Characters / Doctor Who – Rose Tyler

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Rose Marion Tyler (Ninth and Tenth Doctors)

"Come on, tightwad, chips are on me. We've only got five billion years 'till the shops close!"

^{As the Bad Wolf entity}

Debut: "Rose" (2005)
Departure Story: "Doomsday" (2006)
Final Appearances: "Journey's End" (2008), "The End of Time" (Part 2, 2010)^note Rose's last appearance, in her timeline, is "Journey's End". Her last appearance at all is in part 2 of "The End of Time", when the Tenth Doctor goes back to see her one last time before he regenerates, which from her perspective is before she meets Nine in "Rose".

Played by: Billie Piper (2005–06, 2008, 2010)
Young Rose played by: Julia Joyce (2005)

"It was, it was a better life. I don’t mean all the travelling and seeing aliens and spaceships and things. That don't matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life... You don't just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand. You say "no." You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away!"

Defender of the Earth

A shopgirl from 21st century London, living a fairly boring life with her loving if overbearing mother, Jackie, as well as her boyfriend and childhood friend Mickey. One fateful day, when the store mannequins suddenly come to life and began killing everyone, she finds herself face to face with a monster... and helped him become a man again.

The first companion of the revival and namesake of its pilot episode, Rose stays with the Doctor after he regenerates, becoming the first companion since Sarah Jane Smith to fall in love with him. Left after Series 2, came Back for the Finale of Series 4. "The Day of the Doctor", the 50th anniversary special, also references her — the Moment takes on her "Bad Wolf" form to convince the War Doctor not to activate it.

Billie Piper has since returned to to voice the character on Big Finish Doctor Who, both in The Tenth Doctor Adventures, as well as a Spinoff mini-series, Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon, which is set to be a prequel to "Turn Left".

