Mickey Smith

For the American artist, see Mickey Smith (artist).

Doctor Who character
Mickey Smith
Affiliated	Ninth Doctor Tenth Doctor
Species	Human
Home planet	Earth
Home era	Early 21st century
First appearance	"Rose"
Portrayed by	Noel Clarke

Mickey Smith is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, played by Noel Clarke.

Mickey is introduced as the boyfriend of the Ninth and Tenth Doctor's companion Rose Tyler, and a recurring character on the programme. He first appears in the 2005 series episode "Rose." In that story, he is caught up in the events of the Auton invasion when Rose meets the mysterious Doctor. Later, he briefly joins the TARDIS crew as the Tenth Doctor's second companion^[1] in the 2006 series, before reappearing again in the 2008 series, having broken up with Rose and matured into a much more heroic character. He goes on to wed Martha Jones, another of The Doctor's companions, and continues to involve himself with alien contact.

Mickey's involvement stemmed from having lived on the same Southeast London council estate as Rose, and working as a mechanic at the local garage.

Appearances

Television

Mickey Smith is first introduced in the series' 2005 première episode, "Rose". When Mickey's girlfriend Rose (Piper) begins investigating a mysterious alien called the Doctor (Eccleston), Mickey is captured by the alien Nestene Consciousness, from which a living plastic facsimile of him (an 'auton') is created. Mickey, terrified by the revelation that alien life exists, fails to impress the Doctor, who only invites Rose to be his travelling companion in time and space. Mickey next appears in the two-parter "Aliens of London"/"World War Three". In the year since Rose absconded with the Doctor, Mickey has been the prime suspect for Rose's disappearances and has become distressed as a result. However, he assists the pair in defeating the Slitheen, a family of extraterrestrial criminals; using his computer hacking skills, he commandeers a military harpoon missile which he targets at 10 Downing Street to kill the Slitheen. Mickey then declines an invitation from the Doctor to join him and Rose in the TARDIS. A much younger Mickey, played by Casey Dyer, appears briefly when Rose attempts to alter her childhood in "Father's Day". In "Boom Town", Mickey later meets up with the Doctor, Rose and new companion Captain Jack (John Barrowman) in Cardiff, where he helps them foil a Slitheen plot. In the series' finale episode "The Parting of the Ways", when Rose becomes stranded at home at the Powell Estate, Mickey uses a recovery truck to crack open the TARDIS' console, through which Rose is able to absorb the time vortex and save the universe from an invasion of the hateful mutant alien Daleks. After the Doctor regenerates, Mickey helps Rose and her mother Jackie (Camille Coduri) attend to the unwell new Doctor (David Tennant) in Christmas special episode "The Christmas Invasion", .

Mickey sees off Rose and the Doctor, following Christmas dinner, in the 2006 series première "New Earth". Having investigated a case of possible alien activity on Earth, Mickey alerts the Doctor and Rose to strange goings on at a school run by Headmaster Lucas Finch (Anthony Head) in "School Reunion". On meeting the Doctor's former companions, investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and robot dog K-9, Mickey begins to see himself negatively as the K-9 to Rose's Sarah Jane: "the tin dog". In the episode's conclusion, the Doctor finally takes Mickey aboard as his companion. He appears in the next three episodes "The Girl in the Fireplace" and two-parter "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel", where the trio end up in a parallel world where vicious, emotionless Cybermen have just been invented. There, Mickey is mistaken for his parallel universe doppelgänger "Ricky Smith", the much more heroic leader of a human resistance group called the Preachers. In the story's conclusion, following Ricky's death, Mickey decides to stay behind in the parallel world to look after the parallel version of his grandmother and fight the Cybermen. However, Mickey makes a surprise reappearance in finale episodes "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", wherein like the Cybermen, he and fellow Preacher Jake Simmonds (Andrew Hayden-Smith) are able to cross the Void into our world. There, they help the Doctor repel simultaneous Dalek and Cybermen invasions. In the episode's conclusion Mickey returns to the parallel world, this time with Rose who is now also trapped there.

