Last Christmas...

Sunday 28 December

It’s been a couple of days now since I first saw Last Christmas, and I’m still not sure what I think. I really did not like it much on first viewing. I thought the whole dream plot rather obvious and lazy, and the general theme ‘we are all dying and we celebrate Christmas because we think it will be our last’ very bleak. 

On second viewing, I liked it a bit better. Nick Frost’s Santa-with-attitude was excellent, as were the two sarcastic elves, Wolf and Ian. And the juxtaposition of Santa and the Doctor as two impossible beings with implausible means of transport that are bigger on the inside worked well, up to a point. 

But comparing the Doctor in this way with Santa Claus, and emphasising that dreams can be nested within dreams and that we can never know whether we are truly awake, serves to undermine any future stories. How can we be sure that next season isn’t still part of the dream? For that matter, perhaps the last season was part of the dream. I mean, the Moon is a giant egg? Forests that grow overnight to protect the Earth? Missy is surely a creature from the Doctor’s worst nightmare.

 

 

My Top Ten Christmas Specials: No. 1

And finally... at number one, it is of course The Christmas Invasion.

The first 'real' Christmas Special, in which we meet the Tenth Doctor properly for the first time, and discover what sort of man he is.

It's a brilliant romp, with echoes of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the dressing gown),  Star Trek (Sycorax culture seems rather reminiscent of Klingons) and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (the severed hand).  Plus Jackie almost gets killed by a Christmas tree.

And after all that, the Doctor saves the world with a satsuma, brings down the government and then enjoys Christmas dinner chez Tyler.

What could be more Christmassy than that?

Christmassy factor: 10/10

Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 0/10, but who cares?

My Top Ten Christmas Specials No. 2

The Unquiet Dead

OK.  Technically, this one isn't actually a Christmas Special, but it should have been.  After all, it's a story with Charles Dickens, at Christmas, with ghosts (as Donna might have put it.) It deserves the number two spot for simply setting the precedent of Christmassy Doctor Who.

It was only the third story to be broadcast after the series returned. Back then, we didn't even have a concept of a Doctor Who Christmas Special, other than William Hartnell taking time out from the Daleks Masterplan to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Christmassy Factor: 8/10
Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 10/10

My Top Ten Christmas Specials: No 3

No 3: A Christmas Carol

The first Steven Moffat Christmas special, which manages in typical Moffat fashion to be very clever, a bit timey-wimey (how he must regret having written that line!) and very Christmassy.

Like many non-Who Christmas specials, it is basically a rip-off of the plot of the Dickens story, but with the Doctor (and Amy) in the role of the ghosts.  Unlike many non-Who Christmas specials, it is set on a foggy mock-Victorian cyberpunk planet. With fish.  There is an added twist in that reforming the central character is ultimately not sufficient to solve the problem. What the situation really needs is Katherine Jenkins singing to a shark.

Christmassy Factor: 8/10
Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 8/10

My Top Ten Christmas Specials: No. 4

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

The Doctor goes to Narnia (well, almost) in this story, which has a real Christmas feel to it. Not only is it set at Christmas, but the Doctor’s special treat for the children is a trip to a snowy planet where real Christmas trees grow, complete with baubles. 

It being Christmas, when things start to go slightly wrong, it is down to mother to sort everything out, and ensure a happy Christmas for everyone. She even makes sure that the Doctor goes off to spend Christmas with his in-laws.

Christmassy factor: 9/10

Dickensian/Victorian Factor 0/10

 

My Top Ten Christmas Specials: No 5

Number 5: The Runaway Bride

OK so this is not the most Christmassy of Christmas Specials.  Although it is supposed to take place on Christmas Eve, and the robot Santas make a (slightly implausible) repeat appearance, the bright sunshine doesn’t really convey a festive mood.

But this is the episode where the Tenth Doctor meets Donna, my favourite of his companions.  She takes absolutely no nonsense from him.

And Sarah Parish does a wonderful job of eating the scenery as the Queen of the Racnoss.

Christmassy Factor: 1/10

Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 0/10

My Top Ten Christmas Specials: No 6

Voyage of the Damned

What could be more Christmassy than a disaster movie starring pint-sized pop princess Kylie Minogue?*

Well, quite a few things really, but big budget disaster movies (and Bond films) used to be a centrepiece of Christmas family viewing before we had a Doctor Who Christmas special.  I enjoyed this, but couldn’t help thinking it was a rip-off of my favourite computer game (and the only one I ever managed to win), the brilliant Starship Titanic by former Doctor Who script editor Douglas Adams.  According to The Writer’s Tale, this was an accident, and plans for the episode were well advanced before the similarity was discovered.  The finished episode would have been better if they had included the insane parrot from the game, though.

*I understand that one is legally required always to refer to Ms Minogue as a ‘pint-sized pop princess’

Christmas Factor: 2/10

Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 0/10

My top ten Christmas Specials: No. 7

Number 7: The Next Doctor

If you are wondering why this Special is number 7, one word: Cybershades. Putting a mask on a hearthrug does not a convincing monster make.

