Doctor Who: The Runaway Bride

Reviewed By: Paul Mount

Starring: David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Sarah Parrish, Don Gillet,

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It’s a measure of the remarkable success of the 21st century reboot of DOCTOR WHO that the show’s special 60-minute Christmas episode has, after only one previous outing, already been accorded the sort of acclaim and anticipation historically reserved for the likes of MORECOME AND WISE and ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES. Maybe it’s the fact that festive TV in the UK is nowadays generally built around extra-length helpings of soap opera misery and warmed-over barely-popular sitcoms that his helped this now-annual splurge of sci-fi campery (copyright any lazy tabloid you care to mention) become applauded as the real highlight of the festive TV fortnight. Last year it was ‘The Christmas Invasion’ to which all eyes turned as new Doctor David Tennant made his full-length debut and the Earth came under threat from the red-cloaked, skull-headed Sycorax warriors. This time, in ‘The Runaway Bride’ the show faced a very different challenge – proving to its audience that there can be life after Billie Piper.

It’s now quite clear that Christmas episodes of DOCTOR WHO are quite different from the instalments which make up a regular series. And they have to be; the audience is in an entirely different frame of mind, gorged on monstrous Christmas dinners and in no fit state to cope with a dark, spooky DOCTOR WHO story bulging with plot. No, a Christmas TV audience wants spectacle, an easy-to-follow story, the modern equivalent of the old feature film TV premiere we used to enjoy before the advent of home entertainment. Russell T Davies’s fast and furious script for ‘The Runaway Bride’ takes us right back into the series where it left off in July – the Doctor, devastated by the loss of Rose (Piper) to a parallel world, is staggered to discover a woman in a wedding dress standing in the TARDIS control room. This is Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), a brassy, bolshy Cockney bride lifted bodily from her wedding just as she’s about to tie the knot with fiancé Lance and transported across Time and Space to set the Doctor off on another breakneck adventure.

‘The Runaway Bride’ is lots of fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s packed with lovely visual and top-drawer special effects sequences, it’s a powerhouse of energy and enthusiasm. Within ten minutes of the title sequence fading – and how weird is it to see Tate’s name in the titles rather than Billie Piper’s? – Donna’s been abducted by our old friends the Robot Santas and the Doctor’s in hot pursuit. The real money shot of the episode is the stunning taxi chase sequence as the TARDIS pursues the taxi in which Donna has been imprisoned, the Police Box whirling between traffic and bouncing off car roofs, the Doctor hanging gamely onto the threshold encouraging his extremely reluctant new travelling companion to jump out of the taxi. It’s a breathless, exhilarating sequence and it’s the highlight of the episode. The Doctor soon discovers that Donna has been infected with a very particular form of energy which a monstrous alien arachnid creature called the Empress of Racnoss intends to use to reactivate her sleeping race, deep in the bowels of the Earth itself.

‘The Runaway Bride’ fizzes and pops with great ideas and witty dialogue. Some of the ideas are so off-the-wall they fly into orbit – the Earth having been formed around a Racnoss spaceship, the Doctor flooding Racnoss’s base with the Thames. But Davies isn’t a man to worry about rationality and logicality; if it’s a good idea and it’ll look good on the screen, in it goes. This has the tendency to give the stories a broad, scattergun appearance but there’s no denying the vitality on display here, the writer’s sheer love for the insanity of his subject matter. ‘The Runaway Bride’ ticks all the boxes you could realistically expect for a big, dumb action adventure – explosions, robots, big scary alien (Sarah Parrish chews up the scenery and spits it out again in her unrecognisable turn as the giant spider baddie), musical turn, tanks, more explosions. But, as is the way with modern DOCTOR WHO, it’s the little emotional moments which pack the greatest punch. The Doctor mourning for his lost love Rose(the scene at the wedding party where he watches revellers dancing and briefly sees himself with Rose is particularly heart-breaking), the blossoming of the love/hate relationship between the Doctor and Donna into something approaching grudging admiration and, best of all, Donna confronting the Doctor with the fact that he needs someone in his life not just for himself but so that he can be stopped, particularly in the light of his ruthless annihilation of the Racnoss race. This is good stuff, a nice throwback to the slightly sinister edge the Doctor had in ‘The Christmas Invasion’ and ‘School Reunion’, an edge lost a bit in the romance of the latter half of series two. Perhaps series three will suggest the Doctor’s lost a little more than just a companion when he was forced to leave Rose to her new life on a parallel world. The episode ends with one of those moments Davies loves so much and writes so well; the Doctor and Donna together, just talking. Beautifully contrasting with Rose’s exuberant embracing of the Doctor and the TARDIS in ‘Rose’, here Donna, similarly invited to join the Doctor in a life of mayhem in Time and Space, happily turns him down. She wants none of his dangerous life, she’s just not interested in living on the edge. It’s a clever spin on the ‘life can be so much better’ theme which accompanied Rose on her journey and yet, after all she’s been through, Donna emerges from her brief sojourn with the Doctor as a better, wiser person too. Kudos both to Tennant and Tate who carry the weight of the episode; the former might as well be the only person to have ever played the role, so comfortably is he now in the character’s stripy suit and Converse trainers, and Tate is a revelation as Donna, a character hewn partly form Tate’s own comedy oeuvre and partly from her own experience as a proper dramatic actress. The two crackle together on screen.

Compared to last year’s big, epic ‘Christmas Invasion’, ‘The Runaway Bride’ seems distinctly low-key and, despite the odd festive reference and a bit of trimming here and there, decidedly un-Christmassy. With a smaller cast and only a few big set-ups it feels ‘smaller’, more intimate and yet simultaneously looser and wilder. It gives the distinct impression that it’s a series of long-standing ideas thrown together with a hole-heavy plot tossed in for good measure. But ultimately it really doesn’t matter; it’s always entertaining, frequently laugh-out-loud amusing and never less than utterly charming. ‘The Runaway Bride’ is perfect veg out Christmas night television and if DOCTOR WHO is now established as a festive tradition, then long may it continue. Here’s to series three…

12" Empress of Racnoss Action Figure from the Christmas Special "The Run Away Bride"