The Christmas Invasion: Ranking - 104

    The Christmas Invasion

(Christmas Special, Dr 10 with Rose, 25/12/2005, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Russell T Davies, director: James Hawes)

Rank: 104

In an emoji: 🟠

  '...Oi Sid Sycorax, you told me that Doctor was 'armless and he went and turned my Slitheen children into an egg. That wasn't very 'armless was it?! Oh...that kind of 'armless. I understand everything now. Well, everything except timelord biology...' 

Of all the 320-ish episodes of Dr Who out there this is the one I’d have least like to have had to write. Put yourself in Russell T Davies’ shoes: the BBC had such little faith in this remake series that they were expecting to only make one series. Everyone has put so much effort into that one season that they desperately need a rest and Russell’s used all his best ideas up, figuring he might never get another chance to make his favourite show. Only, just as things are grinding to a halt, the episodes have finally been transmitted and they’re an instant colossal hit, taking even its believers by surprise by how quickly the general public have taken to this faded and half-forgotten show. Now the BBC are asking for a Christmas episode (the first since 1965! And that one – a sort of Z Cars and silent movie spoof in ‘The Daleks Masterplan’ was, erm, not at all like this one!) so they can beat their rivals at what must surely be the most coveted timeslot of the year when everyone will be watching. Only because Christmas is coming there’s a turnaround of just a few weeks to get writing. Oh and it has to be a standalone episode so that people who only watch Dr Who at Christmas and haven’t seen the series before or are just flicking channels unable to move post Christmas dinner can be up to speed without needing to know too much about what happened before. Oh and as the series will be off the air for months there can’t really too much of a cliffhanger into the next story either. All that and it has to preferably stuff in as many Christmas references as possible. And be as serious as befits an episode that follows on from such an emotional finale. And be as silly as befits a mass audience watching over a Christmas Dinner. Oh and the coveted radio Times Christmas issue is dedicating its front cover to the special (the first time it had been given over to a single programme since 1989 – and that was the more obviously festive ‘Carols From King’s). No pressure then! 

 Only things aren’t even that simple: the actor playing the Doctor has just quit and the new episode has to be written to introduce Christopher Eccleston’s replacement, with a whole new persona to invent which has to contrast against the old one but not so much that it feels like a different person. Will audiences in the 21st century even accept a different actor in the same role? We long-termies were primed for change in the star every few years but no other series changes its lead roles quite as often as Dr Who and gets away with it and that was back then; the revival is still so new and finely balanced even a slight change could cause it to topple over and collapse and this is a whopping big one. All that while under pressure of how long the series gets to continue for as nothing has been signed past series two. If I was showrunner I’d be running away screaming to the nearest quarry to hide and live out the rest of my days in isolation, but thankfully Russell T Davies is braver than me and more than up to the challenge, delivering a script that manages to be all things to all men (and indeed timelords): ‘The Christmas Invasion’ is the writer at a personal high after his biggest success in a career littered with them, a brilliant piece of standalone television that’s easily my favourite of the many festive specials we’ve had in the now 18 Christmasy stories we’ve had since and the perfect introduction for the 10th Doctor. It’s a perfectly seasoned dish that balances everything just right: this is a story everyone can enjoy, no matter how much Dr Who they know or don’t know, that is full of fun and games and seasonal silliness but also some truly deeper yet still Christmassy moments relating to the importance of family and friends and which also throws in a new scary monster, with a first half that takes the time to properly mourn the ‘old’ era before fully making way for the ‘new’ with a breathtaking second half that’s one of the best introductions any Doctor had to the role. 

