Like Batman, the various enemies of the Time Lord known as the Doctor, define the ethos of the franchise even more than the central character. Other than the TARDIS, the most universal image of Doctor Who is the iconic Daleks. And in second place, right behind the Daleks, is the Cybermen. The “upgraded” humanoids, who are essentially people strapped into robot suits, predated Star Trek’s very similar adversary, the Borg, by two decades. And so, in 2006, after Who successfully rebooted the Daleks the previous year, it was time to relaunch the Cybermen. But the way modern Who rebooted these iconic sci-fi baddies was decidedly different than the return of the Daleks in “Dalek” and “Bad Wolf.” During the weeks of May 13 and May 20 in 2006, Doctor Who dropped a strangely forgettable two-part story, which had massive implications for the rest of Season 2 and the eternity of the modern Who canon.
When Rose (Billie Tyler), Mickey (Noel Clarke), and the Doctor (David Tennant) land in a parallel universe, Who attacks a trope it had only played with a few times before: alternate dimensions. This is another Earth, and here, Rose Tyler’s father, Pete (Shaun Dingwall), didn’t perish, and her parents are wealthy. The big joke here is that although there’s not a parallel version of Rose in this dimension, though her folks do own a dog named “Rose,” which gives poor human Rose all sorts of feelings about who her parents might have been had she never been born. Like much of the first Russell T Davies Who era, this is what the modern version of the show does best: make the sci-fi conflicts grounded in the people we care about, which often includes their extended families.
