"No, hold on...Sorry, that's The Lion King."

The Christmas Invasion
Written By: Russel T. Davies

"What do you mean he's the Doctor? Doctor who?"

That joke really doesn't get old.

The first thing that stands out in this episode is how good the sparsely used music is. There is an almost opera-like voice in certain scenes that sounds so strange and ethereal. It adds an almost alien dimension, which is perfect for this episode. The theme is really about how an alien is the Defender of the Earth. Even Rose, who became very capable of handling herself in disastrous situations in the first series, is shown to be incapable of doing anything without him.

The episode starts with Rose's mom and boyfriend, Jackie and Mickey, both hearing the sounds the Tardis makes, and running to the source. Out of nowhere, the Tardis comes careening out of the sky, colliding with buildings and almost hitting Jackie before it crashes onto the road. Out of the door comes the 10th Doctor, wearing the 9th's leather jacket, and appearing dazed. Jackie and Tyler look on confused, having no idea who he is; unaware that The Doctor has regenerated and has a new body. They are even more confused when he greets them with familiarity, wishing them a Happy Christmas. He then collapses at their feet, at which time Rose comes out of the Tardis to inform them that he is The Doctor. Cue the classic line.

Seriously, why on Earth does Mickey continue to let Rose treat him like crap? She is rarely ever there, puts The Doctor before everyone, and is clearly infatuated with him. This was another reason it took me so long to warm up to this show. She leads him on forever! It not only makes him look pathetic, it makes her look flighty and cruel. Definitely not good character traits.


I would just like to say that the idea of a deadly Christmas tree is pretty awesome. Watching it spin through Jackie Tyler's living room, slicing through everything in its way, is great. Jackie even has one of her best lines in the show in this scene: "I'm going to get killed by a Christmas tree!" Fantastic. This is also the last time David Tennant is awake for more than 20 minutes. In fact, he is only awake for about 25 minutes of the entire 60 minute episode. It is a great way to highlight how hopeless humans are against all the aliens in the universe without The Doctor. It's also a great way to show that the show is absolutely nothing without David Tennant. By the time he shows up again, I was getting antsy.

Harriet Jones, the Prime Minister: "Harriet Jones. Prime Minister."
Anyone she says this to to: "Yes, I know who you are."

This back and forth is used throughout the series, even when she's speaking to the invading alien leader, and it's just hilarious. The woman is so politely earnest in her introduction, not even considering the fact that everyone would know who she is since, as she keeps saying, she is the Prime Minister.

The aliens attempting to take control of Earth look pretty cool. Their way of trying to do it is pretty messed up: taking control of a third of the human population, then ordering all two billion of them around the world to climb the nearest tall building and stepping to the edge. The implication, obviously, is that if Earth doesn't surrender, the alien leader will order all of them to jump. The scenes of the husbands, wives and other family members of these men, women and children desperately trying to stop them from doing this is very touching.

Rose's feelings of abandonment and anger brought on by the new doctor lying in bed unconscious, not getting up to save the world, to save her, jump off the screen. When she says to her mom, "I don't know what to do, all right? I've traveled with him and I've seen all that stuff, but when I'm stuck at home, I'm useless," my heart breaks for her. She tries to save the world when standing in front of the alien leader by trying to string together various laws she's heard about around the universe to tell the alien leader that what it was doing was illegal. In response, the aliens just laugh at her. It is the ultimate point of how she needs The Doctor to be great.

So. All The Doctor needed to recover was some tea. How very English.

"Am I...ginger?"

After The Doctor steps out of the TARDIS to save the day, he asks Rose what he looks like. It seems weird that at 40 minutes into the episode, he still hasn't looked in a mirror.

Alien leader to The Doctor: "I demand to know who you are"
The Doctor: "I don't know"


The climax of this episode is absolutely brilliant. There is a fantastic sword fight between The Doctor (in pajamas) and the invading alien leader for the fate of the planet. Even better, it is an examination of who exactly this new Doctor is. His verbal introspection of what kind of man he is is a perfect way to introduce this new character to the audience. Plus it's just hilarious. Russel T. Davies has a tremendous talent for writing comic dialogue, and Tennant's delivery is perfect. These two men make a wonderful team.


The final few minutes of the episode are incredibly charming, and as I now realize after watching the show through Series 4, so very special. It's the first and last time The Doctor celebrates Christmas with other people. Watching him going through the massive wardrobe in the TARDIS to find out what type of clothes suit him while wearing a Tom Baker-type scarf is too cool. And the scene where Rose sees him in his pin-striped suit and trench coat for the first time is too cute.



As Russel T. Davies said in the commentary, only the British would use falling ash from a destroyed ship and corpses in place of falling snow on Christmas. Ick.


