Father's Day

You're just another dumb, stupid ape.

Father's Day is a very popular episode due to the emotional nature of a man coming to grips with the fact that he has to die and our sympathy for those that love him. I admit that I appreciate the death of Pete Tyler at the end. But this episode is also the story that fully crystalized my dislike for Rose and just about every episode subsequent to this one has only brought her up to neutral rather than fully enjoyable.

Plot Summary

Rose asks the Doctor to visit a couple of points in her parent's past. They travel first to see Pete and Jackie's wedding, then they travel back to the day of Pete's death. Rose had heard from her mother that Pete had died alone on the street after the driver of the car that hit him drove off and she wants someone to be there with him as he dies. The Doctor reluctantly agrees but when the moment comes, Rose can't bring herself to go to him and they walk away.

After regathering herself, Rose asks the Doctor if they could do it again. The Doctor doesn't like it but he agrees. He instructs Rose to wait behind the building and when they see their earlier selves walk away, she can go up to Pete. Rose however runs out into the street and knocks Pete out of the way of the oncoming car, saving his life. The earlier versions of Rose and the Doctor vanish and the Doctor looks on at Rose with shock and cold fury.

Pete thanks her for saving his life and he takes the two of them back to his apartment for a quick tea and change before heading on to a friend's wedding. Rose implied that she knew the marrying couple as well and he offers to give them a lift. After Pete goes to his own room, the Doctor blows up at Rose for changing the past and blames her for thinking only of herself. He feels used and he leaves for the TARDIS with her being just as angry at him for doing what she did.

Pete and Rose drive to the church but they are forced to dive to the side as the car that hit Pete in the original timeline keeps appearing and disappearing in front of them. Rose sees Jackie and herself as a baby. Jackie is angry at Pete for both being late and accusing him of sleeping around with Rose. Rose is shocked to see her parents being so unkind to each other, although Pete starts to smooth things over.

The Doctor arrives at the TARDIS to find that it has become an empty box and he begins to see alien creatures called Reapers. He runs to the church and urges everyone to get inside. Reapers appear and begin to devour the people, but the age of the church acts as a barrier. He lets the people know that a wound in time has been created and the Reapers are like bacteria cauterizing the wound. Rose realizes that this is her fault.

With the talk of a wound in time, Pete realizes that Rose is his daughter from the future. He asks a bit about the future and Rose lies about him being a good father. Pete however, understands immediately that she is lying. Rose tries to apologize to the Doctor. He is still angry but a bit more forgiving and rueful that the Time Lords are gone as they would have been able to fix this. In the conversation, Rose drops her TARDIS key and the Doctor sees that it is still filled with time energy. He uses the key and a battery to start the TARDIS reappearing, although it will take time.

Waiting for the TARDIS to appear, Pete attempts to tell Jackie that Rose is Rose from the future. Jackie misunderstands and thinks that she is a daughter from an earlier encounter and in preparation for a fight, baby Rose is handed to adult Rose. The time paradox (Blinovitch Limitation Effect) allows a Reaper to materialize within the church. It consumes the Doctor and then crashes into the reemerging TARDIS, rendering the TARDIS key inert.

With the Doctor and the TARDIS gone, Pete again sees the car that nearly hit him appear and disappear outside. He knows that the only way to stop things is for him to die. He tells Rose and says goodbye to Jackie. He then runs out and is hit by the car. As soon as he is hit, the Reapers disappear and the Doctor and all the others who had been eaten reappear. The Doctor tells Rose to go to him and she sits over him as he dies. With a slightly modified version of the timeline restored, the Doctor and Rose head back to the TARDIS.

Analysis

This is such a mixed episode for me. I like Pete Tyler. I think the sacrifice at the end is quite moving. But everyone else in this episode sucks. Rose is a huge brat and doesn't really suffer except in the end when Pete takes ownership of her actions and kills himself. Jackie is at her most shrewish and annoying. I had really hoped in the scene where the Doctor bossed her around that he would tell her to shut up. Even the Doctor is a bit annoying because this thing is nearly as much his fault as it is Rose's.

Now, I must immediately say that I thought this story was well acted. I thought the drama and the villains were well realized, although the CGI has not aged particularly well. I also think that the story was framed well in that I went along with the emotions that I think the story was trying to get out of me. Yet, I still get the impression that we are supposed to feel sorry for Rose throughout this whole story and I do resent that.

Rose was given what she asked for by the Doctor and she blew it. He gives her a second chance (more fool him) and she screws things up in a way that was worse than what Adam did. She then acts like a child who knows they've done something bad but is going to deny it anyway. When she is finally sort of punished by the Doctor leaving the road to sympathy is thrown open, but I feel like she hasn't been fully punished enough. And no, it is not enough to me that her dreams of an idyllic father and a perfect marriage between her mother and father are dashed. That is idealistic claptrap to begin with and a person as old as Rose is supposed to be should not be living in that level of delusion. To me, it is another aspect of how spoiled Rose is and that when the cold of reality starts to dawn, the universe corrects itself to reassure her that she is special and will get everything she wants in the end. This is actually at risk of turning into a rant about Doomsday and Journey's End so I'd better stop there.

I think this episode would have been much better if Rose had simply and properly owned up to what she had done at the beginning. You couldn't make Pete into a jerk as that would have deprived us of the one sympathetic character and a non-selfless Pete would never have sacrificed himself either. But if Rose had reacted with more genuine emotion at the mistake she had made. If she had started crying about how she couldn't bear to watch him die again and just wanted to save him, it might have worked better. It would have drawn a closer parallel to her pain and the Doctor's own pain and then given her her own arc where she must sacrifice for the greater good (the greater good). I know that that is what they were going for and that is somewhat achieved, but it feels as though Rose got very little out of this and that it was Pete who actually grew, even though he had to die in the end. It did set a nice platform for Pete's return in the Cyberman two-parter, but that's another review.

I can't call this a bad episode because it's not. But it did solidify my dislike of Rose. She is more tolerable in Series One because the Ninth Doctor calls her on her crap and does rely on her more as a friend. It is with the Tenth Doctor that she becomes insufferable because he is too fond of her to be the tough love that is needed to balance her out. But my own hang ups about Rose should not color the story for others.

Annoying as Rose and many of the other characters are, the story does whip by and is entertaining overall. Unlike The Long Game, it is highly memorable and both Pete Tyler and the Doctor give excellent performances. It is worth seeing, regardless of my feelings about Rose and if that doesn't bother you, it could easily be one of the best of the First Series. It has enough flaws with me though that it doesn't hold up as one that I would readily watch again, even though I can't argue with it's quality.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5