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-Christmas. -Christmas.
Yeah. Christmas.
Ah, the Christmas specials.
A little nugget of Christmas present for the Whovians.
Because the season ends and then it says "Doctor Who will be back at Christmastime,"
with some bizarre title.
I think Christmas is the Doctor's favorite holiday, although he'll never say it.
He'd enjoy the warmth about it and how families get together,
and the sense of celebration.
There's this sense that even though he is not only not Church of England,
but not from Earth, that there's still something significant to him about
a family holiday for a guy who doesn't have a family.
Christmas dinner.
Oh, come on.
There's a general holiday vibe,
probably a threat of genocide,
and then everyone's happy at the end.
Christmas.
There is this thing. This grand tradition,
of the introduction of the new Doctor after a regeneration.
The Christmas Invasion is the debut of the 10th Doctor,
who is David Tennant.
Christmas Invasion opens with the TARDIS crashing. It is like sci-fi NASCAR.
Oh!
(JACKIE SCREAMS)
Here we are then. London! Earth!
The solar system! I did it!
This dude pops out and they have no idea who he is.
And Rose is like...
"Yup, that's the Doctor."
Eccleston, he still felt like your dad, didn't he?
"Shut up, listen to me, run this way."
Whereas Tennant was more like, "Why don't we have a laugh?"
Love the sideburns.
Um. Love the gravity-defying kind of hair, pompadour.
TOMPKINS: That jacket was just hanging off him,
and maybe it's a leather thing, it's not for everyone, you know.
Uh, maybe he could pull off leather pants, but not the top.
Why does Santa always have to be evil in the Christmas specials?
There's just something that's especially creepy about turning something that is so
precious into a killing machine.
WATTS: And that's a very Doctor Who thing.
Taking childish themes, or things that children trust,
and then turning them on its head.
( GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN PLAYING)
-(WEAPONS FIRE) -(PEOPLE SHOUTING)
I gotta say, those Santas did not look not scary to begin with.
Right? Like I don't know why anybody was getting within 100 yards of them.
The Christmas tree took me by surprise.
I did not expect that to happen.
It's scary, but it's also really funny,
'cause it's a Christmas tree that's killing you,
or trying to kill you.
(JACKIE GASPS)
Ah!
(JACKIE SCREAMING)
Get out, go, go! Get out!
Get out of there!
-No, leave him, just leave him! -Get in here!
Oh!
Why can't Christmas just be the peaceful,
loving holiday that it normally is?
The thing about all the Christmas specials,
I think, is that they subvert all of that
lovely, cozy Christmas imagery and make it really, truly nasty.
Ho, ho, ho, I don't think so!
Those Sycorax were classic Doctor Who monsters, in every sense of the word.
With the mad eyes, and the sort of like spiky teeth, and the sort of...
(GUTTURAL BABBLING)
The aliens are gonna kill us, and we can't even understand what they're saying,
because the Doctor's not around to transmit the
TARDIS translation field into our brain.
We need the Doctor.
And then something wonderful happens.
Did you miss me?
(SCREAMING)
(GRUNTING)
You'll have someone's eye out with that.
How dare...
Ah!
I demand to know who you are!
(GROWLING) I don't know!
With this scene he's saying, "This is my stamp. I am the Doctor.
"Like it or not."
ROGERS: Action hero Doctor was great to me. I thought that was a great move.
Just as that Doctor is defining himself to himself within the plot,
within the structure of the story,
you have to define that to the viewers, too, say this is gonna be new,
this is gonna be different.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
Ah. Ah!
(SYCORAX ROARING)
Ah! Sycorax!
Witchcraft...
Time Lord.
That's when you're like, "Well, that arm's not coming back.
"Oh wait! He's still regenerating!"
Very clever!
There is some swashbuckling.
A sword that is played with, swordplay, if you will.
All done in a bathrobe and pajamas, and you think, is this his new character?
Sleepy-time Doctor?
Is his weakness hot tea?
Warm milk?
MATHESON: When it seems like the special is over, and Earth is safe,
and we're all cool...
Harriet Jones decides that instead of letting the Sycorax go,
she needs to destroy them
so they can't go out into the universe and tell other life forms
about the planet Earth.
Fire at will.
-That was ***. -That was defense.
