One of the most iconic companions in Doctor Who‘s history was Rose Tyler, who travelled with the Ninth and Tenth Doctors. Rose had a boring, ordinary working class life in London before she met the Doctor and her life changed forever. The two went travelling through time and space and encountered many strange monsters and aliens. Rose had a passionate onscreen romantic relationship with the Doctor. After all, lovely guys do well with women! Unfortunately, Rose became trapped in a parallel world with her family and she could never see the Doctor again… But eventually, Rose returned to our universe and was reunited with the Doctor once again.
Rose
★★★★★
TX: 26/03/2005
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Keith Boak
The Ninth Doctor meets his new companion Rose Tyler after he blows up the department store in London where she works. The Autons, living plastic shop window dummies, had infiltrated the department store and the Doctor narrowly saved Rose from being killed by them. Rose returns to her boring normal life in a council estate with her mother Jackie and her boyfriend Mickey. Intrigued by the mysterious Doctor, Rose decides to research him online. She contacts Clive who informs her that the Doctor is a dangerous figure. Rose’s boyfriend Mickey is kidnapped by the living plastic and duplicated. The plastic duplicate of Mickey and Rose eat out at a restaurant before they encounter the Doctor again. The Doctor rescues Rose from the plastic Mickey and brings her to the safety of his TARDIS, his time and space machine. The Doctor traces the source of the signal controlling the living plastic to an underground base beneath the London Eye. A giant vat containing the Nestene Consciousness resides within. The Doctor gives the Nestene Consciousness a chance to leave before destroying the creature with some anti-plastic solution. However, the Autons restrain the Doctor whilst the terrified Nestene transmits the activation signal to all the Autons on Earth using the London Eye. Everywhere, Autons begin attacking humans in the streets. Rose’s mother Jackie narrowly avoids being killed by some Auton brides. Rose uses some gymnastics skills to defeat the Autons and knock the anti-plastic into the Nestene Consciousness. The Doctor, Rose and the real Mickey escape the ensuing destruction in the TARDIS. The Doctor offers Rose the chance to travel with him in the TARDIS and have further adventures together. Rose accepts this offer after the Doctor reveals that the TARDIS can travel in time as well as space.
The End of the World
★★★★★
TX: 02/04/2005
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Euros Lyn
The Ninth Doctor takes his new companion Rose Tyler to the year 5 billion to witness the end of the world. A convention of aliens has met on Platform One to watch the Earth be destroyed by the expansion of the Sun. However, a murderer is aboard. Robot spiders have been programmed by someone to sabotage the space station and kill the guests. The Doctor unmasks the murderer as none other than Lady Cassandra, who claims to be the last human. Lady Cassandra intends to manufacture a hostage situation with herself as one of the victims. She will then claim billions of credits in compensation to continue financing the many operations she has had to keep herself “pure”. The Doctor braves the station’s giant fans in order to reach the switch to manually raise Platform One’s shields. Unfortunately, he is too late to save several guests from the extreme heat surge, including his friend Jabe and also the Moxx of Balhoon. The Doctor confronts Lady Cassandra, who explodes due to the increase in heat and the absence of her surgeons. Rose contemplates the end of the Earth and remarks that it is a tragedy that no one witnessed it because they were busy saving themselves on Platform One. The Doctor takes Rose back to the present day where he tells her that his home planet of Gallifrey is gone as a result of war. Despite the danger, Rose decides to continue travelling with the Doctor. This story is partly inspired by The Curse of Peladon. The character of Lady Cassandra (“Moisturise me! Moisturise me!”) is partly inspired by the villain Sil from Vengeance on Varos and The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp.
The Unquiet Dead
★★★★☆
TX: 09/04/2005
Written by Mark Gatiss Directed by Euros Lyn
The Ninth Doctor takes Rose Tyler back in time to Cardiff, 1869 where the pair meet Charles Dickens, who is on tour reading his works, including A Christmas Carol. However, a ghostly apparition flies around the theatre where this takes place, the ghost having emanated from a walking corpse of an old lady. The old lady is whisked away by an undertaker called Mr Sneed and his servant Gwyneth. The pair have been struggling to contain lots of zombies in their undertakers. The zombies are hosts for a gaseous race of creatures called the Gelth, who lost their corporeal forms during the Time War but now seek a new home on Earth. The corpses decompose and produce gas making them the perfect hosts for the Gelth. The Gelth have come to Earth via a rift in time and space that runs through Cardiff, something that the future Torchwood Three team (including one of Gwyneth’s descendants, Gwen Cooper) will one day have to deal with. The Doctor suggests that the group have a seance where they commune with the desperate Gelth. The Doctor decides to allow Gwyneth to form the bridgehead to let the rest of the Gelth through in an archway in the morgue. However, this is a trick by the Gelth who actually have hostile intentions, they want to possess everyone on Earth – as corpses! Mr Sneed is killed by the Gelth. Charles Dickens turns up the gas in the undertakers in order to draw the Gelth out of the zombie bodies, which occurs when the Doctor adds to the gas. The Doctor convinces Gwyneth that the Gelth are liars and that they have deceived her. Gwyneth agrees to sacrifice herself and the Gelth by lighting a match and blowing up the undertakers, moments after the Doctor, Rose and Charles Dickens escape. Charles Dickens is amazed by these events and the notion of extraterrestrial life. Inspired by this, he resolves to write more about ghostly apparitions. However, in the TARDIS, the Doctor tells Rose that the following year, 1870, is the year that Dickens dies and he therefore will never get to tell his story. But, Rose and the Doctor leave Dickens in high spirits nonetheless! God bless us everyone! Dickens appears again briefly in The Wedding of River Song.
