The Doctor Who Christmas Special: What Worked, What We Loved And What We Learned!
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on Mr. Moffat. He did, after all, give us a nearly note-perfect 50th Anniversary special. And the David Tennant farewell special was, in our opinion, almost perfect television. Maybe we could curb our disappointment in Matt Smith’s finale—but that is proving difficult, because it could have been so good.
The Christmas Episode was a lot like Christmas—weeks spent in delirious anticipation as the wrapped presents pile higher and higher, followed by an hour and half of slow realization that most people are as stumped as you are in regards to gift-giving, and ending in a sort of bland, vague, obstinate depression that even chocolate can’t seem to fix.
What Worked, Really Worked
What we loved in this episode:
1. Owning Matt Smith’s bald head and pretty-good wig.
2. The rhyme found in the Christmas Cracker. Simple, sad. Like much that is great with the Doctor, it echoes and knocks around and provokes unexpected reactions.
3. The fact that he hasn’t fixed the phone yet.
4. The Papal Mainframe. Could we get a spin-off of that, please?
5. The gentleness of Matt Smith’s final good-bye.
6. The Time Lords are definitely stuck in a pocket universe. No more debate about that.
7. We never have to worry about limited regenerations again.
8. The wooden Cyberman (it was a little goofy but still…)
(C) BBC – Photographer: Ray Burmiston
A Season’s Worth of Story
It wasn’t that there weren’t great ideas in this episode—indeed, there was a plethora of them—but it felt as if those ideas were never given time to breathe. So many awesome and terrible things happening, and yet the episode never really landed on any of them, making everything seem impermanent and somehow, unimportant. The Church of the Papal Mainframe—what an amazing thing. What an incredible addition to the world of the Doctor. And Orla Brady was luminous in all her dark, mysterious beauty as Mother Superious Tasha Lem (and did anyone else get some Dune flashbacks throughout that whole sequence?), a woman who is neither awed nor frightened of the Doctor; a women with power equal to—if not greater than—his. We could have watched the Doctor and Tasha Lem debate moral imperatives all day. But, like almost all of the things introduced or visited in this episode, it was over too soon and not explored enough.
What other things, you may ask? Well, let’s take the Silence. One of the most intriguing villains created during the Matt Smith era, they are—quite suddenly—decreed to be allies of the Doctor. Via voice over. At one point the Doctor blithely says “oh, them, they’re confessional priests. Engineered to make you forgot everything you’ve confessed” (or something to that effect) which brings a few more questions to mind: How does he know this? Why didn’t he know it before? And what, exactly, is the point of forgetting that one has confessed one’s sins? You don’t forget the sins, and you won’t remember whatever penance you are given, you just forget you’ve confessed? (As a recovering Catholic, this particular throwaway line boggled our mind for quite a while). The idea was very, very cool. Chill inducing, even…but it was brought out, waved about quickly so we couldn’t think about it much, then thrown aside in favor of yet another Doctor/Clara conversation.
Courtesy of BBC,
Or the whole explanation about the Silence, and the splinter sect set upon destroying the Doctor (essentially all of the Rory/Amy Pond storyline) was just thrown out and forgotten. The moment that should have been chill-inducing—Tasha Lem declaring “Silence Will Fall”—fell strangely flat. The episode hadn’t earned that yet, and it didn’t ring true.
Or what about the town of Christmas? The best episodes of the Doctor are the ones where we, the audience, see clearly what sacrifice is being asked of the Doctor—and understand what each decision costs him. Save the child or the world? Save the last of a species or all of humanity? Lose a planet, to win a war? In “The Time of the Doctor,” we never see what is so special about the town of Christmas. Why doesn’t he just put everybody in the TARDIS and send them somewhere safe? Yes, the crack is there but that doesn’t mean the town is important. Just the crack. And why did the townspeople just sort of shrug and say, ‘ok, I guess we’re at war now. No biggie. We’ll just live in a life-destroying warzone and see our children die young because the Doctor is our Sheriff now’ Why? Did no one ever stop and say, ‘gee, Doctor, maybe one of your spacefaring friends could give us a ride out of here?’ or even, ‘gee, Doctor, you seem like a nice guy, but why are we dying in your private war? That doesn’t seem right…’
What about the truth field? That was an exciting device that also wasn’t used to its full potential. Moments of levity, moments of heartbreak—the truth field could have been utilized so much more, with potentially astonishing results.
Clara’s family dinner (who were the adult couple there? Had we met them before? We were so confused as to who they were and why the Blond one was soooooo unlikeable)—again, it didn’t add anything to the episode (other than a reason for Clara to call the Doctor) and it felt flat and a little trite. And, really, cooking a turkey in the TARDIS is why Clara was with the Doctor when he went to Trenzalore?
Courtesy of the BBC
What–How–What?
