Rose Tyler, or simply Rose, is a fictional character played by Billie Piper in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A shop assistant from London, she is the first known companion of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, and is a regular on the programme beginning in its 2005 season.
History
When Rose met the Doctor in Rose, she was 19 and working as a shop assistant at Henrik's department store in Regent Street, London. She also had a boyfriend named Mickey Smith and lived in a council flat with her mother Jackie. Rose left school without taking her A-levels but did win the bronze medal in an under-sevens gymnastics competition at her junior school. Her father, Pete Tyler, died in 1987 in a car accident, the year after Rose was born.
One night after the shop closed she encountered mannequins coming to life in the basement of the building. The Autons were about to dispose of her when the Doctor saved her life, although he went on to destroy the building and her job in the process. She aided the Doctor in tracking down the hiding place of the Nestene Consciousness that was animating the Autons and subsequently helped defeat its plans of world conquest. She then joined the Doctor on his travels in the TARDIS.
In her travels with the Doctor, Rose has (among other things) seen the end of the world, encountered the Doctor's oldest enemy and learned about the consequences of tampering with history. The Doctor even modifed her Nokia 3200 mobile phone to be able to communicate across time and space, among other functions. She has nicknamed it the "Superphone".
During her first year with the Doctor, the words "Bad Wolf" followed the Doctor and Rose around, the phrase being scattered like clues through the places that they visited. In The Parting of the Ways, it was revealed that Rose was the Bad Wolf — the words were a message that she had left to herself in time and space when she absorbed the energies of the time vortex to save the Doctor and the Earth from the Daleks. The Doctor had just returned her home to place her out of harm's way, but "Bad Wolf" was a reminder that it was possible to get back to him. This led her to the point where she would absorb the energies, creating a predestination paradox and making it possible not just to destroy the Daleks but to leave those clues.
However, the energies she absorbed were destroying her body. The Doctor took those energies into himself, sacrificing his ninth incarnation and regenerating before Rose's eyes into the Tenth Doctor.
Billie Piper will return as Rose in the 2006 season with David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. Conflicting reports in the media have alternately stated that Piper will not be returning for a third series and that she has signed a contract for the third series. Neither Piper nor the BBC have officially confirmed or denied the stories one way or another.
Personality
Rose is the first television companion of the Doctor with a fully fleshed-out personal life and background that the audience actually sees on screen in her debut story, as opposed to something developed over time. Notably and for the first time since the first Doctor Who episode "An Unearthly Child", Rose (and indeed, much of the 2005 season and the 2005 Christmas special) is told largely from the companion's point of view. This is also the first time the television series has examined the consequences of a companion leaving with the Doctor. (For the year she was away, she was considered a missing person and Mickey was briefly suspected of her murder.)
She is also unique among on-screen companions in that she has not been cut off from her family and world she once knew. Mickey is aware of her new occupation and continues to track her movements through his website. Jackie found out about the life her daughter was leading in Aliens of London, and despite pleading for her to stay, Rose continued to travel with the Doctor. She is able to communicate with her family if she wants to via her "Superphone", and numerous episodes have seen Rose returning to visit with her mother and Mickey, rendering them recurring "pseudo-companions" along the same lines as Captain Mike Yates, Sergeant Benton and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart from the Third Doctor's era.
Rose has shown herself to be a quick-witted, inquisitive and compassionate young woman, who despite the strange events she was thrown into was quick to adapt to them. She fell easily into the role of the Doctor's latest companion and showed both determination and courage while facing various alien threats. It is also obvious that she cares deeply about the Doctor, although she denies any infatuation with or romantic feelings towards him, despite indications to the contrary on several occasions, particularly in The Parting of the Ways where she goes to incredible lengths to save him and shows jealousy towards a female character who appears attracted to the Doctor.
In Dalek, a Dalek (which has absorbed some of Rose's DNA) challenges the Doctor to "save the woman you love," possibly reflecting Rose's belief that the Doctor might harbor such feelings toward her. In The Christmas Invasion she also expresses her feelings about the Doctor but stops short of outright saying she is in love with him. It remains to be seen if her feelings for the Time Lord will change with his regeneration.
Following the broadcast of The Christmas Invasion, a preview of the 2006 series included a brief clip showing Rose kissing the Doctor on the mouth, but the context of this action is as yet unknown.
Other appearances
Rose is featured in the six spin-off novels in the Ninth Doctor Adventures range published in 2005 and will also appear in at least the first three novels of the Tenth Doctor Adventures book series which is scheduled to launch in 2006.
The Doctor Who Annual 2006, published by Panini in August 2005, gives further biographical information on Rose in an article written by the programme's chief writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies. The piece includes the address of the flat she and Jackie lived in (Flat 48, Bucknall House, Powell Estate, London, SE15 7GO). Jackie supported them by working from home as a hairdresser, and prior to Rose meeting the Doctor her only travelling experience was a school trip to France and an annual week's holiday to South Wales with her mother.
Rose began seeing Mickey at the age of 14, and at 15 she was suspended from her school, Jericho Street Comprehensive, for persuading the choir to go on strike. After doing well in her GCSE exams, she left school to live with a 20 year-old musician, Jimmy Stone, but the affair ended in tears and with Rose £800 in debt. She subsequently returned to Jackie and Mickey, and her mother called in a favour from an ex-boyfriend to get her the job at Henrik's.
The Doctor states that Rose is nineteen years old in the episode The Unquiet Dead, and Aliens of London establishes that she met the Doctor on March 6, 2005. However, the Annual article states that Rose was born on April 27, 1987, making her just under 18 years old at the time. Although this contradicts the age as stated on screen, it is consistent with the appearance of the baby Rose in Father's Day, set in November 1987, where the baby is clearly no more than a few months old. The April 27 birthdate is also consistent with a statement on the BBC's website: during the lead-up to the episode Bad Wolf, the website was altered to tie in with the story's Big Brother theme, and a "contestant portrait" for Rose stated that she was an Aries.
As with all non-televised Doctor Who, the canonicity of both the website and the Annual article, despite its authorship, is open to question.
Trivia