 Most impressive of all is how Russell T handles the regeneration. He’d been adamant in interviews before the series came back that he was going to learn from the mistakes of the 1996 ‘TV Movie/That Weird American Thing With Paul McGann’ to put the plot first and continuity second. That story put newcomers off by having the plot wait while the 7th Doctor died and the 8th Doctor spent half the running time recovering and acting goofy (some would say he still is by the end), only really coming into focus at the end. Initially Russell got round this problem in ‘Rose’ by having the 9th Doctor fully recovered and running around (well physically anyway: the scars of where he’s been when the show was off the air take the whole of that first year to heal). I assumed Russell was going to play the same trick here and have an ‘unseen adventure’ where the Doctor got up to speed (perhaps told in a book or a comic strip) but no: cleverly he writes this story so that the Doctor is effectively put on hold while the plot takes shape without him leaving a Doctor-sized hole at its core and its him who has to catch up at speed, which he does, quite brilliantly, in what’s still arguably David Tennant’s greatest scene, outwitting the baddy in words and actions while still in someone else’s pyjamas. Returning the Doctor to the Powell Estate, scene of many a 9th Doctor adventure, makes us feel his absence all the more and helps us compare and contrast with what came before. Rose, our identification person, goes through all the same doubts and fears as we do (is he dying? Is he the same person? Will he still love her? Will things be the same?) and the same shock (apparently the Doctor never mentioned the fact he could regenerate during their time together, which makes her wonder what else she doesn’t know about him) while for the first time someone in power actively pleads for the Doctor to come forward and save them from the Sycorax threat that’s been cooking up nicely during the first half. By doing this Russell shows just how badly we need the Doctor - and new fans get to feel a little of the pain we old-timers went through during the ‘wilderness years’ when the show was off the air – while Rose gazes at the person she loves fading away in bed and get’s all sad. Instead of ignoring it Russell makes the plot all about the Doctor’s absence, the 10th Doctor every bit as ill and out of it as the 3rd Doctor was in ‘Spearhead From Space’ (clearly a seminal story for Russell, given how heavily ‘Rose’ borrows from it as well) and the 5th Doctor in ‘Castrovalva’, as dotty as the 4th Doctor in ‘Robot’ and as manic as the 7th Doctor in ‘Time and the Rani’. Rose is desperate: she doesn’t know what to do to make the Doctor better and even mum Jackie and boyfriend Mickey start acting kinder towards him. 

 Bad timing for a mass invasion by a new race named The Sycorax then who are one of Russell’s simplest yet still intriguing alien races. They look amazing and suitably alien, while the CGI scenes of multiple Sycorax chanting makes good use of the much higher budget the BBC’s flagship show now has and is an obvious showcase for the Christmas trailer.– Shakespeare invented the name for ‘The Tempest’, a character with blue eyes banished to an island that’s never seen – no, I can’t get that to quite work either (though apparently the bard ‘imself can, judging by events in ‘The Shakespeare Code’). Will probably got the idea from Latin anyway, where ‘Syco’ means ‘pig’ and ‘rax’ means ‘crow’. Or ‘thieving swines’ to put it another way. Although in body shape they’re more like bipedal horses, especially their skulls (a detail in the original script: what with the horse-skeleton in ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ it’s beginning to look as if Russell has a phobia about dead horses). What we think are their faces turn out just to be war-masks in a neat bit of DW shock-horroring that gives us two reveals for the price of one (Russell repeating the joke of the Sontarons – who haven’t made their comeback in the new-look series just yet – by making the audience think that we’re looking at their faces but it turns out that it’s just a helmet, with a head the same shape as the helmet behind that). They’re more Roman-like than The Romans are (the Dr Who version anyway), with their gladiators and amphitheatres and love of combat (I’m just grateful we don’t have a Sycorax lion to contend with too). They’re really good at talking the talk: they seem far more threatening than the likes of the Slitheen and Jagarafess ever did and the way they casually zap Earth dignitaries makes them instantly dangerous – the part they shoot the major general is one of those real I-can’t-believe-they-just-did-that moments. Although the best detail is when their speech is being translated: ominously they use the same word interchangeably for ‘humans’ and ‘cattle’, which gives you some idea of what they think of us before they even get here. The Sycorax have a strong plan too: to control humanity via their blood groups after coming across a space probe ‘Guinevere One’ sent out into the stars. In our real world we’ve sent out craft like Voyager with everything an alien would need to know about life on Earth (including a vinyl record with sound effects, music greetings, star chars and illustrations of naked men and women – I like to think the first alien that gets it sends a message back saying that it’s too early in our relationship for us to start sending nudes while taking the opera music as insults and requesting more Chuck Berry); to date we’ve never sent a probe into space with a sample of our blood but it’s the sort of thing we’d do, no question. The Sycorax doesn’t know about different blood-types though so it only works on a third of the population with the blood group A+; even so that’s a third of the Earth they have under their control, standing on the nearest roof, waiting to plunge to their deaths (and Russell is a clever enough writer to know well that he has to leave someone behind to tell us how scared they are or the threat is just people standing still, about to die. Plus it’s fun to look round the Christmas Dinner table and check for any signs of them acting funny). Amazingly, The Tower Of London were the first London landmark phones to ask if a load of extras could be allowed to trample on their roof…and they said yes! Extraordinary. It’s a very strong, very visual, very Russell T alien invasion, using something of humanity against us and very Dr Who in the way it takes the ordinary and turns it against us, making it extraordinary. 