And that's, I think, good storytelling, is when everybody's right in some way.
The best thing about Doctor Who is that it comments on human society,
and I think that it's not out of the question
that human beings would screw it up somehow.
So the episode ends with this gorgeous snow falling
on the streets of London.
It's the ashes of the fallen Sycorax.
It just sort of underscores the idea that,
you know,there's this other stuff going on,
that the people of Earth really just don't care or want to know about.
What are they, meteors?
It's the spaceship, breaking up in the atmosphere.
This isn't snow, it's ash.
Okay, not so beautiful.
It's reminiscent of the core of what Doctor Who is,
which is, nothing is as it seems
and something always has an antithetical meaning.
ROGERS: There's the thing about the white Christmas,
I suppose, you're supposed to want it
to snow on Christmas as part of the symbology of the day,
and it just never does for him, it's always something horrifying buried underneath
what should be a beautiful moment.
Would you rather find a sonic screwdriver in your stocking,
or a TARDIS under your Christmas tree?
I want the sonic screwdriver because I can open doors and scan things
and figure out if they're human or not and make cool noises,
and I can't fly the TARDIS, I'm not River Song.
Fun as it might be to have, I'm not the Doctor,
so I wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to use this thing.
So I'd probably end up just fixing my grandma's TV.
So I think I'd rather have the TARDIS under my Christmas tree,
'cause then the Doctor's not far behind.
We meet Donna Noble.
She's about to get married,
when all of a sudden she is zapped into the TARDIS. What?
That's what the Doctor says. That's also what I say, right now.
Rewind it if you want proof.
We get one of David Tennant's famous "What?
"What?"
Which I love so much.
(SCREAMS)
What?
(DONNA SQUEAKS)
-What? -Who are you?
-But... -Where am I?
-What? -What the hell is this place?
What?
Instead of being scared and frightened and hiding, she looks at the Doctor
and she's like "What did you do to me? "What's going on?"
'Cause usually everyone,
you know, they kind of struggle with him a little bit.
And they're like "You can't do this!" and he's like "Of course I can!"
and they're like "I love you!"
So to have somebody who comes in and is like "What the bloody hell
"are you playing at? Get me back to my wedding! Never mind, space man!
"Chop chop, time's wasting!"
Then she gets kidnapped by robot Santa.
Why does robot Santa have to do that every Christmas?
This is the first high-speed car chase the TARDIS has been involved in.
Santa's a robot!
Donna, open the door!
-What for? -You've got to jump!
DONNA: Oh!
CHILDREN MOUTHING: Jump!
I can't do it!
Trust me.
Is that what you said to her?
Your friend? The one you lost?
Did she trust you?
Yes, she did.
And she is not dead, she is so alive.
Now jump.
(DONNA SHRIEKING)
(CHILDREN CHEERING)
Woo!
CULSHAW: Wouldn't you just love to see that on the M6?
Wouldn't that just brighten up a journey
to see the TARDIS dealing with some people
who weren't observing the highway code?
Fantastic.
In The Runaway Bride it asks, "You afraid of spiders?
"Well take a look at this bad boy."
The Racnoss Empress has her children,
who are finally being born from the center of the Earth...
All these crazy, hungry, scary spider babies
are going to emerge and take over the Earth.
It's like that old urban legend where somebody's got a mole or a pimple
or something and then it bursts and spiders come out all over the person's face.
That is the Earth. We thought the Earth was a pimple,
but it's really just a spider sac.
We can't have anything that's just ours, can we?
(EMPRESS SHRIEKING)
Racnoss.
But that's impossible. You're one of the Racnoss.
Empress of the Racnoss!
Racnoss come from the Dark Times, billions of years ago,
billions, they were carnivores, omnivores, they devoured whole planets.
Racnoss are born starving! Is that our fault?
I just want to know what that audition was like.
Because she has to do some awesome stuff.
She's all like...(HISSES)
I don't eat shellfish, and it's not for any religious reasons.
It's because to me, all shellfish looks as disgusting as the Racnoss Empress.
Right? Is she that much different than a lobster?
Not really.
He gives her the opportunity to say "Hey, you know what?
"I am gonna take this other option, not destroy this entire race..."
He always gives people another chance, and the crazy spider lady gets greedy.
