Well, for a laugh. Believe or not I do really love Doctor Who, but that doesn't mean I have to blind to it's faults. And since I love it I of course enjoy thinking and talking about it. And whats the easiest thing to do about anything? COMPLAIN.
So, here I go again. Rose Tyler, a companion who on the scale of 1 to Adric turns it up to 11.
Series 2. Oh dear, series 2. There are, sadly, many problems with the second series of the revived show. Most notably that it was crap. Quite how it manages this when you consider how many great stories it actually has is rather puzzling. I think it's something to do with front loading most of the good stuff and the existence of Fear Her, which is the only story in the entire history of Doctor Who that causes me physical pain.
Throw me in the Timelash and exile me to the Web Planet but please stop it with this disney shite.
Still, before we get onto the series proper we have The Christmas Invasion first. Now, I'll admit it's not a bad idea having the companion a bit freaked out by a regeneration. In the past some have taken it fairly well after all, which might not be considered an entirely normal reaction. Anyone would think they'd been off witnessing the infinite wonders of time and space or something. It does have to be said though that Rose does take it a little far. What with the weeping and wailing and mooning and pining and generally hanging around doing very little. Oh wait no, she did manage one thing. She managed to make a complete tit out herself trying to talk to the Sycorax. I know it was a high pressure situation and everything, but that speech descended into total farce with what I can only describe as a deliberate rapidity. It just stands as further proof that she really can't seem to achieve ANYTHING on her own. Always relying on others for help, even when those others are flat out unconscious coma patients.
Still, let's move ahead (albeit with trepidation) into series 2 proper. First up is New Earth. Not the worst episode ever, although it is rather spoiled by the retarded resolution and forced happy ending. But what of the hapless miss Tyler? Well, to be fair we can't be too harsh as she does spend most of the episode possessed by Cassandra. So let's just gloss over the fact that her only major contribution to the plot is getting captured AGAIN and move on to the next episode, shall we?
Ah, Tooth And Claw. So what does she manage to do here? What's that? Get captured you say?
Get used to the view
I'm shocked. No really, I am. Anyway we shouldn't be too harsh here. After all, this one of the few time she actually manages to escape. Also worth noting it's here that she really starts exhibiting what I'll be restrained and call a rather offensive cockiness. After all it might be impolite to label it a callous disregard for the fatalities around her. Never mind going out of her way to piss of the bloody QUEEN. Over the course of the series this attitude will go from tempting fate all the way up to flicking fate in the nutsack and insulting it's mother.
Moving forward in time and space we arrive at School Reunion. An episode with many highlights, none of which it has to be said are Rose. There's that terrible attitude on display again. That selfish sense of absolute entitlement. Once again we are asked to believe how SPECIALY SPECIAL Rose is. And once again I'm really not seeing it. Never mind the whole slagging match and dismisiveness towards Sarah Jane Smith (a woman who I actually can buy as being special having actually witnessed her accomplish something useful at least once) the real telling part is that look she gives when Mickey tags along at the end. You know the one, like someone just shat in her mouth? Yeah. Seriously. Still leading the poor guy on and only using him when it suits her. There are many words to describe someone like that, none of them suitable for a family audience. On the bright side though she doesn't get captured for once.
Still, at least she's managed to suck it up and polite in time for The Girl In The Fireplace. Only it's here that the problems REALLY start. See, over the course of this series we are quite clearly supposed to believe that Rose and The Doctor are totally hot for each other. Like totally, completely, obviously going at it. However at no point do we see anything that makes this believable. Now, I can buy Rose fancying the Doctor in the times she's not bust picking up strangers, emotionally abusing Mickey or having rather improper urges towards deceased family members, but I simply don't buy the Doctor fancying Rose at all. And it's not that I'm going that whole "Time Lords don't do that, never have done, never will do and obviously reproduce asexually since the Doctors had kids" bit, because here I can TOTALLY buy him copping off with Madame De Pompadour. Which does seem a bit of an odd story to have here. The whole series is, on one level, a lengthy clumsy attempt at foreshadowing Roses departure which is terrible and yadda yadda yadda. Only we go straight from a story about one of The Doctors past companions straight into one about him falling in love. This couldn't do less to set Rose up as a super special apotheoses of companionhood if it tried. Not that it has to. Hangs around doing nothing, gets captured, whines, doesn't help much, roll credits. Pretty much standard.
And then we fall through a hole in good writing and arrive at the Rise O The Cybermen / The Age Of Steel. Since the purpose of this article is to unceasingly rip on Rose I won't digress into a long rant about how parallel universe stories are inevitably crappy ways of destroying any sense of consequence and rendering character deaths MEANINGLESS. I won't even mention how the conceit of using a parallel universe to explore varying consequences and divergent timelines is completely redundant in a show about time travel. Instead I'll come back to the chilling phrase which forever haunts anyone who thinks about these episodes:
Perverted Dadlust.
There, I said it. I mean, seriously. Forget everything else. Just that in itself is enough. I've often said about hitting Rose in the face with a shovel. It's here that we see that concept crystallize. As soon as she starts lustily staring at that poster and whinging and wibbling about going of to see her NOTdad the Doctor should have just pulled out a shovel and belted her in the face with it. It would have saved a lot of problems. I mean, REALLY. Last time you went off to see your dad you NEARLY DESTROYED THE UNIVERSE. So really, what's the wost that can happen?
You will be like us. Except that one. We don't want that one.
Oh yeah, everybody's dead. AGAIN. So anyway, aside from nearly getting killed by the Cybermen and being REALLY REALLY UNNECESSARILY CREEPY with her paralleladad, what does she actually do here? Oh yeah. She has a phone. Call me old fashioned, but somehow that just doesn't strike me as being particularly impressive. Still, on the bright side at least Mickey finally gets away from the manipulative bitch.
Oh, did I say that out loud? Sorry.
Moving on once again we come to the Idiot's Lantern. An episode where Rose can't actually be bother to wait for the bad guys to come capture her so she goes to volunteer. Doesn't wait, doesn't tell anyone where she's going, doesn't take one single sensible precaution. Just turns up and says "Hi! Can I be captured now please?" I mean, seriously. What the fuck? Isn't a good job that a bad person dies every bad thing they've ever done is magically undone?
HATE THATSHITHATE THATSHITHATE THATSHITHATE THATSHITHATE THATSHITHATE THATSHITHATE THATSHITHATE THATSHITHATE THATSHITHATE THATSHIT......
Sorry. But that sort of thing bugs me.
Next up it's The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit. An interesting 2 parter in that Rose once again achieves nothing useful. I mean, shooting out the window on a ship that's already falling into a black hole? That's not really a great move unless you happen to be psychic or badly written. There is, put simply, no way that she'd even know that doing that wouldn't just asphyxiate the lot of them, let alone that a dramatic and implausible rescue was mere minutes away. Oh, and the Doctors whole "I believe in her" speech? What the FUCK is that supposed to mean? I believe she's immune to gravity? Or I believe we're all going to die as soon as I break the magic vase?
Then it's Love And Monsters. Oh dear. Honestly this episode isn't as bad as many would say. Well, up to the last 10 minutes when the "Monster" is finally revealed. Then it really is. So yes she's not really in this one (though sadly her whore of a mother is). She just turns up at the end to be a bitch to a poor innocent guy being menaced by moldy caricature of a comedy yorkshireman. Nice.
And now the moment we've all been dreading. I'm going to have to talk about Fear Her. To recreate the experience of watching this episode simply spend 445 minutes smashing your head into a wall whilst screaming "WILL YOU STOP IT WITH THIS DISNEY SHITE!!!" over and over and over again.
Calm blue ocean calm blue ocean calm blue ocean....
Frankly I can't even process Roses involvement in this episode because everything else in it is such utter, utter BOLLOCKS. I mean, downed alien love ships? Who the hell is supposed to buy this shit?
WHO?!?!?
And then, at long last, we have Army Of Ghosts and Doomsday. And to a great extent your reaction to these episodes will depend on whether or not you'd actually bought into Roses supposed specialness or not.
Needless to say I hadn't.
So in Army Of Ghosts she hangs about a bit, fails to infiltrate anything (which frankly has more to do with her chronic inability to bluff rather than any psychic defense) and, lo and behold, GETS CAPTURED. Though that doesn't last long I admit. Because then the Daleks turn up and double capture her. Yay? Then, Doomsday. It's not really a very accurate title for her. I mean yeah, Daleks and Cybermen and dodgy plotting oh my. But for all the vaunted DOOM and portentous monologuing from beyond the grave it's not really, in the final analysis, very doomy. Is it? It's more like "well I'm alive and well and everyone's safe but I didn't get my own way so WAAAHHH..."day.
Let's break it down. So, she keeps the Daleks from exterminating any MAJOR characters for a bit, which is a bit of a plus mark I admit. And then.... She hangs around until the final off button is set up. Because let's be honest, it's really not so much a resolution as a convenience to keep the run time down. Then, after being sent off to safety with her family she tantrums her way back to get in the way. Do I need to point out that at the end of the last episode those levers were operated remotely? Quite why they have to be operated manually now is never quite explained. But whatever. Fine, everyone's hanging on dramatically and the physics gives up and goes home. Now, again this isn't the place to piont out questions like how is the void a void if it's got stuff in it? But we have a rent in the fabric of reality which is pulling with enough force to yank cybermen into the air at tremendous speed from several thousand miles away. And I'm willing to grant that it's pulling with less force on the heroes as they're allegedly less clagged with whatever. However, the lever disengages and the flow of Daleks slows somewhat. It doesn't stop, it just slows. It's still easily enough to pull a couple of tons of protesting death machine which is quite capable of flying on it's own thank you very much uncontrollably towards it. It's still pulling Rose and the Doctor towards it. So Rose grabs the lever and pushes... away from this? I'm no expert, but how exactly is it you're supposed to exert force in one direction when being pulled in the opposite? I mean, I wouldn't mind so much, but if they'd just positioned the levers facing the other way then everything would make a lot more sense.
Anyway, so she TRAGICALLY loses her grip and goes hurtling towards certain death. Which I admit did put a smile on my face. And the her not dad teleports in and grabs her. Mere feet from the fully open breach. Mere feet from the fully open breach which we have been explicitly told will suck him in to his death as having crossed over he too has clag. Never mind the considerable force with which she hits him. Never mind the simple undeniable fact that HE HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING TO DO THAT.
Seriously. Pissing in the face of common sense and physic simply because you don't have the balls to kill off a character. All that build up and then a nonsensical anticlimax which makes retrograde ejaculation look like fucking bukkake.
So yeah, she sulks, the Doctor broods a bit and then we have that whole beach bit. It's interesting to note that it's this that really made me appreciate just how great the music is in the new series. As despite actually HATING the character by this point the music does manage to carry some sense of sadness. Which is just as well. As despite all the acting going on the simple fact remains that I can't credit the whole romance angle between the Doctor and Rose as anything more than the deluded obsessions of a borderline sociopath. She doesn't want the Doctor any more than she wants Mickey or Adam or Captain Jack. She just wants to made to feel special.
And at the end of the day that's the problem with the character. We're supposed to believe she's something that she simply isn't. She's not some sort of uber companion. She's not any sort of romantic interest. She's not actually competant or even self assured. She's a needy, whiney bitch at the end of the day. I mean, we could maybe let her off if she at least manages to save the universe more my times than she tries to destroy it, but she can't even break even on that score.
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