Rose Tyler Billie Piper

• The domestic goddess... by Steve Cassidy

The domestic goddess... by Steve Cassidy 24/9/06

There was a lot riding on the back of Rose Tyler.

The new series, in many ways, rested on her back just as much as it did the actor playing the Doctor. She was meant to be the audience-identification figure. She was meant to be the character that grounded the show in reality. The show was not squarely aimed at the old "intelligent 14 year old male" target figure anymore - it had to appeal to everyone. It had to be feminised so that granny and niece could relate to this as much as nephew. A wise move as the audience figues showed. And central to this was Rose Tyler of the Powell estate as played by Billie Piper.

Billie Piper was a clever bit of casting. There were howls of dismay from some section of fandom that this tweeny pop star had been picked for the plum companion job. I didn't join in as Billie Piper was a stage school actress, I had seen her in 'The Canterbury Tales' and knew she could carry a scene. In fact, she was a reluctant pop star - her ambition was to be a television actress. And she also had a tabloid history, she was a "name" - a girl who sold newspapers. Billie Piper could play the tabloid game, drumming up extra publicity for the series when appearing in Heat magazine etc. And we must remember that Who was a terrific gamble by the BBC/RTD. It could have all ended in disaster. So just like the Big Brother scenes in Bad Wolf, the casting of Billie would gain them publicity inches.

And it became obvious from the outset that she could act. This was vital as this was a character who was defined by her relationships to other people. Romana, Leela, Liz Shaw were defined by their professions/alieness - that is what they brought to the stories. But Rose Tyler was different: she was allowed to bring her background with her. Her background was those she left back on Earth. Rose Tyler was defined by her relationships with other characters. Because she didn't really have a profession; she couldnt help with the space/time continuum like Romanatrevunderlunder, give snippets of history like Barbara Wright or even bring the flash-bang wallop of Ace to the TARDIS. Her strengths were her relationships with others.

And as we saw in series one this worked very well. The emotionally damaged Eccles Doctor was still a brooding, highly-strung mess. His social graces were still struggling (the "shut it!" to Dickens in The Unquiet Dead), he needed Rose to oil the cogs of his encounters with others. She was his alter ego, smoothing and forming relationships as they travelled together. She looked at things from the bottom of the pile. She had empathy with those who suffered. She didn't have the patrician education of Romana or Nyssa, she would always talk to the serving staff/service engineers. She treated everyone the same - which of course as she gained confidence (to the point of supercilliousness) got her slapped down by the most patrician of all, Queen Victoria.

The very first adventure of all revolves around her. And quite right! Rose had an awful lot riding on it. It didn't have to just introduce a new Doctor/companion but an entirely new genre to a generation who had barely heard of the programme. Rose Tyler was going to be their ticket to adventure. Within the first few scenes her parameters are quickly defined: unemployed, overbearing mum, useless boyfriend, living on a council estate with no future. The only way she can go is up. Everything is dragging her down. The Doctor's life is a gamble but one she takes with both hands. Her smiling run into the TARDIS at the end is the perfect ending to the episode. Everything clicks into place.

The End of the World is a particular favourite of mine and the perfect second episode. Rose is stunned by this encounter with blue aliens and exploding worlds. It's beyond her comprehension but she is still witnessing it. Her taking to task Cassandra over certain unpleasant remarks is pure Rose as is her befriending of the blue service engineer. The Unquiet Dead is another good Rose adventure. 1869 means nothing to Rose really, it's just the thought of travelling back in time. Once again she forms bonds with those she thinks are repressed, ie Gwynneth. And thinks she should be impressed by Charles Dickens so tries to be although I suspect the first thing she does when Bleak House comes on the TV is reach for the remote.

Aliens of London/WWIII returns Rose home. A feature of the first two series. Her major weakness is that she never cuts the apron strings entirely. She's still enjoying her travels here and is savvy enough to join in the barnstorming sessions when they are trapped in Number 10. But it is with Dalek that we get the Rose Tyler adventure. It's her humanity and big heart that are the key to this adventure and that brings the captive Dalek to life. It her humanity mingling with its Dalek biology that eventually brings about its downfall. Rose Tyler is the good side of humanity contrasting with the damaged ninth Doctor who swings in the opposite direction (before realising his mistake). And it is also in this adventure that another Rose weakness becomes apparent: her predeliction for comely young men. Adam (Bruno Langley) is mistakenly brought aboard the TARDIS at her suggestion (the Doctor wants to keep HER happy) and unfortunately when he doesn't measure up she doesnt stick up for him. He is kicked into reality.

Father's Day is the series one adventure that really revolves around Rose. I hated it at the time, I hated the emotional armtwisting of the writing/production where you were almost beaten over the head until the tears came out. But it has aged well and I can't deny that it is a very effective character piece. Another Rose flaw, her self-centredness (expressly forbidden to rescue her father, she does so anyway) is brought to the fore. And never has a companion had such a background explored so much (not even the troubled Ace) and gone on such an emotional journey. The thing is once we have learned about her mother, dead father, boyfriend etc, once that has been explored in serious depth - just what do you do with the character?

