Twenty years ago today, Doctor Who underwent the most important regeneration in its history.
Twenty years ago, Doctor Who did something it hadn’t managed for quite a while: it regenerated. Not just on screen but in the hearts of audiences across the world. Russell T Davies’ Rose was the bold, bright relaunch that brought the Doctor back into living rooms, and while it may show its age in places, it’s still impossible not to admire just how deftly it balances the weight of legacy with the giddy excitement of a fresh start.
Ingeniously, RTD begins the reintroduction of the iconic sci-fi series with the humdrum banality of Rose Tyler’s world, with Billie Piper immediately staking her claim as one of the most relatable companions in the show’s long history. Piper’s Rose is cheerful, curious, and unpretentious – the kind of person you’d trust to mind your chips but who might also be halfway across the galaxy before you got them back. Her grounded energy gives the story its heart, and it’s her eyes we’re seeing this new old world through.
Enter Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor. Intense, brusque, and – let’s be honest – a teensy bit generic. Eccleston’s performance carries the weight of mystery and authority with ease, but there’s little in the way of the unique idiosyncrasies that have defined previous and subsequent incarnations and he remains a hard Doctor to describe in much detail. It’s immediately obvious that Nu-Who is too cool – or at least for the present too self-conscious – for question mark motifs on collars or umbrellas or an omnipresent bag of jelly babies, although the sonic screwdriver is back with a vengeance. It’s even carefully equivocal about whether it’s a continuation or a reboot, something it wouldn’t explicitly confirm until David Tennant’s run. But given the task at hand – reintroducing Doctor Who to a world that hadn’t seen it outside of DVD releases and fan conventions for nearly a decade – this stripped-down, almost neutral take was exactly what was needed. He’s a clean slate wrapped in a leather jacket, and that allowed a whole new generation of viewers to get their bearings without having to decode layers of inherited whimsy.
Of course, Rose wasn’t without its wobbles. The CG burps from the Nestene Consciousness and the plastic Mickey replacement are charming in their ambition but haven’t aged well although The Autons’ rampage through the shopping centre is surprisingly effective – proving that some things are timeless in their terrifying appeal. Sure, the CGI wheelie bin is a little goofy and the tone of the episode wobbles as much as the sets used to do in the seventies but those rough edges only add to the episode’s earnest charm (and for veteran fans comforting familiarity) – Doctor Who was back, and it was trying.
Davies’ script crackles with an energy and a confidence that’s infectious. The show knows it needs to earn its place again, and it does so with pace, humour, and a sense of fun that had been absent from the series’ wilderness years as novels plunged into deeper and darker territory than the general audience would care for. The Doctor’s brief flashes of warmth, Rose’s growing realisation that there’s more to life than retail, and that unforgettable moment where she takes the Doctor’s hand and quite literally chooses to run away from humdrum normality – all underscored by Murray Gold’s dynamic, cinematic score that elevates each moment in a way that the incidental music of the classic series rarely did – it’s all perfectly pitched to propel Doctor Who from geeky niche appeal to an unlikely ascent to a BBC marquee family drama.
Looking back now, Rose is its own time capsule of ambition, optimism, and just a touch of chaos. It was the start of something unexpectedly and unpredictably huge, and while the show would quickly evolve – sometimes wildly, sometimes awkwardly – this first step remains a joy to revisit. It’s not perfect, but then Doctor Who has never been one for perfection. That’s rather the point, isn’t it?
