Rate "A Christmas Carol"

I want to smother Amy Pond.

Kate wrote:I want to smother Amy Pond.

As you know only too well m'dear, I would normally be the very first chap to smile and say "Ladies first". But in this particular instance I'm more inclined to say "Tough luck. I want that pleasure all for myself!"

Of course, I suppose we could always place the pillow over her head and press down firmly together.

Kate wrote:I want to smother Amy Pond.

My best friend feels the same way. For myself, I like her, but only that. I don't find myself missing her character when she's not around, like in Death of the Doctor or in segments of this special.

Zoltar wrote:My best friend feels the same way. For myself, I like her, but only that. I don't find myself missing her character when she's not around, like in Death of the Doctor or in segments of this special.

What I really want to see happen during Series 6 is the rehabilitation of her character. You know important things such as her actually showing some evidence of genuine love and affection towards Rory, her new husband.

Because as things currently stand nothing would give me more joy than to see her accidentally jettisoned into deepest, darkest space.

Sid Seadevil wrote:What I really want to see happen during Series 6 is the rehabilitation of her character. You know important things such as her actually showing some evidence of genuine love and affection towards Rory, her new husband.

I wouldn't mind that either, especially since I like Rory's character better than I like her.

Sid Seadevil wrote:Because as things currently stand nothing would give me more joy than to see her accidentally jettisoned into deepest, darkest space.

I see.

Yeah, they definitely need to strike a likeability parity between the two. Because otherwise they face the very real possibility of building a general audience backlash against Amy.

I hate to interject a note of Series 6 into what is, obviously, a thread about the 2010 Christmas Special, but as we're now talking about Rory, a persistent thought has been percolating away in the back of my mind.

River Song, we're given to understand from Flesh & Stone/Time of Angels, was imprisoned for shooting "a good man." I have a nagging feeling the good man she shoots is Rory.

I'm in the same position as Sid and Andrea - I can see that on a technical level the series is very well made, but it's just not engaging me on an emotional level.

I think the issue for me is that a lot of the realism that RTD brought to the series has been jettisoned. His approach - in Who and other works - is about the intersection of the extraordinary and the everyday, and usually presented from the perspective of someone normal who encounters an extraordinary world around them. That appeals to me because it mirrors the kinds of sf that I read - the characters in Philip K Dick or Ken MacLeod novels, for instance, might get involved in world-shattering events, but they also tend to be normal people with bills to pay too.

Moffat, however, comes at it from a different perspective, and the idea of it as a fairytale is telling. Fairytales don't take place in the here and now, and they tend not to include characters with mundane concerns as well. Now, I can see that some people prefer this approach, but it's not one that appeals to me because I tend to bounce off the absence of realism and question the feasibility of the world it's in. One big problem for me with ACC was that Sardick's world didn't feel like a feasible place - I'm not talking about the fish, but that the society and culture around him didn't seem real to me. Like a lot of other places in S5, it was a place where stories happened, not a place where people lived.

(If you've ever read Diana Wynne Jones' splendid Tough Guide to Fantasyland, you might recognise where I'm coming from, as it satirically points out that on a whole lot of levels, most fantasy worlds make absolutely no sense or have some very disturbing implications behind them)

So, I don't think Moffat's version of Who is bad, I just think it's not aimed at me and my preferences in the way that RTD's was, but there'll be the odd episode (like The Lodger) that does appeal to me.

Patrick wrote:I hate to interject a note of Series 6 into what is, obviously, a thread about the 2010 Christmas Special, but as we're now talking about Rory, a persistent thought has been percolating away in the back of my mind.

River Song, we're given to understand from Flesh & Stone/Time of Angels, was imprisoned for shooting "a good man." I have a nagging feeling the good man she shoots is Rory.

If that were to happen, I think it would be a huge creative misstep on Moffat's part.

Nick Barlow wrote:I'm in the same position as Sid and Andrea - I can see that on a technical level the series is very well made, but it's just not engaging me on an emotional level.

I think the issue for me is that a lot of the realism that RTD brought to the series has been jettisoned...

Thank you, Nick. Between your and andrea's input - coupled with the general back-and-forth exchange of ideas contributed by everyone else, for which many thanks all - I think I've finally succeeded in boiling down to its very essence what integral component has been missing for me.

For the first time ever, the inner child that lurks at the core of my being has ceased to implicitly trust and believe that at any given moment he could walk around a corner and find himself confronted by that big, battered blue box; doors wide open, just waiting for him to step inside to be whisked away for a series of incredible adventures.

It's actually the most ironic of personal paradoxes. By overtly injecting the fairytale element into the series, Moffat has only succeeded in (for my inner child at least) ripping aside the curtain to reveal the magic is really only some geezer frantically pulling levers and twisting dials on a prosaic machine.

I've been OZed.

