9. Howard Gets Hungry In His Sleep
For a Christmas Day episode, it has to be said that The Christmas Invasion had some fairly heavy stuff to deal with, what with being the first story to reintroduce a new post-regeneration Doctor in the Nu-Who world. Wisely, in my occasionally humble opinion, they chose to deal with the issue by removing the Doctor entirely from the story for very nearly its entire length. Then once we're sort of used to The Doctor not being there, they reintroduce him as the new version. It was a clever move and greatly helped the transition. There was, however, one little moment of him sort of smack dab in the middle, I suspect as a concession to someone higher up in production who wanted to remind us that it was still The Doctor's show. And so, lying on his deathbed, in borrowed pajamas (or pyjamas, if you're British. And who changed him into them for that matter? It wasn't Jackie based on later comments re: his anatomy) The Doctor gets one brief moment awake to fend off some Santa robots before passing out again. And does he use this time to explain any relevant plot points or deal with any of the larger issues? No he does not. He uses it to quibble about Jackie's Fancy Man and his late night munchies. And then passes out again. On a practical level this really only exists to set up the Satsuma gag later on in the story. But as a piece of brilliantly inane banter about trivia where one might expect some mention of the fact that the world is being invaded it works perfectly well as a joke on its own.