The 2014 series had been a bit patchy, even if the two part finale smoothed over some of the annoyances. It even had the audacity to end with a heart stopping kick in the gut as a moping Doctor is told exactly what the viewers are thinking "You know it can't end like that. She's not OK and neither are you..." by none other than the ephemeral Santa Claus! The line between fantasy and fiction can be hard to define but is something Doctor Who occasionally flirts with and has an unwritten understanding of haw far it can go. Indeed, this series had already seen the legend of Robin Hood given a reasonable explanation but doing the same for Santa was surely pushing it too far...
The opening scene of Last Christmas seemed to reinforce the premise as Clara is woken by the sound of Santa's sleigh crashing on her roof and elves arguing amongst themselves! The Doctor arrives in the TARDIS and tells her to not say anything and just get in... and so the adventure begins. Clara can hardly believe that she is back in the TARDIS but she's loving it already so when the Doctor asks her if she really believes in Santa, as if her life depended on it, she gleefully says "You know what? Yeah. Right now, yeah, I think I do"... Roll opening titles complete with extra snow storm for the TARDIS to fly through (no jingle bells in the music though!)...It looks like it's going to be a regrettable, silly Christmasy episode.
Their destination is a scientific research base at the North Pole where a young female scientist named Shona is about to embark on a mysterious mission, to walk through an infirmary full of patients laying dormant but controlled by telepathic creatures that will only see her if she thinks about them or sees them. She is scared, but she has a trick up her sleeves and asks for her music to be started. Slowly, gradually, she starts to walk with the rhythm of Slade's classic "Merry Xmas Everybody". She dances herself halfway through the room before the Doctor's arrival distracts her focus and the creatures come to life...
From here on, things start to get a bit odd and slightly incoherent. The Doctor identifies the creatures as Kantrofarri, colloquially known as Dream Crabs because of their almost crab-like appearance and the way they interface with their victims and use a dream state as anaesthetic while they consume their brain. In fact, they more closely resemble the Facehuggers from the "Alien" films, but when this is mentioned to the Doctor, he finds the idea of a horror film with such a title very offensive "No wonder everyone keeps invading you!" He then points out that they can't trust anything they see or hear because it is possible that they have already been attacked and are already dreaming...
The adventure evolves and unfolds as the Doctor gleans more information about the scientists and their predicament, each new detail adding further concern and uncertainty, but also helping things along are Santa and his elves with their own layer of unlikelihood. Throughout the episode, reality is being questioned and tested. There seems to be an acceptance of the scenario by everyone yet they question the existence of Santa Clause - more specifically, it is young Shona who does the main doubting and indeed it is her who provides the final clues and, well, I'll leave the spoilers there for now!
Out of all the episodes that have aired at Christmas, I think Last Christmas is the best at capturing both the Christmas nature and the context of the main series. Both The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion Of Earth were broadcast around Christmas time but with no Christmas theme and the first episode to be broadcast on Christmas Day was the following year's "Feast Of Steven" (episode 7 of The Daleks' Master Plan) which was essentially a farce set on Christmas day - the first and worst Christmas Special! Only six other stories aired around Christmas in the shows original 26 year run and they were all standard episodes within normal serials, the last being the very Summery The Greatest Show In The Galaxy a year before the show was cancelled. When the show was revived in 2005, the true Christmas Special was introduced - separate from the main series and set at Christmas time. The Christmas Invasion Saw little action from the newly regenerated Doctor and Christmas was really only a setting (though it included robot Santas and a spinning Christmas tree). The Runaway Bride was again set during the Christmas period but barely featured anything Christmasy, it also didn't feature a regular companion - although it introduced Donna who would return as one after the next Christmas Special... Voyage Of The Damned saw the Doctor between companions again but as with the previous year it introduced us (briefly) to a semi-companion who would return later (Donna's grandpa Wilfred), in terms of Christmas items it featured robotic angels and ended on Earth with a 'Christmas shopping' trip. The End Of Time was the most normal, least Christmasy special as the Tenth Doctor faced the Master before regenerating and the only Christmas connection