Relationship Spotlight: Rose Tyler & the Doctor (Doctor Who)

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 21^st-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.