Aliens of London/World War Three
★★★☆☆
TX: 16/04/2005 – 23/04/2005
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Keith Boak
The Ninth Doctor returns Rose Tyler to Earth, but the TARDIS accidentally lands a year after they left. Rose’s mum Jackie has been distraught, fearing her daughter to be dead and she pointed the finger of blame at Rose’s boyfriend Mickey. Jackie’s suspicions about the Doctor are put to one side when a huge spaceship hurtles into London’s airspace, hits Big Ben and crash lands in the River Thames. The Doctor says that the landing is too perfect and his suspicions are correct. The spaceship (piloted by a fake pig) is a decoy laid by the Slitheen, a criminal family from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius who have murdered their way to the top of the British Government. The Slitheen skin their victims and wear their skins as a disguise, in a similar way to the Foamasi in The Leisure Hive. They do this through the use of a compression field which creates a lot of excess gas leading to increased flatulence. The Slitheen’s plan is to get the nuclear codes in order to provoke a nuclear war which will destroy the Earth. The Slitheen will then sell the remains of the Earth as scrap for fuel, a similar plan to the one that The Dominators used when they invaded the planet Dulkis using the Quarks. Trapped inside Downing Street with the Slitheen, the Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones MP make contact with Mickey and Jackie, who have had their own problems with the Slitheen at Rose’s council estate. The Doctor instructs Mickey to hack into the Royal Navy and fire a missile, which destroys Downing Street and the Slitheen. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones survive in a cupboard in a barricaded room. After leaving the ruins of Downing Street, the Doctor reveals to Rose that Harriet Jones will one day become the UK Prime Minister. Back at the Powell Estate, Rose decides to continue travelling with the Doctor, much to Jackie and Mickey’s disapproval.
Dalek
★★★★★
TX: 30/04/2005
Written by Rob Shearman Directed by Joe Ahearne
The TARDIS is drawn off course by a signal that takes the Ninth Doctor and Rose to an underground base in Utah. The base is home to a private collection of extraterrestrial artefacts owned by a powerful billionaire businessman called Henry Van Statten (who is an allegory for Elon Musk, 20 years before his fame). Van Statten’s prized exhibit is what he calls a Metaltron. But the Doctor realises to his horror that it is in fact a Dalek, the most evil race in the universe. The Daleks are motivated by racial hatred and they want to exterminate all non-Dalek lifeforms in the cosmos. The Doctor was unsuccessful in completely wiping out the Daleks during the Time War. Rose Tyler takes pity on the caged Dalek and touches it. Her DNA revives it because she is a time traveller. The Dalek gets loose and kills hundreds of Van Statten’s staff. After Rose is captured by the Dalek, the Doctor resolves to use an alien weapon in Van Statten’s archive to destroy it. But Rose persuades the Doctor to spare the Dalek as it is mutating as a result of absorbing Rose’s DNA and has therefore gone insane. The Dalek commits suicide rather than carry any further pain. Van Statten is sacked by his own PA. A boy genius called Adam, who worked for Van Statten, joins Rose and the Doctor in the TARDIS by stowing aboard. This is what another boy genius called Adric did in Full Circle and State of Decay.
