A special History in Doctor Who post to celebrate the 14th anniversary of Rose - not a historical episode, Rose still features multiple references to history that are worth exploring.
Rose is the first episode of the first series, starring the 9th Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), written by Russell T. Davies. Set in 2005, the Doctor and Rose meet for the first time to confront the Nestene Consciousness and save Earth from the Autons. At the end of the episode, Rose chooses to join the Doctor on his travels through time and space and the adventure truly begins.
Rose is not a historical episode – it is set in the then-present day (2005). As the first episode of a series about time travel, there are a notable number of historical references throughout though. As today is the 14th anniversary of this special episode, I am going to take the time to explore these instances of history in celebration.
The majority of these references come while Rose is attempting to discover who the Doctor is. She contacts a man named Clive Finch who shows her evidence that the Doctor is “a legend woven throughout history.” He presents her with three occasions on which the Doctor is present in the past.
The first event Clive brings up is the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States of America. He served as President from 1961-1963 and is most celebrated for his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Cold War. America came very close to war with the Soviet Union over Soviet missiles placed in Cuba but by imposing a quarantine around Cuba, and making a secret deal with the Soviet Union about the removal of missiles, Kennedy was able to de-escalate the situation, and prevent nuclear war while also publicly appearing the victor in the conflict.
On November 22nd 1963, Kennedy was assassinated at 12.30pm in Dallas, Texas. He was a shot by a sniper riding in a Presidential motorcade – the sniper was later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US marine. While being taken into custody, Oswald was shot and killed by a nightclub owner called Jack Ruby. Kennedy’s successor as President, Lyndon B. Johnson, set up the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination which after 10 months of investigation found that Oswald had acted alone, firing three shots, one that struck Kennedy in the neck and exited through the throat, one that struck the back of the head (the fatal shot) and one that missed.
Clive shows Rose an iconic photo of the assassination but with the Doctor clearly present in the crowd. No explanation is offered in episode for the Doctor’s presence – perhaps he was just there to see. The Kennedy assassination is a period of history the Doctor could have been involved with though as there have been numerous conspiracy theories surrounding it.
Some argued that the Warren Commission’s findings were impossible – specifically that the trajectory of the first bullet that hit his neck and exited his throat was impossible. This became known as ‘the magic bullet theory’. Some witnesses also claimed to have heard shots coming from a different direction, leading some to believe there was a ‘second shooter’ involved. Theories of conspiracy surrounded Cuba, the Soviet Union, President Johnson, and organised crime for various reasons.
The air of mystery and impossibility around the assassination leaves it an event that a Doctor Who adventure could easily be built around. What the Doctor was supposed to be doing there? Who else was there that shouldn’t have been? The answers to those questions are left to our imagination.
The second piece of evidence that Clive shows Rose is a picture of the Daniels family from Southampton with the Doctor as a family friend. The Picture is from April 1912 and shows them the day before they were due to sail for the new world on the Titanic. Clive notes they cancelled their trip and so survived. The implication is that the Doctor utilised his foreknowledge of the Titanic’s fate to save this family’s life. The Daniels family themselves are fictional but the event the Doctor saved them from is not.
The RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner and the second is a new ‘olympic’ class of liners measuring 882 feet in length and 92.5 feet in width at their broadest point. Work began on it in March 1909 and it was completed two years later. Shipbuilder Magazine deemed the ship ‘practically unsinkable’ due to its watertight bulkheads.
The Titanic’s homeport was Liverpool, but it’s maiden (first) voyage launched from Southampton (where the Daniels family was supposedly from). It set off on what was intended to be the first of many trans-Atlantic crossings between Southampton and New York on April 10th 1912. It carried 2,240 passengers and crew – more than 700 passengers were travelling cheaply in third class, as the Titanic was designed to offer better accommodation and experience for third class price than any other ship of the era.
On April 14th, the Titanic encountered an iceberg, it managed to turn sharply and avoid direct impact, appearing to simply graze along the side of the iceberg. A jagged underwater spur had left a gash 300 feet long in the hull below the ship’s waterline though. The damage was not noticed until over an hour later, at which point evacuation was ordered. The evacuation was confused and chaotic, with many lifeboats launching underfilled. Women and children boarded the lifeboats first, but disorderly procedures failed to get many onto the boats. A notable problem for the evacuation was that while the ship had the capacity for 3,300 people, there were only enough lifeboats for 1,178 people.
An example of a passenger who cancelled his trip and survived, like the fictional Daniels family, was J.P. Morgan, a financier who was delayed by business matters at the last minute. Like with any disaster, some people were saved by pure luck. Or perhaps, by the Doctor.