The chemistry between David Tennant and Billie Piper, who plays Rose, is sizzling in the final scene. It's even stronger than it was between Eccleston and Piper, which I didn't think possible. Proof positive that all it takes for there to be chemistry between any two actors is good acting. The way they both awkwardly try to tell each other that they each still want to continue on like before, traveling the universe, getting into one adventure after another, is goofy and adorable. It's one of my favorite scenes in the series.

Next up: New Earth

Allons-y!

I never watched Doctor Who growing up. I have always known about it, of course. Tom Baker was still playing the role when I was a kid, and the picture of him with his curly hair, frumpy fedora and long scarf burned as an iconic image in my young mind. Yet there was something about it that always turned me off. Granted, I never really had much access to it, and the only person I ever heard talking about it was my mom, who used to go on and on about how much she loved Tom Baker. I think the biggest impediment back then was that I was always told it was England's version of Star Trek, i.e., it was their own sci-fi show. I remember having these proprietary feelings about "my" show, and wanted nothing to do with "that other one." When the television movie came out in 1996, I was dating a guy who was a huge fan of the show, as were all his friends and brothers. I tried to watch it with them, but I just didn't like it. When the show came back in 2005, once again, I had no interest. Last fall, as I posted a few weeks ago, my husband started watching it. He tried to get me into it, but I really, really didn't like it. I realize a couple of days ago it's because the first episode I ended up watching was not its finest hour, and I was only paying attention half the time while surfing the intertubes the other half.


After that detour of an episode, which I found out was actually the Christmas episode that aired right before Series 3, he started watching them in order from the first episode of Series 1, starring a dude with a leather jacket and big ears. I really wasn't that impressed. He seemed to be all right, if a bit of a jerk. Mind you, once my husband told me what had happened to him, I became much more understanding. He went through a lot of terrible, terrible things. I did think actor, Christopher Eccleston, was good.

The problems for me were two fold. 1) The special effects looked pretty bad. Not as bad as they did when I was growing up, but it was very strange for me to see actors that were so clearly just wearing rubber alien masks. American shows usually have a much more slick look to them. But, this issue was trivial, and if it had been my only stumbling block, I probably would have warmed up to the show rather quickly.



This brings me to 2) The Doctor's companion: Rose Tyler. Oh. My. God. She is so ridiculously stupid in the first episode. This is the reason that I mocked the episodes my husband was watching from behind my handy dandy laptop. It was bad enough that the first glimpses I had gotten of the new Doctor Who featured a woman who is so dumb it becomes a part of the plot (Donna Noble in Runaway Bride). Now this actress, who was a regular for the first two series, also played a dumb woman. So far, this show was not making a good impression. I complained vociferously and often that the show would probably be pretty good if the writers would incorporate intelligent women.

But then something started to change. Half way through the first season, the stories became interesting and Rose less annoying. I started watching more and more to the point that by the last four episodes of the series I was watching them from beginning to end without once looking at my laptop. Thankfully, the writers of the show had allowed Rose to grow into a much more confident young woman who turned out to be not as dumb as even she believed she was. By the last episode of the series I was almost heartbroken that the 9th Doctor sacrificed himself to save Rose, even though I knew that he would regenerate.



I was so distraught over the 9th Doctor dying that I couldn't warm to David Tennant's 10th Doctor. There was also the problem with the fact that the first bits of Doctor Who I had seen, as I wrote above, were from Runaway Bride, which had David Tennant as The Doctor. I have already written this, but I really must stress how much I hated that episode. My husband kept trying to woo me back by saying that Donna Noble wasn't in all the episodes, and that I just happened to catch a bad episode. But no matter how hard he tried, it didn't work. Though I would sit on the couch with him sometimes while surfing the internet, occasionally catching brief glimpses here and there, I didn't really watch the episodes.




Then once again, just like at the end of Series 1, as my husband advanced through the episodes, I started catching bits of scenes that I really liked. I watched the last three episodes of the 3rd series featuring the Master, the other surviving Time Lord, and I just loved them. I didn't immediately start watching every episode, but by the last five episodes of Series 4 I was asking my husband to wait until I was home to watch them. When my husband had me watch one of the last one-hour movies featuring David Tennant, my fate was sealed: I was officially a fan of the new Doctor Who show. I also found, to my surprise, that I liked David Tennant even more than Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor. I never thought that possible.

