The Runaway Bride (Doctor Who)

182 - The Runaway Bride
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Production
Directed by	Euros Lyn
Written by	Russell T. Davies
Script editor	Simon Winstone
Produced by	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner
Series	Christmas Special (2006)
Running time	60 minutes
First broadcast	25 December, 2006
Chronology
← Preceded by Doomsday Followed by → Smith and Jones

The Runaway Bride is a special episode of the long running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. The special was produced for Christmas 2006, aired on 25 December (Christmas Day), and played much the same role that The Christmas Invasion played the previous year, introducing the third series while not actually being part of it. It features Catherine Tate as Donna, who appeared in the TARDIS at the end of the previous episode, Doomsday.

Synopsis

As Donna is about to marry her boyfriend Lance on Christmas Eve, she finds herself transported aboard the TARDIS. As the Doctor tries to get Donna to the church on time, the alien Empress of Racnoss watches closely from the throne in her spaceship. Somehow Donna is the key to an ancient plot to destroy the Earth. With time running out, can the Doctor solve the puzzle, defeat the Empress and stop her army of robot Santas?

Plot

File:The Runaway Bride (Doctor Who).jpg

"Listen to me, you've got to jump!" "I'm not jumping on a motorway!"

A wedding is beginning in a church. As the bride is being escorted down the aisle and the wedding party looks on, she begins to glow — literally. She cries out as she dissolves into a cloud of golden particles that streak upward, through the ceiling. Light years away, the particles enter the TARDIS, which is orbiting a supernova. The Doctor looks up from the console, shocked to see the bride standing before him. All he can repeat is the word, "What?" as the bride demands to know where she is…

The Doctor tells the bride she is inside the TARDIS, and that it is impossible for someone to get inside while she is in flight. She does not understand, thinking it is a prank kidnapping. She continues to berate the Doctor as he works the console, threatening to sue him. She rushes to the doors and opens them, stunned as she sees the supernova outside. She wonders why they are not dead and the Doctor explains the TARDIS is protecting them. He introduces himself, and she gives her name as Donna. She guesses he is an alien, and he confirms it.

Donna demands that he bring her back to the church in Chiswick. Then, seeing Rose's shirt, she accuses the Doctor again of kidnapping. The Doctor, stony-faced, says that it belonged to a friend, and that he lost her. He lands the TARDIS while, back at the church, Donna's mother and her fiancé Lance are making frantic phone calls trying to find her.

The TARDIS has not landed in Chiswick, but somewhere else in London. The Doctor checks the ship, worried about its behaviour. He asks Donna if she has been in contact with anything alien, but she has already run off, frightened by the fact that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside. The Doctor follows her, but she refuses to get back in the TARDIS. They eventually hail a taxi, but as they have no money, it drops them off again. Donna complains about the lack of Christmas spirit on Christmas Eve; she cannot stand Christmas, and plans to have her honeymoon in sunny Morocco.

They run to a public telephone box, which the Doctor zaps with his sonic screwdriver so Donna can use it to contact her family. He then goes to a cash point and uses the screwdriver again to make a withdrawal. Hearing the Christmas music of a brass ensemble, he turns to face some familiar masked Santas, recognising them as the robotic scavengers from the previous year's Christmas. Donna manages to borrow some money and gets into a cab driven by another Santa — the Doctor shouts a warning, but the cab drives off. The Santas level their "instruments" at the Doctor, but before they have a chance to attack he uses the screwdriver to make the cash point spill banknotes across the street. As people rush between him and the Santas to get the money, the Doctor runs back to the TARDIS.

In the cab, the taxi moves onto a motorway, despite Donna's protests that this is not the way to the church. Donna tugs at the Santa's hood and discovers that it is a bronze-headed robot. As she bangs on the locked doors, the TARDIS materialises, weaving in and out of traffic as it gives chase. Two small children in another car watch as the Doctor calls out from the open doors, using the sonic screwdriver to short out the robot and asks Donna to jump. She hesitates, but the Doctor asks her to trust him, assuring her that his "lost friend" trusted him, too, and is not dead. Donna makes the leap, and the TARDIS soars into the sky as the children cheer.

On top of a skyscraper, they leave a smoking TARDIS, worn out from the physical stress of flying and needing some time to recover. The Doctor gives Donna a ring; in actuality, a bio-damper that will prevent the robotic Santas from tracking her. The Doctor tries to determine why the Santas are after her, asking Donna about her job and Lance. Donna explains that she and Lance work at H.C. Clements, a security firm. She relates how six months ago, Lance made her coffee on her first day there, despite him being the head of Human Resources and her only a secretary. They began dating and he proposed (in actuality, she did, and nagged him until he accepted).

