I’ve watched this episode so many times! Firstly, I did get the shonky download which had the old theme music on. It was so exciting to watch new Doctor Who! Then I won a place at the DWM early screening across the road from TV Centre. Some of the laughs and other reactions from the audience were a little forced as I think everyone was pretending that they hadn’t already seen it before this sneak preview. I was a little disappointed that we weren’t asked what we thought, as I wanted to tell someone that it was “Fantastic”.
Of course I had to watch Rose on transmission, too. It was vital to keep the viewing figures up. I was genuinely annoyed by the Graham Norton invasion. Having lived through the “Cancellation Crisis”, which became a deferrment in the mid eighties, followed by the cowardly way the show was cancelled at the end of that decade (they kept saying that it wasn’t cancelled; there would just be a bigger gap between series), it was fair to say that I’d developed a dose of fan paranoia. I didn’t think that the feed from Norton’s studio had been deliberately mixed over Rose as it went out, but I did think that it demonstrated the “cannot be bothered” attitude towards Who that dominated in the beeb through the nineties and early 2000s. Of course, I was wrong, because Doctor Who became the jewel in the BBC’s crown for a while.
Anyway, some thoughts about the episode. The soft focus and colour balance made it look a lot like Hollyoaks. Apparently this was a deliberate choice to ease young viewers in who might not be used to watching Sci Fi.
I found the pace much quicker than in classic Who. I liked it, but wondered if it could be sustained. I needn’t have worried of course.
I liked Clive. The joke about a girl being interested in the Doctor was funny but I doubt that it lands now, because the gender balance in fandom is more evenly spread now (again, thanks to all RTD and the team managed in these early episodes)
The wheelie bin was a water cooler moment. A lot of people talked about it. I thought the burp was funny and was surprised that some people objected to it on the grounds that it was “silly”.
Plastic Mickey was fun. Yes, there was no way that Rose could have really not noticed, but I think it was partly played for laughs and partly to demonstrate that Mickey wasn’t a go-getter (yet).
The reveal of the TARDIS and Rose’s reaction was wonderful. I didn’t particularly like the design of the interior, but it wasn’t a big deal.
The resolution and “antiplastic” was rushed, but it wasn’t the main point of the story and in Spearhead we had essentially the same resolution; the Doctor made a gizmo that did the job. It showed Rose in an active role, which was what really worked. And the whole point of the gymnastics thing was that Rose got the Bronze certificate, which isn’t to say she came third. Those certificates were for charting progress. You did bronze, then silver and then gold. The bronze was very simple and would have involved doing a forward roll, maybe a simple vault and dismount. It was more or less a participation certificate. It wasn’t about Rose using her advanced gymnastics skills; it was just another way of pointing out that she was pretty ordinary, but was about to do something extraordinary in swinging on a chain and saving the Doctor. It was her bravery that was her stepping up to the mark. That’s why she didn’t really use her gymnastics again; she didn’t really have any to begin with!
Compared to much of what came later, Rose was an unremarkable episode. However, in 2005 nothing like it was on the box at all, so it stood out as a remarkable bit of TV. People were talking about it in shops and on the street. Doctor Who was back, baby and ordinary people liked it!
I did the watchalong during lockdown and RTD joined via Twitter. I was able to send him a tweet to tell him just how special I thought the relanch was and to thank him for bringing Doctor Who back and making it popular. He (or whoever was working his feed) hit the like button, so I felt hopeful that he had read it. I’d wanted to thank him for so long.
I like RTD’s writing and I like most of his Doctor Who episodes. I don’t like it uncritically, though, and there are some choices that I wish he hadn’t made, but he achieved such an amazing comeback that I can forgive all my subsequent niggles. Rose turned Doctor Who into a ratings juggernaut, helped in no small part by the episodes that followed, of course. But I still regard Rose as a shockwave event in TV history. It’s a great episode.
