Is Billie Piper Playing the Doctor or Rose? 5 Theories About ‘Doctor Who’ Twist
“Oh, hello.” Those two words, from the person Ncuti Gatwa‘s Doctor regenerated into in the Doctor Who Season 2 finale, kick off a slew of questions we now have. Because that person? Billie Piper, very recognizable to fans as Rose Tyler, the companion of the Ninth (Christopher Eccleston) and Tenth (David Tennant) Doctors who also has a major connection to the TARDIS itself.
Most notably, the end credits, which usually read, “Introducing [Actor] as The Doctor,” were different. It only said, “Introducing Billie Piper.” She has yet to be credited as The Doctor — and not just there. The statements from Piper and showrunner Russell T Davies are carefully worded as well.
“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,” teased 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.”
Furthermore, Piper’s “to step back on that TARDIS one more time” suggests that she may only be back for a limited time.
So what exactly is going on here? Below, we take a look at some possible theories.
Billie Piper is the Sixteenth Doctor
It could simply be as straightforward as any other regeneration, and Piper is the Sixteenth Doctor but along similar lines to David Tennant returning as the Fourteenth. She’ll be around temporarily, for one or more specials, before regenerating again, and someone else will be the Seventeenth Doctor for Season 3. After all, she is still wearing the same clothes as Ncuti Gatwa was.
Billie Piper is a Doctor
Piper could be playing a Doctor but not one that’s going to count sequentially. Maybe we have a War Doctor (John Hurt) or Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin) situation going on. Maybe there’s a little Rose in her — after all, Rose once looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked back into her, when she became Bad Wolf to save the Ninth Doctor in the 2005 Season 1 finale “The Parting of the Ways.” Maybe Gatwa’s Doctor triggered something when he used his regeneration energy to punch into the time vortex to bring back Poppy. (Read a recap here.)
Lending credence to this (or what follows) is Piper’s post on Instagram following the episode. “A rose is a rose is a rose!!!” she wrote in the caption, alongside tagging the handles for Doctor Who and Davies and including the emojis for a rose and a wolf! See it below.
View this post on Instagram
Billie Piper is playing Rose again
Again, no one has actually called her the Doctor just yet. Between that and Piper’s post, plus some timey-wimey shenanigans — that description did come up again in this episode, with both Ncuti Gatwa and Jodie Whittaker‘s Doctors saying it — and some similarities between “Reality War” and the two-parter in which Rose was last seen, “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End,” in 2008’s Season 4, maybe somehow Rose was brought back from the parallel Earth on which she was trapped/lived.
In “The Stolen Earth,” Earth and other planets were one second out of sync. In “Reality War,” time shifted by one degree, and the Doctor had to change that (using some regeneration energy, ultimately triggering the regeneration) to get Poppy back. In “Journey’s End,” Rose said that she had built a dimension cannon to make her way back from her parallel Earth to the Doctor’s, only the whole of reality started to collapse. In “Wish World” and “Reality War,” the Rani’s (Archie Panjabi and Anita Dobson) goal was to collapse reality to bring back Omega from the underverse. Is this a bit of a stretch? Maybe.
But what if the Wish World was collapsing followed by what the Doctor did to bring Poppy back were just enough to bring down the walls between the two Earths as well and somehow this is now Rose standing in the TARDIS? As for where the Sixteenth Doctor could be, it could be on her Earth, it could be something else timey-wimey. Whatever the case, this could be a brief time of Rose being back before she returns home and we get the next Doctor.
Billie Piper is playing Rose again — and will reunite with the Fourteenth Doctor
The above can be true but there could be another twist coming, and yes, we know this is probably the least likely to actually happen. But what if this is Rose, and what if this is Doctor Who‘s way of pairing Billie Piper and David Tennant onscreen again? (We’d love to see it.) After all, Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor — following the bigeneration that introduced Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor — is still out there.
What if Rose has come back and is going to reunite with the Doctor and they’ll finally get their happily ever after? Yes, Rose ended up with a version of the Doctor — the Metacrisis one, part human and part Time Lord, that grew out of the Tenth’s hand in the aforementioned Season 4 two-parter — but the Time Lord never got the chance to tell her he loves her or to be with her. And “Reality War” saw Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor wondering if she should tell Yaz she loves her only for Gatwa’s to reveal she doesn’t. Maybe this is going to be the way of fixing that for the Tenth Doctor, who let his Metacrisis counterpart finish what he hadn’t when he and Rose first said goodbye to each other when she became trapped on the parallel Earth in the 2006 Season 2 finale “Doomsday.”
BBC
Billie Piper is playing Bad Wolf
We can’t forget Bad Wolf, especially not with Piper’s use of a wolf emoji in her Instagram post. Bad Wolf created herself in 2005’s Season 1, spreading the message across time and space to lead Rose back to Satellite Five in the year 200,100, to save the Ninth Doctor and wipe out the Daleks. When the Doctor sent Rose away, the only way for her to get the TARDIS to return to him was to look into the TARDIS and the Time Vortex. The Doctor now, in “Reality War,” punched his regeneration energy into the Time Vortex. Maybe he triggered something. Could that be why also during the regeneration sequence, there’s a cut away to the TARDIS console?
