Why I Like Pete Tyler
This week in stand up guys who get hit by cars, we have Pete Tyler. Pete Tyler was a stand up guy. Then he got hit by a car. That is all you need to know about Pete Tyler. Well, and also that there's two of him.
Pete Tyler is Rose Tyler's deceased father. He died when she was three months old and is therefore never mentioned. She never knew him, except through her mother's stories, but his absence has clearly left a real impression, and arguably informs her decision to run off with the Doctor in the first place. Getting to know her father is Rose's primary temptation across her run - "gingerbread house" as the Doctor puts it. They say you should never meet your heroes, though, and for good reason. Most of Pete's story in the show is Rose coming to terms with the fact that he is never what she wants or expects him to be - and then coming to terms with the fact that he's a stand up guy all the same. It's about making the hero human, and then valuing his humanity nonetheless. In between it hurts an awful lot, but they both come out better for it.
The real Pete Tyler is a failure. He's a small man trying to make it big, and it just never quite works out. He has big ideas and goes all-in on them, but they never pay off. He absolutely loves his wife, but is not above flirting with other people, and is never the single-mindedly devoted husband and father she wants him to be. He even manages to get her name wrong at the wedding. But his failures and setbacks never seem to set him back either. He moves from one daft plan to the next, and the Wrath of Jackie doesn't really faze or upset him much. Nor does narrowly escaping a fatal car crash - he just sort of laughs and brushes it off. Where Jackie is a constant storm of emotions, Pete is pretty much happy just to muddle through, eternally hopeful and distressingly ordinary. He does his best, and his best isn't really anything special, but he does it anyway.
He's also very empathic. He notices things, particularly things to do with people (oncoming cars, not so much). He connects with Rose immediately, and not just because she's a good-looking blonde who just saved his life. He's friendly as a matter of course, to basically everyone. And he picks up on all the little hints in what the Doctor and Rose keep saying - and pointedly not saying. The heart and soul of "Father's Day" is Pete slowly putting together the pieces and arriving at the correct conclusion - and the correct solution. He figures out who Rose is remarkably quickly, and his response is to want to spend time with her, even in the midst of global disaster. Even his questions about the future are primarily personal and interpersonal. After perfectly natural questions about time travel, he never asks "am I a success?" or "which of my schemes makes me rich" or whatever (contrast, say, Adam Mitchell) - he asks "do I go bald?" and "am I a good father?" And he knows when Rose is lying. He knows himself and his own flaws and foibles well enough that he knows the perfect Dad Rose describes is never him, never Pete Tyler the man. But he also knows himself well enough to know that Pete Tyler the man is enough. He's not a leader or a hero, neither the perfect father nor husband, but he's a good man - not capital-G Good, but good enough. And he is clever enough to figure out how to make things right, and strong enough to actually do it, even though he's afraid. Even his act of heroism at the end is very human, very small scale, and very personal. It's not some big redemptive Heroic Sacrifice type thing. What it is is his. His life, his death, his realization, and his choice. No one makes him go, or even tells him he should. And in so doing he not only saves the world, but he turns a meaningless death into a meaningful one.
Now, I mentioned that there were two Pete Tylers. There's Pete Prime, as we might say, and then there's his evil alternate universe counterpart. Except that Mirror Pete isn't evil (although he kind of seems that way at first) - he's successful. Instead of a warm-hearted bumbler, he's a slightly sinister captain of industry, important enough to have the President at his wife's birthday gala and the ear of John Lumic. He got rich "selling health drinks to a sick nation" - health drinks that are functionally rebranded soda. He is competent but cold and calculating, and the trademarked smile is fake. And the same qualities that have made him successful in business in this universe have kept him from the interpersonal successes he enjoyed in the other one. He still loves Jackie, but they never had children, their marriage has broken up, and their house is full of staff and strangers. There's almost a Female Success Is Family parable going on, except of course Pete is not female in either universe - but that's the trade-off, personal vs. professional. And this Pete is a Leader of Men - the Gemini mole feeding vital information on Cybus Industries to the resistance, and then taking over for Ricky as the leader of the Preachers, with Mickey as his lieutennant. He is concerned with the global scale, still observant but making plans and pulling strings. And keeping his distance.
Where Pete Prime immediately connected with Rose and accepted her as his own, and then lived that bond as fully as he had opportunity to, Mirror Pete never had a daughter, and every time Rose tries to be close to him he takes a step back. He's clearly got a lot of emotions going on, but he keeps putting his mask back up, and deliberately placing global concerns between them, pushing down the personal ones. Going off to shut down cyber factories, and shutting Rose down at the same time. "Look at her, Jackie, she's ours" vs. the very definite "you're not mine." And she's not, and he's not hers, no matter how much she wants him to be. The Doctor spends a good half of "Doomsday" trying to tempt Pete with the promise of the personal, using Jackie still being alive to get him invested in our world in addition to his own, and it doesn't work. This is a Pete for whom "personal isn't the same as important," and what's important is keeping his own world from boiling to death. Not getting a Replacement Goldfish of his dead wife. And yet, he does save Jackie (Prime) from the Cybermen, and he saves Rose from getting sucked into the void. I think Mirror Pete and Jackie Prime work out because they both realize that neither one is the person they've lost, each of them is settling for a second-best facsimile, but they're doing that together and it's good enough. She's not his Jackie, but she's a Jackie who has also lost, and he has the chance to do better by her than he did by his own marriage.
Each Pete hits a lot of tropes I am an absolute sucker for, and each Pete, different though they are, comes to be valued for who he actually is, and not as the image of a man he isn't. Pete Tyler is a good man and a good enough man, a stand up guy. And there's no eyepatch or distinctive facial hair to tell us which is the right one; there's no wrong way to be Pete Tyler.
