Doctor Who Series 3: Episode 0

The opening scenes of ‘The Runaway Bride’ take place simultaneously with the Doctor’s emotional farewell to Rose, now stranded on an alternate earth with the rest of the Tyler family.

Meanwhile, back on earth, the congregation gather in the church, to the strains of ‘Here Comes the Bride.’ A glowing Donna (Catherine Tate) is accompanied up the aisle by her father, when she starts to glow, but this time literally – glow golden. Moments later she vanishes.

She materialises in the middle of the TARDIS, to the consternation of both she and the Doctor, at the moment at which the second series ended.

Donna is like a small earthquake; nothing, no interstellar abduction, nor ‘Martian’ as she terms the Doctor, is going to keep her from her wedding. But when they return to earth, their attempts are frustrated, especially when she is kidnapped by the same sinister Father Christmases as were in The Christmas Invasion, and a thrilling rescue is needed on the M4 (motorway). Donna has to jump from a moving taxi to a moving TARDIS, marking the moment at which she has to start trusting the Doctor.

Eventually they reach the reception, which they find has gone ahead without Donna, only for the party to be attacked by the returning Father Christmases.

The Doctor is bemused as to why Donna is the subject of intergalactic attention; confronted by her ordinariness, he checks on her employers, and discovers that she works in a building owned by the mysterious Torchwood organization.

Bride, groom and Doctor descend into the bowels of the building, and deeper still, to discover that Donna is being used as an incubator for an age-old form of energy. The question is by whom?

The Doctor has to travel back with Donna to the creation of the earth itself to get the answers, and Donna learns a terrible truth about her marriage and what is planned for her. She -- like the Doctor – has to mourn a lost love, and he distracts her, just as she inadvertently distracted him.

Once again, a huge spaceship hovers over London on Christmas Day, but Davies clearly learnt lessons from The Christmas Invasion, which at times suffered from a lack of focus, and lagged in the early scenes. By contrast, the pace of The Runaway Bride is relentless, especially whenever it looks as if the Doctor is about to mourn Rose.

The set pieces are excellent, without overwhelming the story, as happened too often the year before, while Tait made a feisty companion. That she declined to accompany him allowed the episode to feel much more like a self-contained story, and less like an instalment from a serial.

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