“Who’s your favorite companion?”
That’s easily the second most common question in ‘Doctor Who’ fandom (the first, of course, being your favorite Doctor). For many fans who came into the fold with the 2005 relaunch, the answer is Rose Tyler. But whatever one’s preferences, there’s no denying Rose’s importance to the show, providing as she did a point of view character for new audiences and an updating of a role that the classic series would often reduce to “person the Doctor rescues and explains things to.” It’s why the actress who played her (though not the character herself – because ‘Doctor Who’ is weird like that) was the sole past companion (sort of) to appear in the show’s fiftieth anniversary special in 2013. It’s why, frankly, it had to be her.
But while Rose herself hasn’t appeared on the show since the David Tennant era ended nearly ten years ago, she (like many of her fellow ‘Who’ alumni) has found a second life in audio dramas produced by Big Finish. They started out just as you might expect, reuniting the iconic duo of Rose and the Tenth Doctor. But now the Bad Wolf is going solo! Taking place between Seasons Two and Four of the modern series, during which Rose was trapped in the parallel reality dubbed “Pete’s World”, the upcoming series ‘Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon’ follows Rose, her mother Jackie, her father (or rather, her father’s counterpart) Pete, alien hunter/conspiracy theorist Clive Finch and his wife Caroline (both of whom last – and only – appeared in ‘Rose’, the first modern episode) as they journey through a dying multiverse. As is typical of Big Finish, each of these characters will be portrayed by the actors who originally brought them to life on screen.
‘The Dimension Cannon’ will follow a format familiar to Big Finish fans, presenting essentially a “season” in the form of four stories that will be released as a set. The individual stories are ‘The Endless Night’, ‘The Flood’, ‘Ghost Machines’, and ‘The Last Party on Earth’. Given the “dying multiverse” angle, these stories will largely dispense with the alien menaces typical of ‘Doctor Who’. Instead, they are being characterized as dark and character-driven stories. As producer David Richardson describes them, they focus on “the fight to survive against the odds, and on the power of family and love.”
‘Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon’ is now available for pre-order, with the set due to arrive in September 2019.
