Doctor Who 167: "The Christmas Invasion"

[starlady]

Is it me or is this episode wildly chilling?

My only exposure to Ten before this was the brilliant vid "Handlebars," which was not lying! Everything that happens in that vid is laid out right here in outline form and it is a chilling contrast to the Christmas crackers and general holiday cheer. The Doctor declares himself Earth's defender, which is cool I guess, except that Harriet Jones isn't wrong: he can't be everywhere all the time. And even if he could be…what gives him the right, other than that he can? What gives him the right to bring down Harriet Jones and end the second Golden Age prematurely? He's right that her decision to destroy the Sycorax is murder, but being prime minister means making tough calls, and it's not entirely clear that she made an actually wrong one. Also the Doctor's actions basically directly lead to the rise of Saxon, which is not great! 

The real kicker is that he doesn't believe in second chances, but he's a lucky man; he gets quite a lot of them.

Comments

[recessional]

"Handlebars" is 100% accurate about Ten. Which wouldn't be a barrier to me liking that iteration except that all the writers except for a brief period writing Donna (who was then Done Totally Dirty in the end) seem to be unaware that this is who Ten is and keep insisting he's A Good Moral Man and....yeah.

[starlady]

My memory is that this problem carried through with Eleven, even; before I noped out in season six there was quite a lot of insisting that he was acting with good will and that made everything Okay, which is not actually how it works.

[recessional]

I honestly didn't have that problem with Eleven as long as there were Ponds? Rory and Amy called him on his shit quite a lot, and the arc centred enough on shit coming back to bite him that it didn't get to me.

MMV, obviously.

But any point where they were absent....yeah. And as far as I can tell it got egregious with Twelve. I haven't watched any Thirteen yet so.

[swan_tower]

I don't know the vid, but I'll agree that Ten is often wildly arrogant. I still like him much better than I like Eleven, but my favorite part of his story is the bit where he absolutely gets called on that arrogance.

[starlady]

You should definitely watch the vid, because it's perfect.

I am planning to skip Eleven this time (I guess I've also de facto skipped Nine too, sorry Christopher Eccleston, always getting screwed), but it's interesting starting from the beginning with Ten and realizing that the seeds of a lot of things that happened later were there from the absolute very beginning. When he says that now he knows what kind of man he is, that he's a lucky man, that is not a description of character! That is a random external attribute! My dude! Who are you when the chips are down? He hasn't the faintest clue and that seems like a definite problem.

[legionseagle]

This got Ten off on completely the wrong foot for me, and made me rather miserable for the rest of Christmas: Harriet Jones was one of my favourite characters and that incident was basically character bashing because RTD had to have his own Belgrano moment with a female PM (actually, Thatcher was a) not the person who gave orders for the Belgrano; and b) the captain of the Belgrano has confirmed that the Belgrano was actively a threat to British forces at the relevant time.)

[starlady]

That's a bit of history that I wasn't aware of! That makes it even worse, thanks RTD!

I admit that as I was watching I was like, "It's probably unfair to blame the Doctor for Brexit in this universe, AND YET."

Even aside from all that, Ten and Rose romantically holding hands in the ashfall of a destroyed alien vessel while her poor boyfriend and mother stand apart is a rather unique spin on the meaning of Christmas. I don't have strong feelings about the Doctor and romance per se, but I definitely felt bad for the boyfriend.

[legionseagle]

This is the later analysis of the Belgrano affair and this is what I said about the Christmas Invasion parallels in an unpublished essay from 2010:

Secondly, at the end of The Christmas Invasion27[first broadcast 25 December 2005] he initiates a whispering campaign to depose Harriet Jones, in revenge for her action in ordering Torchwood to shoot down the retreating Sycorax vessel, a possible reference to Margaret Thatcher’s alleged order to sink the Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands campaign28[The Ninth Doctor, in World War Three, is troubled by a sense of familiarity about Harriet Jones, until he recognises her as the Prime Minister who “served three terms” and created Britain’s Golden Age. Although Harriet Jones, as initially presented, is the antithesis of Thatcher, being an unambitious left-leaning back-bencher who voted against the Iraq War, the Thatcher parallels do not stop with the possible Belgrano reference. Thatcher also served three consecutive terms – the first modern Prime Minister to do so – and her downfall, too, began with allegations that she “looked tired”.]