The Runaway Bride (TV story)

The Runaway Bride was the second Christmas special of the BBC Wales era of Doctor Who. It marked the first change of companion since the 2005 revival had begun, and also introduced the concept of the "one-off", one-story companion. Though Donna Noble did later return for a full series of her own, the original plan was for her only to appear in this episode, thereby blazing a trail that others like Astrid Peth, Jackson Lake, Christina de Souza and Adelaide Brooke would follow.

The Runaway Bride was also, from a production point of view, the start of the third series of the programme.

Summary
Killer Santas, exploding baubles, an alien spaceship shaped like a giant star - Christmas with the Doctor is anything but a silent night...

Plot
Donna Noble prepares to walk down the aisle to her waiting groom, Lance Bennett, in her Christmas Eve wedding. Halfway down the aisle she is surrounded by a golden glow. She dissolves into a cloud of energy that goes flying up through the ceiling.

In outer space, the Tenth Doctor is orbiting a supernova and has finished his farewell to Rose Tyler when he looks up to see Donna in the TARDIS. He is flabbergasted as to how she ended up in the TARDIS.

Donna is irate at being stolen from her wedding and blames the Doctor, demanding answers. She yanks open the doors and finds herself staring out into deep space. Shocked back to her senses, she realises the Doctor is an alien and what she is seeing is real. The Doctor cannot figure out how she gained entrance to the TARDIS and Donna demands that he return her to the church. She spots Rose's jacket and accuses him of having abducted other women. The Doctor gloomily admits that "she's gone".

The Doctor tries to get to the church in Chiswick, but accidentally lands the TARDIS near Oxford Street. Donna storms out of the TARDIS and tries to phone her family while the Doctor wonders how she could have gotten aboard. Donnas tries to get a taxi, but the taxi drivers believe that she is dressed for a fancy dress part, drunk and a drag queen in that order. She realises she has no money for a taxi, so the Doctor gets some from a nearby ATM. The Doctor notices familiar masked Santas. They are the robotic scavengers from the previous year's Christmas, levelling their weapons disguised as band instruments at him. He distracts them by using his sonic screwdriver on the ATM to make it spit out money, causing a crazed rush from the nearby crowd. He goes off in search of Donna and finds her taking off in a cab, its driver yet another of the robotic Santas. Donna quickly realises her cab is not taking her to the church, and finds the Doctor has engaged the TARDIS in pursuit of the cab on the highway. Such an endeavour has put a strain on the TARDIS and he cannot use it for some time.

The Doctor gives Donna a bio-damper to stop the Santas tracking her and tries to learn more about her. She works at a security firm called H.C. Clements, where she met her husband-to-be, Lance. The Doctor takes Donna to her reception, where Lance is dancing with Angelica. Her arrival is met with relief by everyone. The Doctor borrows a cell phone to look up H.C. Clements,. He learns the firm is owned by the Torchwood Institute. The wedding photographer's video footage shows Donna was infused with Huon particles, a source of energy that hasn't existed for billions of years, since the beginning of the universe. Huon particles cannot be masked by a bio-damper. He runs outside and finds the hall surrounded by the Santas. They have rigged a Christmas tree's ornaments to fly explosively at the crowd. Using the sound system at the reception and his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor shakes apart the roboforms and traces their control to a star-shaped spaceship hanging above the city, then loses its signal.

The Doctor asks Lance to take Donna and him to H.C. Clements, learning that after Torchwood One's dissolution in the Battle of Canary Wharf, someone else took control of the company; Donna has no recollection of it, claiming she was in Spain, even when the Doctor mentions that there were Cybermen in Spain. The Doctor finds a basement level not on the floor plans and the three go there, finding themselves in a long tunnel that leads to the Thames Flood Barrier. The Doctor discovers a laboratory where Huon particles have been manufactured and stored in liquid form. The Doctor determines Donna was soaked with them. The stress of her wedding day made the particles catalyse and activate, pulling her into the TARDIS. There is an immense hole the room. The Doctor surmises it was dug by Torchwood's laser technology and extends to the centre of the Earth.

As they explore, a half-humanoid, half-spider teleports into the lab. The Doctor recognises it as one of the Racnoss, a race thought wiped out billions of years ago by the Fledgling Empires in the Dark Times. The Racnoss calls itself the Empress. She has fashioned a large web above the pit, where the body of H.C. Clements still hangs. As the Doctor talks to the Empress, Lance sneaks behind it with an axe, threatening to strike, then reveals he has been working with the Empress. He had spiked the coffee he gave to Donna every day with Huon particles to mature in her so the Empress can use their energy to regain her ancient power. However, as the Doctor and Donna are targeted by the roboforms under the Empress' control, the TARDIS materialises around them and they escape. The Empress is not thwarted. She knows how to achieve the same result with Lance. She begins to force feed him the Huon liquid while trapping him in her web.

