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Doctor Who Series 2: Episode 0The Christmas Invasion -- A Seasonal Special by Russell T. DaviesThe Christmas specials have become a way of punctuating each season of Doctor Who, as what was initially a one-off has already become a mini-tradition.
Warning: Plot spoilers follow – readers not wishing to watch the first series should look away now! The Christmas specials have become a way of punctuating each season of Doctor Who, as what was initially a one-off has already become a mini-tradition, allowing creator Russell T. Davies to apply a full stop to each series. They also allow a sense of transition from one series to another, as typified by The Christmas Invasion. With the death of the Doctor played by Christopher Ecclestone in The Parting of the Ways, the episode and the series as whole ended with a few semi-incoherent sentences from David Tennant, without allowing the viewer time to reconcile the change. However, the opening of The Christmas Invasion saw the Doctor collapse into a coma, allowing Rose and family to take centre stage, and to pose the question, “What kind of Doctor will he be?” made explicit by the Doctor himself, shortly after he regains consciousness. Britain’s first mission to Mars collides with an incoming alien spacecraft, and its contents used against humanity. On Christmas morning, a giant spacecraft arrives and hovers over London, and thousands of people sleepwalk to the edge of precipices before halting, still narcoleptic. The Prime Minister and her aides are summoned to the interior of the spacecraft, a hollowed out asteroid. Thousands of alien warriors jeer as their leader issues an ultimatum; surrender and live as slaves, or the sleepwalkers will die. For much of the first part of The Christmas Invasion, the Doctor lies inert while the Tylers survive attacks, first from a collection of psychopathic Santas armed with lethal tubas, then from a murderous Christmas tree in what the undoubtedly the best and most original scenes from the episode. Similarly Torchwood is equally unresponsive to the Prime Minister’s demands for their presence, although most of the name-checks are there to seed interest in the forthcoming TV series than for any dramatic purpose – at least until the final scenes. However, in building up the world’s helplessness in the face of apparently overwhelming force, so that he can emphasize the power of the Doctor, Davies fatally undermines both Prime Minister Harriet Jones, returning from the Aliens of London / World War Three two-parter in series one, and more importantly, the Tylers, foreshadowing the soap-operatic aspect of much of the second series episodes involving them. Having built Rose into an able assistant who is prepared to sacrifice herself to save the Doctor and the rest of the world, Davies then completely reverses direction: “You are a funny little girl,” the leader of the alien Sycorax says. It needs the revivification of the Doctor to debunk the myth of the invincible Sycorax, and in stark contrast to Ecclestone’s screwdriver-wielding Doctor, Tennant’s first action – almost – is to pick up a broadsword and to engage the Sycorax leader in combat. Tennant has kept asking “What sort of man am I?” Admitting that he can certainly talk, which is a considerable understatement – this Time Lord is a motor-mouth -- but when he loses a hand to the alien, he cries, “I’m a lucky man!” But for all the moments of humour, this is a dark, grim episode, with the human race shown in a poor light, sitting oddly ill at ease with the saccharine moments of Christmas cheer tacked onto the end.
The copyright of the article Doctor Who Series 2: Episode 0 in Sci-Fi TV Episode Summaries is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish Doctor Who Series 2: Episode 0 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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