She doesn't take that chance.
Empress of the Racnoss, I give you one last chance.
I can find you a planet. I can find you and your children a place
in the universe to coexist.
I'm afraid I have to decline! (LAUGHS MANIACALLY)
Then what happens next is your own doing. I warned you.
You did this.
(EMPRESS SCREAMING)
My children!
No!
Doctor!
(EMPRESS SCREAMING)
You can stop now!
EMPRESS: My children!
I mean, come on alien. What are you doing? What are you doing?
How many people does he have to kill by not wanting to kill them before you guys just
shut up and leave?
He ends up having to *** them, which is a very weird thing for Donna,
and for his character, too.
By his tenth incarnation, perhaps he's more used to that.
Because he's seen how the bigger picture is affected.
He knows it's bad, he's doing it anyway, he knows it's a black mark on his soul.
But he's doing it for some greater good that only he can see.
And you sort of see all that in his face.
Donna says to the Doctor, "I think you need someone."
And he says "I don't need someone," and she's like,
"You do, you need someone
"to stop you sometimes."
He needs the counterbalance of those other individuals,
to kind of keep him in check.
Well, you could always...
-What? -Come with me.
No.
-Okay. -I can't.
No, that's fine.
I'll tell you what I will do, though.
Christmas dinner.
He's like, "Let me just park the TARDIS."
It's a classic French goodbye.
Right? He's gone.
She calls him on it. She knows what it's all about.
And he's like "Yeah, yeah, I'm still leaving."
Promise me one thing.
Find someone.
I don't need anyone.
Yes, you do.
'Cause sometimes, I think you need someone to stop you.
Yeah.
I think when you're a Time Lord, and you're by yourself,
I can imagine it being very, very lonely.
The Doctor has to go it alone.
No matter whom he wants as his friend,
or partner, or girlfriend through time,
he's ultimately gonna be alone.
But he likes having people to talk to. He likes having somebody there
to show this stuff to. It's good for viewers because those companions are our proxies.
Those companions are us. We don't get to really be like the Doctor,
we get to be like the people he's with.
Would you rather go sleigh riding with a Dalek, or make snow angels with an Ood?
Oh, hello! Okay, I would rather... Wait. What is...
Some kind of feedback. Hold on, let me...
(SONIC SCREWDRIVER BUZZES)
Ah, there we go. Now. I would rather ride in a sleigh with a Dalek,
as opposed to Santa Claus, because I would love to see the Grinch
try to steal Christmas from a Dalek.
That wouldn't end well. Merry Christmas!
Voyage of the Damned is a phenomenal stand-alone episode.
We have the Doctor on his own, and what do we get? We get a disaster movie,
played out across space and time.
(SHIP'S HORN SOUNDS)
Oh!
What?
What?
What? Like, I just picture David Tennant sitting there and thinking,
"How many different ways can I say the word 'what'?"
What?
What? What?
There's that "what" line again.
Don't overuse it, fellas.
VOICE OVER INTERCOM: Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to Christmas.
It's a spaceship,
made up to be like the Titanic.
I don't know why anyone would name something the Titanic.
Future generations who are watching this, never name anything the Titanic .
It's not gonna end well. But... We do get Kylie Minogue in this episode,
which is nice!
We meet Astrid, who is played by international pop star Kylie Minogue.
She's a cocktail waitress on the spaceship Titanic.
The Doctor and Kylie Minogue on a cruise ship.
That is a cruise I would take.
I used to watch the ships heading out to the stars. I always dreamt of...
It sounds daft.
You dreamt of another sky.
A new sun.
New air. New life.
Why stand still when there's all that life out there?
So they go down to Earth for Christmas Eve,
which the Doctor has done many times...
And instead of all the people bustling around and buying presents,
there's just nobody there.
She's just visiting a planet, and she's always wanted to travel,
and she's excited to be there.
But it's empty.
Oh.
It should be full.
It should be busy. Something's wrong.
But it's beautiful.
Really?
Hello there! Sorry, obvious question.
But... Where's everybody gone?
London? At Christmas? Not safe, is it?
Why?
Well, it's them, up above!
Christmas before last, we had that big bloody spaceship,
everyone standing on a roof,
and then last year, that Christmas star,
electrocuting all over the place,
draining the Thames...
