Having only gotten back to the DVR on Friday evening, we watched two things before calling it a night: the Doctor Who Christmas Special and the Stephen Colbert Series Finale — both of which involved Santa Claus …
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(Spoilers, Sweetie.)
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Okay, I enjoyed it. Actually enjoyed it a lot. A lot more than I thought I was going to during the trailers (Santa Claus got handled in an almost entirely satisfactory manner). The whole Dicksian (vs Dickensian) "What is real? What is dream?" parts where handled extremely well. The monsters were creepy, the plotting was excellent, the characters well-done. Moffat was at the top of is episodic game this time out.
Really, there were only few things I was dissatisfied about.
1. It was still unclear to me why Santa Claus played such a major role in the Doctor's dream, given that there's no indication that St Nick also operates on Gallifrey.
Or maybe it's that Santa is Clara (and the other humans' fault), and that just as the Dream Crabs drew the connection between the Doctor and Clara (which raises interesting questions about how they seek out and infect others), Santa was imposed on the Doctor (to the latter's resentment) by the humans. Yeah, that makes sense, esp. since the Doctor ran into Santa only after hooking back up with Clara.
Okay, I withdraw that one.
2. Dream Crabs. Creeeeepy. Nicely done. The one element left unmentioned / unresolved at the end is that there's at least one Dream Crab left on Earth, the one who successfully ate Turkey Leg Guy. Ah, well.
Oh, heck — that means Moffat's going to go back to the well on this one, isn't he?
3. Clara. Clara, Clara, Clara. Actually, I enjoyed Clara this outing. I liked the fact that she let herself be seduced (literally) by the dream. And the creepifying chalkboard scenes with her were nicely done.
I disliked that we end up with Clara running off with the Doctor. Again. Or that the Doctor is so eager to have that happen. While the character has become slightly less annoying, I still have the feel that Capaldi really can't explore his character fully while still having the Impossible Girl along, turning it into the "Clara & the Doctor Show".
Plus, we've now had more than enough opportunities for Clara Oswald to return to the masses of humanity (including a perfectly lovely 62-years-later sequence), which will make her eventual departure feel almost anticlimactic.
I sort of liked Shona the Shop Girl, myself.
Still, all in all, I liked it a lot. It did all the right "Doctor Who" things, especially for a Christmas special: sentimental without being mawkishly indulgent, fantastic without being hand-wavey, and a good opportunity for the Doctor to be both clever and (some of the time) fooled. Cleverly done, well-executed.
(h/t +Doyce Testerman for mentioning having just watched it, too, which reminded me to write this up.)
Sometime, when we're actually in the same location, I want you to break down the difference between being the Bad Wolf and being the Impossible Girl, because Rose had that storyline going on for twice as long (series one, with Nine) as they did the Impossible Girl thing with Clara (the last half of series seven, with Eleven), but the IG arc seems to grate a lot more, considering Clara simply stepped into a glowing pillar and Rose swallowed the Tardis heart. 🙂
I mean, she hasn't been the Impossible Girl for all of Matt Smith's run of specials, plus Series Eight.
This reminds me of an unrelated, disappointing thing I've meant to post about for awhile that was shoved back in my face when I did some google searches through Who-fandom last night.
Well, I'm not a big Rose fan, either, +Doyce Testerman. And I felt the Bad Wolf / Rose thing was poorly constructed and executed. And really only went on for a season, or half of one (was there any actual, significant Bad Wolf stuff post-Nine?).
Clara was the Impossible Girl from (second) appearance in "The Snowmen") the 2012, when it became clear she was the same Clara as the one from "Asylum of the Daleks".
While the IG title stopped directly applying after series 7, It's not so much the Impossible Girl per se as the Impossible Girl as a symptom that I dislike about Clara, i.e., that she comes across as more of the driver of the series than the Doctor. I realize I often bemoan the lack of agency among supposedly significant characters, but it feels like Clara, too often, not only has agency, but takes it away from the titular protagonist of the show, to the extent that, beyond Ten's mooning over Rose for romantic reasons, we get Eleven and now Twelve mooning after Clara for near-existential reasons.
