Friday, 26 December 2014

Doctor Who: Last Christmas

Alien, The Thing and Inception. Being self-aware of where you’re getting your ideas is ok, but I’m not sure about this one.


So, I liked this episode…kind of…I liked the claustrophobic sets, I liked Nick Frost’s Santa and I liked he self-aware references to all the films that were making a more than significant contribution to the story. The problem is that if you’ve seen one of those films, the big twist of the episode isn’t really a twist. In fact, if you’ve seen “Amy’s Choice” then the third act twist won’t be a surprise at all.

But that aside, this is pretty fun to watch, Santa is a pretty good addition and watching Nick Frost run through the logistics of Christmas Eve is quite fun.

Capaldi is on top form as always. He seems to be toning down his Scottish accent and using a Tom Baker voice for some parts, which is an interesting choice.

Coleman is on similar form, though she doesn’t seem to be able to do a old-person voice.

The rest of the cast are all fine, but seem to fade into the background a little bit, one of them being a red-shirt.

But the purpose of the episode becomes more evident as it goes on. This is about resetting things to the way they were before the events of “Death in Heaven”. That’s slightly disappointing, since Moffat crafts a pretty good and suitably emotional way to write Clara out in this very episode. In fact you get the impression that he was among those who didn’t know whether Coleman would sign on for another series.

But anyway, everything’s back to normal aboard the TARDIS and back in place for series 9.



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