OOC: Application
NAME: Rose Marion Tyler
SERIES: Doctor Who
SERIES' MEDIUM: live-action TV show
ROLE IN CANON: goodguy, sidekick, love interest, deus ex machina
AGE: 19
GENDER: female
"REAL NAME:" Sally Powell
HISTORY
(NOTE: Everything from before Rose meets the Doctor is either implied during the series or comes from interviews with Russell T. Davies, the current showrunner who created Rose’s character.)
Rose was a shopgirl - the kind of person who knew all her life that she would be a shopgirl. It’s implied that no one, not even her own mother, believed she could be anything more. Her father, Peter Alan Tyler, was an unemployed loser who went from project to project hoping one day he’d get lucky and make a fortune. Her mother, Jacqueline Andrea Suzette “Jackie” Prentice, worked from home as a hairdresser. It’s implied that Pete and Jackie married out of necessity rather than true love - Rose was born only a few months after their wedding (at which Pete got Jackie’s name wrong). When Rose was just six months old, her father was killed in a hit-and-run car accident while on the way to a friend’s wedding. Jackie was left to raise Rose alone, and never got a job better than hairdresser or even moved out of the tiny flat she and Pete had shared in the Powell Estate in Southwark, London.
Formal education and Rose never got along well. She attended Jericho Street Junior School, where her greatest accomplishment was winning the Bronze medal for under-7’s gymnastics. At fourteen, she began dating fellow student Mickey Smith. Her best friend through school (who we never see onscreen, so they can’t be THAT close) was a girl called Shareen. At fifteen, Rose was suspended from her high school, Jericho Street Comprehensive, for persuading the school choir to go on strike. She did well on her GCSE’s, but almost immediately after taking them dropped out of school to live with Jimmy Stone, a twenty-year-old musician. Things didn’t work out with Jimmy, and Rose returned home £800 in debt. Picking up her life where she left off wasn’t terribly difficult: she started dating Mickey again, and graduated high school (but with no A-levels). Jackie called in a favor with an ex-boyfriend to get Rose a job as a shopgirl at Henrik’s Department Store in Regent Street.
And it was shaping up to be a boring, ordinary life. Every day, Rose woke up at 7:30am, caught the bus to work, took a lunch break with Mickey, caught the bus home, ate chips and watched telly, and then went to sleep, ready to do the exact same thing tomorrow.
Until she met the Doctor. It was a normal, boring day like any other. That night, Rose was dropping off lottery money with the chief electrician, Wilson, in the basement. Little did she know that Wilson had been murdered by sentient mannequins. Rose only escaped in the nick of time, thanks to a mysterious stranger who rescued her from the mannequins and blew up the entire store.
After this, Rose became obsessed with finding the man who had saved her life. A little searching on the internet and she found Clive. Clive believed that this man, known only as “the Doctor,” was an immortal alien from another world, which convinced Rose that Clive was a nutter. But then Mickey was kidnapped by a sentient trashcan and - without Rose’s noticing - replaced by a plastic version of himself. The Doctor appeared again, just in time to save Rose from Plastic Mickey. He explained to her that he was trying to save the world and she really couldn’t help him. But she pursued him doggedly until she learned the truth: he really WAS an alien, and he traveled around the universe in a blue 1950’s police box that was bigger on the inside. The sentient plastic (Nestene) came from another world, too - one that was destroyed in a great war. It was invading Earth with the intention of wiping away humanity and claiming the planet as its own. The Doctor had a vial of anti-plastic, which would kill it, if only he could find the Nestene Consciousness. He told Rose that the Consciousness needed a large transmitter: something big, metal, and wheel-shaped. Rose pointed out what was right in front of him: the Millennium Eye. Together, the Doctor and Rose defeated the plastic and rescued the real Mickey.
Because she was brave and able to think on her feet and seemed to enjoy the adventure, the Doctor invited Rose to travel with him. At first she refused - she had to take care of Mickey and her mum. But then he told her that his ship, the TARDIS, could also travel in time. With one last glance back at Mickey, Rose dashed inside the TARDIS, eager to begin her new life.
