The Runaway Bride (TV story)

The Runaway Bride was the 2006 Christmas Special of Doctor Who.

It was the show's second Christmas special since its revival and the second Christmas special starring David Tennant as the Doctor.

It marked the first change of companion since the 2005 revival had begun, and also introduced the modern-era concept of the "one-off", one-story companion. Though Donna 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. This episode marked the first appearance of Sylvia Noble.

The Runaway Bride was also, from a production point of view, the start of the third series of the programme though, as with most Christmas specials prior to 2012, the episode was considered a standalone.

This episode also featured the first spoken reference to "Mr. Saxon", first referenced on a newspaper in Love & Monsters, who became the story arc of the following episodes.

The concept and title had been considered by head writer Russell T Davies since the BBC Wales incarnation of the show was greenlit in 2003. It had intended to be a series two episode, but, after Russell learnt with little warning from Jane Tranter at the BAFTA screening of The Parting of the Ways that not only was there to be a 2005 Christmas special, but a 2006 one as well, Bride was moved ahead to the Christmas slot and "took on a whole new lease of life" as a story following Billie Piper's departure from her role as Rose Tyler but before the new companion, introduced at the start of the full third series, came in. Bride's spot was replaced by Tooth and Claw, which in turn was bumped up from episode 6 to episode 2.

In 2020, The Runaway Bride retroactively became part of the Time Lord Victorious multimedia event.

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

Plot
Donna Noble is escorted down the aisle by her father, Geoff to her waiting groom, Lance Bennett, at her Christmas Eve wedding. Halfway down the aisle, she is surrounded by a mysterious golden glow. Screaming in horror, Donna dissolves into a cloud of energy that goes flying up through the ceiling. The guests are left baffled. Was Donna just abducted?

In outer space, the TARDIS is orbiting a supernova; the golden energy enters the time machine. Inside, a tearful Tenth Doctor has just finished saying his farewell to Rose Tyler when he looks up to see Donna; she is shocked to find herself in the odd location. He is flabbergasted as to how she ended up in the TARDIS. While the Doctor gets increasingly confused as to how she somehow got inside while the TARDIS was in flight, Donna becomes equally angry and confused as to what's going on.

Donna is irate at being stolen from her wedding and accuses the Doctor, demanding answers; she even threatens to sue him. She thinks her friend Nerys got her back with an elaborate prank. 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 gives very detailed information as to where it is, since the Doctor is an alien. She spots Rose's shirt and accuses him of having abducted other women. The Doctor tells her it belongs to a friend, but "she's gone".

The Doctor tries to get to the church in Chiswick but accidentally lands the TARDIS near Oxford Street. Donna calls him a Martian, then storms out of the TARDIS. She then sees that the outside is smaller and, going into shock again, she rushes off. The Doctor rushes after her, telling her to go back; however, she is too weirded out to want to. The Doctor then notices that it's December 24, 2007; he wonders why she chose to get married today. Donna tells him that she hates Christmas and plans to honeymoon in Morocco. Donna tries to get a taxi, but the taxi drivers believe that she is dressed for a fancy dress party, drunk, or a drag queen. She goes to a payphone, which the Doctor zaps with the sonic screwdriver to work. Donna calls her mother, Sylvia telling her frantically where she is; the Doctor goes to get her money for a cab. However, 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, watched by two astonished children in the back of a car. The Doctor urges Donna to jump from the taxi to the TARDIS, which she is reluctant to do and asks if the woman he lost trusted him. The Doctor confirms this and assures her the friend he lost is still alive, and tells her to jump, which is echoed by the children watching from their car. Donna, after some hesitation, jumps into the Doctor's arms and the TARDIS spins off into the sky with the children cheering it off.

The TARDIS lands on a roof. Donna sits on the ledge, as the Doctor uses a fire extinguisher to put out flames inside the control room; all that excitement put too much strain on the old girl. He tells Donna that the TARDIS needs some rest before she can be used again; he then notes playfully that for a spaceship, it doesn't really do too well when it comes to flying. Seeing Donna is cold, the Doctor lends her his jacket. She jokes that he is way too skinny as the coat wouldn't fit an average-sized man. The Doctor asks if he missed her wedding, to which she confirms; he tells her that she still has the honeymoon, which Donna passes off as just a holiday.

