The Runaway Bride

Dear Gary—

There are so many things I dislike about The Runaway Bride, and upon first viewing I recall that the dislike was intense. However it has been several years and several viewings since then, and I have to say that I can now watch it and be utterly entertained, despite the fact that the elements I dislike remain. It all has to do with that “big picture” that the Doctor keeps trying to get Donna to see and that she continually overlooks.

The Runaway Bride and Donna are the exact slap in the face that Doctor Who and the Doctor needed at that time. Fresh from the Rose-induced illusions of castles in the air, both needed a reminder that the Doctor is not some starry-eyed schoolboy or some teeny bopper idol; he is the Doctor. I do love a well-deserved slap in the face (key word being well-deserved, which does not happen often), and the two that Donna administers in The Runaway Bride almost (but not quite) rival Leela’s back in Horror of Fang Rock.

At the time I did not appreciate that. At the time Donna was one of the elements I disliked most about the episode. Now I view her as its saving grace.

The story itself seems just an excuse to throw together a bunch of disparate components that someone thought would be awesome to see on screen.

“So, come on then. Robot Santas. What are they for?” Well might Donna ask the question. The robot Santas are a tie back to the previous Christmas special, and as in that story they have no plausible reason to be there other than the fact that it is Christmas and they look cool. They have no credible connection to the narrative.

The most obvious example of this, however, is the TARDIS chase scene. It is a thrilling sequence to watch but totally ridiculous and has absolutely no foundation to back it up. It is a parlor trick that cheapens the production.

The Empress of the Racnoss is impressive enough at first, but she’s rather static. I don’t really get the threat. And if she has been on the loose since the creation of the Earth, why has it taken her so long to get around to digging up her kids? She seems to have magical powers, barking orders to the air that miraculously come to be—like, “Transport me!” or “Activate the particles.” Maybe she has some invisible allies—the ‘they’ the Doctor keeps talking about but never defines. The ‘they’ who dug a hole to the center of the Earth and created this underground lab and manufactured the ancient and extinct Huon particles. Was Torchwood in league with the Empress, or HC Clements and his board of directors? Someone has been busy on the Racnoss’ behalf, and it is certainly beyond Lance. None of that is explored, though.

But all of this is incidental. Like the whole key thing. The Doctor makes a big point out of HC Clements making keys, but that really has nothing to do with anything. It is merely a diversion. What really matters in The Runaway Bride is Donna. The Runaway Bride is about Donna and her journey of personal growth. (By the way I find it amusing that Donna has more positive and tangible growth in this single episode than Rose did over the course of two entire seasons with the Doctor.)

Donna begins shrill and angry, which is an immediate turn off. But I have come around on Donna, and I realize that this is a defense mechanism she has utilized all her life. Superficially, the character of Donna is shallow. But just as she learns to dig deep, so too do we as the story progresses. There are hints in the opening TARDIS sequence. As Donna shouts her way through it there are brief moments of quiet when we can see her mind at work.  She throws open the TARDIS doors in mid tantrum and is cut dead at the wondrous sight of space. Her immediate reaction is the practical, “How am I breathing?” Next she delves into who her captor is and where he is from. She takes in all the alien, then returns to the practical, “It’s freezing with these doors open.” She is processing it all and accepting, but she doesn’t want to think about it; not yet. “Get me to the church!”

This is again brilliantly played out in the few seconds as she first steps out of the TARDIS to realize its true nature. After walking around and then in she realizes exactly what the TARDIS is but it horrifies her and she turns her back on it. “I just want to get married.” She reverts to her comfort zone.

Donna has spent her life skimming the surface of it. She has a no-nonsense personality yet doesn’t like dealing with harsh reality. Thus she creates romantic illusions, similar to Rose. This is hilariously exposed with the recounting of her courtship with Lance juxtaposed with the truth. She has built up her defenses, and one can hardly blame her, what with a best friend like Nerys and a family that parties at her expense after just witnessing her disappearance into thin air. When Donna walks into the reception, therefore, and is immediately attacked by her loved ones, she deflects the anger with tears; then burying the hurt she dances like nothing has happened.

Anger is easy; tears are easy; dancing is easy. Facing the emotions boiling under the surface is the most difficult thing in the world.

Donna needs a slap in the face of her own and she gets it from Lance. I have no doubt she has been subjected to casual cruelty her entire life, but Lance’s cruelty cuts to her core. And she stands there and takes it, absorbing and digesting. “But I love you,” she quietly says. The shock and pain washes over her; she faces the harshest truth of all; and she survives, emerging a stronger and better person, all in the span of a few minutes. “Don’t you hurt him!” Her immediate concern after this humiliation is for the Doctor.