The Long Game
★★★☆☆
TX: 07/05/2005
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Brian Grant
The TARDIS arrives on Satellite 5 in the year 200,000. The space station broadcasts all news and media to the planet Earth below. However, the Ninth Doctor realises that Earth society is being manipulated by a higher power. Rose Tyler is keen to know why the temperature in Satellite 5 is so high. Upon close inspection, the Doctor discovers that the central heating pumps all the heat downwards from Floor 500. Floor 500 is the coveted head office where all employees of Satellite 5, particularly Cathica, dream of being promoted to. However, up in Floor 500, the walls are not made of gold… After venturing upstairs, the Doctor and Rose confront the true controller of Satellite 5 and therefore humanity: the Jagrafess and his henchman, the Editor. The Jagrafess is a disgusting, gigantic purple alien that needs to live in cool conditions and has a lifespan of 3000 years. The Jagrafess and the Editor have been feeding Earth society fake news so that they can manipulate humanity. The Editor says that for example, it is easy to keep the borders closed when a climate of fear is created in the mainstream media. The situation worsens when the Doctor’s selfish companion Adam gets a chip in his head so that he can steal information from Satellite 5 and send it back to the present day. The Editor intercepts this and realises that the Doctor is a Time Lord and that he can therefore steal his TARDIS. Cathica thankfully comes to the rescue and vents the heat up to Floor 500, which destroys the Jagrafess killing the Editor in the process. The Doctor and Rose escape in the nick of time and reunite with Cathica. The Doctor tells Cathica that Earth society should now go back to normal after these events. Although, he later discovers that he is wrong about this during the events of Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways. The Doctor and Rose confront Adam who apologises for his irresponsible behaviour, but the Doctor drops him off at home anyway and leaves him there. This story has some similarities to the plot of Dragonfire.
Father’s Day
★★★★★
TX: 14/05/2005
Written by Paul Cornell Directed by Joe Ahearne
Rose Tyler asks the Ninth Doctor if he can take her back in time to see her father before his death when she was just 6 months old. The Doctor accepts and the pair witness the car accident that killed Rose’s father. However, upon revisiting the moment a second time, Rose can’t resist the temptation to change history and she saves her father’s life instead. This creates a paradox which angers the Doctor, who storms off in frustration at Rose. Unfortunately, the time paradox allows the Reapers, time vortex-dwelling bat-like creatures, to enter our universe and devour everything in sight. It is clear that the Chronovores from The Time Monster were the inspiration for the Reapers in Father’s Day. The Doctor, Rose and the young Jackie & Peter Tyler and Mickey Smith take refuge inside the church where a friend of Jackie’s was about to get married. Inside the church, Pete deduces that Rose is his daughter from the future. He accidentally gives the young baby Rose to adult Rose, contrary to the Doctor’s instructions, and this creates a paradox that allows a Reaper in. The Reaper consumes the Doctor as he is the oldest thing in the church. The Reaper then flies into the TARDIS interior that the Doctor had been summoning as a means of escape, which causes it to disintegrate. With the Doctor gone, Rose is dejected and forlorn. The other survivors in the church begin to lose hope. Pete realises that the car that should have killed him is outside and stuck in a time loop. Pete runs outside and sacrifices himself to put history back on track. This banishes all of the Reapers and all of their victims return to life, including the Doctor. Rose holds her father’s hand in his final moments of life. The Doctor and Rose walk back to the TARDIS, shaken after their most emotional adventure together.
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
★★★★★
TX: 21/05/2005 – 28/05/2005
Written by Steven Moffat Directed by James Hawes
One of the scariest monsters encountered by the Doctor in Doctor Who was the terrifying Empty Child. The Empty Child was the product of some confused nanogenes – a bacterial form of medical repair found inside a Chula ambulance warship. The Ninth Doctor and Rose chased the Chula ambulance warship through the time vortex to London 1941, baited by con man and ex 51st Century Time Agent Captain Jack Harkness. The nanogenes escaped the capsule and began repairing the body of a 5-year old boy called Jamie who was wearing a gas mask – he becomes the Empty Child. The confused nanogenes begin transforming humans in WWII London into gas mask zombies, believing that this is how human beings are supposed to look like. The net result is a plague of creepy gas mask zombies across the Blitzed London. The Empty Child is lost and looking for his mother, so he repeats a chilling phrase: “Are you my mummy?” The Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack eventually make it to the crash site of the chula ambulance warship, which the army believe to be an unexploded German bomb. The Doctor manages to reunite the Empty Child with his real mother Nancy, a young teenage woman who pretended to be Jamie’s brother and also looked after homeless kids during the bombings on war-torn London. The clever nanogenes deduce that this is the mother that the Child was searching for and recognise that they share the same genetic information. The nanogenes then put the child and all the other gas mask zombies back to normal so that “everybody lives”! The Doctor and Rose leave in the TARDIS before rescuing Captain Jack whose invisible spaceship is destroyed by an onboard unexploded German bomb. It would be a good idea to bring back the Empty Child to Doctor Who after 20 years, possibly in a Maze of the Doctor’s worst nightmares!
