Russell T. Davies, in rebooting the show, elected to show us the Doctor and his many adventures through the eyes of his companion, placing nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler squarely at the forefront of the narrative, allowing her to soak up some much needed (and thankfully creatively delivered) exposition. Unfortunately, that also meant that we, like a nervous prom date, had to meet her mother. An overbearing single mother of one, Jackie Tyler was written to be as obnoxious as possible in series one. We needed to see that Rose wasnt entirely satisfied with her life so much so that she might, on the spur of the moment, jump into a police telephone box with a gurning stranger and go on adventures. In reality, the 9th Doctor was a mysterious older man appearing out of nowhere to take her out for the day. Rose had probably been daydreaming about her father coming back to do that very thing since she was old enough to know that he had passed on. And if we see all the wonders of the universe through Roses eyes, we also see her life, and her mother through her eyes as well. Permanently dressed to lounge on the sofa, ear-splittingly shrill and shallow, working class Jackie is portrayed as being lazy and vain, nattering away into her mobile phone while watching daytime television, as her teenaged daughter went out to work. Would you want this woman to be your mother? If you went off on madcap adventures throughout time and space, how often would you call her? And thats exactly the point we see her through a dissatisfied Roses eyes. In her later appearances, we see a different side of Jackie Tyler: the tough, compassionate, no-nonsense woman who raised her daughter to echo those traits, on her own, with very little in the way of support. Long after audiences had fallen in love with Rose a little bit, they realised who made her that way and by the time we said goodbye to Rose and the 10th Doctor, the additional room for characterisation had given us a fully rounded and nuanced Jackie Tyler that, yes, wed have been delighted to have as our mum.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
