Tag Archives: Sci-Fi

“World War Three,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 5 (2 of 2)

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

World War Three

Let’s all say it together: “Raxacoricofallapatorius!”

The Doctor, Rose, Harriet, Jackie, and Mickey face off against the Slitheen family. This episode is banana pants. As the second part of the story, it doesn’t have all of the hallmarks of a full-blown Dan Harmon-style circle. I don’t think anybody at BBC is looking at the Dan Harmon circle, I just think it’s a useful tool to look at story structure with. This one doesn’t follow it exactly, so I’m going to get close.

1) In a zone of comfort

We start with a grand escape. At the end of the last episode, the Doctor was in the process of being electrocuted to death in a room full of scientific experts. Things were not going well for anybody and he had to get the heck out of there. Rose and Harriet are hiding and evading the aliens as best they can. So I don’t see this as a zone of comfort unless you think in terms of characters who have their comfort zone inside of being in extreme danger.

2) They desire something

The Doctor desires to stop the aliens from carrying out their plan. He has a plan of his own, but he’s hesitant to use it because of the desires of Rose’s mother. Jackie rails the Doctor the entire episode about the safety of her daughter as she travels with him. It keeps the Doctor from acting as quickly as he could.

The alien crime family is interested in profit, but we don’t exactly know how they could get their profit. We just know that they are going to cause a lot of havoc by creating something that they can sell.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

After encountering the aliens and running into and out of danger with the UNIT guards, the Doctor, Harriet, and Rose lock themselves in the cabinet room. The Doctor, who is used to being able to run around and do things, is sort of grounded. This puts him off guard and vulnerable, a place he does not like being. I think this is the most unfamiliar thing about the episode. We are all used to the Doctor who runs everywhere, but now he has to stop stand, and face what’s going on.

4) Adapt to the situation

The one link to the world inside the sealed-off room is Rose’s superphone. It’s got a connection when nothing else does. Much like my Internet this afternoon. Sorry, my Internet is dodgy today as I write this. Anyway, they get online with Rose’s superphone and call Mickey. Mickey the idiot, he takes continual abuse from the Doctor, who mispronounces his name on purpose just to tick him off, has to do the one thing that he never wanted to do to get out of the situation. He needs Mickey’s help. It’s not a small order either. The Doctor wants Mickey to hack into the national defense system, eventually, so they can launch rockets.

5) Get what they desired

In this episode, getting what they desire is sort of one-sided to the aliens, but the Doctor gets in there too. The aliens have the world in an uproar, and the Doctor and Mickey launch that missile. The missile comes right at the end though, almost a part of paying the heavy price for winning.

I love Doctor Who. I’ve been watching it since I was 11 or 12. I’ve been watching Doctor Who almost as long as there has been Doctor Who. I love the characters; I love the situations and all the gadgets. I love the fun. I live in South Georgia. I grew up in Atlanta. I lived there for 40 years. The way I grew up, the shows I was exposed to, and the experiences all contributed to turning me into a big anglophile, but I got it honest. To a certain extent, I feel more connected to London and Britain than I do to the United States, and I’ve never been there. It’s not to say I don’t love my country. I’m just saying that it’s a tremendous influence. Can you imagine hacking into the national defense system, from within the White House, and clicking a button that would send a missile from a submarine, directly into the building and blow it up? In this episode that’s the idea, except it’s 10 Downing St. and not the White House, that’s essentially what they’re doing. That is the way to defeat the aliens. To launch a missile at yourself, while inside the capital building of your country.

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

That leads to the best line in the entire series, at least as far as I can tell. The Doctor is dealing with Rose’s mother and her not-so-wrong attitude that a life with him is super dangerous, and the alien threat at the same time. He has a plan to stop the aliens. That plan might kill Jackie’s daughter. He’s in a dilemma. Thank goodness Harriet takes control and tells them to fire the missile.

He says, “I could save the world but lose you.” He means it. You could tell that the Doctor, who is infatuated with Rose, a guy who keeps his distance from everybody because he knows how dangerous his life is, is kinda falling for her. He has feelings, and he’s playing them all out there. 900 years old, and he’s talking to a 19-year-old woman like he’s afraid of losing her.