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Tropes from the TV series

• Action Girl: She showed a few signs of it in Series 1 and 2 (using her amateur gymnastics skills to save the Doctor in "Rose", shooting the Beast out of the ship in "The Satan Pit", becoming the Bad Wolf), but Series 4 solidified her as this, where she's casually lugging around a huge gun and shooting Daleks like it's nothing.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: In the final moments of "Doomsday", where, trapped on a parallel world and faced with the prospect of never seeing the Doctor again, she finally breaks down in tears and says she loves him. Even more tragically, the Doctor is cut off before he can reciprocate.
• Animal Motif:
  • A strange example, wolves. Her title as "Bad Wolf" came from the moment when she absorbed the time vortex to return to the Doctor and spread the words "Bad Wolf" so it will create the events of "The Parting of the Ways". In "Tooth and Claw", the host of the werewolf detects "something of the wolf" in her. When the Doctor hears the words "Bad Wolf" from Donna in "Turn Left", he immediately associates them with Rose and the time vortex.
  • On a symbolic level, wolves are known to be mates for life, something that reflects the relationship between Rose and the Doctor as she's among the few companions that the Time Lord had genuine feelings for and Rose finally had the closure she was looking for when the Doctor left her with the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor. Rose was the Doctor's most faithful companion, trying to alert him from the parallel universe and shared his duty of protecting the Earth from villains.
• Anywhere but Their Lips: With both the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, their only proper kisses arising from aberrant out-of-body situations (the "vortex-transfer" kiss at the climax of "The Parting of the Ways", her possessed-by-Cassandra snog on New Earth and her kiss with the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor). There are countless moments of tenderness, though, with the Ninth Doctor kissing her on the forehead and Rose's kiss-of-good-luck delivered to the Tenth Doctor's space helmet in "The Impossible Planet" being two stand-out moments.
• Amicable Exes: With Mickey after an awkward break-up.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • The Daleks, whom she faces four times alongside the Doctor. Though her terrifying first encounter with a Dalek eventually leads to show empathy towards it, she later goes on to kill their Emperor and boasts about it in front of them when they next meet. Come the Series 4 finale, she's blasting Daleks apart with a BFG.
  • Lady Cassandra. Embodying opposite extremes of class, femininity and even humanity, the two take an instant dislike to each other when they first meet in "The End of the World". Rose remains hostile towards Cassandra when they run into each other again in "New Earth" and later becomes the target of Cassandra's revenge, though she ends up having sympathy for her in the end.
• Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Played for Laughs in "New Earth". Cassandra has Chip override Rose's lift and lead her to her dungeon so she can take over her body, but Rose still has to go through the hospital's disinfection treatment first. One shower, powder and blow-dry later, "the human child is clean".
• Beauty Is Best: Cassandra despises her for her working-class background and being responsible for her demise, but Rose is still the person Cassandra shows the largest amounts of respect towards and the only one she recognizes as an equal because she possesses the qualities she values the most in others; beauty and blood-purity.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • In "Father's Day", Rose's request to go back in time and meet the dad she'd never known leads to her trying to avert his death and damaging the timeline after she saves him from the hit-and-run accident that originally killed him. This unleashes the time-scavenging Reapers upon the world, turns a wedding into a massacre and forces Rose's father to sacrifice himself and die again in order to put things right. She also learns her dad wasn't exactly the "wonderful man" she'd always grown up idealizing, and that his marriage with her mother Jackie was on the rocks. The Doctor even lampshades this trope at the start of the episode:
  The Doctor: My wish is your command. But be careful what you wish for.
  • In "Tooth and Claw", Rose bets the Doctor ten quid she can get Queen Victoria to say "We are not amused" and spends the rest of the episode trying to egg her into saying it. When the Queen eventually does say it, she ends up banishing the Doctor and Rose from the British Empire, horrified by their cavalier attitude towards danger and darkness, and later goes on to found the Torchwood Institute, which comes back to haunt them down the line...
• Beware the Nice Ones: Rose is responsible for causing more deaths than any other companion — directly in the Series 1 finale when she obliterates the Daleks, and indirectly (via Jack) in Torchwood: Miracle Day. In fairness, in both cases she had become the Bad Wolf entity and was unaware of her actions, and in the first case, she was defeating the Daleks and ending the Time War.
• Big-Breast Pride: Downplayed, but she continues to use her exposed purple blouse outfit in her later adventures, probably out of respect for Cassandra.
• Big Damn Kiss:
  • The third person (after Grace Holloway and Jack Harkness) to share a snog with the Doctor in the TV series. Courtesy of absorbing the Time Vortex in the Series 1 finale, then Cassandra in the Series 2 premiere (although it's heavily implied that Cassandra did it because she was being influenced by Rose's feelings).
  • Later shares a pretty powerful one with the Metacrisis Doctor.
• Book Dumb: "Rose" suggests that her school grades were poor and she lacked professional ambition. However, that doesn't mean she isn't intelligent. She's observant and resourceful. She often notices and realizes things before even the Doctor does and has proven many times that she can think and act under pressure. She retains information and technobabble well enough to use it, and it's clear that she's learned a lot by the end of Series 2 and even more by Series 4.
• Bound and Gagged:
  • She and Nine are both restrained (and briefly tortured) by electrified manacles in "The Long Game".
  • Happens more frequently in the early episodes of Series 2, as Cassandra traps her in energy restraints in "New Earth", she winds up Chained to a Rock in "Tooth and Claw" and then is Strapped to an Operating Table alongside Mickey in "The Girl in the Fireplace".
• Brief Accent Imitation:
  • In "Tooth and Claw", Rose attempts to match the Doctor's fake Scottish accent with an imitation of her own, but it's so terrible she only gets out a pitiful "och, aye" and "hoots mon!" before the Doctor shushes her. She later bets the Doctor £10 she can get Queen Victoria to say "we are not amused", briefly putting on an upper-crust accent to approximate royalty.
  • The Doctor is impressed by her knowledge of 1950's lingo in "The Idiot's Lantern" when she responds to his Elvis impersonation of "You goin' my way, doll?" with "Is there any other way to go, daddio? Straight from the fridge, man!" Rose mentions it's because she and her mother used to watch Cliff Richard movies every bank holiday Monday.