 One other regular aspect of Russell T is his low view of humanity as a whole but his love for individual humans brave enough to fight back against the crowd. Luckily for this episode one of the best of us has been put in charge. Harriet Jones, heroine of ‘WW3/Aliens In London’ is the star alongside Rose for the first half, busking till the Doctor comes along and doing a better job than any of our past prime ministers in real life would when faced with an alien invasion. After winning us over as the one MP prepared to stick it to the prime minister and ask all the right probing questions instead of just taking taxpayer’s money, here she’s the prime minister we always wanted, bravely standing up to the threat but without losing her humanity (it’s a small detail but the way she pours coffee for Guinevere scientist Danny Llewelleyn herself, instead of getting one of her minions to do it for her, says a lot about her). If she wasn’t a hero to us Brits before then she certainly is after the American president rings up and demands to take over and Harriet, firmly but politely, puts him in his place saying she’s got it covered and isn’t going to be dragged into an ‘illegal war’ (we are, remember, just a few years out form the Iraq-Afghanistan Wars, which had nothing to do with 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction but everything to do with oil). One other quick reference before we move on: Harriet keeps the Sycorax invasion quiet so as not to panic people, telling her staff to ‘tell everyone it ‘was a hoax, we have students hi-jacking the system’. This happened for real during a repeat showing of ‘Horror Of Fang Rock’ on the American PBS Channel’s Chicago branch on November 22nd 1987 and to this day nobody knows who the person in the ‘Max headroom’ mask ranting gibberish and being spanked with a spatula (!) is: the only thing TV authorities could agree on was that it must have been a hugely complicated and expensive undertaking with planning for months if not years in advance as well as inside information on bandwidths and so on. For all we know that was the date the Sycorax invaded for real (it would explain a lot about the way a lot of people have been behaving since the late 1980s…)

 However it soon becomes clear just how out of their depth humanity is when dealing with warlike aliens while the Doctor’s having a snooze and even Harriet and Rose can’t vamp forever. What finally revives the Doctor? In a very 2005 Dr Who twist it isn’t something clever and technical, it isn’t the intervention of his home race to the sound of a weepy pompous choir, it isn’t ‘love’ or even the eye of the Tardis this time, it’s a spilled thermos-flask of tea. Which might not make much sense for what we know about timelord biology but which nevertheless ‘feels’ right (this is Britain: tea revives everyone and cures everything. Well, except me as it happens. Maybe I’m alien and not British after all?) When the Doctor finally wakes up its a triumph: David Tennant nails the part, jovially talking his way round the Sycorax hordes before defeating the boss in a quick swordfight and then dispatching him with a satsuma in what’s meant to be an alien spaceship but which looks very like new-Who’s first bona fide quarry (because it is: the first time the comeback series ever filmed in a quarry Russell avoiding it the first year in case it set naysayers off laughing at how they were always in quarries. As such it’s a moment of triumph that the series is now secure enough not to care. Even so, it would be nice if we took another break from quarries after the Chris Chibnall years). The moment Rose realises that she can understand the Sycorax’s speech mid-sentence and that the Doctor must have woken up (the Tardis aligning with his telepathic circuits shared with all Tardis travellers as an easy get-out clause of why everyone can always understand alien and historical speech), looking expectantly at the Tardis, is one of the iconic scenes of Dr Who, in any era. Tennant, a fan of the show since childhood, just owns the screen and is clearly loving every single second, while his charisma is infectious. Russell, still not sure who his new Doctor is yet, says in interviews that he wrote it for the 9th Doctor just in longer sentences but this very much isn’t a 9th Doctor speech (if anything it’s bang on for the similarly manic speeches Russell wrote for Casanova, his last pre-Who series that happened to star one David Tennant: the pair are said to have bonded over a break in recording when David, knowing Russell was a fan, moaned about his contact lenses and jokes that maybe he could have a scene in a lighthouse that makes the pigment change colour, just like in ‘The Horror Of Fang Rock’. That’s one of Tennant’s Casanova costumes hanging up in the Tardis wardrobe, the red short with the blue collar made of silk, alongside his costume from Harry Potter, Steven Taylor’s ‘Celestial Toymaker’ outfit, the 2nd Doctor’s baggy trousers, the 5th Doctor’s panama hat, a 6th Doctor waistcoat and what looks like a complete 4th Doctor costume). 

