Doctor Who series 1 Episode 1

Scared, Rose looks up into the face of a stranger.

He grins at her, and says, "Run!"

So it begins.

No examination of science-fiction in the first decade of the third millenium could be complete without including the BBC's regenerated Doctor Who, played by Christopher Ecclestone. While there is an overview of the series as a whole, this article deals specifically with the opening episode.

From the moment the orbiting camera zoomed into the UK, then to London, into a council estate and into a single small flat, and cut to an alarm clock ticked that said 7.29, then ticked over to 7.30, Rose hit the ground running to a pumping soundtrack.

Rose Tyler is an ordinary girl, a shop assistant with a boyfriend, and who likes chips. Her life is mapped out, safe but dull.

That all changes when she goes in search of the porter and finds herself in the basement, threatened by what appear to be animated shop dummies, and rescued by a mysterious stranger.

The mixture of the scary and absurd was always one of Doctor Who's greatest strengths -- the ability to terrify the viewer one minute, and then to crack jokes the next. Davies cleverly emphasized this, bringing the mysterious stranger back to Rose's flat and introducing him to the man-eating Jackie, Rose's mother, and then having him choked by a disconnected hand -- then abruptly having him.

"But you can't just go!" Rose cries.

"Yes, I can!" the Doctor replies. "Just watch me. This me saying good-bye. Good-bye!"

When he has left, Rose meets up with her dull but faithful boyfriend Mickey, and starts to look for him; through her eyes the viewer learns of the Doctor's history as it appears on the internet; this is an ambigious, slightly sinister Doctor, who wherever he goes, is accompanied by a constant companion -- death.

Mickey is himself captured and replaced by an alternate Mickey, a creature of plastic, who wants to know about the Doctor and decides that staying close to Rose is the best way to do it. A series of comedic/scary encounters follows.

Davies cleverly worked in an old, but lesser-known assailant as his villain, and even gave them some back-history. He also didn't shy from addressing the obvious, when Rose asks him why he speaks with a northern (English) accent, and the Doctor indignantly replies that all planets have a north. It's ludicrous, but it somehow works.

This is clearly an introductory episode, but because it's all new, and the viewer is unfamiliar with Davies' style, it has a freshness that renders the fact that it's an introduction almost irrelevant. This is still very much a drama, and unusually for what had until then been the wasteland of (UK) Saturday early evening TV, it's fast, it's gripping, and the characters are above all likeable.

At the episode's climax, the Doctor himself is in danger, and a clearly fearful Rose has to decide whether to stand back and let things play out, or whether to step up and help. Inevitably, she chooses the latter course, and in the process saves her mother from the rampaging enemy. This opening episode is as much about Rose and her family as it is the mysterious interloper.

And so to a final parting, first between Rose and the Doctor, and then upon his almost immediate return, with the faithful Mickey. The episode concludes with the dopplering sound of the departing TARDIS, or as the Doctor put it;

"The sound of the universe."

Print Article

Email Article

View All Articles

How to subscribe to feeds