Bad Wolf meme

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The enigmatic "Bad Wolf" graffitied on the ground. (DW: The Parting of the Ways)

"Bad Wolf" was a repeated meme throughout Rose Tyler's travels with the Doctor through space and time, mostly throughout her travels with his ninth incarnation, but partly throughout her travels with his tenth one also.

The phrase was most commonly found in graffiti during the 20th and 21st centuries (DW: Aliens of London, Father's Day, The Parting of the Ways), but the first chronological occurance was in 1869, in which Gwyneth, a parlour maid and clairvoyant, looked into Rose's mind and declared that she had seen "The Big Bad Wolf". (DW: The Unquiet Dead)

However, the first occurance of the phrase in the Doctor's and Rose's timestream was in the year 5,000,000,000 on Platform One orbiting the soon-to-be-destroyed Earth, in which the Moxx of Balhoon told the Face of Boe that the current situation was "the classic Bad Wolf scenario". (DW: The End of the World)

It was also found in other languages - it was used in relation to a Nazi bomb used n World War II, the "Schlechter Wolf" (DW: The Doctor Dances), and to a nuclear power station, built in September 2006, the "Blaidd Dwg" power station. (DW: Boom Town)

Many companies also used the phrase "Bad Wolf", such as GeoComTex, who used it as their helicopter call signs, for example Henry van Statten's private helicopter was "Bad Wolf One". (DW: Dalek)

The phrase became more common in the years 199,909 to 200,100, in which the Dalek-controlled Badwolf Corporation and the television channel "Bad Wolf TV" made use of the phrase. (DW: The Long Game, Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways)

Sightings

Television episodes

The phrase has turned up in every story beginning with the second one, with one mention in each of the two-parters. Although some argue that the Nestene Consciousness (in the first episode of the season, Rose) mouths the phrase when it sees the TARDIS, when the BBC website team published their "Bad Wolf" website, Rose was significantly absent from the list of episodes which had a Bad Wolf mention.

The confirmed sightings of "Bad Wolf" are as follows:

• The End of the World: The Moxx of Balhoon mentions in a half-heard conversation to the Face of Boe the "classic Bad Wolf scenario."
• The Unquiet Dead: When the clairvoyant Gwyneth reads Rose's mind, she says, "The things you've seen... the darkness.. the Big Bad Wolf!"
• Aliens of London/World War Three: A young boy spray-paints the graffiti BAD WOLF on the side of the TARDIS.
• Dalek: The call sign for Henry van Statten's private helicopter is "Bad Wolf One"
• The Long Game: One of the several thousand television channels being broadcast from Satellite Five is BAD WOLFTV.
• Father's Day: A poster advertising a rave in 1987 has the words "BAD WOLF" defacing it.
• The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: The bomb that Captain Jack rides at the end of the story is labelled "SCHLECHTER WOLF", which is roughly "Bad Wolf" (or "Worse Wolf") in German.
• Boom Town: A nuclear power plant is dubbed the Blaidd Drwg project, which is Welsh for "Bad Wolf". The Doctor also noticed for the first time that the phrase had been following them around.
• Bad Wolf: The corporation that runs the Game Station (formerly Satellite Five) is called the Badwolf Corporation.
• The Parting of the Ways: In scattered graffiti around Rose's council estate, including on a poster tacked to the wall behind Rose's head in the café scene and in giant letters on a paved recreation ground. The latter is faded, but still visible, in New Earth.
• Love & Monsters: The Torchwood Institute files on Rose have been corrupted by the "Bad Wolf virus".
• Doomsday: Rose finaly meets the Doctor for the very last time in a place in Scandinavia translated as "Bad Wolf Bay".

Other allusions

Some fans argue that there are other, more subtle allusions to the Bad Wolf. For example, in Aliens of London, the presence of a pig augmented by alien technology could be an allusion to the Three Little Pigs, as might be the three rather portly human forms inhabited by the Slitheen in that same story.

In The Empty Child, Nancy makes a remark about the size of the Doctor's ears and nose, a possible allusion to Little Red Riding Hood's observation to the Big Bad Wolf about how large its various features were. (The Doctor also comments about the appearance of his ears in Rose.) In the same story, some fans claim that the shape of Jack Harkness's time ship on its control screens resembles a wolf's head. Rose also wore a red hoodie for several episodes of Series 1.

