'Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol'

By Gina, with an assist from tempestsarekind

A spaceship hovers above a foggy planet where music-loving fish swim through the atmosphere, with the passengers' lives hanging in the balance until the man who controls the sky will agree to let it through.

How does any of this relate to Charles Dickens?

Glad you asked. The Christmas Carol episode of Doctor Who took the story of Scrooge -- or Sardick, as he was known here (played by the great Michael Gambon) -- and made it into a fascinating space-age tale with lots of time-traveling twists.

As some of you know, this was my first time watching Doctor Who. Yet I'm acquainted with so many adoring fans of the show, and have read so many of their online discussions about it, that I felt almost as if I were watching old friends. (I've asked one of those fans, who goes by the screenname tempestsarekind, to help me with this review. Special thanks to her for her insights!)

Regular cast members Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Arthur Darvill all performed as beautifully as advertised. Gambon and his fellow guest star, singer Katherine Jenkins, were excellent as well, with her sweetness providing a sharp contrast to his dourness. (Child actor Laurence Belcher, playing Sardick as a boy, got almost more screentime than Gambon did, and fortunately was up to the challenge.) Jenkins even got to favor us with a Christmas carol or two during the episode, as it turned out the fish -- including the occasional shark -- were especially drawn to her singing. You kind of had to be there. . . . Anyway, her voice is lovely and I enjoyed it as much as the fish did.

As for the story: Sardick is the sort of man who loans people money and then takes one of their family members as security, to be kept frozen in an underground chamber. You have to admit, this is even worse than the kind of thing the original Scrooge used to do.

Because his friends Amy and Rory (Gillan and Darvan) are aboard the spaceship, Smith's Doctor -- a Time Lord, for the uninitiated -- is trying to help get it safely landed. To do this, he has to become the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future all in one, to try to thaw out (har!) the old miser's heart. This involves the Doctor's actually going back in time to Sardick's neglected boyhood, to remake the man's past, while elderly Sardick watches.

[Note from tempestsarekind: "I'm assuming there's a Peter Pan element to the episode as well as Dickens, with the shark that swallowed half of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver (like Hook and the crocodile) -- and the Doctor essentially flying into Sardick's nursery."]

When young Sardick and the Doctor, in the past, release and get acquainted with a young woman named Abigail whom Sardick's father has been keeping frozen -- turns out this is a family tradition -- the scene is set for Sardick to get his heart broken, and thus we find out why he's so miserable in the present. (But if the Doctor hadn't done this, then wouldn't Sardick have been miserable for a whole other reason, unless there is no chance of an alternative universe where the Doctor hadn't done this, and then . . . you know what, I'm not going to think about it too hard. I don't need the migraine.)

[Note from tempestsarekind: "My take on the ending is that by rewriting Sardick's past, the Doctor just gives him a *different* reason to be miserable. He rewrites the bit where 'nobody comes' to see about the child who cried all night (presumably one of the events that made Sardick a heartless miser the first time around), but by doing so, he sets Sardick up for heartbreak. The Doctor miscalculates."]

Anyway, then we get to Christmas Future, which is handled with an especially clever twist, and the whole thing comes to a bittersweet but satisfying conclusion that involves a mezzo-soprano singing into a broken screwdriver. Did I mention that you had to be there?

I mean that in a good way, though; myself, I'm very glad to have been there. The show, which rattled along at a breakneck pace, was full of that delightfully goofy humor that no one does better than the Brits. It had energy, enthusiasm, and heart that I can only call Dickensian, and as you know, there are few compliments higher than that.

Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol is currently for sale on iTunes and at Amazon, and will be available on DVD in February.

(Image copyright BBC)

Comments

[Christy]

I haven't read your review yet, but I thought I'd tell you what my particular Doctor Who friend told me about this episode: She said that there were times when Matt Smith made his Doctor seem older than Michael Gambon's character, as if he was able to take everything that all the former Doctors went through and integrate them into this ancient, ancient (but young) character. I want to see him, especially this episode.

[Christy]

"conclusion that involves a mezzo-soprano singing into a broken screwdriver."
Noo! Not the sonic screwdriver! Please tell me the Doctor was able to fix it!
(My Doctor Who friend knitted a sonic screwdriver. She also knitted me a Dalek...)

[Gina]

Well, it had an unfortunate run-in with a shark, and I don't think he ever did get a chance to fix it before episode's end . . . but on the plus side, both halves were still functioning just fine!

A KNITTED screwdriver! I'd love to see that!

[Christy]

I just watched it at last. So so so lovely. Poor screwdriver. *weeps*