I can’t decide if the Doctor would look better in a Santa hat, or Santa would look better in a bow tie. Bow ties are cool, after all. But a Santa hat is pretty festive. Walk in the door wearing a red Santa hat with white trim and everyone in the room instantly knows they’re in for a good time. Everyone, except the Doctor, that is. Father Christmas has him on edge, and with good reason—which brings me to the next in our week-long Doctor Who Christmas Special Countdown:
#4: The Runaway Bride or “Donna Noble Has Been Saved…for the First Time”
By now, seeing Donna Noble and her fiery tresses is like running into your best friend, the one who always seems to miss the important things, like alien invasions, because she’s too busy talking to notice. Of all the companions in recent memory, she’s made the perfect foil for the Doctor—thanks to comedienne Catherine Tate’s excellent comic timing and her BFF chemistry with David Tennant. But before she became savior of the Universe, Donna’s entrée into the Who-niverse began in a white dress.
The Runaway Bride opens with Donna Noble walking down the aisle on her wedding day. It’s Christmas Eve—she hates Christmas altogether, so a wedding and honeymoon holiday seem like the perfect antidote. But during her procession, she’s enveloped in an aura of golden light, accompanied by a familiar whooshing sound, and instantly evaporates from the scene in a high-pitched scream. She hasn’t exactly vanished into thin air—she’s landed aboard the TARDIS in what must seem an inconceivable fever dream. The Doctor is just as stunned. Here he was, busy grieving over his adored companion Rose Tyler getting sucked into a parallel dimension (by the way, best break-up excuse. Ever.), and now he has to figure out why this befuddled bride has shown up on his spaceship and how exactly to get her and her run-on mouth back where she belongs.
Donna and the Doctor
They land in the middle of shopping district in Chiswick (pronounced “Chizzick” or “Oi!”) where camouflage robot mercenaries dressed as brass band Santas are out to kidnap Donna. Hailing a taxi to get her to the church on time, Donna quickly discovers she’s trapped in a speeding cab driven by the Father Christmas from Hell. Thus begins a Hollywood blockbuster-like chase as the TARDIS pulls up alongside the taxi and the Doctor begs Donna to trust him and jump out:
DONNA (meaning Rose): Is that what you said to her? Your friend? The one you lost? Did she trust you?
THE DOCTOR: Yes, she did. And she is not dead. She is so alive. Now, jump!
That’s enough to convince Donna to take a flying leap into the doors of TARDIS, the arms of the Doctor, and our very own hearts (awwww).
A rooftop bull session afterwards gives a greater glimpse into the chatty world of Donna Noble from Chiswick—especially the story of how she met husband-to-be Lance, a coworker at the security company, H. C. Clemens, where she’s a temp. To be on the safe side and cloak her from the psycho-Santas, the Doctor places a biodamp on Donna’s ring finger, and the pair make their way to the reception for the wedding-that-never-was . . . to find a party in full-swing. Miss Manners would not approve. But our red-headed bride shifts the attention and sympathy back to her and everyone eventually gets their groove on, giving our Doctor and his sonic screwdriver a chance to do a little recon. His findings? The security company where Donna works has only one client: Torchwood (raises eyebrow?), and the wedding video shows Donna haloed by a lethal dose of Huon particles, an ancient energy source also found in the TARDIS. Now, even my grandma knows Huon particles can’t possibly be masked with a silly piece of biodamp tin. Enter the evil Santas, still on Donna’s trail, with their Christmas tree ornaments of destruction, putting the Doctor, Donna, and Husband-to-be Lance on the run.
They reach H. C. Clemens company headquarters where it ultimately comes to light that Huon-charged Donna is the key to unlocking the Racnoss, a humanoid-spider hybrid race that lived billions of years ago and now lie dormant at the Earth’s core. The Racnoss Empress, the only one of her kind left, hopes to awaken the long-buried children and go back to the business of devouring planets one at a time—just like in the old days!
As if having her wedding postponed wasn’t bad enough, Donna now learns that the Queen Bee—er, Spider—wasn’t working alone: Husband-to-be Lance has been in on the plan to make Donna the key, secretly replacing her usual morning coffee with Huon particles. Marrying her was just a means to an end. Sure, weddings are supposed to make people cry, but not like this. Lance, however, meets his own end when the Empress chucks him down the hole leading to the center of the Earth and her newly awakened “children.” Somewhere, a Bubby is saying, “Donna’s young and pretty. There’s still plenty of time to meet a nice man who isn’t working for a malevolent alien race.”
Oddly enough, it’s the Doctor who now becomes the malevolent alien, offering the Empress one more chance to get out of Dodge with her all eight of her legs intact. What’s Racnoss-ese for “Ah, thanks, but no thanks?” Fair enough, he says, and uses the remote control Christmas ornament/bomb to blow out a retaining wall and send the the nearby river Thames gushing down the hole to drown out the arachno-peeps. Sometimes a fly swatter just won’t do. The Empress teleports herself back to her spacecraft, shaped like a tree-topping star, hovering above the skies of London only to be blown to smithereens by covert British army tanks. How convenient!
For those keeping score, Donna’s gone three for three: losing a job, a fiance, and her catering deposit all in the span of a few hours. Surely, she’s got some free time to explore the universe in a big blue box. Yet, in a what-the-heck-is-she-thinking move, Donna declines the Doctor’s offer to join him (Ahem, I would never do that. Doctor: Call me!). She’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon—like Season Four.
If you can get past the dastardly vocal affectations of the Racnoss Empress, which, thankfully come towards the end, The Runaway Bride is a thrill-minute-spectacle, made even more spectacular by Tate’s turn as Donna Noble. It’s no surprise that fans happily welcomed her back into the fold as a more permanent companion—that is, until her brain got fried in DW: Journey’s End.
Speaking of brains getting fried, has anyone tried diagramming the River Song/Doctor timelines? Don’t, unless you’ve already finished up your holiday shopping. Only three more episodes left in the countdown. Have I mentioned your favorite yet? Come back tomorrow and see what I’ve got for Number 3. I’ll give you a hint: It features a line from a popular holiday novel written by a popular British novelist. I’ve said too much!
–Read the #5 “Doctor Who” Christmas special here
–And see the #3 “Doctor Who” Christmas special here
Camille Dewing lives and writes in New York City. Visit her website at www.WhatsCamilleDewing.wordpress.com.
[...] you need to catch up in the countdown, check out the #5 here and #4 here. And we’ll be back tomorrow with the answer to what boys say in the face of [...]