Episode 11: Rose

The DAR team explores the first post-reboot Doctor Who episode, “Rose,” the reboot that made the show more popular than it had ever been before. But, is it as popular among the DAR Crew?

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

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Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though. – Kari

THE TEAM

THE DOCTOR:

The Doctor. He’s a worthy successor to the First Doctor, but seems as reluctant to kill sentient creatures as Eight was. He definitely does not seem as deft as Eight, though–he tries to do a card trick and sprays the cards everywhere. And he’s EXTREMELY happy to blow up the building.
He’s very acerbic. He’s equal parts totally flippant and completely earnest. He does seem a bit more self-aware than First and is aware that he thinks the world revolves around him.
He does seem to still be capable of First’s level of bulls***. I assumed that he was bluffing on the “Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation” thing he cites but apparently not. We do not understand the Nestene Consciousness’s, the molten plastic thingy’s, words during their conversation so who knows. There’s a great line of bulls*** he slings when Rose asks who he is, about how he feels how fast the world is turning.
He says at one point that he’s been in a war and it’s implied that a lot of worlds died during it, and he “couldn’t save any of them,” including the one that the Nestene Consciousness is from.
This gives the Doctor a more sinister tone–conspiracy theorist Clive says that death is his only constant companion, and that the Doctor only shows up when a disaster is or has occurred. Clive is then proven right by being shot in the face by a mannequin. The Nestene Consciousness, which apparently is legitimately terrified, is also killed, along with a TON of bystanders.

ROSE:

Rose does not seem to be afraid of much, to an almost concerning extent at times. It’s good to be brave but it works better at the beginning when she’s legitimately frightened of the mannequins but keeps asking questions anyway. It’s great that she only screams once in the episode and it’s a very reasonable reaction.
She does react well to crises. She pulls the fire alarm and gets everyone to evacuate when a mannequin impersonating Mickey gets violent in the restaurant.
I like the look of Rose. She’s very pretty, yes, but she’s built like a normal woman and wears normal woman clothing, and her hair looks pretty disheveled a lot of the time.
When her mom calls her during the crisis she hangs up without telling her she’s OK, which is bad. Maybe this is bad editing?
Her associated characters–Mickey and her mom, who is so far nameless–are awful. The mom is the worst, some sort of caricature of a poor person–she doesn’t want her daughter getting “airs and graces,” is implied to be promiscuous and is clueless to the point of stupidity. She’s also careless, doesn’t listen and wants to get money from Rose’s work exploding.
Mickey is annoying, but seemed a little less annoying on the second watchthrough. However, he does want to leave the Doctor behind TO DIE. Even Rose calls Mickey a “stupid lump.” At one point a plastic trash can eats him and I wished he’d stay there. He clings to Rose’s waist and is a coward, is there some racism here? Is this a racism?

TARDIS:

The Tardis has clearly gotten over its indigestion from the Master, because it’s making the “I’m hungry Seymour, feed me!” noise again.
The Tardis looks great, but it is definitely not as large as Eight’s Tardis. It’s also not as liveable, and lacks the homey feeling of the previous one, with its cushy chair and side table and ottoman.
It still has the plasticy tube in the center, but its dome is bronze-looking, with lived-in wear, and green light comes down from it and onto the console, which has a flatscreen monitor attached (must have been fancy back then). Green light shines on the console.
The Tardis has not been spoken of as a person as yet.

THE GUEST STARS/VILLAINS:

Apparently the Nestene Consciousness and the mannequins were in this in previous interations of Doctor Who? But you didn’t need to know that to watch the episode, the Doctor doesn’t explain things a ton anyway. So it’s fine.
Clive is a conspiracy theorist who shows Rose images of the Doctor through history and says he shows up before catastrophes with big death tolls. He is vindicated and then is immediately shot to death.

THE SETTING

The Sonic Screwdriver, what is.
Gay people exist.
Did Genghis Khan really try to get into the Tardis and fail? If so why can Rose just open the door without a key?
The color is fine but unremarkable. No artistic use of color like in the Cushing movie, no unique shots like the TV movie.

THE PRODUCTION

Who decided to reboot the show? Why, what prompted that?
The violence, did it get complaints? There’s a mass shooting at a mall in this episode.
Pacing is too fast. I feel like the right length for this stuff is somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours.
Accents and weird class stuff. Why do we hate the poors?
Icky editing, like the part where it cuts a bunch of times on “babe,” “darling,” “dear,” “sweetheart.” That and the “wacky music” makes it more like a children’s TV show than the original, even though that was also a children’s TV show. Like a crappy Disney channel show of this era. What’s with that?
The effects? The show has a budget suddenly?
The novelization, Josh read that, anything from that we haven’t talked about already?