30 days meme (5)
Day 5: Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)
"This is where I was born. And this is where I died. The first nineteen years of my life, nothing happened. Nothing at all, not ever. And then I met a man called the Doctor. A man who could change his face. And he took me away from home in his magical machine. He showed me the whole of time and space. I thought it would never end."
Rose Tyler. When we first meet her, she's nineteen, bored, and stuck in a life that isn't taking her anywhere. She's so much more than this. When she meets the Doctor, it's a mixture of curiosity, boredom and this promise of this other life - all of time and space, who could resist? - that drives her to go with him. And who can blame her, really? Except it's also kind of important that she hesitates - she refuses his offer first, because of her family, because of MIckey, because she's a little bit scared maybe? But the Doctor comes back for her. A second chance. Because whatever happens, Rose Tyler is lucky. Because she always gets a second chance - now, a second chance at this whole new life, later, a second chance with her father, and finally a second chance at a life with the human-Timelord Doctor.
But even though she's this nineteen year old human, and he's this nine hundred year old Doctor, it's never about him saving her. From the very first episode, you have her, with none of his Timelord brains or his experience, and she takes what she does have - this time, a bronze in an under-seven gymnastics competition - and saves him. It's not the last time she'll do that. And that's part of what you have to love about Rose. She has nothing on the Doctor, but she never ever lets herself feel inferior and she never lets him tell her what to do and she never tells him what to do. It's a partnership. It's two people standing on a lonely beach holding hands.
And yes, she does fall in love with him, and maybe that happens later. But she loves him first, she loves him, this lonely, terrible alien, this soldier from the Time War who has just killed two species so that the rest of the universe can live. He doesn't love him. But she does. And it saves him, really; it's just one more way she saves him. And at the end of the first season, that love is so much that she looks into the time vortex and becomes the Bad Wolf. She transcends the laws of time and space, and she saves people. All that power - all that terrible power - and her first act is to end the Time War and bring Captain Jack back to life. The last act of the Time War is one of life.
It brings her arc in a full circle, and the Doctor's too - because Doctor Who, being a show about time travel is all about circular timelines. And the next regeneration of the Doctor recognises that too - his hand is made to hold hers. From being a man who despises domesticity - or so he says - he becomes part of her family. Christmas dinners. And it's a little bit perfect.
She's brave, we know this, and she recognises the universe as being so much bigger than her. But she's selfish too, and oh so loyal. She's found where she belongs, who she is, and when it comes to leaving the Doctor, leaving this life behind in Doomsday, she just can't do it. She refuses to go, refuses to let him tell her what to do, and she leaves her family behind, just like she left Mickey behind all the way back in Rose, and she stays with him. And it doesn't mean she loves Mickey or Jackie any less, and yes, it is because she loves the Doctor, but it's also because this is what she's meant to do. Stand next - not behind - to him. Fight the end of the universe. Rose Tyler. Defender of the Earth. It's because she so much more than a daughter, so much more than a wife, a girlfriend. Women have always been defined in terms of men. Rose Tyler. Defender of the Earth.
And they get separated and it's a little bit heartbreaking and I should wrap this up because who's going to read my entire rant? But she doesn't wait for him to come find her. She builds a freaking dimension hopper, and much as I would have loved for a return of Bad Wolf, I think it's amazing, and I don't doubt it would have worked even if the stars hadn't started going out. She runs through the multiverse, not just to find him, but to warn him and to save the universe. With a gun, and she's probably one of the only people the Doctor doesn't berate for having a gun. She's always the exception. And with each universe she goes through, she becomes more like him - a mysterious nameless time traveler. But she's still Rose. She's always Rose. He's always her Doctor.
And her story keeps going. I don't doubt that she's in the parallel universe having insane adventures, and running from monster, running after monsters - always running. And there's always going to be a version of them together, somewhere in the stars, somewhere in time, because you know, Rose Tyler is the Bad Wolf. And the Bad Wolf goes on.
day 01: allison cameron || day 02: olivia dunham || day 03: temperance brennan || day 04: kate beckett || day 05: rose tyler || day 06: buffy summers || day 07: angela montenegro || day 08: camille saroyan || day 09: cj cregg || day 10: maria vonn trapp || day 11: alexis castle || day 12: elizabeth bennet || day 13: kitty walker || day 14: martha rodgers || day 15: nora walker || day 16: clare abshire || day 17: britta perry || day 18: sarah walker || day 19: donnatella moss || day 20: annie edison || day: 21: jackie tyler || day 22: alma || day 23: hermione granger || day 24: sarah walker || day 25: caroline julian || day 26: bertha/antoinette rochester || day 27: minerva mcgonagall || day 28 : lisa cuddy || day 29: luna lovegood || day 30: martha jones ||