All of the qualities are present in Donna from the start; they are simply hidden behind the wall she has built up around herself. Chief among these are her compassion and curiosity, and the Doctor has been slowly drawing them out. In the midst of her TARDIS tirade, therefore, she can suddenly stop with a heartfelt, “How do you mean, lost?” Or after missing her wedding and being chased on the motorway by killer robots and having to make a leap of faith in her wedding dress she can sit calmly on the rooftop and absolve the Doctor of all guilt. And when her family and friends have been attacked by a Christmas tree she thinks first of the wounded, but grasps the ‘bigger picture’ and follows along after the Doctor to get some answers.

This is what allows her to stand there and take the abuse that Lance heaps upon her; this is what allows her to see the painful truth; this is what allows her to ultimately forgive her faithless fiancé. The Doctor has led her to her inner strength.  Likewise, Donna has awakened some dormant traits in the Doctor. The Doctor and Rose usually brought out the worst in each other; the Doctor and Donna bring out the best.

This is beautifully depicted in the TARDIS scene when the Doctor takes Donna back to the creation of the Earth. Donna sits silently in her grief; this time her tears are real. The Doctor is taken aback; his bombastic way of bigger, further, brilliant isn’t cutting it. He is drawing Donna out of her parochial view, but he has to realize that sometimes he misses the trees for the forest. Her grief is real; her tears are real; they are deeply personal. For once he does not lose sight of the individual in his grand scheme of things. Gently he leads her to the TARDIS doors to witness the majesty before them.

“All I want to see is my bed,” Donna says, reverting to her head in the sand coping device, but the Doctor prevails as he flings open the doors to reveal the stunning sight.

“Puts the wedding in perspective,” Donna says, voicing her lesson. But the Doctor has learned a lesson of his own: “No, but that’s what you do. The human race makes sense out of chaos. Marking it out with weddings and Christmas and calendars. This whole process is beautiful, but only if it’s being observed.”

There are more lessons for the Doctor to learn, though. Unfortunately this is another element of The Runaway Bride that I dislike. Whereas the previous scene was subtle and moving, the Doctor’s showdown with the Empress is heavy handed and contrived.

For starters, I just don’t buy the Empress as a danger. The Doctor admits that she is defenseless because she used up all her Huon energy. In fact the Doctor doesn’t even deal with her himself in the end; he leaves that for the tank in the street to handle. So why does he have to murder her children in front of her? If she is defenseless I would imagine these baby Racnoss are as well. Can’t he simply brush the Empress aside and take the kiddies in his TARDIS to drop them harmlessly off someplace in the universe like he originally offered?

Then there are the exploding ornaments. I can’t imagine they are capable of the magnitude of damage they cause, but OK, I’ll give them that. But really, couldn’t the Doctor program them to attack the Empress rather than destroying the building and draining the Thames? (Although I love the pockets aspect of this—what a great payoff to the earlier scene with Donna and her pocket rant and a brilliant homage to the Doctor’s historically deep pockets.) And I have my doubts that even the amount of water contained in the Thames would destroy all of the baby spiders climbing their way up from—how deep of a hole and how many miles down at the center of the Earth? (Oh, and lest I forget, I do love Donna’s “trying to help” reference to dinosaurs. She doesn’t seem to be too far off—dinosaurs, giant spiders, same thing.)

But oh what an awesome sight to see the Doctor amidst all of the flooding and the fire. This is a dark Doctor indeed. (And if this is what Rose has brought him to thank God she is gone.) And then there is Donna to bring him back from the brink.

Now it is time for the third and final and most effective slap that Donna administers.

Doctor: “Come with me.”

Donna: “No.”

After Rose’s cloying co-dependence the Doctor has met his match in this independent woman who stands before him.

Donna puts a mirror up to the Doctor and forces him to take stock of himself. “Sometimes I think you need someone to stop you,” she tells him. Donna is not ready to take on that role, not yet. She is ready to “walk in the dust,” but she is not ready to face the sometimes beautiful but more often terrible world in which he lives.

The Doctor and Donna. After Rose, Donna is exactly what the doctor ordered. But it is too soon. Donna is not a rebound, Donna is the real deal. The Doctor is not quite ready to let go the clinging Rose.

Donna: “Am I ever going to see you again?”

Doctor: “If I’m lucky.”

And so, as the TARDIS zips off into space (oh, that effect—too cool, too awesome, too unnecessary) I zip this off, Gary, hoping in the luck of the Doctor.