From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (2014 Christmas Special: Last Christmas)

(Hello again from the past! Still here, on Thursday for me. You should be here on Saturday. Anyway, this is the last of a set of Series 8 writeups I did for the website Boss Dungeon. I'm rehosting them here with added commentary as I rewatch in anticipation of Series 9... which airs the day this should be posted! Hooray! I hope it's good and I will write about it next week. For now we close out our archival special with Santa. And awaaaaay we go.)

Happy holidays! It's been a while since we've seen Doctor Who on our screens, so let's recap where we ended off Series 8. Missy, the newest incarnation of the Doctor's longtime nemesis the Master, made a zombie Cyberman army out of dead humans for the Doctor's birthday. He didn't take it so well. Missy ran off and Danny Pink, Clara's long-time boyfriend who had been hit by a car and turned into a zombie Cyberman, sacrificed himself to save the world. Clara lied to the Doctor about Danny coming back from the dead, and the Doctor lied about finding his home planet of Gallifrey. This continued the trend of dishonesty in Series 8, and the pair went their separate ways at the end of Death In Heaven.

That is, until Santa Claus showed up in the TARDIS, pulling some narrative dissonance out of his sack of toys and telling the Doctor to be happy because Christmas is coming soon! That leads us here, to Last Christmas. Doctor Who's Christmas special for 2014. There's been a special episode on TV for every Christmas since the show came back, and a lot of them aren't just holiday fluff! In Christmas specials past, we've had the first full episode of David Tennant, the introduction of a new companion, the semifinal appearance of David Tennant, furthering of Clara's Impossible Girl mystery, and Matt Smith's swan song as the Doctor. Last Christmas doesn't have a new companion or a Doctor regeneration, but it's far from fluff.

After a comedic cold open with Santa and two of his elves on Clara's roof, the Doctor shows up and whisks her away to the setting of the episode; a research station in the Arctic. There's some creepy stuff going on in its infirmary, and we get a tense scene where a technician has to walk past the monsters contained inside, while not thinking about them. At this point, most might groan. Here we go again, another Steven Moffat episode that has a monster that can't get you based on involuntary functions. Even this one is half-cribbed from the Teller in Time Heist. Don't let the episode fool you, though. This is definitely a case of something that gets better as it goes along, with Moffat adding more wrinkles and subversions while playing with deliberate iconography. Once the Doctor and Clara arrive, all hell breaks loose with everyone thinking of the monsters and having them rise from their beds, ready to strike. It's only thanks to Santa invading the base with Slinkies and toy robots that everyone appears to get away, but that's where the fun begins.

Doctor Who has always been a show about high concepts and mashing things together. Robot of Sherwood is Doctor Who meets Robin Hood. Time Heist is Doctor Who meets Ocean's Eleven. Last Christmas is a conscious meld of at least three movies, with Santa Claus thrown in for good measure because it's Christmas and Doctor Who hasn't met Santa Claus before. The monsters of this episode, called "dream crabs", are very consciously inspired by the facehuggers from Ridley Scott's Alien. Hell, one of the technicians even makes the observation in the episode! The Arctic base under siege from alien monsters has shades of the 1951 horror classic, The Thing From Another World (notable as the inspiration for John Carpenter's rad 1982 remake with Kurt Russell). Isolated in the frigid Arctic, with aliens ready to Make You Dead... if we're being honest, this is something that Doctor Who is familiar with. Classic Doctor Who fans will know it as a take on a "base under siege" plot, which was very popular in the Patrick Troughton era of the late 60's. Tomb Of The Cybermen, The Ice Warriors, The Abominable Snowmen... the list goes on. These are all the minor little callbacks, but the biggest movie Moffat takes inspiration from for Last Christmas comes in the name of the monster. Dream crabs.

The way that the dream crabs kill could be seen as a variation on Moffat's Weeping Angels. See, the facehuggers wrap themselves around your head, just like in Alien... but rather than implant a fetus into your stomach, they put you into a dream state. A dream so lifelike that you don't know you're dreaming, and the only thing that might feel off is the slight pain in your head; the sensation of the dream crab literally burrowing into your skull and drinking your brain, while you don't feel a thing in your happy little dream. If that weren't bad enough, the things create layers of dreams. You could seemingly wake up, see the dream crab die... but still be dreaming, and thus dying. Never quite sure if you're awake or asleep. The most prominent ingredient in this pop culture pot of soup Moffat has brewed us all for the holidays is a heap of inspiration from Inception. The episode even ends with its own version of the spinning top. This is why the episode only gets better as it goes along. What appears to be a creepy holiday-themed episode with more of Moffat's usual creepy tropes gets subverted and twisted as more and more "layers" of the dream crab state are revealed. The only reason they have rules are that it's a bad dream, and the people dreaming it are twisting the crabs to be generic monsters in that fashion. Things get even creepier as the dream deteriorates to full-on nightmare, with reality itself becoming strange and unreliable. Think a tamer version of Nightmare On Elm Street.

