Doctor Who (2005) - Christmas 2005: The Christmas Invasion

Episode:

710

|

Serial:

167

|

Writer:

Russell T. Davies

|

Air Date:

25-Dec-2005

---

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about another episode of Russell T Davies era Doctor Who!

This one's called The Christmas Invasion because it's the first of Doctor Who's annual Christmas specials. I don't watch enough TV to know what kinds of series usually get Christmas specials and how rare they are, but I do know that the classic series never had any. Well okay, it had a Christmas episode one time in 1965, but that's only because serials would continue throughout December back then and Christmas Day just happened to coincide with one of the episodes. But since Christmas Invasion they haven't missed a year, even on occasions where they pretty much took the rest of the year off (I'm looking at you 2009 and 2016).

There will be SPOILERS beyond this point, for this story and perhaps earlier ones as well. For instance, I'm going to spoil that this is David Tennant's first episode as the Tenth Doctor.

---

The episode begins with... hang on, this is the shot from the beginning of Rose! It's the exact same shot.

It zooms down to Rose and Jackie's flat just like before, but this time it's Christmas and Rose is absent due to the events of The Parting of the Ways, where she became a deus ex machina. Jackie and Mickey didn't see the part where she got superpowers, but they helped her hijack the Tardis on a rescue mission to the future so they know where she's gone and I doubt that it happened any time near December.

Jackie's still gotten her daughter a present to go under the albino Christmas tree though, and her optimism pays off when she hears the Tardis materialising outside. Mickey can hear from the garage he works as well, despite his co-worker trying to torture him with Christmas music, so I guess the Tardis must be set to 'loud' for this teaser.

There was a short prequel to this made as a Children in Need special that ended with the Doctor running the engines at full speed to get to Christmas Eve 2006 in a hurry (relative to himself and Rose) as in his deranged state he believed that Jackie's flat would be a suitably quiet place for him to recover from his regeneration. So that explains why when the Tardis finally appears it smashes through time so hard people could hear it before it happened, then smashes into a few buildings as an encore.

Then it wrecks a Royal Mail van as well!

It's so rare to see the Tardis actually flying (well, aside from in the opening credits to every episode). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first time we ever got to see it moving around in the air under its own power (as opposed to flying through space or falling off a cliff).

Fortunately, no one really cares and the new Doctor's able to walk out, wish Jackie and Mickey a merry Christmas and then collapse without too many spectators. You'd think at least one of those people back there would check on the driver of that van though. I'm getting worried about him.

Oh and then Rose finally comes out to tell them that this weird guy who knows their names and currently speaks in her accent is the Doctor (I guess she was in the back making a cup of tea when they landed). Which means that the teaser doesn't end with Jackie hugging the daughter she thought could've been dead, it ends with her making a "Doctor who?" joke.

Then the opening titles come on, which look and sound pretty much the same as last season's credits to me. Though this time it's David Tennant's name that gets to fly past the camera like it's the opening to Superman. It doesn't mention who he's playing, but the end credits have him listed as 'The Doctor' instead of 'Doctor Who', which was a change that Tennant himself requested. And it's been that way ever since.

The credits fade away to reveal the lead actor lying in bed and, spoilers, he's going to be there most of the episode. Tennant must have been really bored (and perhaps a little confused) during the script read-through, but I doubt he was complaining during filming.

They can't take the Doctor to hospital because that's never a good idea with aliens (in the TV movie the heart surgeon killed him!), so all they can do is let him lie there sleeping and keep an eye on him.

I'm not sure if him breathing out a wisp of glowing orangeness is a good sign or not, it never happened during any of his previous regenerations, but the way the camera follows it as it floats out of the window into the sky and then into outer space seems like a bad omen.

Hey, it's a shot looking out from the inside of a fridge! Very Guy Ritchie. These kinds of shots require a bit more time and planning than your typical interior camera work and I don't remember them trying anything like this in the classic series. I'm also a bit surprised to see so many brand names shoved right up to the camera. I thought they didn't like to do that on the BBC.

Jackie's curious about the Doctor, whether it's just his face that's changed or if he's a new person, but Rose doesn't have any answers for her. She's just gotten a big reminder that he's not human and she didn't really know him that well and she's currently a bit bothered by that. It's weird watching this after a classic Doctor Who marathon, as I'm not used to the characters having time to have normal conversations about what they feel about this stuff.