And there's probably more, but I'm being bugged by the family to help plan the day. 🙂
Bad Wolf runs from the first episode with Nine to the end, so it's one full season, but after that it's just a punchline a couple times, I think, and (after Rose is gone from 10's story) used as a flag to warn him something is VERY bad.
We've touched on it before, but I come at the whole Doctor Who experience from a different point of view, I think. For me, the point of most episodes is "everyone but the Doctor" – he's sort of a field effect that keeps the story moving along, but the story itself is about everyone not-him. Given that as my baseline approach, the Companions are as (if not more) important to me than the Doctor.
I mean, they're the humans: through whom (I assume) I'm supposed to be identifying with these stories, so why wouldn't I identify with them more, and consider them as important.
The "titular" thing doesn't indicate much to me. Scooby Doo isn't about the dog after all – it's about solving puzzles. (Or, more relevant: I'm excited to watch Sherlock at least as much because of Watson's personal story arc as I am the meta-arc of Moriarty/Holmes, or displays of inhuman brilliance.)
+Doyce Testerman I agree, to a certain degree — the show can only be relatable insofar as it's about the Companions (or the Doctor to the extent that a thousand-year-old Time Lord can be related to). And I don't want the Doctor to be the deus ex machina. But I do want the Companions (et al.) to generally orbit around him as that field effect.
Or, put another way, while I love watching the Watson story, I expect Holmes to (usually, though not always) solve the mysteries. (The analogy only works, though, if Holmes were working his way through a series of partners.)
+Dave Hill.. The reason Santa was in it was explained in the episode. They were in a collective dreamworld. The only thing they all have in common, at Christmas time, that screams 'you are dreaming' is Santa. Because you have Christmas on the brain, you have christmassy dreams… Snow is a big feature, but that's not helpful. Even the doctor knows what Santa is supposed to look like, but none of them believe Santa exists. Therefore, Santa is the strongest manifestation of their collective will to survive.
+Nathan Glazier I found fascinating / amusing the list of movies that Shona had on her to-do list, all of which played a role in the story: Alien, Thing from Another World, and A Miracle on 34th Street.
Excellent observation 😀 they certainly took care with this episode
It's possible that the IG sub-plot was affected by Jenna Coleman becoming a long-term companion. I can imagine a scenario where the IG role had a definite beginning and end outside of the "regular" companion(s) and her joining the main cast caused problems with the original idea.
It wouldn't be the first time a long-running series has had to sweep a sub-plot under the rug because external real-world events have made it difficult, or unpopular, to continue.
+Jon Gritton Had it been a shorter-duration thing, I probably would have appreciated it more. 🙂
I suspect that, had Clara's arc ended with the the episode where she stepped into the Doctor's timeline at the end of the arc, with perhaps the Doctor figuring out some sort of "River Song Preserved in the Library" way of 'saving' her, you might have liked it better, +Dave Hill . As +Jon Gritton said, part of the problem was that the actress played so well to audiences that they kept going with Jenna Coleman even after the original half-season arc she'd (perhaps) been intended for, as a kind of palate-cleanser after the Ponds.
Husbandperson has a theory that this was actually supposed to be Clara's farewell, but they couldn't get another companion lined up in time, so they added that slapdash final scene to keep her around. It's a pity, because I thought it would have been a lovely way to leave her, and it makes me hate her all the more for getting reversed so clumsily.
I read someplace that Coleman hemmed and hawed over departing and eventually changed her mind and decided to stay. I though both the S.8 finale and the Christmas Special were good send-offs, which will make it a challenge to come up with something different.
She has traveled through my time stream to save me and has been there for me in every moment of my life. And I am very happy that she is back by my future's side.