The Doctor enters 19 year old Rose Tyler's life explosively as the Nestene Consciousness returns to Earth, bringing murderous mannequins to life in a new effort to claim the planet for itself.
- Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith
- Contemporary London, 2005
- New Series 1
- 1 episode
- 3/26/2005
Comments with major spoilers:
This is the first episode of the new version of the show and in short order it introduces us to a new Doctor, a new companion, and a new single story per episode format. It's an important episode of the program and was actually the second episode of the new show that I saw. Thing is, had it been the first I would have been a little bit disappointed. I don’t find it a particularly strong episode and I didn't like the character of Rose that much.
Not being a Rose fan is not exactly a big a deal now, but during the first couples of seasons, it rapidly became near heresy for a large portion of fandom to not obsessively love her. These same fans would have issues when the character eventually left. But that was later down the road. This is the beginning, although even back then for whatever reason something never quite clicked with me about Rose. Instead of being the "best ever!" I thought of her as "only" a better than average companion.
Beyond Rose, the story introduces the general gist of Doctor Who to a new audience via the old series plastic villains The Autons, essentially living plastic mannequins animated by the Nestene Consciousness, a sort of alien, bodiless, gestalt intelligence with a history of trying to conquer the Earth.
I was never a big fan of the Autons so while the images of mannequins clambering around killing people was visually pretty cool it didn't exactly excite my interest. Well, other then to wonder just how crazy skinny the stunt people in the Auton costumes were that is, because those killer mannequin costumes were very very thin.
Part of the reason I was sort of underwhelmed by the story was that for the most part it is an introduction to the ideas of Doctor Who, and already having been a fan of the show for decades much of this introduction time seemed redundant, so I spent a lot of the intro info dump going "yeah, yeah, I get it, Doctor shows up people die, blah blah, get on with it already."
Although, there are some lines designed to grab the interest of even grumpy "old timers" like me, such as mentions of a war, and the Doctor fighting in it and failing.
Picking nits:
When the episode first aired continuity obsessed fans were concerned with the scene where Conspiracy Clive shows Rose pictures of the Ninth Doctor at various places and times including the eruption of Krakatoa and at JFK's assassination. "Facts" introduced in the very same episode that reveal the Doctor doesn’t even know what he looks like, implying that this regeneration is very new (or that he's somehow been avoiding mirrors).
Some fans fretted at an apparent mistake, claiming the show was doomed if it couldn't avoid a simple 'mistake' like this. Some proposed that these pictures were evidence of future adventures he would have later, and some threw out the wacky idea that at the end of the episode when the Doctor initially takes off without Rose, he goes off and has some adventures lasting several days or weeks, including visiting Krakatoa and such. It then occurs to him that he never told Rose the TARDIS was a time machine, so he came back seconds after he left and uses this to successfully entice her to come along with him.
I prefer the last theory because It's a totally goofy idea.
Mickey:
One of the many things I'd forgotten about the episode was how immediately mean the Doctor is to Mickey. Granted, as presented in the episode Mickey goes from largely useless guy that Rose has obviously settled for (since she is so out of league), to totally useless coward endangering her life, so some antagonism is warranted. But the writing perhaps goes overboard with it, to the point that the Doctor's heckling is easily read as his being jealous of Mickey for being Rose's boyfriend. A "fact" that was deeply embraced by the Doctor / Rose shippers.
As is, while this is not exactly a great introduction for him, it does set Mickey on the road to be a character that successfully completes the arc from goof-head to hero. Well, more or less amyways.
Death rate:
Very high, not surprising considering there's a homicidal mannequin driven massacre in the middle of London. Much higher then I remembered. London massacres, especially around the holidays will become a recurring theme for the new show.
Random bits:
- Poor doomed conspiracy Clive illustrates another recurring theme: The safest place place to be in a Doctor Who story is as his companion. This idea, that it's minor characters / people not with the Doctor who die first and most often, is played with in the 11th Doctor story: Closing Time.
- The first look inside the Tardis was certainly a shock to us old timers. All decayed, open spaced, banged together with junk, and no roundles, only hexagon shapes reminiscent of the idea of them.
