One of the good things about dial-up is every time I click on Harry Potter spoilers they take so long to load I regain my self-control in time to not read them. ;)

I meant to spend this afternoon in the company of Johnny Depp's costume from Pirates of the Caribbean, but have discovered that the exhibition (almost on my doorstep) closed yesterday. So near and yet. ;) Anyway, I have something I've been saving for a rainy day, and who knows when the next one will come along? This is too long for explanations or introduction, so without further ado:


These two will sizzle: Rose/Nine from start to glorious end


BBC, is that you there with the Doctor Who Christmas special trailer? What has happened to the BBC? First they bring us hardcore shipper vids (I will never again be able to hear Stand by Me without tearing up), and now this unseasonal trailer-cum-gratuitous "Didn't we do well?"

Actually I don't want to think about the Christmas special. I Just. Don't. See. how you follow that up. I mean, how?

I was weak-willed and bought the Doctor Who Series One companion to read on the train the other day, but had to read it all in tiny bits because I'd get through a few paragraphs and be all overcome. I ache for this show. Russell T Davies' pitch for the show is so shippy I want to waltz him round the room. I love especially his apologetic note that the original document doesn't quite convey how electric the Rose/Doctor dynamic would prove to be, "but imagine if the pitch had tried to predict that. 'These two will sizzle!' Yeah, right..."

Plus, there's an annual. The last time I bought an annual was the Twinkle annual in 1985. But it promises me "brand-new adventures for the Ninth Doctor and Rose", so I'm sold. And they're both very pretty on the front cover.

I've tried and failed about a hundred times to unjumble my thoughts on that final episode and the Rose/Doctor relationship, but they're too much tangled to separate them, so bear with me if this is rambly and indulgent. ;)

Are there words for The Parting of the Ways? I only have clumsy metaphors. I feel a bit like all my life I'd been searching for a mythical creature – a magic dragon, say – and finally, having witnessed all kinds of wonders on the way, I reach the point where, according to legend, I might catch a glimpse of it flying overhead. And while I'm standing there craning my neck upwards, my eyes become accustomed to the light and suddenly I realise that the dragon is there right in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch it. But I don't dare, because it's so dazzling and brilliant and exquisite I'm afraid if I as much as breathe it might shatter into a thousand pieces. And then the ground shifts beneath my feet, and a great, scaly head presses against me, and it turns out this beautiful, fragile, impossibly rare creature is real and tangible, boisterous, even: and flying is not something I witness from far below but something I experience sitting on the dragon's back.

OK, I need to go and lie down. ;) But I think what I've loved so much is that this is never more – or less – than children's television. There's a notion that children's television operates within rigid strictures; that it's heavily filtered by a need to meet censors' demands. Actually, what is wonderful about the best children's television is it isn't tempered by the cynicism grown-up TV feels a need to cloak itself in: there's a boundlessness to it that allows it to soar. And yes, of course this series takes immense joy in the tongue-in-cheek, but it's always suffused with exactly that - joy. There's storytelling for children that caters for adults with a sly nod to the side – and then there's storytelling that does something rather more magical: storytelling that allows you to revisit childhood feelings and hopes and fears. There is tremendous release in it; every action could be infinite; its scope is endless, and because of that it finds truth where something that makes the effort to be more grounded in reality will not.

Sometimes when you're looking at something from within you are caught so much in that moment that when it passes it's gone, and if you go back seeking the experience you remember, you find only the memory, and not the experience itself. The things that etch their place in time do so not because of the way they are remembered but because of what they are, because of the infinite possibility that remains undimmed still when every corner of the story is turned. I may have been reluctant to step outside this show that drew me ever deeper in, but the view from the other side doesn't disappoint: a brilliant, lustrous masterpiece where every screenshot is breathtaking and every scene glows.

It's a handy analogy if ever there was one, but there's a wonderful TARDIS-like quality to it. In the thick of it, that blue police box hurtling through time and space, the exhilarating rush of it, the riveting ride that had me glued to my seat every Saturday night and skipping about all week in anticipation.

Going back to it afterwards, I'm blown away by how much space there is, even in the tiniest moment. It defies logic. There are shows where the dialogue is so tight there isn't space to breathe. And here the dialogue is looser and going back to re-watch there's so much space: every scene is wonderfully rich and nuanced. I remember lines because of the way they are delivered, the way they are received, rather than because of the way they are worded.


