The Christmas Invasion

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174 - The Christmas Invasion
Cast
Production
Directed byJames Hawes
Written byRussell T. Davies
Script editorHelen Raynor
Produced byPhil Collinson
Executive producer(s)Russell T. Davies
Julie Gardner
Production codeEpisode X
SeriesChristmas Special (2005)
Running time60 mins
First broadcast25 December2005
Chronology
← Preceded by
Doctor Who Children in Need special (2005) 		Followed by →
Attack of the Graske

The Christmas Invasion is a 60-minute special episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It began production in July 2005, and was broadcast on Christmas Day 2005 in Britain and on Boxing Day 2005 in Canada.

Synopsis

It is Christmas, but there is little cause for celebration as the Earth is invaded by the alien Sycorax. It is up to Rose and the newly-regenerated Tenth Doctor to save the world once again, with a bit of help from her boyfriend Mickey and her mother Jackie. But will the Doctor recover in time, and can Rose trust a Doctor with a new and unfamiliar face?

Plot

Template:Spoiler

File:The Christmas Invasion.jpg
"I demand to know who you are!"

It is Christmas Eve, and as Jackie prepares presents and Mickey works in the garage, both of them hear the distinctive sound of the TARDIS engines. Rushing out into the street of the Powell Estate, they see the TARDIS blink into existence above them, ricochet off a few buildings, then come to a crashing halt. A strange man stumbles out of the police box doors, greeting them before collapsing. Rose follows, and to Jackie and Mickey's questions, identifies the stranger as the Doctor.

They bring the Doctor to Jackie's flat and dress him in pyjamas belonging to Howard, Jackie's current beau (who has the habit of keeping pieces of fruit in his pocket for snacks). While Rose discusses the Doctor's change of appearance with Jackie, they do not see a wisp of vortex energy emerging from the Doctor's mouth, which then floats into space. On television, Prime Minister Harriet Jones and project director Daniel Llewellyn give a press conference about the Guinevere One space probe, which is about to land on Mars. In space, however, the probe is swallowed up by an island-like spaceship.

That evening, Rose and Mickey go Christmas shopping, but are attacked by a group of masked Santas armed with lethal musical instruments. Managing to escape when the tuba mortar brings a giant Christmas tree down on the Santas, Rose realises that the Santas must be after the Doctor, and she and Mickey rush home. When they reach the flat, Rose notices a new addition: a Christmas tree none of them bought. Before their eyes, it comes to life, whirling around with razor-sharp branches.

The three retreat to the bedroom, the "Christmas tree" in hot pursuit. Rose places the sonic screwdriver in the still-comatose Doctor's hand and asks him to help her. The Doctor rises as the tree bursts through the door and disintegrates the tree with the screwdriver. He then strides out to see who was remotely controlling the tree. Downstairs, the Santas stare up at the Doctor, but transmat away when the Doctor points the sonic screwdriver at them. The Doctor calls them "pilot fish" and collapses in pain, saying that Rose woke him up too soon: he is still regenerating. The energy leaking from him has attracted attention, and something bigger is coming for him.

The first signal from Guinevere One arrives: a distinctly alien face, which is soon broadcast all over the world. Llewellyn is escorted by Major Blake to the Tower of London, which houses a facility run by the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT). There, he meets the Prime Minister and her aide, Alex Klein, who tell him that the cover story is that a student in a mask hacked into the television signal. A technician, Sally, explains that the signal did not come from Mars but 5000 miles above the planet's surface, which means that there is a ship, and it is moving rapidly towards Earth.

As Rose and Mickey use his laptop to monitor UNIT's readings, the aliens send another signal. The aliens speak in their own language, but Rose does not understand it. Normally, the TARDIS would translate it for her, but it seems that with the Doctor unconscious, that function is not working.

At UNIT, Blake orders the use of translation software. With no sign of the Doctor, Jones asks Blake about "Torchwood". She knows that she is not supposed to know about them — not even the United Nations knows — but she wants them to be ready.

The software rather imprecisely translates the message. The aliens are the Sycorax, and they are claiming the planet as their own, demanding surrender or "they" will die. Their word for "human" also appears to be similar to that of "cattle", temporarily baffling UNIT. Jones declines to surrender, warning the Sycorax that the planet is armed. As dawn rises over London, the Sycorax respond. With a wave of the leader's hand, blue energy sweeps over a third of the world's population, mesmerising them. The mind-controlled people climb to the highest spots they can find, climbing to the roofs of buildings and poised to jump.

