"A Christmas Carol" [Doctor Who Reaction Post]

[eumelia]

So, yeah, it rocked.

First of all, Amy and Rory in their "iconic" costumes. As role play! So cute!
Second of all, Steampunk Dickensian Alien World!
Third of all, Flying fish.

Flying fish.

Fish.

I'm not Christian, but fish bloody well are!

And so is Christmas. Moffat is definitely continuing the trend of an atheist universe in Doctor Who, where redemption is only possible via personal decision and heroism.
Of course redemption is only possible if you're a man. If you're a woman, prepare to be fridged.

I'll get back to that. And the fish.

The episode is a reworking and reinterpretation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The way time travel in used to create the montage of past, present and future was very clever and moving, specifically when the child Kazran Sardick sees his "future", which is our "present" in his own past.
A very poetic use of a time paradox which we've seen multiple times - what would happen if you met yourself and the effect of changing the past during the future... er, present?

Ebenezer Scoorge is reincarnated not as a Victorian Workhouse owner (though the poor are still despicable), but as a loan shark (... and damn, I just GOT THAT! *facepalm*) who freezes people are "insurance" or more to the point collateral for the money he loans - also, population control a.k.a collateral damage.

The Doctor, funnily enough, doesn't seem to interested in this problematic state of economics.

The change in Kazran Sardick are pinpointed onto the frigded girl entirely, she who can sing and is instrumental in saving the space ship of carolers and Amy and Rory (who, really, were just having a bit of fun in the Honeymoon Suite) - I was actually very moved by the thought that the passengers were all singing together, because the sense of urgency and despair that surrounds a group of people who try to stave off the inevitable by using sentimental music... well, it's classic isn't it. And my god it works.

The subtle changes in Kazran Sardick are beautiful to watch and the unchanging non-life of Abigail is enhanced by these changes. In that respect there was a whole lot of gender!fail in this respect. The male industrialist has agency, the blonde dying poor woman has none, at best she can "calm the beast", the shark... the loan shark - DAMN, how did I not see it at the time?!

The fish are Jesus. Sorry, they are. You can't put fish in a Christmas special and not evoke the old Christian symbol. It's actually sweet, in a way, to be "surrounded" by god in that way and having god be a part of the weird eco system on that Steampunky planet.

Also, Jaws is finally redeemed! As a reindeer, but who cares!? \o/

The romance was sweet and heartfelt, but ultimately a sad ending we're never going to see. Hey, why ruin Christmas by death.

Moffat gleans insight regarding the human condition, but he doesn't out of the corner of our eye - the singing passenger, the kindness and security of family, the cruelty of family, the pain of nostalgia (brought about beautifully in the various Christmas Eve's) and of course, the denial of the death of a loved one.

I can't help but wonder how much happier Sardick would have been in the long run if he'd been able to realise Abigail was an actual person in her own right and with her own agency, rather than a doll for him to look and marvel at at intervals.

The Doctor is quite frenetic in this one. He appears, at times, that he's forgotten about what he's supposed to be doing (rewriting a history to save a present - hehe, pun) but he's very calculating. In a way the Doctor here is crueler than 9th or the 10th ever were. In the second series episode "New Earth" the 10th Doctor and Rose discover a cache of people kept frozen and used as petri dishes.

Those people are released. They're humanity is reaffirmed. Here... not so much.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. Because on the one hand, it's interesting watching a clearly superior and alien Doctor. This happened throughout the fifth series, other creatures and species were held in the same regard as humans, which is in direct conflict with the 10th Doctor certainly (who thought humans had the potential to be greater) and also with the 9th who seemed to think that humans were pretty effing stupid at times and didn't think much of the "future" of humanity (i.e. Jack pre-immortality) - here, humanity is on the same level as fish, they're even frozen in the same manner.

On the other hand, the fishy god I spoke about before? Well, while the fish are most certainly Jesus, this Jesus doesn't bring redemption, on the contrary, the fish don't live in harmony with the humans who have colonised this planet and are in fact considered pests... interesting metaphor for religion, if you ask me. Humanity matters as much as... well... other fish in the sea.

Man, Moffat really takes the cake with those metaphors, doesn't he?

A very sentimental and heartfelt episode none the less, despite the gender!fail, the damaged abused boy trope and the woman in refrigerator cliche.

I really can't get over the fish and the nuanced layers of metaphor packed inside them.

That's all for now.

Comments

[silveradept]

There was a lot packed in there. Michael Gambon, however, delivered a fantastic performance, and the singing was kind of awesome, too.

I also found it rather...interesting that the one that young Sardick would choose was the one that turned out to be the dying woman. I would have thought young Sardick would have had more idea about what those things did and could choose something more...appropriate. But, if I remember rightly, Moffat tends to write helpless women a lot. Even Amy, in this case, doesn't have agency - she's the ghost of Christmas Present, but that's all she is...a ghost.

[eumelia]

I'm not convinced Moffat is better or worse than Rusty when it comes to female character's agency.

At least Abigail didn't fall in love with the Doctor and had a useful skill... or something.

[silveradept]

True. Although I suspect Abigail was falling for The Doctor, that is, until Young Sardick was old enough for her to fall in love with.

The whole episode rang a bit of the Deus Ex Machina, in that Sardick and the Doctor picked the one woman who would be able to sing the cloud layer down, through apparent luck that she was the one frozen when eleven dropped down the chimney.

And as for agency, you're right. Amy's written with it, River's supposed to have it, but sometimes it seems more like she flips depending on who's around her, so Moffat's kind of fence-sitting.

[svollga]

OMG, loan shark! It's brilliant! I never though about it!

I could see where it's all going as soon as we were shown the on the fridge, took a deep breath and was ready to face gender fail. Moffat wrote a lot of either really good women with agency - River Song, Sally Sparrow and so on - but this one, not so much. (Also, she was a pretty blonde which made me cringe because stereotypes much.)
I still can't quite reconcile Moffat's 'time can be rewritten' and meet-your-self trope with RTD's Reapers. Okay, maybe in Big Bang it worked because everything was collapsing, and now it works because the crack was healed, but I would prefer an explanation in the series.

Otherwise, it was pretty good for a Christmas special. And oh, I love Eleven. He's so very alien and old and boyish. It also had several thematic statements - 'never met anyone not important', 'better broken heart than no heart' (oh, Ten)... And it showed once again that this version of the Doctor is shy of girls :) Ten was charming and flirty, Nine was assertive, Eleven is shy and generally doesn't know what to do with them. (

[silveradept]

One suspects that "Time Can Be Rewritten" so long as the major events are left undisturbed. Father's Day had something very significant knocked out of place, and unlike Turn Left, where the significant event allowed for a parallel universe to develop, there was no fixing the problem. That brought the Reapers. For The Waters of Mars and this one, despite some things changing, the major flow stayed undisturbed. Little things changed, but history was the same. The cloud controller is still built, Sardick is still mostly a bastard, and the ship gets saved. Like it was supposed to, I guess, because if that ship was supposed to be destroyed, I doubt Amy and Rory would have been on it.

Of course, that's not an explanation in the series, but it seems to hang consistently with the writing.

And apparently, Eleven's trope is that he's going to get all the ladies and not have any idea what to do with them (or actively try to deflect them, as he is with Amy).