• The Bus Came Back: She returned for the Series 4 finale after officially "leaving" her role of companion at the end of Series 2.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: She's pretty well-endowed, and a big reason why Cassandra conforms with living in Rose's body is because Rose has an ample bust.
• Celebrity Paradox: Her actress Billie Piper exists in the Doctor Who universe, as her album "Honey to the Bee" was shown in Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams' flat in the Torchwood episode "Something Borrowed".
• Childhood Friends: She and Mickey were this long before they dated. They’ve known each other since Rose was a baby and Mickey was a toddler.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: One of her major flaws is her clinginess to the Doctor, which leads to envy whenever another woman starts to catch his attention, even in a platonic fashion.
  • During her brief encounter with the Doctor's new tag-along friend Lynda Moss in "The Parting of the Ways", Rose's jealousy is written all over her face. Likewise, she has similar reactions in "The Girl in the Fireplace" when the Doctor seems to get overly familiar with Madame de Pompadour, and a waitress named Lucy at Jackie's birthday party in "Rise of the Cybermen".
  The Doctor: According to Lucy, that man over there...
  Rose: Who's Lucy?
  The Doctor: She's carrying the salmon pinwheels.
  [He nods over to a pretty young waitress across the room]
  Rose: Oh, that's Lucy, is it?
  • Forms most of the tension with Sarah Jane Smith when they first meet in "School Reunion" because the Doctor never told her about other companions, and the fact that he left Sarah Jane makes Rose worry he'll do the same to her. By the end of the episode, however, the tension between Sarah Jane and Rose disappears, and the two are delighted to see each other again in "Journey's End".
  • In "The Stolen Earth", Rose says "I was here first" upon realizing Harriet Jones hasn't included her in her group of the Doctor's companions (because the laptop Rose is on, which the subwave network did link to the conversation, doesn't have a webcam).
• Character Development: Rose has one of the biggest character developments in the series. She becomes stronger and more independent as the series progresses. She becomes confident in her own smarts and her ability to save the Earth.
• The Confidant: Most prominent in the first series. She becomes the Doctor's best friend (and love interest). He begins to trust her with facts about Gallifrey and his past life before her, although not everything (Rose didn't know about regeneration and other companions).
• Cuddle Bug: She and the Doctor hug. A lot. They also frequently hold hands or link arms.
• Curves in All the Right Places: At least according to Cassandra.
• Damsel out of Distress: She rescues herself most of the time. Not only that, she rescues others when she can, including the Doctor. She is shown to be very empathetic and selfless when it comes to the universe (a contrast to her more selfish side when it comes to her personal life).
• Determinator: Who cares if travel between parallel universes is impossible? She won't let that stand between her and the Doctor.
• Deuteragonist: In contrast to classic Who companions, whose purpose was often relegated to The Watson and Damsel in Distress, Rose (and the companions that followed her) has a much more active role in her various adventures, saving the day as often as the Doctor himself does.
• Disappeared Dad: Pete Tyler was hit by a car and died when Rose was just six months old. "Father's Day" explores Rose's conflicted feelings about meeting him, and later in "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel", even bringing him back (the alternate universe version of her father, at the very least).
• Do Not Call Me Sir: Like the Doctor, she doesn't like UNIT saluting her.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After being separated from the Doctor in a parallel universe seemingly forever, telling the Doctor she loves him and never getting a reply, crossing dimensions and battling her worst fears (the Daleks) to find him again only to have their reunion cruelly cut short when the Doctor is shot down by a Dalek, then being returned to the scene of their tragic separation after the Daleks' defeat...Rose finally gets to live happily ever after with a (Meta-Crisis) Doctor of her own, who'll age alongside her and return the love she always had for him. The one adventure the original Doctor can never have.
• Eating the Eye Candy: According to Cassandra in "New Earth", this is Rose's reaction to the Tenth Doctor.
  Doctor!Cassandra: You've been looking! You like it!
• Endearingly Dorky: Gets just as excited as the Doctor does by new lifeforms, planets, and more, no matter how dangerous or weird. She celebrates pronouncing "Raxacoricofallapatorius" correctly by jumping into his arms.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Discussed by Martha and Jack in "Utopia":
  Martha: Is that what happens though, seriously? You just get bored of us one day and disappear?
  Jack: Not if you're blonde.
  Martha: Oh she was blonde! Oh, what a surprise.
• Fatal Flaw: Rose's selfish streak. She sometimes prioritizes her own interests and desires over anything and everything else at the time, whether it's wanting to see her dad or staying with the Doctor. This negative trait comes to a head in "Doomsday", when she has to choose between a normal life with her family and a life travelling the stars with the Doctor at the cost of losing her family forever, and she chooses the Doctor.
• Fate Worse than Death: In "The End of The World", Rose makes the claim that she would rather die before living on like Cassandra after being offended by her arrogance. When they meet again in "New Earth" Rose becomes a vain and haughty version of herself when Cassandra possesses her. In essence, she literally becomes Lady Cassandra.
• First Girl Wins: Rose is one of the few companions that the Doctor has expressed obvious romantic affection for, and she eventually ends up with his half-Donna clone, in a very strange (but sweet) way. The writers have explicitly said that the Doctor-Clone told her "I love you" when they hooked up, and Russell T. Davies stated that they grow their own TARDIS (a cut scene originally filmed for the Series 4 finale, "Journey's End") and eventually go back to travelling through time and space in their own universe: "The Doctor, in the TARDIS, with Rose Tyler, just as it should be."
• Four-Girl Ensemble: If we consider the first four main companions, Rose provides the sweet, somewhat innocent Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold to Martha's Team Mom, Donna's Fiery Redhead, and Amy's Ms. Fanservice.
• Forgotten First Meeting:
  • She originally met the Doctor during the last moments of his Tenth incarnation the New Year's previous to her first meeting with the Ninth Doctor.
  • Also, the Doctor first saw her image when the Moment took her form in his War Doctor incarnation, before regenerating into the Ninth Doctor, but doesn't remember because of the crossed timestreams.
