The Christmas Invasion

[khaosworks]

What can I say except... fantastic? It was fun, it was moving, and David Tennant just slides into the role of the Doctor like a second skin. Bits of Tom in his grins and nattering on — especially when he was grinning with delight over the "blood control" console — and shades of Chris showing through in his "no second chances" look, but definitely his own man.

I don't think I was the only one that, when he winked at Rose while asking if he was going to be "sexy", had a flash back to Richard E. Grant and his "lick the mirror handsome" Doctor in "The Curse of Fatal Death". Or maybe I was. Sorry.

It was Christmas, so I'll even forgive the idea that regeneration trauma can be solved with a good hot cup of tea, and the confusion about whether the Sycorax were here for the Doctor, or the planet... or both? But they seemed to forget about the Doctor rapidly enough. But I digress. Poor Harriet. I hope they'll follow up on this in Series 2, or Torchwood. She is supposed to be elected for three terms, after all.

Ultimately, though, this was scene setting. Torchwood, check. Mickey and Jackie becoming more welcome in the Doctor's world, check. UNIT, check. Rose learning to trust the new Doctor, check. The new Doctor using his predecessor's catchphrase to assure everyone he is the same guy, check. And so it comes as no real surprise that the real treat was the Coming Soon trailer, of which I will provide screenshots for those who haven't seen them yet.

Keywords for the trailer: Oh, Sarah! K-9! Christ, the new Cybermen look very powerful, very heavy... and very scary!

It's gonna be another long wait.

Mmm. No further comments on "The Second Coming"? Not even to tell me it's crap?

Comments

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the Second Coming so can't comment on it. I've always regarded CoFD as worthy of being at least AU canon (I'm sure Jim Broadbent's Doctor would have sorted himself out given a bit more time), so while it didn't occur to me while watching, I can see the likeness now.

The Sycorax were here bcause something was going down. They're basically the biker gang from the beginning of season six of Buffy ("Sycorax strong! Sycorax mighty! Sycorax ROCK!") and as such I think they were just winging it. No cunning master plan, no organisation as such, just start a rumble and see what happens. Not your usual DW style of baddie, but all the more refreshing for that. And of course the cure for practically everything (or at least a very good way of hastening the healing process) is a nice hot cup of tea.

Poor Harriet crossed a line, I'm afraid, and yes, I think there will be consequences. It's entirely possible that Interim!Doc was talking about the timeline as it appeared from when he was, in which she went the sane way and stood Torchwood down. As it is, we now know that the Earth is getting noticed, and what will have been noticed on this occasion is that we shoot our enemies in the back after they have surrendered and are leaving peacefully. There is an unfortunate precedent in our recent history...

Scene setting? More than that, I think. This was getting the Doctor back on track after an unfortunate aberration. This Doctor has shown that he's both nicer and nastier than Placeholder!Doc: he's fully in touch with all his feelings and able to cope with "domestic," but he's also pretty much over his survivor guilt, and he's not going to let us get away with being "stupid apes."

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"The Sycorax were here bcause something was going down. They're basically the biker gang from the beginning of season six of Buffy"

Ooh! Nice analysis. =:o}

And there was I thinking... 'Those bony heads of theirs look a bit familiar... and they use "blood control", which the Doctor hasn't seen "in years"... Possibly since his 8th incarnation?...'

Could they be some remnant of Faction Paradox, ignorant of their origins and their former powers? (Else they'd have reacted a bit more strongly to the phrase "Time Lord" and to seeing the Doctor's hand lost and regrown.)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I haven't encountered Faction Paradox, except tangentially in The Gallifrey Chronicles...what do I need to read?

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

The Unofficial Government Mental Health Warning, for starters... =;o}

I haven't dared start on the FP parallel universe that's been spun off as a separate entity from DW. That is, I bought the first of the audio stories, and quickly decided "this is both too intriguing, and spread across too many volumes in too many formats, to be admitted to my regular purchasing stream right now". And that was a couple of years ago.

That said, the spun-off FP universe is all written (or at the very least "run") by "Mad Larry" (Lawrence Miles) himself, so if you want the purest version of the author's vision of what the Faction are all about, that's probably the one to go for, and it's all available from the official Norweigian Press / FP web pages. See The Faction Store.

OTOH, if you want to know how they started out, as cunning twist on a possible potential future of the Time Lords...

Er...

My fuzzy recollection is that they get mentioned here there and everywhere, and alluded to everywhere else, and only show up a few times but those times might not make much sense without all the hints and stuff. khaosworks, can you help with anything more specific than that? I believe their first mention/appearance was in "Alien Bodies", which was a fairly early BBC EDN. AFter that it's all a bit of a blur...

[GOES BACK TO LOOK AT THE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY I LINKED TO] Oh, looks see, there's a reading list! Two, in fact. =:o}

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

One thing you need to keep in mind about the Faction Paradox universe is that the Faction Paradox you read about in the BBC books and the Faction Paradox you read about in the Mad Norwegian Press books (and everywhere else) are not precisely the same.

Lawrence Miles created FP for the Doctor Who universe, but after a point disagreed vehemently with what the other writers and the editors were pushing FP to be. By the time the FP storyline in the books ran its course and ended with the destruction of Gallifrey in "The Ancestor Cell", Miles had basically left the project.

So all the stuff he did with FP outside is spun off from the same continuity as the BBC books and even uses some of the same characters that Mad Larry created for the line, but at the same time it's more properly an alternate universe (I believe Mad Larry rejects the FP as portrayed in "Ancestor Cell" as an abberation and it's not part of his continuity).

For example, while Mad Larry intended Grandfather Paradox to be a future incarnation of the Doctor, Lance Parkin turned the Grandfather into everyone's future incarnation, which is a neat little twist but I'm not sure it's one that Miles would have approved of or agreed with, and is still probably not the case in his own FP stories.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"And of course the cure for practically everything (or at least a very good way of hastening the healing process) is a nice hot cup of tea."

...Especially for anyone waking up to face the imminent destruction of the Earth while still wearing his pyjamas and dressing gown. There's at least one established precedent! =:o}

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Which got a mention! I was so tickled at that.

(Yes, I'm commenting several days later but I only just saw it tonight.)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Ah. Sorry. Your story. Excuse me while I go and rebore my brain...

[solcita.livejournal.com]

Ack...did I miss The Christmas Invasion?

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Um... probably. Sorry. It was shown on Boxing Day in Canada, though, so you might want to see if you can try to grab hold of the schedules and see if there's going to be a repeat. Failing that, there's always BitTorrent.