The Christmas Invasion
What a fantastic invention Christmas specials are. These British have a clever attitude to television. Why wait all the way from one series to the next, when you can have an hour long taste of Who to tide you over?
And what a taste. Of course, after the Doctor’s dramatic regeneration at the end of ‘The Parting of the Ways’, I was desperate to see the new, David Tennant shaped Doctor in action — and writer Russell T. Davies trades off this pathetic desperation perfectly by writing a story about what happens when the Doctor isn’t around to save the day, and holds off all the proper Doctor-action for forty-five minutes. There were complaints from a lot of people, including me, that the Eccleston Doctor wasn’t involved enough in his episodes — that he didn’t “save the day” enough. While close viewing of stories such as ‘The Long Game’ rather gave the lie to this, it was true that there wasn’t much out and out heroism for the Doctor in season one.
This is not a criticism one could make of ‘The Christmas Invasion’. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
After the tumultuous events of ‘That Three Minute Special that Went Out For Children in Need’, the TARDIS crashes to Earth, with the Doctor unconscious, while a full-on alien invasion begins to take place above. As the now-Prime Minister Harriet Jones and UNIT try to deal with the alien menace, Rose finds herself absolutely useless for any kind of planet-saving activity, mourning instead for her old Doctor, and running away to the TARDIS for safety, while the world panics. This took me by surprise a bit: I expected Rose to have the gumption to try at least contacting the PM, or sneaking aboard the ship, or something. But she kind of crumples up. The message seems to be that she can’t be brave without her best friend — and when I think about it, it’s a perfectly sensible plotline to have — but either way, Rose-as-helpless-bystander was quite shocking. Of course, barring perhaps a bit of over-crying at one point, Billie Piper is as perfect as ever.
The other ‘regulars’ are just as good. Jackie’s just tremendous — the perfect lovable yet irritating mother. Penelope Wilton’s return as Harriet Jones is perfectly judged: slightly more restrained and Prime Ministerly, but with enough warmth to be our identification figure in the political half of the plot.1 And if you’d told me after watching ‘Rose’ that I’d be loving every scene with Mickey, I’d have told you you were a crazy person, but Noel Clarke does some of his best work here, especially in his scene complaining to Rose about all her “TARDIS stories”, which plays in a startlingly realistic way. In fact, one of the two best things about ‘The Christmas Invasion’ is the way it keeps Doctor Who firmly nailed down to reality, even in the middle of an Independence Day style invasion. The second, and more important thing, is the sense of fun.
Even though the episode thematically is more evocative of ‘Rose’ and ‘Aliens of London’ from last season, its style reminds me far more of ‘The End of the World’. This story is silly, fun Who with all the stops pulled out: perfect viewing for Christmas Day.2 The villainous Sycorax are perfectly over-the-top, ranting and raving and carrying on. Stupid, brutish and dishonourable, they’re the perfect enemy for the Doctor to face and come out looking perfect. There’s a few moments where it slips into complete and utter cheese, such as the zoom-in reveal of the newly conscious Doctor, but it’s a moment of such joy that it’s earned the cheese.3 And there’s a few surprises in store to keep everything from getting too happy.
This is probably Davies’ funniest Doctor Who script yet, and no one makes more use of that than David Tennant as the new Doctor. From the second he opens the TARDIS doors and asks “Did you miss me?”, he owns the part. There’s a few words doing the rounds to describe this new Time Lord: puckish, cheeky, rude, sexy and waspish are just a few. If Eccleston’s Doctor was a slightly haunted, damaged man, running from his own past, then Tennant’s seems completely mended by his experiences on Sattelite Five. He’s once again happy to settle down and make roots — “Do Domestic” if you will — and he seems a lot more confident facing the monsters than the more fallible Eccleston. It remains to be seen, I suppose, whether this confidence only extends to the fluffy Christmas special, but either way, the Tennant Doctor is a lot more witty than his predecessor, which is welcome.
There’s a few of what I might call Davies’ characteristic plotting flaws hanging around in this story. Mickey’s hacking into government websites again, the Sycorax put together a squad of killer Santas4 awfully quickly, and so on. But unlike his early season one stories, the show glosses over them with such confidence and charm that I honestly didn’t care. After the heart-achingly perfect last sequence, with the Doctor choosing his new clothes, and sharing Christmas with the Tylers and Mickey, I’ve only got one concern: will this astonishingly happy Doctor have his new surrogate family taken from him?5
- And she’s the butt of the greatest joke of the story: “Yes, we know who you are.” ↩
- Unfortunately, I had to see it on Boxing Day, completely failing to be living in Britain, even a little bit. ↩
- Expect my essay on justified usage of cheese in television and film sometime soon. ↩
- Although I was disappointed not to see the Tuba used as a mortar, which seemed to be indicated on my Season One Box Set bonus disc, a bazooka is pretty cool too. ↩
- Don’t give me that look. I can’t jinx it from here. I’m just asking. In most shows I watch, when people are this happy, it’s because they’re about to die. ↩
Andy
January 8th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Being happy at the end of an episode doesn’t imply bad times ahead as much as being happy at the start of an episode.
