Rose by: Russell T. Davies

 

Rose was written by Russell T. Davies, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 168^th story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

There won’t ever be a time where I don’t think it odd that BBC Books decided to revive the Target novelizations with brand new novelizations for the 21^st century.  Filling in the five missing novelizations make sense, especially since the three Douglas Adams adventures were expanded into full length novels and Eric Saward came back for his two Dalek novelizations (despite their lower quality), but doing novelizations of episodes of the revival means more than anything there would have to be an expansion unless it was of a two-parter, yet none of the novelizations have featured two-parters.  The first batch of four split themselves between two episodes novelized by Doctor Who novelists Jenny T. Colgan and Paul Cornell for The Christmas Invasion and Twice Upon a Time respectively, while the other two brought back Steven Moffat for a novelization of The Day of the Doctor and Russell T. Davies to novelize the story that brought back the revival in Rose.  Now, I wrote a review of the television episode last weekend, noting how it worked as a similarity to Spearhead from Space as a reinvention of the show, and the novelization is almost an apt comparison to how Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion laid the groundwork for the future of the Target novelizations.

 

When writing for the television episode, Russell T. Davies approached Rose specifically for newcomers with minor references to Doctor Who’s past, but in writing the novelization he realizes that the target audience is one of fans and not newcomers.  This means there are several continuity references, both to the past and the future, placed right back into the narrative.  The television script referred to the enemies as the Nestene Consciousness, but Davies also namedrops the Autons multiple times during the novelization and that’s just the beginning.  The references are essentially expansions of television scenes: Rose’s search for the Doctor includes appearances of other incarnations and the scene with Clive includes descriptions of every Doctor plus a couple of potential ‘future’ Doctors.  There are also potentially new adventures for the Ninth Doctor mentioned, explicitly giving him a few weeks in between when he blows up Rose’s job and meets her the next day.  The most intrusive references are genuinely good ones.  First, Clive’s father was one of the soldiers killed during Remembrance of the Daleks which is what inspires his lifelong obsession with the Doctor.  This also means he’s a bit more courageous in protecting his family from the Autons in the final battle, giving him a more sympathetic noble sacrifice.

 

The invasion sequence of the Autons is greatly extended, not being restricted allows the Doctor and Rose to face off against some Auton before making their way down to where the Consciousness is, Mickey is duplicated a second time with Rose giving up the Doctor’s plan to the Nestene which feels like a twist mainly for the audience who has seen the episode, and there are sequences with other characters including a brief Donna Noble cameo.  The Donna Noble cameo may have been one step too far, but hey Davies doesn’t know if other stories are going to be adapted.  While Rose’s selfishness and moral nuance is expanded in the novelization as this is from her perspective (outside of the prologue where Wilson is killed on-screen), it’s actually Mickey perhaps best served.  There’s something more of Mickey here as he has several friends with whom he is in a band, they get their own little subplot during the battle fighting off Autons which is cool.  While the relationship between Rose and Mickey is still a little messy, intentionally so, it’s a bit more healthy than on television and based on trust and care.  Davies’ dialogue is great at softening with very slight tweaks to the television scripts too.  His prose is also still as engaging as his prose for Damaged Goods.  Rose is actually quite long, coming in at 190 pages, really pushing the length of a Target novel, but it doesn’t feel its length.

 

Overall, Rose understands what it needs to do to properly expand itself as a novelization from the very tightly plotted television episode.  Davies prose means you can read it in a leisurely afternoon and it draws you in.  While it adds in things from later episodes and brings in ideas that took a while to come up, these work because this is a novel and not a single episode of a series with no guarantee that there is going to be novelizations of the rest of the series, oddly paralleling early Target novels like Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, and Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon.  9.5/10.