Father's Day

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163 – "Father's Day"
Doctor Who episode
The terrifying reapers begin to emerge.
Cast
Doctor Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companion Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)
Guest stars
Camille Coduri – Jackie Tyler Shaun Dingwall – Pete Tyler Robert Barton – Registrar Julia Joyce – Young Rose Christopher Llewellyn – Stuart Frank Rozelaar-Green – Sonny Natalie Jones – Sarah Eirlys Bellin – Bev Rhian James – Suzie Casey Dyer – Young Mickey
Production
Writer	Paul Cornell
Director	Joe Ahearne
Script editor	Helen Raynor
Producer	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T Davies Julie Gardner Mal Young
Production code	1.8
Series	Series 1
Length	45 minutes
Originally broadcast	14 May 2005
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → "The Long Game" "The Empty Child"
IMDb profile

"Father's Day" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 14 May 2005.

This episode marks the first appearance of Rose Tyler's father Pete Tyler played by Shaun Dingwall, who would later reprise his role in the 2006 series as a Pete from a parallel universe.

Synopsis

The Ninth Doctor brings Rose to 1987 to witness her father's death but when she prevents his death from happening, the monstrous Reapers are unleashed upon the Earth, leaving the Doctor utterly powerless.

Plot

The episode opens with a flashback of Jackie telling a younger Rose about her father Pete, who died on 7 November 1987, the day their friends Stuart Hoskins and Sarah Clarke got married. She tells Rose that no one was around when Pete died after being run over by a hit-and-run driver.

In the present on the TARDIS, Rose asks the Doctor if they can go back to the day her father died so that she can be there when it happens. The Doctor agrees, but cautions Rose to avoid interfering. They watch as Pete, attempting to retrieve a fallen gift for the wedding, is struck by a hit-and-run driver. Rose is unable to move when the Doctor tells her to go be with her dad, and Pete soon dies. After Rose recovers, she asks the Doctor if she can try again with the time machine. The Doctor, against his judgement, allows for it, but warns Rose to not run until their former selves have left to prevent a paradox. As the accident is able to happen, Rose runs out and pushes Pete aside, saving his life, but causing their former selves to vanish. The Doctor angrily warns Rose about the damage to the timeline but Rose dismisses it, believing Pete to just be an average person. While Rose goes with Pete to the wedding, the Doctor storms back to the TARDIS, only to find that it is now an empty shell and realizes something is very wrong. Elsewhere, strange flying beasts start appearing and consuming people below without warning.

As Rose and Pete drive to the wedding, there is anachronistic hip-hop music ("Don't Mug Yourself" by The Streets) playing on Pete's radio, and Rose gets a unidentified voice message on her phone, "Watson, come here, I need you." At the church, the same car that nearly ran Pete over appears and threatens to run over Pete, but he dodges it, and the car disappears again. As they mill with the guests, including Jackie who has brought the infant Rose with her, young Mickey Smith runs up to the party and warns that all his friends were taken by beasts. As the same time, the Doctor reaches the church and warns everyone inside just as a one of the flying beasts appears and attacks the party. With the surviving members safely in the church, the Doctor explains to Rose that her actions have caused a time paradox, which the Time Lords, if they were still around, would be able to fix; instead, the flying creatures are like bacteria, sterilizing the wound in time by consuming everything inside it, though the age of the church will protect them. As they talk, the key to the TARDIS starts glowing and heating up, and the Doctor realizes that he can summon it and use it to fix the problem, but warns everyone to not touch it until the process is complete. The Doctor also warns Rose not to touch her younger self, as this will further damage the time stream.

As they wait for the TARDIS to fully reappear, Pete overhears the Doctor and Rose talking, and realize that Rose is his daughter. When he approaches her and asks her about how good a father he is, Rose is unable to answer truthfully. Jackie, seeing Pete talk to Rose, believes Pete is having an affair with her, but in order to show that Rose is really their daughter, he thrusts the infant Rose into Rose's arms. As the Doctor warned, this causes a paradox that allows one of the beasts to appear in the church. The Doctor, as the oldest being there, sacrifices himself as the beast rushes to the crowd, causing it, the Doctor, and the faint TARDIS image to disappear, leaving the TARDIS key cold. As the group tries to figure out what to do next, Pete watches the same car that tried to run him over appear and disappear over and over again. He comes to the conclusion that he was meant to die by that car, and determines that by letting himself die, the timeline will be repaired. He has an emotional goodbye with Jackie and Rose, and then runs out to face the car the next time it appears. Pete is fatally struck by the car, but in that instant, the timeline is restored: all those consumed by the beasts reappear, including the Doctor, while the others, save for Rose and Pete, are unaware of the events. Rose runs to Pete's side and quietly stays with him until he dies. Rose returns to the Doctor, and the two walk hand-in-hand back to the restored TARDIS.