• Foil: To the Ninth Doctor. When the Doctor regenerates into Ten, they’re much more in tune.
  • To Cassandra. They are both presented as being the last "original humans" in "The End Of The World" and "New Earth" (this may be a refence to the stereotypes that they represent in British society and being "human" is a meaningful aspect of their characters). But while Cassandra seems fixated on keeping the material aspects of what she considers make her human, looking down on the hybrids, Rose sees humans evolving as something natural. Despite being shocked by the events of Platform One, Rose doesn't become cynical like Cassandra. This gets further attention when Cassandra takes over the body of Rose; she removes nearly all the qualities that make Rose "human". While Rose is one of the youngest characters, Cassandra is one of the oldest. The past vs the future, or old British values vs new ones. Finally and much to the frustration of Cassandra, they come from opposite backgrounds, Rose being from a working class family and Cassandra being an upper-class lady.
• A Friend in Need: To save the Doctor and Jack, she swallows the Time Vortex... talk about badass!
• Friend to All Children: Clearly shown in the few episodes that feature children in them, like "School Reunion" and "Fear Her".
• Friendship Moment: She and the Doctor share many of these. Their little smiles, hand holding, hugging... When things get tough, they always look at each other.
• Fun Personified: In contrast to the Ninth Doctor's more gloomy attitude. It also shapes how the Tenth Doctor comes out (more upbeat, more happy) to match her.
• Genre Refugee: She's clearly a character from a '00s Soap Opera who gets sucked into the Doctor's universe. This helped the revival serve as a invokedGateway Series to TV family science fiction at a time when the genre was said to be dead — and had something of a meta concept to it, seeing as the popular family viewing of that era was Soap Operas, Game Shows and Reality Shows (which later Ninth Doctor episodes also explore).
• Girl Next Door: One of the most ordinary companions in the entire series (save for her short-lived stint as a goddess).
• Girly Bruiser: She carries a huge gun during her Series 4 appearance and blasts a Dalek about to exterminate Wilfred Mott.
• A God Am I: Temporarily, when she was the Bad Wolf entity, the power of the time-vortex running through her head causing her to develop a god complex.
  The Doctor: You can't control life and death!
  Rose as Bad Wolf: But I can. The sun and the moon, the day and night...
• Grand Theft Me: To Cassandra's chagrin: "I'm a chav!"
• Great Detective: Her deductive skills, which grow over the course of her arc, are seen in full-swing in "Fear Her", in which she, as opposed to the Doctor, is the one who figures out that there is something wrong in the first place and that the source of the children disappearing is Chloe Webber by process of deduction. She also realizes that the problem in "The Idiot’s Lantern" has to do with televisions long before the Doctor does. She becomes a darker version of this when under Cassandra's influence in "New Earth." Becoming a dangerous Femme Fatale with knowledge on par with the Doctor that she uses to figure out the secrets of the hospital before turning on him in classic, Film Noir fashion.
• Guile Hero: She won't wait for the Doctor to rescue her. She will save herself, and often save others whilst doing it. Though not Book Smart, Rose has a lot of good instincts.
• Guy on Guy Is Hot: It's very brief, but her face when Jack kisses Nine is one of delighted surprise.
• Have We Met Yet?: She has a moment of this with Eight during Empire of the Wolf, knowing full well their meeting has to be a paradox.
• The Heart: She is there for the Doctor just after he loses Gallifrey. She shows him how beautiful the universe can be; he sees the universe through her still innocent eyes and slowly he begins to see the beauty in things again. She is a great influence to him, she is there holding his hand and offering him her support no matter what.
• Held Gaze: She and the Doctor can be sickeningly cute together. (Not all viewers mind...)
• Heroic Willpower: She does this several times during her tenure on the show. Most noticeably when she becomes the Bad Wolf, and when she comes back to save the universes from collapsing.
• Heroic Sacrifice: "Doomsday" counts as she nearly dies trying to get the lever back in place to send the Daleks and Cybermen into the Void, and although she's technically not dead, she is listed as dead in her home world because she's stuck in another universe.
• Holding Hands: It's kind of their thing. The Doctor and Rose are always holding hands!
  The Doctor: There's a lot of things you need to get across this universe. Warp drive, wormhole refractors - but you know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold.
• The Homeward Journey: During Empire of the Wolf, her main goal is just to get back home and her family to Pete's World.
• Humanity Is Infectious: Humanity is the core of who Rose is, and it’s her humanity that inspires the Doctor, even influencing who the Tenth Doctor is as an incarnation, as he is born with more humanity than the Ninth and a particular love of life and affection for humans.
• Humanoid Abomination: When she becomes/is possessed by the Bad Wolf (it's not exactly clear which) she is an unfathomably-powerful being beyond time that inhabits the body of an ordinary Earth human. At least she's a more benevolent version of this trope than most other examples.
• Hypocrite: Rose grows jealous of Trisha Delaney and tries to judge Mickey for seeing her, even though she ran off with the Doctor and has been bringing guys like Adam and Jack on the TARDIS. Mickey calls her out for this, and Rose goes quiet, knowing he's right.
• Irony: A lot of characters notice and comment about Rose's good looks but she is not the type of person to be vain about it. She even rejects such behaviour from people like Cassandra. Only in Season 2 does she start showing confidence in her looks but she only really exploits it when she gets possessed by Cassandra, becoming a vain and posh villainess not scared of exploiting her sexuality.
• Iconic Outfit: Even though she's most often at home in jeans, hoodies and other casual wear befitting her working-class background, Rose tries out several different styles over the course of her travels. These include her PunkyFish tracksuit top◊ with the diagonal zipper from "The Long Game", her Union Flag T-shirt from "The Empty Child", the purple-blue "inside-out" patchwork top she wears in "New Earth", the cute tights-and-dungarees combo she dons in "Tooth and Claw", and the adorable pink 50s dress and blue bomber jacket◊ she has in "The Idiot's Lantern".
• If It's You, It's Okay: Billie Piper gave a Word of St. Paul statement in 2017 that Rose would still be in love with the Doctor in their new female thirteenth incarnation. Since Rose was only ever confirmed to be dating or interested in men on the show, it's unclear if this means Rose was bisexual but preferred men, or like with learning to accept Ten after Nine, Rose would come to accept the Doctor's change in sex and Thirteen would become a Closet Key for Rose as she falls in love with her again.