was Wilfred's antlers and a brief present related scene - timing was irrelevant. Steven Moffat took over the reigns (if you'll excuse the unintentional sleigh pun) with A Christmas Carol and introduced the idea of a specifically Christmasy Christmas Special that excluded the main companion, thus swaying it as far away from normality as possible without destroying the whole integrity of the show. The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe repeated the format, as did The Snowmen which featured the second Clara and thereby nearly returning normality (and only missing by the virtue of her death at the end, this was not the girl he would be travelling with). Finally, The Time Of The Doctor took the swing back towards normality but managed to include both Christmas without being Christmassy and the main companion without retaining her for much of the main plot. Last Christmas on the other hand managed to be a completely normal episode and feature Santa Clause as a major character and plot device within a Christmas set story. Surely Christmas episodes can never be better than the time the Doctor met Santa! Yet we already know that such a crossover is a step too far. Indeed, the Doctor has, maybe, met Santa before: The First Doctor met him in comic form (in a story that was then dismissed as all in his head); The Second Doctor encountered him in a short story published by Big Finish; The Eleventh Doctor had a photograph of himself with Santa Claus and Albert Einstein in A Christmas Carol, claiming his real name to be Jeff.
Rather like the Doctor's first encounter with Santa, this one turns out to be not just in his head, but it is also in Clara's head and all the scientist's heads... in fact, we eventually learn that the scientists aren't even scientists and the base they are working on isn't real either. Once the Doctor manages to convince them of this fact, he is faced with the challenge of waking them up safely and getting Clara and himself to wake up... in a bizarre twist, it is Santa to the rescue again despite his existence very much being questioned too! As far as originality goes, Last Christmas feels fresh but oddly familiar. There are naturally parallels with Amy's Choice which flitted between dreams and reality and there are the obvious nods to "Alien" as well as the early 'isolated base under siege' staple from the Patrick Troughton days, but it is the recurring sense of waking from a dream only to find that you are still sleeping that Moffat has centred this story on. When Shona eventually wakes, we learn that she has been the primary source for the whole scenario. She sits alone in a grotty flat with her Christmas day itinerary made up of mostly DVD watching: "Alien", "The Thing From Another World" and "Miracle On 34th Street" These three films are reflected in the episodes alien creatures, Arctic setting and belief in Santa respectively and are followed on Shona's list by a "Thrones" marathon (referring to the massively popular "Game Of Thrones" series, an episode of which won "Best Drama Presentation, Short Form" at the Hugo awards in August (around the time this episode would have been written/produced) beating two episodes of Doctor Who as well as two related dramas, having also beaten three episodes last year!) Shona fed the dream with her desire for friends as well as the films she had been watching. At the end, as everyone starts waking up, she is desperate to cling on to the dream and her new friends, hoping to exchange contact details so they can meet up in the real world but never getting the chance. Clara too wants to cling to the dream for a while longer but when the Doctor wakes up he knows he must rescue her from the Dream Grab that would otherwise be killing her...
The final stages of the episode focus on the Doctor and Clara waking up, then waking up again. At first, the Doctor finds Clara asleep in her bed and discovers that she is 62 years older because, as he pointed out earlier, "time travel is possible in dreams" and the Dream Crabs may have drawn them together from different times as well as locations, and Clara has lived a full life since he left her at the end of Death In Heaven, just as he had aged without her in The Time Of The Doctor and just as she helped him pull a cracker then, he helps her pull one now and wishes he had come back to her sooner... at which point Santa reappears and he wakes up again! This time when he finds Clara, she is still young and he is over joyed, as Clara says "Look at you all happy! That's rare!" But it is the Doctor's next line, the episode's last, that is the most telling "Do you know what's rarer? Second chances. I never get a second chance, so what's happened this time? I don't even know who to thank..." As the pair of them head off in the TARDIS once more, the viewers are left with a clue to the answer... there is a tangerine on Clara's windowsill. Santa's calling card (or 'signature gift' as he puts it) seen and referenced several times throughout the episode including two occasions where he is told that "Nobody likes the tangerines!"