Donna laughs that it's too bad he doesn't have a time machine; then they could just go back to when she vanished. Not wanting to disturb her more, the Doctor subtly says it would be impossible due to the laws of time; he can't go back along someone's personal timeline. The Doctor gives Donna a bio-damper ring to stop the Santas tracking her; he asks Donna to talk about herself, so he can figure out why she's being targeted. To the Doctor's surprise, Donna missed the Sycorax's attempted invasion the previous Christmas (she was asleep with a hangover). He then learns she works at a security firm called H.C. Clements, where she met her husband-to-be, Lance; she was interested in him because as head of H.R., Donna found it odd he would bother to get coffee for a temp. Donna says they went out for a while and Lance asked her to marry him. (However, as the flashbacks show, Donna was the one constantly pestering him to get married; he eventually gave in.)

The Doctor takes Donna to her reception, where Lance is dancing with Donna's bridesmaid Nerys. Donna is shocked and furious that her friends and family are having the wedding reception without her; Nerys points out that it was already paid for, so they didn't want to waste it. Donna snaps back at her. Sylvia Noble, Donna's mother, demands to know about her bizarre phone call and how she pulled off that disappearing act. The amount of attention she's getting causes Donna to break down and cry; they stop questioning her. Donna gives a wink to the Doctor; she's faking to make them feel bad for her.

The party continues, and during the dancing, the Doctor spots a woman with long blonde hair dancing; it makes him think of Rose, upsetting him again. He then borrows a mobile phone to look up H.C. Clements. He learns the firm is, or rather was, owned by the Torchwood Institute. The Doctor catches sight of the wedding photographer showing someone his camera and goes to see what's so interesting. The Doctor sees the footage of Donna vanishing in golden light, asking for a replay; to his shock, Donna was infused with Huon particles, a source of energy that hasn't existed for billions of years. Horrified, the Doctor realises that the bio-damper can't hide Donna.

The Doctor grabs Donna and they run outside to find the hall surrounded by the Santas. Seeing one of them holding a remote, the Doctor looks back at the trees. When Donna asks why he's concerned about them, he retorts "They kill!" The Doctor yells for everyone to get away from the trees, earning laughter. However, everyone soon goes silent; contrary to what the Doctor believed the ornaments are flying off the trees. The crowd watches in awe until they start crashing into tables and exploding. Everyone, with Angelica being the loudest, panics before taking cover, as the Doctor rushes to the DJ equipment. The Santas enter, with the Doctor taking the mic and telling them they blundered; they let a man with a sonic screwdriver near the sound equipment. Using the speakers, the Doctor creates a sound so powerful it shakes the roboforms apart.

The Doctor scans the head of one of the Santas, realising they aren't scavengers anymore; someone has taken command. The Doctor traces the signal outside, finding that the signal is coming from space. Inside a star-shaped spaceship, an alien calls him a clever boy before cutting the signal. Without a signal, the Doctor decides to investigate H.C. Clements, asking Donna to take him there; she points out that she doesn't have pockets for keys. She drags Lance along since he has a car.

The Doctor asks Lance to take Donna and him to H.C. Clements, learning that after Torchwood One's destruction 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 as well. Donna says she was scuba diving at the time; the Doctor sighs that she's always missing the big picture. 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. They find transport - segways. The Doctor and Donna exchange glances between each other before bursting out laughing.

At the end of the corridor, they discover a lab filled with tubes of water. The Doctor explains that Huon particles were being created from water and are being stored in liquid form. He explains that his people created them, making Lance ask who he works for; the Doctor tells him he's freelance. The Doctor quickly does a scan of Donna, revealing to her that she's saturated with the particles. The TARDIS is the only other place in the universe where Huon particles exist; when the ones in Donna activated (due to the raging hormones the stress of her wedding day caused), it created a magnetic effect that pulled her inside. He dumbs this down for Donna and Lance by using a pencil and mug to demonstrate his explanation. There is an immense hole in the floor of 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 herself the Empress. She has fashioned a large web above the pit, where the body of H.C. Clements still hangs. "My Christmas dinner!" the Empress laughs. The Doctor talks to the Empress, wondering if there are any other survivors; this species is a threat as they eat EVERYTHING, destroying whole planets. The Empress defends this as her species are born starving; it's not their fault intentionally, just their biology.

