Causing me excitement today is the news that Billie is Back:

Rose Tyler returns for Series Four.

Following a series of unconfirmed reports across the media this morning, we’re delighted to officially confirm that Billie Piper will return as Rose Tyler in Series Four of Doctor Who.

Anything you may read elsewhere about when, how or for how long Rose returns to Doctor Who should be treated as pure speculation at this point.

I have been speculating internally about how such a thing might be accomplished. There is the possibility that somehow the Doctor can cross to Rose’s universe or she can cross here (he did mention that the Time Lords could accomplish that kind of thing easily when they were all around, if they were not all dead in the other universe they could do it..); he could go back and cross his own personal timeline and see Rose in his past before she became trapped, but we never saw that happen the first time around, and messing with your own timeline is a big no-no; or it could not really be Rose.. an alternate Rose, an alien impostor, Rose in the Doctor’s head..

I hope it’s really Rose, as I’m a bit of a romantic and must admit to being fond of the Ten/Rose Ship. I know there are a lot of strong opinions on this issue, about whether Rose is really special or if she is “just” another companion in his eyes. I am only familiar with Rose and Martha though, and she definitely appears to mean more to him than Martha does. Or maybe that would be better put by saying he seems to view her in a different way than he does Martha.

I wonder if they will bring back any of the others, if it does turn out to be the Rose we know and love. I like Jackie and Pete and Mickey too and it’d be nice to see how they were all going along in their parallel universe. I read a theory online a while ago that in the scene on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay, when Rose made the comment about “five of us”, she had been about to tell the Doctor that she was pregnant with the next generation of Time Lords but then because of the look of surprise and shock on his face she changed her mind at the last minute and said that it was Jackie that was pregnant instead. Though there were of course no canon indications that the Doctor and Rose had ever done anything like that, I thought it was a nice little story because I am a big sappy romantic like that.

So, when is spring 2008..? That would be northern hemisphere spring, which would be … March, April, May. So long away! At least there’s only a couple more weeks until we get something else new..