Catherine Tate is kind of hot.

Just wait until she takes that dress to the cleaners and has to explain what happened to it.

Thanks for opening this Jacob.
It seems that many people despise Catherine Tate, but I found Donna to be absolutely delightful.
The Doctor needed to be smacked around to get him out of his "I miss Rose Tyler" funk and she provided that in abundance. I'd never heard of CT before this episode, so that might be why I liked her so much.
As for the spider people, I completely hate spiders, so I would have preferred a different, less disgusting, villain. Now, I'll be wondering about killer spiders living in the center of the Earth.
I did have one question with this episode. Is London warm enough on Christmas Day for Donna to run around in a wedding dress and not suffer from the cold?

I don't have much of a feeling about Catherina Tate (although what I've seen of her tv comedy show is... not to my taste), but I found Donna a little bit shrill.

Donna certainly has some charm to her -- she slapped the Doctor twice when he needed it, and she showed good sense when she told him to quit with the drowning already -- but she is undeniably thick. Or, at least, she lacks some curiosity about the world. I can't see how she'll become someone the Doctor picks up as a companion if she wasn't even aware of the Slitheen and Christmas Invasion attacks.

As usual, Sci-Fi had a bit of a hack job with its commercial placements. Of course, I kept giggling a bit at Sarah Parrish as the Empress considering her and Tennant worked together on "Blackpool" (and considering just exactly HOW their characters then worked together...heh).

I've seen Tate on her show on BBC America and found it quite smart. She has a good sense of humor, is creative, and doesn't try to make her humor raunchy or dirty - it's just there. If I had kids, I'd want them to watch her show. As for Donna, she seemed a bit Bridezillaish to me; it was hard to get past it. But, she had a big heart, which was wonderful.

It was filmed in July 2006 - so yes, it would be warm enough then - which explains the sheen of sweat the actors had in some scenes.

I'm a big fan of Catherine Tate, and I also found Donna a bit shrill. But I really think that's how she was written -- her portrayal of characters on her sketch show is usually more subtle than that. But as the story progressed and we saw her move out of pure screaming mode, I thought she gave a fine performance. And the Doctor nearly broke my heart at the end, when he said Rose's name.

I also can't believe that was Sarah Parish under all that makeup. I want to watch again just so I can study her face and see if I can recognize her.

Yeah. And I suppose if that happened to me on my wedding day, I'd be the same way - making sure I got back to the church and moving mountains to do so.

I was popping in to ask the same question, it didn't appear all that cold! Is it unusual for it to snow on Christmas in London? They were excited about it last year too (although it was ash).

Who wouldn't want to sell out Donna to a big spider lady in order to go into space? Damn, Doc, couldn't you use the screwdriver to weld her yapper shut?

Seriously, I had a blast with this ep. I was laughing through most of it, especially with the return of the Santa Army and the TARDIS/car chase. Oh, and the kids rooting for Donna to jump into the TARDIS. That was too cute.

Nice filler episode to bind the two seasons together. Also, I figure the Doctor lied about the weather manipulation, and he just blasted some Sycorax ash into the air.

That explains a lot. It did look too much like a warm Summer day in several of those scenes.

That was a wonderful scene. I generally hate children, but those two didn't bring up my hate.

I loved the music too - loved how Murray Gold made the entire episode "Fantasia on Jingle Bells."

What I found funny was what those commercials were for. Here we have this wonderfully sophisticated family show, and the first ad I see is some product for men to get rid of gray hair. Then there were the Rogaine ads, and the athlete's foot ads, and some kind of dietary supplement, and on and on. Of course, that could have all come from my local cable company, but it did make me wonder who they thought the audience for Doctor Who is. Retirees?

Not to mention all the ads for "Supergator". Blaurgh.

The Beloved Hubby said that he was surprised at seeing douche commercials on Sci-Fi...while they were airing ECW.

The best one, which I think was during "Runaway", was the Eureka fake PSA: "If somebody you know is creating a black hole, tell someone. Friends don't let friends destroy the fabric of reality." Definately appropriate for DW!

I liked the reverse symmetry between the Doctor taking Rose to the death of the Earth after meeting her, and then travelling to the birth of the Earth after losing her. Not sure if it was even intentional on RTD's part, but kind of neat nonetheless.

Count me in the "Donna-love" camp. I think she and the Doctor had wonderful chemistry together. I'd like to see her on the show again some time.

As for the villain, the effects were great, but she seemed a little Power Rangers-y in her acting. When she said she and her children would devour the Earth, I think she was referring specifically to the scenery.

I also got a little choked up at the end. David Tennant projected so much pain in their final scene together. I got all sad. All in all, I think "Runaway Bride" made a perfect bridge between Series 2 and 3.

I hadn't noticed that - good eye. I'm sure that it was somewhat purposeful on RTD's part. I know he had been quoted about how he "destroyed" the idea of Christianity with TRB.

