Last Christmas

The first scenes of the annual Dr Who Christmas Special introduce the viewer to Nick Frost's guest turn as Santa Claus, complete with sledge, reindeer and two lippy elves but from there the story gets progressively darker, exploring the darker psyche of humanity as the Doctor, pleasingly reunited with Clara, lands at an Arctic scientific outpost where along with its four inhabitants, they find themselves in a waking dream scenario which threatens to kill them all.

Writer Steven Moffat nods at various sci-fi / horror classic films of yesteryear, notably "Alien", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Inception" even "Ghostbusters" as well as Christmas films "A Christmas Carol" and "The Santa Clause" and weaves a densely layered tale which takes a bit of following, but like Santa on Christmas Eve, gets there in the end.

As one would imagine Santa Frost and his two impish assistants get the majority of the funny lines (when asked how he can deliver so many Christmas presents from a single sled, he knowingly counters "Bigger on the inside" and otherwise becomes the seasonal focus of the group's thought processes to thwart the Dream Crab's life-threatening menace. There were some neat touches in the story like Clara's death-prophesying blackboard and the way the Doctor uses random book-reading to alert them to their danger although some other devices were unnecessary in my opinion, most notably the "return" of Danny Pink into Clara's life and the once too often used collective resistance to break the monsters' spell.

With barely any day-light shots and being even more set-bound than usual, this Dr Who tale effectively builds up its claustrophobic atmosphere of life-threatening dread until the bearded weirdie in red comes along to save the day. There's an interesting diversion near the end as the Doctor visits a much older Clara from 60 years in the future to play out a blame-and-redemption tete-a-tete before he saves the (Christmas) day and hooks up again with Clara in the TARDIS, just in time for the next series.

This wasn't the best Dr Who Christmas special I've seen but had its moments and definitely deserved its prime-time slot on the Christmas schedules.

No tricky Dream Lord on this occasion, just nightmare Christmas crab crustaceans, who have the stick, to play a trick, ending your days through hallucinations.

Despite the contrived fantasy nature of creating a Christmas special featuring Santa (following on from all the other slightly contrived fantasy Moffatt era Christmas specials - one based on A Christmas Carol, one based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and one featuring a snowy town called Christmas) this episode, like A Christmas Carol, manages to rise above its contrivance to be a thoroughly enjoyable story. It has the usual Moffatt obsessions of the 'darkness' of the Doctor, lots of complicated storytelling and over the top bits but it is one of the occasions where he gets it to mostly work.

Moffatt has managed here, as in his other best work, to balance things so that the complications are clever. In a lot of this era the complications end up turning out to be illogical and the showiness is out of control. This episode makes enough sense so that the confusing dreams within dreams and seemingly unrealistic events have some internal logic. The showy stuff like Santa, elves, reindeer etc are made to fit into the context of the episode in a way that makes them work within the world of the show and they are used to great comic and dramatic effect.

Nick Frost is great as Santa, he is funny but also grounded with a more serious side. The comedy works brilliantly and there is smart dialogue throughout. Capaldi is, as always, terrific with both humour and depth. All the guest characters have depth and quality and all the acting is of high standard, including Jenna Coleman. It is lovely to get Michael Troughton, son of 2nd Doctor Patrick Troughton, in the cast.

The darker and more dramatic elements mostly work really well too. The dream crabs are creepy and menacing (their resemblance to creatures from the movie 'Alien' is amusingly referenced) and the serious themes raised work well.

I was not a huge fan of how the dream crabs turn out to be in random people's homes and just disintegrate and we move on. Why and how were they there and isn't there a likelihood they would be elsewhere on Earth rather than just those few random places? Some explanation or resolution would have been nice.

I also was not a fan of bringing Danny Pink into the episode. Moffatt just cannot let characters die! I strongly disliked Danny and was glad to get rid of him so that compounds his unnecessary return. Thankfully he is not a huge issue in this story.

The episode is rather copied in some respects from the great episode from a couple of years earlier, Amy's Choice (as well as its influence from Alien) which is a shame in a way but it is just different enough to still work in its own right.

Overall this was a funny, entertaining and clever episode.

I always saw this as logically being the Series 8 Christmas Special but it is, apparently, officially part of Series 9 so that is what I am counting it as.

My Rating: 8.5/10.

Series 9 Episode Ranking: 8th out of 14.

Doctor Who's Christmas special episodes are usually cheesy funny happy episodes. I expected nothing else when I saw the trailer featuring Nick Frost as Santa Claus. This episode, while still funny and in the spirits of Christmas, was more than that. I honestly did not expect this episode to be as good as it was. The episode messes with your mind as you don't quite know what is happening at certain points in the episode. It's a combination of the horror movie Alien and the mind bending thriller Inception. It's full of twists and surprises and will keep you watching until the very end. As usual I love Peter Capaldi's portrayal of the Doctor and Jenna-Louise Coleman's performance as Clara is as astonishing as ever.

Worth a watch! I will definitely be re-watching this episode next Christmas!

How many times do you hear someone saying something like "I didn't expect much of it, but it was alright", or conversely "I had heard such great things but it was only alright"; same outcome, but the receipt of that outcome is much more of a positive when you expected less, not more. Of course with Doctor Who it is normal that you expect less, but it almost feels deliberate that the show caused my expectations to drop so low this time. After a reasonably okay final few episodes (aside from some terrible decisions), we got Nick Frost popping in as Santa ("stunt casting" as Theo rightly calls it) to announce the Christmas special – something that made me feel this special would be even more silly and festive than usual.

Starting the episode, this is precisely how I felt as we had so-so comedy from Frost and his elves, making me feel like this was going nowhere but even lower than I had feared. The move to the North Pole doesn't help this, since we see a character dancing to Slade in an attempt to avoid some form of danger – really making me cringe. However from here we get thrown into a horror movie of sorts, with some images that sort of made me questions what we have done to ourselves in the last 25-30 years that Aliens once got an 18 but yet these very similar images are now family TV-viewing. This is not the Mary Whitehouse coming out in me, because I thought it was great to have something to shake me and the special out of a festive stupor.

From here the content is weirdly mixed; with Frost still hanging around but yet this horror going on at the same time. It doesn't really work as it is happening, but gradually it works in retrospect as the plot falls into place. Mixing Aliens and Inception kind of works, and although the plot doesn't totally hang together (moving quickly at times to try to stop viewers asking too many questions), it is broadly pretty engaging. The ending felt like it was two endings – the second of which was thrown on once they got the thumbs up from Coleman that she will return for the next season (which is what they did in the end – which is a shame because the first ending was much better). The writing is mostly okay but as usual it cannot control itself and we get silliness thrown in, along with clumsy references like we are stupid.

The cast are solid and in particular this episode shows the value of Capaldi. While Smith was part of the silliness, this slightly dour Doctor sits outside it with a cynical edge, so the viewer can sit with him, so when he reluctantly goes with it despite himself, it feels easier to accept (namely the "do you want a go scene" – which would have been totally different with a childish Smith begging to have a go). This cynicism in word and presence works to the show's favor – particularly in a silly show like this. Coleman is okay, although I really hope they find a reason to have kept her in the show; personally this previous season would have been her "big" one in terms of story, but they have done that and also not gotten too much good work from her. Frost is funny once you realize that he is not the whole show, and generally the supporting players are decent enough without being anything too amazing.

So, against my expectations this was actually quite good. The tone is wobbly, and the plot doesn't make anywhere near as much sense as it would like you to think, but it is enjoyably scary and at least brings in all the Christmas silliness in a way that allows it to have it, but also treat it as a side issue at the same time.