#dw: a christmas carol

[captainsupernoodle]

uuh whichever christmas special is the one with the 11th doctor and the sharkmobile A Christmas Carol time

directed by toby haynes and written by steven moffat

sharkmobile

I forgot exactly how adhd matt smith played the doctor and i really do enjoy it. leaning in to the big alien brain noticing everything all the time and juggling, say, a ship of four thousand (and three) people while christmas carol-ing scrooge and getting engaged to marilyn monroe

the pendulum between the doctor's "hey girl wanna ride in my space ferrari"/apparent irresistibleness to historical figures and his bewilderment around abigail and scrooge kissing. it's good. "top of the list of things humans like: sex appeal! i can do sex appeal, no problem. wait, they spend how much of their time thinking about it??"

like obviously there are certain lines/scenes that are supposed to be the doctor being a Cool Guy who Gets All The Girls TM but also * insert david tennet saying 'he's a fairly asexual creature' * You could probably write an essay on watsonian reasons for those scenes but i might come back to that later

the bit where they've sussed out scrooge and is sitting in that armchair going "on your own head be it." nice. love that. a more goofy doctor but also a very old, very angry creature with a great potential for callousness preparing themself to take on an opponent.

but also "WOE! CHILDHOOD WHIMSY BE UPON YE"

the bits where scrooge is like "have you ever experienced pain like this?? can you imagine it???" and i'm like yeah, yeah they have

LOCATION: the slightly carnivorous not-honey not-moon

we've got another "hey are you okay" for the count! a count i'm starting right now! reaction to amy asking right after they completely saved the day and gave abigail eight christmas eves instead of leaving her locked in a freezer for the rest of her life: "yeah i'm good" mhm right i believe it

this is a fun one on the whole meddling aspect. yeah scrooge is the doctor's enemy but he's also a child the doctor visited every christmas eve on his request while in the middle of trying to save four thousand people that child had grown up to kill from sheer apathy. mmmmm crunchy. also the bits where they careen out of the room and into the video of scrooge's past and pop back to the future for the passcode? absolutely brilliant use of casual time travel.

"i am a responsible and mature adult!"

[notyoujamie]

[ajax0404]

[b33tl3-3at3r]

I’m not the only one that likes them right…

right???

[bl0ndwave]

Doctor Who, A Christmas Carol (2010)

Kazran Sardick: Could you do it? Could you do this? Think about it, Doctor. One last day with your beloved. Which day would you choose?

He did it on New Year's Day in 2005...

...and is going to do it again on Darillium.

(Source: an outcome of my discussion with @good-dandelions)

(GIFs source: Doctor Who GIFs)

[dandelionjack]

rewatching the muppets christmas carol for holiday season. can’t believe i didn’t know last time that rizzo was the fourth doctor for whatever reason. he’s dressed exactly like him at one point and offers gonzo-dickens jelly beans from a paper bag? i mean, british christmas classics, ghosts of past and future, time travel motifs, fairytale whimsy, anti-capitalism, of course it makes perfect sense

[foolishlyzephyrus]

tis the season of doctor who specials

[patheticpeoplesupreme]

Doctor Who : A Christmas Carol (I think)

I heard this quote and I kept thinking about the fact that The Doctor and River’s last night together is on the Singing towers of Darillium

and how he kept cancelling on taking her there because he never wanted their time together to end :,)

However, he waited too long and in the end, he never got to be together on Darillium as 11

By the time he started travelling with Clara, River’s gone to the Library without ever saying a positive goodbye to 11.

Of course, he got to spend time with her as 12 but it’s got to hurt so much knowing that every goodbye could be a permanent goodbye.

[sandymybeloved]

moffat stories always save the day with big important spee- WRONG the day is most often saved by people who love each other so much, no enemy however big, no obstacle however insurrmountable, sometimes not even death, can stop them from saving each other

[variousqueerthings]

people will say that nine is underappreciated when I have never seen anyone say anything bad about nine... it's me, I'm people

[bingus-bing-bong]

I zoned out for a second and now there are like 50 barbie posts in my queue

[bestsistertournament]

Propaganda Under Cut:

Emily Cratchit (Mother of Martha, Belinda, Peter, Mathew, Lucy and "Tiny" Tim Cratchit): Supportive mother raising a large family and taking care of a very sick son. She is dealing with poverty and her husband working long hours.

