Father's Day (Doctor Who) Father's Day (Doctor Who) "Father's Day" is the eighth episode of the first series of the British science fiction television programme "Doctor Who", first broadcast on 14 May 2005 on BBC One. It was written by Paul Cornell and directed by Joe Ahearne. In the episode, alien time traveller the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) agrees to take his companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) back to the day her father Pete (Shaun Dingwall) died in 1987. When Rose intervenes and pulls her father out of the path of a car, time is wounded and dangerous Reapers attack, threatening to erase history. Pete
Rose (Doctor Who episode) later said, "They handled it very badly, but they issued an apology and I dropped it" in a 2010 interview. After it was announced that Eccleston was leaving the BBC said that they were in talks with David Tennant to take over the role and he became the bookmakers' favourite, with odds at 1/10 and William Hill refusing to take any more bets on who would be cast as the new Doctor. A BBC spokesman said that they had "hoped, rather than expected" that Eccleston would continue in the role. "Rose" received positive reviews and was seen as a successful