Monday, April 3, 2023

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Bad Wolf

Doctor Who A to Z: Bad Wolf
"No, no, in this form, I'm called...Bad Wolf. Are you afraid of the big bad wolf, Doctor?"

- The Moment in the form of Rose Tyler/Bad Wolf.

Bad Wolf was an "easter egg" / recurring theme/motif in the first season of the Doctor Who revival in 2005/2006.  The ninth Doctor (in his only season) and his companion, Rose Tyler, kept running into the words "Bad Wolf" wherever they went in Time and Space.

At first, it seemed it was all the places where the Doctor was going, but in the end, it was revealed to be Rose. During the final episode of the season, the Doctor has to face off alone against the enemy he thought he had destroyed, the Daleks. So to protect Rose, he sent her to the TARDIS and had it take her home to 2006. 

Rose, not wanting to leave the Doctor behind and not knowing how to operate the Doctor's TARDIS (his time machine, come back on T-day for that!) forces the console open and accidentally absorbs the heart of the TARDIS. Which is essentially, a contained black hole.  She takes the TARDIS back to the future where the Doctor is about to be killed by the Daleks (again, come back on D-day for those guys) and... well it is spoilery if you have not seen it, but it is a great scene.

What is significant here is Bad Wolf/Rose's line "the Time War ends."  When we next see the Bad Wolf in the 50th Anniversary episode it/she is the interface for a weapon known as The Moment. A weapon that the War Doctor (the one before the Ninth) was going to use to end the Time War.

Time travel, especially in Doctor Who, is never a straight line. It is, as the Tenth Doctor would say a "big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff."

What is great about Bad Wolf is how the Companions of Doctor Who would come to be viewed by the Doctor in this new refresh of the series. This would give us such companions as Martha (the girl who walked the Earth), Donna (the most important woman in the universe), Amy (the girl who waited) and Clara (the Impossible Girl). And, of course, River Song. But she gets her own day.  And in 2006 after dealing with the toxic way Whedon treated his characters and actors this was a breath of fresh air. EVERYONE thought Russel T. Davies was going to kill off Rose, but no. He did the opposite. 

The Bad Wolf would make other appearances, but never like that first season. Likely good too, the times she has shown up again have usually meant the end of the Universe. 


A to Z of Doctor Who

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

7 comments:

James Pailly said...

I remember watching the first season of the new Doctor Who and thinking Bad Wolf must be a band that somebody in the production team really liked. Then came the episode where the characters noticed the words kept popping up everywhere, and then came the big reveal in the season finale. Brilliant foreshadowing.

PT Dilloway said...

I don't think I'd be afraid of a big bad wolf that looked like that, lol.

Zulu Delta said...

I had never seen the "First Bad Wolf" video or scene before. Not bad......BUT....when Bad Wolf becomes the "interface," it is one of my favorite scenes to one of my all time favorite episodes; "The 50th Anniversary special!"

John Holton said...

I never saw any of the Ninth Doctor's episodes, so it was good to see something about him.

TWW said...

I did love rose's character and how she was developed as 'Bad Wolf'. - https://theroadtobeingapublishedwriter.blogspot.com/

A Tarkabarka Hölgy said...

I loved Rose, but Martha was an underrated companion :)

The Multicolored Diary

ElenaSquareEyes said...

I love the Bad Wolf arc and how Rose did what she did out of love. Her speech to Jackie and Mickey when she's trying to convince them to help her "You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away" is one of my favourite moments in the episode.