Rose Tyler, originally a shop assistant from London, was the first known companion of the Ninth Doctor. After she witnessed his regeneration into the Tenth Doctor, she continued to travel with him as the Doctor's companion, before she became trapped in an alternate world.
History
Early Life
Rose Tyler was born to Jackie and Pete Tyler in 1986. (DW: The Unquiet Dead, Dalek) see also: Mysteries and Discrepancies
Rose was only six months old when, on 7 November, 1987, her father, Pete, died in a car accident. (DW: Rise of the Cybermen, Father's Day) Although she was too young to remember the incident or any other events from that year, her mother, Jackie, later told Rose the story of how her father had died. ("Father's Day")
- For more information on Rose's age at the time of her father's death, see Mysteries and Discrepancies below.
- The shooting script of "Father's Day" gives 1992 as the year that Jackie tells Rose about Pete's death, also mentioning that Rose is "about six years old" at the time. The episode itself gives no indication as to the timing of Rose being told the story.
Rose attended the Jericho Street Junior School, where she was a member of the under-sevens gymnastic team, and she won the bronze medal in a school gymnastics competition. (DW: Rose)
When Rose was twelve, she was given a red bicycle for Christmas. (DW: The Doctor Dances)
- It might be assumed that the Doctor had something to do with her receiving the bike, as, in the episode, he knows what she got without her ever telling him and uses the fact she was given a bike as evidence to support his claim that he is Father Christmas.
While at school, she and a friend of hers named Shareen would often intentionally miss school to go shopping and to look at boys. (DW: The Unquiet Dead) Rose left school without taking her A-levels, later blaming Jimmy Stone as the only reason for her departure. (DW: Rose) However, she would also later recall that she had hated every second of school. (DW: The Unquiet Dead)
Rose began seeing Mickey at the age of 14, and at 15 she was suspended from her school, Jericho Street Comprehensive, for persuading the choir to go on strike. After doing well in her GCSE exams, she left school to live with a 20 year-old musician, Jimmy Stone, but the affair ended in tears and with Rose £800 in debt. She subsequently returned to Jackie and Mickey, and her mother called in a favour from an ex-boyfriend to get her the job at Henrik's.
Rose and Jackie lived in (Flat 48, Bucknall House, Powell Estate, London, SE15 7GO). Jackie supported them by working from home as a hairdresser and, prior to Rose meeting the Doctor, her only travelling experience was a school trip to France and an annual week's holiday to South Wales with her mother (Doctor Who Annual 2006).
By the time she was 19, Rose had started working as a shop assistant at Henrik's Department Store in Regent Street, London. She would travel to and from work on buses. She had a boyfriend named Mickey Smith and lived in a council flat on the Powell Estate with her mother, Jackie. One of the rooms in the flat was Rose's pink bedroom, where she would sleep and wake up with an alarm clock, every morning at 7:30. (DW: Rose)
Adventures with the Doctor
One night after Henrik's Department Store closed, Rose witnessed several mannequins coming to life in the basement of the shop building. Although she suspected that the moving, apparently plastic, models were someone's idea of a practical joke, the mannequins were actually Autons about to dispose of her. Luckily, she was saved by the Doctor, who took her hand and helped her escape from the store. However, he proceeded to destroy the building, consequently making Rose unemployed.
After she returned home, she searched for more information about the strange man who had saved her life and found a man called Clive, who had been keeping track of the Doctor's appearances throughout time. Ultimately, Rose helped the Doctor track down the Nestene Consciousness that was animating the Autons and, when the Doctor was being held by two of the mannequins, Rose used her gymanstic skill to free him, simultaneously ending the Nestene Consciousness' plans of world domination. Rose subsequently joined the Doctor on his travels in the TARDIS, leaving her boyfriend and her mother behind on Earth. (DW: Rose)
On her first journey with the Doctor, Rose travelled to the year 5.5/apple/26, where, on Platform One, she encountered several aliens as they gathered to observe the end of the world. At one point, Rose became trapped in a room where she was almost burned alive by the sun, shortly before it engulfed the Earth and brought about its destruction. (DW: The End of the World)
In her travels with the Doctor, Rose has (among other things) seen destruction of Earth, encountered the Doctor's oldest enemy and learned about the consequences of tampering with history. The Doctor even modifed her Nokia 3200 mobile phone to be able to communicate across time and space, among other functions. She has nicknamed it the "Superphone".