But she interrupts her own angst by asking Jackie about where the Doctor's pyjamas came from, then interrupts Jackie's answer when Harriet Jones comes on the news. She's the government minister she met in the Aliens of London two-parter.

It's funny how the news is always on in Russell T Davies stories. Expositional news reports like this were pretty rare in classic Doctor Who, but I do remember a couple in the Pertwee era.

Harriet Jones is the Prime Minister now and people are already calling this Britain's Golden Age apparently. The Doctor said this would happen back in World War Three, and that she'd be elected for three terms, but I didn't think she'd bring about the Golden Age this quickly.

They're talking about the British Guinevere One space probe which is about to make its final descent on Mars soon. I remember one or two Mars missions in the Pertwee era as well, though they were manned back then. The British space program has really gone downhill since the 70s (or maybe 80s).

Cut to a CGI shot of Guinevere One getting sucked inside an asteroid. By Dr Evil I presume, judging by the music.

But no one on Earth has any clue about that, so Rose and Mickey decide to go out to a market together, as you do late on Christmas Eve. Poor Mickey's being driven mad though by Rose always talking about her time travelling and poor Rose has to suffer him being sarcastic about it. The scene's sympathetic to both of them, but I feel like Mickey's being kind of a dick considering that her friend's currently lying unconscious and might be dying. He should probably wait until he's okay first before dialling his whining back up to 10.

By the way, these scenes were actually filmed in August, because this wasn't made in the 60s and they couldn't film it the week before airing like the did in the olden days, but it looks Wintery enough for me. It must have been crazy for the actors though, to experience a world where the Christmas ads on TV weren't airing months too early.

Rose's mind isn't entirely on the Doctor though as her travels have left her with an instinct for when she's going to need to run, and the creepy masked Santa musicians here are setting off her spider sense. I totally forgot that the evil Santas were even in this story, I thought they were from a different one. Maybe they're from two episodes!

Fortunately, it turns out that they're rubbish, as the dumbasses start their assault with a flamethrower trombone that Rose and Mickey can easily evade, utterly fail to hit them with anything else, and then drop a Christmas tree on their own heads. If it had been El Mariachi and his buddies from Desperado under those hoods, this would've gone very differently.

I could wonder how the masked assassins knew to come here and how they arrived in disguise with deadly instruments before Rose and Mickey did, but I'm already still trying to figure out how the Autons knew to set their wheelie bin trap outside Clive's house in Rose, so it'll have to wait.

Unfortunately, the aliens also left a Trojan Christmas tree outside Jackie's door and she wasn't about to say no to a free tree. Even though she already has a perfectly fine tree and the episode started with her putting baubles on it.

Rose and Mickey get back just in time for the tree to try to murder them by spinning its branches like sawblades. Modern Doctor Who loves having ordinary things turn scary... and then come after Jackie or her coffee table.

It's an absurd moment, especially with Jingle Bells playing over the top, but Rose's "Oh you are kidding me." line sells it for me. When the woman who's spent the last year time travelling thinks that a situation is taking the piss, you're not rolling your eyes at the episode, you're rolling your eyes with it! Plus I like how the stuff in the room's getting blown around like it's not a CGI effect.

Jackie's keen to just get them all out of the flat, but Rose rushes to the Doctor instead, so she switches to plan b: barricade the door.

Ten minutes into the episode and he's still lying there.

The Christmas tree might look daft but it's still an array of buzzsaws and it's demolishing everything in its path, including the wardrobe they just put in front of the door. Things are looking bleak, so Rose puts the sonic screwdriver into the Doctor's hand and whispers two words into his ear.

I've just sat through 26 seasons of the classic series so I can't say his reaction entirely fits the character I'm familiar with (it seems like it'd be more at home in a Superman story)... but the unconscious Doctor hearing 'help me' and immediately sitting up to sort things out totally worked for me. I won't begrudge him his hero moments.

He sonics the tree apart and then steps outside to confront the Santas remote controlling it, who immediately teleport away in terror. Well, that explains how they were able to get ahead of Rose and Mickey in the market, but it doesn't explain why they forgot to give the actors gloves in this shot. It also doesn't explain why they didn't just beam the Doctor up instead of going to all this trouble.

But the Santas are gone now. The episode's villain was defeated in just 11 minutes! That seems like a record. Though the Doctor explains that they were just pilot fish who caught the scent of his regeneration energy in space and wanted to use him as a battery.

