Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (37 page)

However, as Jack spends time with the Doctor he draws upon bravery he did not know existed. This is evident in his first story (
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
) when he discovers he is responsible for the plague spreading throughout London (in fact a plague of nanogenes rewriting human DNA that escaped from a crashed Chula ambulance he sent to Earth). This shakes him up, but he sticks around to help the Doctor and Rose. To make amends, he returns to his own ship and stops a bomb from falling on the Chula ambulance, but unfortunately, as he heads from Earth he discovers there is no way for him to escape the explosion. He accepts his fate with dignity and good humour, enjoying an alcoholic drink and engaging the onboard computer in conversation. The Doctor and Rose arrive in the TARDIS to take him away from the bomb, and he accepts the Doctor’s invitation to join them on their travels.

He remains with the Doctor and Rose for an undefined period of time, and when we next see him, in
Boom Town
, he is answering the TARDIS door to Mickey. Jack has settled into a very easy, and highly flirtatious, relationship with both the Doctor and Rose. He is out of uniform and now dressed in contemporary clothes. He enjoys winding Mickey up, not unlike the Doctor. They spend some time in Cardiff (long enough for Margaret Blaine’s photograph to appear in
The Western Mail
), with Jack enjoying being the centre of attention, telling his tall tales of past exploits as a Time Agent. Already, elements of the Doctor’s personality seem to be infecting Jack (something that develops even more when Jack takes over Torchwood, and he clearly begins to model himself on the Doctor – name dropping, his sense of dress, etc). When they go to Cardiff Town Hall to confront Blaine, now Mayor of Cardiff, Jack automatically assumes command, giving out instructions, until the Doctor queries who is in charge. Jack apologies, but the Doctor points out that it is a good plan, and they proceed as Jack suggested. He is very excited by the pan-dimensional surfboard, and instantly recognises it as technology far beyond the inhabitants of Raxacoricofallapatorius and Blaine (Blon Slitheen) had procured it by nefarious means. He seems to be very aware of the Time Lords and their technology – he easily operates the TARDIS console.

Like Rose he is hijacked by the Daleks’ transmat in
Bad Wolf
and deposited on the Game Station. He finds himself in a version of
What Not to Wear
and is at the mercy of the robotic Trine-e and Zu-Zana. They instruct him to try on various clothes before deciding he would be better without a face. Being naked in front of a television audience amuses Jack, but it doesn’t prevent him from hiding a gun about his person. He uses this to destroy both robots.

He is outraged by the apparent death of Rose, but is the first person to work out where Rose really has been taken. He assists the Doctor in rescuing her, and arranges the defence of the Game Station against the oncoming Dalek fleet. He has heard of the Time War and knows why the Daleks disappeared, but is unaware the battle involved the Time Lords. When the Emperor Dalek challenges the Doctor’s resolve in using the Delta Wave, Jack’s faith in the Doctor is absolute. Such faith is misplaced since, in the event, the Doctor proves unable to use the Delta Wave. The sacrifice of every life on Earth is too great a price for the Doctor. Jack, while the Doctor is admitting defeat, fights to the last man. Cornered, he accepts his fate and is exterminated by a Dalek. He is later resurrected by the Bad Wolf version of Rose; only she gets it wrong (more on that later). He is shocked to find himself alive, and rushes towards the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising. The last we see of Jack is on the Game Station, seconds after the Doctor and Rose leave, upset at being abandoned.

It is some time before Jack meets the Doctor again – indeed, for him, a
lot
of time passes. Over a hundred years. But more on that later.

The Ten
t
h D
octor

David Tennant

‘Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me!’

