Surrounded by an army of advancing dream crabs, one member of the team asks, “How can there be so many?” The Doctor replies, “The logic of a nightmare.” A nightmare, or a nice visual.Īfter all, Last Christmas is very much a treatise about Moffat’s vision of Doctor Who. When the Doctor tries to assure the four dreamers that they are still in a dream, he points to the strange logical gaps in their perceptions – reflecting how it was “disjointed.” He seems to be referencing the editing and writing of the episode – the quick cuts and logical plot holes. To be fair, Last Christmas is very clear on this point. “Time travel is always possible in dreams,” the Doctor observes, to borrow a quote from The Name of the Doctor.
And dreams, which are really the same thing. As with so much of Moffat’s Doctor Who, it is a story about stories.
Last Christmas is a story that is incredibly (and almost cheekily) aware of its own fictionality. (She’s also marathoning the Hugo-winning Game of Thrones.) Strangely, she plans to open her Christmas Day binge with a double-bill of Alien and The Thing From Another World, before taking a breather and returning for Miracle on 34th Street – you really do need a bit of space before properly digesting the truly heavy stuff. When Shona wakes up towards the end of the episode, we are treated to a glimpse of her “to do” list for Christmas Day, which happens to feature a variety of clear influences on the episode. Last Christmas is quite overt about this. Doctor Who is a show about a mad man in a box who crashes into random stories. One episode is a period adventure another is a science-fiction comedy. One week, it is a western the next, it is a horror film. One of the most endearing aspects of the show is the way that it can be a completely different show from week to week. As a show, Doctor Who has a long history of crashing genres into one another. Last Christmas is perhaps the most Moffat-esque Christmas Special of the Moffat era.Īs such, it is an episode that will inevitably provoke a strong reaction, playing as it does to the writer’s strengths and interests in Doctor Who.
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on BBC America.There’s a horror movie called Alien? That’s really offensive. His answer was simple: “Watch on Christmas Day and find out.”ĭoctor Who: Last Christmas airs Dec. “When Santa walked onto the TARDIS, it was like saying, ‘Did you forget you were watching Doctor Who?’”Ĭonsidering Moffat had earlier described the Doctor as the science fiction version of Father Christmas, it came as no surprise that he was asked whether or not Santa would make a good Time Lord. “If you do something incredibly dark, where another show would just have another episode of sadness and rain, just turns it right around and does something outrageous,” he explained. The ability to move from the heartbreak of one of the show’s leads to… well, Santa, is one of the strengths of the show, Moffat believes. It very much engages with that storyline - although, at first, you might think we’re ignoring it, but we’re really not.” “As it ended, they parted forever having lied to each other, and that is where we find them again, we don’t just ignore it because it’s Christmas. “We’re not ignoring it,” Moffat says of the separation. It’s a big-hearted, optimistic show - admittedly one with monsters that want to commit genocide - but it’s a big-hearted, optimistic show that features, at its core, the science fiction equivalent of Santa Claus.”ĭespite the optimism and magic at the heart of the episode, “Last Christmas” also picks up on the downbeat climax of the show’s last season, which saw the Doctor and Clara ( Jenna-Louise Coleman) part ways after the death of her boyfriend, Danny. The team-up of the characters makes particular sense, Moffat said, because Doctor Who “isn’t like other sci-fi shows, because it’s kind of more magical. “They belong together, especially in the hearts of the younger part of our audience, Doctor Who and Santa Claus and Robin Hood all live in the same place.” ( Nick Frost plays Santa, and Moffat made light of the perfect casting, name-wise: “Nicholas Frost! It’s a name Santa would choose as a nom de plume,” he said. ”It’s one of those ideas that, when you have it, you think ‘Why didn’t it happen before now? Why haven’t we seen them in a buddy movie before now?’ ” he said. Davies and the BBC in early 2005, and for Moffat, this means that the lead character has finally “earned the right to go toe-to-toe with Santa,” an idea he believes makes particular sense to the show’s younger viewers.
The episode is the 10th holiday special for the show since it was revived by Russell T.