As my husband and I were about to watch the final two David Tennant episodes, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea; I am sure my husband would have a very different description of it. As I detailed a few weeks ago here on this blog: I wanted to go back to Series 2 through 4 and watch them in order. Though I loved Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, I didn't much care for half of the first series. I have already detailed my adventure of getting through Series 2, but as I mentioned in my last post, I am going back to The Christmas Invasion to start over. This post was originally going to be my thoughts on The Christmas Invasion, but as I was about to start watching it, I started thinking about how I came to love this show. This is my post explaining the process of how, very much against my will, I became a major fan of this show. All thanks to my husband.

Next post: The Christmas Invasion

Screw It

One of the things I have been very self-conscious about since I started this thing is the pressure to write something that others would find interesting or entertaining. This has colored a lot of what I have written, or not written. When I started watching Doctor Who a couple of weeks ago, I really wanted to write extensive reviews for every single episode, but there was this idea in the back of my mind that told me no one would be interested in reading that, except maybe my husband.

After thinking about it today, I've decided I don't care. I doubt anyone's even reading this thing anymore anyway. I might as well have fun if it's only for me. So, I am starting Series 2 of Doctor Who over, and I am going to write exactly what I want.

Series 2, we hardly knew ye

You ever watch an old episode of television that is really, really tragic, know that in a later season it does get better, but still cry your eyes out watching it?

Yeah. *sniff*

I finished watching Series 2 of Doctor Who tonight. I cried non-stop for the last five minutes. I don't think I've cried this hard since Niles and Daphne finally got together after seven seasons. It's really weird. It's only been 13 episodes, but I am so very much attached to this doctor and Rose. The pain would have been exponentially worse if I had not known that there is a quasi-happy ending two seasons down the line. It's amazing how humans have the capacity to feel such deep emotion for fictional characters.

It is now official: I adore David Tennant's Doctor Who.

I sense a trend

Once again, I am posting after watching two episodes. I got to see the conclusion to the cliff hangar I talked about in my last post, which was cool. The one I just watched is what I have come to believe is an apparent requirement for all television shows: an episode about televisions, and the inherent dangers in them. I've always wondered about that. Do television writers abhor people who watch a lot of television? Wouldn't that be a bit hypocritical? After all, they want people to watch *their* show. Why would they want to rob other television writers of that pleasure and monetary income?

Anyway, still having fun. I was worried about this latest episode as I had never seen it, and my husband told me he had no interest in watching it with me; not exactly what one would call a ringing endorsement. I really liked it, though. There were a few cheesy parts, but I enjoy seeing David Tennant lose his cool and get pissed off as The Doctor. In the end, a good time was had by all. All being me.

Dang it

I didn't post last night because two things happened Thursday that I needed to let percolate in my mind for a little while before I could go further. My husband laughed at me yesterday when I told him about all the things I have posted about in the past few days concerning different aspects of watching television. He was amused that I spend so much time thinking about something like which way I like watching a television show. I also attended a presentation Thursday night on the topic of negotiating with Iran, given by a man who was one of the Americans taken hostage at the embassy in Iran 30 years ago. A part of me knows how inconsequential my desire to watch all these DVDs is, and it does seem silly that I would make such a production out of this. I do realize this.

But the one thing I like about this blog is that it gives me an opportunity to work out through writing what I think about things in general, what my point of view is about stuff. Talking about television, writing reviews, has given me an opportunity to keep my writing and analytical skills sharp. It is a way to find out what I really think about something. Writing my thoughts down makes them more concise and concrete than the spiraling mess in my head.

So, I will keep doing this.

I did not post about the episode I watched Thursday night, so I will combine that with the episode I watched tonight. Both of these episodes caused some unpleasantness.

In the first one, The Doctor keeps meeting this French woman at brief moments throughout her life, starting when she is a little girl. On his side of things, when he leaves and goes back it has only been a couple of minutes, but in her reality it's been many years. Somehow, even though she hardly ever sees him, and he her, they fall in love. It was just awful; their supposed love was in no way believable. Even worse, The Doctor apparently has a brain fart at the end of the episode and forgets a very key point of how they keep meeting each other. The writer of this episode was so bad he just made the doctor forget that what seems like only a few minutes in his time when he has left her to get the TARDIS ready is many, many years in her world. He told her he'd be back in a few minutes to take her with him. Even worse, there was no need to leave her behind that time. He just wanted time to start the TARDID and let her pack. Why would she really need to pack? The TARDIS carries a gigantic wardrobe. *facepalm* The writer did this so he could end on a sob story with her being dead when he gets back to her. It was so incredibly insulting.

I had a problem with the one I just watched, but for an entirely different reason. The episode itself, while not great like the first four episodes I watched, has a decent story and was entertaining. The problem is, it's got a cliffhanger. I cannot begin to describe how desperately I want to just watch the next episode to find out what happens. So far, my desire to give each episode time to breathe, not watching more than one a night, is prevailing. I have a feeling that unlike the past week, I will be watching the next episode rather early in the day. Ya know, because it's a weekend.