The Doctor
– The Waters of Mars

Regenerated and healed, the Doctor found himself drawn ever closer to Rose, to the point where he started to lose much of the man he used to be – the distant traveller from Gallifrey was becoming more and more human. And not always the best example of one. The consequences of this humanisation will follow him throughout his tenth incarnation, with devastating results…

Rose Tyler – Billie Piper
(
Rose
to
Doomsday
and
Partners in Crime,
and
Turn Left to Journey’s End,
plus
The End of Time
)

She was so sure she knew the Doctor, but as the new face is presented to her Rose realises she knows nothing. Despite witnessing the change of face she cannot believe it at first, and is convinced that an imposter has replaced the Doctor. That it is some kind of body swap, or maybe a teleport. She even thinks that somehow it is a Slitheen in disguise – despite the obvious lack of zip on the forehead. He insists it is him, but Rose really does not like it, and wants him to change back. In spite of her distress she still asks about Jack, and the Doctor simply says he has remained behind to rebuild Earth (an obvious lie, as we later learn in
Utopia
when the Doctor reveals he actively ran away from Jack – or, more accurately, what Bad Wolf-Rose did to him). She is quite clearly scared when the regeneration begins to fail, and the unstable Doctor sends the TARDIS crashing towards Christmas 2006.

The TARDIS alerts both Jackie and Mickey to its imminent arrival, they both hear the engines long before it materialises mid-air, so they are both on hand at the beginning of
The Christmas Invasion
to help Rose with the Doctor. Jackie is understandably confused, and intrigued by the notion of the Doctor having two hearts, but Rose is in no mood to humour her mother and responds with irritation. Although she is curious as to why there are a pair of men’s pyjamas and dressing gown at her mother’s flat – they belong to one of Jackie’s many male ‘friends’ (when we consider how loose Jackie is with men it is not hard to understand why Rose herself is so fickle with her own affections). Rose sits vigil over the Doctor as he recovers in the spare room, finding it difficult to explain what has happened to Jackie. The more she looks at him the more her heart breaks – on some level she is convinced that she has lost the Doctor. Worse, that he has
left her
. As a distraction she goes Christmas shopping with Mickey, who offers his support once more, even though he is tired of hearing about the Doctor. Naturally it is not long before they are being attacked and have to rush back to the flat – Rose is very certain that the robot Santas are after the Doctor. When a Christmas tree attacks them in the flat, tearing through the door and wall into the spare room, it is only a whisper from Rose that wakes the Doctor and he instantly disposes of the tree and confronts the Santas, which he calls pilot fish, signalling the arrival of something much more dangerous. That something is the Sycorax, and when they appear on a news programme Rose realises just how much trouble they really are in – even she cannot understand what they are saying, as if somehow the Doctor’s damaged the circuit in the link between her and the TARDIS. Things become even more desperate when the Sycorax ship hovers over London and they take control of a large percentage of the Earth’s people. After hearing a plea from Prime Minister Harriet Jones, who begs for the Doctor’s help, Rose breaks down. To her mind the Doctor really has gone. She knows she cannot cope without him and the only thing she can think of to do is hide him in the TARDIS. This she does and, along with Mickey, is transported to the Sycorax ship. She attempts to use knowledge gained from her travels against them, speaking for Earth, but she is mocked by the Sycorax who call her bravado ‘borrowed words’. As soon as she starts to understand the language of the Sycorax she is the first to work out what it means and turns, with some nervous anticipation, to the TARDIS where the Doctor is standing in his dressing gown. Watching him face the Sycorax convinces her that he is still the Doctor, even though he is rude to her. Once they are defeated, Rose realises that she does still want to travel with him, even though she thinks it is weird that he can change his face and grow a new hand. Once again she does not consider how this will affect Mickey or her mum, only this time the Doctor is right there with her indifference.