Donna takes control of the conversation to distract the Empress, as Lance sneaks behind it with an axe. However, right as Lance raises the axe to strike, the Empress turns and both start laughing. Donna can't figure out what's going on, making Lance point out she's stupid. The Doctor, who had been suspicious of Lance the moment he heard his job title "head of human resources", sombrely asks Donna how she met Lance again; she says over coffee, before coming to the conclusion she missed before. Lance was spiking her coffee with Huon particles every day; they needed to incubate in a living being until they were ready for use. The Empress needs the Huon particles for what's at the bottom of the hole.

Lance then explains that he only went through with marrying Donna to make sure she didn't leave; he had to put up with tortuous hours of listening to her gab on and on, calling her "the never-ending fountain of fat, stupid trivia". But now, he can finally be free of her and resume his life, callously rejecting Donna's declarations of love, declaring that it "was what made it easy". The Doctor and Donna are targeted by the roboforms under the Empress' control, the Doctor reverses the particle activity with a vial of liquid Huon particles he'd collected earlier. This causes the TARDIS to materialise around them so they can escape; the Roboforms open fire, but the TARDIS shrugs off the shots and dematerialises. The Empress is not thwarted. With the knowledge gained by dosing Donna, 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 tempts the distraught Donna into looking, and they notice a Racnoss spaceship arriving to hide from being exterminated by the Fledgling Empires. The Doctor fast-forwards time outside the ship, asking Donna what's happening; she tells him that the Earth is forming around the ship. The Doctor realises that the ship is the actual core of the Earth; that's why the Empress needs Huon particles, to awaken her "children". If that happens, the Racnoss will eat everything and everyone on Earth; worse, they'll likely destroy the planet to free their ship.

As the Doctor explains his realisation, the TARDIS suddenly shakes and the doors shut. The Doctor yells that the Empress has doused Lance with Huon particles and the pull is dragging them back to 2008. However, to avoid directly returning, the Doctor uses percussive maintenance on the extrapolator, which now appears to have TARDIS coral growing around it, to skip sideways into an empty corridor. As he listens at a door, Donna is captured and suspended in the Empress' web. The Doctor realises she is gone, then opens the door to find a black cloaked robot aiming a weapon at him. The Empress activates the Huon particles, which purge from Donna and Lance and fall down the hole. Knowing her fellow Racnoss will be hungry, she prepares to drop meat down for them. Lance asks her to choose Donna; she considers it but decides to send Lance down instead for being rude. With the web severed, Lance falls, screaming. Donna is now horrified of sharing his fate.

Meanwhile, the Empress' ship descends over the city, taken for a Christmas star until it fires on the city, causing panic and destruction; one little girl is nearly electrocuted by a laser before her father pulls her out of the way. The Empress catches the Doctor as he sneaks back into the laboratory, in disguise as a roboform. The Doctor cuts the spider web with his sonic screwdriver, with Donna swinging on a strand to him; however, it's too long and Donna hits a wall with a comedic metallic clank. "Thanks for nothing," Donna sneers.

The Doctor offers the Racnoss one last chance: he will take her kind to a planet where they will threaten no one. She calls him funny, declining his offer, then tells the firing squad to aim, but they shut down as the Doctor calmly says, "Relax". He pulls a remote resembling a very flashy RC car controller from his pockets (which he says are bigger on the inside); the Doctor reprogrammed the roboforms to only obey him. The Empress proudly declares that the roboforms will not be necessary; her children will dine on Martian flesh tonight. The Doctor reveals that he is not from Mars, but Gallifrey.

The Empress is enraged as she exclaims, "They murdered the Racnoss!" The Doctor simply responds, "I warned you... you did this," and holds out a few of the explosive Christmas ornaments ominously. The Empress realises she has gone too far and pleads for mercy, but it is MUCH too late — the Doctor throws the baubles into the air and uses the remote to control them like remote-controlled bombs to blow holes in the tunnel. Water from the Thames rushes in, swirling around the Empress and then reaching and travelling down the hole to the Earth's core, drowning the Racnoss within.