In my 2008 diary I wrote that “The Next Doctor was an enjoyable family film type episode – it was clear very early on that RTD had (as suspected) merely been being evil with the  ‘is it the next incarnation of the Doctor’ hype.”
 

In retrospect, I don’t think the episode is particularly strong once the joke with David Morrissey is over.  The graveyard scene certainly looks good, but it seems to have been included precisely for that reason rather than to further the plot.  And the denouement with the CyberKing and the balloon-TARDIS is incredibly silly. 

Christmas Factor: 3/10
Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 9/10
 

 

My Top Ten Christmas Specials: No. 8

The End of Time (Parts 1 and 2)

 

Maybe I’m prejudiced about this story because it was the one in which the Tenth Doctor regenerates, but it doesn’t quite work for me.

 

 Positives:

 

• Bernard Cribbins
• The café scene
• Timothy Dalton

Problems:

 

• The preposterous way in which the Master is brought back to ‘life’ (or almost) at the start
•  The cliffhanger at the end of part 1
•  The Doctor’s self-indulgent ‘farewell tour’ at the end. And since he is breaking the rules by doing it anyway, why didn’t he go back to see Reinette as well?

   

What I did enjoy that year was the almost complete takeover of the Christmas TV and radio schedules by David Tennant, who was even on the BBC One station idents and Desert Island Discs. Oh, and I want to be June Whitfield (Minnie).

 

 Christmas Factor: 3/10 - still too bleak

Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 0/10

Top Ten Christmas Specials: Number 9

In at no 9: it’s The Snowmen


The Doctor has parked the TARDIS on a cloud for an extended sulk, whilst Vastra and Jenny from A Good Man Goes to War act as his gatekeepers, assisted by comedy Sontaran Strax, who turns out not to have been permanently killed after all.


Meanwhile, soufflé girl from The Asylum of the Daleks is a barmaid who is moonlighting as a governess. Or possibly the other way round. It’s all very odd.


I found a problem with the tone of this special. It seems to oscillate between Mary Poppins* (the scene where Clara climbs up the staircase to the cloud where the TARDIS is parked) and The Turn of the Screw in the scenes with Clara and the children.


The threat is provided by the eponymous snowmen, but they are being controlled by the real villain of the piece, who is far more abominable than his snowmen. All of which is something of a clue to his identity.


It’s very clever, but this story just didn’t do it for me.

Christmas Factor: 3/10 - still too bleak
Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 7/10 - Victorian London, but points deducted for the Paternoster Gang

*Steven Moffat seems, in the light of more recent episodes, to have something of a Mary Poppins fixation. Is it possible he was traumatised by Julie Andrews as a child?

Vengeance on Varos - ahead of its time?

7 December 2014

Am watching Vengeance on Varos on UK Drama. Somehow I missed seeing this on broadcast.

Watching it in 2014, it's striking how ahead of its time it is.    It starts with two characters talking about what they are watching on TV and then participating in a public vote, as a result of which once of the characters is tortured. Sound at all familiar?

Truly Doctor Who invented Gogglebox and I'm a Celebrity thirty years early.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Peri are stuck in the TARDIS. Arguing. Again. If I was Peri I would have thrown the TARDIS manual at him by now.

Sil is a really interesting and creepy villain.  It is a shame there wasn't more of a build up to his entrance.

Top Ten Christmas Specials: Number 10

Hard as it is to believe that it's almost ten years since the programme returned to our screens, it's even harder to believe that the Doctor Who Christmas Special has now become as much an integral part of the festivities as over-cooked sprouts.

In order to celebrate, I'm going to do my own personal top ten of the Christmas specials. 

So, in reverse order, here we go with number 10:

Time of the Doctor (2013)

I'm sorry, but I don't think this one worked. My diary for Christmas Day 2013 says "Time of the Doctor was depressing and longwinded. Didn’t enjoy it at all. Even after having watched it again."

Particular problems were:

• Clara's family: We had never really met Clara's own family before. Now they were parachuted in for Christmas.  To the Powell Estate (or somewhere suspiciously like it).

• The nudity: Don't get me wrong.  I don't mind the Doctor being naked, but there is a time and a place for it. (Generally in the TARDIS, when the Tenth Doctor is having a metacrisis). But in this story it just seemed like an excuse for cheap jokes.

• The turkey: I thought the turkey that they were cooking in the time rotor was going to turn out to save Christmas (the place), or at least Christmas (the celebration), in a sort of Three Doctors  recorder kind of way, but it wasn't.

• A town called Christmas: a town. Called Christmas. On Trenzalore. I ask you!

• Handles: the Doctor has a pet Cyberman head?

• The Doctor ageing to death naturally: a new idea, but a very depressing one for Christmas. 

Overall the programme seemed too long, too downbeat, and rather hampered by the number of hanging plot threads from previous episodes that needed to be tied up.  I'm still not entirely clear why the Silence were trying to blow up the TARDIS, who Prisoner Zero was or where the Leadworth ducks went.

Christmas Factor: 2/10 - too bleak
Dickensian/Victorian Factor: 5/10 - spurious Victorian atmosphere in implausibly-named town on a distant planet.
So that was number 10. What will be number 9?