Doctor Who just dropped a surprising clue to the return of Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler. The end of Doctor Who Season 15 featured perhaps the most surprising regeneration scene yet, when Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor appeared to regenerate into the likeness of Rose Tyler, the first companion of Doctor Who‘s 2005 relaunch. But is this actually a new Doctor who’s taken on Rose’s appearance, or has something else happened? The mystery will be solved in this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special, which is generally expected to be the swan song of showrunner Russell T. Davies.
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The BBC has just dropped the most surprising clue, using the old UNIT website to share a cryptic message from UNIT Scientific Advisor Shirley Bingham. The message reads:
“Hello everyone,
Sure I’m not the only one who’s got this in their diary already, but today’s the 20th anniversary of the return of Rose Tyler, who went ‘missing’ for one year after Operation Mannequin. Time absolutely flies!
As Rose Tyler is currently both missing from this universe and flagged as a complex space-time event, maybe keep an eye out. I’ve got the Vlinx scanning all media channels and the subwave network.
Cheers,
SAB”
What’s Going on With Rose Tyler?
The email includes the above poster – an image that was released online back in 2005 after the Doctor Who Season 1 premiere, “Rose” (at the time, you could actually leave a message on it to help with the search for Rose, but the number is no longer active). “Operation Mannequin” is clearly a reference to that first episode, in which the Doctor went up against the Nestene Consciousness, a cosmic alien force that animates plastic objects such as shop dummies. There’d previously been no evidence UNIT was involved with this at all, so we’re immediately getting a sense there’s some sort of untold story here.
Rose returned to Earth roughly a year later, with this email apparently now determining that she arrived back on March 6, 2006. This was in the story “Aliens of London,” which frankly means Shirley Bingham is commemorating quite a major event in a rather surprising way; an alien spaceship crashed into Big Ben, which you’d think was a far more memorable event. The email feels like something of an in-joke on the Doctor Who fandom itself, where major moments are a dime a dozen but character arcs are far more interesting and significant.
Notice, though, the acknowledgment that Rose Tyler has become “a complex space-time event.” This is because she bonded with the heart of the TARDIS, becoming the “Bad Wolf” entity that had been influencing time and space. Many had speculated Rose Tyler’s shocking return has something to do with that specific story, and it certainly seems noteworthy that the BBC is reminding us about it right now. It’s also interesting to see a mention of the subwave network, a way of contacting the Doctor that uses former Doctor Who companions – and played a key role in the last story where Rose returned, in 2008.
The timing of this supposed internal email does seem odd. The Doctor Who Christmas Special hasn’t even begun filming yet, so it feels too soon to start promoting it. That said, the fandom is currently frustrated and eager for clues about the show’s future, so it may be wise to start dropping hints given the scripts are surely in a good place right now. We’ll have to wait and see what else Doctor Who reveals ahead of the Christmas Special, and what other clues are dropped.
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