Mickey, who also loves Rose, but understands the situation, clicks the button.

7) Return to their familiar situation

Things get cleaned up. Harriet Rose and the Doctor crawl out of the wreckage, and Harriet runs off to save people. The Doctor and Rose return. The Doctor hangs out in the TARDIS and fiddles with things while Rose packs at the flat. The Doctor is still teasing Rose, giving her inflated stories, and trying to be a badass and get her excited to come back with him. He knows he’s competing with her mom and that old regular life. He’s trying to make it look exciting when he does not know what’s coming next. Rose has already decided. She’s packing and getting on board.

8) They have overall changed

Rose is now less indecisive about what she wants. She wants to travel with the Doctor and find out everything she can about that life out in the stars. Before it was an impulse, and now it’s a decision after what she and the Doctor have gone through.

I think the Doctor has a lot more to learn from her.

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It, by Stephen King

It by Stephen King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It, a third-person singular pronoun, takes a lot of responsibility as the entire title of Stephen King’s 1985 doorstop novel. These days, it’s a story that is widely known. Kids in the 1950s in the book it’s 1958, fight a shape-shifting monster that reverts to the shape of a clown when it can’t scare the kids. And then in 1985, all the kids return to their hometown to fight the monster again, this time as adults. When the way you beat the monster in the first place, is essentially an extension of a child’s imagination and play, the very idea that they can come back at all to find it again is almost out of the question. Mike Hanlon knows this, and even though he knows he will probably get some of his friends killed, he calls them all back.

It is a story of intense friendship and the bonds that kids can make and honor as adults. I was going to say I don’t know about friends from when I was 12 or 13 as the kids are in the book, but that is not true. Online, I still have friends from that age who, if I had a strange contract with, to come back and try to kill a monster that was haunting Doraville, GA, I probably would return to help them.

I read the book for the first time when I was the age of the kids. And I’ve read it several times since then, including when I was the age of the adults in the book. Now that I’m 50 I have another perspective on it. Each time I read this book something new pops out. Details emerge, parts of the story get clearer and clearer, and overall I think I enjoy it more each time I go back to dip into it again.

There are a certain number of aspects of the book that would not fly today. And that’s true but overall, if you’re interested in seeing a story where good friends connect in a very meaningful way, It is your book.

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“Aliens of London,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 4 (1 of 2)

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

Aliens of London

This episode is a little different from the other regular episodes, because there is a cliffhanger at the end, so changes to individual characters are noticeable, but not as strong as I expect from the end of the episode. The Doctor, Rose, Jackie, Mickey, and a new character Harriet, face the Slitheen, a group of body-snatching aliens bent on world destruction.

1) In a zone of comfort

Rose’s been traveling with the Doctor for a few days, but when she returns after an error, it turns out she’s been gone for a year. This understandably upset her home life. Her mom, Jackie, has been searching for her, and her boyfriend Mickey has been blamed for her disappearance. They’ll think him a murderer. Rose won’t tell her mother where she’s been because she wants to protect the Doctor, who is increasingly irritating her mom.

2) They desire something

Rose wants someone she can share her adventures openly. She pursues the Doctor, and Mickey, working out which way she wants to go. She doesn’t know who she can tell. As it comes out that she wants to share her adventures openly, it comes out he’s nine hundred years old. While she’s working out how she’ll deal with that kind of crazy age gap, a spaceship flies over them and plunges them into the next segment.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

The ship crashes into the Thames, after busting out a huge chunk of Big Ben’s clock face. The military has everything blocked up when they try to investigate. The Doctor ends up stuck in Rose’s world, watching coverage of the alien spaceship landing on the news, while everyone Jackie seems to know is there in the apartment with them, like it’s a party and they keep getting in the Doctor’s way.

4) Adapt to the situation

As we’re adapting, strange people show up instead of the prime minister. The news reporters know who they all are, but it is confusing to them why they are showing up instead of some other prominent people. Anytime they are asked why these people are showing up, they are told that it is none of their business and that they are in charge.

