YMMV / Doctor Who S27 E1 "Rose"

• Fanfic Magnet: According to the fandom, the Doctor did quite a lot of things in the six seconds before he came back to Columbo-fy Rose. This is confirmed in e-book The Beast of Babylon.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Mickey's line to Rose, "There's my woman, kit off", became cringeworthy in 2021 when Noel Clarke was accused of sexual misconduct by over twenty women. Similarly the scene of the Mickey dummy turning violent and threatening on his girlfriend is very uncomfortable to watch now. Not to mention him telling her not to read his emails.
  • The episode starts off with Rose's workplace in London exploding and being on the news the next day. The episode aired on March 26, 2005, less than four months before The 7th July London bombings.
  • One scene had the Ninth Doctor looking at his face in the mirror, remarking that it could have been worse. This implies that this is the first time he has ever seen his face, which "The Day of the Doctor"'s novelization confirms to a brutal extent. Not only did he unconsciously allude to the War Doctor's existence, it turns out that the Ninth Doctor shattered every mirror in the TARDIS after he regenerated, since he believed he killed every child on Gallifrey from using the Moment.
• Inferred Holocaust: Though it lasts for a matter of minutes, the Auton invasion is positively brutal, as shown with Clive's execution. As well as the dummies gunning down civilians, any plastic object can be animated by the Nestene to attack. The novelisation adds to this by confirming that the invasion took place not just in London, but in cities all over the world.
• Narm:
  • We're supposed to believe that Rose doesn't notice Mickey has turned into a life-size Ken doll, despite the fact he suddenly can't drive and his skin is obviously waxy.
  • The bin eating Mickey...and then burping.
  • Russell T Davies tries to explain this in the DVD Commentary with people not normally thinking things like "Has he been replaced by a plastic clone?" However, the generally weird behaviour of someone she's known for years ought to raise eyebrows.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The scene where a Nestene-controlled plastic wheelie bin eats Mickey has already aged particularly poorly.
  • The Photoshopping of the Doctor into the crowd at the Kennedy assassination is less than convincing. The novelisation addresses this, with Rose saying it's obviously faked.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The Mickey mannequin may have been intended as this, with his fixed smile, shiny plastic skin, and repetition of words... however the way "Mickey" looks and talks makes it more funny then creepy, especially as Rose comes across as an idiot for taking so long to realise something is off about him.
• Unintentional Period Piece: You can tell the episode is set in the early 2000s because Rose has to visit Mickey's flat to look something up on the Internet.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • March 26, 2005, teatime. The first new episode in just under a decade has begun to air, and after just a minute or so, there's two of these: the beautifully rendered title sequence of the TARDIS travelling through the fiery time vortex and then the shot of Earth in orbit, which picks up speed as it moves toward London.
  • In the original "Spearhead from Space", the Autons are magnificent examples of Uncanny Valley that traumatised the nation in a way that most other monsters in Who never did save the Daleks and Cybermen. However, The BBC did not have the budget to show the glass on the windows breaking, so they cut away from it. This is why it's Awesome when they do have the budget to show the Autons breaking the glass. The almost pornographic attention paid to the effect is joyous, and a total celebration of what they can do now.

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