Doctor Who has been on our watchlist for a very long time, though it was agreed that we would wait until we got out of the Buffy-verse first. That seemed so far away back then, and yet, here we are friends.
Let’s take a trip through space and time, shall we?
—
Rose
Lorraine: First and foremost, Kirsti is the long time fan, this is my second watch and Sweeney is the first time watcher. As always, we try to keep things as spoiler-free as we can, for the benefit of the Snow.
I started watching Doctor Who and quit after 1.5 episodes because it was boring me to tears. At some time while season 7 was still airing, Kirsti convinced me to power through season 1, with the expectation that it would get way better. And so I did (except I skipped episode 3. It’s the only episode I’ve never seen.) and I fell in love.
Kirsti: I find it really interesting that so many people have skipped episode 3 of season 1. Because episode 3 was what convinced me to actually keep watching (I didn’t fall in love until The Empty Child). But that may be because the Victorian era is my jam and Dickens is my homeboy. Or something…
Sweeney: I am a Snow (save for the Den of Spoilers known as Tumblr, but fuck if I understand any of what I saw there) with the exception of this episode, which I watched a couple years ago. I found this episode so incredibly stupid that I could not justify continuing on with this show when there was so much other good TV to watch. (I believe this is when I decided to watch Parks & Rec instead. I stand by that life choice.)
Lor: I’m about 95% sure that recapping this show will change a lot of my opinion of it. It’s problematic at times, a thing I didn’t stop to think about during my hasty marathon watch. Hopefully, though, we’ll find that the things to love are more and better than the things to rage-gif about.
All that stuff you didn’t really need to know said, here we go:
DO DEE DOOO. (Those were the credits. We get no cold open here.)
We start in space and pan from moon to earth. We zoom into London where someone’s alarm clock goes off. Billie Piper wakes up with a wicked case of bed head. Downstairs, Billie Piper says goodbye to her mum and rushes out of the house into the streets of London and all the way to a department store. We watch a sped up montage of her day, including lunch with her boyfriend, lots of sad shots of her working (yes, girl. I feel you.), life going on outside in London and finally, her walking out for the day but being stopped by the security guard, who has one last job for her.
K: WORST EVER. A few months back, I was literally about to walk out the door when one of the teachers came in and dithered about for FIFTEEN MINUTES looking at random stuff. I was not impressed.
Lor: People of the world: quitting time is quitting time.
Rose’s final task takes her to The Basement of Don’t Go In There, where any good story truly begins (K: TRUE. At least in Traumaland). Billie Piper calls out to Wilson, explaining that she has the lottery money and the store is closing. No answer from Wilson, but she keeps calling out to him and names herself Rose.
Sweeney: Saying your own name is a pretty cheap way to earn the star. I don’t like it.
Lor: I liked it just because I got to stop pretending I didn’t know her name was Rose. *phew*
She keeps wandering further into the basement, calling out to Wilson and turning on lights. She finds herself in a room full of mannequins and one by one, the mannequins start coming after her. She’s backed into a wall and braces herself for an attack when we see that someone slips their hand into hers. She looks up and this man tells her to run. I’m having feels already. I guess I never noticed that their very first interaction was a hand hold.
K: I swear, the first time I watched this episode I was all “WTF EVEN IS THIS???”, which I imagine is where Sweeney’s at right about now. But on rewatch, I just love it so much.
Sweeney: I think “WTF?” was watch 1. On watch 2 I had already moved on to bored doodling by this time. Sorry not sorry, Whovians.
Lor: They run into an elevator and just manage to escape when the mysterious-man-you-don’t-know-is-the-Doctor-yet-ahem pulls the arm off a mannequin. Rose is freaking out a bit and asks if those were students. The Unidentified Man asks why she guessed students. Rose: “To get that many people dressed up and being silly… They gotta be students.” The Unidentified Man says that’s smart, but also wrong. Rose wants to warn Wilson, but Unidentified Man says, with little ceremony, that Wilson is dead.
This long-ass elevator ride is finally over. Unidentified Man takes out a doo-hickey and points it at the elevator panel. (S: The quality of the props and special effects departments are such that “doo-hickey” seems to be the appropriate caliber of descriptive term.) The panel sparks and he keeps right on running, Rose following him, shouting questions. He tells her that the mannequins are living plastic, being controlled by a relay device on the roof. It’s not a problem, though, because Unidentified Man has a bomb he intends to use to blow it up, maybe even dying in the process. He pushes Rose out of a door and tells her not to worry and not to tell anyone about it. He shuts the door in her face. A second later he opens it again and introduces himself as the Doctor. He waves the bomb a little and tells her to run for her life.
