Compared to the run-around, family entertainment epics of Russell T Davies’ first Christmas specials, Last Christmas requires a great deal of concentration to fully appreciate its richness and complexity. After the feasting and drinking of the day it is difficult to enjoy in one sitting and might have appeared as disjointed as those half remembered, interrupted dreams. Casual viewing will lead to some misconceptions that those with an anti-Moffat agenda will be all too quick to pick up on.
At first the alien threat appears to be yet another variant of a favourite Steven Moffat theme. A creature who only comes to life when looked at or thought about sounds like another riff on the ideas explored with the Weeping Angels, the Silence, and the ‘monster’ under the blanket (Listen). At first the sound and the look of the alien are blatant rip offs of the movie franchise Alien and might add fuel to those who criticise the show for being tired and for overly relying on borrowed visuals and ideas. And at first the character of Santa appears to have been shoehorned in as the obligatory Christmas reference, a little nod to the festive time and a gift to the younger viewers in what is otherwise the darkest of Christmas Specials.
Another unique and mad concept!
But as the drama unfolds, those willing to invest in the episode will no doubt have discovered that once again Steven Moffat has come up trumps with another unique and mad concept. We discover that the explanation that the Doctor gives to Clara and the team about the Dream Crabs is part of the dream itself, induced by the parasitic alien, who may in fact be of quite a different physical form. Imagination is their weakness not ignorance. We discover that the Alien and The Thing references are intentional and directly linked through Shona’s Christmas Day viewing list, the last thing she wrote before falling asleep, explaining their appearance and sound in the dream. And we discover that Santa is more than a little Christmas joke, he is fundamental to the resolution of the story. Without Santa they would all be dead.
Many of us will have had those dreams within dreams, and on Christmas Day over a few too many drinks we may have also pondered the frightening possibility that when we think we are awake, we might actually still be in a dream. Will we wake up and find that the last few years of our lives were dream time, five minutes one night in 1984? Due to the nature of dreaming it is still possible that the episode is not resolved with everyone waking up. The final shot of a teasing tangerine in the foreground could either suggest the real Santa entered the dreams after all or indeed that the dream state is still progressing. Maybe we the viewers have dreamt the whole episode. Wake up, wake up - what’s that pulsing sensation I can feel on the left temple?
The role of dreams in processing the days information (Shona’s list) but more deeply in dealing with our emotions, especially those of pain and loss (Clara and Danny) is a serious subject matter that has a ready made comic relief element due to the absurdity of dreams. They are fun, playful things we might enjoy talking about, but they have an important physiological and psychological role to play in keeping us alive and sane. One elf holds a real gun, the other a balloon gun – the dangerous with the daffy. And life is so precious it needs to be defended at all costs, yet it is also transient and fleeting that we may as well just eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
The Doctor and Clara here are wonderfully honest with each other, confessing they both lied in the café at the end of Death In Heaven. But is this only because they are dreaming, are they to return to a less open, trusting relationship in season nine or has something changed in their dynamic? Time will tell but here The Doctor admits his mistakes, concedes his need for Clara’s companionship and is prepared to sacrifice all to save her with not a hint of the arrogance of season eight. The aged Clara confesses (in the Doctor’s dream at least, so could be his projection upon her) that if she couldn’t be with Danny, the Doctor was the only other man she could have partnered with, were he not so impossible.
What is interesting and novel is the way in which the non dreaming character of Danny Pink jump starts Clara out of her dream state (albeit into another) as if he like the Doctor had independently entered her dream. This is Clara’s dream and the suggestion is that the girl who Missy and the Doctor called a control freak, concedes that she must let Danny Pink go, in order to save her again. He must be allowed to be free from her needs and wants, in her dream he stops being the man of her dreams and the Doctor’s nightmare and is allowed one final time to be an independent free thinking guy, who does the right thing. Clara in this episode could not be further removed from the Impossible Girl, overly controlling character of past seasons. Here she is almost the stereotypical Doctor Who companion, complete with ear piecing screams.