This place is amazing!
It's a great bit, like, after all these disastrous Christmases,
people are too scared to be in London.
They're thinking about, maybe we should move it to July, or just some other
time of the year, when we're not gonna get
attacked and snowed on by alien debris.
Though the Doctor would feel guilty about his involvement in those alien attacks,
he's involved doing what he can to make things better.
Some things could be better with the Daleks.
Not many.
There's a very sweet scene
where Astrid asks the Doctor if she can be his companion
and it's...this is the one time I'm not jealous of a woman
trying to go off with the Doctor,
because it's Kylie Minogue!
I was a little shocked because normally, when someone asks the Doctor that,
the Doctor always says no.
I'm sort of, uh, unemployed now.
I was thinking that blue box is kind of small, but I could squeeze in?
Like a stowaway?
It's not always safe.
So you need someone to take care of you. I've got no one back on Sto, no family.
Just me.
So, what do you think?
Can I come with you?
Yeah, I'd like that. Yeah.
(CRASHING)
He agrees and so, you know, you kind of think "Oh, my God, she's gonna be..." Nope.
She's not. She's outta there.
WATTS: This is Kylie Minogue. She's not gonna be on Doctor Who.
She might as well be wearing a red expendable crew member shirt.
Kylie Minogue-slash-Astrid is so valiant.
It's such a Doctor Who heroic scene, because she essentially kills the villain
to save everybody.
The reason you know that the Doctor can love her is that she understands
that notion of bravery and sacrifice.
But it's the things he loves about her that means she has to die.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
And I remember as I was watching her fall to her death, I was thinking,
"Oh, I wish the Doctor could bring her back as a being of pure energy and then
"have, like, a ghost-kiss with her."
And then that happened!
She's just atoms, Doctor.
An echo with the ghost of consciousness.
She's stardust.
Kylie Minogue is stardust.
Truer words were never spoken.
Astrid Peth.
Citizen of Sto.
Woman who looked at the stars and dreamt of traveling.
There's an old tradition.
And David Tennant kisses Kylie Minogue.
Now you can travel forever.
You're not falling, Astrid.
You're flying.
If your eyes are still dry when that happens, you have no soul.
I guess it would be pretty fun to just be pure energy,
cruising around and finding stuff.
I guess turning into pure energy to roam the universe is supposed to be uplifting,
but it was a bummer. 'Cause he obviously liked her.
You knew that this whole story really meant something to him,
and it was going to stick with him.
This is the new Christmas tradition,
really, is something terrible's going to happen on Christmas Eve,
it's probably going to involve aliens who want to blow you up or eat you,
and somehow the Doctor's involved.
-Open the door! -(DOG WHIMPERING)
COMPUTER: Engine active.
(GRUNTS)
(GASPING FOR BREATH)
QUEEN: Thank you, Doctor. Thank you.
Happy Christmas.
Well it's about time, right?
(LAUGHS)
When are more of these Heads of State going to thank the Doctor,
and would it kill you to give him a medal?
It's amazing that the British government depends so much on this alien being
for them to just continue.
It's like, "Oh! We didn't blow up again! Thanks, Doctor, we appreciate that."
For some reason we just always forget what happens in the past.
Until it comes up again, next Christmas.
Would you rather spend Christmas traveling with the Doctor,
or relaxing at home with Amy and Rory?
Probably the Doctor.
You could relax with 16 pairs of Amy and Rory in the TARDIS.
And you could go to Florida, London,
wherever.
Well instantly the next Doctor had this wonderful Victorian setting,
and that great misdirection.
When you call something The Next Doctor,
all people are expecting is the end of David Tennant.
So we have to watch this.
WOMAN: Doctor!
Who, me?
WOMAN: Doctor!
Don't worry, don't worry! Stand back! What have we here?
Okay, I've got it, and whatever's behind that door,
-I think you should get out of here. -Doctor!
No, no, I'm standing right here. Hello!
Don't be stupid! Who are you?
-I'm the Doctor. -Doctor who?
-Just "the Doctor". -Well there can't be two of you.
-WOMAN: Where the hell have you been? -Right, then. Don't worry.
Stand back! What have we got here, then?
Hold on, hold on, who are you?