• It's All About Me: Has an unfortunate tendency towards this, as part of her Fatal Flaw. She asks Mickey "But what about me? What if I need you?!" when he decides to stay in an alternate universe to take care of his blind grandmother, and in "Love & Monsters", she decides telling off Elton (who's just watched his friends and Love Interest die) is more important than stopping the Monster of the Week, because he upset her mother.
• Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: Despite being knighted as "Dame Rose of the Powell Estate" by Queen Victoria early in Series 2, Rose twice finds herself impersonating the hired help when she and the Doctor go undercover (needless to say, she is not amused):
  • At Deffrey Vale High School, she gets the short end of the stick as a dinner lady dishing out chips while the Doctor goes undercover as a teacher.
  • To infiltrate the Alternate Universe Jackie Tyler's fancy dinner party, Rose and the Doctor disguise themselves as catering staff, much to her chagrin. Rather than go with Rose's suggestion of Black-Tie Infiltration under their royal titles of "Sir Doctor" and "Dame Rose", the Doctor insists they'll find out more on the kitchen end of things.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: When she finds a cat in "Fear Her", she melts into affectionate gestures to it.
  Rose: Aren't you a beautiful boy? I used to have one like you!
• Leitmotif: The bittersweet piano piece, "Rose's Theme".
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Rose and Cassandra are very feminine characters but in opposite ways. She is the light to Cassandra's dark.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Her interaction with Nine had this vibe to it, leading others to suspect they were a couple.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Nine, and a little bit to Ten as well. She keeps them both stable.
• The Lost Lenore: Although she doesn't die, Rose becomes this to the Doctor when she gets trapped in the parallel universe, especially in Series 3 when her departure is a fresh wound for the Doctor and complicates his relationship with Martha.
• Love Confession: She tells the Tenth Doctor this. While he does not say it back, his clone whispers it back in her ear (according to the writers). She stays with the clone in the alternate universe. As of 2017 she stands as the first of only two companions to directly say "I love you" to the Doctor, which she does in "Doomsday" (the other being Clara Oswald in "Mummy on the Orient Express" (per Word of God), though the Doctor wasn't actually aware of this; River Song also more or less says this in "The Husbands of River Song", but isn't aware she's saying it with the Doctor standing right next to her).
• Love Redeems: To the Ninth Doctor. They meet soon after the Time War, and it's through her friendship and love that the Doctor begins to accept what he has done and move on.
• Male Gaze: Characters making comments about Rose having a nice butt while the camera focuses on it is practically a Running Gag. In his Establishing Character Moment, Captain Jack Harkness zooms in on Rose’s rear end with binoculars and says that she has an "excellent bottom". When Rose is possessed by Cassandra, she admires her "nice rear bumper" while a lingering wide-shot shows her fondling Rose's bum. And when she crawls through a tunnel in front of Toby Zed, he comments that his view "could be worse" as the camera switches to a close-up of Rose’s backside shuffling ahead of him.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Rose’s mortality becomes a point of tension and worry in the Doctor and Rose’s relationship. They’re forced to confront it in "School Reunion", when Sarah Jane makes Rose scared the Doctor will leave her, too, but he promises not to. They end up allowing both themselves and each other to buy into the fantasy of being together forever until "Doomsday" separates them for good.
  The Doctor: I don’t age, I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither, and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you...
  Rose: What, Doctor?
  The Doctor: You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That’s the curse of the Time Lords.
  • The Meta-Crisis Doctor having the lifespan of a human ends up being what makes him suitable for Rose, as he will age with her and won’t be forced to live on without her.
• Meaningful Name: Susan, the first companion of the Classic Series, was named after the Hebrew word for "rose." The first companion of the Revival Series, meanwhile, is more directly named Rose.
• Meta Girl: As part of her characterization, Rose was made to represent viewers unfamiliar with Doctor Who, so she was given this role a lot. She questions the Doctor's Earthly accent, points out that the Dalek's (seeming) inability to climb stairs, and rolls her eyes at the Doctor's frequent Techno Babble. She experiences culture shock in the TARDIS, and when brought to Platform One to watch the end of the world, begins to second-guess herself.
• Mistaken for Prostitute: By Jabe the Tree in "The End of the World" when the Doctor clarifies she isn't his wife. Rose is obviously narked.
• Morality Chain: For the Ninth Doctor, helping a monster become a man again. For the Tenth, she was more like his partner in crime. Ultimately, Ten leaves her with the Meta-Crisis Doctor, who was born out of war and hatred and needed someone to stop him... much like his Ninth self when he and Rose first met.
• Mysterious Protector: She becomes this to Donna in "Turn Left", appearing and disappearing throughout the episode, remaining enigmatic while she gives Donna information to keep her and the Nobles safe and guide her in the right direction.
• Nerves of Steel: After being rightly terrified of the Daleks during her first few encounters with them, by the time Rose finds herself at the mercies of the Cult of Skaro, she is able to shout them down and take control of the situation by revealing her knowledge of the Time War, all without the Doctor or any back-up whatsoever. She pushes her luck when she starts to brag about killing the Dalek Emperor.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Indirectly responsible for all the fallout from making Jack immortal, including the return of the Master (and by extension, Professor Lazarus's rampage) and Miracle Day. Once again, though, this all happened under the influence of the Bad Wolf.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Over time, the Doctor's gleeful appetite for danger rubs off on Rose, and it's not long before their mutual sense of thrill-seeking fun develops into a rapport that sometimes appears disagreeably smug to onlookers. She shares the Doctor's relish of trouble afoot on Satellite Five, and Mickey has a point when he observes the TARDIS crew "think [they're] so clever" when they share a high-five in "Boom Town". Even the mortal danger endured on a daily basis by the crew on Sanctuary Base Six doesn't appear to hit home with a giggly Doctor and Rose until they find themselves separated from the TARDIS.
  • Never is this larky, adrenaline-junkie behavior more apparent than in "Tooth and Claw", where Rose and the Doctor gurgle delightedly at the prospect of encountering a werewolf mere moments after witnessing a man getting torn apart. Their juvenile antics during the episode horrify Queen Victoria, who chastises their ability to "consort with stars and magic, and think it fun".
