Happy Xmas (You're Being Invaded)

Today's extraordinarily out-of-season Christmas episode begins in November with a terrifyingly delighted Casanova assaulting Rose. To be fair, he'd just been Christopher Eccleston and then exploded, so his joy is somewhat justified. Rose, however, can't get past the terrifying delight and tries to flee the TARDIS, but this doesn't work because Casanova's already kidnapped her and is trying to get off with her. She promptly rejects him, and he gets all stroppy and tries to crash the TARDIS.

This throws us forward to the actual episode, where we find Mickey-the-Idiot running into a wall for the third time in his life. He realises that this means the Doctor is on his way (it makes sense in context) and runs around shouting about aliens until Jackie slaps him. She's very good at that. The TARDIS comes flying out of nowhere and completely fails to crash, instead just hitting a bin and making an unimpressive clatter. Casanova emerges, seduces Jackie (talk to the hand, Mickey, you're not his type) before falling over hilariously. HILARIOUSLY!

Jackie puts Casanova in her bed (not quite what he was getting at, but close enough for now), then quickly gets bored and goes off to see if the Doctor Who Christmas Special is on TV. And if it had been then it would've been much easier to solve this whole invasion thing, but as it happened some semblance of normality remained in the Whoniverse and it wasn't. Silly Jackie.

However, TV offers SpiderHarriet, superhero from Flydale North, who has been promoted to Prime Minister SpiderHarriet, Prime Minister of the Prime Ministerial district of the who Prime Ministering country. Did I mention that she's Prime Minister? She is. She's telling everyone that she's put a Prime Minister's Choice space probe up in space (soon to be renamed 'Space, sponsored by Prime Minister SpiderHarriet', apparently) to do probing and other related innuendo. Little does she realise that space feels violated and decides to get revenge. Silly SpiderHarriet, Prime Minister.

Rose and Mickey find themselves out shopping, as no-one does on Christmas Eve because they should be better prepared. For this reason they're singled out by the extremely realistic robots dressed as Santa and wielding flamethrowers. Realistically. Just like Santa. Rose finally uses her amazing powers of ancient wisdom (ooh, it's Santa (I was a puppy! (wait, he's got a flamethrower (can I roast a marshmallow over it? (Oww! Fire hot!))))) and kicks a Christmas tree in frustration (she really wanted that marshmallow). The tree falls over, causing widespread chaos and getting Mickey arrested (because he isn't allowed a good day), while the Santa gang inconspicuously teleports into the sky.

Back at the old Tyler place (I still love saying that), a completely-innocent-and-not-at-all-deadly-Christmas-tree has appeared in the flat (as such trees are prone to) and started being deadly. Jackie is very annoyed, because she was deceived by the name and was looking forward to spending time with Casanova. Rose and Mickey come back in time to feed the tree a chair before Casanova himself wakes up and ruins things by seducing the tree. The tree can't commit to a mixed-race relationship and explodes in defiance. Silly tree.

Casanova, meanwhile, is throwing up 'time-stuff' all over the nice clean floor, so he's sent back to bed without his tea. The rest of the gang sit down to watch TV again, which shows us an alien (unfortunately not a Martian, because that would mean bringing back the awesomeness that is the Ice Warriors. But no, we get Sycorax) who shouts about something. But we don't know what, because that makes it more mysterious. Whoo...

SpiderHarriet, Prime Minister, is out using her amazing Spider powers to sneak into heavily armed places, like Torchwood (this place is getting popular. Remember it.). She meets all kinds of extremely important, exciting people who will mostly be dying within the next half hour. Torchwood use their incredible technology of alien origin to decipher the Sycorax message ("they say they want to borrow half a pound of butter. Can we do that?"). As it turns out there's no spare butter anywhere on the planet, which annoys the Sycorax a bit, so they decide to kill everyone using superior powers of mind control. And that's terrible.

SpiderHarriet uses her amazing Spider powers to break into Buckingham Palace and take over as Queen (it's essentially the same as Johnny English, but she's not French) just in time to give the Queen's speech, which this year will be given in the form of a rap. The Sycorax are displeased by the break from tradition and quickly teleport her onto their spaceship, along with a group of people from Torchwood to kill (told you so).

The Tyler Team have spent this time out for a picnic, except for Casanova who is still asleep and dreaming of his future conquests (Rose... Martha... anyone else I find... not Donna, she's very against that stuff...). The Sycorax feel left out (they have short attention spans and they're bored with SpiderHarriet by now), so they teleport Rose, Mickey and Casanova on board too. But not Jackie, because they're not fans of her.

Rose shouts at the Sycorax for a bit, but it's no more effective than when she shouted at the Reapers all those episodes ago, so they kill one of the Torchwood guys just to teach her a lesson. Casanova wakes up at this point, has a cup of tea, and then proceeds to completely destroy the Sycorax leader with his supreme skill in swordplay styles (and an orange) before deciding that 'supreme skill in swordplay styles' is too long to use on a regular basis, and it's never mentioned again. He keeps the orange though.

And so all is well – the Sycorax are sent home with their tails between their legs, Casanova's ready to take on the universe (in his own special way, of course), Mickey's finally getting over his fear of walls, and Torchwood prove themselves to be utter bastards by blowing up the Sycorax and making snow.

And that's terrible.