The Christmas Invasion

"The Christmas Invasion" seems to encapsulate Russell T. Davies' vision for "Doctor Who" better than any of the other episodes done thus far. It is by turns silly, scary, dramatic, epic, witty, and tragic, and then all of those things again in another order, and then again, and so on. Most of the time this works really well and that's what's made "The Christmas Invasion" such a great show to watch, and the one or two times that it doesn't quite come off aren't enough to totally derail it (but I'll mention those bits all the same).

The story owes much to one of RTD's favorite stories, "Spearhead from Space." It's got UNIT fending off a new alien invasion, Auton-like everyChristmasDay-looking robots, and a regeneration to contend with. He wisely chooses to mimic "Spearhead"'s structure by holding off on the full reveal of the new Doctor for a very long time indeed, and as a result all of the other characters (and by this time the audience) are in such a "we need the Doctor!" state by then that his grand entrance becomes all the more grand and we have a ball following him as he easily romps through the Sycorax plan and puts paid to it.

It's just as well then that the best thing in the episode is David Tennant's debut performance itself, or else all that build-up would've been a bit anticlimactic. But he really is tremendous, isn't he? He seems to get by on his one-liners alone for a good long while, like "You just can't get the staff" or roaring "I DON'T KNOW" back at the Sycorax leader, or his ramble about the "great big threatening... Button!" Or best of all, "Sorry, that's The Lion King." He seems to be going to be one of those Doctors that loves the humor-as-a-distraction tactic, where the tactic part is foremost in his mind. Although, come to think of it, he is just having a great old time some of the time too, such as when he regenerates his hand and exclaims "It's a fightin' hand!" in an American accent.

He has also got a very hard streak in him which should be fascinating to watch. This comes up twice... first when he sends the Sycorax leader falling to his death and saying "No second chances, I'm that sort of a man," and second and more fascinatingly when he tears down Harriet Jones after she uses the secret Torchwood weapon to destroy the retreating Sycorax ship. One need only look at the level of debate that's sprung up over this decision of his to see how fascinating this was, as everyone takes a side as to whether he was right or whether Harriet was. My take on it is that there's no question that each of them acted completely in character; Harriet made the human decision and the Doctor made the Doctor decision. Which one is the truly right thing to do though? Personally, I'm with the Doctor on all counts, as I usually am. His decision gets even more fascinating when you consider that his taking down of Harriet's premiership is a change to the history he's already told us about back in "World War Three," where he indicated she'd be PM for three terms. _That's_ how angry he was with her on this one... angry enough to break what would've been the First Law of Time if the Time Lords were still around, and that says to me that the Tenth Doctor will place his morals above everything and everyone else. This holds a lot of potential for great stories in the next two seasons (at least).

Going back to Harriet Jones for a moment, I was very heartened to see a level of political sophistication in the writing here that you don't often get in today's polarized media environment. I was among many who cheered her dig at the US President early on when she sent the message to him that "he's not my boss, and he's certainly not turning this into a war." The easy way to write this would've been to just leave that there to go on saying "our politicians should be better than America's," but then we get to the end of the story and Harriet herself makes that decision to destroy the retreating ship in the name of national/planetary security, the sort of decision we'd expect to see from the US administration, and here the script seems to be saying "most world leaders put in this position would also make the wrong choice." And I cheer at this piece of writing as well. This doesn't mean I'll be voting Republican anytime soon, or in fact ever, but I do appreciate the perspective RTD brings us here. There's a lot of anti-Americanism in the world today, and while that directed against our foreign policies is completely justified in my view, I bristle at the how knee-jerk and prejudicial so much of it is, as I suspect that whatever nation was in the no. 1 spot today would be making many of the same mistakes. RTD seems to get this too, and I thank him for writing that into this story.

Changing tack entirely, we have the story of Rose, Mickey, Jackie, and Christmas at home. This material was all a lot of fun even if some of the plot starts to creak here if you stare at it really hard. There was another balancing act to be done here of putting Rose back into the standard companion's role from where she was at the end of "The Parting of the Ways" while at the same time not making her seem like a weakling, and the story seems to have done that effortlessly. Or is it Billie Piper's acting that does it so effortlessly? Probably equally both, really. Piper's got this character down inside-out by this point, and at the same time the writing has her not just being a "companion" but showing more experience as any second-season companion should. She's long past the stage of making bad decisions and though she doesn't quite know what to do some of the time (because she's not got the Doctor's knowledge), she doesn't make any mistakes and keeps things together nevertheless, i.e. realizing immediately that there's something up with the sinister Santas and why they'd be after her and Mickey, or thinking to check both the Doctor's hearts, or realizing how dangerous his blood could be to history, or putting the sonic screwdriver into his hand during the tree attack, or taking everyone into the TARDIS for safety when all other options are bad. I also loved the bit where she has to play at being the Doctor herself and basically just quotes every alien name she can think of from last season at the Sycorax leader.

