Rose Noble
{{character stub}}
- You may wish to consult
Rose (disambiguation)
for other, similarly-named pages.
Rose Noble was the daughter of Donna Noble and Shaun Temple. She was transgender, specifically non-binary and female-presenting, and often felt like an outsider, leading her to easily sympathise with the Meep, an alien fleeing from another world.
In fact, however, her lifelong feeling that she was "from a different planet" was actually explained in part by the Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis which she had inherited from her mother's suppressed DoctorDonna persona. Though it shaped her personality as she grew up, notably influencing her choice of name, she was ultimately glad to let this "power" go when she had to give it up to save her own life, grateful to get to be her true, unadulterated self at last.
Biography
Following Donna Noble and Shaun Temple's wedding in Spring 2010, (TV: The End of Time (part two) [+]Loading...{"part":"Two","1":"The End of Time (TV story)"}) Rose was assigned male at birth and given a male name,[nb 1] as well as her mother's surname, as Donna didn't like that "Noble-Temple" sounded like an "old ruin". Eventually, she came out as transgender and non-binary, choosing the name of "Rose" for herself, though not before she had become known by her deadname by some school bullies, who would go on to harass her about her transition into her teenage years.
Rose inherited some of Donna's "DoctorDonna" Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis from her mother, including some of Donna's memories of her adventures with the Tenth Doctor. This subconsciously influenced her choice in name, her building the shed as a replica of the TARDIS and toys that she created based on creatures that her mother had encountered, including Daleks, Cybermen, Judoon, Lupari, Ood, and Adiposes. She sold these through an online business, with one customer as far away as Abu Dhabi. (TV: The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])
In 2023, Rose's life changed when she stumbled across something alien while the Doctor, in his fourteenth incarnation, returned to the Noble family. (PROSE: We Are Family [+]Loading...{"page":"35","1":"We Are Family (short story)"})
Behind the scenes
On 16 May, Yasmin Finney teased her involvement in the 2023 specials with an Instagram post containing a rose and a blue diamond.[1] It was officially announced on doctorwho.tv by the BBC shortly after that Finney would be playing a character by the name of Rose.[2] Finney — a transgender actor herself — confirmed that her character would also be trans,[3] saying that Rose was a 15-year-old transgender girl with "a great supportive family".[4] On 30 August, the Doctor Who social medias revealed in a post on Finney's birthday the full name of her character, Rose Noble, confirming that the character is the daughter of Donna Noble and Shaun Temple.[5]
Deadname
File:Episode 1- The Star Beast - The Official Doctor Who Podcast - Doctor Who In an early scene of The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"], as Donna and Rose Noble return home from Camden Market, a group of boys from Rose's school mocked and bullied Rose by deadnaming her. As revealed by Russell T Davies in the first episode of The Official Doctor Who Podcast — forewarning that the topic would be contentious and thus a trigger warning was necessary — the scene was included to show the transphobia which real non-cisgender people face in their lives, to not shy away from the discrimination they face, as well as the fact that Rose's deadname — Jason — is a historical Greek name, chosen as the name means "healer or doctor", thus creating the implication that Donna, despite having no conscious memory of the Doctor or her adventures with him, had subconsciously named her child after him.
Age
In interviews, Rose was stated to be fifteen years old during the events of the 2023-set The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"], a revelation that creates contradictions for the show's timeline. Rose's given age, combined with the setting, would suggest her year of birth as being 2008, a year before her biological parents even met, and two years before their marriage.
Russell T Davies has directly acknowledged this discrepancy, explaining that he chose to "fudge the years" with Donna to accommodate for the casting of the then-eighteen-year-old Finney in the role, before going on to jokingly give an in-universe explanation;
But you mustn’t forget, uh, that time cloud that descended on Camden in 2017 and dislocated everyone by exactly eight months and three days. We’ll tell that story one day. I will come to that in Series Seven.
Footnotes
Notes
- ↑ Within The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"], Rose is deadnamed at one point, as an example of the transphobia that real non-cisgender individuals encounter in their lives. This name, as revealed by Russell T Davies, does have symbolic importance. More detail can be found in the behind the scenes section.
References
- ↑ @yazdemand on instagram.com
- ↑ Yasmin Finney joins Doctor Who cast on doctorwho.tv
- ↑ Yasmin Finney confirms her Doctor Who character Rose is trans on cultbox.co.uk
- ↑ Doctor Who 60th Anniversary: new information about Rose on cultbox.co.uk
- ↑ Doctor Who character gets a Noble surname on cultbox.co.uk
[[Category:21st century individuals]] [[Category:Noble family]] [[Category:Residents of England]] [[Category:Non-cisgender individuals]] [[Category:Partial Time Lords]]