Still holding the plastic arm, Rose runs. She’s across the street when the department store’s roof blows up. She keeps running, right past a blue police box.
At home, Rose’s mother is talking to someone on the phone about the explosion as the news coverage plays in the background. Rose’s boyfriend shows up, also fussing about the explosion. But not like really worried, because there’s a match on and he wants to go catch the last of it. Rose sends him on his way, and asks him to take out the plastic arm while he’s at it. We watch him walk out, toss the arm in a bin and keep going.
K: Look at you, using the words “mum” and “bin”. I’m so proud.
Lor: I TRIED REALLY HARD!
Next day. Rose’s alarm clock goes off again, but we hear her mother say there’s no point in waking up since her job is incinerated and stuff. Later, Rose’s mom is nattering on about finding a job and seeking compensation for trauma. Rose hears something at the door and yells at her mother, who was supposed to nail the cat flap down. Rose peers out the flap to find the Doctor staring back at her. She opens the door and he says his reading must be wrong and tries to leave, but Rose pulls him inside the house.
Rose tells her mom that a man is there about the explosion and she yells out that Rose deserves compensation. The Doctor stands at Mom’s doorway and when she gets a look at him, she gets all flirty about being half naked and having a strange man in her bedroom. Anything could happen.
K: LOLOLOLOL. It never gets old.
Sweeney: This episode is still stupid, but I like him and this whole, “I’ve gotta go shave my hands now,” reaction.
Lor: Rose goes in the kitchen to fix the Doctor some coffee and we watch him as he does a few odd things: call a person in a tabloid an alien; read an entire book by just flipping through the pages; look at himself in the mirror and proclaim himself not bad, except for the ears. Rose is still in the kitchen, talking about going to the police about the mannequins and explosion, when The Doctor looks behind the couch and is attacked by the plastic arm.
When Rose gets back out into the living room, she thinks the Doctor is messing around, until he’s able to pull it off his neck. The arm next attacks Rose’s face. The Doctor tries to get it off of her and they crash into the coffee table. Once he pulls it off of Rose, he points that light-up-doo-hickey at it again and it goes still. “See, ‘armless?” he tells Rose, who whacks him with it.
We cut to the Doctor leaving and Rose following after him, again, asking him to tell her what’s going on and who he is. “Doctor what?” she asks, almost near enough to have our first “Doctor Who” shot but not quite. “Just the Doctor,” he replies.
K: Rose Tyler: refusing to play along with Whovian drinking games since 2005.
Lor: The Doctor says he’s just passing through and is a long way from home. Rose wants to know why the plastic attacked her, and the Doctor asks if she thinks the whole world revolves around her. The only reason Rose is involved is because she got in the way.
Sweeney: I’m not sure what his indignation is all about – that sounds like a pretty fantastic Sunday to me.
Lor: And to probably everyone else reading this.
We cut to the end of that explanation: something is controlling the Killer Plastic by projecting life into the arm. The Doctor’s light-up-doo-hickey cut off that signal. Rose is shocked but she jokingly asks if someone is trying to take over Britain’s shops. The Doctor laughs with her and CHARACTERS LAUGHING! As you all know, I find it fascinating.
K: Let’s be honest, we’ve been pretty light on the ground for laughing characters around these parts. Buffy‘s more of a smiler than a laugher, Angel featured more sarcasm than anything, and the less said about Supernatural the better.
Lor: Post-chuckle, the Doctor says that the Alien of the Week wants to overthrow the human race. He asks if Rose believe him. She doesn’t, but she hasn’t left either. She asks again who he really is and the Strings of Significance start up as the Doctor says it’s kind of like when you first learn that the world is turning and you can’t believe it, because it looks like it’s standing still. The music soars as the Doctor grabs Rose’s hand again and says he can feel it. “We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And, if we let go… ” He releases her hand and the dramatic music cuts out. “That’s who I am.” So, like, well timed soundtrack cuts? Probably not. The Doctor tells Rose to forget him and go home. He walks across the street to his blue police box.