I really enjoy A Christmas Carol. The injection of magic and urban fantasy (thanks Cat) is possibly my favourite thing about The Moff era and it's the element that most gives his era its own distinctive flavour. However, this is an important consideration:

Nick Barlow wrote:Ummm...I'm really not sure what to say about that. It looked good, Gambon and Smith were excellent, but (and I really hate to use this fan complaint cliche) I'm not sure it was Doctor Who.

Remember that whole 'interfering in established events is strictly forbodden' thing? The question now, every time the Doctor meets someone thwarting him, is why he doesn't go back into his life and make him help him. Now, you can make good stories doing that - a similar premise never harmed Quantum Leap - but are they Who stories?

It's strange isn't it? One of the greatest capacities Doctor Who has is the ability to tell different types of story. However, you remove the "interfering in established events is strictly forbidden' thing, and give the Doctor the capacity to interfere with events, then any story can become the Moffat puzzlebox-type. Now, I'm sure that most stories won't, but, now it's been raised as an acceptable plot solution, the "Why doesn't the Doctor just go back" question will be lurking in the air.

stanmore wrote:It's strange isn't it? One of the greatest capacities Doctor Who has is the ability to tell different types of story. However, you remove the "interfering in established events is strictly forbidden' thing, and give the Doctor the capacity to interfere with events, then any story can become the Moffat puzzlebox-type. Now, I'm sure that most stories won't, but, now it's been raised as an acceptable plot solution, the "Why doesn't the Doctor just go back" question will be lurking in the air.

Indeed. It is a potentially very dangerous precedent that's been set. The top of a steep and potentially very slippery slope for future producers/writers to take when they've written themselves into a very tight corner.

A trap the Start Trek producers increasingly sprung over the years with their "Big Shiny Red Reset Button".

4/5 for me, and, unlike the majority of series 5, this one did actually connect with me. Kazran felt like a character beyond the parameters of the story; whether through the writing or the performance, he certainly made more of an impression on me than a good chunk of the characters in Series 5.

Also, that bit where the Doctor played Ghost of Christmas Future with Young Kazran was cast iron genius.

However, reading through the thread, I would agree that some of the grounding and realism of the RTD era has been lost in the transition to Moffat. I am encouraged by the presence of a

Spoiler:

in the series 6 filming- it's no coincidence that The Lodger is my favourite series 5 episode.

Personally, I've loved the Moffat era so far, and part of me is mystified by the problems some have with it. It's different from the Davies era, yes, but so was the Davies era from those that came before it. I do think that there are two factors that need to be remembered here:

1) We have so far had 14 Moffat produced episodes, compared with 60 Davies produced episodes, and when looked at like that the superior episodes of the Davies era can't help but outnumber the Moffat era. Oddly enough, the same thing used to happen when people compared the Classic era with the first series or two of the Davies era. I would also say that the only part of the Davies era that we can compare series 5 with is series 2: essentially, Dr Who has already been cemented within the minds of the viewer, and we simply have to get used to a new Doctor. In my mind, series 5 is far superior to 2, no matter how much I may like individual stories in the later.

2) I think that Moffat is very much into metafiction, and that this has a distancing effect on his audience. Throughout his stories he has been fascinated in exploring the way people watch and interact with television: A Christmas Carol continued this trend with Old Kazran watching his young self and commenting upon the events he was watching, just as Time Of Angels had Amy able to 'turn off' a monster by essentially pressing the pause button on her tv remote, and of course, at the end of The Big Bang Amy called her fictional childhood friend to life.

Now I love metafiction, but at the end of the day it does give rise to the whole "why should I care about a story when it keeps telling me it's a story" and I think that's been subconsciously affecting people over the last year.

I really do think we're simply having to adjust to a vastly different storytelling style in Doctor Who whose closest comparison from the classic series is the switch over from Barry Letts to Phillip Hinchcliffe. Well do I remember the talk in the playground back in the mid seventies bemoaning the fact that the latest Baker story wasn't as good as when Pertwee was playing the Doctor. And now look, that era's seen as being the peak of the classic era.

The more things change...

stanmore wrote:It's strange isn't it? One of the greatest capacities Doctor Who has is the ability to tell different types of story. However, you remove the "interfering in established events is strictly forbidden' thing, and give the Doctor the capacity to interfere with events, then any story can become the Moffat puzzlebox-type. Now, I'm sure that most stories won't, but, now it's been raised as an acceptable plot solution, the "Why doesn't the Doctor just go back" question will be lurking in the air.

To me, it was no different than the usual "fixed points" versus "history can change" moments. Kazran's life, for whatever reason, was not a fixed point and was thus mutable. Doesn't mean that now every event can thusly be changed anymore than "fixed points" means none of them can.

