Doctor Who: Christmas Episodes Poll

[butterfly]

So, sunnytyler001 did a poll on which Christmas special was your favorite and I decided that I wanted to know even more. Also, I can't get to sleep.

[Poll #1320945]

Apart from polls, I'd curious about how you'd place the episodes in relation to each other. Personally, "The Christmas Invasion" remains my favorite of the Christmas episodes, with "The Next Doctor" slipping into second place. "Voyage of the Damned" is third (I really like Astrid) followed by "The Unquiet Dead" and topped off with "The Runaway Bride" (which I still like a lot -- I've enjoyed all of the Christmas episodes).

* there may be spoilers in comments *

Comments

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for such a thoughtful and thorough response! I really appreciate it.

And Rosita would have made a kick-butt companion!

Rosita was very awesome. And resourceful, using that axe to save the two 'Doctor's at the beginning. If the Doctor were in a more welcoming mood, she probably would have gotten an invite.

Voyage of the Damned starts off with a bang and never lets up! Once again, the Doctor inserts himself into a situation fraught with potential trouble, and finds a way to save the day, and a cute possible new companion in the process. However, the Doctor's authority does get questioned (and does so again in Midnight), a realistic thing to see that probably ought to happen more often, and the possible companion who wants to have an exciting life instead sacrifices herself to save a planet and a people she barely knows anything about. Lovely but so sad.

Someone else who doesn't hate VotD! Yay!

Rose and Martha loved him too much to disagree, perhaps

I think that they both disagreed with him when they felt in necessary -- Rose confronts the Doctor in TUD, "Dalek" and they have a huge blow-out in "Father's Day" -- they didn't really need to hash all that much out in S2 because they'd already argued about the things they disagreed about in S1 (though we still get a couple of confrontations -- Rose in SR about past companions in particular). Rose doesn't have all that much that she needs to disagree with him about in S2.

And Martha is a bit more blinded by the Doctor's image, but she still stands up against him when her family gets put in danger.

[acciochocolate.livejournal.com]

*grins* Really, I didn't mean to write an essay, so to speak, but asking an English major to compare and contrast "things" is too much of a temptation. :) Although I probably didn't do all that much of that.

Rosita was awesome, oh yes! As you say, very resourceful! She cared very much for her Doctor and was always there to help save the day. The one thing I meant to say about her and left out was that several of my costuming friends that I watched the special with on Saturday were, like myself, a bit surprised by her garb. To this old SCA hand, it had late Renaissance stamped all over it. :) Her hair as well. So when DM was unmasked, so to speak, I was a bit surprised, as I felt sure that she was from the 17th century!

I know that some Victorians were quite mad for King Arthur and even created an organization similar to the modern SCA. Used to have a book on this. I must now wonder if Rosita wasn't part of one of those reenactor groups? (Really, of course, just one of the few costuming mistakes the BBC makes from time to time.) Or maybe there's more to the story of Rosita?

I liked VotD and didn't really understand why it was so disliked by a lot of fans. The British public gave it the best ratings of any New Who show, but that had a great deal to do with Kylie, I suspect.

I see your points about Rose and Martha and stand somewhat corrected. But I suspect that this is why I adored Donna so much, after she came back, because she was, IMHO, so much more willing to stand up to the Doctor, but perhaps too much so at times? Certainly the chemistry was very different between Donna and Ten, and Ten and any other companion. Donna liked to argue, I suspect. :)

Going back to Rose for a moment, I must say that the little bet in Tooth and Claw bothered me from the very first time I saw the episode. They were perhaps over-reacting from the excitement of meeting a Queen of the British Empire, and this one in particular, but Victoria did lecture them at the end, perhaps too sternly, but at the same time, some of the joking around could be seen, as the Queen did, as a bit too much. I just compare it to James Bond's quips at seemingly the most bizarre moments, like right after a gun fight, and can only think that it's a way of letting off steam, discharging an emotional build-up, that sort of thing. Really, all the Doctors could say the most seemingly strange things at time, that we the audience perfectly understood, but some of those around him could not make head nor tails of, and therefore took it the wrong way. Some of the throwaway comments that the Fourth Doctor made were just in this style. :)

For Martha, I must say that I thought that the show did her character a disservice with the unrequited crush on the Doctor. Other than that, she was rather awesome. :) I really thought that Ten should have treated her better, because she did so much for him that we had not, to the best of my knowledge, ever seen another companion do. Working as a house maid in the early 20th century for a few months, dealing with the turbulent 60s era while the Doctor worked out a way to get them back to the TARDIS, spending a year traveling all over the Earth to spread the news of the Doctor and how he could save Earth from the Master, some just amazing stuff. Certainly Martha could hold her own with any companion. :)

And I even have one VotD icon--it was too pretty not to use. :)