What? I'm trying to come up with some "idea of Christianity" in TRB and it's not working.

I had also never heard of Cathrine Tate before this episode, but thought she fit the tone of this story very well, which seemed deliberately to be a much more "hyper" episode than typical Who (I mean, it had the TARDIS in a car chase! How are you gonna have your characters going around using their indoor voices after *that*?) Although what works for a one-time "Special Event" type ep. could very easily become unbearable for a full time regular companion unless she were to dial it back a considerable amount. The only other thing I've seen her in is a YouTube clip of some little skit she & David Tennant did for some sort of British telethon. Tennant played a teacher, she played a student (I believe perhaps a particular character for which she's famous in the UK), although the whole skit was jokes about Doctor Who. I found her insufferably annoying in that thing.




Now see, that's one part of the episode I just don't get. It's portrayed like drowning those baby monster spider things (and for the sake of argument let's just pretend that pouring a riverful of water down a hole at the earth's surface would actually somehow destroy spider monsters living all the way down in the core) is some kind of really dark, disturbing, unnecessary act, but I just don't see it. First of all, it makes no sense at all that someone like Donna, who you may have noticed is not the deepest, most reflective person the Doctor has ever traveled with, would react this way towards the destruction of hidious monsters that were being awakened to kill her and then, I assume, the rest of the Earth itself. And even as an outside observer who actually knows the Doctor, some of his issues, and his morality, it still doesn't come across like any sort of overly severe or unwarrented act to me. They were a species who's time had come and gone, they were supposed to be extinct. They were destroyed by the Timelords themselves. This one batch managed to escape and was now threatenig to destory the Earth, how is killing them in self defense not justified? They were never portrayed as anything but purely evil monsters; hell, they were *spiders*, for 90% of the human population, when they see a spider, the instantaneous instinctive reaction is to imediately squish it. There's absolutely nothing about this episode that gave us any hint that we were supposed to feel any sympathy for the Spider Monster Things at all.

In fact, while Donna might perhaps have skirted the edge of annoying, the one truly insufferable thing that I absolutely hated in this ep was the cheesy scenery chewing by the woman playing the Spider Monster, who I understand is another very famous, respected actor in the UK. But I absolutely hated her cartoonish OTT turn here, in fact it made the ending of the ep. seem way to drawn out as I just kept hoping someone would kill her already from the minute she first showed up onscreen.

On the other hand, I absolutely loved the TARDIS car chase, and the Doctor tying strings around the controls so that he could "steer" the TARDIS throught this scene by simply tugging on the string. Once.

Well, the imagery of the Racnoss ship forming the earth goes against the idea that God created it in seven days. The Christmas Star descending is destroyed by Saxon's orders.


I think she was more siding with her from a standpoint of watching a mother whose children are being killed before her eyes. That is the horror of the scene - the Doctor killing a woman's children.

Which.... Okay. A lot of Christians, I know, take that literally, but there are also a whole lot that... don't. Call it allegory or whatever. (Also, why would a higher being count time in exactly the same way humans do? So, yeah, allegorical.)

Besides, its not like the seven days idea is uniquely Christian. After all, it comes from a Jewish book that I think is also subscribed to my Muslims. I assumed he must have meant something like the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection, neither of which I saw any references to.

Also, the idea of the Racnos creating the earth is subversive not just to Christianity but to *Every* religion that mankind has ever thought up, as they all have some sort of creation myth, and the idea that the Earth was actually created by an evil monster to hide her evil spawn and that Man (and all other life) is just an irrelevant side effect of this which will be destroyed & eaten once the Earth has fulfilled its purpose has got to be a blasphemy that is diametrically opposed to *every single one* of those creation myths.

BlueOwl, I saw it as a question of when to leave well enough alone. I may have the timing wrong, but it seemed that we could hear the babies screaming, right? And the drowning continued past the point when the screaming stopped? So then he was just being vindictive, and she let him know she thought he'd done what was reasonable.

Oh, I really liked Donna. Not as a permanent companion, mind you, but I thought she was perfectly suited to yank the doctor out of his doldrums by demanding so much of him that he didn't have time to sink into a funk. And having seen several brides on their wedding days (one whose car died before we got to the wedding), I think her screechiness at the beginning is quite realistic.

I also understood her horror at watching the destruction of the scenery-chewing monster at the end. Even though I had little sympathy for the spider and her glass ship (I wonder if David Bowie was watching...) it was difficult hearing any mother wailing and screaming in horror about her children being murdered. Not that I think the Doctor did the wrong thing, but it was difficult for me to hear. So I can see why Donna would be a little put off by him watching without even one bit of empathy.

Heee!: "I'm not... I'm not not... not Martian!"