For their first trip, the Doctor took Rose five billion years into the future, to the day when the Earth was destroyed by the Sun. He assured her that all life on Earth was gone - spread out across the universe, and the destruction of the planet was a sort of sport for the wealthy who could pay to watch the planet burn from a shielded viewing platform. Of course, things didn’t go according to plan: one of the guests was trying to kill everyone else. The Doctor and Rose found the culprit - Cassandra, the “last pure human” - and saved the day. Cassandra was killed. Though Rose was incredibly disturbed by the fact five billion years in the future, she and everyone she cared about would be dead, the Doctor returned her to 21st century London and assured her that they weren’t really gone. He admitted that his own world burned in the war that destroyed the Nestene’s world: the Time War. Because of the nature of the Time War - it took place outside time - his planet was lost forever and he couldn’t simply go back in time to visit it. Hearing this, Rose made up her mind to stay with the Doctor as long as he would let her.
The Doctor took Rose too all sort of places in time and space: 1869, 200,000 years in the future, and Cardiff. On one trip, they visited the year 2012, where they defeated the last Dalek: a squid-like creature inside a nearly indestructible metal pepper-pot-shaped box. The Doctor came clean about the Time War: not only were the Time Lords all killed and their planet destroyed, but the Daleks, the Time Lords’ enemies, were also destroyed and their homeworld of Skaro obliterated. The Doctor implied that he himself ended the War by killing everyone. He tried to kill the last Dalek, but Rose stood in the way. She wouldn’t let him harm a creature who was so lost and sad. The Dalek ultimately decided to kill itself.
On a visit to WWII, they picked up a former Time Agent turned conman, Captain Jack Harkness. Both the Doctor and Rose were initially leery of him, but he proved to be a good man and worthy of traveling with them.
There was one thing Rose wanted more than anything in the world, and she finally worked up the nerve to ask the Doctor for it: to travel back to 1987 and hold her father’s hand while he died. The Doctor agreed, but instead of simply comforting her dying father, Rose saved his life. This created a tear in the fabric of reality, allowing giant bat-like creatures called Reapers into the world to “fix” reality by eating everyone in sight. The TARDIS lost the Time Vortex, trapping the Doctor and Rose in 1987. The Doctor was furious, but before giving his life to save Rose, Pete, Jackie, and a small group of survivors, he forgave Rose. They were sure the world was about to end, but Pete began working things out. He figured that Rose must be his daughter all grown up, and the car that barely missed him was meant to have killed him. And that very car was circling around outside the church they were hiding in. Knowing that he had to die to right the world, Pete ran outside and threw himself in front of the car. Everyone the Reapers killed, including the Doctor, was restored, and Rose held her father’s hand as he died.
One day, something quite impossible occurred. The Doctor, Rose, and Jack all blacked out, and when they woke up they found themselves trapped inside game shows. The Doctor battled to escape a version of the Big Brother House where getting “evicted” meant getting disintegrated, while Jack had to flee a rather deadly makeover on What Not To Wear. They both got out, but were too late to save Rose from a robot version of Anne Robinson after Rose proved to be the Weakest Link.
A very annoyed Doctor and Jack headed up to central control on Floor 500, where it was explained that they were on a game show satellite 200,100 years in the future, broadcasting thousands of channels to a heavily polluted Earth below. The Controller - who was plugged into the games to monitor them, but was herself being controlled by mysterious “masters” - brought the Doctor there to defeat said masters. Jack discovered that the “disintegrator beam” was in fact a transmat, which sent people to an empty spot on the edges of the galaxy. But it wasn’t empty. The game station was broadcasting a cloaking signal, hiding a Dalek fleet billions strong. The Dalek Emperor had escaped the Time War and built a new race of Daleks out of the remains of all the humans he captured and killed from the games. Once the fleet was strong enough, he intended to destroy humanity and build a new Skaro from the remains of Earth.
The Doctor saved Rose from the Dalek fleet, and while Jack organized the satellite’s defenses, he began building the only thing he could think of to stop the Daleks: a Delta Wave. But with no way to refine it, it would wipe out not only the Daleks, but all life on Earth as well. He justified this by the fact that the human race had spread across the stars by now, and he would not be wiping them out entirely. But he couldn’t kill Rose. So he tricked her into returning to the 21st century in the TARDIS, instructing her to go back to her mum and let the TARDIS rot.