As they are gathering together, this is the first time we get to meet Harriet. She is a lower-ranking member, and no one else seems to know why she’s there either. It’s not for lack of trying, she’s trying to get her program seen, but since there was just a huge spaceship crash in the Thames, no one wants to talk to her which is understandable. Harriet, being a future Prime Minister, not that she knows, is in the way at the wrong time. She tries to bring people coffee. She does anything she can to try to get in front of the cabinet members. Of course, since they’re all aliens in disguise, they could care less about what she has to say.

Tosh from Torchwood is introduced, she is doing her doctor bit, examining the alien that has been brought in. She’s confused by its look and by its biology. A military general, who will later be captured by the Slitheen, tells her to keep it out of sight.
As Harriet tries her last-ditch coffee, the villains all gather in the boardroom and begin to laugh maniacally.

5) Get what they desired

Good things start to go their way. As characters begin to get what they desire, sometimes things come up roses, but other times it’s a bitter win.

Rose, who is looking for some kind of validation that she’s making the right choices, receives a TARDIS key from the Doctor. I like to think of this as less than the idea of giving a loved one your apartment key, hoping that they will come okay and live with you. And more of validation, that he wants her on the road with him.
The Doctor, can’t handle all the peopling anymore and slips away after giving that key to Rose. He sneaks down to see what’s going on. The UNIT troops immediately catch him, but he has a backdoor command that they quickly follow. All of a sudden he’s in charge of the troops. He takes them down so he can talk to Tosh about the space pig.
Mickey shows up, having seen the Doctor disappear. He faces up to Rose and Jackie, validating his innocence in her disappearance.
Harriet gets in to read the protocols and hides in the closet. She got in to sneak her plan in, then found out too much. The alien crisis is much bigger than she realized, and these are the aliens that are causing the trouble!

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

I think the heaviest price in this episode, is witnessed directly by Harriet. She’s hiding in the closet, she sees them kill the general and take his body.
We also witness, back with the doctor and Tosh that people who were not ready to encounter aliens, can be so nervous on their end that they shoot to kill, when the space pig is running and scared.

7) Return to their familiar situation

Jackie, trying to get her life back together and protect her daughter follows the instructions on the television and turns them in. The result is when the Doctor and Rose come back out of the TARDIS, they are met with helicopters and military. Rose thinks they’re going to jail, but the limo seems a bit posh. The Doctor says nope, not jail. They’re being escorted to #10 Downing St.

8) They have overall changed

Harriet usurps some control. She’s the biggest change in this show. She may not know exactly what’s going on, but she knows she’s the only one left who’s been elected in the building.

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“The Unquiet Dead,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 3

Gwyneth, The Doctor, Rose, and Charles Dickens unite against the Gelth, a gaseous race trapped in the pipes. The rift, a vortex of energy, makes its debut in this episode. It recharges the Doctor’s TARDIS and later becomes the power source for Captain Jack’s version of Torchwood. Eve Myles, who plays Gwyneth, will later star as a modern Gwen in Torchwood, as a distant relative of Gwyneth. The series name printed on all the series 1 production scripts for Doctor Who was Torchwood, which was an inside joke as it is an anagram for Doctor Who.

This is the first time a historical figure is part of the story in New Who. Charles Dickens appears and takes on near-protagonist status. He may not make the largest sacrifice, but he’s the character who comes out the other end, changed for the better.

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

The Unquiet Dead

“What the Shakespeare is going on?”
Charles Dickens

1) In a zone of comfort

The Doctor and Rose arrive in Cardiff in 1869 for Christmas. Cardiff plays a large role in Doctor Who. It’s the base for the Torchwood series spin-off, among many other things. The Doctor shows up in Cardiff a lot early on. What will later become the Torchwood series will make its home right over the same spot where the rest of the story takes place over what they call the rift. A local undertaker and his house maid Gwyneth are having trouble because one of their charges gets up and walks off when she should be dead. Charles Dickens prepares to go on stage for one of his oral deliveries of a Christmas Carol. The Doctor and Rose, in the meantime, get ready to go out into the snow to celebrate a Christmas in the past. The Doctor introduces Rose to the TARDIS’s wardrobe where she picks out a lovely period dress before they go out on the town.

