Santa Clawed

I know I've grumbled a lot about the last few series of Doctor Who, but even I think some people must be automatically programmed to complain about it, given the stream of insults I saw hurled at "Last Christmas" on Twitter the minute it ended - I actually thought it was one of the best Christmas specials in ages. Of course, one of my friends turns out to have some kind of notoriety among Whovians, as the person who more or less invented complaining about Doctor Who in the 1970s, so perhaps it was inevitable I'd hear grumbling.

"Last Christmas" by Steven Moffat, directed by Paul Wilmshurst. Spoilers after the cut.

I mean, it wasn't perfect - these hour-long episodes always feel like they're stretching things a bit. And unless something spectacular happens in the next few series I think Capaldi will end up being a mid-ranking Doctor for me - I don't hate him but neither can I get too excited about him. I think it's the attempts to make him seem particularly alien: Matt Smith had the Tom Baker thing going, of seeming completely alien without really having to do anything (it's possibly what made him going straight from Doctor to Patrick Bateman less surprising casting than it seemed.) The trouble is this means trying to make Twelve out-alien Eleven is doomed to feel contrived.

But the episode itself was, I thought, a strong one. It cleared up all the lies the Doctor and Clara had told each other at the end of the last series, meaning we'll have Jenna Coleman back at least for the start of the next series, which can only be a good thing. Apparently she's already one of the longest-running companions of New-Who, although it doesn't feel that way - maybe because so much of her story has been about her moving on from the TARDIS, it feels as if she's never actually settled in. Then again she hasn't really, even Amy and Rory seemed to have made it their home a bit more than she has.

There seem to be a lot of rumours about Faye Marsay's Shona joining her as a companion next series - certainly the rather bleak view we got of her everyday life suggests she could be someone who could do with being taken away from all this. Or it could just be as it appears on the surface, that she's made herself a miserable Christmas because of a boy. I like the companion version better so I'd be happy to see her return; she can act, and the character's gobby enough to be a companion, and the introduction with the monster-avoiding dance suggests she has a personality.

Nick Frost as Santa Claus was always going to work (as Moffat has pointed out, "Nick Frost" even sounds like an unsubtle alias Santa Claus might use,) it's just whether it would work in this particular context that was the question. Making the story about dreams-within-dreams, and Santa as the subconscious' warning to itself, was a great way to throw the contrasting mythologies together, and fits in to the last series' throwing together of the Doctor and Robin Hood, making for a nod to his own mythical status. Of course, the point of Santa's appearance turned out to be that he doesn't exist - I wonder how many parents of young kids had some awkward questions to answer afterwards. (I guess the tangerine at the end was the get-out clause to say maybe he was real after all; forgive me if I see it as a sign of them still being in a dream, like the origami at the end of Being Human.)

If they are out of the death-dreams, I take it they're going to go back and save all those people who think they've woken up? You know, when they all got returned home by sleigh-ride but then there was an additional, "old Clara" level as well? Let's just assume that's where the TARDIS is off to at the end.