Monday 25 December 2006

The Runaway Bride

A bride-to-be, Donna Noble, vanishes while walking up the aisle and materialises in the TARDIS just after The Doctor has made his farewells to Rose Tyler. Both are astounded by this event. Donna, thinking he has somehow kidnapped her, demands the Doctor return her to the church in Chiswick but he accidentally lands the TARDIS near Oxford Street instead.
Donna storms out of the TARDIS and tries to contact her family through a public telephone, while the Doctor wonders how she could have got aboard. He then recognises masked Santas nearby as the robotic scavengers from the previous year's Christmas, levelling their weapons disguised as musical instruments at him. He distracts them by using his sonic screwdriver on a nearby ATM to make it spit out money and causing a crazed rush from the nearby crowd, and then goes off in search of Donna. She has managed to collect some money and is taking off in a cab, but its driver turns out to be another one of the robotic Santas. The Doctor gives chase by flying the TARDIS directly over the motorway and rescues her. However, such an endeavour has put a strain on the TARDIS, and he cannot use it for some time. The Doctor gives Donna a ring to prevent the Santas from tracking her and tries to figure out why she was targeted earlier. He learns that she works at a security firm called H.C. Clements, where she met her husband-to-be, Lance Bennett.
The Doctor takes Donna to her reception, to the relief of Lance, her family and their friends. The Doctor learns that H.C. Clements is owned by the Torchwood Institute, and, through footage taken by the photographer at the wedding earlier, that Donna was turned into Huon particles, a source of energy that hasn't existed for billions of years. This cannot be masked by the ring he gave her earlier, and the reception hall is surrounded by the Santas, who have also rigged a Christmas tree with explosive ornaments. Using the sound system at the reception and his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor is able to shake apart the robots, and trace the source of their control to a star-shaped spaceship hanging above the city, but shortly loses its signal.
The Doctor asks Lance to take him and Donna to H.C. Clements, wondering who controls the firm since Torchwood One's dissolution in the Battle of Canary Wharf. He discovers a secret basement level and the three of them travel to it, finding themselves in a long tunnel that eventually leads to the Thames Barrier. There, the Doctor discovers a laboratory where Huon particles have been manufactured and stored in liquid form. The Doctor determines that Donna was saturated in them so that due to the stress of her wedding day, she would cause the particles to catalyse and activate for an unknown purpose. However, the process pulled her into the TARDIS's own source of Huon particles.
A large hole also extends across the room, the Doctor surmising that it was dug out by Torchwood's laser technology and extending to the centre of the Earth. As they explore, a half-humanoid, half-spider creature teleports, which the Doctor identifies as one of the Racnoss, an alien race thought to have been wiped out billions of years ago. The Racnoss, which calls itself the Empress, has fashioned a large web above the pit, where the body of H.C. Clements still hangs. Lance reveals that he has been working for the Racness and that he was the one who saturated Donna with Huon particles by serving her spiked coffee in the office - unintentionally causing Donna to fall in love with him and bully him into proposing. When the Doctor and a heart-broken Donna escape with the TARDIS, the Empress decides to use Lance as she intended to use Donna, and begins force-feeding him the particles.
The Doctor takes the TARDIS back in time to the creation of the Earth to discover the final piece of the puzzle: the planet actually formed around a Racnoss spaceship which is still in its core. The Empress's goal is to use the Huon particles to reawaken those still on board and devour the human race. The Doctor and Donna, who has been lifted out of her gloom by the majestic spectacle, return to the laboratory where Donna is immediately captured into the Empress's web, while the Doctor is held at gunpoint. The Empress begins to activate the Huon particles and drops Lance into the pit as food for her fellow Racnoss, who have awoken and are beginning to ascend to the surface.
Meanwhile, her ship begins to descend and attacks London. The Doctor manages to sneak back into the laboratory and issues the Racnoss a final offer, to take her and her kind to a planet where they will not threaten anyone. When she refuses, having not realised that the Doctor is a Time Lord, he identifies himself as from Gallifrey (gaining a reaction of outrage and fear from the Empress, who accuses the Time Lords of having murdered the Racnoss) and uses some of the explosive Christmas ornaments to burst apart the walls. Water from the River Thames bursts into the building and floods the well, drowning the Racnoss at the Earth's centre. Donna urges a vengeful Doctor to leave and they escape into the TARDIS once more. The Empress teleports back to her now defenceless ship, shortly before it gets blown out of the sky by the army.
The Doctor returns Donna home but she is desolate, having lost her job and her fiancé the same evening. She declines an invitation to join him in the TARDIS but suggests he find someone else to calm him down, as she did earlier in battle. The Doctor tells her briefly about Rose, and then disappears back into the TARDIS.

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