Doctor Who, "Rose"
I watched "Rose" last night, from the Doctor Who S1 marathon I recorded last week. A few quick thoughts:
Russell T. Davies and company do a great job in this episode of (re-)establishing the parameters of the Doctor Who universe and of reinvigorating them for a new century and a new Doctor. It's fast-paced and exciting and has the requisite odd aliens, and the living mannequins, when they first come after Rose in the store basement, are effectively creepy.
What's even better, though, is that within the course of the episode, they manage to establish three points that are crucial to understanding this new Who, and that are, I think, three of the overarching themes of the show -- both now, at the beginning, for Nine and Rose, on into now, for Ten and Martha and even Captain Jack.
Those three points:
1. The first spoken words in the episode -- the first spoken words in the entire show -- are "Goodbye." Rose says it twice during the opening montage, first to her mother and then to Mickey. This sets up the choice that Rose is going to make in the end, the choice that we-the-audience know all along she's going to make, but it also sets up the idea that people leave each other, and that they will continue to leave each other throughout the show. The Doctor is about goodbyes. The Doctor will always leave, and eventually he has to leave someone behind.
2. Clive tells Rose that the Doctor does have one constant companion: Death. He shows up when death is going to happen, but he also brings death with him. Even though Clive is wrong in many of the particulars of his research, and even though he's wrong about the Doctor's intentions -- he's assuming here that the Doctor creates the disasters and destruction, rather than realizing that he shows up when they're imminent and tries to prevent them -- but in the long run, he's correct. Death is the Doctor's companion, the only one who will never leave him. See also Nine's later conversation with Margaret Blaine in "Boomtown," when she accurately pegs him as a murderer; Ten's speech in Southwark Cathedral about watching people go to dust in "The Lazarus Experiment"; and many, many other conversations. See also:
3. "I fought in the War. It wasn't my fault...I couldn't save any of them." What Nine tells the Nastene Consciousness in the warehouse, and the continued insinuations and hints we've gotten since about just what, exactly, happened in the Time War, and how much guilt and/or responsibility the Doctor bears for that.
Russell T. Davies and company do a great job in this episode of (re-)establishing the parameters of the Doctor Who universe and of reinvigorating them for a new century and a new Doctor. It's fast-paced and exciting and has the requisite odd aliens, and the living mannequins, when they first come after Rose in the store basement, are effectively creepy.
What's even better, though, is that within the course of the episode, they manage to establish three points that are crucial to understanding this new Who, and that are, I think, three of the overarching themes of the show -- both now, at the beginning, for Nine and Rose, on into now, for Ten and Martha and even Captain Jack.
Those three points:
1. The first spoken words in the episode -- the first spoken words in the entire show -- are "Goodbye." Rose says it twice during the opening montage, first to her mother and then to Mickey. This sets up the choice that Rose is going to make in the end, the choice that we-the-audience know all along she's going to make, but it also sets up the idea that people leave each other, and that they will continue to leave each other throughout the show. The Doctor is about goodbyes. The Doctor will always leave, and eventually he has to leave someone behind.
2. Clive tells Rose that the Doctor does have one constant companion: Death. He shows up when death is going to happen, but he also brings death with him. Even though Clive is wrong in many of the particulars of his research, and even though he's wrong about the Doctor's intentions -- he's assuming here that the Doctor creates the disasters and destruction, rather than realizing that he shows up when they're imminent and tries to prevent them -- but in the long run, he's correct. Death is the Doctor's companion, the only one who will never leave him. See also Nine's later conversation with Margaret Blaine in "Boomtown," when she accurately pegs him as a murderer; Ten's speech in Southwark Cathedral about watching people go to dust in "The Lazarus Experiment"; and many, many other conversations. See also:
3. "I fought in the War. It wasn't my fault...I couldn't save any of them." What Nine tells the Nastene Consciousness in the warehouse, and the continued insinuations and hints we've gotten since about just what, exactly, happened in the Time War, and how much guilt and/or responsibility the Doctor bears for that.