Quite a few of the stories in seasons 2 and 4 were noticeably flawed. For me, season 1 was as close to perfection as you get. Martha's season had more good stories than Rose got in S2.
In spite of that, I still felt something vital went out of the show after Rose. It all got darker and somewhat depressing. Some of you imply that Rose cast a shadow over later seasons, but that's just a measure of how good and how rare she is. With a companion who burns like the sun, it was inevitable that the "shadow" descended because she left.
Let me develop this further by way of answering a few of the Rose-critics who posted earlier. There are just too many unfounded myths about Rose going around. I don't suppose for a minute I'll lay them to rest but I'll give it a good try. (Before I tackle Crazzyaz's opus!
)
Originally Posted by mikey1980:
“Rose doesn't really compare. As several others have already stated, she worked really well with nine, but with ten, seemed to have become a rather silly selfish little girl, far too posessive of the Doctor and increasingly smug. The tragic ending of season two was, I think, a relief to many people. I spent the whole of season two wishing Chris Eccleston was still the Doctor, but once Rose left the show, the burden seemed to lift from Tennant, and over the past two years he has become a towering doctor. The best companions bring out the best in their doctor - Rose didn't do that; Martha and Donna did.”
"A rather silly selfish little girl, far too posessive of the Doctor". If that's a pejorative description of being in love, what did you expect? Romantic love matures with age, but is it ever free from the elements of need and desire? The Doctor and Rose
both demonstrate jealousy in S2
and S1, and they
both increasingly prefer to be alone in each other's company as the series progresses.
Also worth pointing out that, in the first two seasons, Rose manages to keep her visibly jealous feelings under wraps. By S2,
she has become the mature one coping with the Doctor's "ridiculous crushes" (Billie's words;
Growing Pains, p.345). She controls her jealousy of Reinette when she crosses the portal to forewarn her, for instance. By and large, when she's jealous she swallows it down. (When she doesn't, as in
School Reunion, it's endearingly hilarious. She still gets over it, though.)
Rose can behave selfishly, as can we all, but not when it matters. When the greater good demands courage and sacrifice, she rises above herself. We see this again and again, in
Parting of the Ways, in
The Christmas Invasion, in
The Satan Pit, in
Doomsday. Rose isn't motivated only by self-interest when she flies the TARDIS back to Satellite 5, but by an idealism that proves even stronger than the Doctor's. She saves the day when he has given up. She faces the Sycorax by herself with the Doctor lying unconscious in the TARDIS. (First Christmas special and STILL the best!
) She does it again at Torchwood HQ when she pushes that lever back up even though she risks being sucked to oblivion.
She does it all because she has to be at his side in the battle ("We'll go down fighting...together") and because his example inspires her. Her "need" for the Doctor makes her strong and drives her to acts of heroism. Along with this, she possesses an intensely moral character which genuinely cares about defending the earth. But the two are inextricably connected, because the Doctor has become her hero. He represents for her "a better way of living your life". And, reciprocally, she humanises and moralises him after the bitterness of the Time War. She becomes a sort of benchmark for him ("Rose would say just the right thing").
Right from the start, her need rises above the purely selfish and it grows into something really noble. If you don't believe me, watch
The Satan Pit again. She could have succumbed to her grief and feeling of loss but instead she rises above it to become the girl who sent the Devil to hell. And then her calmly-delivered line: "But we stopped him. That's what the Doctor would have done". Just the simple nobility of that. Everything's about to get sucked down the black hole but her love for the Doctor keeps her fighting to the last on his behalf, on behalf of a man she believes to be dead.
That is quintessential Rose.
It's not too difficult, surely, to get our heads round the paradox that perfect and ideal behaviour may not be what it takes to be a saviour. Flawed human nature may be what it takes. "Selfish, needy" Rose saves the world again and again, BECAUSE her selfish need becomes something greater than herself. (Doesn't love do that?) Thank heavens for silly selfish little girls!
The notion that Rose held the Tenth Doctor back is something I just don't get at all. I certainly didn't get any sense of a burden being lifted in S3. Quite the opposite: he carried the weight of lost love on his shoulders. I thought he was at his best with Rose: fresher, sleeker, more optimistic. Since she left, and he went into his spikier bedheaded look, he seems in just two seasons to have got visibly older and sadder. (If there's a movie, I hope they get him back to the way he was. A bit more like David Tennant's 'real-life' self.)