Pete Tyler is Rose Tyler's deceased father. He died when she was three months old and is therefore never mentioned. She never knew him, except through her mother's stories, but his absence has clearly left a real impression, and arguably informs her decision to run off with the Doctor in the first place. Getting to know her father is Rose's primary temptation across her run - "gingerbread house" as the Doctor puts it. They say you should never meet your heroes, though, and for good reason. Most of Pete's story in the show is Rose coming to terms with the fact that he is never what she wants or expects him to be - and then coming to terms with the fact that he's a stand up guy all the same. It's about making the hero human, and then valuing his humanity nonetheless. In between it hurts an awful lot, but they both come out better for it.
The real Pete Tyler is a failure. He's a small man trying to make it big, and it just never quite works out. He has big ideas and goes all-in on them, but they never pay off. He absolutely loves his wife, but is not above flirting with other people, and is never the single-mindedly devoted husband and father she wants him to be. He even manages to get her name wrong at the wedding. But his failures and setbacks never seem to set him back either. He moves from one daft plan to the next, and the Wrath of Jackie doesn't really faze or upset him much. Nor does narrowly escaping a fatal car crash - he just sort of laughs and brushes it off. Where Jackie is a constant storm of emotions, Pete is pretty much happy just to muddle through, eternally hopeful and distressingly ordinary. He does his best, and his best isn't really anything special, but he does it anyway.
He's also very empathic. He notices things, particularly things to do with people (oncoming cars, not so much). He connects with Rose immediately, and not just because she's a good-looking blonde who just saved his life. He's friendly as a matter of course, to basically everyone. And he picks up on all the little hints in what the Doctor and Rose keep saying - and pointedly not saying. The heart and soul of "Father's Day" is Pete slowly putting together the pieces and arriving at the correct conclusion - and the correct solution. He figures out who Rose is remarkably quickly, and his response is to want to spend time with her, even in the midst of global disaster. Even his questions about the future are primarily personal and interpersonal. After perfectly natural questions about time travel, he never asks "am I a success?" or "which of my schemes makes me rich" or whatever (contrast, say, Adam Mitchell) - he asks "do I go bald?" and "am I a good father?" And he knows when Rose is lying. He knows himself and his own flaws and foibles well enough that he knows the perfect Dad Rose describes is never him, never Pete Tyler the man. But he also knows himself well enough to know that Pete Tyler the man is enough. He's not a leader or a hero, neither the perfect father nor husband, but he's a good man - not capital-G Good, but good enough. And he is clever enough to figure out how to make things right, and strong enough to actually do it, even though he's afraid. Even his act of heroism at the end is very human, very small scale, and very personal. It's not some big redemptive Heroic Sacrifice type thing. What it is is his. His life, his death, his realization, and his choice. No one makes him go, or even tells him he should. And in so doing he not only saves the world, but he turns a meaningless death into a meaningful one.
Now, I mentioned that there were two Pete Tylers. There's Pete Prime, as we might say, and then there's his evil alternate universe counterpart. Except that Mirror Pete isn't evil (although he kind of seems that way at first) - he's successful. Instead of a warm-hearted bumbler, he's a slightly sinister captain of industry, important enough to have the President at his wife's birthday gala and the ear of John Lumic. He got rich "selling health drinks to a sick nation" - health drinks that are functionally rebranded soda. He is competent but cold and calculating, and the trademarked smile is fake. And the same qualities that have made him successful in business in this universe have kept him from the interpersonal successes he enjoyed in the other one. He still loves Jackie, but they never had children, their marriage has broken up, and their house is full of staff and strangers. There's almost a Female Success Is Family parable going on, except of course Pete is not female in either universe - but that's the trade-off, personal vs. professional. And this Pete is a Leader of Men - the Gemini mole feeding vital information on Cybus Industries to the resistance, and then taking over for Ricky as the leader of the Preachers, with Mickey as his lieutennant. He is concerned with the global scale, still observant but making plans and pulling strings. And keeping his distance.
Where Pete Prime immediately connected with Rose and accepted her as his own, and then lived that bond as fully as he had opportunity to, Mirror Pete never had a daughter, and every time Rose tries to be close to him he takes a step back. He's clearly got a lot of emotions going on, but he keeps putting his mask back up, and deliberately placing global concerns between them, pushing down the personal ones. Going off to shut down cyber factories, and shutting Rose down at the same time. "Look at her, Jackie, she's ours" vs. the very definite "you're not mine." And she's not, and he's not hers, no matter how much she wants him to be. The Doctor spends a good half of "Doomsday" trying to tempt Pete with the promise of the personal, using Jackie still being alive to get him invested in our world in addition to his own, and it doesn't work. This is a Pete for whom "personal isn't the same as important," and what's important is keeping his own world from boiling to death. Not getting a Replacement Goldfish of his dead wife. And yet, he does save Jackie (Prime) from the Cybermen, and he saves Rose from getting sucked into the void. I think Mirror Pete and Jackie Prime work out because they both realize that neither one is the person they've lost, each of them is settling for a second-best facsimile, but they're doing that together and it's good enough. She's not his Jackie, but she's a Jackie who has also lost, and he has the chance to do better by her than he did by his own marriage.
Each Pete hits a lot of tropes I am an absolute sucker for, and each Pete, different though they are, comes to be valued for who he actually is, and not as the image of a man he isn't. Pete Tyler is a good man and a good enough man, a stand up guy. And there's no eyepatch or distinctive facial hair to tell us which is the right one; there's no wrong way to be Pete Tyler.