Poetic Insights

The Christmas Invasion contained the first regeneration of this new era of Doctor Who, and was the first Christmas Day Special. No pressure. It was the episode that sealed it for me, I would be a Who fan from here on in. What an all consuming obsession it was going to be during my teens and, without a doubt, one of the few glimmers of hope I had then. That is why I am so excited about Russell T Davies returning to Doctor Who. His writing influenced my own. I was writing some dreadful fan fiction in those days.

I was surprised reading The Christmas Invasion how much of the story started to come back to me.

Jackie and Mickey are reunited with a devastated Rose, because she does not know what has happened to her Doctor, the man she once thought she knew has been replaced, by a man with an unfamiliar face. Mickey takes her shopping, where a Brass Band become killer, and return to Jackie’s flat, where there is something else sitting in the living room that isn’t very familiar to Rose. That is the Christmas tree.

‘That thing in the corner of the room wasn’t their tree.’

In the background to this not very happy return for Rose, is Harriet Jones, her right-hand man Alex and Mr Llewellyn and his Mars probe. Eventually Rose reunites with Harriet Jones, both are beamed 5 miles above Earth onto the ship of the Sycorax. And the Doctor, freshly revived with tea, makes his entrance in borrowed pyjamas, where is he brimming with puns and bravado and questions – ‘Am I funny? Am I sarcastic?’ he winked at Rose. ‘Sexy?’

To then ending a sword fight with the Sycorax leader with the cold line. ‘No second chances. I’m that sort of a man.’ He doesn’t finish there though, he destroys Harriet Jones too!

The Christmas Invasion is a great story. And it is probably one of my favourite post regeneration stories, after Spearhead in Space.

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