Well, I feel a bit better about my inability to (so far) warm to Moffat's overall vision of Doctor Who as I now understand why a little better; particularly with Sid's, Nick's and Lee's posts, among others. The good thing is that I know I will still enjoy many individual stories, as I did last series.

I remain slightly worried both about too much rewriting of history (a personal prefernece as I start worrying and thinking too much about consequences for other characters and what if it was happening to me and...) and too much Doctor popping back and forth in time just for convenience so hope these will not occur too frequently.

Yes andrea, I think the fact that we have been able to hold a rational, informative and insightful discussion with both those who feel as we do and those who don't, has been of great benefit to everyone involved.

True, we can't like everything all of the time - but understanding why certain things are bothering us through discussion like this is basically the name of the game for this forum and its Wrinkly members.

And long may it continue.

Just a quick unfocused thought prompted by Lee's talk about metafiction, so apologies if this makes no sense:

Maybe that's another difference between RTD and Moffat - Moffat's interested in the way stories are told, while RTD's more interested in the content of those stories and their effect (in a similar way to Philip Pullman). Gridlock, for instance, is about how the inhabitants of the Motorway have to tell themselves stories and create rituals of them to keep themselves going, and Last Of The Time Lords is centred around the idea of Martha travelling the world and telling a story. And Love & Monsters is a story about an unreliable narrator.

Actually I think it makes a lot of sense, Nick. - as well as playing in nicely to many of the disparate points made throughout this thread. Viewed from the above perspective, it could be argued that the major difference in styles between RTD and Moffat is that the former embraces a much more humanist approach to the basic subject matter.

Highly interesting.

Yes, I think you are right there Nick.

Something else - I found Steven Moffat's stories were some of the highlights of RTD's time as showrunner ie Moffat's stories set within the wider context of RTD's vision. I wonder what it would be like to have an RTD story each Moffat series, whether they would fit in, be highlights and so on.

Sid Seadevil wrote:For the first time ever, the inner child that lurks at the core of my being has ceased to implicitly trust and believe that at any given moment he could walk around a corner and find himself confronted by that big, battered blue box; doors wide open, just waiting for him to step inside to be whisked away for a series of incredible adventures.

I never felt that way about the series. If I turned a corner and saw the actual TARDIS, I would have turned and run a mile, because it would have meant the Daleks, Cybermen, and worse of all the Wirrn were real, and could really get me. I knew exactly how dangerous The Doctor and his Companion's lives must be, so I was quite happy watching it on telly.

Zoltar wrote:

stanmore wrote:It's strange isn't it? One of the greatest capacities Doctor Who has is the ability to tell different types of story. However, you remove the "interfering in established events is strictly forbidden' thing, and give the Doctor the capacity to interfere with events, then any story can become the Moffat puzzlebox-type. Now, I'm sure that most stories won't, but, now it's been raised as an acceptable plot solution, the "Why doesn't the Doctor just go back" question will be lurking in the air.

To me, it was no different than the usual "fixed points" versus "history can change" moments. Kazran's life, for whatever reason, was not a fixed point and was thus mutable. Doesn't mean that now every event can thusly be changed anymore than "fixed points" means none of them can.

I'd just like to say that I have no problem with the concept at all - indeed, I actively enjoy time puzzle-paradoxes that the Moffster creates for us as well as films like Twelve Monkeys or Back to the Future. What I'm worried about if it becomes known as a thing that Doctor Who does.

The Browncoat Cat wrote:

Sid Seadevil wrote:For the first time ever, the inner child that lurks at the core of my being has ceased to implicitly trust and believe that at any given moment he could walk around a corner and find himself confronted by that big, battered blue box; doors wide open, just waiting for him to step inside to be whisked away for a series of incredible adventures.

I never felt that way about the series. If I turned a corner and saw the actual TARDIS, I would have turned and run a mile, because it would have meant the Daleks, Cybermen, and worse of all the Wirrn were real, and could really get me. I knew exactly how dangerous The Doctor and his Companion's lives must be, so I was quite happy watching it on telly.

Indeedy. I've only got fleeting memories of the time when I couldn't tell where Doctor Who ends and reality begins, but my over-riding memories are of "aarrrgghh! Sea Devils!" rather than anything else. For me, the whimsical idea of "wouldn't it be nice to travel in time and space with the curly-haired goon and his pretty lady friend?" came because I realised it was TV show.

Lee Carey wrote:
I really do think we're simply having to adjust to a vastly different storytelling style in Doctor Who

You've hit the nail on the head, I think. It seems to have taken me an entire season to warm up to the new overall style, despite taking to the new Doctor more or less immediately.

I know I've missed it while it's been off air and, while there are plenty of things to look forward to in 2011, when it comes to TV I'm still looking forward to Doctor Who the most.

I did like this years christmas special. But the flying fish were a bit weird I didn't see why the shark was their friend It was a bit mad a some bits I had to rate it 3 out of 5