Doctor Who – The Runaway Bride – Review & spoilers

The Runaway Bride
by Russell T Davies

The Doctor gets a new “temporary” companion in time for Christmas.

Synopsis
The Doctor has just said “goodbye” to Rose Tyler, trapped in another dimension. He turns from the console only to see a bride, standing, rather impossibly, in the TARDIS. She proves to be more than abrasive enough that the Doctor decides to put her back in her place and time, but, typically, the TARDIS doesn’t land on target. (At least it lands on the right day.)

The Bride, Donna, catches a cab while the Doctor is trying to get money. The Doctor see the Santa robots from last year’s Christmas special and realizes Donna is still in danger. The cab driver is also a robot and is abducting Donna. The Doctor uses the TARDIS to chase her down the highway and rescue her.

Next, he gets her to her wedding (which everyone has rather callously decided to have the party without her), just in time for the Santas to attack again. Once again, the Doctor saves the day. Somehow Donna has been infused with an incredibly ancient (and supposedly non-existent) type of energy, which is what allowed her to arrive in the TARDIS and allows the Santas to track her.

Donna works for a company that is affiliated with Torchwood. His investigations lead him to a secret (abandoned) Torchwood base under the Thames Barrier. Inside, they discover a hole to the core of the Earth, and a giant Spider Queen, last of a voracious race of archnids who had terrorized the universe billions of years ago. They were all but wiped out by the Time Lords.

Donna’s fiance proves to be a conspirator with the Spider Queen and soon shows his true colors. Donna must be dropped into the pit where a ship full of eggs was placed just as the Earth started to form. The energy in Donna will revive them and send them swarming across the universe to eat everything.

The Doctor saves the day again by draining the Thames into the hole to the core of the earth, killing the baby spiders. The military rolls the tanks in and destroys the Spider Queen and her spacecraft which has been zapping London.

The Doctor offers the heartbroken Donna the opportunity to be his next companion, but she refuses and off the Doctor goes.

Analysis
The initial reviews that came about The Runaway Bride were not good, and I was set to be disappointed. Fortunately, they were completely wrong. This has to be one of Russell T. Davies’ best scripts for Doctor Who.

Without the Doctor/Rose lovey relationship, the Doctor is at his most traditional. The story is basically an action story without being bogged down with too much emotional rubbish, although it does deal a bit with the Doctor’s feelings about loosing Rose.

From a technical standpoint, as with an RTD script, it doesn’t pay to think about the “science” too much. It’s hard to imagine the technology of the spider ship being so powerful that it could withstand billions of years as the grain of sand that made the pearl of the Earth. The pressure alone would have to destroy it, but if not, how come the Queen’s ship was so easily destroyed by a conventional tank?

Then we have the question of draining the Thames. Wouldn’t it just fill in from the oceans? The whole in the basement of Torchwood wouldn’t be big enough to drain the Thames faster than it could fill. (In case you’re wondering, I estimate the hole must have held approximately 44,800 cubic kilometers of water, which is just a drop in the bucket to the Earth’s 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water.)

Having not to long go seen Inferno, I can’t help wondering why this Earth core drilling project didn’t destroy the world, nor why at least isn’t there an up-welling of magma? Still, Doctor Who has rarely been a series too concerned with continuity.

Overall it was an enjoyable romp (more so than last year’s), but the entire Who fandom must have breathed a sigh of relief when Donna turned the Doctor’s offer down. Donna was annoying and stupid throughout the entire episode. I’ve never been a fan of the Catherine Tate show, because I don’t find it very funny, but now I realize perhaps I don’t like it because I find Catherine Tate annoying.

As last year, previews were shown for the upcoming season. It looks good, but then previews are always designed to make it look best.

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