Aired on 26th March 2005
Written by Russel T Davies
Produced by Phil Collinson
Directed by Keith Boak
Synopsis
Rose Tyler has the typical life of a teenager in London. She works in a department store, has a boyfriend called Mickey, and of course, plays the lottery. She has to take the stores lottery money to the caretaker, Wilson, at the end of the shift. However, what makes this day different to all the rest is the fact that Wilson can't be found. Instead, she's attacked by moving shop dummy's.
The dummy's surround her, but she's rescued by a strange man who tells her to "run".
They get to the lift and the man pulls off one of the dummy's arms as it reaches in to grab him.
Rose passes the attack off as students which the man says is not the case, in fact tells her Wilson is dead. He passes Rose the arm, holds up a bomb, tells her he's going to destroy a relay beacon, introduces himself as The Doctor, then tells her to run for her life. Rose does as she's told and is shocked when the entire upper floor of the department store is blown up.
It seems Rose is in a flat with her mum, Jackie. Her mum fusses about the explosion, using it as an opportunity to try and get compensation. Mickey comes around and is worried, but Rose sends him off to watch the football, saying she's fine. She asks him to throw the plastic arm away, which he does on his way out.
The next morning however, the arm comes back, scuttling in through the cat flap. The Doctor is not far behind it, tracking it's whereabouts. Rose passes him off as an inspector wanting to know about the explosion. As Rose is making tea, the arm attacks the Doctor, choking him.
He disables it with his sonic screwdriver and then cheerily leaves.
Rose chases after him, demanding to know who he is. He warns her to forget him, but she won't accept it, so he tells her he's here to stop some living plastic from starting a war that would result in the destruction of the human race so they could have the planet.
He then gets into a mysterious blue box and disappears.
Intrigued, Rose goes to see Mickey and does some research on the internet, tracing the sightings of the Doctor. She finds an add from a man in London called Clive that seems to know a lot more.
Rose and Mickey visit Clive (Mickey reluctantly waits in the car). Clive shows Rose examples of how the Doctor has been sited through time and says ominously that death follows him.
Whilst Rose is inside, Mickey sees a moving bin and when he investigates it, it sticks to him and sucks him inside, creating a facsimile of him.
Rose believes Clive is nuts and invites the fake Mickey to go and get some pizza. At the restaurant, Mickey questions Rose about where the Doctor is, but is acting very weird. The Doctor shows up and confronts the Auton Mickey. It's hands turn into slabs and it attacks, but the Doctor defeats it by pulling off it's head - a fact that horrifies Rose. They run off and lock the Auton behind a door but it begins to break it down. Rose wants to break a padlock on a gate and run for it, but the Doctor shows her to the blue box.
Rose enters it and is astonished at the size of the inside. She questions him, finding out he is an alien, the box can move places and there's an alien race called the Nestene Consciousness controlling this plastic.
The Doctor uses the head to trace the signal it's sending out but loses it just before finding the source as the head melts.
They get to the River Thames and look around for a large dish type transmitter - Rose works out that they're using the London Eye for this purpose. Together, they run across Westminster Bridge and find the Nestene's lair under the Thames.
Rose is relieved to find the real Mickey alive, but chained up down there.
The Doctor meanwhile asks to parley under the terms of the Shadow Proclamation. The Nestene agrees, but soon becomes aggressive as it finds the TARDIS and uncovers the fact that the Doctor is a Time Lord. The Doctor is agitated and tries to apologise profusely as he's seized by the Autons, telling the Nestene that he's not like the others and he didn't destroy their planet.
The Auton's find a vial of anti-plastic in the Doctor's coat, but he assures them he wasn't going to use it. The Nestene doesn't believe him and prepares to kill him. It starts up invasion plans by awakening every mannequin in London that begin to rampage the public, harassing Jackie Tyler and unfortunately killing Clive in front of his own family.
Rose saves him by swinging down on a chain and knocking the Auton's into the molten form of the Nestene, releasing the vial of anti-plastic onto it. The poison kills the Nestene and sets off a chain reaction.
The Doctor ushers Rose and Mickey into the TARDIS and takes them away from the site, materialising into an alleyway. He offers Rose the chance to come with him, but not Mickey.
Rose refuses at first, but finds it impossible to resist as the Dcotor says the TARDIS can also travel in time.
She kisses Mickey one final time, then races into the ship.
Trivia
- This is the first time in the new series we get to see the TARDIS interior - it's drastically different than previous incarnations and is referred to a the "coral desktop theme" by fans
- We see the Sonic Screwdriver re-introduced for the first time since The Visitation. It brings with it all the old problems, but it's a nice return
- This is one of the only episodes in the new series to feature the titles before the episode. From this point on, there's a teaser opening sequence before them
- None other than Nicholas Briggs made his debut here as the voice of the Nestene Consciousness. He would go on to be crowned as the definitive voice of the Daleks and the Cybermen, but this was far from his first involvement with the series. Indeed, he had been one of the ones who led the charge in keeping the Doctor Who dream alive by making independent spin offs in the 90s and is a founding member of Big Finish audios.
- This is also of course, the start of Russel T. Davies' tenure on the show as Producer. He also wrote Doctor Who novels in the 90s and also made a children's show very much in the vein of Doctor Who called Dark Season. He in turn would pull in his fellow writers from Big Finish and Virgin books to write episodes
- And of course, we need to mention Christopher Eccleston, who was chosen by Davies to take the Doctor in a whole new direction and have a fresh start.
- The original episode underran by some minutes, so they added the scene where the Doctor explains things to Rose whilst walking.
- The underground base of the Autons was actually a disused mill in Cardiff. It had to be cleaned out because it was so old, so scenes were shortened - if all had run to plan, we would have seen an additional Auton Mickey in that scene
The Review
And so, after a failed attempt at an American hybrid TV movie, a god-awful abomination combined with the set of Eastenders that I refuse to acknowledge (although John Nathan-Turner wanted it to have a proper production code to follow on from Survival and make it Canon), and one rather purposefully hilarious attempt for Red Nose Day, Doctor Who is finally back on British TV!
So, why did this one succeed where the others failed? I think there's a lot of truth to the fact that this story picked up on the idea that you don't need an "origin" story to be successful on a first episode. This one perfectly picks up on the Doctor's mystery and really manages to re-capture that fantastical element that hasn't been seen since the very first episode in 1963. It does this by showing us the Doctor popping in and out of Rose's life and giving him somewhat of a mystical James Bond persona. It makes us WANT to know more, and when she meets that bloke in his house and he says death follows this bloke she's met, it just adds even more to it.
This even goes into the TARDIS - measure it against the massive exposition we saw in the TV movie about it compared to the Ninth Doctor's rather clipped explanation of "disappears here, reappears there". It gives us just enough explanation to keep going and very effectively drip feeds us information if we're totally new to it, and allows pop culture to fill in the blanks for the rest of us.
The Autons are nice to see, but none of them are particularly scary or effective, they're there for that added bit of nostalgia, but at least they're relevant to the plot and their use of killing that bloke is a sledgehammer to us - showing there's a real threat and highlighting his words - it is dangerous to know the Doctor.
Micky, facsimile aside, is also great, and Billie Piper proves everyone wrong about her acting talent. Both characters have totally believable reactions and there's even bits of humour worked in.
All in all, the only thing to make this absolutely top notch would be to have cut down on the CGI with the wheelie bin and weird copy of Micky. The rest is bang on and a great start to the new series.
Rating
8 out of 10
Re-Watchability Factor
7 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
- Love and Monsters
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