The first
season of new Who has some majorly
clunky episodes. The early episodes do
have a few good ones in there, even the misfires have strong moments, and it
mostly evens out by episode 6, while the pilot and the Slitheen two-parter are not examples of the show putting its
best foot forward. As such, there was no
guarantee that I’d have even stayed with the show long enough to fall in love
with it as much as I did. But as almost
always with the rough spots in Who,
when the story isn’t working, it’s the characters and the relationships between
them that keep me watching. And the
Doctor and Rose are what held me through until Who became a show I could adore (a few Doctor-Rose-related spoilers.)
Rose’s
first meeting with Rose is iconic, that grab of her hand and that single word,
“Run!” As an episode, “Rose” is far from
the show’s finest, but nearly every moment between those two is magic. Right away, we see how the Doctor, still raw
and reeling from the end of the Time War, needs Rose. He’s lived such dark days and made such
unbearable decisions, and he needs that earnestness and light to ground him and
remind him why he stays. That moment
between them at the end of “The End of the World” is excellent, when the Doctor
confesses to Rose that his planet and people are gone, when she herself has
just seen the destruction of her own planet in the future, and now, standing on
a 21st-century London sidewalk, Rose proposes that they go get
chips. Everything ends, but not
everyday; love what you have while you have it, and savor joys no matter how
simple. The Doctor needs that so badly
in that moment, and Rose is the one offering a hand to lead him.
So too,
Rose needs the Doctor tremendously. She
needs the person she can become when she sees the universe he can show
her. At the end of series 1, she
struggles to explain to those back home why she can’t go back to a normal
life. It’s not just about seeing planets
and wonders – it’s about being
better, standing for what’s right and being a force that helps others. Before meeting the Doctor, Rose doesn’t see
any consequence in her life or think much about what she can amount to. But on the TARDIS, she has opportunities to
be truly extraordinary, and with the Doctor telling her how fantastic (and
later, brilliant) she can be, she loses sight of the unspoken limits she’d
placed on herself.
In their
later episodes, Rose and the Doctor do tend to get a little insular, like
they’re their own private in-crowd gallivanting around the universe. Even though they’re still helping people,
there can be a sort of smugness or flippancy about them, which obviously
doesn’t do as much for me. I also think
that, the more overtly-romantic their relationship becomes, the more insular it
feels, more like they’re traveling to be together and seeing/saving worlds is
just a side perk.
But at
their best, they’re gorgeous together.
The joy he takes in showing her something she’s never seen before. The care with which she reaches out to hold
his broken pieces in place as he tries to mend himself. Her tough love when he’s getting in too deep,
the responsibility he feels to always bring her home safely, the way they laugh
at each other’s silly jokes, the way they hold hands when they run, the way
there’s nothing they won’t do to protect one another. At its heart, their relationship is a deep,
deep knowing, and I think that’s beautiful.
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