Whatever Happened to ‘Doctor Who’s Rose Tyler Spin-off Series?

Let’s hop on a TARDIS and take a trip back to the mid-2000s. It might sound odd to viewers that have somehow only learned about the show following Chris Chibnall’s tenure, but, back in those days, BBC’s Doctor Who wasn’t just a successful series, but a nearly inescapable IP. Not only was the internet completely ruled by the series’ fandom — the self-titled Whovians — but TV was also dominated by Who-related content. Besides the original, all-ages-inclusive parent show, there were also behind-the-scenes programs and fictional spin-offs that kept fans, young and old, going while the Doctor, then played by David Tennant, was off chilling at the Medusa Cascade or some other intergalactic destination. But there was one spin-off that never made its way out of showrunner Russell T Davies’ drawer. Now, nearly 20 years into the future, we are still wondering what on Earth (and Gallifrey, and Skaro…) happened to Rose Tyler: Earth Defence?

Originally announced in 2006, before Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures were even a thing, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence had a very short life. In the same year it came into existence as a project, it was killed off. It didn’t even have time to wallow in development hell. The plan was to give viewers a glimpse into the world of beloved companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) as she set off to protect our planet without the Doctor. It’s a premise we’ve seen multiple times, either in the form of companions from Jo Grant (Katy Manning) to Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) popping up in later adventures to help the Doctor fight some alien threat or as Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) leading their own shows about extraterrestrial activity. Still, bringing Rose back for her own set of adventures was deemed a “spin-off too far” by Davies.

Doctor Who

The show follows the adventures of a Time Lord “The Doctor” who is able to regenerate, and the Doctor’s human friends. The Doctor and companion’s journey through time and space in the TARDIS – a time-traveling ship shaped like a police box – saving the universe with a combination of wit, bravery, and kindness.

Release Date

March 17, 2006

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Seasons

14

Studio

BBC America

Streaming Service(s)

Disney+

What Happens to Rose Tyler in ‘Doctor Who’?

The problem wasn’t so much the companion herself, but how she left the series. No, there was no juicy behind-the-scenes gossip, at least not as far as we’re concerned. The issues arose from her in-universe storyline. You see, Rose Tyler’s farewell to the Tenth Doctor was filled with sadness and pain. For many fans, her last episode as a regular companion felt akin to a punch in the stomach. Aired on July 8, 2006, “Doomsday” saw Rose and the Doctor separated by an interdimensional barrier after fighting the Daleks and the Cybermen, each trapped in a different universe. While the Doctor stayed in our version of Earth, Rose, alongside her mother, traveled to another world, in which she was never born. It’s a universe that she had traveled to before, in the Season 2 two-parter “Rise of the Cybermen”/”The Age Steel,” and to which she has a strong connection, since it serves as the home for a version of her father that is still alive.

Especially given the romantic tension between the Doctor and Rose, seeing the two of them separated quite literally by an interdimensional wall, tears streaming down Rose’s face, was just too much to handle for some fans. And then came their final goodbye, in which the Doctor managed to project an image of himself into Rose’s universe just to fail to tell her that he loves her. He burned up a sun just to say goodbye, and he didn’t even manage to do it properly! That’s some agony fodder right there.

With all that taken into consideration, bringing her back for a spin-off, showing that she still had an exciting life without the Doctor, well… that would, in Davies’ words to BBC News, spoil Doctor Who. So even though Rose does tell the Doctor that she’s going to join the version of Torchwood that exists in Pete’s Universe — as this other world became known to fans, after Rose’s father, played by Shaun Dingwall — we just have to take her word for it. The spin-off “was going to be fantastic,” according to Davies, but the pull was plugged before Billie Piper was even formally approached. “Although we’d mentioned it to her,” said the showrunner. Though little is known about what the show would be like, its story would’ve focused on Rose’s time with her Torchwood team.

Would ‘Rose Tyler: Earth Defence’ Have Clashed With ‘Torchwood’?

This brings us to another problem regarding the would-be existence of Rose Tyler: Earth Defence: would it have been too similar to Torchwood? In 2006, Doctor Who was seeing a boom in popularity, and numerous spin-offs were popping up on various channels owned by the BBC. Besides the documentary series, such as Doctor Who Confidential and the CBBC’s Totally Doctor Who, there were fictional shows coming along, such as a hot new thing called Torchwood. And when we say hot, we mean every single character in it was constantly horny. With a much more mature take on the Doctor Who universe, complete with a lot of sexual innuendos, Torchwood saw the adventures of the human time-traveler Jack Harkness at the head of a team of scientists and warriors belonging to the titular Torchwood Institute, a secret organization devoted to defending Earth from alien threats. The show debuted just a few months after “Doomsday,” in October 2006. The show was canceled after four seasons, in 2011.

