Doctor Who- A Christmas Carol

25, December 2010
“It’s either kiss her or go back to your room making a new kind of screwdriver. Don’t make my mistakes.”

The BBC Wales series of Doctor Who (if I can borrow that term… it’s a great term) has had a fascination with larger than life drama, outlandish ideas and romance that pulls at the heart strings. For my taste, it was over done during the now departed Russell T Davies era and came off as obnoxious and trite. Steven Moffat decided to basically utilize a similar blueprint but fold it into a fairy tale that made Doctor Who into the children’s program that the BBC has been claiming it to be for over four decades. The Doctor is an impsih being who is so fanciful that he out-performs many of the heroes of classic children’s entertainment. This is helped in no small part by Matt Smith, an actor that exudes charisma with a boyish grin that makes it look like second nature. The stories by Moffatt and others are likewise more fanciful and less moody and serious than they have been in ages. It can be a bit much at times, watching a program that delivered material like Caves of Androzani or any number of classic drama pieces, but this is the current face of Doctor Who and if you can accept that it’s a lot of fun.

The first Christmas Special arrived at the perfect time, bridging the gap between two Doctors and heralding in a change that would radically impact the whole of Doctor Who with the arrival of David Tennant. The other specials have mainly been forgettable (aside from the Next Doctor two year’s back which I still sort of like if only for David Morrissey as the ‘Doctor Who Never Was’). This year, that all changed as Moffatt and company crafted what has been coined as ‘the most Christmas-y Christmas Special ever.’

The opening features a pleasure space craft crashing through strange cloud-like formations riddled with lightning (not unlike the opening credit sequence introduced this past year) and the most unlikely line of dialog I have ever heard as the ship Captain declares, ‘Christmas has been canceled’ in the face of their imminent deaths. To add to the corniness, the entire sequence is shot to match the JJ Abrams Star Trek film complete with strobes coming from every light source. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvil arrive dressed in silly outfits (she in her policewoman kiss-o-gram costume and he dressed as the Roman soldier who stood guard over her in the Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang finale) with the only adult joke in the whole special, it’s their honeymoon. This is a welcome change from the baudy humor that RTD was obsessed with including in his scripts. Amy and Rory are in touch with the Doctor whom they are sure will save the ship from crashing.

The Doctor lands on the planet below, a weird mish-mash or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and a traditional Dickens London. The meanest man in the universe, Kazran Sardick, holds the fate of the starliner as he controls a device that could easily disperse the clouds and allow the ship to land. But unfortunately he is the meanest man ever so he refuses to do anything other than calmly watch the ship crash. This forces the Doctor into an unusual position. He uses the TARDIS to rewrite Kazran’s life, this making him a better man, the kind of person who would save thousands of innocent lives rather than cruelly let them die.

Kazran Sardick is introduced as a Scrooge character, refusing a poor family the opportunity to spend Christmas Eve with their family member who is frozen in time, held as collateral against a loan that Sardick granted them. Michael Gambon (Harry Potter, Singing Detective) clearly adores playing such a wicked villain but never crosses the line into over-the-top acting that many other actors would have. In the midst of his refusal to loan a family their relative, he also refuses a desperate plea to save the star liner from crashing… and he laughs about it. Clearly a larger than life hero is needed to deal with such an awful man.

The Doctor tumbles through the chimney a la Santa Claus (a moment that I was in mid eye-roll over until Smith’s line of ‘Sorry, I saw a chimney and my mind just exploded’ won me over) to save the day. Already appearing to be too good to be true, the Doctor clarifies that there really is a Santa Claus and his name is Geoff, producing a snap shot from his coat pocket as proof. He appeals to Kazran Sardick to help his friends after it becomes clear that the Doctor cannot operate the only machine needed to stop the space ship from crashing, but has no success. There is just no goodness in Kazran Sardick’s heart. When a little boy throws a rock a Kazran in rage, the old man lunges at the child, his hand inches from connecting in a devastating blow, but Kazran begrudgingly drops his hand and orders them all out.

After the Doctor leaves, Kazran has a violent nightmare, remembering a moment in which his father struck him as a child and wakes to find himself watching the exchange play out on a film played against the wall of his study. As a young boy, Kazran was interested in the fish that dwell in the fog throughout the city streets, but his father forbade him from seeing one close up. When Kazran’s father finds that his son is planning to record a film of a fish, he screams and strikes the child, an act so upsetting that even the adult Kazran watching the memory playback flinches. Somberly, Kazran states that he learned an important lesson that night, ‘no one comes.’ Sorrowful, the Doctor tries to find a nugget of decency in Kazran’s heart, but it has been covered with so much anger and sadness over the years, that he must go deeper. After hearing the familiar sound of the TARDIS dematerializing, Kazran disbelievingly sees the Doctor within the video from his childhood.

Thus is the Doctor once again made into a fanciful fairy tale character who fights monsters, saves children and performs heroic acts to save the innocent.

Moffatt’s script is inspired, the direction stunning and the special effects the best we have seen in ages (especially after the budget cuts caused Doctor Who to look a little cheaper than usual in series 5). I have spouted my opinion on numerous occasions about my dislike of the Russell T Davies style and I have to concede that Moffatt has retained a certain portion of that fanciful and flighty notion, but he does it right. The madcap ideas (such as the fish that float past in the crystalline fog) are not only interesting, they assist the plot and also have a wonderful visual that stays with the viewer. The heart-wrenching melodrama is well told and also part of the plot, a story that the Doctor can play an important role in. The lighter touch and family entertainment approach is sincere and well conceived. Rather than simply introducing a forced concept such as Cybermen abducting children, Moffatt embeds the audience into the imaginative world of children with his tale. When the Doctor appears in the past and rewrites Kazran’s memories by becoming part of them, it’s done so well that the magic of the notion shines through. It’s the kind of thing that if a less talented creator had attempted such a thing it would have fallen flat.

There are some dodgy moments, such as the sleigh driven by a flying shark and the whole idea of singing Christmas carols to save the day is taking the holiday special concept to new levels of sappiness… but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work.

Matt Smith once again shows that he is the most inspired casting decision since Tom Baker, when a bizarre actor was plucked out of thin air, custom made to be a modern day hero to children. Patrick Troughton’s performance laid the groundwork for a wizard-like character who seems straight out of a Roald Dahl story. The Doctor is a mercurial enough creation that this doesn’t need to be the only approach one takes, but it has been used at least three times now (including Tom Baker and Matt Smith). The only other time that the BBC came close to such a perfect casting of the Doctor was probably Sylvester McCoy, an actor who appealed to children and had a magical quality that came off as genuine. Matt Smith not only tells the audience that Santa Claus is real, but he also saves a little boy from a lifetime of sadness, fights a giant shark, and flies through the air like Father Christmas himself (the only moment that made me wince with its twee-ness… but I’m a cranky guy anyway). He’s the ideal children’s hero and even he is surprised by his own actions and ingenuity. It’s a lively performance with so much energy that Smith’s gleeful attitude becomes infectious.

Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are criminally left out of most of this one, but there’s so much going on that I doubt they could have been more.

Very sentimental, overly emotional and incredibly silly, Doctor Who – A Christmas Carol is exactly what it says on the box, a holiday special that makes you feel good about Christmas and Doctor Who all at once. A final exchange between the Doctor and Amy hints at trouble ahead, as the Doctor matter-of-factly states that everything ends, leading into a promising series 6 trailer.

Next Time:

PS – I’d like to point out that there is a magnificent review of this story over at the PlanetZogBlog that also addresses what appear to continuity/logic errors in the writing.