Plus he's still in trouble as they woke him up too soon and he's not done baking yet. This leads to a great scene of Jackie listing all the things she could get for him, while he gurns in pain and tries to get a word in edgeways so he can tell her to shut up for a minute. It's one of the best scenes the Doctor's had in the episode so far, of which there have been three.

And I love how the Doctor has a bit of an Arthur Dent moment here as he's so confused about finding an apple in his dressing gown that he forgets to be in agony for a moment.

He soon passes out again though and Mickey gets on his laptop to research what the Doctor meant by 'pilot fish'... after asking Jackie if it's okay to use the phone line, because 2006. The episode gets very close to being educational about something here, but what we mostly get is a CGI video of fish swimming around a shark. No idea what website that was supposed to be.

But I checked on Wikipedia and it turns out that pilot fish like to hang around with predators, eating parasites off them in exchange for protection. So the Santas aren't alone and their friend is a shark.

The Tylers are also watching the news, as Daniel Llewellyn, project manager of the Guinevere One probe and current record holder for the most consecutive 'l's in one name (unless he's got a brother called Russell L Llewellyn), is holding a midnight press conference to announce that they've found it again. The first time I watched this I thought the guy was on the verge of a panic attack but now I think that's mostly due to the extreme shaky cam. The TV news camera is jerking all over the place throughout and at one point the camera pointed at the TV starts doing it as well, and it makes him look very nervous.

Then they get the first footage live from the probe and it's an alien yelling at the camera. Which means a montage of news presenters talking about our first contact with alien life! RTD loves his news montages.

If this was a Pertwee story it might be cutting to UNIT right about now, but instead it cuts to a pair of black cars driving up to the Tower of London. It's not immediately clear who they are, but they have great theme music. This episode sounds so much better than Rose in general that I find it hard to believe it's the same composer. Though I suppose it helps that they gave him the budget for an orchestra this time.

Daniel Llewellyn steps out of one of the cars and heads inside the building, which turns out to be...

... UNIT HQ!

Their base is looking a lot more expensive than it did in the 70s/maybe 80s. It's somewhere between the MI6 in the 90s Bond movies and CTU from 24. Not that I'm implying in any way that modern Doctor Who would ever try to rip off a popular American TV series (though it clearly has done).

Aliens nicking one of our probes and driving up to the planet in a giant spaceship is a cause for serious concern and I'm sure everyone in the White House who's seen Independence Day is heading for their bunker as they speak, but this scene opens with Harriet Jones bringing back a running joke from Aliens of London!

Actually, I've just checked and the joke of her holding up her ID and introducing herself did start there, but the deadpan "Yes, I know who you are," response is new for this episode. The joke has evolved.

She offers Llewellyn a coffee, because she's a nice Prime Minister, and then reveals that they've covered up the alien contact by saying it was just students in a mask hijacking the feed. Because ordinary folks will accept that when they see what looks like people dressed up and being silly, they got to be students. (Also a PBS television signal was hijacked just like this back in 80s during an episode of Doctor Who, except they were wearing a Max Headroom mask.)

After a second appearance of the "Yes, I know who you are," joke and a brilliant "Maybe they're not actual Martians," "Of course not, Martians look completely different," exchange, the PM and UNIT get on with the business of tracking the movement of the alien ship.

Meanwhile, back in the flat, Mickey uses his advanced hacking skills (or more likely the password he learned in Aliens of London) to get into the UNIT computers through their website, so he and Rose are able to follow what's going on as well. They even get to listen in on their video chat with the aliens.

I guess they found that music video for Bohemian Rhapsody we sent up with the Mars probe. Though, that would make this a sneaky visual 'Queen speech' pun. Eww.

The aliens talk in their language for so long that I started to wonder if I should be turning the subtitles on, but UNIT eventually gets their translation software working to analyse it and Rose realises that if she can't understand it then the Tardis isn't translating for her anymore. Seems that the Doctor's part of the telepathic translation circuit and he's broken right now. A shot of him in bed confirms that he really isn't doing too great.

While they're waiting for the translation, Major Blake tells the Prime Minister that the US President's insisting that he takes control of the situation, which makes me wonder what control she has that he doesn't. Control of UNIT?