The two head to the wedding reception, where she is horrified to see the party going on without her. They bombard her with questions until she fakes bursting into tears. As the party continues, the Doctor uses the screwdriver on a borrowed mobile phone, discovering that H.C. Clements was owned by the Torchwood Institute. He then checks with the cameraman for video footage of Donna's initial disappearance, and identifies the particles she turned into as Huon particles, a source of energy that has not existed for billions of years — and cannot be concealed by a bio-damper.

Sure enough, the Santas have surrounded the reception hall. The Doctor warns the wedding party to move away from the Christmas trees. One of the Santas manipulates a remote control and the baubles on the tree float away, briefly hovering above the crowd before impacting with explosive force, sending people scurrying for cover. The Santas line up with their weapons at the ready, but the Doctor is at the DJ's table. He plugs his screwdriver into the sound system, sending sonic waves which shake the robots apart. Retrieving the remote and a robot head, he discovers that the robots are being controlled by someone else, the signal coming from far above. He rushes out despite Donna telling him that there are injured people that need attention, and Donna follows. Outside, he traces the signal into space. In space, an eight-pointed star-shaped spaceship wrapped in webbing approaches Earth, its occupant looking down at the Doctor, calling him a clever boy for tracing it and declaring that it will soon descend upon the Earth.

The Doctor loses the signal, and decides to investigate H.C. Clements, getting Lance to drive him and Donna there. He checks the computer system explaining that the firm was once owned by Torchwood, but after Torchwood One's dissolution in the Battle of Canary Wharf someone else took control. He discovers a lower basement not on the building plans, and the three head down there. Taking some convenient Segways along a passage, they come across a hatch with the Torchwood logo. The Doctor climbs the ladder within until he emerges on one of the piers of the Thames Barrier, in the middle of the river.

Back inside the installation, the Doctor discovers a laboratory where Torchwood was manufacturing Huon particles in liquid form. The Doctor now realises why Donna was pulled into the TARDIS. Her body is saturated with Huon particles, which also happen to exist in the Heart of the TARDIS. The particles needed to mature in a human host until the heightened stress of her wedding day and the hormones activated by that catalysed and activated the particles, causing her to be pulled into the TARDIS like a magnet. The Time Lords experimented with Huon particles but gave them up, unravelled their atomic structure and destroyed all those that remained, because they were deadly. He promises Donna that he will reverse what has been done to her, as he is not going to lose someone else.

One of the laboratory walls slides upward, revealing another chamber, with more bronze robots armed with guns. As the creature's voice rings out, Lance quietly slips away. Also in the chamber is a deep pit, stretching all the way to the centre of the Earth, built by laser using Torchwood technology. The Doctor challenges the creature to show itself, and it teleports down from its ship; a huge, half-humanoid, half-spider which the Doctor recognises being one of the Racnoss, a race thought wiped out billions of years ago by the fledgling empires during the Dark Times. The creature identifies herself as the Empress. They find H.C. Clements in the creature's web above the pit.

Lance sneaks up behind the Empress and acts like he is going to strike her with an axe, but at the last minute stops and laughs. He reveals that he is working with the Empress: he had spiked Donna's coffee every day with Huon particles, turning her into a key that will enable the Empress to regain her ancient power. In return, the Empress promised to show him the stars. At the Empress's order, the robots turn their guns on the Doctor, but he surmises that if Donna can be attracted to the TARDIS, the reverse is also true. As the robots open fire, the TARDIS materialises around the Doctor and Donna, then dematerialises again. However, the Empress is not thwarted. Now that she knows the correct dose of particles, she can turn Lance into the key by dousing him with the liquid particles. The robot Santas force feed him the liquid.

To find out why the pit goes to the centre of the Earth, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS back 4.6 billion years into the past, when the Earth was just a cloud of dust and rocks waiting to form. As he and Donna watch, a Racnoss spaceship drifts into the nascent Solar System and begins to pull debris around itself. The Racnoss ship, along with its occupants, is not just buried at the centre of the Earth — it is the centre. In the present, the concentration of Huon particles in Lance begins pulling the TARDIS back. Landing back in the laboratory, the Doctor uses the extrapolator to move the TARDIS to an adjacent corridor. However, Donna is taken away by a robot and the Doctor finds himself facing another armed one.

