOR: A huge circular metal structure like a dish, like a wheel. Radial. Close to where we’re standing. Must be completely invisible. What? What?
(The Doctor turns and looks at what Rose is staring at on the south bank but the penny doesn’t drop.)
DOCTOR: What? What is it? What?
(He finally catches on to what Rose is looking at. It’s call the London Eye, it’s on the south bank of the Thames and it is the biggest Wheel in the world – so far.)
DOCTOR: Oh. Fantastic!
At the same time, the doctor is still missing something, he is not yet as he will be later. He appears as a saviour and helper in need, but somehow he doesn’t really seem to care who he helps, who he saves. He still lacks depth, empathy, his infinite concern for the fates he affects. He comes across as if his heart, or hearts, are not in it. He sees a problem (in this case plastic) and copes with it. The end.
CLIVE: Going further back. April 1912. This is a photo of the Daniels family of Southampton, and friend. This was taken the day before they were due to sail off for the New World on the Titanic, and for some unknown reason, they cancelled the trip and survived. And here we are. 1883. Another Doctor. (a sketch) And look, the same lineage. It’s identical. This one washed up on the coast of Sumatra on the very day Krakatoa exploded. The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, he’s there. He brings the storm in his wake and he has one constant companion.
Clive when he shows Rose his research on the doctor. He does not see him as “the good guy”. He then reveals to her that he thinks the doctor is an alien (which he is right about).
ROSE: Who’s that?
CLIVE: Death.
Hardly anyone knows afterwards what role he played in the problems that were solved. In a sense, the Doctor is no more than a rumour among conspiracy theorists on Earth, and he has a dubious reputation. How would the Doctor react if he knew he was thought of in this way? Yes, death is not unknown to the doctor, he has already experienced a lot and seen a lot. But does death actually follow him? Is it not much more the case that he follows death? To prevent it? To save lives? Presumably it would hit him hard to see that especially in the memory remains what he cannot (or must not, for there are fixed points in time that must not be changed, especially not by a Time Lord like him) prevent. His despair at all the suffering comes through again and again in the course of the series. On the other hand, he doesn’t do what he does because he’s looking for thanks or praise. It changes nothing for him what others think of him. He helps because it is his conviction and because he cares, for everyone and everything.
But then why is he so seemingly unconcerned in “Rose”? Why does he look down on people? When he tries to get Nestene Consciousness to give up, he calls people “stupid little people”. Well, in relation to him, an alien Timelord who can feel the earth spinning, maybe we are too. Perhaps his lack of respect arises from people’s behaviour towards him (as with Clive), but perhaps it is something else: fear of loss (or fear of not winning) and responsibility. The Doctor knows his power, he uses it for good, but, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. The doctor knows that people cannot help themselves, that they could all die if he does nothing. But through his power he has also already had to make decisions that no living being should have to make.
As is often the case with Doctor Who, you don’t understand some things until you have the big picture in mind, even if it doesn’t reveal itself until seasons later. In this case, the big picture is the most terrible of all wars, the Time War, in the course of which the Doctor seems to have taken on an almost unbearable burden. For before the Doctor we meet in this episode, his last regeneration was the infamous War Doctor, who ended the Time War with the use of Momentum, wiping out the two fighting parties, Timelords and Daleks, but at the same time destroying his homeworld and all its inhabitants. Again, for your information, Timelords (and -ladys) don’t just die. If their body cannot survive, they can regenerate. Their current self is destroyed and they are reborn in a new body – age, skin colour, gender and character change randomly, but the being does not. The Timelord retains all his memories, remains the same and yet is completely different. So the Ninth Doctor, the first in New Who, now exists in the aftermath of a war that can hardly be imagined, and he lives with the loss and the knowledge of what caused it. At this point, however, you can’t imagine any of that at all, can you…?
DOCTOR: No. Oh, no. Honestly, no. Yes, that’s my ship. That’s not true. I should know, I was there. I fought in the war. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t save your world! I couldn’t save any of them!*
* For better understanding: The doctor speaks at this point with the Nestene consciousness, which commands the plastic. However, the Doctor is the only one who can understand the answers, which is why the conversation seems rather one-sided to the viewer.
Somehow a certain despair emerges from the few words. One cannot yet know what specifically happened, but one knows that the doctor experienced something terrible, that he tried to protect others and that he failed. It is clear from the episode that he is now all alone. How should a single being, now the last of its kind, deal with this guilt? Who should one ask for forgiveness when there is no one left to forgive?
The doctor tries to atone, he tries to continue to live up to his existence as a fighter for those who cannot help themselves and to resolve conflicts. But no saved planet is able to lift the burden from his shoulders. He finds no forgiveness. Who could have guessed that Rose, probably the most average girl in London, would finally be the one to heal him? Although, or perhaps because, she already senses that there is more to the doctor than meets the eye and that he has a seriousness about him that comes from his life and suffering, she accepts him. She leaves everything behind to travel with him. This trust opens the perspective for him to perceive himself as a human (well, not really human) being again and to rediscover his humanity. She doesn’t see him as the warrior who couldn’t save anyone, but as the man who protected her and wants to show her the whole universe. As a result, she is not a passive figure who was simply perceived by the Doctor, her specialness comes from herself, she becomes the actual key person with her very own power: Rose redeems him, she actually turns the broken Timelord into the “Doctor” again. Admittedly, this does not happen at once, no, the doctor needs time, he needs someone to show him the way. He has time – Timelords are not immortal, but they are so powerful that they are hardly subject to time, because instead of dying they regenerate when it is time – and with Rose he has now also found the one who will have a lasting influence on his life, for the better. And so the episode “Rose” stands at the very beginning of a journey in two senses: a journey into the universe that could hardly be more colourful and exciting, and a journey in search of what seems lost and what the Doctor himself hardly believed in anymore.
The story that this episode and several that follow tell us touches on a dimension of human life that we encounter elsewhere. That people can be sick and broken, all alone and crushed by guilt, is not uncommon. Unfortunately. But Rose does something that is admirable in more ways than one. She takes care of him (though the doctor may think he takes care of her, the truth may lie somewhere in between). What is this if not charity? Even if she doesn’t know what she is doing for him at first, she gives him what he needs more than anything else. And where else can you read about stories like this? Perhaps in the Book of Books? A biblical parallel can possibly be seen in the healing miracles reported to us in the Gospels. How often are we told of Jesus taking care of those who are marginalised and sick? It is not only about the physical cure of suffering, but also about social and psychological rehabilitation. Jesus does not perceive the sick and sinners as outcasts, but as human beings, and it is precisely through this that they experience a deeper dimension of healing, liberation and forgiveness. The question of whether the person deserves salvation is never asked, and deliberately so. Everyone deserves that little bit of peace, even those who have done things they regret.
As you can see with Rose, it’s apparently not that hard to work miracles yourself. And apparently she’ll never regret trusting this strange man who just burst into her life.
Fin.
Memorable quote from this episode:
The first time they tell you the world’s turning and you just can’t quite believe it because everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go. That’s who I am. Now, forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.
The Doctor