STORY PLACEMENT
THIS EPISODE TAKES PLACE SOME
TIME
AFTER THE SARAH
JANE ADVENTURES
STORY "THE DEATH
OF THE DOCTOR,"
AND PRIOR TO THE
TV STORY "SPACE
& TIME."
PRODUCTION CODE
2.00
WRITTEN BY
STEVEN MOFFAT
DIRECTED BY
TOBY HAYNES
RATINGS
12.11 MILLION
RECOMMENDED PURCHASE
'THE
COMPLETE SIXTH SERIES' BLU-RAY DVD
LIKELY TO BE RELEASED IN
NOVEMBER 2011.
BLURB
It's the deepest part of
winter, the exact midpoint, Christmas Eve – halfway out of the dark. Amy
and Rory are trapped on
a space liner that's
plummeting through banks of thick icy fog to the surface of the planet
below.
Only one man has the power to
save them; only one man HAS a machine CAPABLE OF clearING the fog and letTING
them land.
That man is Kazran Sardick, a
rich but lonely old miser who rules Sardicktown with a sky-mast of iron.
The Doctor's only chance of
rescuing
the ship's passengers is to
save Kazran's soul and show him that life is worth living. For this he
needs to go back,
way back, to when Kazran was
a boy with a life full of promise.
But can the Doctor
put a song in Kazran's heart
and love inTO his life, in time for Christmas? Can he bring him out of the
dark?
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Doctor Who
has finally become a fairy tale.
Quite where the transformation began, I’m not sure, although it
undoubtedly picked up pace earlier this year as the Matt Smith era began.
It’s not to say that once
the series was hard science
fiction; there’s been the occasional episode of a more scientifically
realistic bent, but
at heart
this is a show about a man who flies around in a police box. It’s always
leaned more heavily towards fantasy than sci-fi.
Still, A Christmas Carol, more so even than The Big Bang, is
Doctor Who as fairy tale. No matter how much time we spend on a
starship bridge with copious lens flair.
A Christmas Carol
- the original, I mean - is a work of absolute genius. These days we can’t
help but see it as a slightly twee period piece, but it was, at the time,
a severe look at contemporary society. Over the years, the various
retellings have lost much of that (although I still hold that the Muppets’
version is the definitive screen adaptation, and I have no shame in
keeping to that). Yet the basic concept of a man
being
shown the error of his ways through glimpses of his own past and future,
will always be profoundly affecting. In fact, the story could be stretched
further - its themes could hold just as well throughout the year, not only
at Christmas.
“I’m
showing it to you right now. So what do you think? Is this who you want to
become, Kazran?”
So it’s perhaps unsurprising to find
Charles Dickens’
classic story forming the basis for this latest festive Doctor Who
special. It is, after all, a time-travel story
-
one of the earliest to have made a popular impact. Dickens himself has
already stepped into the Doctor’s world, and, for me, The Unquiet Dead
remained the one to beat, even though it wasn’t actually a Christmas
special. In spite of the fact that it is mere window dressing, and that
the story could be told just as well in the modern day, there’s something
indisputably Christmassy about the Victorian era. Yet, because it’s just
window dressing, there’s no reason it can’t be shifted to another planet
altogether.
Part
of the success of this episode is the beautiful, tangible world
that
it conjures up. With effects that can match
the
imagination, we are presented with an eerily picturesque mist-shrouded
globe, upon which sits the steampunk-styled Sardicktown.
While we
don’t learn much about the planet - I didn’t even catch a name - that’s
not a problem, because for the purposes of this story, the town is all
that
we need to know. Add to it shoals of floating, MirrorMask-invoking
fish, and not even a pseudo-scientific explan-ation
about crystalline harmonics can spoil the magic. Even the Doctor
is
told to shut up when he tries to explain it away. This is a
series
that’s now unafraid to revel in its own absurdity, and can now happily
show us a bizarre twist on a Santa’s sleigh ride, with a tweed-clad Time
Lord tugging the reigns of a flying shark to pull his carriage.
None of this would stand up, of course, were it not for strong enough
performances to help us suspend our disbelief for an hour. Fortunately, we
have some of the greatest perform-ances
in the show’s recent history. It almost goes without saying that Michael
Gambon is excellent as both Kazran and Elliott Sardick, providing
electrifying performances whenever he’s
on screen. Yet both younger Kazrans acquit themselves brilliantly
too.
Danny Horn
puts in
a beautifully sympathetic turn as a young man dealing with the pain of
growing up, while Laurence Belcher is simply gold in his every moment as
the youngest Kazran.
Katherine Jenkins, being best known as a singer and not an actor, has
inevitably come under a great deal of scrutiny
for her performance here,
and, although she couldn’t
hope to
measure up to
the legend that is Gambon, I feel that she deals very well indeed with her
first screen role,
imbuing
what could have been a two-dimensional character with
some
genuine likeability. Yes, she sings, and I see nothing wrong with that.
This wasn’t something shoe-horned
in to warrant her casting, but an intrinsic part of the story, and if
you’re going to have someone sing to the sharks, why not get one of the
most beautiful voices in the country to do it?
“Now
your past is going to change. That means your memories will change too.
Bit scary...”
It’s Matt Smith, though, who dominates proceedings, even stealing scenes
from Gambon. Smith owns every scene
that
he’s in, effortlessly becoming both the most childlike, and yet
at the same time
most powerful
and
commanding Doctor
that
we’ve ever seen. He makes it somehow entirely believable, even palatable,
that this young-seeming man is in fact a vastly powerful being who,
inspired by an old Christmas novel, takes it upon himself to rewrite an
old man’s entire life story. Had he not imbued the role with such
geniality and humour, he could have become quite terrifying.
Inevitably, some scenes fall flatter than others. Although it’s necessary
to see the lives at risk aboard the ship, in order to develop some
immediacy and threat to the proceedings, each time we were taken away from
Sardicktown
I
was desperate to get back. It’s also a shame that, for me, the
time-hopping trips to Christmas Eves past never quite lives up to its
potential.
I
had become so enamoured with this spellbinding world that I didn’t want to
jet off on side trips, however important they may be to the characters’
ongoing development.
“Nobody
comes.”
There is one scene that encapsulates this story for me:
the
Doctor plays a projection of Kazran’s childhood to the astonished old
man’s eyes. Failing to provoke the reaction he desires, the Doctor enters
his TARDIS, and steps inside the film as it plays, entering the old
man’s treasured memories. A stunning bit of writing, direction and acting,
this is what Doctor Who can be at its best: magical.
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