Well, this is awkward. Yes, Doctor Who might be over for you, though I’m trapped in that realm known as the past. Yes, for you time might just be a straight line going from one point to the next, but for me, I’ve made it this great big ball wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff. I’ve made it full loop back to 2005, back when a majority of 20-30-year-olds fell in love with a big-eared alien from the north (lots of planets have a north). Yes, I’m doing the stupid and I’ve gone back in time to retro review TV. When it was fine to joke that someone was “gay” without someone getting angry on the internet.

I think the first (and only) question I should counteract is, if you’re doing a “retro-review” why aren’t you going back to season 1 from November 22nd, 1963 at about 5 pm GMT? Well, I don’t want to sit and talk about JFK’s assassination for 30 minutes with only two minutes dedicated to Hartnell’s staple point of this character. I’m also not partial to “classic-era” Who when it was seasoned rather than lovely short serials. “New-who” is what cemented not just my love, but the love of many others. Then again I’ve also been partial to bash many of the episodes just the same. with that, let’s get to “Rose.”

Where’s the best place to start? Well, with Rose and her pedestrian life of getting up at 07:30, her mother probably watching some take on the insipid nonsense of Jeremy Kyle, and a montage of Rose going about her daily work life. Ah, human companions, you’re so boring. Though after a full day of working in some nondescript department store, she’s tasked to take some lottery money down to Wilson, the chief electrician, whatever that is. Though retaining that horror for kids, Wilson’s office is all the way down in the basement. The best place in TV for a whole host of creepy things to happen.

Rose, hearing a noise goes searching, assuming it is this elusive Wilson. It’s not. She gets locked in a storage room with a whole host of fully dressed mannequins. Mannequins that can move and cause terror in a household of watching 7-year-olds. The whole room of creepy plastic men and women start moving in a zombie-like trundle towards her, with fully buttoned-up shirts, dresses, and even the most terrifying open-shirt. They are all slowly backing Rose up against a wall until she hears “RUN!”

That’s how it is done, specifically showing our normal boring companion’s pedestrian life being overtaken by the weird and wonderful that follows, The Doctor. I don’t want to say that series 11 and 12 are bad, they’re not, but the most recent series, in particular, enjoys doing nothing. In two paragraphs I’m able to run down six minutes of TV, though with the most recent series it can often be several paragraphs. Russell T. Davies knew, not only how to write a great episode of TV quickly, but he knew how to get enough detail in with and keep you in the episode. To contrast this, Chris Chibnall seems to add every idea without thinking as to why any of it is needed.

Anyway, back to the several hundred-year-old alien with big ears, dragging a 19-year-old woman behind him into a lift, also known as an “elevator” for you Americans. It is another great teaching moment of how an episode of Doctor Who is written. If there is a chase scene, you have to have a door at the end. I’m not taking a slight dig at “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror,” ok I am, but this was mastered in episode 1. This entire episode is seminal to the next five years of Who and Davies career, not to mention it is a big reason why people love it.

That entire scene has every bit of energy the show is built upon: horror, action, sci-fi, comedy, and a bit of drama too. The “Who’s Wilson?” “Chief electrician,” “Wilson’s dead,” bit cements The Doctor as not only someone surrounded by death, but also discusses how quickly he has to move on from it. Eccleston himself did a great job in this series, (also his only series,) to balance both the dramatic weight of it all sitting on The Doctor’s shoulders, as well as the fun eccentric side of running and being in the room with stupid-looking aliens.

Back home with Jackie, Rose doesn’t know what to make of it. Plastic men, a weird man calling himself “The Doctor,” a bomb, it is all weird and nonsensical. Not the mention that in the morning that strange man is at her house, knocking her on the head, and rejecting her mum when she said: “There’s a strange man in my bedroom.” While Rose makes The Doctor coffee, he stumbles about in the living room, reading a story about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes a month early, flipping through a book, playing 52-card pickup, looking in the mirror, and finding the plastic hand. The hand Mickey (Rose’s boyfriend) got rid of the night before.

The night before, he played with it, pretending to be strangled by it. Now with it attacking The Doctor from behind the couch, Rose assumes the same of all men, “give ’em a plastic hand;” I don’t think that’s what they’ll all do with it. A quick bit of walking and talking later involves The Doctor being obtuse about who he is, and Rose being self-obsessed. Then comes that deep and meaningful Doctor that knows how to turn on a dime. His “I can feel it” speech shows just the gravity (pun not intended) he could bring following a bout of laughter.