I'm the Doctor. Simply the Doctor.
The one, the only, and the best.
HARDWICK: There's another guy that we haven't seen before,
and then you kind of go, "What happened?"
Was there a regeneration? That meeting that I was not invited to...
What's fun about this episode is you are waiting the whole time to uncover why
he thinks he's the Doctor, 'cause you know he's not.
I think Time Lords are always going to recognize regenerated friends.
I'm not a Time Lord, I don't know.
I really did not know what was going on.
And I thought, "Well this is...
They're doing a new thing where we actually are seeing
"the newer guy with the older guy at the same time."
What other rules are out the window?
And is the Doctor just going to start straight up murdering people?
And eating their flesh?
He didn't go that far.
I love Miss Hartigan. Her real name is Mercy Hartigan,
but I think of her as Evil Jane Austen.
ROGERS: It's some really high-level thinking
about having Miss Hartigan be the villain,
because she is the, sort of, flip side of
the dawning awareness of women's equality.
She's got this brilliant, forward-thinking mind,
especially for a woman growing up in Victorian England.
You've walked past me so many times, all you good men of charity.
Never once asking my name.
It's Miss Hartigan, isn't it?
Oh, you noticed.
I saw you looking, you cheeky boy.
Hark! I can hear them now.
(THUDDING FOOTSTEPS)
1851, it must have been incredibly frustrating
to not get taken seriously by men.
It's quite frustrating in 2011, so you know, must have been a lot worse.
Commandeering an army of Cybermen is not necessarily the most sensible way forward.
It's hard to tell if you don't have any other recourse
other than to have a giant, steampunk robot crushing London.
She saw an opportunity. (LAUGHS)
The Cybermen promised to, you know, give her a better tomorrow.
HARTIGAN: (ROBOTIC VOICE) People of the world, now hear me.
Your governments will surrender.
And if not, then behold my power.
(SCREAMS)
The Cyberking is one of my favorite things ever,
because it's a gigantic robot that looks like it runs on coal.
Kudos to the Cybermen,
using available materials.
It's like a challenge on a reality show.
"Cybermen, you have to build a gigantic, steampunk robot.
"Go!"
And then, the Doctor seems to manage to defeat it
with a hot air balloon.
It's like the exact opposite of machinery.
He wants to give her a chance, you know, as he always does.
And he ends up saying something that David Tennant says a lot.
Which is, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
I'm so sorry.
(SCREAMING)
(WHIRRING)
The Doctor is often put in these positions of being God,
with either humans or the aliens he's dealing with,
by giving them free will.
And then having them suffer the consequences of their sins or their choices.
I think the Doctor deserves a Christmas dinner, quite frankly.
Normally, he'd just wander off.
This other guy had his consciousness implanted in him.
I guess it's the least you can do, right?
Like, 'cause if he tries to get out of it,
this other guy's gonna go, "Wait a minute, I know exactly what you're doing,
"and it's hurtful."
An offer of Christmas dinner.
It's no longer a request, it's a demand.
In memory of those we've lost.
(EXHALES) Go on, then.
(LAUGHS) Really?
Just this once, you've actually gone and changed my mind.
Not many people can do that.
Jackson,
if anyone had to be the Doctor, I'm glad it was you.
The feast awaits!
Come with me.
-Walk this way. -I certainly will.
(LAUGHS)
Merry Christmas to you, Jackson.
MORALES: It's kinda nice, he maybe felt like he belonged somewhere.
Or at least had someone that understood what he was going through,
even if it wasn't an actual Doctor, you know?
Good team! It's like a Victorian bromance.
Yeah, you could make the case that because he had the...
That info-stamped information about the Doctor
that he was the closest that the Doctor would have to another Time Lord.
And the Doctor could feel a l ittle bit like they could talk about some Time Lord stuff,
over Christmas goose.
He actually sticks around, and has Christmas dinner.
And I also think that we as the audience know that that means something.
That maybe that this is his last Christmas dinner.
Would you rather eat fish fingers and custard, or a traditional Christmas dinner?
Last year, my grandmother left the Christmas turkey in the back seat of the car
for three days before she found it.
We all ended up with food poisoning.
This year, I'll take the fish fingers and custard,
just as long as you take it straight from the freezer.
At the beginning of The End of Time...