Rose's departure at the end of S2 was no doubt applauded by some who never liked the idea of a love story in the first place. I get the feeling many Rose-critics saw it as frivolous and not 'dark' enough. What should be remembered, though, is that central to New Who is this sense of how wonderful the universe actually is, and the exhilaration of discovery. ("Trouble's just the bits in between".) Somebody who recently debated me on DW Online commented that Rose expressed a feeling of wonder which the later companions have just not replicated. Love is wonderful too. Rose represents all that, and that's what came through in the Tenth Doctor for as long as he was with her. It's a vision that's anything but dark.
Originally Posted by customcoaster:
“While I do agree that Rose in series two began to get a bit annoying, I don't think it was strictly Rose as a character's fault. I think both she AND the Doctor came across a bit too smug and giggly and infuriating at times. I understand that, to an extent, this was the point; thinking they were invincible only to get a big fat reality check slapped across their faces by the end of the series, but it wasn't always fun to watch and I can see how it might have polarized opinion - those people who loved that side of their relationship, and those who were left with an unpleasant, nauseated feeling, lol.”
Some of the giggly moments weren't that funny: the one about getting back in the TARDIS was a minor irritant in an otherwise brilliant episode. But these are petty niggles. The only big problem I had with Ten and Rose flirting around the universe is that they never even attempted a snog, so what were the giggles and hand-holding all about? A touch more romantic realism wouldn't have come amiss. But as you say, there's no sense in blaming the character if it's the stories you object to. That is solved not by banishing Rose but by getting her better writers next time round.
Originally Posted by customcoaster:
“Rose was definitely a strong character, but ultimately I think she became too big a part of the show for her own good. I never thought Rose allowed much room for anyone else, she was too much of a Daddy's favourite with the Doctor and nobody else could have really got a look in. Yes, she did mingle about on her best behaviour recently, but only after she had her own storyline going on for the bulk of an episode and a stretch of time with just her and the Doctor.”
Funny thing about that. If you're going to bring a companion back with all that fanfare, you at least want an episode that is mainly about her.
Turn Left was mainly Donna, and then she's kept hanging in the Vault through the finale, all helpless, and not even the honour of taking down the Supreme Dalek in another of her magnificent "go to hell" moments. Billie's name was even last in the title credits! So it's a little harsh to begrudge her a storyline in
The Stolen Earth.
Yes: in the first two seasons she was as important as the Doctor himself, and I'm not deploring it. She rewote the rules and it was the making of New Who. But other characters did get a look in. Adam, Jack, Mickey and Jackie all travelled with her. To some extent they were all there on sufferance, but it wasn't just Rose wot squoze them out. In S2 it's increasingly clear (you can see it in his face when Mickey or Jackie came on board) that neither she nor the Doctor really wanted anybody else along for the ride. Which, as they were fast becoming a couple, was their prerogative.
Originally Posted by customcoaster:
“Also, the series three finale really worked for me because Martha's motivations seemed a lot more ... I don't know, I think if that'd have been Rose, it would have been so much more focused on her winning back her Doctor as opposed to the mission in general.... if that makes sense.”
If that had been Rose, she wouldn't have needed to win him back! From the way he missed her throughout S3 it's clear she had won him already.
Originally Posted by beeurd:
“Rose wasn't bad until she kept coming back every time she was written out...”
This is a frequent enough complaint, but Rose didn't "keep" coming back! She's been written out once and came back once, if you count her S4 reappearances as one single storyline. Every one of the New Series companions has come back at least once. Jack and Martha have each been back twice (separate and unconnected). Yet for some reason it's Rose who gets accused of casting her shadow over the series, and that's neither fair nor objective.
We're missing a big point here: RTD has gone a long way to breaking the cycle of companion turnover where the Old Series characters got dropped into the end-of-season black hole, never to reappear. With today's more continuity-minded audiences, that would fatally undermine long-term character development. DW is The Show That Came Back, and Russell has given us companions who come back.
Originally Posted by lordOfTime:
“My take on it is as follows.
The Doctor is how shall we put it an eccentric character. I don't think i'd have bought into the romantic angle on the character if I never saw the TV Movie which for me is the first doctor Who story i'd ever seen.
But over the years I kept hearing people who didn't like the whole idea of the Doctor having a love interest which I bought into. After all, he would probably be the first confess that he was "rubbish" at his own wedding.