Even ignoring some of the leaps of logic the episode forced on us…you know what? We can’t ignore it. Here’s our list of the some of the worst ones, in our opinion:
1. It took 300 years for the TARDIS to come back because Clara was on the outside?
2. The Daleks, who no longer remember anything about the Doctor, still show up, with all the other baddies?
3. What about the Weeping Angels, who were just hanging out in the forest, unwatched by anyone, who never attack, ever, for all those centuries?
Courtesy of the BBC
4. Where did the Doctor get that Cyberman head? Why did he even have it?
5. Did not one person in the Church of the Papal Mainframe send out a distress signal when the Daleks invaded? How is that possible?
6. Once the Daleks invaded the Papal Mainframe, why didn’t they just wipe the planet out? Why were they still involved in land-based siege warfare?
7. In the hundreds of years the Doctor was there, he couldn’t have built a wall around the town to defend it?
8. Could the Doctor not have shouted through the crack: “Hey, stop sending out this signal, you’re starting Galactic War 14 up here, I’ll let you know when you can come over!” Could he not have at least tried, once? It worked when Clara did it.
9. How did Tasha Lem get the TARDIS? How did she know where to find Clara? How did she know how to fly it?
Courtesy of BBC.
10. How did the Doctor not know that the planet was Trenzalore? He’d been there before.
11. What is the point of a Church that requires you to be naked, but is ok with holographic cloths? What is the difference, really, between actual cloths and projected clothes that do the exact same thing, i.e., cover up your nakedness? If you have to be naked to enter, than be naked. Sheesh. And why was being naked so important??
12.Was the Doctor Santa? Because he kept making toys for the Children of Christmas…
The episode creaked along despite those, relying upon Matt Smith’s bravura and Jenna Coleman’s huge pair of brown eyes (where did you think we were going with that?? Naughty!). Moffat’s greatest episodes have always had a few ‘wait-a-minute—how—’ moments, but those were usually minor quibbles that tended to get lost in the epic quality of the events surrounding them; this episode, unfortunately, never reached that epic, breathtaking momentum of “The Day of the Doctor,” or “Demon’s Run.”
Perhaps all of the flaws boil down to the fact that the episode tells us quite a lot; people throw about explanations (a lot of it in voice over) and facts, that tie the basic elements of the plot together, but we are never shown most of it. One example: The Doctor allied with the Silence. Yes, please, show us that. Take the time spent with Clara’s family (ugh) and show us how the Doctor found common ground with the Silence. That would have been worth watching. Or give us more Tasha Lem. Or spend some time in the town of Christmas so we cared about it, even a little.
Courtesy of BBC
Regenerations? As Many As You Want
We did get some answers, the most important was the explanation as to how the Doctor would get past the ‘only 12 regenerations’ rule (SPOILER AHEAD)—Clara pleads with the Time Lords (via the crack) to help the Doctor, and the Time Lords move the crack and give the Doctor more regenerations. Problem solved.
If you are wondering to yourself, why, if the Time Lords could move the crack, why they didn’t do that HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO and solve the whole blockading-the-planet issue, so are we, dear reader, so are we.
The Doctor’s regeneration took out the enemy ships (ok…) and after all the fallout is over, he goes back to the TARDIS. Note, he doesn’t bring the Time Lords through, even though the way is now clear. Not really sure why not.
Clara follows, and Matt Smith’s Doctor appears because apparently the regeneration’s first step was to make him young before, you know, actually regenerating. Because that’s what it does, now.
He then gives what we think was meant to be a heartwarming speech about how we all change throughout our lives (which sounded remarkably similar to a letter we wrote some months ago, you can compare here) but really, it felt both a little clichéd as well as somewhat chiding—we could hear the writer/showrunner instead of the Doctor, telling the fans that change is good for them, so stop whinging and give the new guy a fair shake.
Courtesy of BBC
Amy Pond shows up (the Doctor hallucinates during regeneration now, apparently) and says good bye to her raggedy man.
Then, BAM!, it’s Capaldi. The kidney line was great. The ‘do you know how to drive this thing?’ was, like the episode, too on-the-nose and a little predictable (since Lem had already stated that flying the TARDIS was easy, perhaps a better line would have been ‘who’s been driving this thing?”). And then we ended the episode, not on the 12th Doctor’s face, in a panic, but rather on Clara’s face, which made it seem like there was more dialogue, or something, supposed to happen. It actually took a minute to realize the episode was over. And then, all we could muster was sort of a huge ‘meh.’ It was no “I don’t want to go.”, that’s for sure. It wasn’t even an ‘I have to kiss you to save you but in doing so I will sacrifice myself!’ regeneration. It certainly wasn’t how we envisioned the end of Matt Smith’s Doctor—the Doctor referred to in “The Day of the Doctor” as the ‘one who forgets.’
We will miss Matt Smith—he who taught us that bow ties and fezzes are cool—and we still have high hopes for Capaldi. But we do wish that this Christmas special had been, well, more about our lovely madman with a box, who had so many rules and so much grief, and who thought every one of us were important.
Still, it was a grand ride, and we’re sad it had to end.
What did you think? Let us know in the comments and follow us at @geekscapedotnet and @sjbwrite!