Checking the UNIT staff's medical records, Llewellyn discovers that all the affected people have A+ blood. The Sycorax found the sample of A+ blood that was sent with various other materials on Guinevere One and are somehow using that as a control mechanism. Desperate now, Jones gives an emergency broadcast on television, pleading for the Doctor's help if he is out there. She also informs the public that the Queen's Christmas speech has been cancelled because the Royal Family are "on the roof". Just then, the shockwave of the Sycorax ship entering the atmosphere shatters windows all over the city; the gigantic craft takes position above the centre of London as the frightened population watch. Rose, not knowing what else to do, asks Mickey and Jackie to help move the Doctor to the safety of the TARDIS. Jackie gathers various supplies, including a thermos flask of tea.

The Sycorax transmat Jones, Klein, Blake and Llewellyn up to their ship. The leader removes his helmet, revealing a skinless face surrounded by a mantle of bone. His hand hovering over a large glowing button, he demands immediate surrender, or he will order the controlled humans to jump. Llewellyn tries to reason with the Sycorax, but is disintegrated by the leader's energy whip, as is Blake when the Major protests. Half of the world to be sold into slavery or a third die; it is Jones's choice.

As they move the Doctor into the console room, Jackie goes back to get more supplies. Mickey tries to use the TARDIS scanner to tune into what is happening, but the time machine's advanced technology is detected by the Sycorax. As Jackie watches helplessly, the TARDIS is transmatted up. Rose steps out of the TARDIS, not realising that they are aboard the Sycorax ship, and screams when she sees the aliens. Mickey rushes out after her, dropping the flask of tea, which spills and starts dripping through the grilles at the base of the console next to the Doctor's unconscious form. He breathes in the fumes created as the tea sparks against various components.

Rose tries to bluff the Sycorax by quoting various things and races she has encountered on her travels, commanding them to leave, but is answered with laughter. As the Sycorax leader gloats, his alien words start turning into English. Rose realises that if the TARDIS translation is working again, that means… and, on cue, the doors of the police box open and the Doctor stands there, smiling.

The Doctor tells the Sycorax leader to wait while he gets reacquainted with his friends. He tells them that all he needed was a good cup of tea; a superheated infusion of free radicals and tannin to "fire up the old synapses". As the Sycorax leader demands to know who he is, the Doctor blithely strides across the ship's floor, nattering on and still working out what his personality is like in this new incarnation. He spots the glowing button and walks up to it, discovering that it is being powered by blood. He quickly deduces about the blood control, and to everyone's shock, pushes the button. However, instead of sending everyone to their deaths, it simply releases them from the Sycorax control.

The Doctor explains that blood control is like hypnosis: you cannot hypnotise a person to death as the survival instinct is too strong. The Sycorax were also bluffing. The leader says that they can still conquer Earth with an armada, but the Doctor demands that the humans be left alone, challenging the leader to single combat for the planet.

The swordfight goes from inside the ship to its exterior, and in the midst of it, the leader cuts the Doctor's hand off. However, the Doctor is still in the first 15 hours of his regeneration cycle, and regrows his hand. The Doctor holds the leader at sword point at the ship's edge, extracting an oath from the leader to leave the planet and never return if the Doctor spares his life. As the Doctor walks back, the leader tries a final attack, but the Doctor bounces a satsuma he finds in Howard's dressing gown off a control button, opening a section of the ship's wing beneath the leader and sending the alien plunging to his death.

The Doctor sends the other Sycorax on their way with a reminder that the planet Earth is defended. Transmatted back to London, Jones asks if there are more aliens out there and the Doctor notes that there are thousands; the human race is being noticed more and more. Klein receives a telephone call and quietly informs Jones that Torchwood are ready. Jones seems reluctant, but gives the order to fire. Five green beams converge as one over London, and the resulting energy burst destroys the Sycorax ship as it heads into space.

The Doctor glares at Jones, furious, but she tries to justify the use of the weapon (engineered from a crashed spaceship ten years previously) as defending the planet, especially since the Doctor cannot be there all the time. The Doctor bitterly says he should have warned the Sycorax to run as the real monsters, the humans, are coming. When Jones asks if she should consider the Doctor another alien enemy, the Doctor warns her that he can bring down her government with just six words. He whispers them in Klein's ear: "Don't you think she looks tired?"

Jackie, Mickey and Rose serve Christmas dinner in the flat. The Doctor looks through the TARDIS wardrobe, finally settling on a suit and a long coat. He joins the others for dinner, and they watch Harriet Jones on the television, fending off rumours about her ill-health and a pending vote of no confidence. Outside, what looks like snow is falling over London, accompanied by shooting stars, but the Doctor points out that it is ash — the remains of the Sycorax spaceship. It is a new start for Earth as well; with so many people seeing the Sycorax ship, there is no covering up the existence of aliens this time.

But there are new worlds to see and explore. With a now-trusting Rose by his side, they look up into the sky, and the Doctor assures her that it will be fantastic.