2) They desire something

Charles Dickens is in a slump. He is away from his family, doing holiday readings of A Christmas Carol, which are inspirational to everyone but himself. He wants to be reunited with them but faces the Christmas season, which has become a bit of a slog for him.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

In the middle of Charles Dickens orating on the ghostly version of Bob Marley’s face appearing in the doorknocker in A Christmas Carol, a dead person in the audience, possessed by a spirit hiding out in the gas pipes begins to glow and reminds him of the description he’s trying to make. People scream and run as Charles Dickens stands astounded on his stage, which of course attracts the Doctor and Rose. There’s nothing like a good scream to get everything started.

4) Adapt to the situation

Trying to make the best of what’s going on the Doctor speaks with the undertaker, trying to understand the history of the situation. It’s been happening for years, but now it’s getting worse and worse. It’s affecting Gwyneth and the Doctor notices that she has a psychic twinkle when she brings him his tea just the way he likes it.

Rose helps Gwyneth and tries to talk girl talk with her and reassure her only to discover what different worlds they seem to come from. The Doctor is starting to put the pieces together, and he doesn’t like the direction this is heading.

5) Get what they desired

In order to get in touch with the gaseous creatures, the Doctor stages a seance. I think he does it mostly for Gwyneth’s benefit because he believes them to be aliens, but he knows she believes they are angels that speak to her. He gets the undertaker, Rose, and Dickens, to join him. I think he does it mostly because he thinks Dickens needs to see this, and the Gelth show up spectacularly, with a huge blue light show, and ask for help. Please bring Gwyneth to the rift under the building and they can be free.

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

They take her to the weakest part of the house where the rift is. Gwyneth stands in it and opens it psychically, creating a bridge, but then it’s time for the big double-cross. The Gelth turn on them and attack, using all the dead bodies that were down in the morgue where they were. Gwyneth must save everyone by sacrificing herself. To save the day, she must die. The Doctor already knows this.

7) Return to their familiar situation

Then Dickens has an idea. With these gaseous creatures occupying bodies, he turns up the gas, flooding the house. He goes from room to room, turning up the gas. When he gets to the Doctor, he has the Doctor help him. As the room floods the Gelth are driven out of their host bodies. It gives Gwyneth the chance she needs to light a match and destroy the lot of them. The Doctor gets Dickens and Rose out in time. Rose is not happy about it, but she gets an object lesson firsthand that what she and the Doctor do is dangerous and sometimes people die.

This is, of course, not the only time that angels are made out to be evil creatures in Doctor Who. Later on, we will get the Weeping Angels. And of course, there are demons as well who show up in Doctor Who. There’s a certain amount of atheism that reigns in science fiction. I think it’s interesting that Doctor Who seems to be an equal opportunity villain maker when it comes to both Angels and Demons. (Maybe a little more so for angels.)

8) They have overall changed

Dickens gets a boost, energizing his mind as a writer, and it inspires him in A Christmas Carol sense to reconnect with his family. Someone who was kind of run down and toward the end of his life leaves energized and full of life and looking forward to visiting with his family again. The Doctor gives him a gift, to see the TARDIS disappear. He leaves laughing, his spirits high.

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“The End of the World,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 2

Story structure may not be everyone’s thing, but I love it and it’s a key part of this website. It’s not intentional to sit around and just look at the plot. I intend to take stories apart and see what makes a story a good story. How many of these work? I mean, there are a ton of episodes of Doctor Who and it’s not the only show that I intend to work my way through here. I remember the first time I was figuring out story structure. I was a kid watching Inspector Gadget, and it occurred to me that certain things happened in a certain order every time. This show helped me predict when things would happen down to the minute. I realized that having this kind of thing on your side is crucial for writing long-running series, especially with today’s TV shows and movies.

I want to take them apart and see what makes them tick so that I can write better stories of my own.

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

The End of the World

1) In a zone of comfort

As the story begins, the Doctor and Rose travel as far into the future as the Doctor can imagine. He wants desperately to impress her. He brings her to the last day on Earth before the sun expands and destroys it. He has brought her to a place where she feels small, surrounded by rich people and the troublesome lady Cassandra. One by one strange-looking alien groups enter, all piling up to make Rose feel as insignificant as possible. The Doctor and they exchange gifts which he immediately hands off to her. These things mean nothing to him, but she doesn’t know whether they are important, so she stands there with them. Some might say that he’s in a zone of comfort here, but that Rose is standing in a zone of discomfort. She doesn’t know who this guy is. She has been rather impulsive to leave with him in the first place, and here they are at this strange party at the end of the world.

2) They desire something

The Doctor desperately wants to impress her, but he’s going about it all the wrong way. He has a problem explaining who he is because of the terrible loss he feels coming off the end of the Time War. He is not emotionally ready to deal with that in front of her. We as an audience don’t learn about the Time War until much, much later. So she wants to know who’s driving the car. Can someone trust this guy when he doesn’t want to say a word about himself? It Puts her off, and she has to deal with the response “This is who I am here, and now.” He could have said, “I come from Gallifrey, I’m a Time Lord, my world is gone, and I played a big role in its destruction, but it was necessary.” Oof. But she doesn’t get that story, she just gets either nothing or more riddles and it creates serious tension between them when all she wants to know is who he is.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

They gave everyone on the space station a little silver pod. It was a gift handed out when they arrived and as Rose sets out to explore; they sabotage the ship. The first casualty is the Steward (“He’s blue…”), who hosted the initial party. He announced people as they came on board. Now he’s locked in his room. There’s a very unfortunate button on his keyboard that would allow the shields to drop and the sun to burn him alive. I think it’s a kind of design flaw. I think that there should be better fail-safes involved to keep people from being able to do that. It also kind of shows the mentality of the people who are boarding this platform for the party. These are upper-echelon party members and not necessarily the savviest technical people in the universe. These are all people used to convenience, and the little robots are easily infiltrating and sabotaging the station.

4) Adapt to the situation

Rose is doing her best to fit in. They’ve been introduced to Cassandra, the last human who appears to be a stretched-out piece of skin with a mouth, eyes, and a brain in a jar hanging out underneath her. Cassandra is incredibly frightening to me because of the lengths to which she’s gone through surgery to “fix” herself to last as long as she has. Meanwhile, the Doctor is off looking for part of the heating system with Jabe, and she has figured out who he is, which is the last thing he wants to hear about. She touches a nerve and makes him cry, which is something that you don’t see often with the Doctor. You do, but you don’t see it often when he is brought to tears. He’s trying to figure out a technical problem on the ship when she brings him back to reality and confronts him about something he’s keeping from Rose. He’s not emotionally ready for it.

5) Get what they desired

The Doctor being his usual clever self, outs Cassandra for sabotaging the station. He has this kind of detective’s moment, gathering everyone in the library where he puts together the clues in front of everyone. He’s trying to act the badass, showing how the little sabotage robots belong to her.

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

Because of outing Cassandra, she activates the sabotage robots. They respond by attacking the shields protecting the ship. The Doctor has taken care of Cassandra, but as a result, he has to run down to the engine rooms and try to vent the ship before it burns up. He takes Jabe, who is a female anthropomorphized tree character, with him. He’s been treating her like his companion the whole show instead of Rose, and she perishes trying to help him. The Doctor is used to losing people, but this shows him part of his pattern and as terrible a loss as Jabe is, he has to remember that he’s got a 19-year-old woman with him. She’s someone new to traveling with him, and this world, and he hasn’t watched over her for the last couple of hours. He needs to do a better job or he could get her killed, too.

The Earth explodes, but no one is watching as they all come so close to death.

7) Return to their familiar situation

The Doctor has had it. He’s a little mean at this point. He reverses Cassandra’s escape route and brings her back to the platform, where he completes his investigation and condemns her. Rose wants to help her, but he stands there and lets her die.

