5 reasons why Rose Tyler is the best companion for the Doctor

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When Russell T Davies breathed new life into the Doctor, he not only re-imagined one of pop culture’s greatest heroes, but gave his human companion a history just as vibrant as any Time Lord adventures. 


Steven Mofatt said:

“She has a bigger status than most of those companions and really seriously, for the first two years, that was Billie Piper's show and she was amazing.” 


With her being voted RadioTimes.com’s greatest companion and her return in the 50thanniversary just days away, here’s why she is loved her so much.

SHE WAS THE FIRST FLESHED OUT COMPANION

Rose Tyler had a life before The Doctor came into it; complete with job, boyfriend, and amorous mother. As such, Who finally had a realistic representation of a teenage girl, unlike previous characters. As she once said upon being plunked back on Earth at the end of The Parting Of The Ways: “What do I do every day…? What do I do? Get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, eat chips and go to bed? Is that it?” She was a truly fascinating character.

SHE MADE THE DOCTOR “BETTER”

For a 19 year old shop clerk and a Time Lord pushing his 1000s, Rose was an unusual source of wisdom for a hardened Doctor. As the Doctor says to Rose - of his meta-crisis clone - in Journey’s End, “[he was] born in battle. Full of blood and anger and revenge. Remind you of someone? That's me, when we first met. And you made me better. Now you can do the same for him.”

SHE CAME FROM NOTHING

In the same way that most classic companions showed no signs of having a past, Rose’s concerns were more about having no future. Instead, Rose came from a modest upbringing, with a history of broken hearts and bereavement, making the sci-fi series a heck of a lot more human in the process. Russell T Davies instilled her with a warm heart, courage, and quite the witty repartee.

THEN SHE BECAME THE BAD WOLF

After a full series of sassing the heck out of everybody, Rose’s defining moment of bravery fell right at the end of series 1, where she displayed her true loyalty for the Doctor and the Tardis by absorbing it. 
By doing so, Rose was able to play with the lexis of time and space, spreading the warning message “Bad Wolf” wherever the Doctor went, a sly motif that ended up shaping the arc of the whole series. Showing the love he had back for Rose, this resulted in our first proper Doctor/Companion snog since the 1996 movie, which apparently is how you save the universe these days.

STICKING WITH THE DOCTOR THROUGH AND THROUGH

Don’t you hate it when your balding, Mancunian best friend regenerates into David Tennant? For some reason Rose did, and in the Christmas Invasion had to come to terms with the man she thought she knew being, well, a completely different one. Although regenerated Doctor/companion crossovers were commonplace in the old days, Rose’s allegiances stretched far beyond, to the extent she planned to give up her whole family to be with the Doctor forever in Doomsday. 

As we all know, fate made sure that didn’t quite work out, but this didn’t stop Rose cropping up again, and again in future series trying to find him – such as in Turn Left, guiding Donna Noble through a parallel universe, and from the looks of the 50th trailer, hanging out with the exiled incarnation of John Hurt’s Doctor too… Although, as RTD confessed, it wasn’t just the loyalty of a young girl in love that kept Rose in the Doctor’s life. 


“Let's be blunt — every time I brought her back, the ratings went up."