Did you miss me?
So, this one is a bit of a trip down memory lane, as ‘The Christmas Invasion’ is the start, ‘Feast of Steven’ aside, of a retrofitted Christmas tradition. One that feels so right, that you almost believe it has been going for 55 years. One which, to me at least, makes so much sense, that I wonder at the thinking behind breaking it this year – ‘Doctor Who’ at Christmas. In our house, we will be marking it by watching a Christmas Special from another year – one that we know we are going to enjoy having peaked ahead to the ending! Anyway, back to Christmas 2005…
In the lead up to the festive period this year, we broke off our recent trip through Series 5 (the Pandorica has just opened!), having recently seen Matt’s introduction in ‘The Eleventh Hour’, to watch David’s introduction on Christmas Day 2005. And the two bear some comparison. Whilst ‘The Eleventh Hour’ is an equally confident production, it is very different both in the way in which the Doctor is introduced and in its construction. ‘The Christmas Invasion’ feels closer to something like ‘Robot’ or ‘Deep Breath’, in that the new Doctor is surrounded by old friends and ‘family’ and we see him and the impact of the change through their eyes. Unlike ‘The Eleventh Hour’, ‘The Christmas Invasion’ also holds the Doctor back, brief introduction aside – rather like the initial episodes of ‘Spearhead from Space’. ‘The Eleventh Hour’ instead puts him front and centre and we see him through the eyes of a small child, he is a whirlwind of physical comedy and eccentricity – a cross between Tigger and Frank Spencer. Here, well let’s just say David Tennant is very much the opposite, he’s much too cool for school for all of that, but his impact is equally dazzling and assured.
There is also another comparison to be had here. A while ago I reviewed Virgin’s Eighth Doctor introductory story – ‘The Dying Days’ – the story of a Martian invasion of Britain, political skulduggery in the British establishment, a British probe sent to Mars and a battle between the Doctor and the Martian leader on a giant spaceship hanging high above Trafalgar Square. This story has so much in common with this – but particularly as the Doctor disappears for much of the first half. This ‘absence of the Doctor’ allows the alien menace to become serious, we rely in ‘The Dying Days’ on the Brigadier and Benny to fight the good fight, initially losing and having to re-group, at least until the Doctor re-appears to save the day. The Doctor’s stature grows in his absence and well, the companions get lots of good material in the meantime. Here the same trick works perfectly – we have Harriet Jones, UNIT and Rose, her Mum and Mickey, all trying to fill in unsuccessfully for the new Doctor – who is lying in bed, waiting for a cup of tea, whilst Jackie Tyler peaks under the bed sheets to see whether the Doctor has more than one …
Song for Ten
Our heroes and the TARDIS end up on the Sycorax ship, surrounded and out of their depth – the death of the Major and Mr Llewelyn raising the stakes. On the 40 minute mark, as the Sycorax leader’s speech turns from Sycoraxic to English, as the TARDIS language translation starts to work again, David Tennant breezes in and steals the show, putting the alien menace firmly in their place (‘I’m busy’, ‘blood control, I haven’t seen blood control in ages!’). He instantly becomes the Doctor in a whirlwind of words and action – an intelligent, dazzling quicksilver, charming hero, unafraid of traditional action sequences (a very Pertwee sword fight with the Sycorax leader for the world) and well a fair proportion of the nation fell for him instantly. He is all geek chic and dazzling smiles, but steely with it. I remember back to his announcement and the costume reveal with almost exactly opposite feelings to the Colin Baker reveal many years before – David’s felt so right for him and Colin’s, well let’s not go there again. What we get in this story is a full 60 minutes of the Doctor is compressed into 20 minutes of pure essence of 10th Doctor.
David Tennant was to become a hugely popular figure – something I think that has maybe been a bit lost in the time since 2009. The most popular Doctor with the British public since Tom left, so much so, that at the end of his time it was even wondered if he could be replaced, there were rumours in BBC circles about the future of the show. It is difficult remembering back to the public profile of the show at this point, the front-page press coverage, the extent to which it was being talked about wherever you went and the sheer amount of merchandise on sale in UK shops – by the following Christmas the toy to have was a Cyberman helmet/voice changer. Today, well that sort of thing is the domain of specialist shops like Forbidden Planet and to be honest there really isn’t that much of it even there despite the brand-new series and Doctor. For a while, as series one ended and up to around series 5, it was possible to understand Dalekmania, as popular as Jon and Tom had been in the 1970’s – it was never like this. That popularity isn’t sustainable in the long term, but in the few years following this special, with the addition of 2 spin-off shows, well its profile was off the scale.
2005 and all that
Winding back a bit. 2005 – well it seems a long time ago now, a lot of water has passed under a lot of bridges since then. It is a year I have a lot of personal fondness for, despite some of the serious world events surrounding it. ‘Doctor Who’ came back and was wildly popular and my football team won the Champions League for the first time since 1984. It as if my entire childhood had come to life and had come to visit me in my late 30’s. If Dinosaurs had had walked the streets of London, the illusion would have been complete. Elsewhere the aftermath of the Iraq War was rumbling on, as was Afghanistan and that summer I was caught up in the 7/7 bombings in London. The 2012 Olympics had just been awarded to the city, but the celebrations didn’t last long. In those pre-banking crisis days though, the economy was booming, over-heating and austerity and the dark days of Brexit and Trump seemed far away – these days, George W Bush almost seems like a voice of sanity in comparison with the current incumbent of the White House – something we wouldn’t have believed possible back then. It is fair to say that they were very different times.
