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Original Transmission
Cast The Doctor Matt Smith
Crew Written by Steven Moffat
Senior Visual Effects Artist Craig Higgins
Plot Outline from Wikipedia The crew of a space liner carrying more than 4000 passengers struggles to maintain the ship's course while travelling through the strange cloud cover of a human-inhabited planet that interferes with their controls. Amy and Rory, aboard the liner for their honeymoon, send a distress call to the Doctor to help. The Doctor is unable to use the TARDIS directly to save the liner, and lands at a house topped by a giant antenna-like spire that seems to control the clouds. The sole resident of the house is bitter, peevish, old Kazran Sardick. The wealthiest and most powerful man on the planet, his father had built the spire. The Doctor tries to convince Kazran to turn off the cloud controls — isomorphically locked to him — but he mockingly refuses. Kazran, like his late father, considers the rest of the population of the planet little more than cattle, and cares not for the lives aboard the liner either. This becomes apparent to the Doctor when Kazran refuses to release a young woman, Abigail, from cryonic storage to her family for even a Christmas day. Recognizing that Kazran's father has had a significant effect on Kazran's life, the Doctor devises a scheme inspired by Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the idea being to influence Kazran in his past and present to become more compassionate to the lives aboard the liner.
The Doctor visits a young Kazran shortly after his father had struck him for trying to experiment with a unique phenomenon of the planet: the ability of all manner of fish to "swim" in the foggy air. The Doctor discovers the ice in the clouds contain a weak electrical charge; this is what allows the fish to swim, but is also what is disrupting the space liner. The "boys" experiment with the fish anyway, until a shark attacks them and swallows the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. The Doctor recovers half, but inadvertently harms the shark in the process; it cannot return to swim in the clouds. The Doctor concludes that some sort of life support container could transport the shark safely to the clouds. Young Kazran shows the Doctor a system of cryonic chambers beneath the spire, where Kazran's father stores as "security" family members of people to whom he has lent money. Kazran directs the Doctor to Abigail's chamber; Kazran knows she had been fascinated by the fish before she was put into storage. They release her, and she sings to the shark, resonating with the ice crystals, and calming it. The three then successfully return the shark to the clouds.
Before putting Abigail back into her chamber, Kazran promises that he and the Doctor will return every Christmas Eve to celebrate it with Abigail. The Doctor keeps this promise, travelling forward every year to reunite Kazran and Abigail, taking them across time and space, and watching them develop a romance as he grows to a young adult and is introduced to her family. However, after several Christmas Eves, Abigail reveals a secret to Kazran, leading him to decide to end the tradition and leave her in cryonic storage indefinitely. The Doctor gives the broken half of the sonic screwdriver to Kazran to use when he needs it. Meanwhile, in the present, older Kazran enjoys his many new memories, but, heartbroken at Abigail's fate, still refuses to disable the spire.
From the liner, Amy appears to present-time Kazran as a hologram. She shows Kazran the crew of the doomed liner, singing Christmas carols, using the musical vibrations to partially stabilise the ship within the cloud system, just as Abigail calmed the shark, but still leaving the ship doomed to crash. Kazran waves away the holograms, continuing to refuse to release the controls. When the Doctor appears to show Kazran his future, Kazran reveals Abigail's secret, that she was dying before she was frozen and will live only one more day outside of the chamber, and that he does not feel qualified to decide which day that should be. Having fully accepted that he is fated to die alone, he chastises the Doctor for being so naive as to think such a revelation could affect him. Unbeknownst to Kazran, the Doctor has brought young Kazran into the present to show the boy his future; he is shocked and terrified by his elder self's bitterness and spite. This change is reflected in the newly compassionate older Kazran, and he agrees to release the spire controls. They find, however, that the Doctor's interference has changed Kazran's past too much; the isomorphic controls will no longer recognize him as the same person, so he is locked out of the system.
The Doctor concocts a new plan: by unfreezing Abigail and having her sing through the broken half of the sonic screwdriver amplified by the spire, the other half, still inside the shark, would be able to resonate the ice crystals, disrupting the cloud field, and allowing the liner to safely land. Kazran is aware that Abigail will die after one day, but he releases her anyway; she comforts him, reminding him they have had many Christmas Eves together and it is time for Christmas Day to come. The Doctor's plan is successful, and as the ship safely lands on the planet, the breakup of the clouds releases snow across the city. As the Doctor takes young Kazran back to his past and reunites with Amy and Rory, the old Kazran and Abigail celebrate a shark-drawn carriage ride together.
Analysis by Cuisle Unbelievably, there were people who didn’t like this episode. Some of them can be completely discounted. They are uncultured types who don’t like the idea of an opera singer playing a role in a TV drama. One or two others complained that it was a ‘trivial’ story. Well, yes, it was. It was made for Christmas Day, at 6pm, when people have eaten and drunk too much and are worn out from being nice to each other all day. Trivial, light-weight, easy to understand stories are what is called for. The makers of Doctor Who made the mistake last Christmas of making an episode that was complex and thought-provoking and the complaint was that it was too complicated and they didn’t understand it. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. For those prepared to be entertained, there was a beautifully designed set, an excellent score, including a Christmas Carol specially written for the episode – next year’s soundtrack CD eagerly awaited – and marvellous performances from both the old hand of Sir Michael Gambon and Katherine Jenkins making her acting debut.
The story was a futuristic take on A Christmas Carol, obviously. The Doctor was the Ghost of Christmas Past who used the TARDIS to show Kazran Sardick why he didn’t need to be bitter and mean and that he could show compassion to the people in the stricken spaceship. It was far from a simple reworking of the classic, though. The Doctor actually gets it wrong. Kazran becomes bitter BECAUSE he falls in love with Abigail through The Doctor’s intervention and cannot be with her. It takes a bit more effort to save the day in the end. The scariest thing in the whole episode had to be the moment when it looked like Kazran was going to strike the child at the beginning. The very idea of that happening on a Doctor Who episode, especially at Christmas, was shocking. The scene when Kazran’s father DID beat him was cut at just the right moment and it was left to the imagination. Very well done.
The second scariest thing was the first view of the shark, all teeth and gaping mouth. In the scale of killer shark filming, there is Jaws at the top end and Shark Attack Three at the bottom, with the lamest effects imaginable. Doctor Who comes somewhere inbetween. The effects were the best that could be expected on a BBC drama budget. They worked well enough for anyone prepared to suspend disbelief and not make a fuss about them. In fact, the fish swimming about in the air were quite beautifully done. If it didn’t look entirely realistic, then what do you expect? This is science fiction. Before the episode aired, most online blogs had concluded that the
Radio Times image of The Doctor in a santa hat driving a carriage
pulled by a shark was a joke. They could not see how it could fit
into the story. Lack of imagination, people. It fits perfectly in
a fun, creative, none-too serious story for Christmas day.
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