Amy Pond (Mother of Melody Williams a.k.a. River Song and Anthony Williams): Amy having absolutely no knowledge of her pregnancy until she was in labour immediately loved her newborn daughter. She begged for the Church to not take her daughter from him and was overjoyed when she thought the Doctor and Rory had rescued their daughter. She was then devestated to lose her baby twice in one night. She was desperate to find her daughter and despite never being able to raise River she loved and supported her.

[notyoujamie]

Doctor Who Advent Calendar —Day 5

[besidesitstoowarm]

"A Christmas Carol" thoughts

i mean. what is there to say that hasn't been said already? i actually just read "a christmas carol" for the first time and it's really good, though sparse, needs some beefing up. this episode more than delivers

michael gambon absolutely kills as kazran, have to say this first. my bf was positive this was michael mckean the first time he saw it (last year) and honestly he would also kill this role. michael gambon is better in this one episode than he ever did as dumbledore. richard harris superior. his son is jared harris of "chernobyl" or "the terror" fame so it's a familial trait. anyway

it is a fairly standard retelling. amy and rory are honeymooning on some ship that starts crashing and the doctor needs to control the atmosphere on this planet to stop that, but kazran is the guy in charge of that and he's crotchety and evil so he refuses. so the doctor tries to fix him. i do think that's lovely, that he wasn't "destined" to be yucko, he was merely an incredibly abused child who didn't have (or didn't think he had) any other options but to grow up like this. so the doctor goes back to his childhood and takes him on marvelous adventures, see the fish in the sky, see the pyramids of giza and the eiffel tower, hang out w frank and marilyn in 1952. the doctor gets engaged by mistake. haters used to get soooo mad that moffat did this (same w liz 1) when like, the doctor getting mistakenly engaged goes back to one and "the aztecs" and if you're mad about him sullying the reputation of the virgin queen then you're a monarchist loser. sorry

abigail has an astoundingly beautiful voice, rich and low and warm, very church choir. i love how for many christmas eves she greets them with "doctor!" until kazran becomes of legal age and she starts noticing him. he looks so much like the guy who plays jaskier in witcher but it's not him. it's also not harry lloyd despite my bf thinking they look alike. it's the creepily blue eyes w all that dark hair, imo. kazran finally cuts them off, says he's done w this christmas bullshit, see you later

and i really love his (old) discussion where he says abigail has one more day to live, it's so sad she never cured her terminal boneitis, so which day? how do you decide which day is going to be the last day? he asks the doctor directly, which day would you choose? i think that's a wonderfully poignant question, altho it is not answered. how do you decide when the ending is? how do you know, how do you come to terms with the very last day? i have no idea what i would do in that situation. probably exactly what he did, which is not decide. this poor boy, beaten by his father, who only wanted to see the cloud-fish, was introduced to the most wonderful love he could ever imagine, and then was told "you get one more day and that is IT" i mean what are you even supposed to do

abigail's singing does fix things enough for amy and rory's ship to be saved, and she chooses to let her life end on that day with old kazran. the doctor builds 20+ snowmen. trying to explain this to someone who had never seen the show would be fucking bonkers and yet it's so emotionally impactful! it's rich, it's funny, it's silly, it hurts. moffat episodes at their best are many-layered like this, and i really do think his fast-paced quippy writing style works perfectly with matt smith bringing his autistic swagger, i don't think it works as well with nine or ten– despite there being some GREAT goddamn episodes there– or with twelve, iirc. can't wait to see him write for fifteen. match made in heaven, these two

anyway. future-dickensian is a lovely aesthetic and this episode perfectly balances all the best aspects of doctor who, to me– the alien, the familiar, the silly, the profound, the wacky, the heartfelt. i don't think any other christmas special nails it the way this one does, although "husbands of river song" might come close. god i love it so much

[quietwingsinthesky]

can i say. top notch use of carol of the bells as a ominous musical cue.

[canarypost]

do people really think TEN said the 900 years of time and space line. did they even watch the show