Mickey returns again in the series four finale episode "Journey's End" (2008), along with Jackie. Alongside many other recurring characters, they have come to help the Doctor defeat Davros (Julian Bleach), the creator of the Daleks. Mickey and Jackie save Sarah Jane from a Dalek attack, and the trio then surrenders to other Daleks in order to be taken to the Dalek headquarters, the spaceship Crucible. There they join forces with Captain Jack. After the Doctor's companion Donna (Catherine Tate) defeats Davros, Mickey is one of several former companions who pilot the TARDIS. In the episode's conclusion, Mickey declines to return to the parallel universe because, having both broken up with Rose and lost his "parallel" grandmother, he can find no reason to go back. Leaving the TARDIS, he follows after Jack and the Doctor's former companion, UNIT officer Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman). Mickey next makes a brief final appearance in the Tenth Doctor's final episode The End of Time (2010), when the dying Doctor visits all his companions and saves the now-married Mickey and Martha, "freelance alien hunters", from a Sontaran sniper.

Online media

Mickey appears extensively in electronic literature and tie-in videos hosted by the BBC website. These websites are "in-universe", part of an alternate reality game set within the show. Concurrent with the 2005 series, Mickey ran the conspiracy theorist website "Who is Doctor Who?" (first featured in Rose). In the 2006 series, however, the website became "Defending the Earth". Both featured videos of Clarke as Mickey, informing the viewer of facts about the series, or introducing "missions" which would be played out in online Macromedia/Adobe Flash games. Several of Mickey's blog entries tied into the overarching story arc for 2006, depicting interceptions by the Torchwood Institute. Games include tie-ins to the plots of 2006 series episodes, such as "Tooth and Claw" and "Fear Her".

Clarke also starred as Mickey Smith and Ricky Smith in several online 'TARDISODEs'; these were 60-second webisodes and mobisodes (available online and via mobile phone download), which only aired in 2006. For the "School Reunion" TARDISODE, Mickey is researching UFO sightings online when he is blocked by a notice referring to Torchwood, prompting him to call Rose to investigate. In the TARDISODE prequel to "Rise of the Cybermen", Ricky Smith is seen viewing a message sent to all the Preachers, again on his laptop.

Literature

Of the Doctor Who literature, Mickey appears in one New Series Adventures novel alongside the Doctor and Rose, Winner Takes All (2005), and two Tenth Doctor novels, The Stone Rose and The Feast of the Drowned. In none of these does Mickey take the companion role himself. Mickey features as the centric character in the short story "Taking Mickey" from the Doctor Who Files series of hardbacks from BBC Children's Books. In Gareth Roberts' Doctor Who Magazine comic book story "The Lodger", the Tenth Doctor is forced to cohabit with Mickey; this story was later adapted into an Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) episode of the same name, with Mickey's role supplanted by that of Craig Owens (James Corden). In the comic book story "The Green-Eyed Monster", Rose has a dream in which Mickey suddenly has an Amazonian girlfriend.

Development

"Rise of the Cybermen" and its online TARDISODE prequel featured Mickey's doppelgänger, Ricky Smith, whose tough, decisive, and in control demeanour Mickey would come to adopt. A deleted scene from "The Age of Steel", which showcases a humorous variation which creator Russell T Davies had intended for Ricky. Ricky was intended to be gay, and in a relationship with his co-fighter Jake.^[2] The scene is included in the Series Two DVD Box Set. It depicts Mickey and Jake in the van, where Mickey "I know it's not easy with my face looking like Ricky. But I'm a different man, I'm not replacing him." Jake responds "You never could. I'll never have another boyfriend like him." Shocked, Mickey affirms "OK, definitely not replacing him."^[3]

References

1. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/characters/mickey
2. ^ Kilkelly, Daniel (May 7, 2006). "Davies wanted 'Doctor Who' gay kiss". digitalspy.co.uk. http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds32633.html. 
3. ^ Russell T Davies (2006). Doctor Who (New Series 2): Complete Series 2 Box Set (6 Discs) (DVD). http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/1003429/Doctor_Who_Complete_Series_2_Box_Set/Product.html. Retrieved 2007-01-03.  More information from bbc.co.uk

External links

• Mickey Smith on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• Mickey Smith on the BBC's Doctor Who website
• "Defending the Earth!" website