Robot Rose was the first game and second release exclusively published in the Doctor Who Annual 2006 in September 2005 by Panini UK and the BBC. The puzzle game featured an original illustration by Ben Morris, while the writing of the Annual's puzzles was collectively attributed to Justin Richards and Gareth Roberts. The reuse of the Breebles, an alien species first encountered in Roberts's audio story Bang-Bang-a-Boom!, does suggest that this particular entry was his work rather than Richards's.
Unlike other puzzle games in Annuals past and future, Robot Rose kept the fourth wall intact:[disputed statement] the interactive element came in the form of asking the reader to spot the clues presented in the text which had allowed him to solve the story's mystery.
Summary[[edit]]
The malevolent Breebles capture Rose Tyler and create a Robot Rose to infiltrate the Doctor's TARDIS, with orders to kill the Ninth Doctor. When Rose manages to escape the Breebles and rejoin the Doctor, he is left trying to figure out which of the two Roses is the real one, and which is the deadly android assassin!
Plot[[edit]]
The meddlesome Breebles attempt to take their revenge on their old enemy the Ninth Doctor by abducting his companion Rose Tyler and creating an almost perfect robotic duplicate of her, whom they send back to the Doctor with orders to assassinate him.
Rose's escape from the Breebles' prison and reunion with the Doctor puts the Time Lord in an awkward place as he wonders which of the two Roses is the real one and which one is the killer robot. Thus, the Doctor asks both Rose Tylers to give an oral account of their adventures in the TARDIS in the hope that one of them will make an egregious mistake identifying her as the copy.
Indeed, the copy, whose memories are a flawed copy of Rose's, makes ten mistakes in her summary of her adventures with the Doctor: she believes the animated shop-window dummies were working for the Slitheen family while it was the Nestenes trying to blow up the world disguised as journalists, that her boyfriend was called "Mike", that it is in 1869 Edinburgh that the Doctor and Rose met Charles Dickens, that the end of the world took place in the year 2 billion, that the Last Dalek was encountered by the Doctor in Canada and killed by him, and that on "Satellite Nine", the villainous Lady Acassandra was controlling things behind the scenes.
From all these mistakes, the Doctor realising who the impostor is, and deactivates the fiendish machine using his sonic screwdriver.
Characters[[edit]]
Worldbuilding[[edit]]
- The Doctor once destroyed the Breebles' replication pods.
- The Robot Rose is equipped with a (flawed) memory disk containing copies of the real Rose's memories.
- The Doctor is able to deactivate the robot using his sonic screwdriver once he realises which one of the two Roses is the forgery.
Notes[[edit]]
- Although the story frames the Breebles as returning antagonists out for revenge, they had never been featured as enemies of the Doctor before and the incident during which the Doctor destroyed their replication pods remains ever unseen.
Continuity[[edit]]
- The Robot Rose gives slightly-off accounts of the 2005 Nestene invasion of Earth, (TV: Rose) the Charles Dickens affair, (TV: The Unquiet Dead) the Slitheen family's plots, (TV: Aliens of London, World War Three, Boom Town) Rose's trip to the end of the world, (TV: The End of the World) the two time-travellers' encounter with the last Dalek and meeting with Adam, (TV: Dalek) and their adventure on Satellite Five. (TV: The Long Game)
- The Doctor is facing the Breebles, whom he has encountered before. (AUDIO: Bang-Bang-a-Boom!)