The idea of the Dream Crabs working across time seemed a bit implausible but the ageing and cracker pulling aspects were still part of the dream so the time twisting was irrelevant. They weren't just a writer's device to remind us of the last Christmas special, they are drawn from the characters' own memories, just as Danny appeared in Clara's earlier dream-with-the-dream and had bought her precisely the right presents and the Doctor's blackboard appeared as a warning message when he tried to wake her. Many fans and critics were quick to dismiss this episode ripping off old stories instead of coming up with anything new - including the films already mentioned, but also an obscure Superman comic adventure - but Doctor Who has borrowed from other stories since the 60s and every detail has been cleverly crafted and specifically placed. During Clara's dream with Danny, there is a knock at the door and Clara presumes it's her father, but that is also another item on Shona's list... However, the final item on her list is "Forgive Dave???" which has no clear representation in the dream but Shona ticks it, something about the experience has presumably made her see things, whatever they are, differently. Or perhaps it's just so that she's not alone... Layered throughout the episode, quite blatantly is the reference to how unreal things are especially from Shona declaring "This is ridiculous! Am I dreaming?" and "This is mental! This is totally not happening!" and it truly isn't. With the possible exception of the 'scientists' waking up at home, nothing in the entire episode was real. All the silliness or dubious plot points are easily explained away by the phrase "It's just a dream", right down to the final frame of the tangerine... not just a writer's clue to how the Doctor had a second chance or who saved the day, but a reminder that the dream still isn't over. Both Clara and the Doctor are seen waking up several times but the Doctor's final waking is on the Volcano seen in Dark Water where Clara tricked him into a dream state as part of her attempt to blackmail him into finding Danny in the Nethersphere... So if this is him waking from that dream state then the rest of the finale never happened, no flying Cybermen, no revealing of Missy being the Master, no death of Osgood... but the Doctor was only on the volcano because Clara had piloted the TARDIS there so she should have been with him rather than at home in bed... and in fact, after the key destroying scene had played out, the Doctor revealed that the whole thing had taken place inside the TARDIS as Clara had the 'dream patch' back to front and affected herself by mistake... so the reality of the matter is quite simple, the Doctor can't wake up at the volcano because he was never there in the first place!
Winding forward in the finale, or backward from Last Christmas to the earliest possible beginning of the dream and we come to the final scene of Death In Heaven. The Doctor has just told Clara that he has found Gallifrey and she told him that Danny made it back to life safely (both lies that were uncovered within the dream) and they have gone their separate ways, each content that the other is happy. We saw the Doctor enter the Police Box before it dematerialised and Clara walked off. Cut to the final scene, as detailed in my opening sentence, the moping Doctor is sat with his eyes closed when Santa comes knocking... could it be that a Dream Crab (or any other sleep inducing situation) took control while we weren't looking? Whatever the solution, the new series will need to address it.
All in all, I enjoyed Last Christmas. It was well crafted and thought provoking. The script was clever and funny with great performances from the cast. The banter from the elves (played by Dan 'Strax' Starky with just his ears covered by prosthetics for a change and Nathan McMullen from 'Misfits') is a little irritating at times but funny. Nick Frost was the perfect choice for Moffett's slightly offbeat Santa delivering lines like "No! No! No!" in place of the 'catchphrase' "Ho! Ho! Ho!" with such natural conviction. Faye Marsay gave a very refreshing ballsy performance as Shona, inspiring some comments from fans suggesting that she should be the next companion (as did Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow seven years ago in Blink), a desire they also claim is potential on the horizon with the next episode being titled "The Magician's Apprentice" because Shona called the Doctor a magician a couple of times... though he said it himself during the main series so I wouldn't hold your breath for that one!
A final random thought that hasn't found its way into the review yet is the way that Easter managed to get multiple mentions throughout the episode!
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