Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Billie Piper, Camille Coduri, Shaun Dingwall, Mark Benton, Joe Jameson, Waleed Akhtar, Amerjit Deu, Elli Garnett, Julia Hills, Syrus Lowe, Gemma Page, Alistair Petrie, Dan Starkey, Elizabeth Uter, Robert Whitelock, Claire Wyatt.
Across dimensions she has searched for the one she called Doctor. For Rose Tyler, companion of the ninth incarnation of the mysterios man in the box, and the trusted friend of the tenth to bear that name, time has been a burden, time is running out, for across the galaxy, across all dimensions, the stars are going out, and each Earth is facing its own unique set of problems in which it will eventually die.
The end of the second series of the current run of Doctor Who was particularly heart-breaking for the fans of the dynamic and relationship of Rose and David Tennant’s 10, the breakup of a joyful partnership had many fans wondering of the series could keep the momentum, keep up the precise nature of storytelling.
Then in a smack in the teeth for the emotions that had been ramped up during the fourth series as Rose was finding a way back to her Doctor, she was once again forced from her friend’s life as the rift that had been opened, closed around her with all hope lost of ever being with the man with two hearts.
Yet in between these two moments is a mystery, a missing chunk of a story in which Rose Tyler of the Powell Estate searches for ways back to her own reality as her Mum finds companionship with another version of her husband, Pete.
Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon doesn’t just fill the gap of that missing period of time, it gives a tsunami of information in which the young woman, with the help of her parents and another version of Clive Finch, searches in vain across different realities, planes of existence where the Sun goes dark and leaves the Earth cold, lightless in the no freezing solar system, a world where the rain won’t stop and threatens life in a cascade and deluge of water, and a version of home which leaves her and her mother, Jackie, feeling bereft for those they have left behind.
In the original classic series of Doctor Who only the insistent and brilliant Inferno stood up to the scrutiny of drawing upon stories of other dimensions, the small or hugely different ways in which alternate realities can shape a person’s perception of life differently; and even in the new era of the series there has only been one journey to another plane, that in which ties this four part series together, the Rise Of The Cybermen/The Age Of Steel, and the issues facing Rose arguably start to threaten the mental health of the young adventurer.
Across the four tales, The Endless Night, The Flood, Ghost Machines, and The Last Party On Earth, Rose Tyler, played exclusively by the sensational Billie Piper, seeks a kind of redemption, the evidence before her is eye opening, for it is in the realisation that The Doctor is unique, that there may be a whole host and incarnations at any one time rolling around the Universe, but no Doctor has an opposite number in a parallel world.
A compelling four-part series that does justice to the period lost to the listener and fan, Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon is its own dramatic slice of continuality and reveal.
Ian D. Hall