Is Last Christmas a Doctor Who Masterpiece?

Subverting the "base under siege" format is just the beginning.

Plot Summary

Rescuing an arctic base from deadly aliens proves difficult for the Doctor and Clara, but luckily Santa Claus is nearby to help.

Notable for:

• The 10th Christmas Special!

• Modified title sequence puts snow everywhere.

• First (and only) My Little Pony reference in Doctor Who.

• Dan Starkey also plays Strax.

• The Doctor helping Clara open a Christmas cracker mirrors her helping the elderly Matt Smith in The Time of the Doctor.

• Michael Troughton, who plays Prof. Albert, is Patrick Troughton’s son.

• Steven Moffat wrote the story so it would work whether Jenna Coleman wanted to continue or not. If she had decided to leave, Faye Marsay was considered as a possible replacement.

Pete commentary:

• I wrote the preview of Last Christmas for Mashable, interviewing Steven Moffat. He was pretty coy about details (they hadn’t screened it), but this is the interview where he made the statement that you’ve got to be big and loud in a Christmas special since you’re literally competing with Christmas. He also justified the Doctor meeting Santa from a younger viewer perspective — that of course they live in the same universe, along with Robin Hood.

• All that is to say this is Steven Moffat leveraging his “political capital” with fans: We’re super skeptical of big risks like this, and he would have been laughed out of his writing career before this even aired if this was his debut episode. But he had built up a lot of trust, everyone gave it a chance, and he delivered, weaving Santa into the Doctor Who universe that really works. Contrast that with “Doom’s Day,” which I have zero interest in ever seeing because it just looks dumb. I have no idea if it’s good or bad, but if someone like Moffat had written it, I’d check it out.

• Continuing with that idea, Moffat really seems to be giving himself writing challenge after writing challenge, and seeing if he can write his way out of it:

  1. Put Santa in the Doctor Who universe and make it work

  2. Write it so Jenna Coleman might stay or leave

  3. Do a fresh twist on “base under siege”

  4. Combine Christmas with horror movie elements that both work and are not too scary, but end on a warm, holiday tone.

• Moffat stays true to his mission of “loud” — the episode is very well paced, keeping you spinning within its “base under siege” format so the giveaways that it’s all a dream aren’t that obvious. You also never question the illogic of its central premise: that the crabs would put everybody in a collective dream state, rather than as individuals.

• There’s also the nonsense about the crabs potentially uniting them all in a dream state across time, which sounds even more ludicrous than Santa Claus. This is clearly inserted to help explain Clara being old at the end, but it’s really unnecessary. Who says it’s not 2076 for everybody?

• The horror stuff really works. Yes, it’s derivative, and the show just barely gets away with that by 1) acknowledging its an alien rip-off early on, and 2) explaining it via Shona’s binge watch of horror flicks on Christmas Eve. Beyond that, the dream crabs have their own interesting twist of inducing a dream state to dull the pain of what they’re doing. That said, you’d think the clear difference in the real world — the way to check that you’ve really woken up — would be a wound on your temple.

• It’s a bit convenient that cutting off the crab mid-meal destroys them entirely, but I like that they’ve evolved to put layer upon layer of dream states to ensure that generally doesn’t happen. Good enough for me!

• The scariest scene, however, has no crabs in it at all. It’s when Clara is in the dream-within-a-dream state of Christmas morning with Danny. When she’s outside the bedroom, with the blackboards, and they keep shouting at her that she’s dreaming and dying — that’s really great stuff.

• It’s great that they kept dream Danny a surprise. His dialogue with Clara is very smart, and his plea with Clara to only miss him 5 minutes per day is heartbreaking. This really showcases how great a writer Moffat is — contrast this with Martha calling her mom in 42. While that scene is more “real,” here you’re really entertained with something memorable. It does make Moffat’s characters less relatable sometimes, but on the whole I’ll take Moffat’s style over Chibnall’s.

• Good point to praise how great this episode is on a technical level: the Christmas morning dream is shot differently than the rest of the episode, with soft-focus stuff done to make it feel more unreal. Smart, since we, as viewers, understand that this is a dream state from the get-go.

• The dialogue between the Doctor and Santa is some of the wittiest Moffatt has written, especially the bits where Santa is making fun of how ridiculous the idea of the Doctor is. The Doctor retorting back at him with, “Happy Easter” is pretty priceless too.

