11.14: A Christmas Carol

In which the Doctor ruins a miser’s life, and it’s the best Christmas special ever.

Sorry this has arrived on New Year’s Day, just as Christmassy cheer is at a low point, lads: accident of the calendar. Still, never mind, eh?

Broadcast: December 2010

Watched: December 2021

“And you know what boys say in the face of danger? Mummy.”

Still the best Christmas special, I think. Partly because it feels movie-sized – between the crashing spaceship and the Christmas stuff and Kazran’s journey and the side trips to Hollywood and so on, it feels huge in a way a lot of hour-length episodes don’t. 

But also it’s just *magical*. The design, with goggles and space fish and weird hats and so on. The organ that’s actually a computer. The Doctor falling down a chimney, or appearing on a film in the past. The portrait of Kazran’s father turning into one of Abigal. The flying shark, every Christmas eve. The ghost-like holograms of the passengers singing In The Bleak Midwinter. The line, “Halfway out of the dark”. (Snow, obviously, but we get that every year.) There aren’t many stories you could put a Katherine Jenkins song in and make it work.

Michael Gambon is brilliant. I’m not sure the opening monologue entirely makes sense – why is the man who hates Christmas making speeches about Christmas to people he’s about to tell to go f**k themselves? – but he makes Kazran initially nastier and more actively cruel than Scrooge, while still making it possible to believe we’re watching the same man when he transforms at the end. This may partly be because the thing that finally causes him to turn is his child self calling him “Dad” – it is in its way an extremely selfish route to selflessness – but Gambon is so great it doesn’t matter.

The other weird thing about this episode, especially coming straight after The Big Bang: it breaks all the rules again. The Doctor is constantly and consciously changing the history he’s in. The companions are barely in it – they don’t play that role in the story, they’re all but bystanders – and the Doctor abandons them for weeks at a time to hang around with other people. Moffat’s Doctor will keep doing the latter, but thankfully that’s as far as the former gets.

The only sad thing is I watched this already this year, and the next couple of Christmas specials are a bit rubbish. Oh well.

Other things:

• I think this is maybe the peak of Moffat’s writing-Who-for-his-children thing. The way the thing that finally turns Kazran around is the horror of the fact he nearly hit a child (okay, it’s himself, but still) is a bit like the space whale or Kermit Mengele. I think the 11th Doctor gets more stuff with kids than any other? (Amelia, Kazra, the kids in Widow, etc).

• I’ve only just realised the threat is Voyage of the Damned again.

• “Christmas is cancelled” is an extremely stupid line. Though perhaps not as stupid as the Geordi La Forge character (“I can’t see!”) which may be actually offensive.

• Young Kazran is basically a YouTuber. His crying over the dying shark (“She was hungry”) is weirdly touching.

• Katherine Jenkins doesn’t get a line until 25 mins in, which is quite odd for one of your big guest stars. The videos playing over the top of the frozen people are genuinely haunting.

• Abigail fancying Kazran at 17ish is deeply weird because she’s clearly 30. To be fair, though, it then ends up inappropriate in the other direction, so.

• “When girls are crying are you supposed to talk to them?” “I have absolutely no idea.” The Doctor doesn’t understand girls again. Then, two scenes later, he’s engaged to Marilyn Munroe.

• The Doctor failing to do magic tricks at the Christmas party is just lovely. I have no comment on it beyond that. Ditto, when Amy talks about snowmen, his delivery of, “Yeah, I’ve been busy”. Smith is so great.

• Some referencey bits: the countdown on the sarcophogi is the same trick as Flesh & Stone. You can tell this is the year of Sherlock, as the Doctor’s deductions briefly work the same way.

• Surely the machine should still recognise Kazran because the machine’s history has changed too? But this is a quibble.

The next time trailer makes it extremely clear that Doctor Who has, at long last, broken America.