Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 758: The Runaway Bride
Dear Diary,
About a month before Christmas, 2006, there was a big Doctor Who concert held in Cardiff. It was - I think - for Children in Need, and it was designed to celebrate the scores that had been created for the programme since its return to screens the previous year. As much as I’d enjoyed the music in the series, that wan’t the reason I watched when the episode made it to TV (or the website? It’s hard to recall). No, the highlight for me was a brand new clip of the Christmas Special… and it was tremendous. They showed the TARDIS chasing a taxi down the motorway, and it looked amazing! In some ways, I’m surprised that it’s the moment they chose, because it’s such a highlight of the episode… but on the other hand I’m not surprised, because it’s not the only septic we get in this one! The Runaway Bride is perhaps the first time that you can really see the scope of the programme increasing vastly. By comparison, Rose looks positively lightweight!
Not only is there the chase with the TARDIS (which has dated a little, but still holds its own), but there’s the size of the Empress of the Racnoss prosthetic (which really holds up now - has there been a physical monster of this size in the programme since?), the amount of CGI and practical effects - especially in the climax… You can really see them going for it with this one, pulling out all the stops and making a point of saying ‘this is the scale we want to achieve with Doctor Who.
And as iff all of that wasn’t enough… we’ve got the introduction of Donna! Oh, can you imagine, there’s a world out there where Catherine Tate only showed up for this one special. That world is a cold, heartless place. It seems odd to think now that there was a time when this was all we had of Donna! It was ages (well, it felt like ages) before we had confirmation that she’d be returning for the fourth series, and I find it hard to imagine that we might have been deprived more of this character. She’s brilliant right from the off, if written a little ‘broader’ here than when she makes a comeback later on. I think the fact that I know what she’s like now as a regular companion means that there’s all the more to enjoy about her appearance in this one - don’t think I’ve actually watched The Runaway Bride since Donna and the Doctor hooked up again.
The story also serves as a nice way of moving the Doctor’s story on, following the departure of Rose. To pick up fresh here with a new companion would have felt a bit strange, I think, were we just carrying straight on into new companion territory (in the same way that Time-Flight only gives us the smallest of nods to Adric’s death before moving on - completely dispersing the atmosphere at the end pf Earthshock). Instead, it allows the Doctor’s story to carry forward, and we get some nice nods to Rose and the Doctor’s time with her scattered throughout, while making sure that there’s enough happening to keep these few and far between (and tied to the story). I can recall a lot of Series Three feeling like it had Rose’s shadow hanging over it, but if we carry on in the same vein as this one, then maybe it’ll be better than I’m remembering in that respect!