Donna and Lance are webbed to the ceiling above the pit. The Empress activates the particles in Donna's and Lance's bodies, which streak downward to awaken the Racnoss sleeping in their ship. The Empress eagerly waits for her children to rise and take their first feeding. She slices Lance free of the web, and he falls, screaming into the pit. The Empress's spaceship descends towards London, and the wondrous looks that people give the star-shaped craft turn into panicked horror as it begins to throw lightning bolts towards the street.

A robot walks in the room, but the Empress is quick to recognise the Doctor in disguise. Unmasking, he frees Donna with the sonic screwdriver, but she misses swinging into his arms and lands on the floor instead. The Doctor gives the Empress an ultimatum — he will find a planet for her and her children if she ends this. The Empress declines, and the Doctor warns her that in that case, what happens next is her own doing. She orders the robots to fire, but the Doctor deactivates them with the remote control. The Doctor reveals to the Empress the name of his home world. It is far away and long since gone, but its name lives on — Gallifrey. The Empress screams in rage that his people murdered the Racnoss.

The Doctor takes out some of the unexploded Christmas baubles. He tosses them in the air, using the remote control and throwing them into the surrounding pipes and walls, letting the Thames flood into the base and into the pit. The Empress screams amidst the flood and flame about her children. Donna asks the Doctor to stop, but he continues to stand there impassively before grabbing Donna and racing for safety. The Empress teleports back to her ship, vowing revenge. However, now that the Huon energy has been exhausted, the Empress is defenceless. In the streets, tanks take up position and, under orders from a "Mr. Saxon," fire on the Empress's ship, blowing it to pieces. The Doctor and Donna reach the top of the barrier piers, to see the Thames completely drained.

The Doctor takes Donna back to her parents' house, but Donna is still disconsolate, as she has missed her wedding, lost her job and her fiancé all in the same evening. The Doctor tries to cheer her up by sending a burst of TARDIS energy to make it snow, then offers her a chance to travel with him. However, Donna refuses, saying the life is not for her; the Doctor frightens her with his abilities and the chaos that he seems to be always in the middle of. Before he finally leaves, Donna asks the Doctor to find someone, because sometimes he needs someone to stop him. She asks who his friend was, and in an almost broken voice he replies, "Her name was Rose." He steps back into the TARDIS, and before Donna's eyes, it shoots straight into the sky, trailing snow.

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Donna Noble — Catherine Tate
• Empress — Sarah Parish
• Lance Bennett — Don Gilet
• Geoff Noble — Howard Attfield
• Sylvia Noble — Jacqueline King
• Vicar — Trevor Georges
• Rhodri — Rhodri Meilir
• Nerys — Krystal Archer
• Little Girl — Zafirah Boateng
• Robot Santa — Paul Kasey

Cast notes

• The Doctor's new companion Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman, did not appear in this episode. She does, however, appear in the "Coming Soon" clips at the end of the episode.
• In the lead-up to transmission, Radio 1 reported that Billie Piper might appear in the episode "in one form or another". Although she did appear, it was only briefly (and uncredited) in flashbacks from New Earth. Her character, Rose, was also discussed by the Doctor and Donna, but only named in the last line of the special.
• Sarah Parish co-starred with David Tennant in two other BBC One dramas: Blackpool (2004) and Recovery (2006).
• Don Gilet previously appeared with Sarah Parish in Cutting It.

