I spoke to a friend on the 'phone the other day.

"I'm going to watch The Runaway Bride in a minute," said I.

"Oh it's dreadful isn't it?" replied he.

It pretty much summed up my first (and second) impressions of it last Christmas. Which is, frankly, an absurd thing to say about such a joyful, perfectly pitched slice of ratings-snatching Christmas Day fun. Really, I deserve to be covered in treacle and thrown at a wasps nest while being made to watch all eight series of "My Family" without a break for such a miserly observation. There are, for sure, many things within "The Runaway Bride" to love - for example the bizarre and inspired appearance of the Racnoss - not CGI, but an actual eight-legged prop!. Then there are the nuances of Catherine Tate's character, if not quite the character herself, which skates between shouty-annoying and almost-likeable. Her delivery of "Santa's a robot!" is a joy, as are the moments when the script pokes fun at her, such as when her her recollection of "he begged me to marry him" is revealed to be skewed somewhat with reality. Best of all, the high-speed chase down the motorway between robot-driven taxi and TARDIS is superb beyond words. Who wouldn't be won over by the sight of the Doctors police box tumbling and bumping off the top of cars while a symbolic vehicle full of young kids cheers it on?

Alas, what "The Runaway Bride" really is, is 98% window dressing. It's so dressed up that it winged its way to the top of the Christmas ratings without even a proper plot underneath to help it through. It's that rare thing - Doctor Who that DOESN'T work on an adult level as well. The plot, such as it is, is absolute bunkum. Without bothering to check references for correctness (because, let's face it, if one watches something one should emerge the day after with a reasonable idea of what the point of it was), Torchwood (hey ho) have been brewing a secret brew of Huon particles, which a Random Office Guy has been secretly feeding to his secretary. Elsewhere, the Racnoss children are buried at the core of the Earth (as they have been since the Earth was formed) and are now emerging. What links these two events is anyone's guess. What does Donna have to do with the Racnoss? Why has she been dosed up for six months? Why, when it took this long, does the Empress use her spare male subject instead and it (whatever it is) happens instantly? Why not just use him to start with? Why does the Doctor say the particles are deadly when they aren't? Why does the Empress wait from when the Earth was formed until 2007 to retrieve her offspring? What has she been doing all this time? Are there two spaceships then? What, in fact, is any of it about?

You'll be tutting now at Old Mister Scrooge Hunt here, but can you honestly answer even a few of those questions? "The Runaway Bride" is that worst of things - a Doctor Who that chunders along powered by fun set pieces until it reaches a big cave whence the whole plot is "talked" out. Remind you of anything else? *cough!* "Christmas Invasion" *cough!*. There is actually a vital bit of plot dialogue which is spouted by the Doctor during the exact point at which Donna is 'snatched' during the scene just outside the main chamber, but it's clumsily obscured by a sound problem and Donna being whisked away rather detracts your attention from it anyway. Even winding it back, it's still muttered too quickly to be really absorbed and anyway, does it really matter? I doubt it was enough to explain away the whole mess of the plot.

But listen here. I'm not saying you should hate "The Runaway Bride". If it works for you as an amusing runaround, if you like the robot Santas and the car chase and the disco and draining the Thames, and if that's ENOUGH for you, then I'm delighted. But, pity me, I'm here to critique these things and as a Doctor Who story, the thing is just shoddy beyond belief. There IS no comprehensible plot or motivation, the only real character apart from the Doctor is very likely to annoy the hell out of you some or all of the time and, if I was being ultra picky, I'd have to point out that even the monsters are just reheated from last years Christmas Special. We waited forty years for Doctor Who at Christmas - is it too much to expect them not to use exactly the same foes in both specials? Perhaps fittingly, "The Runaway Bride" is like the rest of Christmas - great fun at the time, but not something you'd really need to see again for a long while afterwards.