• Non-Linear Character: When she was Bad Wolf, she existed across all of time, and also at one point manifested as The Moment many years before she'd meet The Doctor. Whether Rose Tyler and Bad Wolf are the same being or not is never made very clear, as Bad Wolf only technically appears twice, despite making its presence known across two different seasons. This is in addition to her pastime as a time-traveller, of course.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Rose joins the Pete's World equivalent of Torchwood and becomes a dimension-hopper off screen after "Doomsday", leading up to her enigmatic cameos and return in series 4.
  • Plans for a TV spin-off Rose Tyler: Earth Defence were tabled but did not come into fruition. However, her dimension-hopping would eventually be covered in the Big Finish series Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon.
• Older and Wiser: By Empire of the Wolf, she's mature and understands time travel well enough that she's very reticent to explain the whole "Bad Wolf" thing to Eight, knowing in a paradox as big as the one she's been dragged to, no good can possibly come from making it larger with such a dangerous piece of information.
• One Head Taller: Both the Ninth and Tenth Doctors are tall enough to pick her up. When they hug, usually either the Doctor picks Rose up or she jumps into his arms, or a mixture of both (often followed by a spin).
• One-Man Army: Singlehandedly defeated the Autons in her very first appearance, wiped out an entire fleet of Daleks at the end of that season (though admittedly, she was under the influence of Bad Wolf during that time), and personally confronted and gunned down multiple Daleks during her return in Series 4.
• Only Sane Man: In Empire of the Wolf, when Eight and Eleven start arguing, she firmly reminds them of the paradox they have been embroiled in and basically pushes them out of the discussion and into the action. An amused Eleven wryly comments he never expected her to ever be scarier than Jackie.
• Person of Mass Destruction: As the Bad Wolf entity, she destroys half a million Daleks in seconds.
• Physical God: Again, Bad Wolf is a basically a goddess of time because Rose consumed the Time Vortex.
• Plucky Girl: Rose definitely has courage and can think and act under pressure, using her gymnastics skills on a whim to save the Doctor and defeat the Nestene Consciousness in her very first episode. Her bravery only grows and by her last regular appearance, she's laughing in a Dalek's face.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Not usually, but she displays some mild homophobia in "Aliens of London", jokingly deriding the Doctor as "gay" for complaining about being slapped by Jackie.
• Prone to Tears: Rose is often brought to edge of tears by the emotive implications of her experiences, especially those revolving around her father's death and later her heartbreak over losing the Doctor to regeneration. After a particularly traumatic time in Series 1, Russell T Davies wrote the body-swap episode "New Earth" as a corrective to honour Billie Piper's request for a chance to play more comedy, and a lot of Series 2 is definitely meant to emphasize the fun and enjoyment she gets out of her adventures with the Doctor.
  • Nevertheless, Rose is seen to be tearful in several more episodes, as her anxiety over losing the Doctor becomes a major running theme for the rest of the season. Things are brought to an emotional head when this does actually come to pass during the tragic conclusion of "Doomsday", wherein Rose completely breaks down in sobs more than once, and her eventual reunion with the Doctor in Series 4's "The Stolen Earth" brings more tears when he's abruptly shot down by a Dalek.
• Proud Beauty: Downplayed. Unlike her mother, Rose tends to be more modest about her looks, her Victorian dress and her Union Jack T-shirt in Series 1 being the only instances where she chooses a more show-offy outfit. This becomes more pronounced in Series 2 as she starts wearing bolder colours along with more stylish outfits, signifying her growth and confidence as a person.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: In "Rise of the Cybermen", Rose gives the Doctor a sweet look, pressing her chin to his shoulder to convince him to let her seek Pete out after they realise Ear Pods are affiliated with his company through the manufacturer Cybus. The Doctor is taken in for a few moments before agreeing.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: She provides a lot of fanservice in "New Earth" but it's because she was possessed by Cassandra's spirit and not out of her own free will.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She is appalled by Cassandra's snobbery and narcisstic claims to being "the last human" in "The End of the World" and gives her a piece of her mind:
  Rose: I was born on that planet. And so was my mum, and so was my dad, and that makes me officially the last human being in this room, 'cos you're not human. You've had it all nipped and tucked and flattened till there's nothing left. Anything human got chucked in the bin. You're just skin, Cassandra. Lipstick and skin.
  • When the two meet again in "New Earth", Rose gives her a similar lecture, pointing out that Cassandra's refusal to embrace change as something natural is precisely why she has continued to stagnate while the rest of humanity thrives around her:
  Rose: They evolved, Cassandra. They just evolved, like they should. You stayed still...got yourself all pickled and preserved and what good did it do ya?
• Running Gag: Characters commenting on Rose having a nice butt while Male Gaze is used.
• Stalker with a Crush: Cassandra spends a large part of "New Earth" possessing different people but targets Rose in particular because she is the only other pure-blooded human by Cassandra's standards. She also has strong, contradictory feelings towards her host and often gets drunk on her new appearance when inside her.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: She and Cassandra engage in this when Rose finds her hiding place on New Earth.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: In "The Unquiet Dead", when she changes out of her 21st century clothes for a more period-appropriate Victorian gown and a Prim and Proper Bun. The Doctor remarks she's beautiful, "...considering".
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Downplayed, but she still continues to use her purple blouse unbuttoned like Cassandra did in her later adventures, probably as a sign of respect towards her rival and her fashion sense.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: To the Ninth Doctor, mainly. The Tenth and her become closer and are less interested in hiding their mutual affection.
• Show Some Leg: References this trope in "The Doctor Dances" when she offers herself up to distract the guard, only for Jack Harkness to volunteer instead. "Trust me," he tells Rose, "You're not his type".