Rose was devastated that she wouldn’t be with him in the upcoming battle. Jackie and Mickey tried to convince her that it was for the best, and she was almost ready to give up until she saw the words Bad Wolf written in chalk in a playground. Those words had followed her through time and space and she never understood their meaning, only that they seemed to be everywhere. She realized that they were a message, a reminder not to give up hope. She opened the Heart of the TARDIS and absorbed the Time Vortex into her mind, turning her into a god. She returned to the Doctor, and with a wave of her hand, Rose (now the Bad Wolf) wiped out the Daleks, effectively ending the Time War. Jack died in the fighting, but with another wave of her hand Rose returned him to life. But no one was meant to absorb the Time Vortex, and the energy was slowly killing her. The Doctor took the energy from her and released it back into the TARDIS. He brought Rose home, accidentally stranding the newly-revived Jack. Some of the energy remained inside the Doctor, and it killed him. But Time Lords have a “trick,” allowing them to cheat death by changing every cell in their body. The Doctor changed his face and to an extent his personality, but he assured Rose that he was still essentially the same man. At first, Rose was wary of the new Doctor, but she fully accepted him after he saved the world on Christmas Day.
They continued to travel together, having wacky adventures in time and space. When they landed in the city of New New York on New Earth, Rose’s body got hijacked by a disembodied Cassandra, whose brain matter had survived. Cassandra noted that Rose seemed rather attracted to the Doctor, and even shared a good snog with him while in her body.
But the Doctor was almost a thousand years old, and Rose was barely twenty. No matter how much they cared about each other, it would be impossible for them to be together forever. As the Doctor said: Rose could spend the rest of her life with him, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life with her. The hard truth was brought to light when they met a former companion of the Doctor’s, Sarah Jane Smith. Though she and the Doctor were supposedly very close once, he just left her behind one day. When Rose confronted him about this, he vowed he would never leave her the way he had left Sarah Jane.
After having it rubbed in his face that he was only the “technical support,” Mickey decided to travel in the TARDIS. But when the TARDIS accidentally crash-landed in an alternate reality, his life was put in jeopardy while the Doctor and Rose were too busy with each other and a world crisis to notice. In the alternate reality, John Lumic created Cybermen, robots with a human brain welded inside. Mickey fell in with his alternate self, Rickey, while Rose and the Doctor teamed up with alt!Pete Tyler, who was still alive and in fact filthy rich. Eventually, they all banded together and destroyed the London Cyber Factory. When the Doctor finally got the TARDIS fixed and ready to return to their own reality, Mickey decided to stay behind and continue the battle against the Cybermen.
The Doctor and Rose continued to travel, facing down werewolves, clockwork monsters, an evil television, and even Satan himself.
On a trip back home, they discovered the presence of “ghosts.” According to Jackie, this was perfectly normal and the ghosts had been around, all across the world, for months. The Doctor and Rose traced the origin of the ghosts to Torchwood Tower (more popularly known as Canary Warf). An organization called Torchwood, founded by Queen Victoria in 1879 to combat the “alien threat,” had built Canary Warf to reach a temporal anomaly, which they had learned to open and close at will. Opening the breach allowed the ghosts in, and closing it by means of levers could block the ghosts out.
The head of Torchwood, Yvonne Hartman, captured the Doctor and Jackie, but Rose snuck down in the basement, where a mysterious sphere was being kept. The Doctor recognized the sphere as a Void Ship - something made to travel through the Void between realities.
In her foray into the basement, Rose bumped into Mickey, who had found a way to cross the Void. He explained that that “ghosts” were really Cybermen. And sure enough, millions of Cybermen burst through the breach, covering the entire world. Matters were complicated when the sphere opened, revealing four Daleks and a prison ship containing millions more. The Daleks and the Cybermen battled across London, but the Doctor had a plan. He would open the breach, and everything carrying “Void stuff” (anything that had passed through the Void) would be sucked in. Unfortunately, this included Rose, Mickey, and Jackie. The Doctor insisted that the three of them retreated to the alternate reality with Pete, while he stayed to open the breach. He could cling to a giant magnet and hopefully not get sucked in.