She tells him to tell him that he's not her boss and he's not turning this into a war. Then she tells Blake that if there's no sign of the Doctor they're going to have to bring Torchwood into this. Hey, that's the arc word for this season! Blake's a little surprised to hear it coming from her though, as the Prime Minister and UN aren't even supposed to know about Torchwood, which makes me wonder who has the authority to keep her out of the loop. The Queen?

The translation program finally finishes, and the Prime Minister's right-hand man Alex helpfully reads it off the screen for us:

"People you belong to us the Sycorax. We own you. We now possess your land, your minerals, your precious stones, your women. You will surrender or they will die."

Only the actor doesn't read out the 'your women' part as it makes it sound like they're the ones who will die if the Harriet Jones doesn't surrender. You might be wondering how the translator knew how to spell Sycorax with a 'y'. Well, obviously it took the nearest phonetic match in the English language, which is a character from a Shakespeare play. Obviously. Plus we can spell their name any way we want as it's not like they have the same alphabet as us!

Harriet Jones decides to sends them a reply, saying "This planet is armed and we do not surrender."

Meanwhile, back at the flat, Jackie's fallen asleep at the Doctor's side after trying and failing yet again to get him to tell her what he needs. Rose is a bit upset about the fact that aliens are invading and the Doctor's not waking up (the proper Doctor would've woken up) so she gives Mickey a hug.

I love the cartoony Christmas tree silhouette in the wall, by the way. This is the episode all over: a serious emotional conversation next to the carnage of a Christmas tree assault that even the characters thought was taking the piss. The episode is fun but it also cares about the consequences of its insanity.

Back at UNIT HQ, the leader of the Sycorax is back on TV. He waves his hand and it glows a bit, like some kind of energy or static, almost like someone casting a spell. They don't notice at first, but people's heads are lighting up with the same blue energy and soon a third of the staff are heading out of the command centre in a trance.

Cut to a woman outside Jackie's flat who's pretty concerned about her husband walking off in his dressing gown the same way, completely ignoring her. Rose looks down to see the street full of people like him, all walking in the same direction, with family members trying to stop them.

It's a Russell T Davies story so we've got to check in with suburbia as well and they're having zombie family member problems as well. Some people are wandering down the street in a trance, others are yelling at them to knock it off. All of them are probably freezing considering it's Christmas Day.

Most of classic Doctor Who happened without a whole lot of modern humans noticing, but RTD had a fondness for involving as many ordinary people as possible in his stories. Sometimes all of humanity, like in this episode.

Turns out that they're all heading to anything with stairs so they can get up to the roof. That's some absurdly powerful mind control. It also means that the episode's taken a real turn, from 'Christmas tree attack with Jingle Bells soundtrack' to 'kids about to jump from tall buildings'.

It's hard to be too creeped out when the compositing looks this fake though. I guess people flocking the rooftops like birds is always going to look a bit unreal though, plus it looks way better than when they Photoshopped Christopher Eccleston into a picture of JFK in Rose.

There's nothing fake about this shot of people lined up along the roof of the Tower of London though. They got permission to film there, and presumably permission to ignore the sign saying "Please do not walk on the new lead roof," as well.

Turns out that an entire third of the human race is currently looking for something tall to hurl themselves from, 2 billion people, which is a bit of a concern for UNIT. It's also a big enough sample size to find a pattern, as they quickly figure out that within families brothers and sisters have often gone wandering together but rarely both the husband and wife. They haven't spotted that it hasn't affected main characters yet though.

With the Doctor unconscious and Rose helpless, the story's now following these guys as they follow the clues and try to solve this mystery. Starting with checking UNIT's medical records.

Damn, I guess UNIT medical files require the staff to be 3D scanned so they can set up the spinning naked wireframe. I like the interface though, that's a pretty cool WinAMP skin they've got there.

Actually, I did a bit of research and that's the UI for Cyberlink PowerDVD.

Mickey, on the other hand, seems to be using InterVideo WinDVD for his video playback.

The medical files confirm that everyone on the roof has the same blood type, A Positive. They also bring up the file on the Guinevere One probe revealing that it was sent up with a vial of A Positive blood. It also had 'Music - International' on it, which I'm taking to be confirmation of my Bohemian Rhapsody theory.

So now that UNIT has spent a few minutes solving the mystery of what the people on the roof have in common, and they know that the Sycorax are going to make them jump unless they surrender, the Prime Minister is ready to take the next logical step...