 It’s not harsh or gritty or full of sudden wisecracks and doesn’t have the 9th Doctor’s in-built guardedness that gives nothing away – it’s one full of charm and charisma and even before Tennant got hold of it runs off the page in breathless sentences that sound as if the Doctor is speaking at the same time he’s thinking. Of all the regenerations this is the one who uses his mouth the most and the 10th Doctor never uses that gift more than here, stalling his opponent (who are all action and slogans) and bamboozling them as he goes from manic to clever to angry in the space of a few lines. What’s more, Tennant is authoritative while still wearing pyjamas, which not many actors could pull off. Despite this Doctor’s open doubts about who this new person is because he isn’t fully formed yet somehow David Tennant is authoritatively the Doctor by the end of this story in such a way that it’s easy to see why he still tops ‘best Doctor’ polls. He even gets in a swordfight, something only the 3rd, 4th and 5th Doctors ever did before this and it took a lot of stories for them to do their Errol Flynn routine (this is another thing it’s hard to imagine the 9th Doctor doing: a boxing match maybe, but not sword-fighting). In another bit of trivia look out for the brilliant detail of the shot of London and the CGI replacement of ‘Big Ben’ as if the clock tower’s still being rebuilt following the events of ‘Aliens In London/World War Three’. Oh and in a rare episode that borrows practically nothing from ‘Quatermass’ for once, note the name of the British equivalent of NASA at the press conference, the ‘British Rocket Group’ which Quatermass used to run back in the 1950s (David Tennant had himself just been in a ‘live’ re-make of Quatermass written by Who writer Mark Gatiss, his ‘other’ job before Who along with Casanova). 

It’s what happens during that swordfight that’s a little bit silly. Russell ‘invents’ a new part of timelord biology that we’ve never heard before: as long as he’s hurt within the first fifteen hours of a regeneration he can repair himself because the cells in his body are still changing. That’s…confusing. Especially as we’re not talking a cut or a gash here but the Doctor losing an entire arm, with one of the oddest shots in the series as we linger over it falling from the Sycorax spaceship (to re-appear in many a story to come). ‘This is a fighting hand’ snarls the Doctor as he grows it back in a demented CGI shot, looking for all the world like Aardman Animations’ Morph. It’s clever and all and makes sure that old time fans are now on the same page as newer fans (i.e. completely bewildered and surprised) but it feels so left-field. As it happens it doesn’t quite contradict any of the regeneration stories seen on screen (although it does make Tom Baker’s rather over-sensitive shoulders in ‘Robot’ a bit of a mystery: Terrance Dicks clearly thought regenerations took away the Doctor’s timelord ‘super-powers’ and made him more vulnerable, not less; also I like to think the 6th Dr regenerated a toe unseen when turning into the 7th Dr and walking into the Tardis console which is why Sylvester McCoy is perhaps the most confused of all newly-hatched Doctors) but it’s a bit hard to swallow. Apparently The Master hasn’t worked this ability out either, given that he’s forever getting hurt in his first story post-regeneration, but maybe it’s a willpower you need to know that you have to work?) I do love the final bit with the ‘Satsuma’ the Doctor finds in his dressing gown pocket though (left by Howard, Jackie’s on-off boyfriend) the ‘traditional ending’ to a British Christmas stocking – very seasonal, very clever, very Russell T. 