Doctor Who has never shied from tackling contemporary social and moral issues, even if sometimes dealt with superficially or in passing. Here we have a one liner about social media with the Doctor’s dismissiveness towards attachments on Facebook followed by his immediate ‘deleting’ of the four fellow dreamers (an expression as familiar to Facebook users as Cybermen fans). But in the context of the rising debate over nationality, identity and prejudice with UKIP’s recent election successes, we have the elves arguing about whether the utterance of their name is a statement of prejudice or fact and similar exchanges about humans and size. But the Doctor neatly picks up on the innate fear of the other expressed in our propensity to assume an alien is an evil, horrific thing (Alien = horror movie). Capaldi is able to convey a serious intensity in his voice at just the right times, and his scolding judgement is tangible.
“Capaldi’s Doctor has an air of the unpredictable and flits between different characteristics of previous incarnations.”
Capaldi’s Doctor has an air of the unpredictable and flits between different characteristics of previous incarnations. We are treated to a lovely visual reference to Pat Troughton with the use of the fire extinguisher, plenty of Tom Baker like line deliveries, and perhaps surprisingly a reminder that he is more Tenth and Eleventh Doctor than War Doctor with his use of the phrase “beardy weirdy” and Santa’s mocking “dreamy weemy” But perhaps his defining characteristic is his awkwardness at intimacy and in Last Christmas it is made all the sharper with his reluctance to hold hands, never mind hug. It is touching (excuse the pun) and childlike that he says he is only happy to hold his best friend Clara’s hand. Some other elements of last season’s Twelve Doctor remain, including his tetchiness towards rival saviour figures, here there is a small amount of competition with Santa (cf Robin Hood). He is still prone to occasional unthinking flippancy (re Danny Pink calling mistresses). But overall there is a noticeably softer tone after the events of Death In Heaven, and it is extremely moving to see his joy on being given a second chance with Clara.
“The most interesting character is Shona…”
The guest cast is as impressive as we have come to expect for the Christmas Specials but there is no stand out performance here, Capaldi and Coleman are very much the stars of the show. Nick Frost is well cast as the business like, less cuddly Santa, but the role is an undemanding one for an actor of such talent. Michael Troughton makes his long overdue debut and again whilst not putting a foot wrong is not given a great deal to work with. Although he is the one victim of the piece, the episode shies away from showing his actual death, instead moving quickly to the homecoming of the others. The most interesting character is Shona, the shop girl who dreams of being a scientist - a great performance and with a backstory that would no doubt be interesting and indeed potential future companion material. The disturbing scene of Shona dancing and singing along to Wizard could have so easily gone wrong and undermined the horror of the moment, but it was expertly carried off, disturbing and mesmerising at the same time. The idea that the four crew members are all together in a dream from different time zones, created the possibility that they could be from very contrasting eras. Presumably budget constraints denied us the possibility of seeing some historical and futuristic home settings.
As always in the tradition of Christmas Specials there are many visual gags right from the opening Christmas card shot of a Christmas Tree in front of a window pane complete with snow outside, the flying reindeer and Santa’s bigger on the inside sleigh are highlights of some effective CGI. Camera work, direction and music combine throughout to disorientate the viewer and remind us that what we are watching is a dream, from the moving walls in Clara’s house to the blurring of the alien faces.
Series Eight provided the Doctor Who canon with so many excellent speeches, but in this action packed, dreamy-weamy, drama it was the one liners that triumphed over longer speeches, with almost all of them reserved for the Doctor. From “Fantasy and reality… they are both ridiculous” to “”some things we should never be ok with” his economical words are frequently pointing to deep truths. Why others around him see him as a magician is not immediately obvious from this story and it is likely more a lead up to the next episode, but he certainly has a magical way with words.
And yet it is Danny Pink, the one character who wasn’t living the dream, who provides the words for the episode’s title. Last Christmas. Not quite strong enough to excise Wham’s song from my mind when hearing those two words side by side, but certainly a strong episode. There is unlikely to be anything better to grace our screens this Christmas.