Continuity

• Although not obvious on-screen, several signs and banners produced for this episode appear to date the story at Christmas 2006. This setting would appear to contradict dialogue claims that it takes place a year after the events of The Christmas Invasion, which in turn is set over a year and a half after Rose — itself set in spring of 2005.
• The end of Doomsday is featured as part of the pre-title sequence, although it is actually a different take.
• The first shot of the zoom-in to Earth was previously used in Rose, The Christmas Invasion and Army of Ghosts, but this time it zooms into the church rather than the Powell Estate.
• Depending on interpretation, the Doctor's comment regarding humanity being "optional" to him can be read as confirming a popular fan hypothesis that the Eighth Doctor's controversial comment about being "half-human on his mother's side" (Doctor Who, 1996) applied uniquely to that regeneration, rather than to the Doctor in general. It may also be a sly aside to the audience about that controversy, like the Daleks crying, "Do not blaspheme!" to Rose's comment about them being "half-human" from The Parting of the Ways (2005).
• The "Robotic Santas" and "Killer Christmas Trees" from The Christmas Invasion return in this story.
• This story is the first mention of the ancient form of energy known as "Huon particles", as an element of the Heart of the TARDIS.
• This episode reveals that the London branch of the Torchwood Institute had a base under the Thames Barrier. Donna remarks on how amazing it is that a London landmark could be a secret base, although the Doctor gives a less than surprised response. London landmarks have previously been bases for the Nestene Consciousness, based under the London Eye in Rose, UNIT under the Tower of London in The Christmas Invasion, the Cybermen in the parallel Earth's Battersea Power Station, the Torchwood Institute in 1 Canada Square in Army of Ghosts and Doomsday in the revived series. Those seen in the original series include the War Machines based in BT Tower in The War Machines (1966) and the Chameleons in Gatwick Airport in The Faceless Ones (1967). Although not set in London, Torchwood Three's base beneath Roald Dahl Plass uses the same concept.
• The Doctor makes use of the Tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator, last seen generating a force field in The Parting of the Ways, to shunt the TARDIS to a different location once it lands. It appears to have been integrated into the TARDIS systems, as a portion of it is covered with TARDIS "coral".
• The Doctor tells Donna that his pockets are also "bigger on the inside", finally confirming a long-held fan theory as to how the Doctor (particularly the Fourth Doctor) over the years managed to keep so many things in his pockets.
• This is the first time that Gallifrey, the Doctor's home planet, has been referred to by name on screen since the series relaunched in 2005. Gallifrey is also referred to in some of the tie-in novels for the new series.
• The tank commander who opens fire on the Empress's ship is heard to say that he has orders from "Mr. Saxon". The name, apparently that of a politician, first appeared in the 2006 series episode Love & Monsters as part of a headline on a copy of The Daily Telegraph being read by the Abzorbaloff.
• The use of the TARDIS lamp to fire a discharge (in this case to excite the atmosphere and produce snow) is also a first for the series.

References to other stories

• The Doctor refers to the "spaceship overhead" seen in The Christmas Invasion (these events given as having taken place the previous year), and to the Battle of Canary Wharf between the Daleks and Cybermen, as seen in Doomsday. However, Donna had not seen any of these events due to a hangover and a scuba-diving trip in Spain, respectively.
• At the end of this episode, the TARDIS takes off vertically like a rocket. The first time this was seen was in the Second Doctor serial Fury from the Deep (1968).
• The unmasking of the robot Santa driving the taxi is reminiscent of the Episode Two cliffhanger of Terror of the Autons (1971), when the Third Doctor, while inside a police patrol car, unmasks an Auton disguised as a police officer.
• A bus is shown carrying an advertisement for Henrik's (a spoof amalgamation of Harrods and Fenwicks' department stores, whose logos it imitates), the department store Rose Tyler worked in. The store itself, and an employee holding an advertising banner for it, are featured in the background of the scene where the Doctor uses the cashpoint.
• The hall hosting the wedding reception is called "The Manchester Suite". The Manchester Suite was also a room on the far future space station Platform One in The End of the World .
• When the Doctor asks about Lance, he says, "He's not a bit of a whale with a zip round his head, is he?". This is a reference to the Slitheen.
• The Doctor first used the sonic screwdriver to manipulate a cashpoint in The Long Game.
• The Gherkin building has all its glass intact, exactly one year after it was shattered during The Christmas Invasion.
• Similarities between this episode and The Christmas Invasion include artificially created snow at the end, a large spaceship hovering over London, the destruction of the spaceship, a secret base under a London landmark, the Doctor being invited to join a family Christmas dinner, the TARDIS flying and the robotic Santas.
• Brief clips from New Earth (2006), of the Doctor catching Rose after being possessed by Lady Cassandra, are featured in this episode.
• When the Doctor uses the mobile telephone to search for information on H.C. Clements, the Guinevere One website can be seen briefly.
• Labels from a modern-day Magpie Electricals (from The Idiot's Lantern) are featured in this episode's gallery on the BBC Doctor Who Website.

