Why Bring Back Rose Tyler?

[TedShatner10]

A significant reason why Season Four is one of the weakest series of the relaunched Doctor Who in comparative terms was that Russell T. Davies, not wanting to let go of Rose Tyler, wanted to keep using her to the detriment of the show.

What was the point of bringing Rose Tyler back?! She stood around and talked a bit, ran around a bit with a giant plasma rifle, spent most of an episode standing behind a force field, and then smooched a clone. What a waste.

And before "Children of Earth" I felt Captain Jack went through needless hassel and waste in the later season finales to a lesser extent as well.

Russell T. Davies did more lasting good than more lasting harm, but his abuse of significant supporting characters were definite symptoms of him beginning to lose the plot as a show runner: his character work has more feeling to it than Moffat's pricision engineered narrative, but I felt he left at the right time.

 

[Winterwind]

Oh please... The weekend has been going badly enough as it is. I didn't need this.

We're waiting for S6 now. She's gone. Please, please let's forget she ever happened. We're in agreement that she didn't need to come back but did you have to remind me that she did???

I need therapy now... *sobs*

 

[RoJoHen]

Because Rose, after all she had been through with the Doctor, could not simply give up. It made sense to me, and it gave Rose the happy ending that I think she deserved.

Then again, I liked Rose. I thought she was a great companion.

 

[DWF]

I thought her appaerance in The Stolen Earth/Journey's End and The End Of End brought some closure to her time on the show.

 

[RoJoHen]

I thought her appaerance in The Stolen Earth/Journey's End and The End Of End brought some closure to her time on the show.

It not only brought closure for her, but especially in "The End of Time," it brought closure to the 10th Doctor's character. I thought it was great.

 

[Neroon]

Because Rose, after all she had been through with the Doctor, could not simply give up. It made sense to me, and it gave Rose the happy ending that I think she deserved.

Then again, I liked Rose. I thought she was a great companion.

Same here. Different people will prefer different characters, and it's true for me that RTD had his problems. Yet I enjoyed having her back and didn't feel it impeded the stories at all. I'm a sucker for a good romance. RTD came close to the line with the mechanism by which he brought her back. But overall I liked seeing her again

 

[tomalak301]

Wasn't Rose in only two episodes that season? How could someone who was in two episodes (Or 1 and a half) make a season bad? I'm missing something I think?

Oh and I liked season 4 and Rose Tyler.

 

[FalTorPan]

I thought her appaerance in The Stolen Earth/Journey's End and The End Of End brought some closure to her time on the show.

It not only brought closure for her, but especially in "The End of Time," it brought closure to the 10th Doctor's character. I thought it was great.

I agree, although I had grown a bit weary of her by season four. I did enjoy her final appearance in "The End of Time."

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Wasn't Rose in only two episodes that season? How could someone who was in two episodes (Or 1 and a half) make a season bad? I'm missing something I think?

Oh and I liked season 4 and Rose Tyler.

Actually, she was in four, but your point still stands.

I'm no fan of Rose but even I think this is a bit hyperbolic. Granted the whole "running towards each other like little school children" in "The Stolen Earth" was absolute rubbish, but I actually didn't mind Rose's return for the most part (I quite liked her appearance in "Turn Left"). That being said, I did want to smack her when she whined about getting The Consolation Doctor (to steal a term from Turbo).

 

[tomalak301]

Wasn't Rose in only two episodes that season? How could someone who was in two episodes (Or 1 and a half) make a season bad? I'm missing something I think?

Oh and I liked season 4 and Rose Tyler.

Actually, she was in four, but your point still stands.

I'm no fan of Rose but even I think this is a bit hyperbolic. Granted the whole "running towards each other like little school children" in "The Stolen Earth" was absolute rubbish, but I actually didn't mind Rose's return for the most part (I quite liked her appearance in "Turn Left"). That being said, I did want to smack her when she whined about getting The Consolation Doctor (to steal a term from Turbo).

She was in Stolen Earth, Journey's End, Turn Left, and I guess the very end of End of Time is part of Season 4? Still, that's less than half the season, so I'm still confused.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Wasn't Rose in only two episodes that season? How could someone who was in two episodes (Or 1 and a half) make a season bad? I'm missing something I think?

Oh and I liked season 4 and Rose Tyler.

Actually, she was in four, but your point still stands.

I'm no fan of Rose but even I think this is a bit hyperbolic. Granted the whole "running towards each other like little school children" in "The Stolen Earth" was absolute rubbish, but I actually didn't mind Rose's return for the most part (I quite liked her appearance in "Turn Left"). That being said, I did want to smack her when she whined about getting The Consolation Doctor (to steal a term from Turbo).

She was in Stolen Earth, Journey's End, Turn Left, and I guess the very end of End of Time is part of Season 4? Still, that's less than half the season, so I'm still confused.

Actually, I was counting the end of "Partners in Crime," not "The End of Time."

 

[tomalak301]

I don't remember her in the end of Partners in Crime.

Edit: Ok, she was, as I just saw on Youtube. Still, she didn't say anything or added anything so I'm not sure if that counts.

 

[Mr Light]

I wasn't a huge fan of Rose but I thought her little cameos in Season Four were cool. I particularly enjoyed her bits with Donna in "Turn Left".

 

[OmahaStar]

The obnoxious slut was in way more than that.