‘Doctor Who’ had returned in April that year and older people remembered why they had loved it growing up and young people discovered it for the first time and loved it as well. But days after ‘Rose’ aired we had the blow that we were already losing our new Doctor. It felt like a hammer blow to our fragile new show. Rumours started soon after that David Tennant was to take over – someone who I knew from the drama series ‘Blackpool’ (with David Morrissey) and RTD’s version of ‘Casanova’, I’d also seen him in at least one production at the RSC. He had been in a number of Big Finish stories – including a brilliant turn in the ‘Dalek Empire’ series, so I also knew that he was a fan. I have no idea what fandom thought of his appointment at the time, I wasn’t part of any forum and only knew one other fan back then, but personally, I was pretty sure he would be good.
His introduction story itself is pretty straightforward, but we get time to reconnect with Jackie and Mickey and spend some time with Rose. Rather appropriately, as Christmas is a time for family, dysfunctional or not. We have a series of Christmassy set pieces – the Robot Santa band and the homicidal Christmas tree that would become an RTD Christmas trademark. These just about work in the context of a boozy, fun Christmas special, but make no real sense within the plot! We even have a song – I have rather a soft spot for Murray Gold’s ‘Song for `Ten’ – playing as the Doctor picks his outfit in the TARDIS wardrobe, which Rose then glances over appreciatively. As ever, Russell cleverly connects the story of alien contact to the real world – Jackie packing shopping bags of food to take to the TARDIS, her ‘friend’ who keeps fruit-based snacks in his dressing gown, Mickey going around to Jackie’s for Sunday lunch or working in the garage and the ordinary people standing on the roof, waiting for the order to jump.
A Chep bit of voodoo
Set against this, the Sycorax are deliberately alien – skull faces, yellow eyes and voodoo, the humans having to translate their words. Their design is pretty effective I think – they seem a powerful protagonist, that is until the Doctor returns and puts them firmly in their place, towards the bottom rank of alien invaders. The new Doctor gets to swash his buckle, grow a new ‘fighting hand’ and defeat the Sycorax leader in a swordfight over London with the help of a satsuma. For those of you who might not know, tangerines or satsumas were often placed in children’s Christmas stockings back in my childhood – by a generation for whom an orange was the height of luxury – it was as puzzling to me back then, as it sounds like it was to Russell, we had plenty of oranges in the shops when I grew up, but for my Mum and Dad and particularly my Nan they were the stuff of dreams during the austerity of the 30’s, rationing during the war and post-war years.
Enough time now has passed since 2005 to regard this piece through the lens of nostalgia, it is now of its time. This is particularly true of the look and feel of the show. In contrast to the dark graded, sharp HD of modern drama, this is all soft, warm colours, typical of the era of the Tyler family and along with the tanned cast, it looks suspiciously like Christmas was in July that year! In some ways, the colour palette is reminiscent of popular drama of the times – Kay Mellor’s series for example, but it also feels reminiscent of the Barry Letts era, particularly Season 8 – bright and colourful earth-bound stories, surrounded by a family who we know.
It is defended!
The story is also of course political – the connection between the actions of Harriet Jones and the sinking of General Belgrano or to Tony Blair and the Labour government of the time. There is a glorious moment where the PM stops, mid-address to the nation to enquire about the royal family – only to be told ‘They are on the roof!’ – which might be the most RTD thing ever. There is also something prescient about all of this – be careful what you wish for. The Doctor brings down Harriet Jones after she orders Torchwood to destroy the departing Sycorax ship. And we are made to stop and think – because Harriet is right in some respects, good people have died and the Doctor isn’t always there – the people of Earth surely have the right to defend themselves from alien threats, rather than relying on a rather unreliable, mercurial alien? He put the idea of the Earth being so ‘noisy’ into her head himself – it is the element of doubt that directly leads to her actions, she only contacts Torchwood because he isn’t there to help.
Then he brings down an elected PM, a good person who had the interests of her people at heart. That isn’t democratic, why does have the right to do that? He can bring down despots, dictators, false gods or invaders – but an elected PM? As much as it pains me, I’d even draw the line at Thatcher – I don’t think he has that right. Well guess what, the next PM is Harold Saxon – The Master – well done Doctor…I’ll modify what I’ve just said – he does have the right to bring down the elected PM if the PM is The Master. In the real world we had the Tory-liberal coalition and austerity and now the farcical situation we have right now, something that would have been unthinkable back then. In this fictional universe we have the Doctor to thank, in our own it is the electorates of Britain and the US that have brought this on themselves, the rest of us, who actually have a brain, just have to deal with the consequences. There are no magic 6 words to help us.
All those planets, and creatures and horizons. I haven’t seem them yet! Not with these eyes…
The final images of the story are Rose and the Doctor about to head off on new adventures out in the universe, choosing a route out into the stars and then a quite dazzling, exciting trailer for series 2 to be aired in the spring of 2006 – Sarah Jane Smith, K9 and Cybermen. I remember looking forward to the next series so much. The day after ‘The Christmas Invasion’ aired, we embarked on our own adventure, we flew to Buenos Aires, on our way to travel down through Patagonia to catch a ship in Tierra del Fuego bound for Antarctica – a place I could never have dreamt of seeing as a child watching Tom’s debut in 1974 on an old black and white TV or waking up on Christmas Day in my Nan’s house, to a Christmas stocking with a satsuma nestled at the bottom. An adventure as exciting for us as a trip in the TARDIS.
They were exciting times for us, adventurous, full of hope – at least for me, you might feel otherwise. Time passes, optimism wanes and I don’t know whether that can ever be regained, but at least I had that feeling once again. When I watch something like ‘The Christmas Invasion’, a Christmas present to us from Russell and his team or particularly when I hear the music of Murray Gold from series 1 and 2, it fills me with some of the optimism I felt at that time. Things were new again, a second chance at childhood and yes, it was going to be fantastic!
A Journal of Impossible Things 