The episode ends on a similar flashback as the opener, as Jackie explains to a young Rose that Pete didn't die alone - a young woman stayed with him until he died, leading the adult Rose to eulogise about Pete Tyler, her father, "the most wonderful man in the world."

Continuity

• Continuing the "Bad Wolf" theme of the season, a poster advertising a rave on a wall near where Pete was supposed to die in the beginning has the words "BAD WOLF" defacing it. (See Story arcs in Doctor Who.)
• Although never named in the programme, the creatures were called the Reapers in publicity material. They bear a strong resemblance to the Chronovores (first featured in The Time Monster) as portrayed in Paul Cornell's Doctor Who New Adventures novel No Future, the Vortisaurs in the Eighth Doctor's first series of audio adventures for Big Finish Productions, and the Hunters in the New Adventures novel The Pit by Neil Penswick.
• Although also not named on screen, the driver of the car that kills Pete is named Matt in the shooting script.^[1]
• As a Reaper is about to consume Sarah Clarke, she screams shrilly and it turns away to attack the vicar instead. Logistically, the reasons for the Reaper's actions are not readily apparent. In the shooting script for the episode, it is the vicar who leaps into the way of the Reaper and allows Sarah and Stuart to get inside the church, but this is not what is seen on screen.^[1]
• Rose says that Pete will never start "World War Three". The Doctor tells the infant Rose that she is not going to bring about "the end of the world". These were both titles of episodes earlier in the season.
• The young Mickey runs to Rose and hugs her around her waist, in the same way that the adult Mickey hugged her legs in "Rose" when he did not want her to leave.
• A possible continuity error is that the baby Rose has blue eyes, the younger Rose has green eyes, but the adult Rose has brown eyes. However, it is not uncommon for a baby's eyes to change colour from blue (to green) to brown as the eyes develop melanin over time.^[2]
• Rose references the ending of this episode in "The Parting of the Ways", telling Jackie that she "met Dad" and was the girl who held Pete's hand as he died.
• Although he dies in this episode, Pete Tyler returns (in a parallel universe form) in the second-series episode Rise of the Cybermen.

Changing history

• When the Doctor and Rose see their future selves when Pete was about to get hit, they disappear, but this does not happen to the Doctor in the The Five Doctors.^[3] It is possible this effect was simply prevented in earlier serials due to Time Lord involvement - in both The Five Doctors and The Three Doctors, the Time Lords say they are using an enormous amount of energy to allow all the Doctors to interact together in the same time and space.^[3][4] In this episode, the Doctor does mention that his people used to prevent the results of paradoxes, but without them they cannot be controlled.
• The treatment of changing history in this episode appears to contradict some elements from the classic series. Although changing history was always shown as a possibility in serials like Genesis of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks, and Pyramids of Mars, it was always assumed that the Blinovitch Limitation Effect prevented anyone from "redoing" their own actions like Rose does here. The episode suggests that such a "redo" is possible, but extremely dangerous; it is possible, however, that a "redo" has only now become possible as a result of the deaths of the Time Lords and the loss of their stabilising influence on time (hinted at in "The Unquiet Dead")^[5]. Speaking at the Gallifrey convention in February 2006, Paul Cornell said that although his script does not mention the Blinovitch Limitation Effect by name, it was in the forefront of his mind while writing the episode.
• The Doctor makes an oblique reference to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect (and the events of Mawdryn Undead) when he tells Rose not to touch her younger self, and when he tells the congregation that to touch the TARDIS while it is trying to materialise will produce a "Zap!" However, while the two Brigadiers produced a violent energy discharge when they touched,^[6] Rose does not suffer any effects from touching her infant self, although it is unclear if, as compared to the two Brigadiers, any skin to skin contact was made.
• This is also the first time that Doctor Who has explicitly used the reset button technique. In Pyramids of Mars and Day of the Daleks possible futures were erased, but unlike this episode, the actual events of the serials were left intact.^[7][8] However, in this story, despite the reset, history still changed in some small ways. Pete now died in front of the church (a few hours later than previously); an unidentified woman (Rose) was with Pete when he died; Pete stepped in front of the car instead of it accidentally running him down; and the driver stayed behind rather than it being a hit-and-run. In Carnival of Monsters the S.S. Bernice had originally vanished in 1926 and at the end of the story was seemingly restored to its proper place, but there was no acknowledgement of any alteration of history.^[9]
• Considering that time is repaired and reformed in the end by Pete's sacrifice, it is possible that neither the Doctor nor Rose remember any of the events of the episode before his death, or that none of it ever happened (whether they do or not is not confirmed in the episode). However, Mickey's related website update featured photographs from "1987" which clearly show the presence of the Reapers, although nobody seems to actually remember them being there.^[10] This argues for the proposition that the websites produced for the series are non-canon.