And finally we have Rose at her height in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways. She reaches her apex by looking into the heart of TARDIS and destroying the invading Dalek fleet (and the Doctor is destroyed helping her). Rose reaches her pinnacle here - a girl confident enough to do something helping the Doctor against the Daleks on the space station. Life with her mother and Mickey isn't enough and she has to empower them to help her get back to the Eccles Doctor. And you get the feeling at the end that he did it all for her. Rose Tyler in this adventure becomes a goddess..

I now want to take a break to examine the relationship between her and what I call "her" Doctor. Christopher Eccleston's Doctor was a tour de force. We had not seen the like ever before in Who. He was in pain, serious pain; bit by bit, the Time War was revealed and his role and guilt over it. He needed someone to cling to, he needed someone to assuage his pain. He was exceptionally vulnerable and, one suspects, lonely. The fact that he chose a nineteen year old shopgirl to travel with him is interesting. Under RTD the Time Lord hormones have been raging more then ever and maybe that prompted his decision. For her, he was an escape - a good man, slightly unhinged, who could show her the universe. The two worked well together. His neediness blended with her enthusiasm for what they were doing. And then the Doctor changed...

The Tenth Doctor seemed to have recovered from his angst and guilt. He seemed to bounce around the universe with his companion having "a lark". In fact, he didn't need her so much that other females seemed to vie for his attention. This and the revelation that she wasn't his only travelling companion seemed to release something rather unpleasant in Rose Tyler. Whether her confidence had turned into something else I don't know but between Tooth and Claw and The Satan Pit the character seems to go into freefall. From her bitchspat with Sarah and jealousy of Mickey during School Reunion, to not learning the lesson of keeping away from her father in Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel. The Rose Tyler during these adventures is catty, supercilious and borderline obnoxious.

It is all brought together in Fear Her and the old Rose Tyler returns: resourceful, pleasant and enterprising but still with that emphatic side that served her so well in series one. Her leaving was perfectly natural in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. I wondered how they would write her out. They teased us all season with "the girl so far from home, soon to die in battle".

My problem with heris that she was always tied to her mother's apron strings, seeking to ring her up at every opportunity. She never entirely left Earth. There is also an argument that she dragged the Doctor down with her (The Christmas Invasion). Rose was OK exploring time and space but only so long as she can go back to her mother at the end of it. And the character began to deteriorate in season 2. My theory about why this is happened is that Rose's story, along with that of the ninth Doctor, was concluded in TPOTW. They were trying to do character-based drama with a character whose story has already finished. So they need to do something artificial. To do good, proper drama (as opposed to soap) you ideally want to have a character who's created specifically for the drama, rather than having been created for an earlier one.

One problem I think is this idea which seems to have become embedded in the people making the programme is that Rose is every bit the Doctor's equal. It's as if they feel that they have to put them on the same level to stop any accusations of "make a cup of tea, there's a good girl" chauvinism. As if the only way to counter one extreme is to go to the other extreme. So we have her cracking jokes in dangerous situations, lecturing complete strangers on morality, etc as if she's the Doctor too. They want her to be as witty as a Romana I or a Sarah Jane Smith but in a nineteen year old girl it comes across as rather supercillious.

Rose Tyler has sharp edges, but I get the sense that the Doctor doesn't see them because the writers don't want the viewers to. She really is incredibly manipulative at times, and very selfish in some ways. It makes her real, but she's presented so positively that it feels like they've stacked the deck to make me like her, which distances me somewhat. I can care about her, but not more than I cared about any of the others, and while I know it's unfair to compare like that, she's never going to measure up to the ones who didn't have the entire thing telling me how much I should love them. The new series deliberately draws attention to how the Doctor feels about her, and most of the time I can't actually see why he'd hold her in more esteem than anyone else other than "because he just does". Because the story says that he does.

I find that Rose for me is terribly uninteresting because of this positioning. If the Doctor thinks she's that spectacular beyond anyone before, then I'm looking at her harder than anyone else and I can't see what it is that he finds so interesting. In fact Rose is really quite a selfish self-absorbed person who takes the people around her for granted. I don't really see how the Doctor finds that fascinating compared to all the other companions who were quite frankly better people.

But she was a success for the new series. She will never be one of my favourite companions but there is no doubt she has a lot of fans. New viewers will look on her in a few years time as us oldies look on Leela or Jo Grant - and there is no doubt that Billie Piper was rock solid in the role. Well deserving of her BAFTA nomination. Rose Tyler was the kickstart to get the series going. The audience identification figure...

A good character, yes - but I would have hated to see her mobile phone bill.