But Rose refused to be sent away from him again. Over the objections of Mickey and her parents, she returned to the Doctor’s side and helped him open the breach. Her lever didn’t quite lock, however, and in trying to lock it she nearly got sucked in. Pete showed up at the last second and brought her to the alternate reality. The walls between realities closed forever, and Rose was trapped. The Doctor was able to exploit one final crack in the fabric of reality to say goodbye, but told her that if anyone were to travel between the realities again, the universe would probably collapse.
Rose went on to work at Torchwood in the alternate reality. And it took several years, but she found a way back. With alt!Torchwood, she began work on a "dimension canon" which would allow her to travel between realities. But because the parallel realities had sealed themselves off, the canon didn't work. But then one day, it started to. And then the stars started going out. And it wasn't just in the alternate reality - the stars were going out in every reality. The Earth was stolen out of time and space, hidden where the Doctor couldn't find it by his arch-nemesis Davros, creator of the Daleks. Davros had created a "reality bomb," which would wipe out all life in all realities, leaving only his reconstructed Dalek fleet. The Doctor's former ally Harriet Jones found a way to lead the Doctor to Earth, but was killed in the process. Rose was reunited with the Doctor, and they teamed up with the Doctor's current companion, Donna Noble, and Captain Jack to get on board the Dalek command ship. The Doctor was mortally wounded by a Dalek, but because he had his severed hand (which had been cut off in a duel two years before but had regrown), he could channel the excess regeneration energy into that so he wouldn't have to change his face. When Donna was trapped inside the TARDIS, she touched the hand, causing a biological metacrisis, growing a second (and human) Doctor out of the hand. The second Doctor wiped out the Daleks, and all the googuys escaped safely.
The walls between realities were closing again, so the Doctor dropped Rose back off in the alternate reality. He left the human Doctor with her, giving the two of them the possibility of living happily ever after.
PERSONALITY
I think it’s fair to say that Rose has been labeled a “dumb blonde chav” her whole life, told time and time again that she should be grateful for the life she has. Her own mother scolds her for “getting uppity” about working in a shop. She’s always had to settle: she settled for Mickey because he was a safe, steady boyfriend, and she settled for being a shopgirl because it was a safe, steady job. Part of her was probably defeated by the Jimmy Stone affair, or by being told her whole life that the best thing she could hope to accomplish was working in a shop. Safe and steady is obviously attractive to her, on some level. When the Doctor first asks her to travel with him, she says no. In the alternate reality, she tracks down her family, hoping that they are intact and happy. And when alt!Pete and Jackie meet, she wills them to be together, because she wants a family.
But in the end, no matter that she hesitates, Rose will always choose adventure over the safety of routine. Growing up, she probably felt that something was missing from her life but didn’t know where to look for it. She tried to avoid the safe, steady path by running away with Jimmy. That didn’t work out, but an emotional breakup and a few hundred pounds worth of debt didn’t stop her trying. When she met the Doctor, she pursued him instead of just letting him go. Rose is very curious about everything and very willing to explore and experience new things. She’s the sort of person who, when asked what futuristic slushies taste like, will drink one to find out, instead of asking someone else. The downside of this is that when the Doctor tells her to stay put, she’ll go wandering off anyway (and usually land in trouble). Her curiosity sometimes gets the better of her common sense.
As much as she shows little regard for her own safety, she is very concerned about other people’s wellbeing. Rose is a compassionate person, who is always quick to make sure that others are okay and always eager to chat with new people. She offers comfort and support to all sorts of people, even those that many wouldn’t bother with or feel threatened by. And of course she always, always puts the Doctor ahead of herself. When the Dalek in Van Statten’s Museum is about to kill her, she does her best to make sure the Doctor won’t blame himself for her death.
