The first Christmas special for Matt Smith's Doctor and I have to say that this is without a doubt my favourite of all the Christmas specials. It's exciting, heartbreaking and just utterly utterly mad!
So as you can probably guess from the title, this is a take on the popular Christmas tale, A Christmas Carol. Amy and Rory are trapped on a spaceship caught in the atmosphere of this planet. The ship is going to crash one hour. The only way this can be prevented is to use a machine which tames the skies. Unfortunately this machine is owned and controlled by Kazran Sardik, and he couldn't give a single crap if the ship crashes. After several attempts to persuade him to help fail, the Doctor comes up with the genius plan of travelling back through time to visit Kazran as a younger man in order to try to prevent the events which led to him becoming such a bitter and nasty old man.
The way this is done is just brilliant. The future Kazran finds that his memories are starting to change as the Doctor rewrites his life. As Kazran states to Amy when talking about the Doctor "I'd never met him before tonight, now I seem to have known him all my life"
Kazran's business is money lending, a business that he inherited from his cruel father. As insurance they take one of the family members from the family the loan is being made to and keep them in a kind of freezer chamber where their bodies are suspended in time. It's from here that we meet Abigail played by opera singer Catherine Jenkins. I was a little dubious when I heard she was cast in the Christmas special but she's actually amazing in the part and it helps of course that she is an excellent singer as the role includes several parts where she is required to sing, which is just beautiful.
So the young Kazran releases Abigail from the ice with the Doctor and this starts an annual tradition that every Christmas Eve the Doctor will return and him, Kazran and Abigail will go off on adventures for one night only. This goes on for several years until Kazran and Abigail have fallen for each other. Which is pretty bad as Abigail reveals to Kazran that she was on the verge of death when she was frozen and the number on her ice tomb indicates how many days she has left. This number now being at "1". This turns Kazran into the bitter man that we see in the future and it does make us think quite badly of the Doctor. As Kazran says "I would never have met her if the Doctor hadn't rewritten my whole life to suit himself" It also leaves Kazran with the devastating decision in that he knows he has one day left to spend with the love of his life, so he can't bring himself to let her out for that final day.
On top of this great story we have the sheer madness of the planet itself! It's a world where fish can swim in fog and the bigger the fog the bigger the fish. This means that you have sharks swimming through clouds! It shouldn't work because it's insane but it does work somehow.
I love this episode so much I just want to watch it again now!
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