Character Highlight: Jackie Tyler (Doctor Who)

Like Mickey, Jackie is introduced as fairly broad and unimpressive, but she rises similarly in terms of genuineness/likeability.  Though it doesn’t come through in her first appearance, Jackie is characterized chiefly by her love for her daughter and the great lengths she’ll go, despite her relatively limited capabilities, to ensure Rose’s safety.  (Some Jackie-related spoilers.)

The Jackie we meet in “Rose” is a comic thumbnail, nothing to write home about.  She’s sort of a fluff character, somewhat shallow and mildly trashy.  Not a bad person by any means – she comes across as blunt and clueless more than anything – but when Rose decides to travel with the Doctor, you’re not left thinking, “Oh, but what about her mum?”

Skip ahead to “Aliens of London,” where a TARDIS mishap results in Rose having missed a year of life on Earth.  Jackie, we learn, has been understandably frantic during this time, and Rose’s return finds her mother hostilely suspicious of the Doctor and distraught that Rose won’t say where she’s been for the last year or why she hasn’t called.  Over the course of the ensuing earthbound adventure, her main concern is getting Rose away from the Doctor’s dangerous way of life.  At a critical moment, she calls him out on his ability to keep Rose safe, arguing that if he can’t, he has no right to involve Rose in his exploits.

This, like I said, emerges as Jackie’s most prominent trait.  She’s always at her bravest, toughest, and cleverest when she’s working to protect Rose, and it’s why, even though she gradually starts coming around to the Doctor, she still keeps him the tiniest bit at arm’s length, knowing that he’s the reason Rose’s life is so precarious.  Whether it’s fighting aliens herself, withholding important information from untrustworthy people, or simply preparing the food when they need to hunker down and hide out in the TARDIS, she does whatever she can to help Rose.

Because, while Rose would obviously be safer staying home instead of traveling time and space and leaping into the alien-fighting fray, Jackie ultimately realizes how devoted Rose is to life with the Doctor and doesn’t try to stop her.  It’s a very self-denying conclusion for her to make, because beyond worrying about Rose’s well-being, there’s another hardship for Jackie herself.  Quite simply, Rose’s travels mean she’s rarely home and Jackie hardly ever sees her, hardly ever knows where or when her daughter is.  And that’s painful.  “Love and Monsters” is an uneven episode, but Jackie’s scenes with Elton, sharing what it’s like to be left behind and missing Rose, are quietly heartbreaking, something I wouldn’t have expected from the Jackie I met at the start of the series.

But that’s the thing about Jackie.  Regardless of her fears for Rose or her loneliness at being without her, Jackie makes the best of her daughter’s choice and supports her anyway.  In “The Parting of the Ways,” when the Doctor sends Rose back home for her own protection, Jackie is enormously relieved.  However, when Rose makes it clear that she needs to get back to the Doctor, even though it’ll be the greatest danger she’s ever faced, Jackie still accepts Rose’s decision and helps her to leave again, coming up with a way to help in Rose’s desperate attempts to interface with the TARDIS.  I can’t imagine how hard it must be for her, how it must break her heart to see Rose so determined to put herself in jeopardy, but she acknowledges what her daughter feels she has to do and makes up her mind to help.