An Hour of Who a Day: July 16: "Last Christmas"

July 16: "Last Christmas"

Stuart Manning's poster for "Last Christmas"
(from Doctor Who: Exclusive Last Christmas
poster revealed)

Strictly speaking (or going by home video boxsets, at least), this episode is the start of series 9, not the end of series 8. But "Last Christmas" (which, remember, only aired a month and a half after "Death in Heaven") partly concerns itself with addressing the unfinished business between the Doctor and Clara, as each lied to the other in the belief that it would make it easier for the other to say goodbye. But it's also a Christmas special, so we get a whole bunch of Christmassy stuff thrown in as well.

But pleasingly, instead of overwhelming us with Christmas imagery and narratives, we're treated to a creepy episode involving an alien crab that latches onto your face and induces a dream state. Cheekily, the end of the episode displays (most of) its influences on screen, as Shona looks at her Christmas to-do list, which includes watching the movies Alien, The Thing from Another World, and Miracle on 34th Street. (No mention of the other major influence on this episode, Inception, but perhaps that's making things a little too obvious -- at least with the others we can say that it was Shona influencing the dream, but including Inception would be a little too meta.) This means that we get a properly scary story that happens to involve Santa Claus.

I have to say, my initial thoughts upon hearing about this episode (well, beyond the obvious jokes about stories now being based on Wham! songs) was a bit of dread as to how they were to going to handle the Santa bit, but there was no need for concern; Steven Moffat has come up with a clever way to integrate Santa and his elves into the storyline without it bringing everything crashing down -- in fact, it just adds to everything. Yes, there's a bit of a sense that Nick Frost is playing Santa the same way he approaches his other roles, but to be fair, that's exactly what the script is looking for -- and he's clearly having fun doing it. Meanwhile, his two elves -- Dan Starkey (now out of his usual Strax makeup) and Nathan McMullen -- are just as much fun, commenting wryly on what's going on and with explanations for all the Santa mythology delivered in a condescending tone of voice.

But this is primarily an episode meant to scare you, and it does a good job. The dream crabs are a combination of being absurd and terrifying, and while, as Professor Albert Smithe (played by Patrick Troughton's son Michael) points out, they resemble the Facehuggers from Alien ("You know, Alien. The horror movie Alien," Albert says. "There's a horror movie called Alien?" the Doctor asks, aghast. "That's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you"), they're still very effective for the most part -- although the times when the "mouth" opens and reveals the face underneath are rather less successful. It's also an episode about dreams in dreams, and there are some clever moments as a result. "You know what the big problem is in telling fantasy and reality apart? ... They're both ridiculous," the Doctor says, but nevertheless that's the task that's been set for the Doctor, Clara, and these four scientists at the North Pole.

Clara's dream with Danny is obvious wish fulfillment (both for her and for anyone who wanted to see Danny again), but it also serves a greater purpose: to lull the audience into thinking they can recognize the difference between dreams and reality, when in fact that's not remotely true -- it eventually turns out that everything we've seen has been a dream, which they're able to cleverly prove with the Helman-Ziegler test, where they all look at a copy of the same book and pick a random word to see if they're the same. (Of course, this would only work with proving shared dreaming, but it's still a really smart idea.) And so because they can prove it's all dreams, we get an explanation for Santa: it's their subconscious trying to save them from being killed by the Dream Crabs.

So there are thrills and magic coexisting side by side in "Last Christmas", like all the best Doctor Who stories. And there's also the fake out of the ending, where the Doctor goes to save Clara and discovers that she's become an old woman -- only to find out that this too is a dream.²⁶² But that gives the Doctor enough time to regret not going back for Clara, and since they've admitted their lies to each other and have made peace, they can go off and have more adventures together. (Although, worryingly and presumably unintentionally, this repeated "it's just a dream" ploy means that the final shot of the tangerine, which is actually meant to make you wonder if Santa actually is real, instead makes you wonder if they're in fact still in a dream.)

It's a fast-paced, exciting episode, with some scary monsters and some mind-twisting mechanics at work here. There are lots of both fun and suspenseful moments, matched by some lovely acting and clever ideas. Equal parts magic and fear, "Last Christmas" is a great episode, and possibly the best Christmas special of the Moffat era.

And so with "Last Christmas", 563 days later, I've reached the end of my daily Doctor Who (plus spin-offs) viewing. And while I suspect I'll be back for future episodes (though I'll likely wait until they're available in a block -- perhaps check back on 17 July 2016 for the start of series 9...), for now this is it. This, of course, isn't the end of Doctor Who -- series 9 is set to start on 19 September, and not only has series 10 been confirmed, but reportedly Steven Moffat had discussions with BBC Worldwide regarding the future of the next five years of the show. Doctor Who is as strong as ever (it was the BBC's top-selling programme last year) and it looks like there's no signs of it going away. (This presupposes the Tory government is unsuccessful in its current attempts (literally current; the government issued a green paper on the future of the BBC today) to dismantle the BBC.) And the impressive, amazing, wonderful thing about Doctor Who is that through nearly 52 years, the show continues to adapt and change while still remaining, at its heart, the same show about a man in a box travelling the universe and taking in the sights, helping where he can. Sydney Newman and company probably had little inkling of just how flexible a format they'd created, one that their successors could shape in new ways and still remain true to the core. It's little wonder the show has endured; it really is the greatest television show out there. Long may it continue.

²⁶² Reporters kept asking Jenna Coleman and Steven Moffat if Clara would be back for series 9, but they were both tight-lipped, telling people to watch the show and find out -- which led to all sorts of rumors either way. It turns out this was the escape valve: if Coleman wanted to leave, the "old woman" version would have been the reality, and if she wanted to stay, what we eventually got would happen.