That’s not the only moment of silliness though. The pilot fish who take on the persona of a Christmas band and killer Christmas trees are highly popular in fandom (so much so they’ll be back a few times) but I’ve never quite understood why. They’re basically just tinsel, a way to give us some thrills and spills before the story plays its hand with the Sycorax too early. They aren’t mentioned again once the Sycorax start bleating and they don’t fit with their modes operandi at all (they’re straightforward warriors in the Sontaron mould and so full of themselves they don’t need other support mechanisms. Another thought is that they’re a smaller species hanging around a bigger bully, but if so then why do the Sycorax allow them to give the game away? And how come they know so much about Earthly customs?) They feel left over from another draft, perhaps a return of the Autons from ‘Rose’ (the robo Santas, especially, look like plastic and plastic things that come to life and try to kill you would be very fitting as a comment about the commercialism and tat of Christmas at its worst). They’re kind a of a stage too far in a story that already manages to cram in multiple Chroistmas songs (Slade will be in this series so much it becomes a joke but it works here as, well, decoration), The Queen’s Speech (cancelled!), Brussel Sprouts, The Lion King (a film always on at Christmas) and snow (albeit in a sneaky way when the spaceship blows up). 

 There’s a reason, too, that the Sycorax aren’t loved in the way that other period inventions like the Weeping Angels, The Ood or even the Slitheen are: they’re simple warlike villains who lack the stealth, brain or ideas of most other more interesting races and try to take the Earth over by simple conquest and a bit of blood-fiddling. They don’t do much other than chant like they’re going to an intergalactic football match (or sing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody: Russell’s scripts actually specified the ‘four person’ grouping, mostly to show off that they can afford to make more than one monster at a time now, and the DVD extra of the four actors singing this song in costume is one of the funnier ones around). You have to say, given how much they’ve been bigging it up for an hour, they run off pretty sharpish after being defeated too (you’d think other Sycorax would have wanted revenge after the spaceship we see gets blown up). They’re a bit too much like Klingons, with their desire to fight first and ask questions later and love of harsh consonant sounds, a rare case of DW borrowing from Star Trek rather than the other way around (the Borg are totally a diluted Cybermen). Their plan for controlling human blood groups (after finding a sample of blood on Mars – why don’t they go and pick on The Ice Warriors?!) is indeed clever, but the episode doesn’t revolve round this idea the way you feel it should – had this been a sub-plot in ‘Smith and Jones’ with the Judoon on a hospital on the moon or the New New New New Earth nurse-cats it would have made more sense than here. I mean, your Christmas Day has usually gone seriously wrong if you’re having conversations over lunch about which blood type you are – it feels out of kilter with the other plot decorations somehow. 

Oh well, this is one of those stories where the downfalls are more than understandable: you need spectacle and decoration in a regeneration at Christmas story and an alien threat you can understand really quickly and simply without layers of back story to boot. There was so much riding on this. It could all so easily have gone so wrong – after all, lesser series end after one series with less serious changes to the cast than this one. Instead it was fabulous. Other Christmas specials might have better ideas or more Christmassy moments or better individual scenes but this is the best Christmas episode as an episode of Dr Who where the tinsel trappings enhance the stakes of this story rather than get in its way. In the great pantheon of Dr Who Christmas episodes this one is still the best kind of present (like a remote-controlled Dalek or a Cybermen changing helmet) that’s just missing a couple of vital ingredients (like batteries) rather than some of the other festive specials to come (a lot of which are weirder presents than a doll cyberman with a nose dressed in Dr Who underpants (seriously, both toys on sales in the 1970s, though not usually paired I have to admit). Certainly there’s far more mistletoe and wine here than bah humbugging, with a story that’s strong on the festive stuff, the human emotion the drama, the alien invasion and the regeneration all in one go. No wonder everyone seemed to like this episode: old-timers, newcomers, Christmas drunks, even the many fans who said they’d never accept a different Doctor to Christopher Eccleston in the role. This isn’t really an invasion at all of course. It’s a celebration. And everyone is invited. Even with all the other iconic stories that came after it, this one feels special – a moment when all the non Dr Who fans were invited to the party to celebrate along with those of us who just the previous Christmas had never dreamed in a quadzillion years we’d get to have another Dr Who episode at all never mind one in the prestigious Christmas slot. Even if you’d never seen the show before this still felt like a magical bit of telly, sprinkled with just the right amount of Dr Who pixie dust. No wonder a lot of the newcomers with nothing else to do on Christmas Day, or who were bullied into watching by their friends and relations, became fans for life after seeing this story. Even after all those months of speculation about if they would ever be able to pull a change this big off the Dr Who production team deliver us a Secret Robo-Santa gift that’s far better, bigger and looking much pricier than we ever imagined they could. . They gave an arm and a leg to make this show –well, an arm anyway in the Doctor’s case – and from a difficult place came up with a brilliant episode against the odds.This is a show at the peak of its powers, more secure and assured of a place in the schedules than the show had been in over twenty years and I don’t know a single Whovian who could wish for a better Christmas pressie than that. 

