Christmas Special 2010 (Possible Spoilers)

[colmquinn]

Can I take from the lack of posts in the week since showing that this episode was as underwhelming for others as I thought it was? Sure I know its a Xmas episode and as such isn't really a proper episode but a rehash of A Christmas Carol isn't what I really wanted.

Michael Gambon was, of course fantastic. The whole floating fish things were just silly (but I can more or less forgive that as it is an infinite universe after all). Being able to rewrite time that easily kind of chaffes as well, why has he never done it before?, does that mean that S Moffett can use that trick again in future episodes to get around unfortunate plot situations?

[Sonic Glitch]

I unfortunately did not get to watch it in its entirety, but from what I read before hand a rehash of A Christmas Carol was exactly what they intended, so I'd assume if they pulled that off it was alright. I was intrigued by the few minutes i did see tho.

[IanKennedy]

I thought it was excellent. Was it a re-working of "A Christmas Carroll", well sort of but only in the same way the Titanic xmas special was a re-working of Titanic. Did he show him is past present and future and then attempt to use the telling to change him, No, not one little bit. Was it a typical Dr Who episode, yes, very much so. Can't wait to see this year's series.

[Mikey]

Underwhelming is the perfect word for it. I have grown from antipathy for Matt Smith to rather liking him, but this ep did nothing for me. There wasn't anything especially bad about it, and Gambon was excellent - but there was nothing more than "meh" about it, either.

[Graham Kennedy]

I rather liked it. The setup with the planet was interesting - permanent weird fog layers and flying fish are exactly the kind of thing that Who does best, stuff that doesn't really necessarily make sense, but it creates an atmosphere of genuine alien-ness on the planet, the sense that we're somewhere truly different to Earth.

I loved the whole "You didn't hit him" moment. If the guy had been a truly evil man, the Doctor would have destroyed him, and done it easily; this is the man who defeats Gods and Monsters that threaten the whole universe, he'd crush a mere businessman under his heel like you or I would squash an ant. And he's all set to do that, until he sees that the guy won't hit the kid... that's the moment when you see him realise that this guy isn't evil, more of a victim himself - somebody he has to help, not destroy.

And I thought the Christmas Carol thing worked perfectly for Doctor Who - what other franchise could so easily include the past and future? Seeing the guy sitting there watching his own memories change... weird. Not at all sure that time should work that way, but it's typical of Who that such considerations are simply dismissed because they universe is really this "Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey" thing.

Things that didn't quite work or stuck out a bit... I've no idea who the blonde woman is, I gather she's some famous singer who's not acted before? She was okay... but they obviously tailored the script so that she didn't have to act, and got to sing a couple of times. It felt... not quite forced, exactly, but a bit contrived.

And Amy and Mr Pond. Both spent almost the whole time on the spaceship, which felt very much like it was filmed separately in a "come in for the day" sort of a way. This strikes me as curious... were the actors not available for the whole thing? It seems odd, because it's the kind of thing that happened with Martha Jones, almost as if they decided they didn't quite want her on the show but didn't want to get rid of her either.

Overall not quite stellar, but pretty good.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Perfct? No. But pretty damned good all around.

[Mikey]

To me, the weird clouds and atmospheric fish weren't off-putting because of their "Doctor Who-ness," but felt very much like a contrivance.

[Sionnach Glic]

Personally, I really liked it.

I found one thing interesting, though. During one particular scene, the Doctor keeps reacting to the fish biting him....despite the fact that there aren't any fish anywhere near him. Did they just run out of money for the CGI fish in that scene, or is this some sort of foreshadowing?

[colmquinn]

Nah I'd say on a wet world like that I'd say its just those tiny midge flies, little buggers

[Mikey]

Personally, I really liked it.

I found one thing interesting, though. During one particular scene, the Doctor keeps reacting to the fish biting him....despite the fact that there aren't any fish anywhere near him. Did they just run out of money for the CGI fish in that scene, or is this some sort of foreshadowing?

Right, down in the freezer vault. Maybe it was atmo-plankton?

[Mikey]

Hmmm, sorry for the double but I was just thinking... is it possible that those imagined "bites" are an early symptom of some heretofore-unnamed Gallifreyan disease that will manifest next season?