The Journey Continues

I got distracted last night and forgot to post this.

Several years ago, I bought the first season of CSI on DVD. I had never seen an episode before, and had never really thought about doing so, but the movie store I worked for made a typo on the reservation prices, and it was only going to be about $30. Considering the fact, that everyone else was going to have to pay about $80, I thought if nothing else I could just sell it if I didn't like it.

It ended up sitting in some dusty corner for a few months, though, because, as I wrote, I wasn't especially interested in it. One day, my husband and I were looking for something new to watch, and we just decided to watch an episode of CSI. Several hours later, we had gone through 8 episodes straight. Thus began my desire to watch television shows on DVD rather than waiting for a new episode once a week, excluding half the year when it's just not on. Watching television only on DVD is a lot of fun and has several advantages. First, there are no commercials. I never watch commercials, so I have been spending years doing a lot of fast forwarding. Second, the picture quality is higher if you don't have High Def satellite, which we don't. Third, since you can watch as many as you want in a row, if you run up against the bad apple of the bunch, you can just shrug and go to the next one in hopes of a better episode.

Out of all the reasons, the third one is primarily why I like watching TV on DVD. Anyone who has ever followed a weekly show knows how utterly frustrating it is to watch a really bad episode, and then be forced to wait a week to see if the next one is any good. Even worse, if it's the last new episode for a while, you are left with a bad taste in your mouth that can become quite nasty. Having to spend days on end with how bad an episode is in the front of your mind leaves a distorted image of the show as a whole. Watching shows on DVD takes that away. It's wonderful.

This is how I have watched most television shows for a long time now, and I have been deliriously happy. My husband and I got in to Supernatural last summer and ended up watching all four seasons in just a couple of months via Netflix, going through long marathon episodes where we'd watch four or five in one night, sometimes more. *That* was a rush. The thing is, now that we are caught up and are forced back into waiting for a new episode every week, or in the most recent case, waiting more than a month, I am just not as interested in it.

I realized as I was watching the next episode of Doctor Who tonight that what I am doing now is much more satisfying. When the episode was done, my husband asked if I was going to watch another one. There was a very strong urge to do so because it was such a great episode, as all of them have been so far, and I was having so much fun. But after thinking about it, I decided to stick to my plan of just watching one a night. Watching one a night instead of a bunch in a row really makes me appreciate each one all the more. I am sure I will hit upon a bad episode soon, but knowing that my dissatisfaction will only have to fester a day instead of a week is a relief.

I have not really been discussing the episodes much in detail because, really, I don't see much of a point. I will say that the one I did watch tonight was a special treat because on of the Doctor's companions from the older show made an appearance and it was wonderful. There was also a deep examination of what it means to be a man that never dies, forced to watch those he loves die; which has resulted in the Doctor abandoning all of them before he gets too attached. Very powerful stuff.

To sum up, tonight was entertaining and stress-free. I had a great time.

I am not amused!

I am so very tired right now. I got about four hours of sleep last night and it looks like I am only going to get about five now thanks to a major test tomorrow, for which I do not feel ready. Today was absolutely exhausting. Driving in North Carolina with snow on the roads is not fun, and I had to drive more than 100 miles today.

The one saving grace was the 45 minutes I just spent watching Doctor Who. Tonight's episode was fantastic, featuring both a sort of alien werewolf and Queen Victoria (note the subject line). Two episodes into the series and I am already seeing references to the first series, as well as foreshadowing for the spinoff that started later.

It has been a long time since I looked to a television show as a way to relax and forget about the stress of the day for a while. Of course, I used to only have it once a week since I've never really absolutely adored more than one show at a time. It is just fantastic to know that I will have this every night. For unlike a lot of my movies, the only TV DVDs that remain unopened are ones I really like. It really is a great way to unwind, and it is nice to know that no matter how crappy my day is, there is at least one thing that is going to be good about it.

Reminiscing...

Not really much on my mind concerning this topic to write about today. It's very strange to think about the fact that when I was younger, I used to watch about 8-10 hours of television a day. Back then, I couldn't imagine any other way. Over the past few years, I've slowly been losing interest. I still watch television, but I have grown tired of bad and even mediocre writing. Even the few shows I still watch are viewed on an irregular basis; I often have a backlog on the DVR. The only thing that will get me to take a look at a show these days is excellent acting, which leads me into the next bit.

I watched another Dr. Who episode today, Episode 1 of Series 2. I enjoyed this one even more than the first. The story was very good, and even better, David Tennant was in it for most of the episode. I find I am enjoying watching just an episode at a time rather than the three or four I normally watch. Less really is more.