Halfway out of the dark

[alexsarll]

The Doctor Who Christmas special became a tradition out of nowhere. But more than that, the Doctor Who Christmas special starring David Tennant and written by Russell T Davies became a tradition. All five of them, same team. Charitably, two and a half of them were good. One was the worst Doctor Who story ever. Could Moffat and Matt Smith follow that and do it better?

Of course they bloody could. Best Christmas Who ever. It helped that when it wasn't ripping off Moffat's own first professional Who, 'Continuity Errors', it was reworking Paul Cornell's 'The Hopes and Fears of All the Years. But with the exception of that slightly vexing swerve at the end, it was otherwise a thing of utter beauty, unashamedly soppy but never schmaltzy, smart without confusing the casual viewers. In other words: utterly, near-perfectly Doctor Who.

Merry Christmas.

Comments

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. :)

[xandratheblue.livejournal.com]

I concur!

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

I laughed, I cried, I jumped up and down with glee. Lovely stuff.

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

(I am 32)

[amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com]

Really? It seemed like Moffat parodying himself to me.

I like it when they remember that it's a time travel show, but for the looping, self-referential stuff to work, there needs to be some kind of story beyond a series of contrived character beats. I kept waiting for the real threat to be introduced.

Why doesn't the super-genius, super-observant Doctor work out what the countdown timer is about? And what the hell kind of illness leaves you looking that good when you are one day away from dying?

Bah, humbug.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Why does there need to be a story beyond the character beats? In the original the Doctor was just trying to borrow a library book. It doesn't always have to be about an evil plot to destroy the universe.
And we've established that this Doctor in particular does miss things sometimes. He has to or he'd just be infuriating. The illness? Well, it's common enough on screen and I prefer it to tiresomely worthy method buboes.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

She did look a bit more drawn as the Christmas Eves continued but she was all rosy-cheeked again for the finale.

The relative smallness of scale worked very well I thought.

Poor old Blinovitch.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Blinovitch's limitation is one of many instances where I think a little Time War handwaving is nowadays needed. The Laws of Time are not what they used to be.

[amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com]

There didn't need to be an evil plot, but the problem is that it's hard to believe metaScrooge is so evil that he'll let 4003 people die because he can't be arsed to push a button, but at the same time he can't bring himself to hit a boy. The script can't decide whether pseudoScrooge is a curmudgeon like Original!Scrooge, or a mass murderer.

Also, his objection to letting the cruise ship land seemed to be to do with surplus population, but presumably the people on board were holidaymakers and not refugees.

They could at least have put in a closing shot showing the Welsh bint's head exploding in a massive, festive aneurysm shaped like a sprig of holly.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was an ecological objection to 'surplus population', just the way anyone feels after a bit of Christmas shopping.

And it's the old Stalin tragedy/statistic line - especially when the individual reminds you of (or indeed, is) your younger self, that's going to get through layers of emotional defences which 4,003 unseen holidaymakers can't.

[amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure he explicitly said at one point that he didn't want to add to the surplus population. It think it was supposed to be more "coming over here, taking our jobs and our women" than ecological, but admittedly he could have been making up excuses for being grumpy.

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

I thought he was being fippant, there.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten, until listening to another Christmas Carol riff in the form of Radio 4's Marley was Dead, that the 'surplus population' line is also a direct quote from the original Scrooge.

[intermix.livejournal.com]

I cannot believe I was the only one who was sitting there thinking, 'So long, and thanks for all the fish.'

WHY HAS NO ONE MENTIONED THIS YET? WHYYYYYYY?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I totally failed to spot this, but did assume that someone, at some stage, would literally jump the shark.

[miss-sheldon.livejournal.com]

what was the worst? x

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The Runaway Bride. Most bad old stories are just too long and boring, or else so bad they're funny. This was just an hour of shit.

[(Anonymous)]

Is the 8 year-old girl named Lucy?