* * * * * * * * *


"She loves him, and he loves her. Simple as that. … From the moment they meet, the Doctor and Rose are soulmates. They need each other and complete each other." (Russell T Davies, pitch for Doctor Who.)

(Neither I nor my spellcheck like "soulmates" terribly much, but it is fitting in context.)

I love Rose because even there, right at the start, she knows exactly what she's signing up for. She sees the life he's offering her, the risks, sizes them up, understands. But more than that she sees him. And she understands that too. Nineteen and nine hundred don't meet on the level, by rule, but this is a whole new level, a whole new page in a whole new rulebook.

It's captured exactly in his solemn acceptance that whatever his world may have been before, now it's a world with her in it:

"Yes I would. Thank you."

It's Rose who asks him over and over, who are you, and yet it's Rose who knows the answer to that better than anyone – instinctively, I think. Rose who wears her heart on her sleeve, and never takes the time to be frightened of what caring for him might mean. Rose who is "more loyal than anyone else in the universe." Rose who doesn't say take me back until the TARDIS takes her away from him.

She's kind of the ultimate footballer's wife. The Posh to his David Beckham of time travel. Um, maybe not quite the analogy I'm looking for. ;) But on the one hand she leads this glamorous, enviable lifestyle, and yet in the other hand she holds – just as firmly – the harder side to that, the one that no-one else sees and no-one gives her credit for. The unrelenting line that the Doctor takes; all it means to go on choosing him over everyone else in her life. That great, aching vulnerability, that nine hundred years of hurt that he so desperately needs someone to help him bear - "Oh Rose. They're all dead" – and she will bear it, because she'll never stop and ask herself whether she can. And she never once asks him to change, to be other than he is. She'll fight her corner when it counts, and she'll challenge him when he crosses his own lines, but she puts her faith in him without condition.

Billie Piper in Project Who talks about the scene in episode four when, "basically Rose has to make a very quick decision about something quite life or death, and she handles it perfectly, and she trusts the Doctor, and it's done in a look. And it's quite emotional when I speak about it now, because you always hope that you will meet someone in real life that you can trust that much and that you will be that loyal to."

There are some love stories that ache with the might have beens. And there are other love stories where all that is, all that was, all that could be, is there: where the might have beens are part of what is, not what is not. Where the relationship is defined simply by the mutual acknowledgment that this is us. Because this is not the love that dare not speak its name. There isn't a big love declaration always hovering in the background. There's nothing tentative about this relationship. It's contained, yes, but never suppressed.

Above everything it's the sheer joy in this relationship that gets me every time; the way they so evidently delight in each other's company; that glorious vibe between them of Like me best.

There's not the space here to pay all the homage due the outstanding performances in the series, for all I'd happily sit here and talk for hours about the depth and the resonance the leads, in particular, found in their characters. And it was such an odd mix on paper: actor of the calibre of Christopher Eccleston meets Billie Piper, teen-popstrel-turned-tabloid-fodder, meets well-loved but sometimes clunky cult SciFi show. It's a triumph - individually and collectively - made all the sweeter for that, I think.

Not space either for the thousand-and-one reasons why the Ninth Doctor will always be my doctor, but all the yes in the world and then some. I mean, yes. YES.

His exits and entrances. The way he wears a doorway. Or the doorway wears him. I've no idea, but oh it's good.

Leather coat. Baby.

And this:

"He should also be sexy. … He's immediate and tactile. Stand too close to him, you could get burnt." (Russell T Davies, pitch for Doctor Who)

Not enough rrrrrr in the world, I'm telling you.

The way he looks at her when he makes a joke. The way when he speaks to her he leans in and looks her full in the face. The two of them together anyhow, any which way the world cares to spin.

The attention to detail, the sense of belonging that infuses every moment these two share on screen together. It's a silly example, but I love the tea-cup scene in The Unquiet Dead, where Rose is berating Mr Sneed and the Doctor is just leaning against the wall (he does walls pretty much as well as he does doorways) and grinning across at her.

You know, there's this tiny off-screen moment from Rose that comes in the Ultimate Doctor Who Guide they showed just before the finale, and she just leans in and nuzzles his shoulder. Honestly, it looks like she just has an itchy nose or something, but somehow that tiny scene gets at the heart of why I love these two together on screen so much.