As Rose walks away, she hears whooshing and wheezing sounds. She runs back to where she left the Doctor but he’s gone and so is the police box.
Rose goes to visit her boyfriend Mickey, for the purpose of using his computer. A computer I would not think actually existed in 2005.
K: I wrote my Honours thesis in 2004 on a computer VERY similar to that one. Also, bear in mind that Rose and Mickey live in council flats. Money’s not exactly abundant…
Lor: Very true. I guess I just find all outdated technology hard to believe.
Rose does a web search for “doctor” and gets a billionty hits. She tries “doctor living plastic” and that doesn’t help her any either. Finally, she does, “doctor blue box.” The first hit is for “Doctor who?” She clicks the link which leads to a super basic website that has an weird, half unpixelated picture of The Doctor, asking for people to contact Clive if they’ve seen him.
Sweeney: This was a staple of mid-2000’s television. Your show couldn’t speak to a generation without at least one Google montage.
Lor: Rose goes with Mickey to visit Clive. Mickey is hesitant because he could be a crazy murderer. This is pretty much the exact conversation I’ve had with family/friends before meeting other bloggers. I mean, not any more. They’ve pretty much accepted that I live in the Internet.
K: Mine haven’t. The first thing my mum said to me when I mentioned that I was planning on meeting up with internet friends in London was “DON’T TELL YOUR FATHER, HE DOESN’T GET IT.”
Sweeney: In keeping with a running theme of, “Sweeney’s parents let her do ALL THE FUN STUFF,” the first time I met an internet friend in person I was 11. She came to my play and then we went to Six Flags and I have not spoken to her in a decade and a half, so I can’t verify that she did not go on to become an ax murderer, but would rate her 11-year-old self as 10/10 Not An Ax Murderer.
Lor: Would recommend!
A boy answers the door and calls out to his dad that one of his “nutters” is at the door. Clive comes over and doesn’t seem ruffled by the ridiculous, “I’mma kill you,” faces Mickey is giving him from the car. Probably because they are even way less threatening WHEN YOU WAIT IN THE CAR. Clive’s wife is surprised that a girl has been reading her husband’s Doctor website.
Out in the back shed, where murdering would most certainly happen if any murdering were to happen, Clive shows Rose a collection of badly photoshopped (K: SO BADLY OMG) pictures of the Doctor at such events like the assassination of President Kennedy and before the Titanic sailed and even a crude drawing from 1883. He tells Rose that the Doctor is always around when disaster comes and his one, constant companion is death. Clive says if the Doctor is back, they are all in danger.
Mickey is still hanging out in the car and we see that a trash bin is rolling towards him. He would not go inside the house, but he is going to check out the self-rolling trash bin.
K: DUDE, NO. Personally, I steer clear of wheelie bins at the best of times, because EW GROSS. But one that was moving? RUN. LIKE. FUCK.
Lor: For his trouble, his hands get fused to the plastic lid and then the trash bin eats him. (K: AND THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS)
Rose asks Clive who he thinks the Doctor is. Clive replies that he thinks the Doctor is immortal. Apparently, after everything she’s seen, “immortal” is where Rose is all, “LOL. NO WAY JOSE.” We see her leaving Clive’s house and getting back into the car with a very not-okay, plastic, shiny looking Mickey. I’m not sure how Rose doesn’t notice he basically has cartoon hair.
Rose and Plastic!Mickey grab some dinner. He is very, very interested in getting Rose to tell him all about The Doctor’s plans and also his voice keeps malfunctioning. A waiter comes over and presents them with a bottle of wine while Plastic!Mickey starts to get really aggressive in his questioning. “Doesn’t anybody want this champagne?” the waiter asks? ME ME ME ME! (S: Rose’s disinterest in this champagne was disappointing.) They look up and see that it’s The Doctor offering them the bottle. He shakes it up and shoots the cork into Plastic!Mickey’s head.
Plastic!Mickey is unfazed. He morphs his hand into some sort of giant, killer spatula. The Doctor grabs him into a headlock and pulls off Plastic!Mickey’s head. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the body from charging about, blindly swinging its killer spatulas. Rose thinks on her feet and hits the fire alarm, yelling for everyone to get out.
K: This entire scene is utterly ridiculous, but I do have to applaud Noel Clarke for making Plastic!Mickey believable.
