Rose in “Real Life”- Part Two

This is the second in a series of Doctor Who in “Real Life” posts. The idea is that I shall discuss how episodes work from a real world perspective. This might be from a science point-of-view, from a historical point-of-view or simply real-world elements of the episode.

In this post, I look at the events of Rose themselves.

The earliest evidence of the events of the London incident come from security cameras in a restaurant in Kennington, South London. The footage is unclear but it appears to show Rose Tyler, 19, and her boyfriend Mickey Smith. It appears the Doctor was also involved.

This image appears to show the London Eye becoming a wheel of fire:

Approximately a minute after this plastic dummies rampaged the streets. Here are a few shots taken by passers-by, although they are unfortunately quite blurry:

Various people reported witnessing this event. Here are some of them:

Mark Fraser-Betts: I was in Chelmsford High street having coffee with my girl friend. She dropped her coffee and I thought she was mucking around but then I saw the dummies coming towards us, we just ran out of there. I thought we were going to die.

Billy Hopper: I was patrolling (im a policeman) when I saw the man in the photograph followed by a young lady run down by the Thames. I decided to tell them that they were not allowed there so I followed them into a big room. There was some molten lava stuff moving around and the man started talking to it. It was moving. Then the place started to rumble and shake and plastic dummies came and grabbed the man. I think I passed out at that point. A couple of hours later I woke up and found that the lava stuff was gone and everyone had gone. I told the sergeant but he didn't believe me. Am I mad or did I see that stuff?

Dr. J. Smith: As a spokesman from the Meteorological Office, I can confirm that this is nothing more than a combination of mass hysteria, and hallucination brought on by the Earth passing through the electromagnetic tail of a large comet. Equally, the explosion at Henrik's department store, which some have claimed is connected with the so-called rampage was caused by a gas leak. Thank you, and I hope you all continue to maintain such refreshing interest in extraordinary phenomena.

SG1981: Didn't see it myself, though my mate Dave swears blind his sprite bottle tried to eat his face. This isn't the first time this has happened, either. I heard rumours of a government cover-up of something similar in the 70s. Or was it the 80s? Anyway, sorry to hear about Clive. Keep fighting the good fight!

UNIT published the following press release after the incident:

A conspiracy site reported 78 dead and 300 wounded. Henrik’s Department Store was rebuilt and the store started a large advertising campaign, running big Christmas promotions and advertising across the city.

^{Cab with Henrik’s Advert}

Next week I’ll be looking at The End of the World, where I shall be taking a more scientific approach on things!

^{(Again most of the material here comes via here. The cab was seen in The Runaway Bride, as was the store itself complete with Christmas sale. Small adverts for Henrik’s have appeared various times during the RTD era.)}