Production

• Russell T. Davies had the idea for this episode from the very beginning of his association with the programme, and he planned to air it in Series Two. With the public announcement of two Christmas specials and the private knowledge of Billie Piper leaving at the end of Series Two, Davies decided to "elevate" this story to the Christmas special, not introducing the new companion immediately, and filling the slot with Tooth and Claw.
• Catherine Tate's name appears in the opening credits along with David Tennant's, the first time that a guest actor's name has been in the opening credits.
• The Doctor Who logo in the opening credits has been slightly redesigned from the previous one, with more background detail and flare on the "lozenge" that the words "Doctor Who" sit on.
• For legal reasons, the production team made obviously fake banknotes for the scene where money comes flying out of a cashpoint. The £10 notes feature the Doctor's face and the phrases "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ten satsumas" and "No second chances — I'm that sort of a man". The text is a reference to the Doctor's actions and dialogue near the end of The Christmas Invasion. There were also £20 notes featuring producer Phil Collinson. These had the phrase "There's no point being grown up if you can't be a little childish sometimes" printed on them, misquoting the line originally spoken by the Fourth Doctor, (Tom Baker), in Robot, "There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes." All notes and the cash machine were labelled "London Credit Bank". The notes have become collector's items, regularly selling for £50 or more.
• Night filming of scenes involving gunfire, explosions and a tank disturbed some Cardiff residents, including one American woman returning home from the conflict in Lebanon. These scenes, as well as those on "Oxford Street", were filmed on St. Mary Street outside Howell's Department Store in Cardiff City Centre; Cardiff Castle is visible behind the tank in some shots.
• The TARDIS chase scene down the motorway was shown at a Children in Need concert, which featured a live orchestra performing many of the music themes from Doctor Who, including the Dalek music and Rose's theme. The clip was leaked online shortly after the event and the concert and clip were shown earlier before the episode officially aired on Christmas Day on a Doctor Who Confidential special at 1:00pm
• The controller used by the aliens appears to be a heavily modified PlayStation/2 controller; Sony's consoles being the only ones to feature two sets of L and R triggers, all of which are still clearly numbered (although some third party controllers for the Nintendo GameCube also have two sets of L and R triggers). The large size of the controller implies that the controller is a third party wireless, with the extra space used for batteries.
• The closing shot of Canary Wharf Tower and a dry Thames riverbed appears to omit Ontario Tower from the London Docklands skyline.
• There is a small special effects error in this episode. As the Doctor and Donna watch the swirling dust and rocks that will eventually become the Earth, two of the rocks they are looking at instantaneously disappear almost a second before the end of the shot.
• Due to her extremely busy schedule, Catherine Tate was unable to be present for the script readthrough. As a favour, her part was read by Sophia Myles, who played Madame de Pompadour in the 2006 series episode The Girl in the Fireplace.
• This is the first Doctor Who episode to be shot at the new dedicated Upper Boat studios in Pontypridd; the TARDIS set had previously been housed in former warehouse space in Newport.

Music

• "Merry Christmas Everybody" by Slade appears again, as in the previous year's The Christmas Invasion.
• Also as with The Christmas Invasion (which contained the tune "Song for Ten"), composer Murray Gold wrote an original song for this special, called "Love Don't Roam". The song was performed by Neil Hannon, frontman of the Divine Comedy (who had, coincidentally, appeared in a sketch of The Catherine Tate Show earlier in the year). The song was previewed at the Doctor Who: A Celebration concert on 19 November, 2006 at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff; a studio version is on the soundtrack album released on 4 December.

Broadcast

• This was the first Doctor Who story to be broadcast with in-vision British Sign Language interpretation, in a UK repeat on 30 December 2006.
• The end of the episode's COMING SOON trailer featured: Martha Jones, mentioning that she is a medical student; a mention of Rose, "Not that you're replacing her!"; Elizabethan London and Shakespeare on stage; action featuring the Judoon, including a firefight; a cackling witch-like humanoid; the 'space pig' from Aliens of London in a woodland setting; a man played by Mark Gatiss rejuvenating himself on stage from the age of 76; mass panic among people in evening wear, and the Doctor similarly attired; Ardal O'Hanlon as a cat person (as seen in New Earth) piloting a spaceship and commenting that the Doctor is "very well-dressed for a hitch-hiker"; many large explosions and a lot of screaming; and, finally, black Dalek Sec in a Dalek control room.
• The episode was followed immediately by two additional trailers, one for Invasion of the Bane, the pilot episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and one for the double-bill finale of Torchwood, both of which aired on 1 January, 2007.
• This episode came in fifth place in the Christmas Day unofficial 'overnight' ratings, with 8.7 million viewers.

External links

• Episode commentary by Julie Gardner and David Tennant
• The Runaway Bride episode guide on the BBC website
• Template:Brief
• Template:Doctor Who RG
• "Doctor Who has Christmas in July". BBC News. bbc.co.uk. 2006-07-24. Retrieved 2006-07-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Filming reports and photos for The Runaway Bride at Outpost Gallifrey's News Page
• "Sarah Parish in Shropshire and Wales". The Guardian. 2006-08-02. Retrieved 2006-09-10. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)