So begins the David Tennant years. This episode was intended to introduce audiences to Series 2 of Doctor Who (or Season 28 for the rest of us), introduce new and old fans to our newly regenerated Doctor, and also to gather families around the tele near Christmas for a dose of Doctor Who.
Unfortunately, about three quarters of this episode scarcely fit the bill for a slice of traditional Doctor Who. For starters, the episode opens with the TARDIS barreling down through the urban streets of London, bouncing off building walls. The TARDIS comes to rest and out comes Tennant as our beloved Doctor - still wearing the 9th Doctor jacket & jumper, observing his surroundings in relief that this was one of those rare times that he got the TARDIS destination right.
The last Jackie or Mickey saw of the TARDIS crew, Rose vanished in the TARDIS bound for the year 200,100 to save an otherwise doomed 9th Doctor. After a moment of "good to see you" hugs, the Doctor wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and then collapses. Probably the first of several dominating "downers" in this episode is the over-extensive use of the "Doctor Who?" gag. While there are appropriate times for a character to ask "Who?" or "Doctor Who?" and it not be obvious that it was intentionally inserted into the script to be a gag. It often depends on the actor voicing the dialogue, and the tone of their voice when saying it. Jackie Tyler in this episode not being one of the better ones. The conversation started out fine, with Jackie asking Rose, "Where's the Doctor?!" Rose replies with "That's him. That's the Doctor." Suddenly, the seriousness of the moment drops almost instantly, as Jackie cries out "The Doctor?! Doctor Who?!" Thank the stars it only lasted those few seconds, but it was certainly enough to suck the life right out of that scene.
A successful "Who gag" scenario would be like in the classic episode "The Android Invasion." In that story, an exact android copy of the Doctor is at large accompanied by an android Sarah Jane. The UNIT soldiers are also androids, and are on the lookout for the REAL Doctor. To evade capture, the real Doctor casually strolls in the front doors at UNIT headquarters, and when soldiers attempt to apprehend him, he successfully fools them into thinking he's the android Doctor. As he walks away, he advises them: "But keep your eyes peeled. We don't know who's who around here!" In the interests of satisfying readers that are bent on accusing me of favoring the original series (well, that's probably true) I'll also describe a new series "Who gag" scerario: In "The Girl In the Fireplace," Reinette and the Doctor exhange thoughts, and after reading the Doctor's mind and learning what name he goes by, she looks into the Doctor's eyes and with a serious tone, says "My Doctor. Doctor who?"
Enough about the Who gag. After the title sequence, the Doctor is still out cold. As Rose tucks the Doctor in, and leaves the room to bring Jackie up to date on the events of recent, we see the stage being set for the plot of this episode: a remnant of the vortex energy escapes through the Doctor's mouth and out the window. It then streaks into orbit and into an approaching Sycorax ship. After that brief "Doctor Who" related scene, we return to Earth for more domestic drama, as Rose is all in tears because, we are lead to believe that she was beginning to fall in love with the Eccleston Doctor, only to have him suddenly change his appearance and personality on her. Rose openly admits that she keeps forgetting that he's not human.
Yet another "drama-steroid" that was way overused in this episode is the constant use of news anchor scenes. It's agreeable to use occasional shots of a news broadcast to heighten the mood a bit, but in this episode, we more or less were fed the synopsis of the backplot from a tele though a tele. As if that were not enough, all of the "news team footage" is shown in over-exagerrated reality TV camera-work, meaning the camera shots are exceptionally shaky, more along the lines of the family's home movie of the local school football game that was sitting behind you.
The feel of classic Doctor Who returned with the arrival of Harriet Jones at the UNIT headquarters. From the time the episode changes to the UNIT scenes, the main focus of those scenes was slowly revealing to us the plotline. And for once, Davies pays more attention to detail in this story - the Sycorax broadcast a message, but none of the Earthlings can understand their language. Jones then scrambles a team to start translating their message. The music was also quite subtle in these scenes, which was a plus.
However, the Doctor Who flavor comes to an abrupt end with the return of domestic drama between Rose and Mickey. Mickey tries unsuccessfully to get Rose's mind of an ill and changed Doctor, and to enjoy Christmas. The casual stroll comes to an end when robots disguised as Santa Claus carolers start shooting at Rose and Mickey with their instrument-shaped flame-throwers/(grenade launchers?). Upon return, the Tyler family, the sleeping Doctor and Mickey are attacked by a spinning, singing Christmas tree. We get a Doctor/Rose love moment when Rose softly whispers into the Doctor's ear, "help me!" The Doctor suddenly jumps up in the bed and points his "all-purpose" sonic screwdriver at the tree, causing it to explode.
This episode struggles through the first half to show any classic Doctor Who appeal, with the second half show much more homage to a slice of Who than the first bit. The UNIT scenes in the first half are by far the best. The beginning of the episode seems to have been divided into two separate plots, one focusing on Harriet Jones dealing with the Sycorax and the other focusing on Rose coping with the Doctor's regeneration. For the most part, the Doctor plays a minor role in the episode, and I feel the "post regeneration" was a bit over-played. A large chunk of the episode was devoted to tears and pull-on-heart-strings moments because of the Doctor's regeneration.