They appear to remain on Earth for a while longer (the Doctor at least moves the TARDIS between stories, but it is heavily implied that they are only now setting off on their travels again – perhaps Jackie convinced them to stay for the New Year), but they soon head off and travel further than they have ever travelled before – to
New Earth
. While they rest on the cliff’s edge looking out towards New New York, Rose shows how much she now totally accepts the new Doctor – indeed, she states that she loves travelling with him, and together they are much more tactile than before; holding hands and hugging on many occasions. She finds it difficult to get her head around the notion of the Cat People, and when she comes face-to-skin with Cassandra, who survived their previous encounter in
The End of the World
, she thinks that Cassandra deserved to die. This is a radical change of view – when Cassandra apparently died before, Rose was shaken up by it and did not think such an outcome was necessary. But she is very aggressive to Cassandra this time around and Cassandra gets her own back when she steals Rose’s body, suppressing Rose in the process. Rose is aware of what is going on, but cannot affect anything. Cassandra draws much from Rose’s mind, including her obvious attraction to the Doctor, and enjoys snogging him. She thinks Rose is a chav. It is not only Rose who has developed a new aggressive streak, but the Doctor too, as seen when he realises that Rose has been possessed by Cassandra. It seems that as a result of his regeneration he has become much closer to Rose, both emotionally and in attitude, almost as if her proximity to him when he regenerated imprinted some of her personality on him.

The most obvious example of this personality imprint can be seen when they arrive in the Scottish highlands in 1879. In
Tooth and Claw
they meet Queen Victoria, and go on to Torchwood House with her; the Doctor’s psychic paper telling the queen that he is James McCrimmon, a doctor who has been assigned by the Lord Provost as her protector. The Doctor passes Rose off as a feral child he ‘bought for sixpence in old London Town. It was either her or the Elephant Man’. Rose cannot believe she is meeting Queen Victoria, and makes a bet with the Doctor that she can get the queen to say, ‘I am not amused’. Throughout this story we are shown the complete lack of respect Rose has for Queen Victoria – speaking to her like she is a regular woman, constantly trying to get her to say she is ‘not amused’. Such questionable actions are only compounded by the Doctor actively taking part in the bet – although he at least has the decency to look embarrassed from time to time. This does not stop him from laughing and cheering with Rose,
in front
of Her Majesty, when Victoria finally says, ‘and I am
not
amused’ for which she gives them both a proper dressing down before banishing them both from the British Empire (after knighting them Sir Doctor of TARDIS and Dame Rose of the Powell Estate, for saving her life from a werewolf). She tells them both that she sees a bad end for them if they continue ‘straying from all that is good’. Unfortunately, though, as demonstrated throughout the 2006 series, neither takes any heed of what she tells them.

They are called back to 2007 by Mickey, who has heard reports of possible alien activity at a local London school in
School Reunion
(Rose thinks he has called her back just because he wants to see her, but he tells her no). Investigating the school proves to be quite an eye-opener for Rose when she meets the Doctor’s old companion, Sarah Jane Smith, who has not seen the Doctor for some twenty-seven years (assuming he dropped her off in her own time of 1980 in
The Hand of Fear
). Rose is threatened by Sarah’s presence, and is very jealous of the bond she shares with the Doctor. As Mickey points out it is almost like Rose is meeting the Doctor’s ex. As a result Rose turns into an über bitch, constantly making snide comments relating to Sarah’s age. She is confronted with what the Doctor calls the ‘Curse of a Time Lord’ – although she may live her entire life with him, he can never live his life with her. She will grow old and die, but he will simply regenerate and carry on. Rose does not like the idea that the Doctor may one day leave her, like he did Sarah, since once they were obviously as close as he and Rose now are. She remains competitive with Sarah throughout, until they end up arguing over the things they have seen and Sarah trumps with the announcement that she met the Loch Ness Monster! They burst out laughing and finally bond by mocking the Doctor over how he tends to explain things at such a high speed that they can never keep up, and how he strokes bits of the TARDIS. In the end Rose seeks Sarah’s advice – should she continue travelling with the Doctor? Sarah says that yes, some things are worth getting your heart broken over. Rose is less impressed with the idea of Mickey joining them on their travels. The Doctor asks Sarah to go with them, but she refuses, feeling she is too old for it, but she suggests he take Mickey – the Doctor needs a Smith on board. Rose mouths a ‘no’ to the Doctor, but he appears not to notice and agrees to let Mickey join.