The Runaway Bride [TV/2006.12.25]

★★★☆☆

  It's initially very odd that this episode was incorporated as part of the Time Lord Victorious thing, because your mind doesn't immediately pull up the character-defining moment of the ending when the Doctor deems fit to wipe out an entire race for the sake of the Earth. All you remember about it are those darn robot Santas, Donna having a laugh of a time with the Doctor, the opening sequence being a recreation of Doomsday's last moments with less impressive lighting... but then you remember as you watch along, and you remember that Russell T Davies had a knack for writing these overall light-hearted affairs that could shift to a very dark moment of character establishment in an instant. It's lucky RTD had two amazing actors playing the Doctor while he was showrunner (his first run as showrunner, anyway -- I'm sure Ncuti Gatwa will be more than up for whatever he and the other writers throw at him); David Tennant can be the silly pin-striped Costello to Catherine Tate's Abbott, and in the blink of an eye, he can be a heartsbroken Time Lord who misses his Rose dearly, a lonely god who destroys an entire race of aliens because they didn't heed to his final warning. 

  I find The Runaway Bride absolutely fine as an episode. It's fun when it needs to be, exciting when the moment calls for it, emotional when it allows itself to be, and creepy in an awe-inspiring way whenever the practical effects for the Racnoss empress are onscreen in their full glory. It's a triumph of Dr. Who monster design, and the production team went the extra mile and made it entirely real -- no speck of CGI! That may be my biggest source of joy with the episode (I'm a bit odd like that), but rest assured, I love Donna Noble and Catherine Tate makes an immediately joyful impression. In what could've been a rather thankless role as a plot device/slight damsel in distress, she basically carves her own way into our hearts as the painfully delightful and relatable Donna. She makes the episode work, there's no denying that, and I can tell Tate had a fantastic time filming. No wonder they brought her back as an actual companion.

  This is yet another Christmas episode that has very little to do with the actual holiday (the jury's still out on whether I prefer the RTD Christmas specials or the Steven Moffat Christmas specials, but at least with the latter you get much more Christmas-y stuff), but as a slice of Dr. Who, it's pretty darn good. I particularly like that the Doctor gets to interact with the "remains" of Torchwood (because for all he knows, Torchwood is gone); I think it's a cool little touch that makes the institute feel more ancient and embedded in the show when it was literally properly created that year.