The Christmas Invasion

David Tennant's opening scenes in the Children in Need special were engaging and very amusing, perhaps slightly over-acted in places but this is par for the course in regeneration sequences (cue Tom Baker's introduction in Robot, exasperatedly empathizing with Harry Sullivan being too busy a man to worry about someone's new ears, and hilariously though ludicrously jumping with him in unison over a skipping rope). What was certain to me was that Tennant was a far more suitable choice of actor to play the Doctor than Eccleston had been despite his acting talents. Eccleston for me was just too earnest and human for the role, and the least equipped out of any of the incarnations to convince with eccentricity, for me one of the most important idiosyncrasies for any Doctor (Davison comes a close second to that deficit, though proved to be a very memorable and worthy incarnation by the end of his tenure). I'll remember Eccleston's Doctor chiefly for his confrontation with the Dalek in Dalek, livid and Ralph Fiennes-esque, disturbingly but powerfully unDoctorish – certainly his Doctor was the most distinctively different to any other incarnation, but unfortunately for me, largely to the detriment of my rating of him. I'd say he had the edge over Colin Baker's bungled portrayal, and was only slightly less credible than Davison and McCoy. But in my opinion the first four Doctors, yes, even Hartnell (whose original portrayal in Unearthly Child was the most memorable for me after Patrick Troughton and Gothic-era Tom Baker), still tower above the Ninth: their gravitas was more credible, their humour more affecting.

Tennant instantly jumps out as an obviously more suitably cast Doctor to me, perhaps almost slightly over-doing the eccentric element, but fitting his casting far more comfortably than Eccleston did even up to the end of his tenure (though his farewell speech to Rose was genuinely well acted and quite moving). As other reviewers have noted already, there's definitely some element of the Second and Fourth Doctors to the Tenth, notably Troughton's impishness and Baker's palpable alienness – especially when he stares wide-eyed and silent at Rose as she struggles to come to terms with his new identity. There's also Davison's youthfulness, symbolized also by a similar pair of white trainers. I'm just not too keen on his hairstyle, a bit too trendy for my taste – the leather jacket too added to this radically different Doctorial manifestation, making him resemble a Jarvis Cocker-style Brit Pop frontman.

Onto RTD's first installment for the Tenth incarnation. Well, predictable irritants such as the superfluous return of Jackie and that bloody council estate again, this episode's general tone was a relief for me, as it was overall fairly straight, without any obviously cringe-worthy moments as in RTD's previous Earth invasion shambles, Aliens of London. Finally he proved he could create a fairly convincing alien race without any scatological aspects to undermine its sense of menace. The episode cavorts forth typically briskly and hyperventilates its 'story' in the true way of modern TV which makes stories such as Earthshock seem relatively slow-moving when watched now. I suppose in the case of one-dimensional action stories, this is partly excusable considering the time limitation, however, some more of a build up with the emerging festive threats would have added to the credibility of the invasion scenario. Though puzzlingly plagiarized from the machinations of the Autons (Rose, Terror of the Autons, Spearhead from Space), I thought the tuba-torching Santas and the spinning Christmas Tree were very well realized and actually faintly menacing – but I think RTD may as well have just had the Autons behind it, giving him a chance with a clearly extended budget this time, to do those foes full justice in tying up the loose, or rather non-existent ends, of the non-story Rose, and also maybe having one more stab at the perpetually 'unrealized' Nestene Consciousness. But no, cue a new alien race from the rather limited imagination of the producer: the Sycorax look convincing and are quite sinister, but they have nothing unusual about them, nothing distinctively Doctor Who-ish like the aliens of the old series (Sontarans, Ice Warriors, Autons etc.), but come across as basically Star Trek-style aliens speaking in a lingo strongly reminiscent of Greedo or Jabba the Hutt's language from Star Wars. Their ship is extremely well realized but again, nothing overly original, reminding one obviously of Hitchikers. One does get the feeling of other writers' and directors' previous ideas being brought in together to form one big rehashed potpourri, in the JK Rowling vein.

This lack of disctinctiveness continues with the second and equally nondescript appearance of UNIT, now wearing red berets with a newly designed logo which makes them look like Paratroopers. What happened to the blue of Battlefield? No attempts to produce a 21st century Brigadier equivalent from their blank-faced ranks – Harriet Jones now fills in for the semi-cooperative Earth/military authority and yes, as one reviewer has pointed out, the end scenes of this episode are strongly reminiscent of The Silurians.