The Doctor's family

• In his argument with Rose, the Doctor says, "My entire planet died. My whole family..." The Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman, was one of the first companions in the original series. The Doctor later mentioned having a family in The Tomb of the Cybermen;^[11] in The Curse of Fenric, when the Seventh Doctor was asked if he had a family, he replied, "I don't know."^[12] Other brief mentions of relatives occurred in Kinda (where he confirmed he had "just the one" father),^[13] Time and the Rani (an uncle)^[14] and The Time Monster (a house on a mountain).^[15] The Doctor's family — and the House — was central to the story in the Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow, by Marc Platt. In the 1996 Doctor Who television movie, the Eighth Doctor mentions both his father and his mother, and says that his mother was human.^[16] (This revelation was controversial among Doctor Who fans.) In "The Empty Child" (2005) when Doctor Constantine mentions having been a father and grandfather before the war, and now being neither, the Doctor says "I know what you mean",^[17] which can be read as meaning that he is in the same position. In "Fear Her" (2006), the Doctor references having been a "dad once",^[18] and finally, in "Smith and Jones", he mentions once having a brother.^[19]
• It is unclear, when the Doctor says that his "whole family" died, if that includes Susan, who was last seen in The Five Doctors but presumably was returned to Earth in the 22nd century (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) — although in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel, Susan did eventually resume travelling in time and space.

Production

• Working titles for this story included "Wounded Time" and "Wound In Time" (as stated in the Telos Publishing Ltd. book Back to the Vortex).
• On the DVD commentary for this episode, writer Paul Cornell and producer Phil Collinson mention that in the original script, in the scene where the Doctor opens the TARDIS doors and discovers only a police box interior, the police box fell apart. This was changed for reasons of cost, and Cornell said on the commentary that he thinks the change is an improvement.
• Cornell also states on the DVD commentary that the character of Pete Tyler is based on his own father, who attempted many different jobs and schemes (including, like Pete, selling health drinks) before eventually finding success running a betting shop. Pete's line "I'm your dad, it's my job for it to be my fault" is taken from something Cornell's father once said to him.
• Also on the DVD commentary, Billie Piper says that this was her favourite episode of the first season, and the most emotionally taxing for her to perform. Christopher Eccleston has also stated that this was his favourite episode, due to its many emotional layers.

Outside references

• Posters seen advertising the Socialist Worker read 'No Third Term For Thatcher', serving to campaign against re-electing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the General Election in June 1987.
• When time is damaged, one of the effects is that mobile telephones all begin to repeat the message, "Watson, come here, I need you," purportedly Alexander Graham Bell's first words ever spoken over a telephone. However, according to a recording by Watson reminiscing about the event, the words were "Watson, come here, I want you."^[20] The error was not present in Paul Cornell's original script, but crept in at some point during production.
• The episode features two of the biggest hits from 1987, "Never Gonna Give You Up" performed by Rick Astley and "Never Can Say Goodbye" performed by The Communards, both of which have some relevance to the basic themes of the story. It also features the 2002 song "Don't Mug Yourself" by The Streets, indicating the damage to the timeline.
• Rose believes Pete to be "a bit of a Del Boy", referring to the character from Only Fools and Horses, which was airing around the time this episode is set. One of the bride's friends also mentions a pub called The Lamb and Flag, which is one of the regular settings in another British sitcom, Bottom.

Awards

• The episode was nominated for the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form; the episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" won. "Father's Day" topped the third place category in terms of votes.^[21]

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ninth Doctor

• Father's Day on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• "Father's Day" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "Father's Day" at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• "Father's Day" at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• "Father's Day" at Outpost Gallifrey
• "Father's Day" at TV.com
• Doctor Who Confidential — Episode 8: Time Trouble
• "Be careful what you wish for." — Episode trailer for "Father's Day"

Reviews

• "Father's Day" reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• "Father's Day" reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide