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

[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.