My first exposure to the show was the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors, which my mother had a DVD copy of which I now own. Through that, I had several of the show's core concepts made more apparent to me than a casual viewer would have had it starting from a traditional episode. The 2005 continuation of the show first helmed by Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner came out...which I actually didn't see in full until the DVDs came out.
I'm American and, for some reason, we had either missed or the Sci-fi Channel (back when it was called that and not "Syfy") chose not to air this episode but instead the following episode The End of the World. And, having viewed The End of the World...I'm not exactly happy with that choice for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that The End of the World is really, really not that great, but I'll get to that next time.
But let's have a look at the premiere episode, Rose. It starts out unassumingly enough with young Londoner Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper. She has a montage of her daily life, taking the bus to work, working in the shops, having lunch with her boyfriend Mickey - played by Noel Clarke. And then she gets attacked in her shop by...mannequins. She is saved by a mysterious man with close-cropped hair who claims to be 'the Doctor' - played by Christopher Eccleston - who sends her off with one of the mannequin arms and then proceeds to blow up the shop she works at.
Needless to say, when he shows up the next day, she's rather peeved by that and gets some more information about him before deciding to do the only sane and logical thing someone could do in her position - consult the internet to find out who the Doctor is.
Luckily for us, it's still 2005 rather than 2006, so LINDA hasn't been invented yet. Thank God.
But here we get what will be very common throughout the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who - acknowledging that the past happened, but going out of their way to really go into any detail about things that happened. This is a little glaring in some places more than others, and I'll get into it more as we go along. Also Clyde, the conspiracy theorist guy, conveniently has pictures of Christopher Eccelston throughout time but not any of the other Doctors because, sure why not?
Back to the plot, however, Rose gets picked up by a definitely not suspicious duplicate of Mickey who takes her out to dinner. After being rescued by the Doctor, Rose assists him in tracking down the source of the Mannequin 3 cast to underneath the Millennium Wheel. After finding Mickey, who is alive for...some reason...and trying to entreat with the leader of the mannequins (who are called Autons, but I'll get to that in a minute), known as the Nestene Consciousness, Rose uses some of her gymnastic skills that I don't think are ever brought up again in the course of her tenure as a companion to kill it with anti-plastic.
I think I can hear Anton Chekov having a stroke.
Afterwards, the Doctor offers Rose the chance to travel with him in space and, while she initially refuses, takes him up on the offer after he mentions that it's also a time machine. Thus, Mickey is left utterly traumatized after the event, completely abandoned by the woman who apparently loved him. I guess. Sort of.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 1
Yeah, you're gonna learn really quickly if you haven't yet that I hate Rose Tyler with a fiery passion. However, in the interest of fairness, Series 1 does not have nearly as many problems for her as later ones do. We'll be getting to that as well. Also, take your pick as to how high the counter gets.
My guess? As high as the Fourth Doctor fell from in Logopolis.
As for Rose, it isn't a bad episode. It does what it set out to do - namely introduce the new Doctor, new companion, and start the work of setting the tone for what the show was going to be: The Doctor is an alien who travels through time and space righting wrongs, he occasionally picks up humans to help him out, and something inevitably explodes at some point.
And speaking of the Doctor himself (at this point, anyway), Christopher Eccleston was my first Doctor and I absolutely adore him. Given some things that we find out about this incarnation of the Doctor (some of which are hinted at in this episode very briefly), he plays the Doctor as someone who is recovering from a great trauma, still trying to maintain the principals that he held before in going around saving the universe. He does not kill as a first approach and wants to talk things out, but occasionally worse comes to worse.
It's really a shame both that Eccleston didn't get a longer tenure as the Doctor and that he was treated so poorly by the BBC. But, hey, that's internal politics of a corporation with such a totalitarian control over a country's television broadcasting that they make Fox News look like cable access network for you.
Yes, I know ITV exists. You know what I mean.
I'll just go ahead and spoil some of my final thoughts on Series 1 - Eccleston could have really been great, if he'd been given more time. Sadly, he only gets the thirteen episodes that make up Series 1...and it's not a good season. This is for a number of reasons, none of which were his fault. Much like Colin Baker before him, Eccelston was screwed over by everyone around him to the point where we may never know the full details.
Rose isn't a bad start and, while its not great, it doesn't have anything horrifically objectionable in it. The villains of the piece - namely the Autons - are pretty neat and it's easy to see why they were chosen as the first baddies of the new series. I've actually seen the only other two appearances they've had in Doctor Who TV canon (they've made others in books and audio dramas, but that's a whole other story) - that being the Third Doctor's first episode Spearhead from Space and the later Terror of the Autons - and can say that the Uncanny Valley nature of them that makes them rather terrifying has been no less diminished with the passage of time.