Lor: Rose and the Doctor head out a back door. Rose finds a locked gate and tells the Doctor to use his light-up-doo-hickey to unlock it. He calls it a sonic screwdriver. The Doctor has a better idea, though, and is going to head into that blue police box we keep seeing. Rose thinks that’s a horrible idea, but since Plastic!Mickey’s body is still banging at the back door, she runs inside. Whatever she sees makes her stop short and run right back out. She runs around the police box checking to see what’s behind it. Plastic!Mickey breaks out the back door so Rose runs back inside, and this time we see it too.
K: FEELS. SO MANY FEELS.
Lor: The Doctor pays no mind to Rose’s wonder or the mystical music that comes with our first look inside the box. He’s busy hooking up Plastic!Mickey’s head to the middle console, as he can use it to track the source of the signal. That all done, The Doctor turns his attention to Rose and asks where she wants to start. She goes with, “the inside is bigger than the outside,” which I’ll spoil you into knowing you’ll hear that one again because: SHOTS.
K: HEY GUYS, REMEMBER THE TARDIS CRYPT AND THE BIGGER ON THE INSIDE DORM ROOM? Good times.
Sweeney: Listen, I’m sure this show is great and I’m willing to take you all are your word that it’s going to be a whole lot better than this beginning, but the Spice World Bus was the best Bigger On The Inside set of all time.
Lor: I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH YOU RIGHT NOW. You should sit in the Shame Corner.
Rose asks if the Doctor is an alien. He is. “Is that alright,” he asks. “Yeah,” she answers with no hesitation. The blue box is called the TARDIS: Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Rose starts crying, and the Doctor thinks it’s because of the culture shock, but she actually asks about Mickey. He admits that he didn’t even think about that. She asks if her boyfriend is dead after the Doctor pulled his head off– a head that is now melting on an alien ship console. The Doctor freaks out because he hasn’t locked onto the signal yet. He hits a bunch of buttons and the TARDIS starts its whirring and wheezing.
The Doctor runs out and Rose yells that it isn’t safe. When she walks out too, though, she finds they are no longer in an alley. They’ve moved. Rose asks what happened to Plastic!Mickey’s body then. The Doctor says it melted with the head. Rose will have to tell his mother. The Doctor looks a bit lost so Rose has to spell out that Mickey just died and someone has to tell his family and he just went and forgot about him again. The Doctor says that if he did forget, it’s only because he’s trying to save the life of everyone else on the planet. And then:
Well played, show.
Sweeney: Indeed. Clever, clever. Points for self-aware jokes.
Lor: Probably my favorite line of the episode.
Rose next asks what a “Police Public Call Box,” is. It’s a 1950s telephone box used to disguise the TARDIS. Then she asks what the Killer Plastic has against them. “Nothing,” The Doctor says. The air is perfect for them to live and they’ve got no home to call their own. Thankfully, The Doctor has a vial of anti-plastic with him! First, he’s got to find the transmitter. He doesn’t get how you can hide something that big in a city. He describes the huge, round, transmitter right smack dab in the middle of London as he paces a bit and the shot pans out. He’s standing in front of The London Eye. Rose gives him a pointed look. He turns around a couple of times without noticing and then when he finally gets it, he smiles a big smile.
K: And we get our first Doctor catchphrase!! FANTASTIC.
Lor: They reach the Eye and locate a shady looking manhole area perfect for looking for the consciousness controlling all of the plastic. In the manhole, they find a giant vat filled with the Nestene Consciousness, the living plastic. Rose is all, “GOOD. KILL IT.” but that isn’t why the Doctor is here. He wants to give it a chance. He approaches the vat and formally asks for an audience. There are lots of gurgling noises that the Doctor apparently understands. He gets permission to approach just as Rose sees Mickey further below. She runs to him as the Doctor says that he knew there was a possibility they would keep him alive. Rose is not amused.
The Doctor, now in front of but above the vat, tells the Nestene Consciousness to “shunt off” and give up the invasion. The Nestene growls at him but the Doctor holds his ground: This planet is just starting. These stupid little people have only just learned how to walk but they’re capable of so much more. I’m asking you, on their behalf, please just go. There are two mannequins creeping up behind the Doctor now. Rose warns him, but it’s too late. They grab him and pull out that nifty vial of anti-plastic. The Nesten growls and the Doctor swears it was just insurance, and he wasn’t going to use it. He’s not their enemy and the Nestene is all, “oh yeah?” Behind them, a door opens (who opened it?) (MAGIC.) (K: Prue Halliwell?) and reveals that they’ve captured the TARDIS.