Cast

Notes

  1. This special marked the first full episode starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor; he was only shown briefly at the end of The Parting of the Ways for the regeneration sequence. A 7-minute "mini-episode", set between The Parting of the Ways and The Christmas Invasion, was shown as part of the Children in Need charity telethon on 18 November, 2005.
  2. The Christmas special is a tradition in British television series. While this is the first story for Doctor Who clearly labelled as a Christmas special, the seventh episode of The Daleks' Master Plan, titled "The Feast of Steven", was written as a Christmas episode, even featuring a fourth wall-breaking Christmas wish to the viewers by William Hartnell.
  3. Although Christmas specials of UK drama series do not always have a seasonal theme, producer Russell T. Davies was quoted in the press as saying he felt Christmas specials should include traditional Christmas items such as sleigh bells, snow, reindeer, and Santa.
  4. The episode's opening shot is a repeat of the opening shot of Rose, using the same music.
  5. During the live broadcast, the official BBC website had a screen saying "THE CHRISTMAS INVASION is on BBC One NOW. HARRIET JONES SAYS: Switch this website off for Britain."
  6. The TARDIS has collided with other objects in flight before, with a Skonnon spacecraft in The Horns of Nimon, and missiles in Timelash and The Parting of the Ways.
  7. The Tenth Doctor speaks with an Estuary English accent, in contrast to the Ninth Doctor's Northern one. In a December 23 interview on BBC Radio 1, Tennant explained that a line had been scripted for the Christmas special explaining that the newly regenerated Doctor had imprinted on Rose's accent, "like a chick hatching from an egg," but the line was cut from the final programme.
  8. Just before the opening credits sequence, Jackie says the line "Doctor? Doctor who?", continuing the long-running in-joke.
  9. The special sees the return of MP Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton), from Aliens of London and World War Three. At the end of the latter episode, the Doctor stated that she would at some point become Prime Minister of the UK, and by the time of The Christmas Invasion she has won a general election with a large majority.
  10. The BBC tie-in website for the Guinevere One project indicates that the landing is supposed to take place on Christmas Day, 2006, much like the Beagle 2 probe was supposed to in 2003. Had Beagle 2 landed successfully, its call signal to Earth was to have been a specially-arranged piece of music by the band Blur which contained elements of the Doctor Who theme tune.
  11. The organisation that developed the spacecraft, as mentioned on the website, is the British Rocket Group. Its logo is half-seen in the background during the televised press conference. This is a reference to the British Experimental Rocket Group from the Quatermass serials of the 1950s. The British Rocket Group was first mentioned in Doctor Who in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988). David Tennant starred in the 2005 BBC remake of The Quatermass Experiment as Dr Gordon Briscoe.
  12. Early in the episode a Routemaster bus is very briefly shown, presumably as a device to indicate that the episode is taking place in contemporary London. In fact Routemasters were withdrawn from service on 9 December 2005, approximately two weeks before the show was broadcast in the UK, and at least one year before the date on which the episode is supposedly set. However a small number of these buses remain on the streets of London serving "heritage" routes aimed principally at the nostalgia market.[1]
  13. The British Government plan to cover up the Sycorax's initial appearance by claiming it was a student in a mask hacking into the signal. A 1987 broadcast in Chicago of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock was interrupted in this way (with the hacker wearing a Max Headroom mask), while in 1977, a voice claiming to be Vrillon of the "Ashtar Galactic Command" broke into the signal belonging to the Southern Television region of ITV.
  14. Major Blake comments that Martians look different from the Sycorax. This could be a reference to the original series serial The Ambassadors of Death, in which aliens on Mars intercept a manned space probe. It is also possible that is it a reference to the 1997 Ice Warrior invasion of Earth in the Virgin New Adventures novel The Dying Days by Lance Parkin, although like all spin-off media, the canonicity of the novel is uncertain.
  15. Sycorax is the name of the witch in Shakespeare's play The Tempest.
  16. The Sycorax, with their "curse"-like blood control technology and bone-motif costumes bear a passing resemblance to Faction Paradox, a time-travelling voodoo cult created by Lawrence Miles that were recurring villains in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels.[2]
  17. The Sycorax's scheme is similar to that used by the villain in the 1977 pilot for The Amazing Spider-Man television series. The villain, a self-help guru, used post-hypnotic suggestion via radio signals to make his clients climb tall buildings, threatening to make them jump unless he received a ransom from the city.
  18. John Barrowman announced on his website that the story of upcoming Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood would be "seeded" in this special and in the 2006 season.
  19. Although not explained in the episode, Mickey is presumably able to tap into the UNIT computers thanks to the Doctor's backdoor password, first used in World War Three.
