Series 1 Special: The Christmas Invasion

"The Christmas Invasion" would easily be guaranteed a sugnificant place in the Doctor Who history-books by virtue of being David Tennant's first episode-length appearance in the programme (following the short Children In Need sketch), and being only the second story which could be charitably deemed a Christmas special However, it does work quite well as an entertaining story in its own right, picking up and developing the storylines of the earlier series.



Christmas specials are, normally, the low point of a television series, generally being an excuse for substandard writing, either involving trite and saccharine messages about the spirit of Christmas, or pantomimesque romps:  "The Christmas Invasion", however, is nothing like "The Feast of Steven", and also proves a nice antidote to Christmas saccharinity, skewering the holiday-special cliche of snow miraculously falling at Christmas (cf. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Amends") by having the "snow" in question turn out to be ash from the destroyed Sycorax spaceship. The production is once again flawless, with Clearwell Caves making a welcome appearance (although the one major sticking-point from our perspective is that the credits sequence has reverted to the 1980s trend of crediting the lead character as "The Doctor" rather than the more traditional "Doctor Who").

Rating: 7/10