* * * * * * * * *


So, the Parting of the Ways. There are a million things I want to write about, but so much has been said already elsewhere. So I'll play music geek and delve into the soundtrack, because the way this episode is scored has me on my knees. Two themes, especially, underscore what takes place on screen with a significance that touches this series at its very heart.

The "bad wolf" theme – or at least, that's the mantle it's taken on by Boom Town - makes its first appearance after Rose and the Doctor's conversation the second time they meet in Rose: that questioning, otherworldly vocal line: ever searching for something, someone, somewhere, somewhen.

"Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home."

And here's where it begins. She's standing there, his words about the earth turning beneath him spinning round in her head, and she will do a lot of things but she will not go home and forget him.

It weaves its way through episode after episode, this haunting, searching theme: its echo of questions unanswered an undercurrent of something looked for and longed for. Until now. Because here in a kiss something extraordinary happens. This strange, solitary vocal line is flooded suddenly in the richest harmony. It finds its direction, its purpose. It resolves.

The world spins round, full circle. She feels it. Knows that it doesn't stop. Not ever, not even here, kissing him like she's always kissed him in the moments beyond time, in every breath between breaths. Knows it most of all because this time they're the ones keeping it spinning.

She will do a lot of things but she will not go home and forget him.


The second theme is the one that underscores the activation of Emergency Programme One – a beautiful, yearning theme that's sketched out first in piano and slips into great layers of (synthesised, at least) strings.

Do you know when we first hear it? It's The End of the World, one of those scenes that is just a glorious window on everything I love about these two together. They fight because he's being cagey about who he is – his history, and his heritage – and it's she that makes the conciliatory gesture: "As my mate Shireen says, don't argue with the designated driver". His response is to do what he does best – the bit of "jiggery-pokery" that lets Rose phone her mum.

Did I mention, ticking every single box for me? Because, guh, there's your "show not tell" relationship. There's history laughed in the face of. There, in that instinctive acknowledgement of everything unsaid, is a connection stronger than words and as natural and necessary as breathing.

The theme we hear at that point is one that comes to mean a lot of things. It's a theme about choice: Rose's choice to be with the Doctor; his choice to send her away; her choice not to accept that. We even hear – unmistakably – the first two chords of that very same theme as the Doctor chooses coward over killer, and the TARDIS re-appears behind him. His choice; hers.

And then, a piece of parallel scoring that is almost indescribably brilliant. At the end of The End of the World Rose is stood mourning the Earth, as the Doctor watches over her in just about the Best. Doorway. Moment. Ever. He makes his way over to her -accompanied by that same theme - and reaches to take her hand, inviting her to "Come with me." When Rose steps out of the TARDIS it's back into the world she left – just as she left it. Five billion years in the future the world is ending but that doesn't matter. Her world, the world she knows and loves, is still there.

The scoring of the Emergency Program One sequence is a deeply significant echo of that. As Rose despairingly steps out of the TARDIS it's back into the world she left – visually and musically it matches the scene at the close of the End of the World note-for-note. Two hundred thousand years in the future the world is ending and it matters: her world, the world she knows and loves – because it turns out what he told her in Rose was true and that world really does revolve around him. And she doesn't know, just then, if she can save the world, but neither time nor space will stand in the way of saving him.


* * * * * * * * *


I love that everyone has their story to tell here in this final episode, cometh the hour. Even the two co-workers at the game station have their moment, and take it.

Mickey! Mickey! and Jackie! "OK, if that's what you think, let's get this thing open" just breaks my heart.

The Doctor/Jack kiss was just about the most romantic thing I've ever seen on TV, or at least had seen at that point, given that there was Doctor/Rose goodness still to come. I love so much the way John Barrowman talks about it too, that he didn't want it to be about, "Yay! I finally get to snog Billie Piper! Yay! I finally get to snog Chris Eccleston!", but that he wanted it to be a very real expression of the love between his character and theirs. Again, I don't have the space to do justice to John Barrowman and the absolute rightness of his character in that mix, but two lines I have to quote because I want to, because I want to (hee! cheap, but irresistible): "Wish I'd never met you, Doctor. I was much better off as a coward." And, "Don't I get a hug? Hey, I was talking to him."

Rose's "What do I do every day?" speech has me in tiny little pieces on the floor, especially in its wonderful echo of a moment in Rose:

"What, you're on your own?"
"Well who else is there? You lot, all you do is eat chips, go to bed and watch telly."