• Stable Time Loop: In series 1, the Doctor and Rose are followed by the words "Bad Wolf" — in the final episode, Rose saves the Doctor's life and uses the time-bending power of the TARDIS to deposit the words in the past, in order to inspire her to go forward into the future and save the Doctor's life, which ends in her putting the words into the past, etc., etc. The TARDIS-empowered Rose even declares she's "creating herself" by doing this.
  • The words also crop up a few times in the second and third series (since they were placed all over time and space, they're not going to stop showing up just because they're not needed anymore). The phrase also turns at the cliffhanger of "Turn Left" (with all written words, from the Doctor's point of view being replaced with "Bad Wolf" — even the TARDIS' signage), which heralds Rose crossing over back into the main universe.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: She just doesn't feel at home with her mum anymore after a while, especially in "The Parting of the Ways". This is revisited again in "Army of Ghosts", where Jackie is shown to be alienated by the changes in her daughter as she becomes more and more comfortable with the Doctor's world than her own.
• Supernatural Phone: Her 2005-era Nokia 3200 mobile phone, which the Doctor upgrades in "The End of the World" with "a little bit of jiggery pokery" so she can call her mother from five billion years in the future. She later dubs it the "Superphone", as it can pick up signals anywhere and work in all of time and space (it even has the TARDIS listed on the caller ID!). By the middle of Series 2, she's replaced it with a Samsung D500 with Internet options, which becomes instrumental in defeating the Cybermen in "The Age of Steel".
• Sympathy for the Devil: Rose is one the few New Who companions who takes pity on a Dalek in pain — twice — and helps it find peace in its final moments.
  Rose: Do it.
  Dalek: Are you frightened, Rose Tyler?
  Rose: Yeah.
  Dalek: So am I.
• Taking Up the Mantle: She is established early on as one to take charge of a situation and show leadership, particularly when the Doctor is absent or captured. This is taken up a notch in the alternate timeline created in "Turn Left" where he's dead, with Rose acting like the Doctor as she guides Donna towards correcting the timeline.
• Techno Babble: She picked up this habit from the Doctor.
  Rose: One word in the wrong place can change an entire causal nexus.
  Captain Magambo: She talks like that... a lot.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In "The End of the World", Rose vehemently rejects Cassandra's suggestion of doing some plastic surgery on herself, saying she "would rather die" before becoming like her and claiming she is the last human in the room. When the two meet again in "New Earth" one season later, Rose ends up getting possessed, effectively becoming Lady Cassandra in the flesh.
  • Early on during "Aliens of London" Rose laments aloud to the Doctor that no one else can relate to the thrill of having seen evidence of aliens with their own eyes. Of course, she says this right before an alien spaceship smashes through Big Ben and crash-lands into the Thames.
  Rose: Oh, that's just not fair.
  • While fleeing the Dalek in "Dalek" she's overjoyed at reaching a flight of stairs, assuming the Dalek won't be able to follow since "it hasn't got legs". Then the Dalek begins to fly...
  • Faced with a futuristic (and unbeknownst to her, lethal) version of The Weakest Link in "Bad Wolf", Rose declares "What the hell, I'm gonna play to win!" and spends much of the first round laughing at the absurdity of it. She ends up losing the final round and gets transmatted onboard a Dalek ship.
  • At the end of Series 2's "Fear Her", she just has to say it: "They keeping trying to split us up, but they never ever will. [...] We'll always be okay, you and me." Lamp-shaded by the Doctor, who responds "Never say 'never ever'" and senses that A Storm Is Coming. Cue the season finale...
• Thinking Tic: She sometimes plays with her hoop earrings, which she always wears.
• Took a Level in Badass: She appears to have taken one (off-screen) in Series 3 because she gets a lot of respect from UNIT in "Turn Left". Series 4 makes it explicit, with her carrying a BFG and blowing up Daleks.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Downplayed. It was at times suggested in Series 2 that the Tenth Doctor and Rose were not always the best influence on each other, having grown more cocky, co-dependent and self-involved. This only led to their hearts being shattered in "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday".
• Trademark Favourite Food: Has a particular love of chips (fries).
• True Blue Femininity: She wears a modest blue jacket at the start of the "New Earth" story until she later gets possessed by Cassandra, who strips it off to expose Rose's patterned purple blouse underneath. Heavily featured in promotional material, these are considered to be Rose's and by extension Cassandra's most Iconic Outfits by many fans. The blue represents Rose's sweet and caring personality in contrast to Cassandra's haughty, more seductive character.
• Twin Switch: She is forced to take her Empire of the Wolf's self place in order to allow her to see the consequences of her crusade.
• Unreliable Narrator: Everything she says about her death in "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" is metaphorical or referring to the fact that she has been declared dead on Earth proper, (as Jack Lampshades in "Utopia", having believed the news was true until the Doctor informs otherwise).
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: To the Doctor, to the point where she became a Physical God to save him.
• The Watson: While far from the first Doctor Who companion to function as this, she was designed to have her viewpoint and knowledge be as close to the audience watching the show as possible.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Her Union Jack T-shirt in "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances".
• What the Hell, Hero?: Rose is often willing to call the Doctor out when she feels he is in the wrong.
  • She was horrified that the Doctor would allow the Gelth to use human corpses as vessels for their consciousness in "The Unquiet Dead". And she was right to be worried, as the Gelth turned out to be malicious and the Doctor doing this led to at least two deaths.
  • In "World War Three", the Doctor doesn't seem to care that Jackie is in danger, and Rose responds by reminding him she's her mother.
  • In "Dalek", Rose calls the Doctor out on how willing he is to kill a Dalek that happens to have become sympathetic and non-violent, quite literally saying, "[The Dalek is] changing. What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?"
• Working-Class Hero: Her family's stature is rather like this, being from a council estate, and the Ninth Doctor first meets her as a shop worker. She also finds kinship in fellow working-class people on her travels, such as Raffalo the plumber in "The End of the World" and servant girl Gwyneth in "The Unquiet Dead".
• Worthy Opponent: She seems to respect Cassandra's fashion sense, Using her purple blouse unbuttoned in a similar way to Cassandra in her later adventures.
  • In a similar fashion, Cassandra sees her as this when it comes to embodying beauty and race. It's the reason why she chooses her as her vessel.

