Tony’s hanging baubles
on his tree.
There have been some very
strange Doctoral debuts over the course of the last fifty-three years.
Troughton went off darkly burbling, and the production team, unsure whether the
viewers would actually buy the first, audacious use of regeneration, anchored
him with one of the strongest Dalek scripts in the show’s history. Pertwee
began his time falling unconscious and being hospitalised for a good chunk of
his first adventure, and then had to sell the new raft of restrictions on the
storytelling – the endless wanderer through time and space would be trapped on
Earth in the 1970s! Tom Baker made the part his own immediately, despite a
script written mostly for a Pertwee-based omniDoctor before he was cast.
Davison had post-regenerative amnesia and unravelled his own past to find his
new self in the mystifying nonsense that was Castrovalva. It got worse – Colin
Baker was a violence-prone psycho bombast in a coat that was so naff, even the
80s hated it! Sylvester McCoy played the spoons on Kate O’Mara’s chest, fell
over the furniture, explained the plot, such as it was, and wore a sweater
utterly covered in question-marks (subtlety was at a premium during the 80s,
and the BBC couldn’t afford any). Paul McGann didn’t appear for the first third
of his inaugural story, spent time in hospital and had post-regenerative
amnesia, as a nod to a couple of his predecessors.
Then came New Who, with
its pacey launch, its quirky but deeply troubled, survivor-guilt Doctor, and
his redemption through what is undeniably a love story with his companion,
despite Rose’s assertion that he’s “better than that”.
So how in the name of
Omega and Rassilon do you top that? Oh, and make the story Christmassy into the
bargain, as you launch the brand new Doctor and the brand new British tradition
of a Doctor Who Christmas Special all in one?
Oh.
Really?
You have the Doctor fall
unconscious in the pre-credits sequence, wake up once, briefly, then fall
unconscious again till the last ten minutes.
Really? Is that going to
work?
This was New Who’s Troughton
moment. Eccleston and Piper had conquered the cynics, turned a nation of women
onto Doctor Who by the equality of the companion and got us all weeping or
clutching our hearts with their chemistry, their loving care of each other, and
that goodbye. Now some new interloper was coming into the Tardis, all teeth and
spiky hair and the body of a whippet on a crash diet. How could he possibly take the place of everyone’s
new Doctor? Especially if he was going to lay about in bed doing very little
for the vast majority of the episode?
The fact that it worked at
all was down to the strength of the new format. The Ninth Doctor had made
friends in high places, friends on a council estate, and…well, not exactly
friends with Jackie Tyler. The first Doctor Who Christmas Special would take
the more traditional Eastenders Christmas Special, and stick some aliens on
top, like skull-mask-wearing fairies on a spinning Christmas tree. The episode
revolves around two parallel threats – the aliens (comin’ over ’ere, takin’ our
satellites, messin’ about with our blood – the Sycorax are basically the
acceptable face of UKIP), who add a hard, pre-Torchwood Torchwood edge to their
threat when people around the world go up high and seem about to jump to their
deaths, a genuinely scary thought over one’s soggy sprouts – and the Doctor,
seemingly comatose and drawing the threat to him, and therefore to the Earth.
His friends try to protect him, keep him safe, and also in a parallel thread,
are negotiating with the aliens – the imprint of the Ninth Doctor is everywhere throughout The Christmas
Invasion, which is fitting for a nation of fans still in mourning for their new
favourite Time Lord.
The fact that David
Tennant is made to wait until the last ten minutes to really come into his own
and give us a blueprint for his
Doctor is an extraordinary risk, and ultimately an unnecessary one – but oh,
how it pays off. When the Sycorax begin speaking English, it starts a tingle
that swells with the music. The Tardis doors open. And then – and only then – is the Ninth Doctor gone,
because there, fully formed, is the potential of the Tenth. And off he goes,
like a wind-up toy. Where Eccleston’s Doctor was by turns silly and profound,
Tennant’s barely pauses for breath, has a streak of comic madness in his face,
and seems to treat the Sycorax, bless ’em, like a bunch of quaint old springer
spaniels, with their blood control and everything. Is you a clever old Sycorax ’en? Yes you is, Big Fella, yes you is…
Then he grabs a sword,
unexpectedly. Still finding out who he is, he challenges the Sycorax leader to
a sword-fight! And suddenly the
cheerful chatterbox draws in and focuses and becomes our Time Lord Defender,
and it’s all so very believable. This is the Doctor. Of course it is.
Christopher Who?
This new Doctor’s hand is
clearly a fightin’ hand, and he defeats the alien warlord, snarls at him to
take his command – and the moment it’s agreed the Sycorax will bog off and
leave us in peace, the chirpy chatterbox is back.
Or is he? The instant the
Sycorax leader tries to go back on his word, and armed with nothing but a
Satsuma, this new Doctor despatches him to a fall to his death, without even
turning around. ‘No second chances – I’m that sort of a man.’
It’s a stark warning, and
it’s necessary because the chatterbox Doctor could all too easily become all
froth and fun, but it’s a balancing act Tennant carries off with an aplomb
beyond his years. Yes, it’s time for the Doctor to lighten up after his
post-Time War angst, but don’t ever cross this High Noon Doctor. You get one
chance to be a good sport. You don’t take it, he will bring down your world
without a second thought and you’ll only have yourself to blame.
It’s a warning Harriet
Jones should have learned to take. Back home on the Powell Estate, she makes a
tough call and kills the retreating Sycorax. It weighs heavily on her, but the
new Doctor is merciless. He brings her down with just six words, then swans off
for Christmas Dinner – a more inherently sociable Time Lord, we notice, and one
who pulls off the ultimate regenerative trick: getting along with Jackie Tyler!
The Christmas Invasion
ends by cheekily framing the fan’s dilemma in Rose’s – ‘I thought you might not
want to come…y’know….cos I changed.’ But by this time, we’ve been thrilled and
chilled, we’ve laughed at homicidal Christmas trees and gasped at blood control
and electro-whip death. We’ve felt the loss of our Doctor so keenly, and been
blown away by ten minutes of the pure promise of this chatterbox,
Tigger-bouncing nerdcool new man. Plus whoah, he looks good in that coat. So
when he offers Rose – and us – the chance to come with him to new stars, new
adventures and new dangers, we, like her, can do nothing but grab the new
Doctor’s hand, and step into the box. The universe is waiting, and here we go
again.
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