Rose Noble

Rose Noble was the daughter of Donna Noble and Shaun Temple, and a companion to the Fourteenth Doctor.

She was transgender, specifically non-binary and female-presenting, and often felt like an outsider, feeling that she was "from a different planet" due to the Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis which she had inherited from her mother's suppressed DoctorDonna persona. Her feelings of isolation lead her to easily sympathise with the Meep, an alien fleeing from another world, until the Meep revealed the Meep's true character in battle with the Doctor. When her mother was forced to become the DoctorDonna to prevent the Meep's attempted destruction of London, the meta-crisis was also awakened in Rose, but she ultimately chose letting go of the meta-crisis, feeling grateful to get to be her true, unadulterated self at last.

When the Doctor settled down on Earth to heal himself from his mental and emotional scars, Rose would occasionally take adventures with him in his TARDIS, such as a trip to Mars.

Biography

Early life

Rose was born some time after Donna Noble and Shaun Temple's wedding in the late 2000s. (TV: The End of Time (part two) ^[+]Loading...{"part":"Two","1":"The End of Time (TV story)"}) She was assigned male at birth and given the name of "Jason", as well as her mother's surname, as Donna didn't like that "Noble-Temple" sounded like an "old ruin". Rose inherited part of the "DoctorDonna" Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis from her mother, including some of Donna's memories of her adventures with the Tenth Doctor, which would influence aspects of her life in subtle ways. (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])

Whilst her mother was teaching Rose to play the recorder, (TV: The Giggle ^[+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) she came out as transgender and non-binary, choosing the name of Rose for herself, based off memories of Rose Tyler she inherited from the meta-crisis. (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"]) Rose's transitioning involved years of therapists, doctors, voice lessons, hormone treatments and her loved ones learning pronouns. (PROSE: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (novelisation)"]) Rose's family were generally supportive of her coming out, although Sylvia Noble was still having trouble getting used to her grandchild's change of gender. There were school bullies who would harass Rose by continuing to use her deadname, which tended to annoy Donna, who was highly supportive of her daughter, but Rose herself put up a brave front against the harassment.

To help her parents earn money, Rose started a toy business where she sold homemade toys online, with one customer being as far away as Abu Dhabi. Rose made her toys in a shed that served as a replica of the Doctor's TARDIS and her toys were based on creatures that her mother had encountered in her travels in the TARDIS, including Daleks, Cybermen, Judoon, Lupari, Ood, and Adipose. (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"]) She also became vegan. (TV: The Giggle ^[+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])

Meeting the Doctor

Rose and Donna tease the Doctor. (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])

In November 2023, (PROSE: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (novelisation)"]) on a night that changed her life forever, (PROSE: We Are Family ^[+]Loading...{"page":"35","1":"We Are Family (short story)"}) Rose and Donna met the Fourteenth Doctor just before a spaceship came crashing through the sky. Shortly after returning home, Rose stumbled across the Meep, who asked for her to save it from the Wrarth Warriors. Rose attempted to hide the Meep in her shed, but the Meep was found by Donna, and the Doctor then arrived, much to the displeasure of Sylvia. When Shaun returned home and calmed the situation down, Rose listened as the Meep explained why the Wrarth Warriors were after the Meep, and called out the Doctor for assuming the Meep used male-assigned pronouns. The Nobles' house then came under fire from the Soldiers of the Psychedelic Sun and the Wrarth Warriors, and the Doctor, the Noble family and the Meep were forced to flee in Shaun's taxi. However, the Doctor realised the flaws in the Meep's story, and it soon transpired that the Meep was the real villain, on the run from the Galactic Council that had hired the Wrarth Warrior, and the Meep took the Doctor and the Noble family hostage, declaring its intention to destroy London in order to help its ship take-off.