...getting on the TV and asking the Doctor to come and bail them out. Because she doesn't know what she's doing and doesn't care who knows about it! Man, I hope the aliens aren't watching this, or anyone who can vote during the next election. It doesn't help that it didn't occur to her to check on the situation of the royal family until she was live on TV, though her perfect deadpan delivery of "Oh. They're on the roof," should've won back some supporters.

I feel like I should hate this scene, but I really don't. In this episode, with this character, the comedy works for me. I'm already believing in the fiction of a good Prime Minister, I can accept a little more absurdity.

Meanwhile, Rose and Jackie are having another serious emotional scene with Rose crying about the Doctor leaving her, but it's suddenly interrupted by the window in the background exploding. It's a sonic wave from the Sycorax spaceship entering the atmosphere over London, thanks to Harriet Jones making sure that the UK was in charge of dealing with the aliens. This could've been Washington DC that got all its windows blown out!

Just once they should have an episode of EastEnders start like this.

Also the Sycorax need to get themselves a spaceship that doesn't look like a rock. It looks like they hollowed out and stuck engines inside the ugliest asteroid they could find.

Here it is from another angle as well. Doctor Who rules clearly state that any sci-fi crisis must be composited into shots of as many landmarks as possible so we can fully appreciate the scale of it.

I like the attention to continuity though, as they remembered to put people standing on the buildings in another shot and Big Ben's still being repaired after getting sideswiped by a Slitheen ship in Aliens of London. Incidentally, the Elizabeth Tower (as it's officially called) looks a lot like this right now in real life as they're fixing it up a bit.

There's not much Rose and the others can do about a spaceship parking overhead and threatening to enslave the human race so Rose takes charge of the group and tells them to take the Doctor into the Tardis as it's the only safe place on Earth. Makes me wonder she didn't think of that when she told her mother to they were running to the Peak District earlier.

Back at the Tower of London, the Sycorax would like to speak to the planet's leader, so Harriet Jones steps forward and is beamed up, along with everyone standing next to her.

Their spaceship is a cave set!

Must have taken them ages to film the same few actors standing in different places to composite that shot together. Though it turns out that they're all wearing helmets, with saves a lot of time in the makeup chair. The leader has full alien prosthetics under his mask though, and now they know for sure that he's not a Martian. Or an 'Ice Warrior', as the Martians are usually called in this show.

Llewellyn heroically steps forward and takes responsibility for what he's caused by sending up the probe, giving a similar speech to the aliens that the Ninth Doctor did to the Nestene Consciousness in Rose. He asks them to show compassion to a young race taking its first steps towards the stars.

It doesn't work.

But then Major Blake steps forward to protest and he's killed too! That sucks, I liked Blake.

Harriet and Alex are understandably a bit shocked by seeing two people turned to charred skeletons right in front of them (great imagery for a Christmas show that), and it was a bit of a surprise to me as well. The episode's getting very serious and grim all of a sudden as it establishes how pointlessly cruel and dangerous these aliens are.

I've spotted a pattern to the kills though: they seem to happen whenever someone walks towards the Sycorax leader and says anything. But Harriet Jones steps forward nevertheless....

… and they do the ‘yes we know who you are' joke for a third time! There is no way this should work but it actually does.

The Sycorax leader tells her that she has a choice to either give up half of humanity as slaves or to let a third of them die. So that went back to dark in a hurry.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Rose and Mickey manage to get the Doctor into the Tardis and try to use the scanner to see what's going on outside. But the Sycorax detect the advanced technology and beam it up to the spaceship while Jackie's still outside. A lot like when the Nestene stole the Tardis in Rose.

Rose and Mickey are completely oblivious to this, so Rose goes to check on her mother and wanders out into the Sycorax ship. Ironically, this is why you should check the scanner before leaving. Mickey hears her scream and is so keen to save her that he drops his flask of tea and races out of the door. He seems a lot braver now than he was in Rose.

Then Rose and Mickey actually pull off something clever that ultimately saves a significant percentage of the human race: Rose yells out "The door, close the door!" and Mickey runs over and shuts it just before the Sycorax can stop him. Well, I thought it was clever anyway; it drives me mad whenever I see someone walk off and leave the Tardis door open.

The Sycorax leader decides that despite Harriet Jones having some actual authority on Earth, Rose came out of the clever blue box so she should be the one to speak for the planet now. There's no mention of whether Mickey also gets to speak for the planet, but I'm guessing no. Mickey never gets any respect.