Rose, who will find her way to him across time and space because with her standing there loving him – anywhen, anywhere – he is not on his own, and because, well, who else is there?

And find her way to him she does.

The acting in that scene. I almost wish I'd never raved about anyone's acting in anything ever before, because this is sublime.

The break in her voice, the extraordinary strength. "You are tiny".

I love so much that Bad Wolf means nothing at all. That all it is is the two random words that happened to be in front of her at that moment, two tiny words she scatters through time and space to lead her back to him.

"My doctor."

"Come here."

That glorious, escalating certainty; the inevitability of it; this moment longed-for and looked-for that turns out to be the easiest thing in the world. Like falling into step. Guh, I don't have the words, but this is Russell T Davies in the final Confidential:

"Finally he's put in the position again where, instead of giving your life for time lords and daleks and great big mythological concepts that are very much offstage, it's for Rose. It's for that nineteen-year-old shop girl from planet earth who is braver than brave and more loyal than anyone else in the universe.

She is dying, and he gives his life for her.

Never mind wars, never mind epic mythology, never mind all that grandstand stuff, it's absolutely personal. And he's at his most human, right at the end, he does a very, very human thing – he gives his life."

(having mourned my lack of BBC3 all series, I finally discovered the Confidentials can be accessed here. Even on dial-up I got a very reasonable audio version.)

The age-old message is always the same: you can't save the world from outside. You can only save it from within.

In that heartbreakingly lovely wire-stripping scene - "but you could ask" gets me every time - the Doctor tells Rose that, "as soon as the TARDIS lands in that second I become part of events, stuck in the timeline."

The Doctor lives outside of time. Until Rose. Rose is his timeline, his constant. His reason to go on, to go back.

When the Doctor chooses not to activate the Delta wave, it isn't just that he surrenders his own life. He will die now. In this time. He says it himself: "Maybe it's time."

The Doctor feels the world turn beneath him because it doesn't take him with it. He can't stay, because he's always needed sometime, someplace else. Except in this one moment there is no other place, no other time – there is only this girl, this time. He takes back that great weight of all of time and space that Rose has taken for him, and yet in doing that, somehow, he is able to let it go. I love the way John Barrowman sums it up in the final Confidential:

"When he kisses her, it's not only the thing that he's wanted to do throughout the entire series, but it gives him peace, because he's letting go of the burden of the time lords being destroyed, and he's saving the one that he – he loved the time lords, they were his people – but he loves this girl."

I didn't believe the regeneration could happen any way I could bear it. I was proved wonderfully wrong. Everything about that final scene between them was pitch perfect. And even here, with time slipping away from them, there's that same sense of space; even in a precious last few moments a whole lifetime of wonder, of warmth, of overwhelming love.

I don't feel bereft. I feel enriched.


* * * * * * * * *

A final, silly note: it's been so much fun watching something that, for its duration, became part of the national consciousness. Lorraine Kelly (no less, in a wonderful feature I caught on my Wednesday off in which she was supposed to be interviewing Bruno Langley about his role in a touring production of Romeo and Juliet, but spent the whole time fangirling over Doctor Who instead - "So you're playing Romeo? That must be a very different experience to your last role in Doctor Who. You must be so excited about having been part of something so successful. What was it like being on Doctor Who? Did you know it was going to be such a huge hit? Chris Eccleston Billie DaleksDaleksDaleks…") summed it up for me perfectly, when she said that it was the first time in years she'd had to stay in on a Saturday night - "it just wasn't the same if you set the video."

Maybe watching TV isn't high on the list of grand, unifying experiences, but if any TV show can capture the public imagination, I'd ask that it be something as rich, as lovingly crafted and as inspiring as this.

Oh! The other day I received an e-mail from my old housemate in which she says:

And excitingly, the new Doctor Who is one of the new patrons of our charity, so perhaps he'll come and visit one day...maybe?

OMG, help me here! Who is "the new" Doctor Who? And when she says "come and visit" that means, visit me, in shiny blue box, for time travel and maybe more, right? Right.

A quick rec before I go. Do go and watch ooglymoogly's videos here. They're beautifully put together and I can't watch either of them often enough.



I know my posts have become a bit fandom-centric of late. Please don't think I care any the less for keeping quiet when there's so much to be said.