Doctor Who:
The Christmas
Invasion
By Russell T.
Davies
“Here we are
then, London. Earth. The Solar System. We did it. Jackie. Mickey. Blimey! No,
no, no, no, hold on. Wait there. I've got something to say. There was something
I had to tell you, something important. What was it? No, hold on, hold on. Hold
on, shush, shush, shush, shush. Oh, I know! Merry Christmas!”
The TARDIS
literally falls from the sky and crash lands next to Jackie and Mickey. Out through the doors appears a confused and
somewhat disorientated man. The man
wishes them a Merry Christmas and promptly faints. Rose exits the TARDIS and tells them that
this man indeed the Doctor, a recently regenerated Doctor. After putting The Doctor to bed and making
sure both his heartbeats are all right Rose and Mickey go to town and do some
Christmas shopping. Their presence is
soon discovered and they are set to be attacked by four killer Santa’s. The Santa’s use their musical instruments to
cause distruction to the shopping area and Mickey and Rose make a close escape.
As soon as they get back to Jackie’s apartment Rose is astonished to see a new
Christmas tree. Not as astonished as she
is when the tree suddenly comes alive and tries to kill them. Rose is able to get The Doctor awake just in
a nick of time as he uses his sonic screw driver to destroy it and they
discover there is a bigger threat before The Doctor slips back into a
coma.
All this
alien activity isn’t going unnoticed as UNIT and Prime Minister Harriot Jones are
about to encounter the threat from space.
The Sycorax apparently have captured British unmanned space vehicle
Guinevere One to communicate with British officials and to launch their
invasion of Earth. On board Guinevere
One is a sample of blood in which the Sycorax use to hold 1/3 of Earths
population hostage and under their control and in doing so have them on the
roof of buildings awaiting a command to jump if their demands are not met. It’s up to Rose to figure something out until
The Doctor awakes from his slumber to save Earth once again.
“The
Christmas Invasion” is the first full story to feature David Tennant as The
Doctor and is the first of the Christmas Specials that has been a staple of the
new series. Sure we have seen snippets
of him at the end of “The Parting of the Ways” and the Children in Need short
but this time we get a full hour of the new Doctor. Well sort of.
Unfortunately David Tennant spends most of the episode dreaming of
sugarplums dancing in his head. It isn’t
until the last 15 to 20 minutes that we get to see the full Doctor effect in
this story. Sure we get that little
snippet at the beginning and during the Christmas Tree attack but it really isn’t
until the final quarter of the episode that we get a glimpse of what this new
Doctor would be like.
Billie Piper
does her customary good job with Rose this time around. She brings to this story a lot of confusion
and a broken heart but at the end she is totally approving of the new
Doctor. During “The Christmas Invasion”
Rose is sadden that her Doctor is gone and replaced by this new Doctor. She has her doubts about this new guy and
with good reason as it is taking him forever to recover from his post
regeneration crisis.
“The
Christmas Invasion” does have some problems with the plot as there are certain
elements that aren’t explained in depth.
Like the mystery surrounding the Santa’s. Like how did they know The
Doctor would return to that point in time?
How did they know about Rose, Mickey and Jackie? Are they really working for the Sycorax or
are they working for someone else? I guess
we do find out the following Christmas or do we really or is it just something
RTD thought would be great to do and didn’t plan on discussing it further.
My favorite
moment from “The Christmas Invasion” is watching the killer Christmas
Tree. The Christmas music of Jingle
Bells really makes the scene and makes it hilarious. It is just a funny scene that works really
well in this story. Another classic
moment is onboard the Sycorax ship when the TARDIS telepathic circuit translate
the Sycorax language to English and everyone looks back at the TARDIS and the
new Doctor has arrived all healed from his regeneration ready to save the
day. Just thought the Doctor losing his
hand was a bit stupid but we know where that goes in the future.
A good start for the 10th Doctor
even if the story was just an average story and not anything really
spectacular.
Grade B
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