I suppose considering this one is set at Xmas it's inevitable to continue the tedious Tyler soap opera which unapologetically monopolized much of last series. But this really is an element which should be gradually phased out in my opinion if the series is to truly compete with the original, and also to allow at least this incarnation to have room to be substantially developed. So too must Rose eventually leave so the Doctor can reclaim his series fully. It's ironic that, as with the original format of the programme, this reinvention kicked off focusing as much on the companion as on the Doctor, but the difference is that Susan was apparently of the Doctor's race also, whereas Rose is ultimately simply a human companion accidentally and ultimately ephemerally linked to the core character, and so to the series. I was shocked when one newspaper referred to Doctor Who starring Billie Piper and co-star David Tennant. And we used to think Ace had too much attention.

When Tennant finally revives (from a cup of tea, a nice parochial touch linking not only to the old series in its inimitable, Lewis Carrolesque Englishness, but also of course to the Hitchikers references, dressing gown and pyjamas and a mention of Arthur Dent), the episode lifts considerably from what up until that moment, give or take the odd scene with Santas, is a pretty run-of-the-mill, rather dull 'story line'. Tennant's humour is genuinely humorous (not embarrassing like some of those gurning Eccleston moments), especially when he seems pointlessly preoccupied by the apple in his pocket. He also takes command very quickly and displays a convincing sense of authority, rather than the face-contorting turns of a man on the brink of a breakdown of his predecessor. His cheeky nonchalance towards the Sycorax leader is very funny, though maybe a little bit too funny and thus suspense-killing – it's also hard to understand why aforementioned alien and his legion comrades just stand around doing nothing while the Doctor takes his time adjusting to his new persona and chatting with old friends. The sword-fighting denouement is well executed and probably as filmic as Who has ever looked – though not necessarily a wholly good thing. I suspect, incidentally, this episode is on a higher definition film camera than the previous series. Certainly this episode was hard to beat in the area of visual spectacle in the history of Who, but one feels this expense might have been better used on a more imaginative storyline.

I'm not keen either on new catchphrases such as 'That's the kind of man I am' – again the terrestrialisation of the Timelord initiated shambolically in the Doctor Who Movie and then maintained quite excessively throughout the Ninth Doctor's incarnation, is hinting its ugly head again, though thankfully the Tenth Doctor convinces sufficiently in alienness to distract from such scriptorial dubiousness.

Yes, the script. Well, I know this story is meant to be an introductory romp, but a line such as 'there's a great big alien invasion and I just don't know what to do' from Rose to Jackie is just plain banged-it-out-and-didn't-redraft-it bad scripting. The script of this episode was quite amateur, unimaginative and dull overall, apart from some of the Doctor's more quirky speeches and a few well-thought-out lines such as Harriet Jones saying 'they've brought in an Act banning my autobiography' when someone quizzes her on her apparent incredulity regarding alien life-forms. Those sorts of lines work well by cementing the credibility and continuity of the new series, and I commend RTD for giving sufficient thought to the believability of his reinvention by putting them in. I will also commend him for producing a pretty straight and fairly menacing episode thankfully free of any childishness this time round. It's still a great pity though that the new series' tinny incidental music is prevalent, gratingly upbeat and lacking in atmosphere, emphatically filmic, or cod-filmic, but ultimately quite appalling (only beaten by Keff McCulloch's atrocities of the McCoy era).

But the question remains, is this really good Doctor Who? My answer is, not really. We now have a potentially very good Doctor, much more in the vein of previous incarnations, suitably eccentric and alien, charismatic, elfin, impish, very amusing but who also adds one new aspect to the character, that of insatiable energy, which is a welcome new element to the character. He's almost a Timelord on speed at times. But scriptwise this was another lazy effort from a man who is puzzlingly much more creative with scripts outside his own series (re Casanova). At the end of the day the script is pretty much everything and despite the gloss, pace and energy of this episode, The Christmas Invasion still to my mind falls far short of the writing standards of most of the old series. Though having said that, from some of the teasers at the end of the episode, it looks like Doctor Who's long history of peerlessly imaginative storytelling (only ever near-matched by PJ Hammond's Sapphire and Steel) has not yet run out of steam, and may indeed be about to undergo a renaissance from the general averageness of last series with some tantalizingly unusual story titles and plots (Girl in the Fireplace etc.) echoing those unsung glory days of the early Davison era, when anything from mathematically-created cities to sailing ships in space was possible.

4/10