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.

I am not sure what to think of season 8. At times I am watching and confused on Clara and the Dr. I keep asking myself a lot of questions like What happened to River? I thought the Master was dead. etc and so forth. Dr. 12 is really morbid, sad and cranky! However, then I realize you can not always think too hard with Dr. Who. Lol! I am still not sure I like the new Dr at all. He seems so different and well, pun intended, Alien compared to the others. With that said, I really, really and thoroughly enjoyed this special. It was touching, sweet, funny, sad and scary. Kudos! Enjoy watching. I do believe in miracles, Christmas cheer and Hope!

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!