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.