8) They have changed

Rose trying to figure out what she’s going to do. He’s got to come clean with her, but she doesn’t want to push. The Doctor has made some breakthroughs. After Jabe dies, he’s ready to at least give Rose part of the picture. They’re looking out the window at the Earth, or what’s left of it, rolling around and on fire, and he explains to her that his planet burns just like this. I always imagined that subconsciously that’s why he brought her here, because he was still dealing with it in his head. It still bothers him for a long time.

But there’s hope. There’s still life in the universe, there is still plenty to fight and live for.

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“Rose,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 1

I have started my journey into story appreciation and structure with the period of Doctor Who, which I like to refer to as New Who. It comprises the work of three showrunners and the adventures of the Ninth through the Thirteenth incarnations of the Doctor. I do not plan to include Torchwood, or other spin-offs this go-around. It’s not because they lack something, but because I feel like this version of Doctor Who stands very well on its own.

Eventually, I plan to dip into some of Classic Who, as well as what I’m calling New New Who, which begins on Disney+ in America later this month.

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

Warning: spoilers ahead (can you spoil a show from 2005?)

Rose

The first series of New Who follows the adventures of the Ninth official incarnation of the alien, death-defying, shapeshifting Time Lord known as Doctor Who, or as he prefers, “The Doctor.” The theoretical “last of his kind,” The Doctor almost always travels time and space with a companion or two. They are usually young human characters, so we can relate to all the bizarre antics The Doctor gets up to.

I like to think of a companion entering The Doctor’s world like someone visiting the Addams Family. As an audience, we need characters somewhat anchored in a reality we can agree with and understand boggling for us at all the world-saving weirdness that’s coming our way. The tragic part of many companions is that once they are fully attuned to the wild universe the Doctor lives in, they must leave the nest of the TARDIS, and either retire from adventure, return to Earth, or venture out into space on their journey to make way for fresh eyes. In the saddest cases, a companion might die, have their memory erased, or get trapped in a parallel dimension.

I know I’m starting out doing write-ups of a series that started in 2005. I’m okay with that. Just wait until I eventually hop in my own TARDIS and head back to 1993 to cover the X-Files.

In this series, the primary companion is a young woman, Rose Tyler, and she brings with her the support characters of her boyfriend Mickey, and her mom Jackie. Jackie is especially interesting because it’s the first time any parent of a companion has been involved in shaking up the narrative. They remain important, if not always present, the entire time she travels with The Doctor. For this blog, I intend to think of the leads as simply The Doctor, Rose, Mickey, and Jackie. I could spend a ton of time listing cast members and that entire angle, but since I’m focusing on the story, I think I’ll just stick to the character names.

When applying Dan Harmon’s eight-part story circle, I’m used to looking at it about his Community sitcom series. He notes that early in each story, you can see distinct characters in the ensemble assert themselves as the lead at the beginning. I’ll be on the lookout for that as I go through these shows.

This one’s titled “Rose.” Guess who’s looking for big excitement, and a change in her life? I can’t guarantee that every one of these is going to follow the format exactly. I don’t expect all of them to. I do, however, expect many of these to work out and follow the example. Even multi-parters on some level should follow the pattern, so let’s look at Rose.

1) In a zone of comfort

In a zone of comfort, Rose begins her day by getting up and going to work at a shop and having lunch with her boyfriend. She’s fairly carefree, but you can tell she feels like something is missing in her life. On her way home, she gets told to take extra cash down to the basement. We quickly see that where she works, she is at the absolute bottom of the food chain, metaphorically. She’s headed down through an elevator where the only people she knows are already dead and the monsters are waking up. The zone of comfort quickly falls away when she meets the most unusual man she’s ever met. He’s a strange heroic character who wants to blow up the very building where she works. She doesn’t need this place anymore. Rose has got places to go.