The Doctor takes the TARDIS to the creation of the Earth to learn why the Empress has dug into the core of the planet. He finds a Racnoss spaceship is the actual core of Earth, the rest of the planet forming around it. Were the Empress to use the Huon particles, she would reawaken those on the ship. Armed with this knowledge, Donna and he return to a corridor by the laboratory. Donna is immediately captured in the Empress' web, while the Doctor is held at gunpoint. The Empress activates the Huon particles. Knowing her fellow Racnoss will be hungry, she severs Lance from the web, dropping him into the pit.

Meanwhile, the Empress' ship descends over the city, taken for a Christmas star until it fires on the city. The Doctor sneaks back into the laboratory. He gives the Racnoss a chance to take her kind to a planet where they will threaten no one. She refuses and the Doctor reveals himself as from Gallifrey. His long-gone race have defeated the Racnoss before and he will do so again using the explosive Christmas ornaments to burst open the walls and flood the room with water from the Thames. The Doctor is caught up in events and doesn't move until Donna pleads that he stop. They escape into the TARDIS while the Empress teleports back to her ship, moments before it is blown out of the sky by tanks under orders of "Mr. Saxon".

The Doctor returns Donna home, but she is desolate, having lost her job and her fiancé the same evening. The Doctor uses a burst of energy from the TARDIS to make it snow, hoping to to cheer her up. He invites her to join him in the TARDIS. She declines, but encourages him to find someone, recognising he has just lost someone himself. The Doctor tells her briefly about Rose, and then disappears into his TARDIS.

Cast

 * The Doctor – David Tennant
 * Donna Noble – Catherine Tate
 * Empress of the Racnoss – Sarah Parish
 * Lance Bennett – Don Gilet
 * Geoff Noble – Howard Attfield
 * Sylvia Noble – Jacqueline King
 * Vicar – Trevor Georges
 * Taxi Driver – Glen Wilson
 * Nerys – Krystal Archer
 * Rhodri – Rhodri Meiler
 * Little Girl – Zafirah Boateng
 * Robot Santa – Paul Kasey

The Doctor

 * According to the Doctor, the creation of the Earth is the furthest back he has ever travelled. While the Fifth Doctor had travelled back to just before Event One, the Doctor probably doesn't count that because the TARDIS was under the control of the Master at the time (DW: Castrovalva).

Individuals

 * 'Mr. Saxon' orders the destruction of the web star.

Organisations

 * There is a Torchwood Institute base under the River Thames extracting Huon particles, which exist within the Heart of the TARDIS.

Species

 * The Doctor asks Donna if Lance is a bit overweight with a zip round his forehead - alluding to the Slitheen.

Technology

 * The Doctor uses the Tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator, which seems to have grown into the TARDIS.
 * The Doctor uses a bio-damper to keep Donna hidden from the Robot Santas.

Story notes

 * A controversy occurred during filming of this story as guests at a hotel were awakened and frightened by gunfire and explosions during filming of one scene in the street below, including one who had just returned from the conflict in Israel.
 * Though set at Christmas, this story was filmed in late July, with an average temperature of thirty degrees, centigrade. David Tennant was quoted as saying he was "blinking boiling" during filming.
 * As part of the 2006 Children In Need concert, a four minute clip from this episode was shown. It features Donna riding in a taxi, unaware that it is being driven by a Robot Santa. The Doctor gives chase in the TARDIS down a motorway and tries to persuade Donna to jump between the two vehicles. The unveiling of Christmas-special preview footage for Children in Need became an irregular tradition afterwards, with the 2008 campaign featuring a preview of DW: The Next Doctor and the 2009 edition a preview of DW: The End of Time, Part One.
 * This is the first appearance of companion Donna Noble. It is debatable whether Donna qualifies as an actual companion for this episode, though in the eyes of the show makers, she gains this status. She also receives a lead credit at the start which, normally, only the Doctor and his companion(s) receive. She returned in Partners in Crime and left in Journey's End, both in Series 4.
 * Catherine Tate was unable to attend the traditional first cast read-through of the episode. David Tennant's then-girlfriend, and former guest star Sophia Myles (The Girl in the Fireplace) read the part of Donna Noble on this occasion.
 * The reprise of the cliffhanger scene from Doomsday had to be refilmed for The Runaway Bride as the change of cinematographers resulted in a discontinuity in terms of lighting between the earlier footage and that shot for the special. (DCOM: The Runaway Bride)
 * The "TARDIS car chase" sequence was the first part of the episode to be publicly screened when it was included in the Music and Monsters charity concert TV special, broadcast several weeks before the episode.
 * In the DVD commentary it is confirmed that a scene filmed, but cut from broadcast, would have continued on from Donna pointing out a piece of Rose's clothing by showing the Doctor angrily throwing it through the open TARDIS doors and into space. Executive producer Julie Gardner explained to David Tennant in the commentary that it was cut as being too melodramatic. The cut scene was not included with the other deleted scenes on the DVD release.
 * Two songs are heard during Donna's wedding reception: "Merry Xmas Everybody" by Slade, and an original song, "Love Don't Roam", which makes reference to Rose's disappearance. "Merry Xmas Everybody" would be heard again in the alternate timeline of Turn Left. It was also heard previously in The Christmas Invasion.
 * After the Doctor informs the Empress that he is from Gallifrey, she screams in anger, shouting, "They [the Time Lords] murdered the Racnoss!" Ironically, she is killed when her ship is ordered shot down by Mr Saxon - in reality the Master, another Time Lord
 * It should take Lance more then 32 hours to reach the centre of the earth travelling at the terminal free fall of 122 MPH or 195 KPH. If this is the case, he should have died when the water flooded the shaft, and not eaten (unless the Racnoss children were incredibly fast climbers).
 * It was suggested that the Torchwood helicopter be used for certain shots by Patrick Schweitzer; this was turned down.
 * The Doctor references Gallifrey by name for the first time on-screen since the revival of the series (however in NSA: The Stone Rose the Doctor mentions his 'Gallifreyen signature').
 * For unknown and unexplained reasons at the end of the episode the TARDIS starts to dematerialise and then takes off vertically into the sky; reasons have yet to be discovered why this is.