The TARDIS "car chase" really did weird me out a bit -- it just didn't seem right for the old girl to fly down a street and bump into cars. It was also weird at the end when instead of disappearing it shot up into the sky. Not sure of the logic behind that.

I was glad to finally hear the word Galiffrey uttered. That was the first time his home was actually mentioned by name on this new series, right?

Well, I will stick to my previous estimation - CT has the potential for being a good Companion and a refreshing change from the angsting for the Doctor, BUT only if they can dial back the shrill on Donna. By the second commercial break my husband was holding his head saying "Oh, if this is what i can expect for next season I am passing."The scenes in which she reined it in a bit were the most effective, I thought, even when she hauled off and slapped him silly, or snarked at him unmercifully. Funny!

I figured the zooming up at the end was just pure showing off for Donna, hoping she changes her mind if they ever meet again.

Yes.


Well, thankfully S3 is with Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones, medical student.

Did the Doctor really use the neuter pronoun to refer to a hypothetical non-gender-specific human? I could have sworn he said that there was no way that a human being could lock "itself" onto the TARDIS. Heh. I'm not sure whether to find that endearingly gender-liberated or chillingly alien. Maybe a little bit of both, really.

I loved Donna, but that's partly because I'm a mean old cynic who tires awfully quickly of "gosh! wow! sense of wonder!" We already had that with Rose, and of course it has a certain mythic resonance and all that, but in my opinion, it's refreshing to have a different sort of companion: one who isn't naturally intellectually curious, or very often overly impressed with the new, the wondrous, or the strange. Someone with narcissistic tendencies, whose ingrained habit is to look inward and not to the world around her, and who consequently is often in a state of self-imposed "thickness." To me, it makes a nice change from the more usual type of fantasy protagonist. (Then, I always vastly preferred Eustace Scrubb to any of those dull little Pevensie children, too. So perhaps my tastes are suspect.)

I also liked the glimpses we caught of Donna's hidden depths of emotional intelligence, whenever her usual habit of self-absorption cracked enough to allow them to shine through. Whenever she did choose to pay attention to something other than herself, she came across as quite insightful, I thought. I liked that contrast, partly because I've known people like that and so it seemed very real to me, but also because I just thought it made her an interesting character with a lot of potential for growth.


Hee! Oh, hee!

Indeed. All of that scenery-chewing was much too much for me. Rather than getting into the spirit of the thing, I found myself jarred out of the story by a sickening sense of embarrassment as I winced and cringed my way through her performance. It really marred the episode for me, since I quite enjoyed everything except for her scenes. Even the car chase, complete with kiddies cheering on the good guys (ordinarily the sort of thing that I loathe), I found cute and fun, and not really treacly at all. Then the screamy spider lady showed up, though, and from that moment on, I just wanted her to get off my screen already. Too over-the-top, too loud, too cartoonish, too panto, too...well, too everything, really.

And it's a pity, too, because I think it made it harder for me to pay attention to what I suspect was meant to be really important about some of the scenes. Like, rather than thinking to myself "Oh, wow. The Doctor is committing genocide again! And this time, he looks like he's kind of...getting into it. Uh-oh. That's a really bad sign. He'd better start watching himself," instead I was thinking: "Oh, god, isn't this sequence with the awful screamy overwrought spider woman performance over yet?" I think it did weaken the impact of the end of the episode for me a little.

POCKETS!!!!

I think that recurring line and the looks on the kids faces in the car/TARDIS chase scene were my favorite parts.
Oh and when DOnna told him his jacket was the right size for, a rat, wasn't it? David IS rather thin!

Oh, yes, the pockets! I always knew there was something special about them, ever since Tom Baker spent what seemed like half an episode emptying his pockets. Great call-back!

How many jelly babies did he find? ;)

This episode had so many wonderful comic moments: the true version of Donna's engagement; the three of them riding Segways down the Torchwood tunnels; Donna getting kidnapped during the Doctor's little monologue, leading to the Buffy-esque "blah blah and this is the quietest you have been in your entire life;" the fake-looking CGI alligator-dinosaur thingie...

Wait... that last one was a commercial for a SciFi Original.

If the TARDIS can alter your perception so that you think you're hearing English when you're actually hearing an alien language, can't it alter your perception so you hear a normal tone of voice instead of someone screeching?


Please? :D

What I find amazing is that it was the same Sarah Parrish from Blackpool! If I had not known it was her, I wouldn't have recognized her at all.

Or was the "screeching" referring to any number of actors that have been in/near the TARDIS? Everyone in S2 and so far in S3 has had a tendency to "screech."

I was refering to Donna, especially since she's signed on for next series.

Yeah, I was just joking about DT's tenor range. Which can get screechy at times.

I was actually very impressed with Catherine Tate. That part where Lance just basically completely torpedoed her self-esteem? She was wonderful in her reactions. I got a little chokey.