  20. The Big Ben clock tower is shown with scaffolding around it, in the process of being rebuilt since Aliens of London.
  21. While trying to bluff the Sycorax, Rose mentions "Article 15 of the Shadow Proclamation" (Rose), the Slitheen Parliament of Raxicoricofallapatorius (Aliens of London, World War Three and Boom Town), the Gelth Confederacy (The Unquiet Dead), the Mighty Jagrafess (The Long Game) and the Daleks.
  22. When the Doctor is trying to persuade the Sycorax leader to spare humanity, he finds himself quoting the first few lines of the song "The Circle of Life" from the 1994 Walt Disney film, The Lion King.
  23. Arthur Dent is mentioned by the Doctor, in reference to the dressing gown he is wearing. The Doctor previously quoted The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in Ghost Light; and mentions Oolon Colluphid in Destiny of the Daleks. Whether the Doctor actually met Dent or if he was just teasing Rose is unclear.
  24. The Doctor's remark that the human race is attracting extraterrestrial attention through its space probes echoes a similar speech by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to Liz Shaw in the first Third Doctor story, Spearhead from Space.
  25. Jones's order to destroy the retreating Sycorax ship is a reference to Margaret Thatcher's decision to attack the General Belgrano in the Falklands War.
  26. Although the Ninth Doctor stated at the end of World War Three that Jones would be elected for three successive terms, her status as Prime Minister appears in jeopardy at the end of The Christmas Invasion. How this will turn out is, as yet, uncertain.
  27. The climactic scenes of the episode were shot on location at Wallis House, Brentford, one of the Golden Mile's few remaining Art Deco buildings.
  28. The redesigned TARDIS wardrobe is shown as a multi-storey area in the TARDIS with a spiral staircase. Although the wardrobe was mentioned in The Unquiet Dead, this is the first time any part of the TARDIS beyond the console room has been shown on screen in the new series. In the original series, the TARDIS wardrobe was mentioned several times, and seen in The Twin Dilemma and Time and the Rani.
  29. A burgundy scarf resembling the one worn by the Fourth Doctor can be seen in some of the wardrobe scenes — this is a replica owned by producer Phil Collinson, made for him by his grandmother when he was a child. (The Doctor's scarf was seen to be unravelled in Castrovalva, but it is likely that he had more than one. The Seventh and Eighth Doctors also tried on long scarves after their regenerations, in Time and the Rani and the 1996 television film, respectively.) Also, the first outfit the Doctor picks from the rail is (or looks similar to) an outfit worn by David Tennant in Casanova. According to the commentary for this episode on the BBC's official website, all of the costumes from the Doctor's nine previous incarnations are included somewhere in the wardrobe.
  30. A "Coming Soon" trailer was shown at the end of this episode, featuring brief clips from the forthcoming series. Following this was a new theme arrangement restoring the traditional middle eight.
  31. David Tennant is credited as "The Doctor" rather than "Doctor Who" as Christopher Eccleston had been in Series 1, the first appearance of the definite article since Episode 3 of Survival (1989).
  32. Parts of the episode were filmed at the Clearwell Caves in Gloucestershire.
  33. This was the first original episode of Doctor Who ever to premiere on a Sunday. (Although for a period in the mid-1970s, BBC Wales premiered the series on Sunday rather than Saturday evenings, one day after the rest of the UK had seen the episodes).
  34. Immediately following the special, digital viewers were able to "press the red button" to view a special, interactive episode written by Gareth Roberts and starring Tennant.
  35. A commentary track for the episode in MP3 format, by producers Phil Collinson, Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner, is available from the BBC Doctor Who website.
  36. On 3 December 2005, the annual Christmas edition of the BBC's listings magazine Radio Times was released, featuring a Doctor Who cover to tie-in with The Christmas Invasion.[3] This was the first time Doctor Who had featured on the Christmas edition cover in the show's forty-two year history, and the first Christmas cover for an individual BBC television drama since EastEnders in 1986. The Christmas Radio Times cover usually features artwork of a generic Christmas scene.
  37. As confirmed by Russell T. Davies in the episode commentary, the Doctor Who section of that issue of the Radio Times contains a hidden message explaining what saves the Doctor: many of the paragraphs in the articles have an oversized first letter, which taken consecutively spell out "A cup of tea" (in the manner of an acrostic).
  38. Overnight ratings for the episode gave a peak viewing audience of 9.8 million viewers, and an average of 9.4 — the second highest rated programme of the evening, behind EastEnders. [4]
  39. The Canadian presentation on the CBC on December 26 2005 was hosted by Piper, who was attired for the occasion in a red Roots "Canada" sweatshirt. The episode was scheduled in a 90-minute long slot; as the episode and the presentations took less than the alloted time, the rest of the broadcast was filled with the start of two episodes of the ITV programme Creature Comforts, which was set for the following 30-minute slot.
  40. The tie-in website "Who is Doctor Who?" was updated with a message from Mickey referencing the Guinevere One website, and an appeal to The Doctor to bring back Rose.
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