In a Doctor Who Magazine column discussing how the Bad Wolf references were made, series producer Russell T. Davies refers only to the direct occurrences of the phrase, and adds that some writers were not informed of the idea, necessitating the addition of references that were not in the scripts (for example, the stenciling on the bomb in The Doctor Dances). This suggests that many of the indirect references may have been coincidental and unintended.

The characters of the Adherents of the Repeated Meme in The End of the World may also have been a metafictional reference to the repetition of the phrase and how it would spread.

In the 2006 series episode Tooth and Claw, a character mentions that Rose has "seen [the wolf] too", and that there is "something of the wolf about [her]".

Tie-in websites

The tie-in websites set up by the BBC to accompany the series also featured appearances of the phrase. The "Who is Doctor Who?" site featured a clip from World War Three with an American newsreader. This clip differed from the one shown in the broadcast version in only one respect: the newsreader was identified as "Mal Loup" (French for "bad wolf"). At one point, the Doctor is described as being off "making another decision for us, all 'I'm the big bad wolf and it's way past your bedtime.' "

The UNIT website also used "badwolf" as a password to enter the "secure" areas of the website. The [Geocomtex website's] support page had BADWOLF transcribed in Morse Code, and its products page made mention of Lupus and Nocens variants for their "node stabilisers" (lupus nocens is Latin for "bad wolf"). They also offered "Argentum Ordnance", argent being Latin for "silver" — silver bullets being traditionally used for killing werewolves.

In the background image of the BBC Doctor Who website's TARDISODE page, the words "BAD WOLF" can be seen scrawled behind Mickey Smith.[1]

In one of the areas in the ghostwatch game, "BAD WOLF" is written as graffiti on a wall.

Ninth Doctor Adventures

The phrase occurs in some of the Ninth Doctor Adventures, the BBC Books range of spin-off novels featuring the Ninth Doctor.

• The Clockwise Man, by Justin Richards features a character who notes that the two time travellers keep turning up, "like a bad wolf."
• In Winner Takes All by Jacqueline Rayner, there is a game called "Bad Wolf" amongst Mickey's other computer games.

• In The Monsters Inside by Stephen Cole, a character tells Rose "The big bad wolf's ready to blow our house down."

• In The Deviant Strain, also by Richards, a psychic character tells Rose that he fears "The bad wolf... The man with the wolf on his arm." Later, this character is indirectly killed by another character who has a tattoo of a wolf on his arm.

• In The Stealers of Dreams by Steve Lyons, a character explaining why fiction is dangerous says, "We've good reason to be afraid of the big bad wolf."

• Only Human by Gareth Roberts does not contain a reference.

Comic strips

There were two "Bad Wolf" references in the Doctor Who Magazine Ninth Doctor comic strips. In Part Two of The Love Invasion (DWM #356, May 2005), there is a poster on the wall of a pub reading "Bad Wolf". In Part One of A Groatsworth of Wit (DWM #363, December 2005), a tavern sign in Elizabethan London features a picture of a wolf's head and the initials "B.W."

Revelations

The explanation as to why the phrase Bad Wolf kept cropping up through the travels of the Doctor and his companions was revealed in the season finale, The Parting of the Ways. Rose had been sent back to the 21st century in the TARDIS for her safety, while in the 2002nd century the Doctor was on the Game Station facing off a Dalek invasion. Having tried unsuccessfully to pilot the TARDIS back to the distant future, Rose was almost resigned to remaining in her present when she noticed the words "Bad Wolf" written in six-foot high letters on a paved public area of the estate as well as in graffiti scrawled on nearby walls. [2] (In addition, but apparently unnoticed by Rose, the words "Bad Wolf" are also across a flyer that is taped to a window behind her head during the scene in which she, Jackie, and Mickey go to a cafe after her return to Earth.)

Rose deduced that the words were not a warning as they had assumed, but a reminder that she and the Doctor continued to be connected. She then managed to open the TARDIS console and absorb the power of the Time Vortex, giving herself almost unimaginable power over space and time, and being able to perceive all of it. Returning to the Game Station to rescue the Doctor, she took the name of the Badwolf Corporation, scattering the words "Bad Wolf" throughout history as a reminder to herself. This is an example of a predestination paradox.

In Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts, producer and chief writer Russell T. Davies notes that the origin of "Bad Wolf" started with a wish to see "the TARDIS being graffiti'd", with the words simply being made up. Once he had done so, however, he decided to tie it into the plan to make Rose into the "Time Goddess" at the end of the series, and started to insert references retroactively into the scripts. The design department noticed this, and without knowing what it meant, began to insert the phrase on various props as well.