• My favorite might be the exchange with Shona:

  1. SHONA: You're a dream who's trying to save us?

  2. SANTA: Shona, sweetheart, I'm Santa Claus. I think you just defined me.

• The Doctor exiting the base after they wake up in the infirmary may be the last vestige of Series 8 Peter Capaldi. Moffat seems to fall back on it as a way to get the Doctor uninterested in going further, which is generally out of character for him, but for Twelve it works. Then he can flip it with the “we’re still dreaming” bit.

• Nick Frost is a flipping genius. I like how he’s initially sheepish on the rooftop with Clara, but once the jig is clearly up he flips it and takes command. He’s just the guy to deliver Moffat’s dialogue, particularly when he’s using the base people’s past gifts to embarrass them.

• The episode is ultimately all about Clara moving on from Danny’s death and rekindling her friendship with the Doctor. Since the heart of the episode — the dream state with Danny — is so good, it earns that payoff. Clara wanting to stay with Santa is a little unexpected; surrendering to the dream underscored how vulnerable she still is, and still wants to cling to unreality. This tracks from her comment about how much she missed the TARDIS.

• Where exactly is the Doctor when he wakes up? It looks like the same volcano set from Dark Water. I assume he’s on Earth somewhere since that’s where the other dream crabs are. While we’re at it, why were the dream crabs spread out all over London(?) in the first place?

• The ending with elderly Clara is quite sad. Moffat seems to be not just ending her run, but making it so she can’t ever come back. It’s a fun/funny twist that the Doctor can’t see age, although I like that he feels remorse for making her wait so long. He is still aware of human lifespan, and he probably feels bad because of all the stuff he put Amy through.

• Was it all a Tangerine Dream? Discuss…

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? We recently did Amy’s Choice, the only other episode that’s almost entirely in a dream.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Maybe it did? How can they know they’ve really woken up at the end? If the evil plot is the dream crabs’, the Doctor doesn’t have the realization that they’re still dreaming, and they don’t wake up. Or they get Santa!

   
   The other evil plot is Moffat’s, and instead he successfully ditches Jenna Coleman by making Clara really old. How do you like those tangerines, fans?

3. Where's the Clara splinter? Ensuring her apartment has a cat door since she knows she likes cats, but of course it lets the dream crab in.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, or Lady Cassandra? It’s a really good mare! Viscount Banger of a special.

Chris commentary:

• 7 Easter references! More than any other Who story … and there have been a surprising amount: 2 in Planet of the Dead, 1 in Eleventh Hour (repeated in Big Bang), 1 in the Girl Who Waited, 1 in Church on Ruby Road (from Mrs. Flood!) Not counting "easter eggs" in Blink or "Easter Island" in Impossible Astronaut and Time of the Doctor … 

• I stand by everything in my 2014 review for Mashable! Wild that this was one we both worked on

• The only dud note, still, is the notion that Clara would only go traveling in the TARDIS if she was younger. The Doctor doesn't notice the difference! I wanted more older Clara … 

• Went back to Dark Water and the volcano wasn't real then either. 

• I hope some extreme Whovian has done the "Dying!" corridor at Xmas

Four Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Seasonal programming = Easter! The spookiness of my "last Christmas" gift showing up. Capaldi still the Randomizer's favorite Doctor? And this is actually a trilogy (with Brain of Morbius and Keeper of Traken, but also with Dark Water and Magician's) about trying to interfere with natural death – when it's possible, when to give in. And it wanted to give us Last Christmas at not-Christmas so we can judge it without any seasonal sentimentality …  

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? It would succeed if the Doctor gets sucked into the dream himself, perhaps because it's providing so many layers of mystery that he doesn't want to leave. They all succumb to the dream and get slowly digested. Would the Doctor regenerate with his brain turned to soup? Perhaps the Dream Lord would appear to wake him up by annoying him first … 

3. Where's the Clara splinter? Kicking back somewhere else entirely in her flat on Christmas Day with a Costco-sized box of anti-Dream Crab spray (or some psychic pollen to re-activate the Dream Lord?) and a rocket-powered sleigh to deliver it in, just in case the Doctor's attempt to wake them all up goes awry. But not if it's not necessary: on some level she knows he needs this experience in order to turn into loosey-goosey Doctor Disco in Season 9…

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, or Lady Cassandra? It's Easter week. It's a perfectly heartwarming and terrifying Christmas story that you can watch anytime. Who you gonna call? Who is that, arriving in his well-appointed sleigh? Could it be … Santa Banger?