YMMV / Doctor Who 2005 CS "The Christmas Invasion"

• Broken Base: Whether or not the Doctor was right to take down Harriet Jones over her destruction of the Sycorax spaceship (since he obviously didn't know about the Master or Children of Earth, and it's not as if the Master couldn't have easily deposed Harriet Jones anyway), and, for that matter, whether Harriet was right to commit murder, is a hotly contested issue.
• Designated Hero: The Doctor brings down the government (one that he even said would be remembered in the future as Britain's Golden Age) because the prime minister blew up a spaceship of aliens whose leader had proven untrustworthy (he tried to kill the Doctor after promising to leave in peace) and would have likely gone on to enslave other planets. This leads to the Master becoming prime minister and trying to take over the world, followed by a government willing to send ten percent of Earth's children to a Fate Worse than Death in the spinoff Torchwood: Children of Earth (though the Doctor almost certainly doesn't know that). There's also how, whether intended at the time or not for the Doctor's Character Arc, his decision to remove Harriet foreshadows the Time Lord Victorious.
• First Instalment Wins: Among all the revival era's Christmas specials, this one is still considered by many to be the best, albeit with "A Christmas Carol" providing close competition.
• Ham and Cheese: The Sycorax Leader and David Tennant. Killer Santas and killer Christmas Trees meet a bellicose alien who wants to sell humanity into slavery. When he meets Ten, it results in Ham-to-Ham Combat. And when the Sycorax Leader is practically frothing at the mouth, Ten decides to mock him and takes the ham through the ceiling.
  Sycorax Leader: (growling) I DEMAND TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!
  Tenth Doctor: (bellowing outrageously) IIIII DOOON'T KNOOOOOOOWWW!!!
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Doctor takes down Harriet Jones by whispering in her aide's ear "Don't you think she looks tired?" Flashforward to 2016, where Jeb Bush was the poised favorite to win the Republican nomination and the election as a whole. Donald Trump started calling him "Low-Energy Jeb," and his campaign soon imploded in a way not that dissimilar from Jones. The same thing occurred to Hillary Clinton later the same year, when she was running against Trump and had a health scare months before the election, which caused many on both sides to doubt whether she could run. She ended up losing as well.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Doctor says that you can't use Mind Control to make someone commit suicide. Kinda funny for David Tennant to say that, when ten years later, he played Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, who is more than capable of doing just that, mind-controlling people into killing themselves or trying to in various forms like cutting their own throats (Ruben), shooting themselves in the head (Trish Walker), or even walking off a roof ledge (Will Simpson).
  • Tennant would later have a magnificent ginger mane in Good Omens.
  • London's Big Ben is seen encased in scaffolding, presumably still under repair after its destruction in Aliens of London. This is more or less how Big Ben would look from 2017 to 2021, when restoration work was carried out on the iconic landmark.
  • David Tennant's Doctor quotes Disney's The Lion King (1994) to the Sycorax, by accident. Doctor Who would later be picked up by Disney+ for international streaming rights in 2022. And guess who their debut Doctor for the 60th anniversary specials just so happens to be?
  • In this episode, a thermos of tea is spilled into the TARDIS, and the old girl uses it help heal herself and the Doctor. In Doctor Who 60th AS "The Star Beast", a cup of coffee is spilt onto the TARDIS console and the whole damn thing bursts into flames. And yes, people have joked about how quintessentially British the contrast is.
• Misblamed: Everyone likes to blame the Doctor for creating a power vacuum leading to the Master taking over and the events of Children of Earth. Given how manipulative the Master is, it wouldn't have been at all hard for him to arrange for Harriet's downfall himself if she'd still been in power, and clearly the Doctor didn't know about the 456 (or maybe it was a fixed point in time that was meant to happen) or he would've dealt with them himself (for that matter, given how ruthless she shows herself to be, it's debatable how much better off they would have been with her).
• Never Live It Down: Even fans of the Russell T Davies era will point out that Tenth started his downfall (in three series to boot) when he caused the fall of "Britain's Golden Age" by ruining Harriet Jones's career as Prime Minister of the UK.

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