Here’s who’s who in ‘The Child of Death’.

THE NINTH DOCTOR (Christopher Eccleston)

The sole survivor of the Last Great Time War, scarred by the terrible things he’d seen and done. The Ninth Doctor was an intense and emotional incarnation. Hiding his psychological trauma behind madcap wit and frivolity, he took Rose Tyler in ‘Rose’ to see the end of the world, inspired Charles Dickens and showed that for once, ‘everybody could live’. He was still capable of great cruelty and anger though, killing Cassandra and torturing a lone Dalek into submission. After Rose defeated the Daleks using the power of the time vortex in ‘The Parting of the Ways’, the Doctor saved her by transferring that dangerous power into his own body. The strain destroyed his every cell and as Rose watched, his body exploded with raging energy…

ROSE TYLER (Billie Piper)

Trapped by Autons in the basement of Henrik’s department store in ‘Rose’, shop assistant Rose Tyler’s life was saved by a chance encounter with the Ninth Doctor. When her heroism led to the defeat of the Nestene Consciousness, the Doctor invited her to travel with him – taking her from Victorian Cardiff to the day the Earth died. Although travelling with the Doctor was often dangerous, she told him she’d stay with him forever. Witnessing the Ninth Doctor’s regeneration into the Tenth only made that bond stronger. However, during the Battle of Canary Wharf in ‘Army of Ghosts’/’Doomsday’ they were separated – trapped on parallel worlds. Using a Dimension Cannon, she attempted to make contact with the Doctor and new companion Donna several times, eventually encountering them in ‘The Stolen Earth’/’Journey’s End’ where they and other companions fought against Davros and the Daleks. Once the Daleks were defeated, the Doctor returned Rose to the parallel world with her family and the half-human Meta-Crisis version of him remained to spend his life with her.

CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS (John Barrowman)

Time Agent; Torchwood Leader and poster boy for the Boeshane Peninsula. Over his (very) long life, Captain Jack Harkness has been many things. First meeting the Ninth Doctor and Rose in 1940s London in ‘The Empty Child’/’The Doctor Dances’, he helped to defeat the reanimated ‘Empty Child’ and the Slitheen before he got exterminated by the Daleks on the Game Station in ‘The Parting of the Ways’. Revived and made immortal by Rose Tyler after she absorbed the power of the time vortex, Jack travelled back to 1869, where his vortex manipulator burned out. Forced to live throughout the twentieth century, he joined Torchwood in Cardiff, knowing the Doctor would return one day to refuel the TARDIS via the time-space rift. Following the TARDIS to the end of the universe in ‘Utopia’, Jack meet the Tenth Doctor and Martha and also faced the Master. He later joined the Tenth Doctor and other companions to confront Davros and his Dalek crucible in ‘The Stolen Earth’/’Journey’s End’. He’s also confronted evils on Earth with Torchwood.

© Tim Bradley, 2020