But who do you think Billie Piper is playing? Let us know your theories in the comments section below.
Conversation16 Comments
Please read the TV Insider Community Guidelines.
Comments are closed on this story.
-
P
Wow! Just saw this episode. Love the possible idea of the Doctor resyncing to the "wrong" 1 second and rejoining the worlds where Rose is in it again where the 10th doctor has now "retired." Would love to see that it has something to do with the few times the time vortex was accessed - Rose looked into it, Clara jumped into it, now Ncuti regenerated through it. The time vortex concept will now be explained, and I think will most likely give us a wonderful Whovian explanation for Rose coming back. I agree with the above opinion - I don't think she'll count sequentially in this creative twist. I recall the TARDIS shows up as a womyn during the 11th doctor - TARDIS preference perhaps is female. 🙂
7 1
-
P
So at the end of 'Reality War' the 13th and 15th Doctors were not sure if he would survive - my theory is that the Doctor is in danger of dying. Rose once jumped across realities to save him before, she may be doing so again. In theory, she has hijacked his regeneration and now needs to find a way to ensure he survives it.
5
-
B
She's the TARDIS... Or somehow uses the connection with the TARDIS...
5
-
G
I agree. In the Matt Smith episode when the Tardis is living in a woman just before it returns to the Tardis core, she says there is something she needs to say. The Doctor thinks it is good-by but she says hello. Rose "merged" with the Tardis and the Doctor sent his regeneration energy into the Tardis. Billie Piper said hello. She is the Tardis.
3
-
-
L
I just think it's cool she's back yay She's my favorite character anyway Rose I mean
4
-
P
Considering this regeneration being caused by interacting with the energy within the TARDIS itself, I'm gonna go out on a limb and vote Bad Wolf Doctor, which is not exactly the same as Bad Wolf Rose.
It's effectively infusing the Doctor with the spirit of the TARDIS (similar to what happened to Idris in The Doctor's Wife, and to Rose in The Parting of the Ways, though neither body could sustain the energy), and Rose's face is how it chooses to present itself (probably because it's one of two faces she can remember clearly, as it's laid across the entire timestream of the TARDIS, and she didn't like Clara's impossible nature or bossy demeanor).
Fun side note: the interface of the Moment (The Day of the Doctor) could have retroactively represented Bad Wolf Doctor and not Bad Wolf Rose. It does, after all, have a hard time telling between past and future. Could also have a hard time putting the right name to the right face, especially when it's the same face.
3
-
J
Why is no one anywhere talking about how she broke the 4th wall like Mrs. Flood was doing when she clearly said "Oh, hello" to the audience?
3
-
P
It's also the last line of the TARDIS in The Doctor's Wife. The fact that she was looking at the camera could be incidental, but the TARDIS could know things the Doctor doesn't.
1
-
C
Yeah I was wondering who she was saying hello to… why would she say hello to herself if she can’t see herself? Also - Rose is Bad Wolf. She became bad wolf by staring into the TARDIS, and when Ncuti regenerated, he broke into the TARDIS. What if, when that happened, the Bad Wolf energy entered him, making him Bad Wolf (aka Rose)?
-
-
-
O
I'm thinking Billie is The Bad Wolf. But the Bad Wolf is almost a god type character and would never say OH, hello? Maybe she's both The Bad Wolf and Rose as one person? Who knows?
3 1
-
P
The TARDIS said it in The Doctor's Wife. They were her last words. Bad Wolf is the TARDIS, AKA Sexy. In the Doctor's body, she can be much more comfortable than she was in Rose's, closer to the Bad Wolf in the Moment from The Day of the Doctor.
2
-
-
C
Well, some are theorizing that Billie is actually playing "The Moment/Bad Wolf" from "Day of the Doctor".
This might explain how she knows we're watching her.
1
-
C
Rose is Bad Wolf. She became bad wolf by staring into the TARDIS, and when Ncuti regenerated, he broke into the TARDIS. What if, when that happened, the Bad Wolf energy entered him, making him Bad Wolf (aka Rose)? Also, what if he still had some Bad Wolf energy in him when he took it from Rose? Hmmmmm well whatever it is it’s either gonna be to do with The TARDIS or Bad Wolf. BTW - JimJam - I agree with you.
1
-
O
I think The New Doctor’s appearance based on Rose Tyler could be linked to The Ninth Doctor absorbing the energy of The Time Vortex out of her in the Parting of The Ways.
-
G
Christ, no.
Ncuti deserved better writing.
Fans deserved better writing.
Bringing Billie Piper back, yet again, is cheap AF like *two supposedly rare/impossible bigenerations in two years.*
2 2
-
B
What if she is actually Rose as in Donna’s daughter regenerating and using Rose’s face ?! And 15th and Donna’s daughter switched places somehow just before?
1
Watchlist Easy access to only the shows you care about — all in one simple place
Alerts Only important notifications — when a show is returning, when it becomes available to stream, and more.
Special Offers Exclusive products we release related to your favorite shows and streaming services