‘Doctor Who’: 10 Billie Piper Episodes to Watch Now She’s Back
Doctor Who, in its Season 2 finale on Disney+, delivered quite the twist for the Time Lord’s regeneration. Ncuti Gatwa exited after two seasons as the Doctor, with Fifteen sacrificing himself to bring back the daughter he shared with companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) in a wish world (who then became only her daughter) and regenerating. It was a shock, since usually there’s a casting announcement for the next Doctor well ahead of that happening onscreen. That wasn’t the case here. Instead, fans were surprised when the Doctor regenerated into Billie Piper.
Most notably, no one has said definitively that Piper, who starred as Rose, companion to the Ninth (Christopher Eccleston) and Tenth (David Tennant) Doctors, when Doctor Who was revived in 2005, is playing the Doctor. Her post on Instagram included emojis for a rose (and specifically mentioned rose in text) and a wolf, referring to her playing Bad Wolf in the Season 1 finale after she looked into the TARDIS to get it to fly her back to the Doctor and save him.
As we ponder just who Billie Piper could be playing now (oh, we have theories), below, we take a look at 10 episodes (all streaming on HBO Max) you should watch now that she’s back on Doctor Who.
"Rose" (Season 1 Episode 1)
This episode and one word (“Run”) are what started it all. Rose meets the Ninth Doctor when living plastic invades her workplace, a department store. But it’s not quite as straightforward as the Doctor and Rose have an adventure near her home and she flies off with him. She even says no at first!
"Father's Day" (Season 1 Episode 8)
The Doctor’s TARDIS takes the Time Lord and his companion through time and space, and so wouldn’t you use that to go see a loved one who died? That’s where the Doctor and Rose go here, to the day her father (Shaun Dingwall) died, and she can’t help but want to save him. She, sadly, learns the consequences of doing that and instead must lose him all over again.
"The Parting of the Ways" (Season 1 Episode 13)
Hello, Bad Wolf. Those words keep popping up, and it’s in this episode that we find out why: Bad Wolf creates herself. The Doctor sends Rose home as he deals with the Daleks on Satellite Five in the year 200,100, but she is determined to get back to him and opens up the TARDIS. She looks inside, and the TARDIS looks inside her, and she becomes Bad Wolf, who then scatters the message throughout time to lead her to that moment. The Doctor then saves Rose, leading to the first regeneration of the revival.
"Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" (Season 2 Episodes 5 and 6)
In this two-parter, the Tenth Doctor, Rose, and Mickey (Noel Clarke) end up in a parallel world, one where Rose’s father is alive and married to her mother, Jackie (Camille Coduri), but their Rose is a dog. They run into and fought alongside the parallel Mickey (Ricky) and his resistance against the Cybermen, and this world becomes very important because…
"Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" (Season 2 Episodes 12 and 13)
“This is where I died.” Those words kick off this two-parter that sees the Doctor, Rose, and Jackie in the middle of a battle between the Daleks and Cybermen at Torchwood. They get a little help from their parallel world friends, but in order to get rid of the aliens, the Doctor must open a breach so they’ll be sucked into the void. Anyone who’s traveled between worlds will be as well, and so he and Rose (who refuses to let him send her away to the parallel Earth) try to hang on … only she loses her grip. The parallel Pete saves her, bringing her back to his Earth, but she and the Doctor are separated forever, only able to say a heartbreaking goodbye with him as a hologram. But…
"The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" (Season 4 Episodes 12 and 13)
Rose pops up across Season 4 until she makes her official return in this two-parter. She’d been building a dimension cannon so she could return to the Doctor. However, over the course of these episodes, a second version of the Doctor, one who’s part-Time Lord, part-human, due to the Doctor, after getting blasted by a Dalek, redirecting his regeneration energy into the hand he’d previously lost, emerges. When that Metacrisis Doctor destroys the Daleks, the Doctor leaves him on the parallel Earth with Rose and lets him finish the “I love you” he hadn’t in “Doomsday.” This Doctor, with only one heart, can also grow old with her.
"The Day of the Doctor" (50th Anniversary Special)
The 50th anniversary special saw Billie Piper return as the interface of The Moment, the dangerous weapon the War Doctor (John Hurt) plans to use to end the Last Great Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks. “It’s just a wolf,” she says to this Doctor. “They must have told you the Moment had a conscience. … 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.” The special also features Matt Smith‘s Eleventh Doctor (then the current Time Lord) and David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.
From TV Guide Magazine
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