 POSITIVES + The queen’s Speech gets cancelled. Hooray! Alright, I’ll do it properly. David Tennant’s first long scene as the Doctor comes after we’ve seen Rose and Harriet Jones fumbling while trying to sound Doctor-ish. They’re not doing a bad job – and a third of us would be dead if they hadn’t – but humanity has never looked more like feeble little children waiting for mum and dad to wake up and sort out the mess they’ve got themselves into. By contrast to them and to match up with the power of how the 9th Dr said goodbye and 40 odd minutes of build-up this opening speech needs to be utterly brilliant. And it is. Dr 10 starts off by snapping the Sycorax weapon-staff that’s caused so much damage in two, points his fingers at the Sycorax like it’s the naughty child, praises the rejuvenating effects of tea, makes a big grinning face at all his old friends, worries about how he looks, is rude, worries about him being rude, flirts, out-roars the roaring baddy, does something clever and scientific working out what’s going on by licking blood, babbles away to himself looking for answers, pleads for humanity’s progress, unwittingly makes a detour quoting bits of ‘The Lion King’, orders the Sycorax to leave mankind alone and then ends up in a swordfight – something that we haven’t seen him do since he was Peter Davison in ‘The King’s Demons’ (and then it wasn’t really in character; certainly compared to Dr 9 already this Dr’s bite is worse than his bark – he is already refusing to give second chances to aliens who don’t deserve it or, indeed, Prime ministers who go against his wishes). And then, just to underline that he’s still the Doctor and unlike any other TV hero there’s ever been, he effectively loses, regenerates a limb then defeats a charging Sycorax with a satsuma taken from his pyjamas. As much as the main thrust of the speech is this regeneration not knowing who he is, he’s totally the 10th Dr first time out. This Doctor needs to be so so good out of the blocks and David Tennant is, his comic timing is exceptional and he’s already better at brooding anger than even Eccleston was, if not quite open fury. He gives an arm and a leg in this role from the first – literally in the first case. 

NEGATIVES - I always felt the ‘don’t you think she looks a bit tired?’ ending was at odds with the triumphalism of the rest of the story and this new Doctor and indeed Christmas (there’s plenty of time to start family feuds over petty things on Boxing Day). While its fully in keeping that scared humans would blow up a departing defeated species and it returns to moral questions first asked when the Brigadier did the same thing 35 years earlier, that all needed to be in a future episode not this one. It puts a right downer on the story and a good half hour when Harriet Jones has been the calming influence on matters till the Doctor woke up, while Tennant’s one duff note of the episode is his ‘fury’ as he turns on her (he’ll get better at rage in years and seasons to come, but it never comes as easily as the joy, the sadness or the comedy despite the rather good scene of anger against the Sycorax). Also, as fun as its been to tweet ‘don’t you think they look a bit tired?’ in real life every time yet another politician does something reckless and needs replacing (a phrase associated with the downfalls of both Thatcher and Blair in private amongst MPs that Russell wrote in partly about how disappointed he was with the latter), it seems unlikely that a whispered word in an ear would bring down such a popular PM following a successfully prevented invasion, Doctor or no Doctor. I mean, look at what Boris got away with (and is still being allowed to get away with despite not being in office): blowing up a spaceship of aliens is a vote-winner to most people as it is. 