As with many of Davies' stories, the majority of this episode was spent building up to the climax placed within the final 10 minutes of the episode, in this case being the swordfight between the Doctor in his "jim-jams" and the Sycorax leader. The dialogue scenes between Jones and the Sycorax wasn't too bad, either. The swordfight reminded me of classic Who fights such as "The Androids of Tara," "The Masque of Mandragora" and "The King's Demons."
All in all, the episode gets a 5, because once you hash out all of the unrelated stuff to the overall plot, you're probably left with about 25 minutes of solid Doctor Who. So, only about 50% of the episode devoted itself to being a solid installment of the Doctor Who series.
Ok, I can kinda agree that it wasn't a very traditional Who story, but I don't think it was meant to be, and a traditional story might not have been such a great idea from the production side of things. It was a Christmas Special, so it's there to be a bit light and fluffy, to provide a bit of excitement after all the presents have been opened and the dinner's been eaten... light fare, as it were. Also, given that Christmas is an occasion for family to gather, for most people, I expect a fairly heavy family/domestic focus in Christmas TV. And I like Jackie, Mickey and Rose, so no complaints there from me ;)
ReplyDeleteI agree about the Doctor Who? joke, and about the news anchor scenes... the news anchors, in particular, are for me one of the most annoying features of the RTD era - it's like every plot element has to be spelled out by the serious news anchors for those too thick to get it, and every single event is "the end of civilisation as we know it." If news anchors said that in the real world they'd be fired and probably prosecuted for inciting panic. It seems to me, too, that the news people were used more and more often throughout RTD's run, and it really started getting on my wick.
I do think the Doctor's coma lasted a little too long, but keeping him out of it a bit was probably very shrewd on the part of the producers, he was given a very gradual introduction no doubt so that people who were newish to Who could get used to the idea of the Doctor being someone new. There were, no doubt, those in the audience who were quite sure that no one could ever be the Doctor again after Eccleston, and sweeping 9 out of the way and shoving 10 onstage from the start would have been a huge mistake with a revived series, it would vey likely have alienated a great swathe of new fans. It had also been some time in the real world between 'The Parting of the Ways' and this special, so the Christmas episode had to remind audience members what the show was like and also prepare them for the inevitable changes with a new leading man. No, I think it was well handled, keeping him in the wings preserved a bit of his mystery and allowed new audience members to adjust to the idea of a new, different Doctor. And the 'borrowing' of the Arthur Dent persona was a stroke of genius, a stand-in familiar British icon while the Doctor works out who he is. I loved it.
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ReplyDeleteFor me, the biggest problem with this episode is what I call the 'Harriet Jones Paradox'. Let me explain: The events of 'Rose' happen in 2005, probably quite early on in the year by the looks of it. She comes back to London in 'Aliens of London', and a year has passed. So it should be 2006 sometime, and as we all know Harriet Jones is introduced in that episode as the MP for Flydale North, and at the conclusion of that 2-part story the Doctor remembers that Harriet Jones goes on to be elected as Prime Minister and becomes "the Architect of Britain's Golden Age". In 2006. And yet, when Rose and the newly-regenerated Doctor come back to the Powell Estate from the year 200,100, Harriet Jones is already Prime Minister. In 2005. Rose hasn't even MET Harriet Jones yet (though she obviously has from the episode's events). Mickey and Jackie's reaction to Rose's arrival provides further evidence that she didn't come back BEFORE the events of 'Aliens of London', so we have to either make 'The Christmas Invasion' happen in 2006 (which throws out all the dates for everything else that follows in the Martha/Donna seasons), or we have to push the events of 'Rose' back to 2004 and keep 'The Christmas Invasion' as happening at the end of 2005, substantially lengthening Rose's tenure with the Doctor and making a mess of the dates in her 2 seasons but preserving the latter seasons. The only other way to do it is to ignore the lines in 'Aliens of London' that state that Rose has been missing for a year.
It's just sloppy writing, and I don't think it's good enough.
The Christmas Invasion is set in 2006, and the following episodes are set one year in the future from the date of initial broadcast. Harriet Jones was elected by a landslide majority after the death of the preceding Prime Minister pretty soon after the destruction of Downing Street.
ReplyDeleteIt's sloppy thinking, and I don't think it's good enough.
In Series 5 (which aired in 2010) present-day Earth is clearly stated as being 2010, so "present day" Earth was NOT one year ahead from that point on.
DeleteSo I was researching some dates for DW canon and came across this little conversation - I feel obliged after researching the canon goes like this:
ReplyDelete"Rose" - 2005
"Aliens of London" - 2006
"The Christmas Invasion" - Winter 2006
Series 2 (continuing from 2006 obviously!) - 2007
"Smith and Jones" + series 3 Earth arc - Spring/Summer 2008
"Partners in Crime + series 4 Earth arc - Spring pre-Easter 2009
"Planet of the Dead" - Easter 2009
"The End of Time" - Christmas 2009 + New Year 2010
Series 5 - 2010
+ onwards.
So there's no Harriet Jones paradox as she was elected between AoL and TCI after the death of the Prime Minister.
So I don't believe it's sloppy writing, it's actually quite clever how it resets itself.