Partners in Crime - meeting Donna at the end
Poison Sky - On the monitor in the Tardis trying to call the Doctor
Midnight - Again trying to call the Doctor
Turn Left - Poor Donna had to put up with her even in a parallel universe.
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End - Bitch just wouldn't go away.

There's a scene in TSE that pretty much sums up the character for me. Harriet Jones has the subwave network online. Captain Jack, Martha, and Sarah Jane were all part of this. Bitch was watching. At one point someone talks about Martha, with Sarah Jane clearly there. Bitch says "Oy, I was here first." No, actually of all of them, Sarah Jane was there first, by several decades.

But being the spoiled rotten brat that she is, she can't see it. Even Useless was before Bitch. Any number of companions could have been shown during that scene and they would have all been there before the bitch. But she would never see that. And RTD had a hardon for her since day one. That's why he kept bring her back over and over and over again, to the point where I was just sick of seeing her. She had her time. She had her reunion. And that still wasn't enough. Towards the end, I was hoping someone would stick a spear through her and be done with it.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

What was the point of bringing Rose Tyler back?!

I think that Davies always intended on bringing Rose back, much as he brought Jack back in the Master trilogy, as a familiar face to show the audience just how high the stakes were. When you read Davies' rough outline of the fourth season in The Writer's Tale, you see that for the two-part finale of the season, Davies wanted to bring everything back, and one of those things he wanted to bring back was Rose.

Davies, unfortunately, wasn't particularly good at bringing back his old characters and making them useful as anything more than a momentary fanwank. Jack was superfluous to the Master trilogy. Martha got to take one more trip in the TARDIS, but she was shunted off to the side. And Martha's appearance on Torchwood was utterly superfluous. Even Sarah Jane's return in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" was unnecessary. Donna's return in the fourth season is the one exception, but that's because Davies basically created a new Donna and invested her with more characterization that what we saw (or what was needed) for a one-hour one-off. By and large, Davies never came up with compelling reasons to revisit past characters, nor was he able to craft stories that required them.

Rose in the fourth season is an especially problematic case, because her appearance in "Partners in Crime" feels so portentious. One thing you learn in The Writer's Tale is that Billie Piper wanted to do more than just the two episodes that Davies offered, which would have been the two-part finale. Building the Doctor-lite story around her fit the requirements that Piper had for coming back, but that also made her character appear more significant than she really was, especially when viewed alongside "Partners."

Compounding the problem was Davies' inability to work out what he was trying to say with Rose. The writing of "Journey's End" was especially difficult for Davies. He decided that he had to revisit the scene at Bad Wolf Bay, but he didn't understand why he was doing this, and no other conclusion seems to have ever occurred to him. What is clear from The Writer's Tale is that everyone thought that the Bad Wolf Bay scene was a really bad idea and that it didn't work, but no one knew what else to do. Worse, Davies believed that the emotional climax of the episode was there with Rose, which is why he put so much effort into the scene, and as a result the episode's real emotional climax with the Doctor and Donna is left feeling unfinished and unsatisfying.

Rose, basically, was a toy that Davies loved. He was going to play with it, not because he needed to play with it but because he wanted to play with it, even if it made no sense to play with it. That's why Rose came back in the fourth season.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

As always (with the exception of The Brain of Morbius ), well spoken, Allyn. I couldn't agree more if I tried (even if I did enjoy Rose's appearance in "Turn Left").

 

[Nerys Myk]

The obnoxious slut was in way more than that.

Partners in Crime - meeting Donna at the end
Poison Sky - On the monitor in the Tardis trying to call the Doctor
Midnight - Again trying to call the Doctor
Turn Left - Poor Donna had to put up with her even in a parallel universe.
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End - Bitch just wouldn't go away.

There's a scene in TSE that pretty much sums up the character for me. Harriet Jones has the subwave network online. Captain Jack, Martha, and Sarah Jane were all part of this. Bitch was watching. At one point someone talks about Martha, with Sarah Jane clearly there. Bitch says "Oy, I was here first." No, actually of all of them, Sarah Jane was there first, by several decades.

But being the spoiled rotten brat that she is, she can't see it. Even Useless was before Bitch. Any number of companions could have been shown during that scene and they would have all been there before the bitch. But she would never see that. And RTD had a hardon for her since day one. That's why he kept bring her back over and over and over again, to the point where I was just sick of seeing her. She had her time. She had her reunion. And that still wasn't enough. Towards the end, I was hoping someone would stick a spear through her and be done with it.

Geez, what did she do? Steal your boyfriend?

 

[Photoman15]

Rose WAS Davies. Rose was there from the beginning of RTDs running of the series. He created her and she was him (and us). The human traveling with the Doctor. When Davies was leaving, his character alter-ego had to be there to say goodbye.

 

[VDCNI]

Well personally I thought Season 4 was the best series of modern Who so Rose didn't ruin anything for me.

I was glad to see the back of her at the end of season 2 but actually most of her appearances worked - particularly Partners In Crime & Turn Left.

The main problem is that in the end her appearance in Journey's End was essentially pointless - why bring her back just to redo the beach scene.

Thankfully in the end RTD realised that Donna's story was the important one and gave her the focus.

 

[Mitty]

Season 4 was great because of Donna. I had no problem with Rose coming back because everyone got closure. And it's deadly obvious that at some point in the future, Petesworld Doc will meet 11, or maybe even 12. Hopefully not for a while though.