In a way, her compassion is also a coping mechanism. Time after time, Rose finds herself smack in the middle of a culture that she doesn’t understand one bit, so she seeks out people that she feels she can talk to (usually lower-class people) and chats with them about plumbing or boys or other things she can connect to. This not only makes the other people feel better that someone’s talking to them, but it also makes Rose feel less overwhelmed by the strangeness of everything: if they still have plumbers and like boys, it can’t be too different from her own world.
Even her compassion can sometimes get her in trouble, though. Her sympathy for the Dalek actually gets a bunch of people killed. And when she tries to take care of a guy who was possessed by Satan, she fails to see that he’s still possessed by Satan until he’s already caused a lot of damage. All she can see is people and creatures in pain, and she always tries to resolve that pain even when she should exercise more caution.
But in spite of her compassion, Rose can be self-absorbed, bratty, and take those closest to her (especially Mickey) for granted. Mickey was the safe and steady boyfriend that she was forced to settle for, and part of her probably resents him for that. He keeps trying to prove that he’s more, that he’s worthy of her, that he loves her in a far more lasting way than the Doctor ever could, but she never seems to buy it. The closest she comes to accepting him as a real boyfriend is when they’re on a stopover to “fuel up” in Cardiff and he suggests they get a hotel room for the night. She agrees, but he immediately admits that he’s been seeing someone else (Trisha Delaney, who Rose spitefully refers to as “a bit BIG”) because he can’t wait around for her forever. Rose is quite upset, not because he was about to cheat on Trisha but because she thinks he’s only dating Trisha as a poor replacement for Rose herself. She turns it into something that’s all about her (she even says, “This is all about me, isn’t it!”). Mickey tells her that the way she ran off with the Doctor made him feel like “nothing.” She grudgingly apologizes for that, but the truth is that she does expect Mickey to live his life running when she calls and staying behind when she doesn’t want him. When he wants to come on the TARDIS, Rose turns nasty and full of animosity, even though she was happy to invite Sarah Jane along. And while Mickey is trying to make himself a useful part of the TARDIS crew, the Doctor and Rose ignore him and make him feel left out (although this is probably unintentional on the Doctor’s part). However, by the time he returns, Rose has grown to respect him, and grown quite a bit as a person. She even calls him the “bravest man [she’s] ever met,” because she knows it’s what he needs to hear.
Rose is also observant - perhaps something she’s developed over time, traveling with the Doctor. She sees a Cyberman helmet in Van Statten’s museum for about ten seconds, and is able to recall it a year later. She picks up on the overabundance of TV aerials in 1950’s London, the London Eye, and an unusual number of missing kids posters. And while she’s noticing all the missing kids, she’s simultaneously listening to the Doctor babble about how he likes edible ball bearings. At the end of that episode, she brings him a cupcake with edible ball bearings on them, because she remembers how much he said he liked them and wanted to do something nice for him. Though a lot of people do classify her as a “dumb blonde chav,” she proves that being uneducated and dumb are NOT the same thing. She did well on her GCSE’s, and the fact that she busts out several random facts she picked up watching TV hints at the fact that if she’d tried for her A-levels, she probably would have done passably well. The fact is that she’s not well-educated, but she is clever.
Also, she’s stubborn as hell. She never lets the Doctor make her choices for her, especially when those choices involve her leaving him and living a normal life with her mum. Time, death, and alternative realities can’t keep her away from him. It’s not that she selfishly clings to him; she knows he’s lonely and she loves him and wants to help him. She doesn’t take crap from him, either - when he tells her not to go see alt!Pete, she ignores him and tells him that he can’t stop her, she’s going to see her dad no matter what. And she is perfectly capable of saving the day without him - when he’s trapped inside the drawing, she puts all the facts together, acts on them, and saves the day by herself with a pick-axe while being screamed at for stealing said pick-axe. When she’s trapped in a rocket with a guy possessed by Satan, she has the presence of mind to unbuckle his seatbelt and then break the window, sending him hurtling out into space. And when she makes a big break in a mystery about TV aerials, she goes off and investigates and discovers the truth without the Doctor’s help at all. Nor is she a pushover - she doesn’t bow down and kiss ass no matter who you are (even if you’re Queen Victoria). It's not so much that she's deliberately rebelling against people of a higher rank than her - more that she has no sense of rank; she treats everyone the same.