The Doctor stoically — coldly, even — watches as the water pours in, flames rush up and the Empress screams in anguish for her children. Donna's look grows horrified, and it takes her yelling out to the Doctor when they are both soaked, "Doctor! You can stop now!" to snap him out of it, at which point a look of terror comes across his face as well as if he realises what he has done. They escape into the TARDIS while the Empress teleports back to her ship, vowing to scorch the Earth; the Doctor replies that the opening of the Secret Heart and the Webstar's assault on London has drained its energy and left it defenceless. Humanity isn't, however, and the powerless Webstar is blown out of the sky by Challenger 2 tanks under orders of "Mr Saxon", presumably destroying the Empress and the Racnoss species with it.

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 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 and that sometimes he needs someone to stop him from doing something terrible. The Doctor tells her briefly about Rose, and then disappears into his TARDIS.

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
 * Taxi Driver – Glen Wilson
 * Nerys – Krystal Archer
 * Rhodri – Rhodri Meilir
 * Little Girl – Zafirah Boateng
 * Robot Santa – Paul Kasey

Uncredited cast

 * DJ - Mark Haste
 * Iris Bennett - Sandra Scott
 * Stan Bennett - Ash Croney
 * Robot Santas - Ken Hosking, Adam Sweet, Richard Tunesi, Joe White, Pete Symonds, Marc Llewellyn-Thompson

Animals

 * Donna once had a dog, which she would have got rid of if Lance married her.

Food and Beverages

 * Lance made Donna coffee, which got them talking.
 * Lance mentions Pringles, and how Donna seemed to get excited when there was a new flavour.

Individuals

 * "Mr Saxon" orders the destruction of the web star.
 * Lance says that Donna talked excitedly about "Brad and Angelina", "Is Posh pregnant?", X Factor, the Atkins diet and feng shui.
 * Connie decorated the tree.
 * Lance's parents are Iris and Stan Bennett.
 * Donna thinks Nerys is behind her suddenly appearing in the TARDIS.
 * On her first day of school, Donna was sent home for biting.
 * When trying to hail a taxi, passersby assume Donna is either drunk or in drag.
 * Lance is the head of human resources.

Locations

 * The church Donna and Lance are getting married in is called St Mary's. It's on Haven Road.
 * Donna planned to have her honeymoon in Morocco.
 * According to Lance, Donna cannot point to Germany on a map.
 * The Nobles' home is a red-brick semi-detached house. It has a wooden door, bow windows, a small front garden with flower bushes enclosed by a shallow brick wall topped with a metal fence. There are picture frames inside.
 * For Christmas, it is decorated with Christmas lights, a Christmas tree, and ornamental stars.

Music

 * The Roboforms play God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen when in their Santa disguise.
 * 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 parallel world of Turn Left. It was also heard previously in The Christmas Invasion. It's heard again during the dream crab dream of Last Christmas.

Objects

 * The Doctor compares Donna to a microwave and a pressure cooker.
 * Lance pretends to attack the Racnoss with an axe.

Organisations

 * There is a Torchwood Institute base under the River Thames extracting Huon particles, which exist within the Heart of the TARDIS.
 * Donna's wedding dress is from Chez Alison.
 * There is a W H Smith near where Donna and the Doctor try to hail a taxi.
 * Donna describes H.C. Clements as a "posh locksmith".

Species

 * The Doctor asks Donna if Lance is a bit overweight with a zip around his forehead — alluding to the Slitheen.
 * After the Doctor informed the Empress that he is from Gallifrey, she screamed in anger, shouting, "They [the Time Lords] murdered the Racnoss!"
 * Donna repeatedly mistakes the Doctor for a Martian.
 * The Racnoss claims she has been waiting at the "edge of the universe".
 * Donna thinks there might be Dinosaurs under the Earth.

Sports

 * Donna, sarcastically, says she was playing ten pin bowling before she appeared in the TARDIS.
 * Donna was scuba-diving in Spain during the Battle of Canary Wharf.

Technology

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

Websites

 * Whilst looking for information on H.C. Clements, the Doctor went past websites for WickedMail, UNIT, Torchwood House, Tech Minx, unknown, All Star Lookalikes, Leamington Spa Lifeboat Museum, GWR, GEOCOMTEX, unknown, Fran Barker, Deffry Vale School, Defending the Earth!, Cheapserve, British Rocket Group, Boy*d Upp, unknown.