Andy
January 9th, 2006 at 2:52 am
Why do people carefully close the door before looking around to see what’s outside?More could have been made of the scene where the Doctor loses his spoiler hand. Maybe ratings prevented the chopping off of the arm and blood being shown. The Doctor didn’t show any pain from the injury so any drama from that moment was lost on me.I like the aggressiveness of the new doctor but I don’t know if he can be so morally righteous about removing the prime minister’s government because she shot the aliens for killing two people. It’s a fine line.Also Rose was moaning about losing the Doctor when he was only kind of sick, and he didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger. I thought she was tougher than that. I would have kept the Doctor in the Tardis out of harm’s way.
Tom
January 10th, 2006 at 12:38 am
To be fair to Rose, she really didn’t expect the TARDIS to have moved. I’ve done similarly silly things sometimes. Her grief was I think mostly for the old Doctor. She may well have someone who looks vaguely doctorish in her house but he’s still not quite the same person and hasn’t had a chance to convince her yet.
I agree that there should have been some kind of pain, even if they’re not allowed to show blood (and I don’t think they are). It wasn’t very dramatic at all.
The argument between Harriet and the Doctor was one of my favourite moments — they’ve both got good points. Technically Harriet’s act was unprovoked, especially when you consider that only the Sycorax Leader killed anyone, and he’s already dead. If Earth’s going to get noticed by aliens, it seems a good idea not to go around committing war crimes.
Andy
January 10th, 2006 at 3:18 am
I like Harriet Jones, and although she has shown backbone previously, I was surprised that she would order the shooting down of a spacecraft that was no longer threatening the Earth. Keeping the weapon secret seems like a better idea for the long term defense of Earth. Keeping a low profile is better than being one planet with no spacecraft and only one gun.
I agree with the Doctor in that final conversation. As he had already delivered his judgement on the Sycorax and both sides were at peace, Harriet was in the wrong. She was too slow with her death star laser. The Doctor did not seem to view their actions as seriously as Harriet did. He knew that they couldn’t kill a third of the Earth’s population so treated them more like conmen than pillaging barbarians and let them off lightly.
Is the new Doctor’s hand a fighting hand or was he just making it up? Maybe he could have got himself a fighting leg too. Perhaps when he regenerates he could immediately cut off parts of his body while he has the most energy and grow more specialised body parts like eagle eyes or a typing hand.
How long is the gap since the previous episode? The doctor previously sounded like Harriet would be in charge for a reasonable length of time, but she seems to be on the verge of losing government. Does that count as her first warning? I’d like to see her in a couple more episodes.
Tom
January 10th, 2006 at 7:11 am
I think her idea is that with the Sycorax gone, Earth is “invisible” in the sense that they’ll never tell anyone else about it. I agree that holding the weapon in reserve would be a sounder plan.
I hope they play further with the “human race as monsters” idea. I’d like to see a story where the Doctor was actually defending aliens against humans.
If ‘Rose’ was set when transmitted, in March 2005, ‘Aliens of London’ was in March 2006 and ‘The Christmas Invasion’ is therefore Christmas 2006. It’s possible that the Doctor has changed history. It always seems like he’s not allowed to interfere unless there’s alien influence — perhaps Harriet’s use of Torchwood makes the whole timeline malleable. Or something. The way RTD talks in the commentary, Harriet gets the boot. It’s not as impressive if the Doctor claims to be able to bring her down with six words and then fails to.
Andy
January 11th, 2006 at 4:37 am
Plenty of aliens manage to find their way to Earth as it is. The Sycorax didn’t look like a worker bee scouting out good flowers for the hive. If I was the Sycorax, I’d be embarrassed by being defeated by such a backward planet and not mention it to anyone.
So somewhere between March 2006 and Christmas 2006, Harriet ran for Prime Minister, got the job, sent a probe to Mars, ushered in Britain’s Golden Age, killed the Sycorax and came under controversy about her health?
Tom
January 11th, 2006 at 5:07 am
The Mars probe could have been underway before she came to office. Given the deaths of lots of politicians, the election would probably have been pretty speedy. Maybe they only just reached the Golden Age.
I think we have to assume that most Sycorax are either massively devoted to their ancient combat rites, or not that interested in conquering planets. I tend to agree with you and the Doctor. Besides, if all Sycorax only speak Sycoraxic then I doubt there’d be much Earth-gossip anyhow.
Tom
January 11th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
This page would seem to confirm my dating. I think.
Tom
July 5th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
It’s ‘Critic Watch’, my semi-regular feature where I explain why I should be in charge of every major TV listing on the planet. Ahem. Doctor Who starts on the ABC in Australia this week, so Kenneth Ngyuen is reviewing;
“tin-can production values, British parochialism… Doctor Who fans will love it.”
Did I say explain? I meant rant. Whose production values is he comparing Who to? Superman Returns? Its only rival on TV these days is Battlestar — and it’s hardly a fair competition since Battlestar gets to use the same 3D models every week and has few practical effects. “Parochialism” is clearly the moment when Britain tells the USA that something happening over British airspace is none of their business. Fantasy, yes, parochialism, no. I doubt Mr Ngyuen would call Independence Day an example of US parochialism. But he might. Gah.
The worst condemnation is that only Who fans will like it. The family hit of the decade in Britain is only palatable for fans here? That’s… harsh. I’m not saying it’s not potentially true, but it’s a brutal thing to say to a TV show.
OK, I’m done. Ah, I feel better already.