Doctor Who: Last Christmas

"So that's 22 million children per hour. That's impossible! So, obviously, I've got a second sled?"

Could this be the best Christmas episode ever? It really could be, although I'm glad that an episode questioning the existence of Father Christmas happens before my daughter is born. We combine the real strengths of Moffat's storytelling- an imaginatively conceptual monster that revolves around our perception of it and intricate plotting- with real heart, wit and fun. Naysayers beware: this blog post will consist of 100% gushing.

I love the whole concept of dreams within dreams, and the dream crabs themselves, which look like face huggers from Alien (as we're told, by Michael Troughton's Albert!) and always attack you when you think about them (that is sooo Moffat), anaesthetising you with nice dreams as they melt your face off. Lovely.

Oh, and Santa is in it. With all the best lines. Nick Frost is perfect casting, and all the scenes with Santa and the elves are hilarious, leavening what could otherwise be the grimness of the base under siege format.

The plot is a marvel to behold and, wonderfully, any conceivable plot hole can be justified that the whole thing (including the very end of Death in Heaven) is a dream except the last few minutes. It's not a dream without dramatic consequences, though; the Doctor and Clara finally admit that they lied to each other and parted for absolutely no good reason. Oh, and we seem to get to know Shona suspiciously well for a one off character. Could we be seeing her again?

(Shona, incidentally, gets the best metatextual moment of the episode as she wakes up in her drab flat; her Christmas to-do list includes three DVDs- Alien, The Thing from Another World and Miracle on 34th Street- which are the clear influences for the episode. Nicely done.)

Obviously, Clara dreams about Danny (will he stay dead?) in a lovely character scene in which Danny, wonderfully, insists that he didn't die saving the world; he died saving Clara. The rest of us were just along for the ride. And Moffat cruelly wrong-foots is at the end, showing the Doctor returning to an elderly Clara (nice age make-up for once), having squandered the chance forever to travel with her again. But this is all a dream; the Doctor and Clara get a second chance, and we end with them travelling together again.

A really nice touch here, incidentally, is the fact that the Doctor can't tell the difference between old and new Clara. Another nice touch is the description we get of the Memory Crabs: "We're getting hacked. The visual input from your optic nerve is being streamed to their brains". I have to marvel at how Moffat, as he did in The Bells of St John, describes an alien threat perfectly in terms of very contemporary technology. The only death (Albert) is shown figuratively by having him pulled into a screen, some excellent nightmare logic. And the Doctor has a line in the sand: "Santa Claus does not do the scientific explanation."

Best Christmas episode ever!!!

Blake's 7: The Children of Auron

“The trouble with the people of Auron is that they all suffer from a superiority complex.”

Is it me, or does Servalan look particularly ravishing in this episode with that gorgeous make-up? Then again, I do have a bit of a predilection for evil women. She’s back, anyway, complete with mutoids and fractious underlings, and this time she’s more heinous than ever, planning to unleash a plague on Cally’s home planet of Auron.

Meanwhile, aboard the Liberator, Avon (who seems to be more or less top dog at this point) has decided they’re all going to Earth to “execute” Anna Grant’s killer. This is a far cry from Blake’s idealism (although this, as we’ve seen, carried its own big problems), and I think the sheer crudeness of this desire for revenge rather appals Cally, who spends this episode uncharacteristically at odds with him. But this stuff, of course, is only here to be contrasted with the motivations Cally is soon to acquire, which will cause Avon to be outvoted.

Servalan “rescues” an Auronar pilot (Michael Troughton) and infects him with a nasty pathogen before sending him on his way, and he duly infects the planet. This is the first time we’ve got to see Auron, a planet we’ve heard so much about, and it’s a crushing disappointment to behold; a control room staffed by people in dull space uniforms, an equally dull laboratory, and a bit of location footage shot in an industrial complex. That’s it. And, aside from the fact that for the last three decades they’ve reproduced by cloning (why?), they’re a bit telepathic (although we only actually see this with Cally and her sister, although it’s only the younger, cloned, generations that seem capable of this), and they’re strictly neutral, we get absolutely no impression of their having any kind of culture or hinterland. It’s a terrible waste of an opportunity.

Conveniently, Cally has a twin sister, Zelda, and Zelda’s telepathic abilities are apparently capable of traversing many light years instantaneously to reach Cally. So, er, telepathic vibes can travel faster than light then? Oooo-kaaay…

Avon is unable to persuade everyone that it’s a trap, so off they go. It is a trap, of course, but it’s more than that. Servalan wants to use their cloning technology to reproduce- asexually, with all the children being young copies of herself. It’s interesting to see Servalan showing a maternal instinct, but there’s something cold and sexless, not to mention genocidal, about how she intends to fulfil it.

I realise this is going to make be sound incredibly stupid, by the way, but it’s only when Avon suggests consulting Orac about what to do that I realised that Orac is transparently intended as a kind of “oracle”. How thick am I? Never mind. It’s also revealing to hear the Auronars refer to Servalan as merely the “president” of a “faction” of the “ex-Federation”. It seems her powers are not as great as her fancy title might imply.

Everyone, aside from Dayna, Vila and, if he counts, Orac, teleport down, and it’s not long before they and their rather wet hosts are taken prisoner by one of Servalan’s squabbling underlings. Servalan is now in a position to bargain with Vila for the Liberator by threatening to kill everyone. Unfortunately, her plan fails miserably because for some reason she forgets Dayna exists. It’s nice to see Dayna kicking some arse, incidentally. She’s being written with more personality than lately, and I like her- smart, loyal, fond of administering a good kicking but ultimately kind and caring. Plus Josette Simon is rather attractive, I have to say…

As usual, Servalan’s plans unravel, and the subplot between Servalan’s two underlings becomes interesting; Ginka, the junior underling, lies to Servalan, claiming that his superior officer destroyed her own offspring and replaced them with his. This means Servalan no longer has any reason to blow up the room out heroes are hiding in. They all manage, with Dayna’s help, to teleport away, complete with incubators containing the genetic material for five thousand babies. Inevitably, Cally and her sister (who inevitably meet, although only through glass; the budget won’t stretch to split screen!) can’t both be allowed to live due to the strains this would place on the special effects budget, so Zelda has to rather pointlessly sacrifice herself.

Servalan instinctively knows that her own “children” are blown up (er, quite), and is genuinely anguished by this, instantly killing both of this episode’s underlings.

It’s not clear how this ends for Auron- there’s to be a new Auronar colony with a disturbingly young median age, yes, but what happened to the survivors on Auron itself? This is a fairly rubbish script from Roger Parkes, really, and the Hanna Barbera ending is possibly the worst bit of all.