selenak

Somewhere in the great writerly beyond, Thackeray questions why good old Charles D. got an episode all for himself and a Christmas special while we've yet to see the Doctor matching wits with Becky Sharpe. This years' special was fun, and while it doesn't dethrone The Runaway Bride as my all time favourite Christmas special, it's certainly aiming to be No.2. (Don't like The Christmas Invasion for several reasons, The Waters of Mars is stunning but, err, not of the symbolically squeeze and hug it type, The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead I both enjoyed but neither is RTD at his best, and The End of Time should have been one episode instead of two and really needed an editor.)

To start with the nagging so I can move on to the praise, Abigail is about as Dickensian a love interest as they come. I'm trying not to quote George Orwell's unkind remarks about Victorian legless angels here, but she really is Dickens' ideal of beautiful, sweet, selfless womanhood, complete with white dress, golden hair and an early death, and well, Moffat can do better. The glass coffin briefly awoke the hope we might get some Grimm undercurrents, given the fairy tale theme of s5, but no. (Which reminds me: can we get a Brothers Grimm Christmas special? The unDisneyfied version, of course.) This being said, let's move on to the squee.

Michael Gambon does a great job as ~~Scrooge~~ Karzan, and so do the kid and the young man playing the other Karzans. I was amused and found it highly interesting in a meta fashion despite my complaints above that Moffat made some crucial changes in his updating. Karzan doesn't just get confronted with an innocent past full of affection, nor does he get presented with observing a loving family with adorable yet sick toddler in the present, with that family containing his loyal clerk who expresses regard for him despite being treated ill. And the notion that being confronted with his own lonely death could make a difference gets rejected in the text. Instead, Tiny Tim, merging with Scrooge's past love, becomes Abigail, and the affection Karzan develops both hardens and liberates him at different times; his challenge is not Scrooge's (who with his money saves Tiny Tim from death and ensures a glowing future for him) but actually Ten's, to accept death. Most radical and telling, though, I found that Moffat seems to think remembering an innocent past a la Scrooge isn't enough; what he lets the Doctor do is to rewrite Karzan's past, to literally write himself into Karzan's childhood and change it. Now, that's the kind of thing that if we're talking fixed point leads to catastrophe and otherwise with not fixed points leads to heroic adventure but with a price to pay in this 'verse. It puts Karzan in a line with Amelia Pond and Reinette, those other children the Doctor befriended.

Young Karzan is luckier than Amelia in that when he demands the Doctor should come every Christmas the man actually obliges (has to, in order for his scheme to work), but the script, and Gambon's acting as Old Karzan watches and feels his memories change, nonetheless points out that this might be great fun while it happens for young Karzon but, like Amy's childhood, is also considerably messed up. There is great ambiguity in Karzan's voice and face as his memories change (though as with Connor near the end of AtS, it seems he keeps both sets, the original ones and his rewritten life) - it gives him adventure, the Doctor as a friend (what both little Amelia and many a youthful DW watcher wished for through the ages) providing it, and love via Abigail, but at the same time it's as drastic an alteration and takeover of another life as anything Ten did in Waters of Mars. Even before the punchline of Abigail's illness is revealed, it's clear Old Karzan both loves and resents what is happening to him. But he can't help but being drawn into the adventure. Which, btw, tells you another point where Moffat's and Dickens' sensibilities meet - of course children like to be scared as a thrill, as long as there's a rescue. When the rescue fails, that's when Amy says "What's the use of you then?" and crashes a car, in "Amy's Choice", and young adult Karzan does not open the window anymore for the Doctor and completes a machine.

The gags in the script were galore and had me stitches, both the oneliners like "what do little boys say in the face of danger? Mummy!" and the insane and wonderfully DW-worthy concept of flying fish. And a shark. (Who apparantly is as long lived as Moby Dick.) And a sled with a shark. I love this show. Given that Marilyn Monroe/Eleven is the new Elizabeth I/Ten, there better be fanfiction. Also, with Torchwood not back on the air yet, it's Amy's and Rory's turn to make an allusion to roleplay costume fun, and I grinned.

Speaking of Amy and Rory, they had a decidedly minor role, but then this was the first Christmas special since The Christmas Invasion where there was a current companion (all the others were between companions), and the Moff wasn't ready to give up the RTD tradition of letting the guest star shine in the special. (Nor should he - I mean, if you hire Michael Gambon...) (Nor was he prepared to give up the RTD tradition of letting it snow in the tag scene.) Since we're about to get a full season with them, I was okay with that.

Speaking of: Trailer! Yay! River, hooray! Are they doing a Roswell episode? Those are great baroque costumes. Oh dear, a Nazi episode. Well, if the interlude on SJA is anything to go by at last they get the accents right instead. ZOMG that ship looks familiar! In conclusion: bring on season 6!