One of Rose’s defining characteristics is the will to make change. She inspires people, she organizes and takes charge, and she has the courage and strength of character to take a stand against those who would oppose her.
But most of all, she loves life. She adores living the crazy life she leads in the TARDIS with the Doctor. Every time they land in a new place, she’s never hesitant or fearful - she’s more often than not the first out of the door, eager to see where he’s brought her and soak it all in. Rose always takes the opportunity to dress up in the style of the period. She takes great joy in the little things, like grass that smells like apples. And though she is often overwhelmed by things she couldn’t possibly understand, she never lets herself freeze up or be dumbfounded (unless she’s terrified out of her wits, which is pretty rare) - she always finds a way to work through what she’s experiencing (even if some of her coping mechanisms make her seem callous). Also, Rose never questions what the Doctor and the TARDIS can do. She's certainly shocked when she first encounters the Doctor, but never shows any skepticism. It's not that she’s not particularly gullible, but she still has that almost childlike belief that the impossible can happen and the universe is more full of wonders than she could imagine.
Her vivaciousness has a downside, however. It’s not unusual for her to take it too far, swapping jokes with the Doctor and being downright cavalier in the midst of terror and death. Queen Victoria reprimands her quite harshly for this, but even then Rose has a hard time taking the situation seriously. When trapped in Downing Street, she makes an inappropriately timed joke about clothing size, and Harriet Jones calls her out on it. Rose apologizes, but points out that “you get used to this stuff when you’re friends with [the Doctor].” Faced with a werewolf, Rose is stopped dead in her tracks when she sees it rip a man apart. Her immediate response upon regaining use of higher cognition is to turn to the Doctor and squee “Werewolf!” and hug him. To an extent, she’s dismissing the man’s death, but she’s also dealing with it the only way she knows how: with humor. This often makes her seem callous and uncaring about the mayhem and death around her. But if there’s one thing that Rose Tyler knows, it’s that life is for the alive, and she is truly alive and loving every second of it.
She grows in self-confidence and matures quite a bit over the course of he travels with the Doctor. The more she travels with him, the more she becomes like him. She’s far more happy-go-lucky in Series 2 than she is in Series 1, and she also becomes more prone to mercurial mood changes. In 1953, she’s angrily reprimanding a guy for hanging the Union flag upside-down (and secretly having a blast doing it), but as soon as she’s done talking she bursts into a wide grin and runs off. She also grows more at ease when facing down enemies. At the start of Series 2, she tries to convince an evil alien horde to back down by stammering her way through in ineffective monologue filled with terms she’s vaguely remembering or just pulling out of her ass. But by the end of the Series 2, she calmly squares off with the leader of the Daleks and actually makes him afraid of her. This may partly have to do with the fact that at the beginning of Series 2 she can’t remember anything she did as the Bad Wolf, but the memory seems have come back by the end of the series. Where I’m taking her from, she’s just about in the middle of this growth.
POWERS & ABILITIES
Rose has absolutely no power. But those who can sense true forms will still have a lot of confusion trying to puzzle her out.
First, Rose “burns like the sun.” She appears as bright and full of strange, ancient energy. There is also something about her that says “wolf.” These are both results of her absorbing the Time Vortex and becoming the Bad Wolf. Also because of this, part of her still appears as the powerful Time Goddess - the most ancient and eternal being in existence. This is not inherent to Rose, but at the same time it isn’t a foreign entity “taking over” her.
Rose also carries both “Void stuff” and “Artron energy.” The first appears as swirling dust particles and marks her as one who has crossed the Void between realities. The second is invisible, but manifests as an almost physical knowledge that Rose is far from home. It marks her as someone who has traveled in the space/time vortex.
There is one thing she can do (or did do, as the Bad Wolf) that might be considered a power, called Bad Wolf Virus. Basically, any official trace of Rose’s connection to the Doctor has been erased. For instance, her medical records/birth certificate/school transcripts/etc would be intact, but all mention of her in the Torchwood archives is corrupted/deleted. I don’t think that could possibly apply at Landel’s, though.