During her time with the Doctor, the words "Bad Wolf" followed the Doctor and Rose around, the phrase being scattered like clues through the places that they visited. Eventually, it was revealed that Rose was the Bad Wolf — the words were a message that she had left to herself in time and space when she absorbed the energies of the time vortex to save the Doctor and the Earth from the Daleks. The Doctor had just sent her home to place her out of harm's way, but "Bad Wolf" was a reminder that it was possible to get back to him. This led her to the point where she would, by looking into the heart of the TARDIS, transcend temporarily into a transcendentally powerful being.
- In doing so, she also created a predestination paradox.
However, the energies she absorbed were destroying her body. The Doctor took those energies into himself, sacrificing his ninth incarnation and regenerating before Rose's eyes into a new form ("The Parting of the Ways").
Personality
Rose has shown herself to be a quick-witted, inquisitive and compassionate young woman, who despite the strange events she was thrown into was quick to adapt to them. She fell easily into the role of the Doctor's latest companion and showed both determination and courage while facing various alien threats. It is also obvious that she cares deeply about the Doctor, although she denies any infatuation with or romantic feelings towards him, despite indications to the contrary on several occasions. In Doomsday, she told the Doctor that she loved him; he began to reply, but only got out the words "Rose Tyler" before he was cut off.
Mysteries and Discrepancies
The Doctor states that Rose is nineteen years old, (DW:The Unquiet Dead), and it is later established that she met the Doctor on 6 March 2005 (DW: Aliens of London). However, the Annual article states that Rose was born on 27 April 1987. Although this contradicts the age as stated on screen, it is consistent with the appearance of the baby Rose in "Father's Day," set in November 1987, where the baby is clearly no more than a few months old. The 27 April birthdate is also inconsistent with a statement on the BBC's website: during the lead-up to the episode "Bad Wolf," the website was altered to tie in with the story's Big Brother theme, and a "contestant portrait" for Rose stated that she was an Aries.
Behind the Scenes
"Tyler" is a common name in the works of writer and producer Russell T. Davies, who has used it as the surname of a family that features heavily in his Virgin New Adventures Doctor Who novel, Damaged Goods. He has also used the name as the surname for several other characters in various series, such as Ruth Tyler in Revelations, Vince Tyler in Queer as Folk, and Johnny Tyler in The Second Coming.
Among those who auditioned for the role of Rose Tyler was actress Georgia Moffett, daughter of Fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison. Actress Julia Joyce, at the age of seven, portrayed "Young Rose" in "Father's Day".
The title of the first episode of Season 27, "Rose", is a references to the character's name and she is the first character to appear in that episode. Therefore, she is also, simultaneously the first character to appear in Season 27 and the first to have been seen in a Doctor Who television episode for nine years (given the interval between the 1996 Doctor Who television movie and "Rose").
After Rose was written out of Doctor Who at the end of Season 28, Russell T. Davies considered giving the character her own 90-minute spin-off production, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence, with the possibility of such a special becoming an annual Bank Holiday event. Although the special was officially commissioned, Davies changed his mind and decided that such a return, wherein the audience would be able to see Rose when the Doctor could not, would spoil her final scenes in Doctor Who. The production was consequently cancelled.
Sam Tyler, the lead character in the BBC's other time-travel drama, Life on Mars, was named after Rose. Reportedly, the lead character's surname was suggested by the young daughter of Life of Mars co-creator, Matthew Graham, after her father had asked her to choose the character's surname. She had ultimately decided upon "Tyler" because of Rose, a fact only later discovered by her father, who eventually went on to write the Doctor Who episode "Fear Her".