That being said, I am disappointed that nobody was eaten by a plastic chair. Just saying, Russell. Missed opportunity.
But as a start to the new series and, in fact, to Doctor Who in general, you could do a lot worse. The status quo is set, and we get to see what they do with it from there in following episodes...boy do we get to see what they'll do with it. Next time, we look at Rose Tyler's first trip in the TARDIS, as it's time for the end of the world.
Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
Needless to say, when he shows up the next day, she's rather peeved by that and gets some more information about him before deciding to do the only sane and logical thing someone could do in her position - consult the internet to find out who the Doctor is.
Luckily for us, it's still 2005 rather than 2006, so LINDA hasn't been invented yet. Thank God.
But here we get what will be very common throughout the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who - acknowledging that the past happened, but going out of their way to really go into any detail about things that happened. This is a little glaring in some places more than others, and I'll get into it more as we go along. Also Clyde, the conspiracy theorist guy, conveniently has pictures of Christopher Eccelston throughout time but not any of the other Doctors because, sure why not?
Back to the plot, however, Rose gets picked up by a definitely not suspicious duplicate of Mickey who takes her out to dinner. After being rescued by the Doctor, Rose assists him in tracking down the source of the Mannequin 3 cast to underneath the Millennium Wheel. After finding Mickey, who is alive for...some reason...and trying to entreat with the leader of the mannequins (who are called Autons, but I'll get to that in a minute), known as the Nestene Consciousness, Rose uses some of her gymnastic skills that I don't think are ever brought up again in the course of her tenure as a companion to kill it with anti-plastic.
I think I can hear Anton Chekov having a stroke.
Afterwards, the Doctor offers Rose the chance to travel with him in space and, while she initially refuses, takes him up on the offer after he mentions that it's also a time machine. Thus, Mickey is left utterly traumatized after the event, completely abandoned by the woman who apparently loved him. I guess. Sort of.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 1
Yeah, you're gonna learn really quickly if you haven't yet that I hate Rose Tyler with a fiery passion. However, in the interest of fairness, Series 1 does not have nearly as many problems for her as later ones do. We'll be getting to that as well. Also, take your pick as to how high the counter gets.
My guess? As high as the Fourth Doctor fell from in Logopolis.
As for Rose, it isn't a bad episode. It does what it set out to do - namely introduce the new Doctor, new companion, and start the work of setting the tone for what the show was going to be: The Doctor is an alien who travels through time and space righting wrongs, he occasionally picks up humans to help him out, and something inevitably explodes at some point.
And speaking of the Doctor himself (at this point, anyway), Christopher Eccleston was my first Doctor and I absolutely adore him. Given some things that we find out about this incarnation of the Doctor (some of which are hinted at in this episode very briefly), he plays the Doctor as someone who is recovering from a great trauma, still trying to maintain the principals that he held before in going around saving the universe. He does not kill as a first approach and wants to talk things out, but occasionally worse comes to worse.
It's really a shame both that Eccleston didn't get a longer tenure as the Doctor and that he was treated so poorly by the BBC. But, hey, that's internal politics of a corporation with such a totalitarian control over a country's television broadcasting that they make Fox News look like cable access network for you.
Yes, I know ITV exists. You know what I mean.
I'll just go ahead and spoil some of my final thoughts on Series 1 - Eccleston could have really been great, if he'd been given more time. Sadly, he only gets the thirteen episodes that make up Series 1...and it's not a good season. This is for a number of reasons, none of which were his fault. Much like Colin Baker before him, Eccelston was screwed over by everyone around him to the point where we may never know the full details.
Rose isn't a bad start and, while its not great, it doesn't have anything horrifically objectionable in it. The villains of the piece - namely the Autons - are pretty neat and it's easy to see why they were chosen as the first baddies of the new series. I've actually seen the only other two appearances they've had in Doctor Who TV canon (they've made others in books and audio dramas, but that's a whole other story) - that being the Third Doctor's first episode Spearhead from Space and the later Terror of the Autons - and can say that the Uncanny Valley nature of them that makes them rather terrifying has been no less diminished with the passage of time.
That being said, I am disappointed that nobody was eaten by a plastic chair. Just saying, Russell. Missed opportunity.
But as a start to the new series and, in fact, to Doctor Who in general, you could do a lot worse. The status quo is set, and we get to see what they do with it from there in following episodes...boy do we get to see what they'll do with it. Next time, we look at Rose Tyler's first trip in the TARDIS, as it's time for the end of the world.
Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
No comments:
Post a Comment