Ratings

 * 9.4 million viewers

Filming locations

 * This is the first episode to be filmed in the new Upper Boat studios.
 * Filming also took place in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff (which represented the Torchwood base).

Production errors

 * In the scene when Donna asks the woman if she could borrow £10 as it's Christmas, you can clearly see that Donna is wearing sports shoes instead of her usual white wedding shoes; Catherine Tate had been wearing sports shoes between takes.
 * When the TARDIS arrives back from the creation of the Earth, the Doctor and Donna rush out leaving the TARDIS door open; yet in the very next scene, the door is closed.
 * Even though it is supposed to be Christmas, it is obvious that the special was filmed during the summer, because all the trees have leaves on them, etc.
 * When the Doctor is saying good-bye at the end of the episode, the snow is coming from the left of the screen, implying that a snow and wind machine is there.

Continuity

 * The Tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator was first seen in DW: Boom Town.
 * The Robot Santas previously appeared in DW: The Christmas Invasion.
 * These events are referred to by the Master in DW: The Sound of Drums.
 * When the Doctor is standing waiting for the cash machine, the shop Henrick's is seen. Rose Tyler worked there in DW: Rose. A sign for Henrick's is also seen on the taxi Donna and the Roboform drive in.
 * The episode DW: Turn Left shows that in a world where Donna never met the Doctor he would have died in the process of stopping the Empress of the Racnoss' plan and failed to regenerate.
 * Donna comments the Doctor "stood there like a stranger." This may be a reference to the BBV video series starring Colin Baker, the chief character in which was initially assumed to be a thinly veiled version of Sixth Doctor by many fans.
 * The upstairs section of the bar where Donna had planned her wedding reception has a Manchester Suite, last referred to in DW: The End of the World.
 * Donna says, "St Marys, Haven Road, Chiswick, London, England, Earth, The Solar System!"; in DW: Rise of the Cybermen when they enter Pete's World, Mickey Smith says, "London, England, Earth". When the Tenth Doctor first comes out of the TARDIS in The Christmas Invasion he says, "London, Earth, the Solar System!"
 * When the Doctor remembers Rose during the "Love Don't Roam" sequence, a very short clip of Billie Piper as Rose Tyler from DW: New Earth is shown; this is Piper's last physical appearance on the series until DW: Partners in Crime, although in the interim a drawing of her is seen in DW: Human Nature.
 * The Doctor shows that his pockets are "bigger on the inside." Although never stated outright, his fourth incarnation's clothes were implied to have similar qualities. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)
 * The Empress of the Racnoss calls the Doctor a "physician". He would later be known as "the Sainted Physician". (DW: The End of Time)

Timeline
For the Doctor:
 * This story occurs after DW: Doomsday.
 * This story occurs before DWS: Corner of the Eye.

For Donna:
 * This story occurs after she turns left in DW: Turn Left.
 * This story occurs before DW: Partners in Crime.

Home video releases

 * This episode was released as the sole story on Doctor Who: The Runaway Bride, alongside the full Children In Need 2006 concert. Extras include Music and Monsters and the Dr Who Confidential/ Children in Need 2006 Special Concert.
 * It is also included in the Series 3 DVD box set.