'Rose' Story Code 1.1 by Russell T. Davies

“If you’re an alien, how come you sound like you’re from the North?” - Rose
“Lots of planets have a North.” - The Doctor

Nineteen-year old sales assistant Rose Tyler’s day starts out like any other: a morning spent working in the London department store, Henrick's; lunch with boyfriend Mickey; then an afternoon spent serving more customers. However, things soon change when, just as Rose is leaving for home, she is asked to take the lottery club’s winnings to the store’s caretaker, Wilson. Searching the dark basement Rose is unable to find any trace of Wilson, but she does come face-to-face with several shop mannequins – which somehow come to menacing life and make to attack her. Rose is saved by a mysterious man calling himself the Doctor, who talks of aliens made of living plastic and energy relays on the store’s roof. After sending Rose - and a memento of her ordeal, a severed plastic arm - on her way home, the Doctor then blows up the department store, apparently ending the threat. The following morning, a now-jobless Rose stays at home, but it is not long before she encounters the Doctor again; he tells her that he has located an alien energy source coming from her flat: the mannequin’s arm, which promptly attacks him and Rose. After the Doctor disarms the threat, he tells an inquisitive Rose that he is trying to save the world from an alien invasion, but before Rose can learn any more, the Doctor steps into a police box and vanishes into thin air. Rose is intrigued, and uses Mickey’s PC to search the internet for information on the enigmatic man; she soon finds a website devoted to the Doctor, run by a man named Clive**. With Mickey along for protection, Rose pays a visit to Clive and his family. While Mickey waits in the car outside, Clive shows Rose his extensive collection of old newspaper cuttings and photographs of the Doctor, compiled from records covering many years, but showing several different people; after explaining that ‘The Doctor’ could be a title passed down a family line, Clive then shows Rose pictures of ‘her’ Doctor: seen in the crowd at President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963; at the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic; and in a Nineteenth-Century sketch. Meanwhile, in the street, Mickey falls victim to a vicious plastic wheelie-bin, and is replaced by an Auton double. Rose rejoins her ‘boyfriend’, and together they go for lunch; the Auton duplicate tries to elicit information concerning the Doctor, but they are interrupted by the arrival of the man himself; the Auton goes berserk and attacks the Doctor and Rose, but in the ensuing struggle the Doctor manages to remove the creature’s head, and he runs off with Rose close behind. Pursued by the headless ‘Mickey’, Rose has no choice but to follow the Doctor into his police box… and finds herself inside a huge control room filled with complex machinery. After explaining that they are inside his TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension In Space), the Doctor uses the Auton’s head to locate the source of the alien signal; he transports the TARDIS to London’s South Bank, where he and Rose begin searching for the giant antenna that the invading Nestene Consciousness is using to broadcast its control signal to the Autons. After Rose realises that the London Eye wheel is what they are looking for, the two of them find an entrance into the complex below; descending into the depths of the Nestene’s underground lair they find Mickey, shaken but still alive, and the Nestene Consciousness itself, manifested within a huge vat of molten plastic. The Doctor attempts to reason with the creature, requesting that it leave Earth alone, but the intelligence has captured the TARDIS, and now believes that it is under attack from an old enemy, which it holds responsible for the destruction of its homeworld in an interplanetary war. As two Autons seize the Doctor and take his phial of anti-plastic, the Nestene transmits the activation signal – and all across London, plastic shop dummies come to life, smashing through display windows and slaughtering anyone in their path. Rose’s mum is caught up in the attack, while Clive is killed in front of his family. Back at the lair, Rose saves the day by swinging on a securing chain, knocking the phial of anti-plastic out of the Auton’s grip and spilling it onto the vat of plastic below. As the Nestene dies, its influence on the Autons dies with it, causing the deadly creatures to collapse to the ground, reduced to mere inanimate mannequins. The threat to Earth ended, the Doctor offers Rose the chance to travel with him through time and space – an offer that Rose cannot refuse…

Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who), Billie Piper (Rose Tyler), Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler), Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith), Mark Benton (Clive)**, Elli Garnett (Caroline), Adam McCoy (Clive's Son), Alan Ruscoe, Paul Casey, David Sant, Elizabeth Fost, Helen Otway (Autons), Nicholas Briggs (Nestene Voice)

Directed by Keith Boak
Produced by Phil Collinson
Executive Producers Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner and Mal Young
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1):
26th March 2005 @ 7.00 pm

Notes:
*Introducing the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith

*This is the first time since Season 18 that the title role is credited as "Doctor Who", rather than "The Doctor"

*The television premiere of 'Rose' was spoilt somewhat by the BBC's automated Presentation system, which faded up the microphones from the studio of the previous live programme, 'Strictly Dance Fever', as it was transferred to BBC 3 during the first few minutes of the episode

*Initial overnight figures showed that the programme achieved an average audience of 9.9 million viewers (peaking at 10.5 million), and an audience share of 43.2%; the official BARB listings gave the final viewing figure as 10.81 million viewers, putting it at No.3 in the BBC 1 chart (and overall No.7 for the week, beaten only by four episodes of "Coronation Street" and two episodes of "Eastenders")

*Bad Wolf sightings: Some sources say that the Nestene Consciousness appears to shout "Bad Wolf" when it sees the TARDIS (can't heard it myself!); it's also worth noting that when we first see Rose, she is wearing a little red(ish) 'riding hood'.

**Clive's note: A man named Clive, married, with a son, and who runs a website devoted to the Doctor... That seems familiar, doesn't it? Hang on a minute! Are they trying to tell me something?!?