Was that confusing? Probably.
You get the feeling from the beginning that this isn't going to go well.
He's been away for a few years, is what I get,
avoiding this confrontation. And he just seems a little drunk.
The Doctor seems like A-okay, everything's groovy,
and then Sigma drops some crap on the Doctor.
DOCTOR: So... Right...
SIGMA: The darkness heralds only one thing.
The end of time itself.
(EVIL LAUGHTER)
They basically tell the Doctor
his life cycle is going to end.
At which point, I turned it off and sobbed.
Whenever I tell anyone to watch Doctor Who and they're like,
"Oh, End of Time's coming up,"
I'm like, "Okay, I want you to brace yourself,
"because you're going to go through a lot of things."
The song is ending. No one ever wants to hear that.
Even worse if you're told your jam is ending.
'Cause you're like, "That's my jam!"
And I suppose, in a way, at that point it's again playing with audience expectations
because maybe you know that this is it for Tennant as an actor on this.
You know, at this point we always saw regeneration
as something awesome and cool.
And then, when we hear the tenth Doctor talk about it,
you realize it's not just that.
If I'm killed before regeneration, then I'm dead.
Even then,
even if I change, it feels like dying.
Everything I am dies.
Some new man goes sauntering away.
And I'm dead.
It's such a great scene,
because you're reminded of a few things, and also told something new.
Right, you're reminded that the Doctor is an old man,
and that he's tired.
But also that, for this Doctor at least, in this sort of new construction of it,
that a regeneration is a death.
You think, "Oh, all it is a new body," but that's when he starts to define it as,
"Well, yes and no."
So it was really hard, really, really hard to watch.
And the Master is back.
The Doctor's old foe.
He is much like the Doctor in every way.
Maybe in ways that are too close for comfort, question mark?
For everything that the Doctor can do and be,
the Master can do and be, except he is evil.
(LAUGHS)
He makes all these copies through this alien technology
that you don't really need to know how it works.
I mean, it's just creepy!
(LAUGHS)
(LAUGHS)
The hierarchy is very confusing, because everybody is the same person, right?
Yet, one guy will say, "Hey, go over there and do that thing."
And I don't know why the other guy doesn't say, "Who? What? We're the same person!
"Who are you to tell me what to do?"
I still don't understand what good that would serve.
"All right, great, what do we do now?"
"I don't know. We're all Masters.
"You wanna go bowling, or something?"
So the Doctor comes up with a solution.
And this is like when you get stuck on a video game level for a really long time.
It doesn't really matter how this is working, don't pay too much attention to that.
What's happening there is emotional arcs.
What's happening there is characters who have been built up over years now
are coming to a conclusion.
It'll wreck you, if you're a fan.
(SOBS)
Then there's the four knocks.
Oh... The four knocks.
The damn four knocks.
Wilfred knock, knock, knock, knocks
on that glass door.
Still problems!
(KNOCKS)
The Doctor is still that character that will sacrifice his life for an old man.
To be as big as a universe and as small as human love, is, uh...
Yeah, I cried like a baby.
They drag out his death so painfully.
Usually, when a Doctor regenerates, it's just like,
"Oh, I've been shot by a thing, or something happened,
"and now, here I go!" And then, you know, hand sparklers!
He knows he's dying, but he also doesn't have to regenerate immediately.
So it gives him the time to say goodbye.
Dad...
I bet you're going to have a really great year.
Yeah?
See ya.
Man, the farewell tour wrecks me.
Wrecked me the first time I saw it. It makes me feel like a twelve-year-old.
Good final words for David's hero.
"I don't want to go."
Yes, the audience didn't want him to, either.
I don't want to go.
(SCREAMS)
Legs! I've still got legs!
Good!
Arms! Hands! Fingers!
Lots of fingers.
Ears, yes, eyes too, nose,
and I've had worse. Chin!
Blimey! Hair!
I'm a girl!
No! No!
I'm not a girl!
And still not ginger!
There's something else, something important, I'm...
I'm... I'm...
(LAUGHS)
...crashing!
Matt came in and did his own... The eleventh Doctor is his own Doctor.
And it...
It just reaffirms why
(LAUGHS)
it's my favorite show in the world.
Space fish!
