My thoughts on the Dr. Who Christmas special
- From: "Orson Wells as CitizenCain" <noemail@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 23:16:56 -0400
A wedding is beginning in a church. As the bride is being escorted down the
aisle and the wedding party looks on, she begins to glow - literally. She
cries out as she dissolves into a cloud of golden particles that streak
upward, through the ceiling. Light years away, the particles enter the
TARDIS, which is orbiting a supernova. The Doctor looks up from the console,
shocked to see the bride standing before him. All he can say is the word,
"What?" as the bride demands to know where she is.
The Doctor tells the bride she is inside the TARDIS, and that it is
impossible for someone to get inside while she is in flight. She does not
understand, thinking it is a prank kidnapping. She continues to berate the
Doctor as he works the console, threatening to sue him. She rushes to the
doors and opens them, stunned as she sees the supernova outside. She wonders
why they are not dead and the Doctor explains the TARDIS is protecting them.
He introduces himself, and she gives her name as Donna. She guesses he is an
alien, and he confirms it.
Donna demands that he bring her back to the church in Chiswick. Then, seeing
Rose's shirt, she accuses the Doctor again of kidnapping. The Doctor,
stony-faced, says that it belonged to a friend, and that he lost her. He
lands the TARDIS while, back at the church, Donna's mother and her fiancé
Lance are making frantic phone calls trying to find her.
The TARDIS has not landed in Chiswick, but just off Oxford Street. The
Doctor checks the ship, worried about its behaviour. He asks Donna if she
has been in contact with anything alien, but she has already run off,
frightened by how the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside. The
Doctor follows her, but she refuses to get back in the TARDIS. They
eventually hail a taxi, but as they have no money, it drops them off again.
Donna complains about the lack of Christmas spirit on Christmas Eve; she
cannot stand Christmas, and plans to have her honeymoon in sunny Morocco.
They run to a public telephone box, which the Doctor zaps with his sonic
screwdriver so Donna can use it to contact her family. He then goes to a
Automated Teller Machine and uses the screwdriver again to make a
withdrawal. Hearing the Christmas music of a brass ensemble, he turns to
face some familiar masked Santas, recognising them as the robotic scavengers
from the previous year's Christmas. Donna manages to borrow some money and
gets into a cab driven by another Santa - the Doctor shouts a warning, but
the cab drives off. The Santas level their "instruments" at the Doctor, but
before they have a chance to attack he uses the screwdriver to make the ATM
spill banknotes across the street. As people rush between him and the Santas
to get the money, the Doctor runs back to the TARDIS.
In the cab, the taxi moves onto a motorway, despite Donna's protests that
this is not the way to the church. Donna tugs at the Santa's hood and
discovers that it is a bronze-headed robot. As she bangs on the locked
doors, the TARDIS materialises, weaving in and out of traffic as it gives
chase. Two small children in another car watch as the Doctor calls out from
the open doors, using the sonic screwdriver to short out the robot and asks
Donna to jump. She hesitates, but the Doctor asks her to trust him, assuring
her that his "lost friend" trusted him, too, and is not dead. Donna makes
the leap, and the TARDIS soars into the sky as the children cheer.
On top of a skyscraper, they leave a smoking TARDIS, worn out from the
physical stress of flying and needing some time to recover. The Doctor gives
Donna a ring; in actuality, a bio-damper that will prevent the robotic
Santas from tracking her. The Doctor tries to determine why the Santas are
after her, asking Donna about her job and Lance. Donna explains that she and
Lance work at H.C. Clements, a security firm. She relates how six months
ago, Lance made her coffee on her first day there, despite him being the
head of Human Resources and her only a secretary. They began dating and he
proposed (in actuality, she did, and nagged him until he accepted).
The two head to the wedding reception, where she is horrified to see the
party going on without her. They bombard her with questions until she fakes
bursting into tears. As the party continues, the Doctor uses the sonic
screwdriver on a borrowed mobile phone, discovering that H.C. Clements was
owned by the Torchwood Institute. He then checks with the cameraman for
video footage of Donna's initial disappearance, and identifies the particles
she turned into as Huon particles, a source of energy that has not existed
for billions of years - and cannot be concealed by a bio-damper.
Sure enough, the Santas have surrounded the reception hall. The Doctor warns
the wedding party to move away from the Christmas trees. One of the Santas
manipulates a remote control and the baubles on the tree float away, briefly
hovering above the crowd before impacting with explosive force, sending
people scurrying for cover. The Santas line up with their weapons at the
ready, but the Doctor is at the DJ's table. He plugs his screwdriver into
the sound system, sending sonic waves which shake the robots apart.
Retrieving the remote and a robot head, he discovers that the robots are
being controlled by someone else, the signal coming from far above. He
rushes out despite Donna telling him that there are injured people that need
attention, and Donna follows. Outside, he traces the signal into space. In
space, an eight-pointed star-shaped spaceship wrapped in webbing approaches
Earth, its occupant looking down at the Doctor, calling him a clever boy for
tracing it and declaring that it will soon descend upon the Earth.
The Doctor loses the signal, and decides to investigate H.C. Clements,
getting Lance to drive him and Donna there. He checks the computer system
explaining that the firm was once owned by Torchwood, but after Torchwood
One's dissolution in the Battle of Canary Wharf someone else took control.