And what about those Sycorax and the eponymous Christmas Invasion? This was exactly the right mix of a great big epic Independence Day-style alien invasion and "Doctor Who" alien cheesy fun. It starts with that hysterical moment when the news footage is tuning in the space probe's transmission and the whole world sees "Raarrgh!" and just builds from there. They are by turns post-modernly funny ("Sycorax rock!") and really scary what with the whole genius idea of them getting every A+ blooded person up onto a roof or height to jump from if they don't get what they want (and didn't those crowd shots just look _amazing_?). This whole mix is wonderfully encapsulated in the moment when the leader starts to take his helmet off and Mr. Llewellyn says "they might be like us!" only to reveal a nasty-looking alien face beneath. And they've got this fabulously big-looking menacing "ship" that looks like they've just hollowed out a big asteroid and put some engines in it while at the same time they've got a pseudo-Klingon culture of trial by combat and champions and tactics that aren't really as nasty as they at first appeared (the blood control). I loved them, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of them again in another setting, perhaps their home planet or vs. some other creatures. Their bark was worse than their bite, and there's always more potential with a set of characters like this.

The direction was as top-notch as James Hawes' earlier effort... I particularly like his sense of scale when it came to the big outdoor shots, from the Sycorax ship hovering over London to the crowds of people first walking and then standing on the edges of buildings, to the fight scenes set against what looks like nothing but sky. The music by Murray Gold was some of his best as well. With just one rather glaring exception, I thought he nailed every scene right on the head this time (and more especially in the "Children in Need" prelude... I really loved what he did there).

As I've heaped so much praise already that the episode's about to go into a diabetic coma, I'll turn now to my list of mostly small quibbles with the episode. I'll start with that glaring music exception. Why does Murray Gold go for brass and trumpets in the scene where Rose breaks down and cries over the loss of her old Doctor? Trumpets don't say "sadness" in my musical vocabulary. Also, the swordfight choreography between the Doctor and the Sycorax leader didn't come off looking at all well. I liked the movement around the cave and then outside onto the edge of the ship, but the actual blows looked very clumsy by today's action standards, or even by those of the Pertwee era (although it still manages to beat that anemic-looking swordfight in "The King's Demons"). I didn't care for the teleport special effect either, as it looks far too much like that used in the "Power Rangers" shows. The CGI and effects were otherwise very, very impressive.. oh, except for the Guinevere One probe, which looked too computer-generated for my taste.

I've mentioned how the story so rapidly turns from funny to tragic to something else and so on, and most of the time that really worked, but the one time that it really didn't work is the only blight on the episode big enough for me to take a point off my rating of it, and that's the too-violent tonal wrench we're whiplashed through when at the end we go from Harriet's genocide and the Doctor's "just six words" bit to suddenly happy music as he finds his new clothes in the TARDIS wardrobe and then Christmas dinner at the Tyler's flat, and then back again to the awful aftermath of the genocide as "Schindler's List"-like ash falls on the area like snow and then back to fun again as the Doctor and Rose peer upwards at where they'll go next. I can't be having much fun at a mass funeral, I have to say, and I'm a little shocked that they let this go through as it is. This really jars.

And, one other note about this ending, with the alien ship's death throes being seen by the Doctor and company at Christmas... didn't we get this exact same thing in Big Finish's "Winter for the Adept"? Except that there it was written much more sensitively... or at least it was after Peter Davison objected to the original text and got them to change it. I'll give one point to Andrew Cartmel over Russell T. Davies on this occasion. :)

And I should also say a great big "hooray!" for the restoration of the middle-8 to the closing title music, even if we couldn't hear the music properly owing to the continuity announcer talking over it. I have already said that I don't care for how orchestral the closing music now gets though as I think it's now drowning out the Derbyshire radiophonic swoops sounds, but I now wonder if that's a transition that's in fact more gradual through the piece and we just can't hear the swoops earlier on because again the announcer was talking over them. The opening music has been redone as well, and there the balance is perfect.

Overall then, 9 out of 10 for "The Christmas Invasion," with only that strangely set-against-itself ending being a blight on the story to my mind. And welcome to the TARDIS Mr. David Tennant. I agree with your character, that it is gonna be fantastic.