A spaceship is hurtling towards the surface of an alien planet! Amy and Rory are among the many passengers trapped on board! The only person who can save the ship is a bitter old man called Kazran Sardick, ruler of Sardicktown, and he just doesn't care. Looks like he needs the Doctor!
Last year's Christmas Special, The End of Time was pretty doomy and gloomy so it's good to have a Christmas Special that is fun, frothy and simple. Steven Moffat promised us the most "christmassy christmas episode" and he certainly did his best. We get a vast planet of snow, and the Doctor building a snowman at the end. The actual story is a retelling of A Christmas Carol, with the Doctor showing Kazran his past in order to change his present. The Doctor and Kazran get to share Christmas dinner with a family and there's even a snowman at the end.
In spite of all the wonder and visuals, the story focuses on the life of Kazran Sardick, and the Doctor's timey wimey attempts in redeeming him. The Sci-Fi plotting was simple window dressing. Like many Moffat episodes, the story had fun with time paradoxes, but as they are focused on Kazran's life, they are character driven, unlike The Big Bang, which was concept driven. Some might complain that Moffat is reusing his time paradox trick too often. But then again, RTD repeated his invasion of earth trick, so what do you expect? All writers have their quirks and repetitions.
I've said it before, but Matt Smith continues to be brilliant in the role of the Doctor. Amy Pond wasn't in the episode much, but what I saw of her seemed okay. Her reaction to Kazran is nice, and one of the few occasions we see her empathise with a being on another world. Rory gets even less to say or do than Amy, so I can't really say anything about him at all.
The episode revolves around Michael Gambon's character Kazran Sardick. He is as you would expect from an actor of his calibre, very good indeed. Unfortunately, Katherine Jenkins had very little to do as The Abigail character was sadly lacking in personality, and seemed to exist as a mere love interest for Kazran, and a plot device to save the spaceship.
The design of this episode was great. Sardicktown looked like a wonderful city of steampunk. The only downside was the spaceship set, which looked like the kind of tacky rubbish you'd find in a 70s episode.
This was a fun little episode you can really enjoy while gorged on turkey and wine!
8/10
Next: America! A green eyed Ood! The Lodger Tardis! River Song naked! I want to see Series Six right now!!!
