Who Is Rose Tyler? Billie Piper’s First ‘Doctor Who’ Character Explained

Welcome back to Doctor Who, Billie Piper! The British sci-fi series just shocked fans when, in the Season 2 finale, Ncuti Gatwa‘s Doctor regenerated — and the Sixteenth Doctor appears to be played by none other than Piper!

This is far from the first time she’s been on Doctor Who. In fact, when the show returned in 2005 — it first premiered in 1963 and aired 26 seasons, until 1989 — Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler is the first character seen onscreen. But who’s Rose? What happened to her? Who’s Bad Wolf? And when was the last time Piper appeared on Doctor Who? Read on for everything you need to know, which takes us back to the new era’s Seasons 1, 2, and 4 (let’s call Gatwa’s the new new era). Plus, does that explain why the Doctor now looks like her?

Who is Rose Tyler on Doctor Who?

Rose is the first companion of the new era, to both the Ninth (Christopher Eccleston) and Tenth Doctors (David Tennant). She meets the Ninth Doctor when she was a department store worker and he saves her from living mannequins. She soon joins the Ninth Doctor on board the TARDIS and is there when he regenerates at the end of Season 1. Though she’s wary at first, she then continues to travel with the Tenth Doctor in Season 2.

Does Rose die on Doctor Who?

“This is where I died.” Rose may utter those words in the penultimate episode of Season 2, “Army of Ghosts,” but she’s only recorded as being dead after the Battle of Canary Wharf. Instead, when the Doctor, Rose, and others are caught in the middle of a battle between Cybermen and Daleks, she ends up paying the price. The only way to get rid of the Cybermen and Daleks is to allow them to be sucked into a breach, but anyone who has traveled between parallel worlds, like both the Doctor and Rose have, will also be sucked in. When things go wrong, Rose is about to fall in when Pete (Shaun Dingwall.), her father in an alternate world, arrives just in time to save her, but she becomes trapped in his world. The Doctor and Rose have a heartbreaking, holographic goodbye.

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But two seasons later, Rose returns, having built a dimension cannon to find her way back to the Doctor.

Do Rose and the Tenth Doctor end up together?

Sort of. When Rose returns to the Doctor, it’s in the middle of a battle with the Daleks, and he’s shot. Rather than regenerate, he directs the energy into the handy hand he has — it was chopped off during a fight while he was still close enough to his previous regeneration that he grew it back — and eventually, out grows the Metacrisis Doctor, half Time Lord and half human.

The Doctor leaves this Doctor in Pete’s world with Rose. He can grow old with her.

Who is Bad Wolf?

Those two words keep popping up in Season 1, and it’s not until the finale, “Parting of the Ways,” that Rose realizes why. They’re a message, she determines, after the Ninth Doctor sends her home while facing off with the Daleks on Satellite Five in the year 200,100. In order to get the TARDIS to take her back to help him, she opens it up and looks into the heart of it. She spreads those words throughout time as a message for herself, and she uses the power of the TARDIS inside her to save the Doctor, wipe out the Daleks, and bring Jack (John Barrowman) back to life (making him immortal). But the Doctor then must save her from that power and taking it inside himself is what leads to him regenerating.

Who does Rose play in the Doctor Who 50^th anniversary special?

Adrian Rogers / ©BBC / courtesy Everett Collection

Before her return in the Season 2 finale as the Sixteenth Doctor, Billie Piper appears in the 50th anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor.” There, she’s the interface of The Moment, the dangerous weapon the War Doctor (John Hurt) is going to use to end the Last Great Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks. “It’s just a wolf,” are her first words. “They must have told you the Moment had a conscience,” she tells the War Doctor. ” I chose this face and form especially for you. It’s from your past. Or possibly your future. I always get those two mixed up. … I think I’m called Rose Tyler. No. Yes. No, sorry, no, no, in this form, I’m called Bad Wolf.” Matt Smith‘s Eleventh Doctor is the current Time Lord then, with Clara (Jenna Coleman) his companion. David Tennant also appears as the Tenth Doctor.

Is there an in-show explanation for the Sixteenth Doctor looking like Rose Tyler?

This is far from the first time that the Doctor has looked like someone they’ve run into in the past. The Tenth Doctor encounters a character he saved played by Peter Capaldi in Season 4, then he later stars as the Twelfth Doctor. He chooses the face to remind himself his job is to save people.

Now, is it a bit weird that the Doctor now looks like an old girlfriend? Yes, especially considering how much we know the Doctor loves Rose. But that aside, there is a possible explanation already in-place for the Doctor choosing this face.

As Jodie Whittaker‘s Thirteenth Doctor (yes, she appears!) tells Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth, “We never change. All these faces, and we never really change.” It’s also possible that after that conversation, in which he tells her that she never tells Yaz she loves her, the Doctor recalls that he never told Rose that, either. It’s the Metacrisis Doctor who does, finishing what he hadn’t during their goodbye at the end of Season 2.

But it may also be as simple as the Doctor regenerates after he punches his regeneration energy into the time vortex to shift reality enough to bring back Poppy. (Read a recap of the finale here.) Rose, when she briefly becomes Bad Wolf, looks into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looks back into her. Maybe there’s something there…

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But there’s also the matter of the credits not having “Introducing Billie Piper as The Doctor,” as is the norm. (It just says “Introducing Billie Piper.”) And the statements from both Russell T. Davies and Billie Piper certainly add to the mystery.

“Billie once changed the whole of television, back in 2005, and now she’s done it again! It’s an honour and a hoot to welcome her back to the TARDIS, but quite how and why and who is a story yet to be told,” said Davies. “After 62 years, the Doctor’s adventures are only just beginning!”

Added Piper, “It’s no secret how much I love this show, and I have always said I would love to return to the Whoniverse as I have some of my best memories there, so to be given the opportunity to step back on that TARDIS one more time was just something I couldn’t refuse, but who, how, why and when, you’ll just have to wait and see.”

What’s your theory about Billie Piper’s return? Let us know in the comments section below.

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