Rose is terrified but when the Doctor's not around his companion's the next best thing, so she knows it's up to her to step up and send them off with a speech. This is her chance to show what she's learned after 12 episodes travelling with the Doctor... and she basically just lists all the villains she ran into in season one until the Sycorax start laughing at her and her stolen words. She's come a fair distance as a companion but she's still a long way from graduating.

It was a good try though and it helped to show how utterly screwed they are without the Doctor, who is incidentally being revived by the fumes coming off the tea dripping into the Tardis's electronics while this is going on. The Doctor needing something to save him has been mentioned several times up to this point and tea being the solution to everything is perfectly British (plus Rose still owed him some tea after his cup got smashed in Rose), but I still hate it. I'm never keen on the Doctor being saved by pure chance.

But I do like how everyone realises that the Doctor's awake when the Sycorax leader switches to speaking English. Turns out that the Tardis telepathically translates for everyone around the folks who travelled in it, so Harriet Jones and her right-hand man Alex get the benefit too! Not much good for him though, seeing as his only job here was to translate.

Anyway, the Doctor's up now and the first thing he does is yank the Sycorax leader's energy whip from his hand, snap his staff and then... go and have a chat with his friends. Nine was so focused on trying to save the world in Rose he didn't have time to be considerate, but Ten puts the drama on pause to hang out for a bit. So he finally gets to know what Rose thinks of his new face!

39 minutes and 28 seconds, by the way. That's how long the episode makes viewers wait for the Doctor to get up and finally jump into action. Which isn't actually that bad compared to the TV movie, where the Eighth Doctor only starts to get anything done about 53 minutes in. It's also almost the same time that Rose swings in to save the Ninth Doctor in Rose after he makes a mess of talking the villains down, so there's symmetry there.

The Tenth Doctor goes on a big speech about how he doesn't know what kind of person he is, while simultaneously swanning in and owning the situation with the force of his personality. Then he walks over to the button that'll make everyone jump off buildings, figures out they're controlling people with the A Positive blood, and decides to press it! See, this is why I could never be a time travelling genius hero; even if I was absolutely certain the button would do nothing because people's survival instincts would override the hypnosis, I would not gamble 2 billion lives on my understanding of the situation. Especially as I've seen what the Purple Man can do in Jessica Jones.

But yeah, everyone's fine, the Doctor saved the day. Which raises the question: why did they have the 'kill everyone' button wired up if they knew it would do the opposite? Humanity ain't gonna know if it's a real button or not! Well okay, I guess it could be a 'run instructions' button you press after giving a command like 'climb up to the tallest nearby building'... man I'm struggling to nitpick the logic of an RTD script here.

Next step in the Doctor's plan to save the world: accidentally quoting The Lion King, followed by challenging the leader to ritual combat. With broadswords!

I always appreciate it when the Doctor gets into a good swordfight and I've been waiting a while for one, as the last time was probably the Fifth Doctor vs. the Master in The King's Demons. Sadly this is not a good swordfight; the choreography is nothing impressive and they're struggling with big heavy clumsy swords. Plus the fight takes them onto the hull the ship, high above London, so there's a lot of shots like this, where all you can see is sky. Pointing the camera up a bit is far cheaper than CGI and elaborate sets.

The Doctor is actually knocked down and gets his bloody hand cut off (with absolutely no blood weirdly), but the leader decides to wave his sword around and yell in triumph instead of putting a sword to his neck and asking him to yield. So the Doctor grows his hand back, gets a new sword from Rose, takes him down, puts a sword to his neck and asks him to yield.

Dude had no idea he was fighting Deadpool. Neither did the fans, but I suppose there's been nothing that contradicts this new fact that Time Lords can regrow lost limbs up to 15 hours after starting their regeneration. I'm fairly sure it's been established that Time Lords bleed though, so I don't know what's up with that.

But the Sycorax leader was just bullshitting until he could get up off the floor, and he charges at the Doctor to kill him. But quite by chance he happens to be standing over an inexplicable trapdoor, so the Doctor throws a satsuma at an unmarked switch and sends him plummeting to his death.

Just once they should have an episode of EastEnders start like this.

How ironic, the man who threatened to make people fall from high places himself fell from a high place! It's a bit troubling though how the Doctor seemed not to care much that he just killed a guy. Especially when it was followed by the line: "No second chances, I'm that sort of a man." He seemed like such a friendly Doctor as well.

