Doctor Who Thoughts

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A Christmas Carol

I enjoyed this special. It was really great to get a new episode of Doctor Who again.

• There were three things I had an issue with:

1) The lack of Amy and Rory. It would have been nice if they’d been more involved.

2) The whole end of the story really hinged on Abigail’s illness and the fact that she had only one day to live and this would have been sad and worked well... if they didn’t know someone with the ability to travel through time and space. All it would have taken was for one of them to mention to the Doctor ‘oh, yeah, Abigail’s dying, could you do something about that?’ and the problem would be solved. I mean ‘all of time and space’ which means that somewhere in the universe there would have to be a cure for whatever illness she had. The fact that they didn’t think of this, and that the Doctor didn’t even bring up the possibility after he realised the truth really irritated me.

3) Old Kazran actually touching young Kazran bugged me. Um – isn’t that a bad thing? Don’t bad things happen, say reapers, when people do that?

• For the most part I loved the time travel hijinks in the episode. The Doctor going back to influence young Kazran and that entire section in young Kazran’s rooms was excellent. Eleven really is excellent with kids and I fully endorse Moffet throwing the Doctor and kids together at all opportunities.

• I loved the whole Christmas Eve Kazran/Abigail romance. I do have to wonder about the end though – the Doctor brought young Kazran into the future and he saw and heard about how things played out with himself and Abigail and the Doctor – so wouldn’t that change the future once again? I could see it being fine if the Doctor took him back immediately after Kazran almost hit him and then broke down. But he didn’t. So I don’t see how with all this knowledge of his future young Kazran wouldn’t change things again. It worked before so why wouldn’t it work again?

• “Come along Pond.” – Doctor. I love when he calls her Pond but no ‘Ponds’? That really stuck out for me. The Doctor isn’t just travelling with one person now, and he knew Rory was on that ship as well. Plus in the previous episode he stated right out he saw Rory becoming Rory Pond. So really it should have been ‘Ponds’.

• We got two things in this episode pointing to the Doctor as a sexual/romantic being.

First: When encouraging Kazran towards kissing Abigail the Doctor tells him “It’s this or go to your room and design a new kind of screwdriver. Don’t make my mistakes.” Hmm. Who did he fail to kiss?

Second: the whole marriage to Marilyn and the implication that they really did get married. I wonder if Moffet is doing this sort of thing as foreshadowing, or otherwise slowly building things up to the point where Doctor/River won’t be weird or as unexpected to old school fans?

• “You know in nine hundred years in time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.” – Doctor. ♥ This is just so the Doctor.

• Various other things I liked/amused me:

- the Doctor being his usual self (if a little hyper)
- “Big flashy light things have me written all over them.” So very true.
- the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver as a phone
- Rory and Amy clearly having been in the middle of dress-up/some role-playing
- the psychic paper not working when the Doctor asserted he was so mature because it was ‘a lie too big’ Hee
- the Doctor and Kazran and the shark
- “Fish that can swim in fog. I love new planets.” So do I. I loved the fish/sharks.
- I really like the name Kazran
- Abigail’s singing was gorgeous