Other spin-offs followed its lead. In 2007, The Sarah Jane Adventures came along, with a more kid-friendly approach. Starring Classic Who companions Sarah Jane and K-9, the robotic dog that made its first appearance beside the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), the series ran up until Elisabeth Sladen’s untimely death, also in 2011. In 2016, while Peter Capaldi was serving as the Twelfth Doctor, a new spin-off aimed at a younger audience came out. Titled simply Class, the show focused on students at Coal Hill Academy dealing with alien perils as well as with regular teenage problems. Coal Hill is the school that the Doctor’s granddaughter and original companion, Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), attended during her time on Earth. Later, Twelfth Doctor companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) would come to work there as a teacher. Class ended after just one season.

Still, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence would have been part of a proud tradition of Doctor Who spin-offs that was kicked off by the rebooted 2005 series. Sure, a K-9 show was proposed in 1981 and even aired a pilot, but that never went anywhere. It was under Davies’ helm that the offshoots began to sprout. However, out of all the spin-offs that emerged from Doctor Who, the one its premise bears most resemblance to is Torchwood. After all, it would be yet another series with a former companion working alongside the Torchwood Institute to defend the Earth. Sure, the showrunners could’ve gone with different approaches for each series, with Rose’s show focusing more on her family drama than on sexy times when the aliens were off-screen, but the premises still sound extremely similar.

Rose Tyler Did Eventually Come Back to ‘Doctor Who’

But what about the reasons cited by Russell T. Davies for getting cold feet? Would a Rose Tyler show really ruin the emotional punch of “Doomsday”? Were fans better off not knowing what really happened to Rose after she and the Doctor parted ways? Well, there’s no answering these questions for good. Unfortunately, we cannot travel to a parallel universe in which Rose Tyler: Earth Defence aired and see how that played out. However, there was high demand for the first companion of the revamped series to come back, and indeed she did. In the 2008 two-parter “The Stolen Earth”/”Journey’s End,” which served as a goodbye not only to companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), but also to all the characters that made up Davies’ run of the show, Rose was reunited with the Doctor after spending the entirety of Season 4 trying to reach him. The story, however, did not have a happy ending, exactly: “Journey’s End” wraps up with Rose once again stranded in her universe, this time with the Metacrisis Doctor (Tennant) to keep her company. Talk about a consolation prize!

Billie Piper would also appear as Rose in the 2009 special “The End of Time,” David Tennant’s farewell to the show, but only for a few seconds as the Tenth Doctor was saying goodbye to his friends. She would also return for the 50th anniversary special, in which she played The Moment, the weapon once used by the Doctor to destroy Gallifrey and the Daleks, now taking the form of Rose to speak with him.

Rose Tyler didn’t come back to the Who-niverse only in televised form. After all, we can’t forget that the Doctor Who franchise goes way beyond what we see on TV. It comprises books, comic books, video games, and, of course, audio adventures. It was in audio format that Rose Tyler: Earth Defence eventually gained life as the Rose Tyler Big Finish series. Well, sort of. Split into three short seasons of three to four episodes each, Rose Tyler doesn’t focus on Rose’s adventures with the Torchwood team, but on her long journey to reaching the Doctor in “The Stolen Earth,” leaping from one dimension to another. The series’ last episode so far was released in September 2023.

It is pretty clear, then, that fans had a lot of interest in learning what happened to Rose Tyler after her adventures with the Doctor. Still, we have to recognize that, while fans often know what they want, they rarely realize what they need. And, in a way, Russell T. Davies was right: making Rose Tyler: Earth Defence back in 2006 would have diminished the impact of “Doomsday.” It would have put our hearts at ease by telling us that Rose was doing okay without the Doctor, and, at the time, we needed that pain. We needed to suffer alongside the Doctor as he met new companions, and we needed the anguish in our hearts to get us primed for Rose’s return in Season 4. It might be painful to accept, but some spin-offs are better left unmade.

Doctor Who is available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.

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