Staff Writer
As we saw yesterday in our companion special, Rose started her journey with the Doctor having a boyfriend in tow. While at first Mickey Smith may have come off as the jealous, clingy and scared boyfriend, by the end of his run on Doctor Who, he was an independent, brave and confident man.
Mickey first made his appearance in the series one episode “Rose”. At first, he didn’t know anything about the Doctor other than he seemed to be the only thing on his girlfriend’s mind after he saved her. In the episode, Mickey actually gets taken by something called the Nestene Consciousness. While Mickey was being held captive, there was a “replacement Mickey” put in his place that was actually an Auton, part of the whole living plastic gang. Mickey was saved by the end of the episode by the Doctor and Rose together but the whole thing left him very scared and in a state of shock. Like most of the people the Doctor runs into, Mickey hadn’t really ever thought about anything from another planet or planets invading Earth, let alone kidnapping him. Due to Mickey’s cowardice at this first encounter, the Doctor specifically told him that he was not allowed to travel along with him and Rose on the TARDIS.
As much as I may not have liked Mickey at first, he definitely went through a lot of hardships when it came to Rose Tyler. Due to a miscalculation on their journeys, Rose and the Doctor were gone for a whole year, when he thought they’d only been gone an hour. During that time she was gone, Mickey had been the main suspect in her disappearance and was being accused for her murder. Upon her return, he told Rose that he had gone through hell for her, people always whispering about how he was responsible for her being gone, being interviewed by the police five different times about her and how Rose is hurting him by trying to have the best of both worlds by keeping him and the Doctor around. The two eventually made up as friends and all was well.
Shortly after their spat, Mickey was finally forced into a situation that he was going to have to be very brave through. In the episode “Boom Town”, aliens called the Slitheen are all over London. Rose’s mom, Jackie, happens to find herself in an unfortunate situation with a Slitheen who is trying to kill her. Luckily, Mickey was there to save her. He stepped up and worked together with the Doctor to find a way to kill the alien. After disposing of the Slitheen that was attacking them, Mickey was given the task of hacking his way into the Royal Navy’s system in order to launch a missile at the gathering spot of all of the Slitheen. Mickey does just that and saves London. This display of bravery results in the Doctor asking Mickey to come aboard the TARDIS and travel with him and Rose, however, Mickey thinks that the lifestyle is too intense for him and declines, asking him not to tell Rose that he’d done so.
By the end of series one, we saw a huge growth in Mickey’s character. He went from being a scared, jealous boyfriend to a guy that had faced and conquered his fears as well as someone who could put his personal feelings aside for his friends and loved ones. In the series one finale when Rose needed to get back to the Doctor after she’d been sent back to London, Mickey helped her. While she was the one that went back and saved him, she definitely couldn’t have done it without Mickey’s help. He is the one that helped her find a way into the TARDIS so she could absorb the time vortex.
Despite turning down the spot to travel on the TARDIS, Mickey was still looking into suspicious alien activity on his own time, something he never thought he would be doing. In the second season, in an episode called “School Reunion”, Mickey was curious that there was something weird going on at a nearby school. When the Doctor and Rose showed up to look into it, the Doctor was very surprised to see that Mickey actually knew what he was talking about. Mickey once again helped the Doctor evacuate the school of innocents allowing the Doctor’s old friend, K9, blow up the school. It was then that Mickey was finally ready to join them aboard the TARDIS and the Doctor did not object.
With Mickey now on the TARDIS, he’s gets to experience first hand the type of relationship that Rose and the Doctor have. It’s pretty apparent that it hurts him to see the woman he loves, loving someone else. In the episode, “Rise of the Cybermen”, the crew on the TARDIS find themselves in a parallel world that is technologically more advanced while also in a terrible position as it is being ran by a man named John Lumic and the Cybermen. While in this world, Mickey gets mixed up with a group of underground vigilantes called The Preachers. The Preachers were dedicated to bringing down John Lumic and the Cybermen and would stop at nothing to do it. With Mickey’s new brave and confident persona, he really took to the group and in the end decided that there was nothing back in the real world for him and that he’d rather stay in the parallel world with The Preachers. Mickey remained in the parallel world for a very long time, including when Rose was forced to go there in the series two finale “Doomsday”.
Just as Rose came back later in series four to help the Doctor, so did our boy Mickey! He arrived in the real world facing the Daleks with no fear and being a part of the whole team that restored Earth to it’s proper place. While Mickey loved the Tyler family dearly, Rose now had her Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor to spend her life with and Mickey ultimately knew that there wasn’t anything left for him in the parallel world now. So, our brave Mickey decided to stay in the real world with former companions of the Doctor, Martha Jones and Captain Jack Harkness.
So Mickey wasn’t on the TARDIS as long as some of the other companions but you don’t necessarily have to be on there to be great companion. He helped him a lot of the time by just being on Earth and researching. Judging how their relationship grew, I think Mickey also helped the Doctor to be more tolerable of people he may think aren’t perfect for certain jobs. He helped Rose with everything she ever wanted, despite her breaking his heart. Don’t worry though, all of the heartache was worth it because he later found love with another companion, Martha Jones. Through helping the Doctor, he discovered a part of him that he probably never even thought existed. Through his discovery of self-confidence, bravery and independence, Mickey Smith turned out to be more than just a sidekick but a true asset in saving the world time and time again.
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