NuWho Rewatch: Rose

[purplecat]

No-longer-so-small child inquired whether I might, perhaps, own any Doctor Who DVDs and then expressed an interest in watching them. I strongly suspect David Tennant has something to do with this however she reluctantly agreed to start at the beginning of NuWho. I rewatched Rose fairly recently as part of the randomiser and don't really have a lot to add here.

No-longer-so-small child was a little restless through the first half and spent a fair amount of time asserting the innate superiority of Clara. However she loved the scene in front of the London Eye and remarked shortly thereafter that Rose was actually quite clever. Afterwards she observed that she could see why people randomly stumbling across this episode got hooked and wanted to see more. That said, given the hype at the time, I doubt many people randomly stumbled across Rose.

I mentioned in my randomiser review that I felt Rose was stylistically very similar to nearly all of NuWho. I'm less certain of that now. It is slower paced than recent seasons - indeed the build-up to Rose deciding to swing across into the Auton goes on for ages - and I think it is tonally much more grounded in conveying some sense of realism which even in its quieter stories I don't think recent seasons have been interested in. Rose is also noticeably less pencil thin than Clara and Amy - but many, many people on the Internet have observed that Moffat... has a type shall we say? More generally, I do think it a shame that under Moffat, much as I have liked much of it, Doctor Who has become distinctly more middle-class. I suspect part of Davies' intent with Rose was to draw a line under old Doctor Who and assert a vision for his version that encompassed a wider range of experience. It is a shame that this particular part of the remit has been lost. I'd be interested to know if anyone has ever looked at the demographics of the Doctor Who audience and, if so, whether there has been a shift towards middle-class viewers under Moffat, or whether his comparative lack of interest in every day, working class, lives has made no real difference.

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Definitely re: realism. I remember RTD's line about any revived Doctor Who should be recognisably about people who worry about their job, their rent, the mortgage, whereas Moffat (until this year when he has explicitly broken with it) has been presenting a 'fairytale'. However, that isn't all there is to it, and the statistics you seek would be interesting.

[purplecat]

I'd forgotten that Moffat was doing a fairy tale thing, probably, as you say, because it seems to have been changed. Even so, when every day life intrudes, it feels much more like an excuse for frenetic random high-jinks than some attempt to ground the story in something identifiable to the viewer.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Yes, I definitely agree with your second sentence.