Doctor Who - A Christmas Carol

It will hardly come as a surprise to regular readers that, ever since the Sycroax tried to invade earth on Christmas Day six years ago while the recently regenerated Doctor lounged around in another man’s bedclothes, a highlight of my Christmas Day has been the Doctor Who Christmas special. And let’s just say that yesterday’s edition did not disappoint.

Now, it is a bit of a cliché for shows to do, as their Christmas Special, a version of A Christmas Carol. And it often goes wrong, because most shows are not suited to retelling the story of Scrooge at Christmas. Fortunately, Moffat seemed to understand this, and gave us a story that used the Dickens tale as a loose template to tell a similar, yet in some respects, a startling different tale. After all, there were no flying sharks in the original A Christmas Carol.

Some people might argue that Christmas Day’s episode was perhaps a little too light-hearted – after all, there were only the briefest scenes of mild peril. Yet this sort of analysis misses the point in two different ways. Firstly, this was broadcast at prime time on Christmas Day. You can’t make it too dark – this has to be for all the family at one of the most relaxing times of year (post Christmas lunch on a day of general indolence). Furthermore, there some very dark undertones to the story. At its heart was a tale of desperately doomed romance and the trauma of an abusive childhood. Karzan Sardick was not just a one-dimensional villain – he was the product of a monster of a father and the bitter realisation that he could only spend one final day with the love of his life.

The story also had nice little twists to keep the viewer engaged. My personal favourite is when the Doctor was being the Ghost of Christmas Future – yes, it was not a great stretch to guess that he was being so to the young Sardick rather than the older version, but it was a nice, but surprisingly unobtrusive, example of intricate Moffat plotting. And, of course, the centre of the story was Matt Smith’s mercurial, complicated Doctor. He’s the man who claims to know nothing about kissing the girl, but ends up engaged to Marilyn Monroe. He is capable of moments of deep empathy, but also often gets so carried away in the moment that he misses what is obvious. And he is unpredictable, energetic and often compelling alien – meaning he takes centre stage in any scene he wanders into.

I’m sure that there will be some people who bellyache about the fact that the Doctor changes history within the story. To this I can only say that such people are missing the point of Doctor Who - he constantly changes history – indeed, that’s the reason why he first became a renegade among his own people. The point is that he cannot change a fixed point in time; clearly, the life of Karzan Sardick was no such fixed point. Besides, as Amy pointed out, people can be rewritten – Sardick went from being the cold monster created by his awful father to the old man bitter about the fate of his love to the old man who made peace with his life, and took the opportunity to spend that final day – Christmas Day – with Abigail. The moment when Abigail told him that he had, given his age, probably waited for too long was simple and touching; it was also the moment that Sardick accepted his fate, and in doing so became a good man.

Any gripes? Well, we could have had longer before the shark became tamed; a bit more of a threat for the majority of the episode would have been good. And this did feel like a companion–lite episode: the very fact that Mr and Mrs Pond were dressed (albeit in their most memorable) costumes from last season couldn’t help (despite the nudge-nudge, wink-wink explanation for why they were dressed like that) but add to the feeling that they were tacked onto the episode. They seemed to exist just to add a further reason to why the Doctor had to save the thousands of people trapped on a crashing shuttle. As if he wouldn't anyway...

But these are minor points. Moffat and his team delivered a wonderful Christmas romp with melancholic overtones. As such, it was perfect viewing for Christmas Day