At least twice. In the scene at the beginning when the ship is just beginning to crash, and at the end after they’re reunited with the Doctor.
I fondly recall the Fables of Aesop, the tale of the lion with a thorn in his paw. He is helped by a runaway slave named Androcles. I read these tales as a kid.
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0156.html
It seems Steven Moffat did too. Except, The Doctor helps a shark in trouble. The shark becomes a friend, pulls the cart and provides entertainment for the young child.
It’s a nice touch including this old tale in another old tale The Christmas Carole.
The shark was also an allusion to the crocodile in Peter Pan - with the sonic screwdriver head in lieu of a watch.
Doctor Who Christmas special episode : called Christmas Carol was so interesting and enjoyable episode to me. I gonna watch it online twice. Engaging story, wonderful acting include some incredibly touching moments. I hope no any one miss it. but if someone has missed it, then should gonna enjoy doctor who online . I am sure, you also enjoy it. as it is worth watching for Christmas holidays.
I loved this show (but I am an easily pleased Whovian). My only complaint: it would’ve been wonderful to see the Doctor with Marilyn.
I noticed that, too – the whole bridge layout, everything directed towards a big center screen, the hyper-sterile clean whiteness, the uniforms, and yes, the LENS FLARE – I half expected the exterior shot to be a riff on the iconic drives-engineering-saucer section design, but that probably would have taken things too far…
Anyway, count me as among those who thought the episode was pretty awesome. Favourite line: “It’s Christmas, I’m on a roof, there’s a chimney, and my whole brain just went – ‘Oh, what the hell’!”
But (and I know I probably should leave those nits unpicked), isn’t this whole ‘interaction with your past self’ supposed to be a BAD THING, creating paradoxes and causing strange winged things to eat up the ‘wound’ in time? Wasn’t there something with Rose touching her baby self?
Or is that just part of the new ‘time can be rewritten’-paradigm? It’s a new universe after all…
“Time can be rewritten” is Steven Moffat’s mantra for this Doctor. It will happen a lot, and that new freedom is something to do with either River Song or Amy Pond. Or both.
However, there are still fixed points in time, and the thing about the episode Father’s Day is that Rose’s Dad’s death was one of those, so everything surrounding that event wasn’t supposed to be dicked with.
Yep, Moffat sure loves his timey-wimey. I have mixed feelings about that.
There are a lot of indicators throughout the series that the laws of time travel are imposed by the Time Lords, rather than fundamental aspects of the universe.
How the Reapers from Father’s Day fit in here isn’t clear - however, the Doctor didn’t seem to think of this point until The Waters of Mars, so he may have been subconsciously imposing the rules he was taught.
Okay - I will admit this bugged me when Old Scrooge hugged young Scrooge. Every other time a non-Time Lord touched his (or her) past self Very Bad Things[sup]TM[/sup] happened. (The Brigadier and Rose come to mind.)
Otherwise, it was a lot of fun.
I loved it. It was my favorite one so far. You just have to not think too much about it 
I know. Has Doctor Who never watched Time Cop? Man, I expected Scrooge to turn into a puddle of goo.
OK, so once the Doctor screwed with Gambon’s past (sorry I forget his character name and have no idea how to spell it), we learn that the reason he kept Abigail on ice for so long was because he loved her and didn’t want her to use up her final day. But, what was the reason he kept her frozen *before *the Doctor got involved? He had never met her yet. Was he just doing it to be a dick or was there some other reason I missed?
And her family sure didn’t seem to age that much in 60+ years.
Pretty much. In the first version of Kazran’s life, his only influence had been his miserly and uncaring father, who started the practice of freezing people as ‘security’ for loans, and as much as he hated his father, kept doing a lot of stuff the same way the old man did.
When the Doctor interfered with Kazran’s childhood, to show him what love and joy could mean, Kazran started to change, until he learned that his time with Abigail had almost been used up. As he told the Doctor, now he was heartbroken instead of heartless, but the overall impact on his personality was much the same.
That’s what I got from it at any rate.
Exactly, Abby was on ice the first time, because her family was still in debt.
Now, this prompts a bit of a line of thought.
First, could the ‘0000008’ indicator be clearly seen on Abigail’s freezer container in the opening scene? I don’t remember spotting it there at that time.
When the family were petitioning on the first go-round for Karzan to let them spend Christmas with Abigail, they presumably knew that she had only 8 days or so left to live, and I expect that he probably knew it too, and that might have had a bearing on his decision to refuse - a sister with only 7 days left to live is marginally less effective security than one with 8, and much less security than a sister who could expect to live a long time after she’s released.
And further - I have a mental picture now of one of the family spotting that the indicator is only at 1 day while making their petition, and the father gets really upset, since she ‘should be’ at 8 or so. “Who’s been wasting her time left to live??”
It occurred to me that the family sort of had the joke on the banker. They used someone about to to die as collateral on a loan. That’s like me using a rusty 1988 Chevy with torn upholstery & 4 bad tires as collateral. No lender or banker would accept it.
I recall the singer lady said she knew she was sick and volunteered to go into the freezer to help her family.
TV writers paint themselves into odd corners sometimes. 
I thought of that, but the fact that there was the counter on Abigail’s freezer hints that the elder Karzan might have known her health issues when he took the ‘security’ and taken it into account. After all, a person with a terminal illness is very different emotionally from a physical possession in bad disrepair. The opening scene with the family pleading to get a small amount of time with Abigail rings true for me, even with the revelation about the nearness of her death.
There are a few motivations that Abigail or the family might have wanted her to go into the freezer, from vague sentimental ‘she will live on forever’ notions, to the specific idea that a medical breakthrough might make her disease curable in the future. (Like with contemporary Cryonics practice.) But the latter, at least, would only be possible with Karzan’s agreement to release custody of Abigail’s frozen body.
Why did he make sure the guy in the future could see his past being changed though?