Doctor Who: 10 Brilliant But Overlooked Moments In NuWho
7. Rose Tells Jackie She Met Pete - The Parting Of The Ways
The Parting of the Ways is an epic ending to the Ninth Doctor’s era. With tragedy, Daleks and a regeneration all in one episode, the stirring scene in which Rose reveals to Jackie that she was there when Pete died sneaks under the radar.
From the start of series 1, we’re immersed in the Tylers’ world - looking in at a domestic angle never explored in the Classic era - and are subsequently susceptible to the emotional punch this moment packs.
Great sympathy is evoked for Jackie, as we watch her understanding of the most difficult day of her life irreversibly change. Camille Coduri acts with a heart-wrenching rawness which perfectly conveys her struggle to accept that those life-defining details, seen in Father’s Day, are not as they’d always seemed. Billie Piper matches Coduri’s quality and, together, they create a brief yet intimate and understated scene - the best shared by these two characters.
It acts as the turning point in the episode and in Jackie’s own view of the Doctor, as Rose insists “that’s how good the Doctor is”, moving her mum to borrow Rodrigo’s yellow truck, which opens the heart of the TARDIS and creates the all-powerful Bad Wolf.
In effect, this one scene leads to the demise of the Daleks and the Ninth Doctor, and is therefore both important for the role it plays in this finale and worthy of applause for its delicate, emotive nature and the performances Coduri and Piper give.