He discovers a lower basement not on the building plans, and the three head
down there. Taking some convenient Segways along a passage, they come across
a hatch with the Torchwood logo. The Doctor climbs the ladder within until
he emerges on one of the piers of the Thames Barrier, in the middle of the
river.
Back inside the installation, the Doctor discovers a laboratory where
Torchwood was manufacturing Huon particles in liquid form. The Doctor now
realises why Donna was pulled into the TARDIS. Her body is saturated with
Huon particles, which also happen to exist in the Heart of the TARDIS. The
particles needed to mature in a human host until the heightened stress of
her wedding day and the hormones activated by that catalysed and activated
the particles, causing her to be pulled into the TARDIS like a magnet. The
Time Lords experimented with Huon particles but gave them up, unravelled
their atomic structure and destroyed all those that remained, because they
were deadly. He promises Donna that he will reverse what has been done to
her, as he is not going to lose someone else.
One of the laboratory walls slides upward, revealing another chamber, with
more bronze robots armed with guns. As the creature's voice rings out, Lance
quietly slips away. Also in the chamber is a deep pit, stretching all the
way to the centre of the Earth, built by laser using Torchwood technology.
The Doctor challenges the creature to show itself, and it teleports down
from its ship; a huge, half-humanoid, half-spider which the Doctor
recognises being one of the Racnoss, a race thought wiped out billions of
years ago by the Fledgling Empires during the Dark Times of the universe.
The creature identifies herself as the Empress. They find H.C. Clements in
the creature's web above the pit.
Lance sneaks up behind the Empress and acts like he is going to strike her
with an axe, but at the last minute stops and laughs. He reveals that he is
working with the Empress: he had spiked Donna's coffee every day with Huon
particles, turning her into a key that will enable the Empress to regain her
ancient power. In return, the Empress promised to show him the stars. At the
Empress's order, the robots turn their guns on the Doctor, but he surmises
that if Donna can be attracted to the TARDIS, the reverse is also true. As
the robots open fire, the TARDIS materialises around the Doctor and Donna,
then dematerialises again. However, the Empress is not thwarted. Now that
she knows the correct dose of particles, she can turn Lance into the key by
dousing him with the liquid particles. The robot Santas force feed him the
liquid.
To find out why the pit goes to the centre of the Earth, the Doctor pilots
the TARDIS back 4.6 billion years into the past, when the Earth was just a
cloud of dust and rocks waiting to form. As he and Donna watch, a Racnoss
spaceship drifts into the nascent Solar System and begins to pull debris
around itself. The Racnoss ship, along with its occupants, is not just
buried at the centre of the Earth - it is the centre. In the present, the
concentration of Huon particles in Lance begins pulling the TARDIS back.
Landing back in the laboratory, the Doctor uses the extrapolator to move the
TARDIS to an adjacent corridor. However, Donna is taken away by a robot and
the Doctor finds himself facing another armed one.
Donna and Lance are webbed to the ceiling above the pit. The Empress
activates the particles in Donna's and Lance's bodies, which streak downward
to awaken the Racnoss sleeping in their ship. The Empress eagerly waits for
her children to rise and take their first feeding. She tells Lance that he
was quite impolite to his lady friend (Donna) and that she (the Empress)
does not approve. For this, she slices Lance free of the web, and he falls,
screaming into the pit. The Empress's spaceship descends towards London, and
the wondrous looks that people give the star-shaped craft turn into panicked
horror as it begins to fire lightning bolts down at the street.
A robot walks in the room, but the Empress is quick to recognise the Doctor
in disguise. Unmasking, he frees Donna with the sonic screwdriver, but she
misses swinging into his arms and lands on the floor instead. The Doctor
gives the Empress an ultimatum - he will find a planet for her and her
children if she ends this. The Empress declines, and the Doctor warns her
that in that case, what happens next is her own doing. She orders the robots
to fire, but the Doctor deactivates them with the remote control. The Doctor
reveals to the Empress the name of his home world. It is far away and long
since gone, but its name lives on - Gallifrey. The Empress screams in rage
that his people murdered the Racnoss.
The Doctor takes out some of the unexploded Christmas baubles. He tosses
them in the air, using the remote control and throwing them into the
surrounding pipes and walls, letting the Thames flood into the base and into
the pit. The Empress screams amidst the flood and flame about her children.
Donna asks the Doctor to stop, but he continues to stand there impassively
before grabbing Donna and racing for safety. The Empress teleports back to
her ship, vowing revenge. However, now that the Huon energy has been
exhausted, the Empress is defenceless. In the streets, tanks take up
position and, under orders from a "Mr Saxon", fire on the Empress's ship,
blowing it to pieces. The Doctor and Donna reach the top of the barrier
piers, to see the Thames completely drained.
The Doctor takes Donna back to her parents' house, but Donna is still
disconsolate, as she has missed her wedding, lost her job and her fiancé all
in the same evening. The Doctor tries to cheer her up by sending a burst of
TARDIS energy to make it snow, then offers her a chance to travel with him.
However, Donna refuses, saying the life is not for her; the Doctor frightens
her with his abilities and the chaos that he seems to be always in the
middle of. Before he finally leaves, Donna asks the Doctor to find someone,
because sometimes he needs someone to stop him. She asks who his friend was,
and in an broken and emotionally charged voice he replies, "Her name was
Rose." He steps back into the TARDIS, and before Donna's eyes, it shoots
straight into the sky, trailing snow.
Sorry...guess I should have said SPOILER?
.
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