A quick search on this “internet” over at Mickey’s house, Rose has found a site that says to contact Clive if you know anything about a mysterious man with a blue box. With the help of Mickey, Rose goes round to talk to this weirdo on the internet, someone Mickey doesn’t trust. I mean, who really trusts a man on the internet telling them something about a man in a blue box? Nutters, the lot of them! To put it simply, Clive is the type of Yorkshire man you hear of down in a pub, drinks by himself, and when he does talk, he’s talking about traveling to mars on a space hopper. Nevertheless, his conspiracy theories on The Doctor are right.

Ok, he’s not correct that The Doctor title is passed down in the family, but he’s right that The Doctor was around on the afternoon of November the 22nd 1963. All the while as Clive talks ghost stories with Rose, Mickey is sitting out in Bessie’s Beetle-based cousin. Nearby a plastic wheelie-bin starts moving, causing Mickey to check it out with laughably bad 2005 special effects as his hands are stuck to it. Look, for Americans it might feel like you’re watching a show for three-year-olds, but Doctor Who is a show with the budget a 10th the size of Westworld‘s catering accounts, it will look a bit crap in places. It is supposed to.

Now that the bin has eaten Mickey his life’s in plastic, (it’s fantastic.) Rose leaves Clive’s place thinking he’s a complete lunatic, resulting in the new plastic Mickey and Rose going out for dinner, where Mickey is overly concerned with The Doctor. Some northern bloke is offering the two some wine and surprise! It’s The Doctor who pulls off Mickey’s head. The body now features slab hands. This also leads to the start of one of my favorite “tropes” of Who, the “It’s bigger on the inside” moment. It’s just such a pure moment; until Clara defecates on that.

I’ve said it already, but Eccleston just knows how to go from that fun moment of pure child-like wonder as someone walks into the TARDIS, to his angry speech about trying to save humans. No one since has mastered that ability to be happy one moment, angry the next, and back to happy fun Doctor seconds later. It might be because he was my first, but god he’s good, and possibly the best? One minute he’s calling humans stupid, then the next can play his own obliviousness fantastically. With a plan in hand, he’s ready to go, he just needs to find a big round disc in the center of London.

With the Anti-plastic in hand, the alien’s plan spotted, and some way down to the alien, it is time to go confront it. It is also the first mention of the Shadow Proclamation, a beautiful set of rules that could do as a great over-arching theme in a series. With that said, I am not a fan of the speech with the Nestene Consciousness, something about it doesn’t work and the first response would be that it’s just a special effect The Doctor is talking to. I’d say some of it is that, and some of it could be the writing. It is wonderful writing no doubt, but it is still too grand for the threat it comes off as.

Then, of course, Jackie and Rose seal both the threat of the monster and Eccleston’s speech about us being unconscious to the danger around us. Another example of Davies’ brilliant writing is just tying Clive back in with the signal going out the mannequins around him. After all his babble about how all The Doctor brings death, he’s the one to die in his wake. Though the creepiest of all the mannequins are the children, every last one of those plastic monsters should be killed with fire.

While panic ensues above ground, in the subterranean pit of plastic Rose does something simple and effective to get rid of the threat. A threat she doesn’t know is about to kill her mother, but with a swing on a chain and a bit about her gymnastics background, she saves The Doctor, her mum, and the world. We don’t get Mickey’s inside response to the TARDIS after being rescued from the Nestene Consciousness, but his shock and horror exit does just the same. However, not even his terror can stop Rose from the excitement of a box that travels through space and time.

Was it the best introduction episode? No, not even in this series either, later there are better re-introductions and introductions of new monsters. The best regeneration episode comes as the Christmas special at the end of the year and start of the next series. The best companion introduction by far goes to “Smith and Jones,” anyone else who says otherwise is lying. However, there is a reason we’ve just wrapped up the 10th straight week of Doctor Who series 12 reviews. This episode is one of them.

Part of the praise I’ll admit is the rose-tinted vision of youth, excitement surrounding the show’s return, and finding all of this new again. I remember sitting down to watch each episode hearing about how one of my uncles was petrified of the upside-down space Nazi bins known as The Dalek. Part of it is the history, the knowledge, and the hope that the title character brings. We might have had to wait for 15-years before Picard would bring hope back to our TVs, but I was happy with this big-eared weirdo from the north.

“Rose” is a solid episode of TV that relaunched the ship that is Doctor Who. It is by no means perfect, but it didn’t stumble and fall from its feet straight away.

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Doctor Who "Rose"

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Christopher Eccleston's pinpoint turns
• Cheesy 2005 TV special effects.

Cons

• Notable continuity issues in writing.
• The final speech is a little cack-handed.