2) They desire something

Everyone makes a big fuss over Rose. Her mother and her boyfriend try to tell her what to do. Her mom thinks she should get money for working somewhere that doesn’t care about her, and her boyfriend just wants to go to the pub like it was nothing. Even though the fire from the explosion the Doctor caused is still on the news. Rose doesn’t care about any of that anymore. Rose only wants to know who the mysterious man is. It’s funny when she complains to her mother about the loose cat flap in the door because they’re going to let in strays. The Doctor is a stray floating around the galaxy moving from one mission to another. Rose says the clear motivating desire, and where of course supposed to relate to her and be on her side. The Doctor is still an alien mystery even though many of us already know who he is from Classic Doctor Who. Here we are still learning about him and finding out what kind of tragic story is in his current background.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

After the Doctor saves Rose from the living plastic arm, she chases him out and won’t leave him alone until he speaks to her. He tells her she can get people killed if she talks, but she doesn’t care. She’s going to find out everything she can about him. She presses him for information; she wants in on the mystery. I don’t even think she knows why she wants in on the mystery yet except that she’s not satisfied with her life. She thinks she can do something better or something different, rather than sitting on the couch. Because of the big speech about the earth turning underneath her, she has to make a choice. Her choice is to follow, but the doctor cuts her off and gets away. It’s the first time we hear the noise of the TARDIS materializing in the series. She is now in unfamiliar territory and looking for a way to make it back out.

4) Adapt to the situation

If the doctor will not help her, then Rose, who has already decided that she’s in this, will do it for herself. She’s resourceful even though she doesn’t exactly know what she’s getting herself into or what she’s doing. She goes to visit her boyfriend Mickey, who has a computer, and she knows enough about it to get searching. She looks up all the clues she can figure out about him. That quickly leads her to a local conspiracy theorist’s website, which has an unwitting knack for tracking the Doctor. Clive is such an interesting character, and I wish we got to learn a little more about him, but he shows her a small history of the Doctor. It brings up a few points I don’t agree with. It’s mainly because we know that he’s just regenerated into the ninth incarnation of himself. He mentions that when he looks at himself in the mirror in Rose’s apartment. Then he never goes to any of the locations that are mentioned, such as the Titanic or Kennedy’s assassination, with this face in the series’s course. It’s probably covered in an audio story. In the absence of the Doctor telling her what’s going on, Rose goes out to find out for herself, even if that gets Mickey captured.

5) Get what they desired

When the Doctor rescues Rose from the restaurant where she and the fake Mickey are about to order pizza, she gets what she wants. The Doctor has returned; the excitement has returned, and he lets her in a little. As they run from the fake Mickey, he lets her, and us for the first time in this series, get into the TARDIS. The Doctor is standing with the fake Mickey’s head, plugging it into the TARDIS console. Then he turns and stands calmly and truthfully, answering every question that she has. He’s an alien, and so is the ship. We follow a signal to the base of the London Eye and the Doctor has to trust her a little more.

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

Rose is having a great time, hanging out with the Doctor when it comes up that Mickey is likely dead after having been copied by the Nestine Consciousness. As exciting as everything is, she realizes the Doctor thinks in a much different way than she does. He looks at everything on a different scale, and sometimes that scale means that he appears insensitive about really human topics.

7) Return to their familiar situation

Is this their new normal? Just when it looks like Rose is going to leave all this craziness behind, she gets the London Eye clue. She can see the massive Ferris wheel in the middle of London, and it’s the giant antenna that they were looking for. This has to be the place. At that moment, I believe the doctor realizes that he couldn’t have done this without her, even if he wanted to. She’s now part of his new normal.

8) They have changed

Rose has no job as the Doctor blew it up. She has no A-levels, which means she left school at age 16 or quickly dropped out after starting them. Mickey turns out to be alive, but he’s a useless mess when things get weird. She has no future unless she takes that job at the butcher (ugh!), but she’s got a bronze gymnastics medal. She could do this. She could be an action hero. This is the job for her! She transforms, leaving her old life behind, and swings into action, knocking the Autons over the edge and saving the day. Escape for everyone, including her mom.

This is the kind of breakdown I expect from each of the episodes that I look at. The more often I take one apart, the better I hope to become at creating them for myself for my own written work. I want to understand how my favorite stories function in order to create my own unique ones.