Bad Wolf

"I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself."

After being sent back home in the TARDIS by an all-but-defeated Doctor stuck in a battle he has no hope of winning, Rose, with the help of Mickey and her mum, desperately tries to break open the TARDIS console in order to find a way to get back to the Doctor. However, in doing so, she becomes possessed by the essence of the Time Vortex itself.

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• Above Good and Evil: In its brief screentime, Rose as the Bad Wolf entity declares herself to be utterly beyond all mortal concepts in response to the Doctor's claim that she cannot control life and death.
  Bad Wolf: But I can. The Sun and the Moon. The day and night.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Bad Wolf is the bigger fish to the Daleks. She outright belittles the Dalek Emperor as "tiny" and a "false god" before demonstrating her complete superiority by disintegrating him and his entire fleet.
• Arc Words: Provides its own name, Bad Wolf, as the show's most famous example of this trope throughout Series 1. The phrase 'Bad Wolf' even continues to appear, albeit more scantily, throughout Russell T. Davies' tenure as lead writer.
• Deus ex Machina: Quite literally a god out of the machine. The Bad Wolf entity possesses Rose after Mickey's truck breaks open the TARDIS console, allowing Rose to become a Physical God and arrive at the Game Station just in time to save the Doctor from the Daleks.
• Humanoid Abomination: As a result of looking into and absorbing the Time Vortex, Rose is temporarily turned into a Physical God. She still looks her herself, but with golden energy frequently radiating in her eyes as the entirety of spacetime is open to her, power is positively pouring off of her every second she's the Bad Wolf, even her voice reverberates, and she has what looks like evaporated tear-stains to indicate the power is burning her up.
• Offhand Backhand: Nonchalantly deflects a Dalek's death ray, which had previously been shown to kill anything it hits.
• One-Hit Kill: Offers the Daleks a taste of their own medicine by annihilating them at a subatomic level one at a time.
• Outside-Context Problem: She is definitely one for the Daleks, who could not possibly have anticipated her arrival. The Dalek Emperor, for all his god complex, outright claims that she is not part of "his design" when the Doctor questions how the Bad Wolf meme could be connected to him.
• Power Incontinence: Rose's fragile human body can only contain the Time Vortex's enormous power for a few minutes before it starts tearing her apart. She makes sure to use it to the fullest extent while she has the time.
• Physical God: Bad Wolf is by far one of the most powerful, destructive entities in the Doctor Who universe, capable of effortlessly resurrecting the dead and atomising an entire Dalek fleet. It's a good stroke that she's on the Doctor's side.
• Stable Time Loop: A rather convoluted one. The Bad Wolf scatters its name throughout the universe to points in the Ninth Doctor and Rose's timestream specifically as a message to lead herself to the Game Station and come into existence. Although whether the entity always intended to call itself 'Bad Wolf', or was merely inspired by the Bad Wolf Corporation (which is where the Doctor starts to take serious notice of the words' omnipresence) is up to interpretation.
• Story-Breaker Power: Prior to Bad Wolf's arrival, Earth is in the process of being carpet-bombed into unrecognisability, the entire population of the Game Station is dead, and the Doctor is forced to make a Sadistic Choice that risks killing every living thing in the solar system. Then the TARDIS lands, and Bad Wolf uses her godlike powers to erase the threat of the Daleks within seconds of stepping foot on the satellite. Understandably, she does not stick around for long.
• Transhuman Abomination: A temporary one. She's the result of a human looking directly into the Time Vortex, turning Rose into a Physical God who has the raw power of spacetime running through her head, at the price of the full power threatening to burn her away until the Doctor removes it.

Audio tropes

Tropes associated with Big Finish

• A Day in the Limelight: She gets her own boxset, The Dimension Cannon, focusing on her exploits during the events leading up to "Journey's End".
• Alternate Self: The Dimension Cannon introduces two new Alternate Universe counterparts for her: a cat owned by Jackie much like on Pete's World where her counterpart was a dog, and a male counterpart named Rob Tyler who was in a relationship with Mickey.
• The Bus Came Back: She returns seven years after her last appearance on the show, and nine years since she was a full time companion in The Tenth Doctor Adventures, which is set during her time with Doctor, and two years after that she comes back in a boxset of her own which is set after she's been separated from the Doctor.
• Dimensional Traveller: In her spinoff which is set before she reunites with the Tenth Doctor, she starts to travel to parallel worlds using a dimension cannon to go there with Pete Tyler to be her contact while she does that because she cannot stay on any of them for long because they have a time limit and if they run out then she will be trapped on the parallel world she's on.
• Determinator: Rose feels that her life has been on hold ever since she got separated from the Doctor. As a result, when offered a chance to go to any parallel universe which will give her a chance to reunite with the Doctor, she takes it despite knowing the odds are slim.
• Protagonist Title: Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon.
• Tempting Fate/Foreshadowing: In The Sword of the Chevalier, she says that she doesn't believe in the Devil. Those familiar with Series 2 of NuWho know that she's due to encounter a very Satan-like being...
• Trapped in Another World: Rose ends up living in Pete's World with everyone thinking that she's dead in her original world, and while she ends up having her dad alive, her parents together, a little brother, and a job working for Torchwood, she feels her life isn't the same anymore after being separated from the Doctor. When Pete tells her there's a way to finally be reunited with the Doctor, she decides to take that offer from him even if the world she ends up on might not be her world.

Empire of the Wolf tropes

Tropes associated with Empire of the Wolf Rose Tyler

The Bad Wolf Crisis had certain effects on Rose Tyler, a few of which she never knew until it was too late. The most important of these was the accidental creation of a paradox duplicate, who went on to become the puppet Bad Wolf Empress for an empire that should have never existed.

• A Day in the Limelight: She and the original Rose starred in the Empire of the Wolf comic arc alongside Eleven and Eight.
• Alternate Self: She was created due to the lingering effects of Rose's actions during The Parting of the Ways.
• Quest for Identity: Her problems stem from this. Despite her massive power, due to her ability to see other pasts, she has always lived in the shadow of other Roses.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: She has a crude one, allowing him to see the past of several alternate Roses, including the original.
• Senseless Sacrifice: For all her power, she is only devoted to helping others... to the point the Doctor genuinely asks when it's supposed to end. Even worse, her "help" comes by becoming a Galactic Conqueror.

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"When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me?"