Of course, the thing that I personally keep coming back for are the character interactions. As far as the base technicians go, the one who's left a mark on people is Shona, the girl with the Northern English accent. Much comparison has been made between her and Lucie Miller, a character from Doctor Who audio dramas. Shona ain't no Lucie Miller, but she's alright. The real meat of it all comes from Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, as always. The Doctor, trying to distract Clara from thinking about dream crabs, brings up Danny Pink and she slaps him. Because Danny Pink is dead. (Well how would he know that, you lied, Clara!) Later, Clara falls into a dream where Danny actually shows up to spend Christmas with her. The Doctor lets himself get crabbed in order to go into her dream and pull her out before her brain gets sucked out, and it's Danny (or rather, Clara's ideal dream version of Danny) who somewhat backs him up. Danny Pink will do anything for Clara, especially Clara's memory of Danny Pink. That's how she chooses to remember him; the man who sacrificed himself to save Clara, and incidentally saved the world as well. Nick Frost as Santa Claus is also a brilliant bit of casting. Much of the episode is him and his elves making jokes about how Santa Claus could possibly work, and in a world with a space man in a magic box, is it really that farfetched? He works well in the role, providing more of that dissonance seen at the end of Death In Heaven. Santa Claus, jolly old elf who gives to children, in a horror movie with facehuggers and dreams you can't wake up from. Bizarre.

Well, then everything wraps up. The dream state is vanquished, the Doctor and friends get to ride above London in Santa's sleigh, and there's even an in-universe reason for all of the horror movie references mashed together. Then we get a scene where the Doctor meets a very old Clara, which contains a beautiful little callback to last year's Christmas special involving a Christmas cracker. It's a fakeout, though, and many have speculated that it was meant to be Jenna Coleman's departure as Clara, but it was changed at the last minute. The Doctor and Clara aren't lying to each other any more. They've both lost things important to them, be it their home planet or the man they love. All they have is each other, and a universe to explore together. So, hand in hand, they rush off to have adventures in a magic blue box. Perfect. I will say, though, that this is likely Jenna Coleman's last series. If you count the two episodes she appeared in for 2012, she'll have been on this show for four years in 2015. That's longer than some actors have lasted as the Doctor, and one of the longest-running companions for sure. One can only hope her actual swan song is as good as the fake-outs we've had throughout Series 8.


In any case, that's Last Christmas! It's sufficiently spooky and trippy, and plays with the things it's referencing to create something that only Doctor Who could create. Its character beats hit all the right notes, and it's the perfect Christmas present to us all from Steven Moffat. Now all we need to do is survive the eight months of nothing that await before Series 9. Hey, at least it's not like we have a split season this time. In 2012 we only got six episodes of Doctor Who. That's counting the Christmas special we had to wait three months for after The Angels Take Manhattan. Yeesh. With luck, we'll see you when Series 9 happens. Take care.

 AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(Spoiler warning: there are spoilers.)

It's okay, and it ends with Clara looking into a mirror to make sure she's not old. The Christmas episodes are always a little hefty and extra-scrutinized because they're our island of new Doctor Who in otherwise desolate seas. They're the first new Doctor Who we get after a brief absence, and the last new Doctor Who we get before a long absence. It's been almost 9 months since this aired and it's pretty much the only new televised Doctor Who we've got. So, sometimes we can be harder on these things than usual. I'm still fine with this episode though. Let's see what stray observations we can make.

First, and this is a boldish sort of claim considering that I don't know shit about what is going to go down on the 19th of September, this feels like a transitional piece. We're tying up the Danny Pink arc and the consequences of these two people lying through their teeth at each other. The infinite reflections are broken, and now the Doctor and Clara both know the new status quo. While we're at it, mention keeps being made of the Doctor being a magician. So, you know, that stands out when you consider the title of the first episode of Series 9. I mean, for god's sakes, the sonic screwdriver basically is a magic wand at this point. Except it doesn't work on wood, which is what actual magic wands are made of. Hmm. Like a dream, I am all over the place with this one. The dream crabs are straight up facehuggers with Inception/Nightmare on Elm Street powers. Moffat is some sort of madcap alchemist, hucking shit into the cauldron to see what sticks. He even throws in some base under siege, and bothers to cast one of Patrick Troughton's sons in there. So, invocations! What fun!

I do love Danny, or rather, Clara's ideal Danny. Her mind is trying to save itself from becoming soup, and so Danny is recreated pretty much as he was. He saved the world before, and now he saves Clara. I'm also fond of the fact that, to distract herself from thinking about the dream crabs, Clara does basic math in her head. An interesting callback to Danny before he's called back proper. As for Santa, well he's fun. That bit with the toys invading the base to save the day is just wonderful. That and the sleigh ride. As well as old Clara not being able to pop the Christmas cracker, just like old Doctor one year ago. Perfect. I have very little else to add. It's a fine episode, it does interesting things, and it sets up (hopefully) the new status quo for Series 9. The Doctor is a magician, and Clara Oswald is no longer his dark mirror, ready to lie through her teeth to those she loves. Clara Oswald is an equal, and worthy of taking up the torch of the arcane and alchemical. Hand in hand, the two enter a magical box and warp off to the next adventure.

Next time: Clara Oswald is a Magician's Apprentice.