Ratings

 * 9.3 million viewers (UK final)

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.
 * 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 Donna returns to the reception, and the Doctor borrows a gentleman's phone, you see a menu item that says "Play". It is obvious that the HC Clements search that the Doctor does is a movie clip on the phone.
 * The mask of the Roboform which abducts Donna in the taxi has eye lenses on its Santa mask which change from plain blue to fake eyes like those seen on the masks of other disguised Roboforms.
 * When the Roboforms surround the hotel, they are armed with a flamethrower trombone, a missile-launcher tuba, a machine gun trumpet, a bugle of unknown ordnance, a tenor horn or euphonium of unknown ordnance, and the remote control for the bauble bombs. However, when they face the Doctor in the ballroom, the tenor horn/euphonium has been swapped for a curling, bugle-like instrument, looped over the Roboform's shoulder.

Influences

 * Russell T Davies took inspiration from classic Hollywood screwball comedies starring and.

Continuity

 * The Doctor had previously encountered the Racnoss Empress when his fifth incarnation stumbled upon her conflict with the Time Lords. (AUDIO: Empire of the Racnoss)
 * The tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator is still integrated with the TARDIS systems. (TV: Boom Town, The Parting of the Ways)
 * The Doctor first called the Robot Santas "pilot fish" when they appeared before the Sycorax Invasion. (TV: The Christmas Invasion)
 * later referred to these events. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
 * When the Doctor is standing waiting for the cash machine, the shop Henrik's is nearby. Rose Tyler worked there when she met the Doctor. A sign for Henrik's is also on the taxi that the Roboform used to kidnap Donna. (TV: Rose)
 * In a parallel world where Donna was not with the Doctor for these events, the Doctor would have died without regenerating after stopping the Empress of the Racnoss. (TV: Turn Left)
 * The upstairs section of the bar where Donna had planned her wedding reception has a Manchester Suite, as did Platform One. (TV: The End of the World)
 * Donna says, "St. Mary's, Haven Road, Chiswick, London, England, Earth, The Solar System!" When they entered Pete's World, Mickey Smith said, "London, England, Earth". (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) When the Tenth Doctor first came out of the TARDIS on the Powell Estate he said, "London, Earth, the Solar System!" (TV: The Christmas Invasion)
 * The Doctor remembers Rose Tyler in a moment from their time on New Earth. Rose's purple top, which Donna finds in the TARDIS, is the same one she wore during that adventure. (TV: New Earth)
 * The Doctor says that his pockets are "bigger on the inside." As did his fourth (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) and seventh incarnations. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)
 * The TARDIS starts to dematerialise, before taking off vertically into the sky. (TV: Fury from the Deep)
 * Donna puzzles over the fact that there's a secret base hidden right under a famous London Landmark. This prompts the Doctor into saying in a sarcastic tone, "I know. Unheard of." The Doctor previously dealt with an underground base that housed the Nestene Consciousness hidden under the London Eye, (TV: Rose) while Torchwood has another base in Canary Wharf (TV: Army of Ghosts / Doomsday) and UNIT has one at the Tower of London. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, The Power of Three, The Day of the Doctor)
 * Rosemary Kizlet's company would later be shown to be based at the Shard. (TV: The Bells of Saint John) The 3W Institute was inside St Paul's Cathedral. (TV: Dark Water / Death in Heaven) On a parallel Earth, Battersea Power Station was shown to be a Cyberman factory. (TV: The Age of Steel)
 * Donna wears the same wedding dress once again in her virtual life inside the data core of the Library. (TV: Forest of the Dead)
 * The Doctor is surprised that Donna doesn't remember Earth's recent encounters with the Sycorax (TV: The Christmas Invasion) and the Cybermen and Daleks in the Battle of Canary Wharf. (TV: Army of Ghosts / Doomsday)
 * The Doctor attended Donna's next two weddings. (AUDIO: Death and the Queen; TV: The End of Time)
 * The Sixth Doctor previously spent Christmas 2007 with Evelyn Smythe and the Cracker family. (PROSE: The Crackers)

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.
 * It is one of seven stories that are included in the Time Lord Victorious: Road to the Dark Times blu-ray.