Say what you want about Rose Tyler, but she was an amazing companion! The Doctor has a way of finding people and making them see the good and special qualities that they possess, and Rose is no different.

Doctor Who began in  1963 as a science-fiction program focused around a Gallifreyan Time Lord who calls himself The Doctor. Using his TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space) he travels the universe helping people in need.

The TARDIS takes the shape of an iconic blue police box because, according to show lore, the chameleon circuit that allows the TARDIS to blend in to its surroundings broke–and the Doctor never got around to finding the user manual and fixing it.

According to The TARDIS Handbook by Steven Tribe, a small team of people at the BBC thought the show up as a means of filling Saturday teatime. The capsule in which their hero would travel needed to be “something humdrum,” and “a tangible symbol.” Thus, in May 1963, a police box was settled on as the main mode of transportation.

But what does this have to do with Rose Tyler?

Doctor Who fell off the air after the eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann (1996), received his one-off television movie appearance. In 2005, the show was rebooted for the modern era with Christopher Eccleston starring as the Madman with a Blue Box.

And one of the first people he grabbed? Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). He grabbed her hand and told her to run. 

All of that running resulted in Rose being trapped in an alternate dimension, a parallel Earth, at the end of Series 2. By that time, Eccleston had regenerated into David Tennant, and he was burning up a sun just to say good-bye.

Well, a spin-off show almost made it off the ground! Rose Tyler: Earth Defence was going to follow Rose’s new life on this parallel Earth.

A short synopsis reads:

“Rose Tyler: Earth Defence focuses on Rose Tyler and her new life as a member of the Torchwood Institute in Pete’s World.”

The spin-off would have been a major win for the BBC, and got so far as the budgeting stage before Russel T. Davies left the Doctor Who team. Unfortunately for fans, Davies felt the Series 2 finale was enough of a heartbreaker, and did not feel the spin-off would make a good impression.

Really, Russel? You couldn’t even give us the one-off, 90 minute special it was supposed to be?

“It was going to be fantastic,” Davies said in an interview for Doctor Who Magazine.  “We’d have had a lovely budget and done brilliant things with it, maybe one Bank Holiday special a year. It was actually commissioned by the controller of BBC One and budgeted. It spoils Doctor Who if we can see Rose… if we see as a concrete fact that her life continues to be as exciting without the Doctor.”

Even though we never got this particular spin-off, Rose Tyler came back to us for a brief moment in 2008.

During a panel at Awesome Con in 2014, Billie Piper said she would be interested in continuing with a spin-off project.