Boom Town
★★★★☆
TX: 04/06/2005
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Joe Ahearne
The Ninth Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack Harkness land in Cardiff so that the TARDIS can refuel from the rift in time and space running through the city. Mickey arrives to give Rose her passport and so that they can have a holiday together. However, their time in Cardiff is no picnic as the Doctor discovers to his horror that one of the Slitheen has survived and is now the Mayor of Cardiff! Margaret the Slitheen plans to build a nuclear power station, which will meltdown once it reaches capacity. The explosion being on top of the rift would destroy the Earth and propel Margaret on a pan-dimensional surfboard called an extrapolator out into space. The Doctor decides to take Margaret back to Raxacoricofallapatorius, where she will face the death penalty for her crimes. Over dinner, Margaret pleads with the Doctor for her life. However, this is all a ruse as Margaret’s real plan was to trap the Doctor and his friends by using the extrapolator to lock onto the TARDIS and open the rift. Margaret threatens Rose’s life and the Doctor is forced to comply. But before the rift opening can destroy the planet, the heart of the TARDIS opens. Margaret looks inside and regresses back to being an egg. The Doctor decides that they will take the egg back to Raxacoricofallapatorius where Margaret can start again and begin a new life. Rose looks for Mickey but realises that he has gone because he is jealous and crushed that he has been replaced in Rose’s heart by the Doctor.
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
★★★★★
TX: 11/06/2005 – 18/06/2005
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Joe Ahearne
In the year 200,100, society on planet Earth has devolved to the point where the population simply sits and watches sadistic reality TV and game shows where the losing contestants are executed on live television for the entertainment of others. In reality, the unfortunate contestants are transported to a massive Dalek fleet hiding on the edge of Earth’s solar system, where they are harvested in order to become part of a new Dalek army. Led by the Dalek Emperor, who has survived the Time War, the Dalek fleet launches a devastating attack on the planet Earth. The Ninth Doctor, Captain Jack and other humans hopelessly mount a defence on the Game Station orbiting the Earth. The Doctor sends Rose Tyler back home to the present in the TARDIS to keep her safe. But Rose returns after she looks into the heart of the TARDIS and with the power of the time vortex she defeats the Dalek Emperor and the Daleks once and for all. The Doctor takes the power of the time vortex out of Rose by kissing her and he absorbs it himself. But the power is too much for the Doctor too and so this forces him to regenerate.
The Christmas Invasion
★★★★☆
TX: 25/12/2005
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by James Hawes
The TARDIS crash lands on the Powell Estate, London on Christmas Eve 2005. The newly regenerated Tenth Doctor stumbles out followed by Rose. Jackie, Rose and Mickey help the Doctor into bed so that he can recover from his regeneration. However, he won’t be able to get much peace and quiet! Whilst out Christmas shopping, Rose and Mickey are attacked by a brass band of Robot Santas. Upon returning to Jackie’s flat, the group are attacked by a killer Christmas tree, which the Doctor wakes up and destroys with his sonic screwdriver. The Doctor says that the Santas and the Christmas tree were pilot fish, and that they were the precursor to a full scale alien invasion. The Doctor is soon proven right when the UK government announce that the British Guinevere One space probe has made first contact with an alien race called the Sycorax. The probe contained an A positive blood sample, which the Sycorax use to control a third of the world’s population to walk to the rooftops and prepare to jump. A gigantic Sycorax spaceship arrives above London and hangs in the air. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey (inside the TARDIS) are beamed aboard the Sycorax ship. The Sycorax try to blackmail Harriet Jones (who is now UK Prime Minister) into surrendering half of the world’s population into slavery. However, the regenerated Doctor wakes up on the Sycorax spaceship and engages in a swordfight with the Sycorax Leader, during which the Doctor loses his hand (but he grows it back thanks to his regeneration). The Doctor wins and orders the Sycorax leader to leave Earth forever. The Sycorax leader agrees but then shortly tries to kill the Doctor again. The Doctor uses a satsuma to make the Sycorax Leader fall to his death. The Doctor tells the Sycorax court that Earth is defended! Upon returning to London, Harriet Jones (whom the Doctor and Rose previously met in Aliens of London/World War Three) orders the Torchwood Institute to destroy the retreating Sycorax ship. This is an allegory for Margaret Thatcher’s sinking of the retreating General Belgrano ship during the Falklands War of 1982. The Doctor deplores Harriet Jones’s actions as a war crime and deposes her, using just six words to topple her government. The recovered Doctor spends a happy Christmas Day with Rose, Jackie and Mickey. Rose decides to continue travelling in the TARDIS with the new Doctor as she now trusts his new face. Mickey and Jackie still have their reservations however as they know that Rose is not safe during her travels in time and space. Some elements of the plot of The Christmas Invasion were borrowed from The Ambassadors of Death, i.e. the Mars Probe.
Doomsday
Chris Olsen's TARDIS 