Yes, I was very much impressed with how much Donna developed over the episode from being this bridezilla to being this person who is now experiencing the world anew. You can just sense that she isn't distraught over the incident, she just wants to explore her life now from a different perspective. And, it looks like she's developed more of a feel for herself, her confidence, and humanity in general.

I'm with whoever said the Racnoss' was a little too Power Rangey. Just sometimes...this show misses the mark with costuming. But, eh. That's a small detail for an episode that I really enjoyed.

Was anyone else disappointed Lance was evil? I wasn't surprised at all, but just considering how excited she was about her wedding, it was sad that she's still single. The scene where he tore her to bits made me cringe, it was so mean. Almost to the point where I wanted to leave the room for a moment, or change the channel.

What made me cement my love for Donna was at the very end when she said Lance deserved his death, and then took it back. Even though he was beyond comprehension in his jerkiness to her, she still forgives him.

Heh. That was me. She was completely Rita Repulso with eight legs. And it didn't help that her prosthetic teeth made the actress drool, so she had to keep sucking the spit off of her teeth. It was like, "shriek shriek shriek SHLURP! shriek shriek shriek SHLURP!" I kept expecting her to emit a six-foot streamer of drool and scenery pieces.

That's what bugged me about it - and I hadn't realized it until now. Well, in all honesty, Doctor Who is originally meant to be a kids' show, so it makes sense that it could mirror Power Rangers a bit.

Jacob has pinned an announcement at the top of the Questions About The Forums thread to the effect that casting news isn't a spoiler, and specifically listing the non-spoilery casting facts that CT will be the regular companion for all of series four and that Martha leaves at the end of series three but will return to Who halfway through series four after doing a short stint on the second season of the Who spinoff Torchwood

I'm probably completely off base with this, but watching closely the scene in which Donna's finance seems to "fake out" Donna by pretending to sneak up on the Racnos with the ax, I got the distinct impression that he was actually not faking; he was really intending to hack her, until she happened to turn her head and spot him, and in that instant his reaction was one of fear, until *she* started making with the maniacal cackling like the cheesy overdone cartoon villain she is, and it's only then that he seems to try joining in and pretending to be joking, now that she got the drop on him. It doesn't change the fact that he originally joined with her, went along with her planed, and spent six months poisoning Donna, of course, but it suggests that he might have, at least for awhile, been making a sincere attempt to try to repair the damage from something that he found himself caught up in way over his head.

Besides, if it wasn't that, than that whole thing of pretending to come at her with an ax purely as a cheap joke the whole time is just..., really stupid.

The part that annoyed me was the point where the Rachnoss' star was shooting the people of London and you see this family in panic, then the next shot is of a kid just standing there as the laser comes toward her while her parents who were right behind her in the previous shot are nowhere to be found. Of course Dad comes to get her out of the way at the last second, but that was just a bit of a cheap shot at showing a (incredibly stupid) kid in peril.

Parts that I liked: The. Whole. Damn. Episode. (well, except for the shot mentioned above and Sarah Parrish's performance, heh)
Seriously, it was fun from beginning to end. Donna started out as just a screeching harpy, but it was her wedding day so a bit of Bridezilla was to be expected. Once she saw the "big picture," she mellowed somewhat. She's not afraid to call Ten on his crap and slap him when he gets too manic. That's exactly what he needed. The Rose angst was done well, yet the fun tone of the episode was maintained. All in all a great start.

Did she forgive him, or did she just think that being a snack for the Rachnos was fate too terrible even for Lance-the-jerk?

Ooh, true story. That bothered me too, since it felt like it went on forever. So it really was only ten seconds, but they could have put it to better use.

I was thinking, all those missiles that went past/over the ship, wouldn't they land right on top of something in London? Good show, except for the Mourning Over Lost Rose. Bleh. Other Companions were lucky if they even got a mention once they were gone.

Like the idea it could have been a huge computer created to come up with a single question that gets destroyed to make room for a hyperspace bypass five minutes before it fulfills it's purpose where human life was a side affect of crashed alien telephone cleaners.

Ha! I kept thinking, "I hope the scenery made a nice dinner for the actors." A lot of people have said this episode was cartoony, but I think most cartoons are more sophisticated.

I stopped hating Donna when she stopped shouting for long enough, but I never warmed up to her. I don't like shouters and I don't like people who are willfully ignorant, so I wasn't able to like her. I also thought she was an incompetent bridezilla with her undone hair and the most unflattering wedding dress ever. Did the hairstylist and tailor go on holiday or was that outfit supposed to indicate things about her character?

I'm glad this episode was immediately followed by Smith & Jones or I would have been very disappointed. It was still better than Fear Her, though.

Well, they do have a fair bit of real life experience at shooting hostile entities out of the sky in that town, so hopefully that wouldn't be a problem.