At the Millson Wagner Steelworks, Rose and her family were rescued by UNIT scientific advisor Shirley Bingham, but Donna insisted they separate, with Shaun getting Rose and Sylvia to safety while she went to help the Doctor. Soon after, the Doctor was forced to restore Donna's memories in order to defeat the Meep, with the meta-crisis that Rose inherited also awakening, giving her the knowledge to free the brainwashed UNIT soldiers from the Meep's control. After the crisis was averted, Rose and Donna were able to safely expel the meta-crisis from their bodies by "letting go". In the following morning, Rose was taken to the Doctor's TARDIS with her family, but was denied going in by Donna, who went in instead to take a trip to see Wilf. However, the TARDIS started going haywire and Rose, Shaun and Sylvia could only watch in horror as it departed Camden Market. (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])

Travels with the Doctor

Within the next few days of Donna's disappearance, Rose, Sylvia, and Shaun went into hiding at Wilf's behest after the world fell into the madness (TV: Wild Blue Yonder ^[+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"]) caused by the Toymaker and [[the Giggle]. After the Doctor and his fifteenth incarnation resolved the crisis, the Fourteenth Doctor decided to take "rehab" on Earth to heal his mental state. (TV: The Giggle ^[+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) He bought a house in the countryside, (PROSE: The Giggle ^[+]Loading...["The Giggle (novelisation)"]) but still partook in the occasional adventure, one of which saw him and Rose end up on Mars.

Rose came to a garden party with her family and Melanie Bush, where she accepted being the Doctor's "favourite niece", but also got him in trouble with Donna by slipping out about their trip in the TARDIS. (TV: The Giggle ^[+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])

Rose would later meet the Fifteenth Doctor. (PROSE: TARDIS Data File: Rose Noble ^[+]Loading...["TARDIS Data File: Rose Noble (feature)"]) One such meeting was when she was employed at UNIT, as she was on the observation deck with the Doctor and Ruby Sunday materialised to find out more information about a woman that they kept seeing on there adventures. She went with Ruby to collect a VHS tape of Ruby Road on the days she was born. (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday ^[+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) She was initially killed by Sutekh, but was returned to life after his defeat. (TV: Empire of Death ^[+]Loading...["Empire of Death (TV story)"])

Psychological profile

Personality

Growing up, Rose was often told she seemed as if she were "from a different planet", a sentiment she seemed to agree with, feeling that she was "different" from others. Indeed, this was due to her inheriting a part of her mother's meta-crisis side. (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])

She was very considerate of others. She began her homemade toy business in order to earn some extra money for her parents. Her first instinct upon meeting the injured and seemingly alone and scared the Meep was to give them shelter in her shed and to tend to the cut on their hand. (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])

Though she was confident in her identity as a female-presenting transgender person, she still showed signs of being upset when faced with such transphobic abuse as being deadnamed. When this occurred with her mother by her side, she would attempt to brush off the abuse and convince her mother to "just leave it" when she got angry. (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])

She was conscious of the use of personal pronouns, objecting to the Fourteenth Doctor's assumption that the Meep was a "he". (TV: The Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])

Rose seemed to be either a vegeterian or vegan, choosing to eat the vegan alternative to the chicken-based dish that her father had prepared, and was horrified upon learning that he might have accidentally gotten the two mixed up when serving. (TV: The Giggle ^[+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])

Skills

One of Rose's skills was craft making. (PROSE: TARDIS Data File: Rose Noble ^[+]Loading...["TARDIS Data File: Rose Noble (feature)"])

Behind the scenes

On 16 May 2022, 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]

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, not the least because The Star Beast is also stated in dialogue to be fifteen years after Journey's End ^[+]Loading...["Journey's End (TV story)"], before her parents could have actually met.^{[nb 1]}

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.'Tête-à-Tate, DWM 597

Neither The Star Beast nor The Giggle ^[+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]'s broadcast versions give Rose a specific age, although she is unambiguously school-aged. However, the novelisation of The Giggle states her age to be 16.

Footnotes

Notes

Citations