If Charles Dickens ever sees the Doctor Who version of A Christmas Carol,
I think he'll realize where he went wrong with his original draft.
No flying sharks.
That's the best Christmas special by far.
It's got time travel as a plot point,
it's about exuberance and joy, the true Christmas spirit.
You can't go wrong with opening with a spaceship crashing,
that's a good way to open a show.
There's always a spaceship crashing towards Earth, isn't there?
COMPUTER: Please return to their seats and fasten their safety belts.
He'll come. He always comes.
Right, well he is cutting it kind of fine!
The ship is going down!
The planet that the spaceship is about to crash into in A Christmas Carol
is basically Victorian London, but with a twist.
There are sharks that swim through the sky unless this force-field is activated.
And only one man is in charge of that force-field.
Gambon, Gambon, Gambon.
Viewers will be familiar with Gambon from Top Gear.
The man even has a corner named after him on that.
So then we meet Mr. Sardick. This guy...
Look, I don't like to talk about people behind their back,
but he is an unpleasant person.
There is not a caring bone in his body.
So the Doctor makes it his mission
to get this guy to care.
And he does it by going back to his childhood and changing his life,
and changing his memories.
-Get out! Get out of my house! -Okay.
Okay, but I'll be back.
DOCTOR: Way back!
(TARDIS WHIRS)
DOCTOR: See? Back.
-YOUNG SARDICK: Who are you? -Hi. I'm the Doctor.
-YOUNG SARDICK: Who are you talking to? -DOCTOR: You.
DOCTOR: Now, your past is going to change,
that means your memories will change, too.
A bit scary, but you'll get the hang of it.
-I don't understand. -I'll be you don't.
I wish I could see your face.
But that never happened.
But it did.
I don't know why that little boy is making home movies of himself.
I don't know, I guess every planet has their own YouTube.
He doesn't mess with people's timelines, usually.
That's supposed to be against the rules.
The Doctor, I feel like he says he has rules, but he really doesn't.
He breaks all the rules, all the time.
I think this is the new Doctor, you know?
I think he realizes time can be altered, and he's gonna take advantage of it.
Then show me the future. Prove me wrong!
I am showing it to you, I'm showing it to you right now.
So, what do you think?
Is this who you want to become, Kazran?
Dad?
(WHIPPING)
(SOBS)
It's just heavy for me, that episode in particular
just really grabbed me in a very profound way
because it's all about behavior and who we are through experience,
and yet how much does that define who we are?
And that's an interesting question.
That's a heart-wrenching scene.
Also, no little boy wants to know he's going to look like that guy.
They end up saving the spaceship in a sleigh, with space fish, then it's, uh,
a merry Christmas, or whatever they
celebrate up there on that planet.
The day space-Jesus was born in a space-manger.
Where are they, Kazran and Abigail?
Off on a little trip, I should think.
-Where? -Christmas.
-Christmas? -Yeah.
Christmas.
-Yay! -(BOTH LAUGHING)
And then the snow is not alien ash
from some genocidal holocaust that the Doctor perpetrated this time.
That's a nice relief.
You can't really imagine Christmas without a Doctor Who Christmas special.
You can have your How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
because really the only kind of Whoville I want to visit
is in a Doctor Who Christmas special.
With the Christmas specials, they're in some ways more interior.
It's more of the kind of science fiction where it almost doesn't matter
who the evil robot space aliens are,
as much as it is working through the emotional issues of
who your loved ones are and where they are and how can you be with them.
So it's kind of like Christmas.
Sometimes it's really fun, and sometimes it's just uncomfortable and sad.
The message always seems to be, Christmas is a tough time
when you got your relatives,
you have space monsters,
but there's always somebody who's going to bring it all together.
If the specials are trying to send a Christmas message, it might be,
"Don't go to London on Christmas."
I know, seriously. Everyone should just leave London.
Really, Britain's calendar is, "Christmas".
And then January through the first of December is,
"Rebuild England."
"Christmas, crap!"
"Rebuild England."
We just fixed that!
Big Ben, Parliament, we just fixed that, come on!
What are you doing?
Why do we live here?
You know what? Just leave it. Leave it. Here, I'll kick it down, aliens.
There, I'll knock down Parliament, okay? Fine.
Whatever, I'm leaving.