Rose Tyler – she’s one of the most divisive companions in new Doctor Who fandom. For many
fans, she was their first companion. For others, she’s a Mary Sue of Russell T Davies’ making,
pushing a love story angle that had previously only been attempted in audio adventures with
varying degrees of success and failure. (Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard, anyone?)
Leave it to Steven Moffat to fix it – and give Billie Piper the best character she’s ever played in
Doctor Who: the Moment.
A Tangible Tangle in Time
The War Doctor’s mission is seemingly simple: end the Time War between the time lords of
Gallifrey and the Daleks. But to do it, he has to destroy what he loves and hates, brandishing a
weapon the rest of the time lords are too scared to use, lest they be judged.
A sentient weapon with a conscious, the Moment selects a face and form to appeal to the War
Doctor’s hearts. She lands on Rose Tyler, explaining she’s from his past. For us as the
audience, she’s not wrong, but she’s actually from the future because the War Doctor hasn’t
transformed into Nine yet. She walks it further back, explaining she’s Bad Wolf, but the War
Doctor still doesn’t understand.
In their first interactions together, the Moment is most decidedly not Rose Tyler, even if they share the same face. Draped in deconstructed clothes and smudged eyeliner, the Moment is just as much a dangerous scavenger as the War Doctor perceives himself to be. She jokes that she can be both the most dangerous weapon in the universe as well as a makeshift chair. When she burns the War Doctor’s hand, she pointedly suggests she’s both hot in terms of temperature and looks. These sort of verbal gags are typical of the Doctor, but not companion wise. As their time together progresses, the Moment proves she’s an equal in intelligence and compassion.
Weapon of War or Purveyor of Peace?
Rose Tyler was a spunky shop girl turned loyal companion who may or may not have always listened to her incarnations of the Doctor. She did, after all, look into the time vortex to find and save the Ninth Doctor. As Bad Wolf, she brought both destruction (wiping out the Daleks) and creation (rebooting Captain Jack Harkness into immortality). It makes sense that Moffat would want to return to this idea and since the Moment is a weapon, there’s really no limits of what it – or in this case she – can do.
Billie Piper’s performance seemingly knows no bounds either. To be sharing a space with the late great legend John Hurt, she is biting and beautiful, but at turns ethereal and otherworldly. When the War Doctor admits he doesn’t want to survive this, her voice goes dark and gravely, explaining that’s exactly what he’ll do if he destroys his home.
“That’s your punishment . . . you . . . live.”
Visible only to the War Doctor, she’s quick to remind the War Doctor how this decision will affect him in the years to come, by introducing him to two versions of his future selves that carry the guilt of that day hundreds of years into the future. “The man who regrets, and the man who forgets,” she warns, her face pale, a hazy apparition floating about the Tower of London.
Closing the Time Loop
Part guardian, part ghost, the Moment is always two steps ahead and drives the internal dialogue the War Doctor is having with himself as well as discussions with his past selves and current companion Clara. Waiting for the War Doctor’s go ahead, her moods fluctuate between cold and factual and warm and supportive. This isn’t the love sick, head strong Rose Tyler of Series 1, 2, or 4. And that’s okay – there’d be no good reason to replay the 10th Doctor and Rose melodrama that was tightly woven through those seasons.
We understand that the Doctor loses people and when he’s on the edge of losing himself, it’s the Moment that brings him back. Sussing out that all the Doctor’s past selves can make Gallifrey disappear without destroying it, the Moment’s mission is accomplished and the War Doctor heads off to a new incarnation that is scarred by memories of a Time War he still thinks he committed only to collide with a shop girl who will become Bad Wolf.
Like her namesake suggests, the Moment’s time was brief but packed a surprising emotional punch and revelation for new and classic Whovians alike. The War Doctor and the Moment were a mad man and a box of a different sort and a meditation on how thinking things through could impact worlds, but most importantly, protect and heal a broken self.
“You know the sound the TARDIS makes? That wheezing, groaning? That sound brings hope wherever it goes . . . To anyone who hears it, Doctor. Anyone. However lost. Even you.”
3 Comments
This seems like a strange way to commemorate International Women’s Day? To imply that somehow loving someone is shameful and automatically makes you a weak person seems… sanctimonious. The Moment was a wonderful one off character, but why is this celebrated by depreciating her origin? There’s just a lot of bias and hypocrisy here.
Honestly, whatever your thoughts on the Rose Tyler character, this article has quite a few holes. For starters, Rose Tyler nowhere near a ‘Mary Sue’ – she’s as ordinary and flawed as they come and she was written that way deliberately. Like her or hate her, she’s a real person. Frankly, all the female RTD characters-whether you liked them or not- were real. That was his preference. Moffat himself hated the Rose character for its ‘ordinariness’, and was pretty open about his view that the Doctor could never love such a seemingly unremarkable person. Hardly the stuff of a Mary Sue. Even her one brush with ‘a super-power’ (which wasn’t even hers) was the result of a human decision, and was surrendered shortly after it was no longer needed. I’m not at all trying to malign or demean anyone’s preferred character, but i do suggest that if you want to look for a Mary Sue, River Song and Amy Pond are much more likely candidates. Moffat was pretty obvious in indulging in his preferences there with pretty women toting guns and dropping sassy lines, and gaining super powers to make them ‘important’. He wasn’t even subtle about it. As for the Moment- it was a shadow of a well loved character included as a salve to fans because the demand for some Rose Tyler involvement was quite strong and the character was too popular to leave out. To suggest that this fanciful imagining is better than the real, live person (faults included) misses the point of the character and the show.
And honestly, it’s ridiculous to claim Billie Piper, an acclaimed and accomplished actress with a VERY impressive CV, peaked at playing the Moment.
For the record: I don’t hate Rose Tyler, and it wasn’t my intention for this piece to come across this way! Nine and Rose were my first Doctor and companion but her storyline felt played out (two trips to Bad Wolf Bay) and wrapped up (with human!10) so to see Billie step into a different role felt like a breath of fresh air for me as a long-time viewer. I wanted to specifically focus on her performance as the Moment and what I really loved about it. And I’ve followed Billie’s acting career since Doctor Who but felt that this was when she really hit her stride (with her amazing turn in Penny Dreadful following soon after).