The Doctor walks back inside to address the audience of Sycorax, who've been waiting patiently on the ledges despite all the action going outside, and tells them:

"By the ancient rites of combat, I forbid you to scavenge here for the rest of time. And when you go back to the stars and tell others of this planet, when you tell them of its riches, its people, its potential, when you talk of the Earth, then make sure that you tell them this. IT IS DEFENDED."

(By one person with some decent sword fighting skills who knows what the buttons do).

And then they're all beamed down onto a street, along with the Tardis. Makes me wonder what would've happened if they'd tried to keep it.

I love Rose jumping on Mickey's back here as they watch the Sycorax spaceship leave. It's little moments like that make this that make the modern series feel more natural than the classic show. Then Jackie comes over and gets a hug from the Doctor! Even Harriet Jones gets a hug, as she confirms for the audience that he's "Absolutely the same man." It's such a completely happy ending.

Then the Doctor mentions to Harriet the same thing we learned in the Pertwee era, that the human race is drawing attention to itself with probes, messages and signals, getting noticed more and more, and there's plenty of aliens out there.

So she orders Torchwood to fire the Death Star super laser secretly built into London.

Just once they should have an episode of EastEnders start like this.

The Doctor's not all that impressed that she just destroyed a ship full of people while it was retreating, but she points out that they would've told others about Earth and they're not ready for that kind of attention. He has always defended them, but he's not there all the time and they can't solely rely on him. She could've also pointed out that they weren't on their way to settle down and become farmers, they were likely going to get their three billion slaves from some other innocent planet, but she didn't.

In fact, if she'd chosen her next few words a little more carefully the Doctor might have just gone off in a huff and left her alone, but she basically challenges him to take her down and he's angry enough to do it. He whispers "Don't you think she looks tired?" into Alex's ear and lets her fall into panic about what he could've said. Man, this story got serious all of a sudden. Again.

And that's the end of Britain's Golden Age I guess. The Doctor just went and meddled with history because he personally didn't agree with an elected leader who was doing a great job for her country, a character who's been portrayed as being sensible, tough and fundamentally decent all episode. Three terms she would've lasted.

But hey, can't dwell on the serious things for too long, this is Christmas!

So we get our first glimpse of another room in the coral-themed Tardis as the Doctor visits the wardrobe to pick the costume he'll be stuck with for the rest of his life. Though the way it's shot is very weird, as it's all close-ups to begin with, and this is obviously the console room redressed and digitally extended, so for a while it seems like he's just filled it up with clothes. What's also weird is despite this being a comedy episode, the traditionally comedic outfit-picking scene is played entirely straight.

And then he completes his new costume with a paper hat. As far as I can tell from watching the classic series, the rules are that once he chooses an outfit he's stuck with it for the next 3 years, so he'll be wearing that paper crown in every story from now on.

Wait, hang on, the Doctor stayed for Christmas dinner? Damn, he really does have a different personality to the Ninth Doctor. Must be cold in there though with all the windows blown out.

Since the beginning of the wardrobe scene there's been a song playing called Song for Ten which sounds like licensed music but was actually written for the series, but it cuts out here because the news is back on! This time they're reporting on the Prime Minister's health scare, as in the last few hours Alex has apparently told a few people about her looking tired and her frustration during the press conference isn't doing her any favours. But this isn't the 24 universe, there's no way that rumours about her health spread this quickly. Not during the day that she successfully defeated alien invaders, saving half the planet! Though making a cryptic plea for 'The Doctor' to come help her on TV in front of the entire nation might have made her seem a bit ill.

Just then Jackie gets a phone call telling her to look outside and when they do it's snowing!

Snow on Christmas Day in England! It's the most far-fetched sci-fi concept in the whole episode. They do have a good explanation for it though: it's the ash from that ship that blew up. They're literally standing in the ashes of all those people Harriet Jones just killed. It's a real 'what the hell am I supposed to be feeling about all this' kind of scene, but in a good way. I think. I hope no one tries to make a snowball though... with all that broken glass on the floor.

But the Doctor and Rose are happy enough, as she's accepted him now and they're ready to go travelling across space and time again. And this time he'll be looking at it all with new eyes.

Then the end theme comes on and it's all orchestral now! They've put the middle eight back in as well, so that's cool. It's a shame that the opening theme didn't get an upgrade to match really.