The Nestene’s growling gets more violent as the Doctor denies whatever it’s saying. “I fought in the war,” he explains. “It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t save your world. I couldn’t save any of them.” The Nestene isn’t listening, terrified by the superior technology of the TARDIS. It’s going to initiate the final stage of its evil, plastic plan. The Doctor tells Rose to run, but instead she calls her mom to try to warn her. Unfortunately, there is crappy reception down in the tunnel.
K: Not like the LA sewers then, where Angel always got perfect reception? Shame.
Lor: The Nestene’s signal goes out, boosted by the London Eye. We cut to a shopping center where Clive and his family are hanging out. Rose’s mom is there too. The mannequins come alive. Clive gets shot by a mannequin.
The tunnel starts crashing in around Mickey, the Doctor and Rose. She tries to get in the TARDIS but doesn’t have the key. The Nestene growls, “time lord.” Rose looks like she’s thinking very seriously about trying something to help the Doctor who is still struggling in the arms of some mannequins. These long looks are stupid awkward. I mean, I say that knowing this is an episode about killer plastic, but you know what I mean.
Sweeney: If you mean that almost all of the shots in this entire episode are stupid awkward then yes, I do.
Lor: Despite Mickey’s protests, Rose runs over to where she finds a conveniently placed ax. Before she takes any action, she has nice little speech about how she has no job and no future but she did win a bronze medal in a gymnastics competition once. (K: Bless.) She uses the ax to free a chain and swing down to where the Doctor is. The mannequins go tumbling into the vat and so does that super helpful anti-plastic. The Doctor catches Rose on the swing back. He smiles at her and tells her now they are really in trouble.
The signal stops and in the city the mannequins all start shutting down.
Rose, Mickey and the Doctors head into the TARDIS and whooosh-whooosh-whooosh out of there right on time. When they land, Mickey stumbles out of the TARDIS, scared out of his mind. (K: Legit, Mickey.) Rose calls her mom, just needing to hear her voice and make sure she survived. Next, she runs to Mickey. The Doctor watches them from the TARDIS doorway. Rose says he would’ve been dead without her. He agrees and thanks her. He’s leaving now, unless Rose would like to come with him. The TARDIS isn’t a London-only thing. It can take them anywhere in the universe. Mickey protests.
K: I have a small case of gif-staring where that bottom right gif is concerned. You can tell Rose is totally sold already but trying to talk herself out of it. And The Doctor’s so excited about the idea of having a companion again. BRB, FEELS.
Lor: Mickey clings to Rose and she says she can’t go. The Doctor says he’ll see her then, and retreats into the TARDIS. It whooshes and wheezes away. Rose looks forlorn.
After a moment, she helps Mickey up and they walk away, but they stop when they hear the TARDIS noises again. The Doctor peaks his head out and asks if he mentioned that it also travels in time. He smiles and leaves the door open. Rose turns and kisses Mickey, thanking him nothing, and smiling, runs into the TARDIS. The doors close and we head to the ending credits.
Sweeney: Verdict so far: this is definitely as stupid as I remember it, but I’m keeping the faith that it it will maybe some day get better. Fingers crossed.
Lor: To be clear, though I know you must know this, the rewatching isn’t really the thing. This doesn’t get better because you see it again, but only when you see it with the context of the rest of the series. This gets better when you already care for these characters, because as a pilot, it did a risky thing of relying heavily on them I mean, the whole plastic thing is so much in the background that they blow right by the “explanation” of what is even happening. It was a risk that wasn’t entirely successful, which makes it no wonder first time watches find it easy to abandon.
I was reminded a lot of my feelings after Welcome to the Hellmouth while reading Sweeney’s comments. The comparison is quite apt because a lot of what was amazing in that pilot was the snappy dialogue and character introductions, which I think is very true here as well. I love that the introduction into the world (for anyone joining with New Who, at least) comes first through Rose, normal shop-girl with a very bland life. We start with her story first and get to meet Nine through her.
But, also, sorry to say Sweeney: it’ll get worse before it gets better.
We’ll get there, though.
Next time on Doctor Who: The Doctor takes Rose to see the destruction of Earth (which is a morbid first trip) in S01 E02 – The End of the World.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
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