The final piece of evidence that Clive produces, is a drawing of the Doctor from 1883. It shows him on the coast of Sumatra on the night Krakatoa exploded. Krakatoa is a volcano on an island of the same name between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia.
Since May 1883, there had been reports of clouds of ash more than 6 miles high above the volcano, and loud thundering noises. Festivals were held on the surrounding islands to celebrate the natural fireworks lighting the night sky. The festivities were brought to a tragic end on August 27th1883 when the volcano erupted.
The 1883 eruption was one of the largest eruptions in recent history, destroying two thirds of the island and killing 36,417 people in the eruption and the ensuing tsunamis. The eruption had a huge effect on the climate, causing temperatures to drop worldwide. The Doctor’s presence at natural disasters, often fighting unnatural causes, or saving any lives he can, is seen frequently throughout the series. This serves as a further example of a point Clive emphasises to Rose: “He was one constant companion… Death.”
There are two further references to history made during the episode, both by the Doctor himself and both referring to the TARDIS. When Rose encounters the TARDIS for the first time, discovering it’s bigger on the inside, the Doctor assures her of her safety by promising that “the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t get through those doors.”
Genghis Khan (1162-1227) was born Temujin and went on to become the founder and first Great Khan (ruler of an empire) of the largest empire sharing one border in history – The Mongol Empire. He united many of the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia and was proclaimed ‘Genghis Khan’ before conquering most of Eurasia in a series of military campaigns that established him as one of history’s fearsome military figures. The exact cause of his death in August 1227 is unknown, with being killed in battle, falling from his horse, illness and from hunting or battle wounds all having been suggested.
The final, and perhaps most important, historical reference in Rose is the TARDIS himself. The Doctor tells Rose that it’s in disguise as a telephone box from the 1950s. The words Police Public Call Box across the top identify it as a Police Box. This has been the iconic form of the TARDIS since Doctor Who first started back in 1963 (the year JFK was killed).
The police force had first taken advantage of the brand-new telephone technology in the early 1890s, setting up police signal boxes in Glasgow. The first boxes were eight-sided iron pillars. Gilbert Mackenzie Trench created a standardized design for the Metropolitan police that first appeared in London in 1929. The main difference between the old signal posts and the new boxes was that they were now available to the public to use.
The inside of a police box was not in fact bigger on the inside, but rather a miniature police station where officers could read/file reports, hold detainees and take lunch breaks. The telephone was located behind a hinged door on the outside so members of the public could use it – the location of the telephone is seen also replicated by the TARDIS in later episodes such as The Empty Child and The Bells of St. John.
Police Boxes were phased out in the 1970s, so over time the image of a police box became as associated with the TARDIS from Doctor Who as with the police. None of the props used as the TARDIS by the BBC have actually been faithful replicas of the original MacKenzie Trench model it claims to be based on, and the design has changed significantly over time, as showcased in the episode Twice Upon A Time that displays the First Doctor’s and the Twelfth Doctor’s TARDISes side by side.
Rose uses a small amount of history to create a sense of mystery around the Doctor, without going into any detail. The use of history in the episode is largely as brief lines and comments that do not notably advance the story but do add to the sense of legend and mythology surrounding the show. History is used to add a sense of scale to Rose and to tease the sorts of adventures that might be in store in the future of the series.
Trivia:
· Both the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness previously appeared in the Classic Series stories: Spearhead From Space (1970) and Terror of the Autons (1971) – both stories were also ‘firsts’ with Spearhead from Space introducing the 3rd Doctor and his companion Liz Shaw, and being the first story broadcast in colour, while Terror of the Autons introduced new companion Jo Grant, and one of the Doctor’s archenemies: The Master
· The episode was originally called Rose Meets the Doctor and the Journey Begins but was then shortened to Rose Meets the Doctor and then finally to just Rose
· A novelisation of the story by Russell T. Davies was released on the 5th April 2018 which featured changes and expansions to the story, including Clive possessing pictures of past and future Doctors apart from the 9th
· The same opening shot was reused in the first two Christmas Specials: The Christmas Invasion and The Runaway Bride
· When she believes Mickey is dead, Rose says she’ll have to tell his mother – we learn in Series 2 that Mickey was actually raised by his gran
· The Doctor speed-reads the book The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and comments it has a sad ending
· The first ever episode of Doctor Who was first aired the day after the Kennedy assassination
· The episode features the first use of the word gay (“he’s gay and she’s an alien”) in Doctor Who on tv
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