CONCLUSION

---

I love how messed up this story is. It's got a super-happy ending with everyone grinning in the ash of a thousand dead aliens as their own government collapses, taking their Golden Age along with it. Only two humans were killed, which doesn't seem so bad, but one of them was Major Blake so as far as I'm concerned it's a tragedy. He should've been a recurring character!

The tone's all over the place, going from Rose's angst, to a killer Christmas tree, to frightened parents yelling at their loved ones to get off a roof, and then back around again, but they pulled it off in my opinion. It's a soap opera sci-fi comedy thriller that's fun and enthusiastic and emotional and daft, and it doesn't take anything entirely seriously except for what the characters are feeling. Part of the reason this works so well is because Murray Gold nailed the music this time. Whether there's a convoy of black cars driving up to a secret command centre or a Christmas tree going on a rampage, the music's there supporting the mood instead of trying to tell us how hilarious it is like it did in Rose.

I liked this a lot more than Rose in general, though I can see how people might find it too ridiculous. Also it's hard not to notice how little Doctor there is in this Doctor Who story. It's 60 minutes long, like a short three-parter in classic series terms, but David Tennant is only in it for 26 minutes and for 6 of those minutes his character is unconscious! Though to be fair he's still beating Christopher Eccleston's screen time in Rose. (Wait, Christopher Eccleston... Christmas Invasion... they're only 10 letters different!) Russell T Davies seems to feel that the best way to make an audience accept a new lead character is to withhold them and build up the anticipation of seeing what they're going to do, and I can't argue with the results here. I wasn't keen on Doctor-light stories in the classic series, I got bored out of my mind waiting for a main character to turn up, but this had a strong ensemble cast of recurring characters I already cared about to carry the drama while he was out of action.

It follows two groups of characters for the most part, Rose, Mickey and Jackie, and Harriet, Daniel and Major Blake, and they're both treated very sympathetically. Harriet's group are trying to solve a crisis that's way out of their league and Rose's group are just trying to survive it, so it offers a different perspective on a typical Doctor Who invasion plot that we'd normally get. Rose also has the thankless task of carrying all the emotion over the Doctor's regeneration and if you can't empathise with her she's not the most fun person to watch. But after watching all of the classic series I've learned to appreciate it when the companion gets a chance to have a human reaction to something. She even mentions to Mickey how weird it is to be back in the normal world after so much time travel, which is something that was rarely acknowledged in the classic series. Speaking of using sci-fi concepts and mythology for down to earth emotional impact, the way the episode had the Tardis translation cut out while the Doctor was dying was brilliant.

But then the Doctor finally woke up and from that moment on it became his story, with the rest of the characters basically becoming background extras as he managed to single-handedly save the world before breakfast. I'm not sure who my favourite of the modern Doctors is (it's the Eleventh Doctor), but I have a feeling that the Tenth Doctor would be up in my top five as David Tennant is perfect for the role. And not just because his name has 'Ten' in it. (It wasn't even his real name until the American Screen Actors' Guild made him change it to match his stage name, he was born David McDonald, so... yeah.) It's funny how similar he is to Nine on paper (because RTD wrote his lines as if he was writing for Christopher Eccleston), but instead of being a bit of a rude antisocial git with a heart of gold, he's a friendy outgoing type who turns into a real mean bastard when he's crossed. For a lot of the series the Doctor has been the moral centre, the one you can rely on and who teaches others how to be better people, but here he just got more complicated than that. Maybe deposing Harriet Jones was the correct thing to do, and I get the impression Russell T Davies intended him to be in the right when he was writing it, but it's far from unambiguous in the episode. Three alien invaders came to Earth this Christmas, one of them brought down a Christmas tree on themselves, one killed two people and made London's glaziers very happy, and the third rewrote history and brought down the British government with zero guilt. Plus he broke a Royal Mail van.

So yeah, it's a simple dumb complicated intelligent story with a moral: people are going to change or let you down at some point and maybe it's better to calm down a bit before deciding to judge them for it. Also, don't send anything up into space for aliens to find that you don't want aliens to find.

---

COMING SOON

The next episode of Doctor Who should be the series two premiere New Earth, but I'm going to skip ahead few years and go straight to Matt Smith's first episode, The Eleventh Hour!

If you've got any thoughts of your own about The Christmas Invasion then you're in luck, as there's a comment box down there waiting for you to share them.