Then you consider the fact that what we have here is romance between Human and Time Lord. What kind of a life could they ever expect. The Doctor doesn't exactly make his biology known. He only told Rose about his regenerations when he absorbed the Time Vortex and his body cells died. Similarly with Donna, only Rose filled Donna in about that aspect of Time Lord biology.
The thing is though in spite of this, The Doctor became intertwined in the lives of a family on a cheap estate in London. The Tyler's and their friend Mickey the idiot. He chose Rose as companion because he thought she was "brilliant". The attraction between the two was obvious and unbreakable. The kind of life that Mickey couldn't offer her. It was as if the Tyler's replaced his own Time Lord family. He lost Gallifrey, he lost his own people. Then there was the Earth... there were the Human Race. Then there were the Tylers.
He gets closer to them all even to Mickey. He even shares Christmas Dinner with them.
Then one day, Doomsday happens. The price of sending the Daleks and the Cybermen to "hell", pulling them into the void was losing Rose and his "human family". This wouldn't be the first time he has experienced loss but he was obviously hurt. Not that he had much time to dwell on his new found loneliness. Donna Noble appeared in the TARDIS for the first time. I think she was probably the only Companion the Doctor had who wasn't interested in him romantically. This could have been why he was moved to ask her to join her in the TARDIS.
Then we have Martha Jones. Another companion who was smitten by the Doctor. He offered her one trip in the TARDIS. That's what it was supposed to be anyway. Bhyt we know that the Doctor was lonely so he kept finding reasons to hang on to her. One trip to Elizabethan England, which lead to a Trip To New Earth. This then lead to a brush with the Daleks in Manhattan. We thought he'd left her behind for good until they caught sight of the Lazarus youth experiment. It wasn't until then that he accepted Martha as a companion, but he never truly got over Rose, and he never has.
Not even after she came back when we were all lead to believe that it was impossible. Now she's gone again, apparently never to return again, to look after the Doctors genocidal double.
Rose was good for the Doctor. It always comes back to Rose because for me she has had the biggest impact on the doctor than any companion he has ever had.”
I agree with this wholeheartedly and couldn't have put it better if I'd written another of my really interminable epic posts which don't frighten Crazzyaz.
May I expand on it somewhat?
I think what RTD has done with Rose is restore the original idea of the show. It was the First Doctor, previously married and with grandchildren, who demonstrated in
The Aztecs that he was capable of romantic feelings but lacked the opportunity. This got lost sight of from Troughton onwards, and you sometimes felt that the Doctor wasn't even capable of finding human women attractive. (Moffat has suggested that he is only now entering puberty, which seems unconvincing in light of the above.) There's no evidence that he's ever fallen in love with a companion before. So why now, and why Rose? The simple explanation may be that, with all of time to go at, he could afford to wait for the right person. In Rose, the Doctor finally found that rare exception, a soul-mate who shares his child-like sense of wonder and would happily travel with him for the rest of her life. (Even if he can't travel with her for the rest of his.) For someone who is always moving on and never looking back, it is remarkable that since losing Rose, he has been unable to move on and has been continually looking back. That's never happened to him before.
I would go further. You see, I'm not trying to argue that romantic love trumps platonic. It's a lot deeper than romance. There's a sort of
mystical depth in the love between Rose and the Doctor which he couldn't develop with Martha. Nor is it there with Donna; they're just best mates. And that's great. But it's not in the same league. There's something pretty special going on with Rose when the Doctor can say, "if I believe in one thing, I believe in her" (
The Satan Pit). Something akin to religion. Indeed, she becomes his personal saviour-goddess, because that's who Bad Wolf is. For the first time he's got somebody who's far, far more than an 'assistant' and on occasion can outdo him spectacularly.
In that regard, Rose has become the template for all her successors, and probably will forevermore, but they all look a little derivative and, dare I say, watered down next to her. Neither Martha nor Donna nor Christina nor anybody else has the full combination of traits that we see in Rose, though individually they may be as strong in this or that respect. Nothing and nobody like her has ever happened to him either before or since. Rose is literally extraordinary. IMO she fully deserves a special place of honour even if some of her successors
eventually surpass her.
This is what I mean when I call her archetypal. Somebody said on DWO recently that all companions are versions of the same character. I don't agree -- but if you argued the case from the New Series female companions, then Rose would be the one they are all versions of.
Give me a while and I'll have a stab at answering Crazzyaz.
Last edited by Andy Blake : 27-06-2009 at 08:09
