THE Doctor Who Christmas Special Countdown: #3

When my cousin and I were little girls, my grandmother would get us the same Christmas presents.  It looked like a yuletide Noah’s Ark under the tree—two of everything.  And she’d make us sit with our back to each other as we opened our gifts so as not to spoil it for the other—in case one of us was not as fast at opening as, say, I was.  While the gifts were nearly identical—toys, treats, outfits—there was always a slight difference between the two.  I don’t know why I brought that up, so let me just get right on with the Countdown . . .

#3:  The Next Doctor or Invasion of the Monkey-Puppies

This Doctor Who Christmas Special sees the Doctor arrive in London, 1851 and marks the return of longtime foes, the Cybermen.  Having just destroyed the Daleks and saved the entire Universe from Darvos’s Reality Bomb, and seeing off his band of companions—including his beloved Rose Tyler—for what could be the last time, the lonely Tenth Doctor finds himself in a snowy Dickensian tableau.  He even echoes the famous author’s renowned holiday character when he asks, “You, boy, what day is this?”

It is, in fact, Christmas Eve.  But before our Time Lord has a chance to take in all the sights, a woman in distress calls out for him.  Not him, exactly.  The “Doctor” she’s shouting for is another man, decked in waistcoat and cravat, chasing what appears to be a gorilla/dog hybrid wearing an iron mask.

The dastardly Cyber Monkey-Puppies

Our Doctor joins his doppelganger in hot pursuit of the “Cybershade,” but the monkey-puppy ultimately gets away.  The Doctor, our Doctor, begins to suspect his new friend, whose female companion is named Rosita (hmm?), is a future incarnation of himself—albeit one whose memory has been parboiled to forget certain, extremely important bits, like his previous Tenth form.  Only when this new Doctor—or next Doctor, get it?—whips out his sonic screwdriver and reveals it to be an actual screwdriver and his TARDIS is a blue hot air balloon (Tethered Ariel Release Developed in Style), does Number Ten get a little suspicious.

Trying to piece together one’s memories is not nearly so difficult for Mercy Hartigan, who remembers all too well the misuse and abuse she suffered early on in life.  This could be why she has no qualms about aiding the Cybermen in their global domination, so long as she gets a seat at the table when all is said and done.  Seriously, what’s a girl gotta do to get a little respect in Nineteenth Century England anyway?  The answer, it seems, lies in rounding up the children of Victorian England and putting them to work creating an industrial, Godzilla-sized Cyber King.   (Sidenote: After watching this and seeing the musical Oliver!, I’m going to state as fact that the entire workforce of the Industrial Age consisted only of street urchins under the age of twelve.)

Now, not only do our two Doctors have to remember what one of them has forgotten—that one of them is a widower named Jackson Lake whose child has been kidnapped to toil in the cyber-factory—together they must stop the rise of the dreaded Cyberking.  But figuring out the former makes them too late for the latter: Mercy Hartigan’s mind has plugged in to the behemoth Cyberking, which is now towering over London.  (Where’s Mothra when you need her?)  The Doctor, the real one, uses the hot-air balloon TARDIS to come face-to-face with this ultimate cyber-bully.  After offering mercy to Mercy (Mercy mercy?), which she declines, he destroys the looming figure and once again saves the world without making too big a metal mess for the citizens of London to clean up.  They’d probably make five-year-olds do it for a ha-penny, anyway.

The Next Doctor hits all the right Who notes: spectacular settings, period costumes, top-notch casting, high-energy chases, the celebrated return of the Cybermen, and a refreshingly lo-tech take on How to Save the Universe in Ten Easy Steps.  It marked the beginning of the end of David Tennant’s tenure as the Doctor, and the casting of David Morrissey, who starred with Tennant in Blackpool, sent ripples through the Who-niverse that he might be the next, and Eleventh, Doctor.

The wrath of the Cyber King

Fans of Steampunk (the sci-fi/fantasy sub-genre where flight goggles are every season’s must-have) also have a soft spot for this episode.  The Cyberking, a monolithic and maniacal creation of the Industrial Age, hits all the right cogs and sprockets, and Mercy Hartigan’s red corset alone has inspired many a cosplay ensemble.  Come to think of it, a figure dressed in cherry red surrounded by small beings toiling away in a factory sounds an awful lot like…seriously, I’m beginning to think writer Russell T. Davies once drank some pretty bad egg nog.

If you need to catch up in the countdown, check out the #5 here and #4 here.  And check here to find the answer to what boys say in the face of danger.

Camille Dewing lives and writes in New York City. Visit her website at www.WhatsCamilleDewing.wordpress.com.