BEST QUOTE: ‘I gave them the wrong warning. I should have told them to run, as fast as they can. Run and hide, because the monsters are coming - the human race. 

Prequels/Sequels: Though never seen on screen again the Sycorax have turned up lots in other Who media. Comic strip ‘The Widow’s Curse’ (which started life in Dr Who Magazine before being collected into the anthology of the same name) features a 10th Doctor re-match accompanied by Donna. It’s one of the best 21st century strips, with the pair arriving on an island with a bunch of holidaymakers, only to find out the boat is really a Sycorax Church. The Sycorax are every bit as ruthless as they were on telly and get lots of extra back-story (did you know married Sycorax break each other’s ribs and wear them as part of the wedding ceremony?!), but alas their plan to ‘zombiefy’ the population isn’t as strong as the ‘blood type’ scenario of the episode. Even so, it’s a well written atmospheric story with lots of menace and a very different feel to the usual action-packed strips with lots of big speeches about humanity’s role in the universe. ‘Harvest Of The Sycorax’ (2016) is a Big Finish audio adventure from their ‘Classic Doctors, New Monsters’ range that has the very interesting contrast of one of Dr Who’s most straightforward war-like baddies against the most complex and manipulative Doctors, the 7th. There’s less of a sense of threat to this story anf they aren’t portrayed as well as elsewhere, but seeing how the Doctor defeats the Sycorax is nevertheless gripping. Once again the plot revolves around blood groups, this time a blood bank on a space station. 

Additionally there’s the ‘Born Again’ clip broadcast as part of the charity telethon ‘Children In Need’ (see ‘Dimensions In Time’ for more) which fills in the few minutes between the end of ‘Parting Of The Ways’ and this story. Rose is very wary of the new Doctor, still a bit unconvinced by his regeneration and very much echoes Polly’s doubt in ‘Power Of The Daleks’ (the first time the Doctor regenerated for the ‘old’ series). Mostly its all the things other Doctors get to do but the Christmas special doesn’t have time for (the Doctor checking himself out in the mirror and commenting on his new features mostly). An upset Rose wants the old Doctor back and the new one’s face crumples as he admits he can’t do that (well, not till an anniversary special one day anyway maybe). This scene makes clear what we never quite found out in ‘The Christmas Invasion’ – that the Doctor was taking Rose home to be with her mum rather than force her to be with him. The ending comes as the Doctor goes all orange and sparkly and full of pixie dust, although he seems to have recovered miraculously by the start of this story when he’s busy greeting Jackie and Mickey like a long lost friend! A cute little extra, though you’re not missing much if you haven’t seen it. 

Additionally to the additions red button viewers on Christmas Day got an interactive episode ‘Attack Of The Graske’ featuring Jimmy Vee in yet another costume (e don’t see the Graske in the series proper but he does turn up in the Sarah Jane Adventures). Written by Gareth Roberts, it’s the first time the Doctor has ‘broken’ the fourth wall and spoken to us since ‘The Dalek’s Masterplan’ Christmas episode, which makes it all a little weird, though the story itself is a lot of fun. The Graske is down the mischievous end of Dr Who monsters and instantly likeable, running rings around the Doctor like a toddler on sweets and you almost want it to win. Instead your mission is to work out which of the ‘family at Christmas’ is an alien (the glowing red eyes are always a clue…and many a fun time can be had starting arguments over Christmas as to which family member has the reddest eyes) before a fun game where you can follow the Tardis through the space-time vortex. Worryingly, the Doctor imbues your TV remote with the same mechanism of the sonic screwdriver for this story though he never takes it off again. I thought I was just watching repeats on BBC4 but it turns out my telly really did go back to those years of the Top Of The Pops re-runs! Not really something that could be easily replicated on DVD or Blu-Ray, your best bet to find it nowadays is the BBC Dr Who website, although it takes some tracking down. 

 Previous ‘Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways’ next ‘New Earth’