# Doctor Who: Last Christmas episode discussion **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 25, 2014, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134 "2014-12-25T02:09:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2014, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/41 "2014-12-29T10:48:23Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > Maybe he gets awakened by Shona (who gets my vote for next companion when Clara does leave). Shona’s interpretive dance to “Merry Christmas, Everybody” was a thing of wonder. And Slade must have earnt a fair few quid off Doctor Who over the past ten years or so; I’m pretty sure that song has been in every Christmas special. [QUOTE=grude] They did not seem to have or be capable of using technology, are we supposed to think someone snuck into their rooms while they were sleeping? [/quote] They came down the chimney, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2014, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/42 "2014-12-29T18:24:31Z")
I thought it was a good episode. When it comes to plots involving dreams within dreams within dreams, I’m usually pretty fed up by the time that the final “we are still dreaming” twist is revealed. But in this case, I was having too good a time watching the final reveal looking for the exact moment where the writers had to toss out the original story and think up something else in light of Jenna Coleman’s late choice to come back to the show. ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2014, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/43 "2014-12-29T21:10:55Z")
Good lord, please let this show finally be done with Danny Pink. I can’t stand this character and they keep. bringing him. back. Other than that, I liked the episode. The dream-within-a-dream device was completely uninspired, but it was executed fairly well. I loved Santa and his elves–they were by far the best part of the show. ---
**Author:** ![jharvey963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/54ee81/32.png) [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2014, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/44 "2014-12-29T21:13:45Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Give them caffeinated drinks and sugar snacks, and put them close to the TV. This wins the thread. 😃 Also, thanks for cleaning out my nose with the water I was drinking. 🙂 J. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2014, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/45 "2014-12-29T23:42:48Z")
I would have enjoyed the plot more if I hadn’t seen the “we’re all still dreaming” twist in episodes of Star Trek Voyager and The X-Files. My favorite line: “You know why it’s so hard to tell the difference between fantasy and reality? Because they’re both ridiculous.” Capaldi just nailed that delivery. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2014, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/46 "2014-12-29T23:46:34Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Tangerines. British thing, or random dream weirdness like the cheese guy on Buffy? It used to be an American thing to get an orange in one’s stocking, or so the history books say. (Article mentioning it: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-legend-of-the-christmas-stocking-160854441/](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-legend-of-the-christmas-stocking-160854441/) ) I suppose the “tangerine” custom might be related. But, speaking of British Things: when did Santa Claus banish Father Christmas from the British Isles? (Or _did_ he?—did UK viewers see a version with Nick Frost in the long red gown, etc.–?) ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/47 "2014-12-30T00:17:46Z")
It is the Inception problem all over again, if the crabs can simulate reality perfectly and as many layers of it as they want how can you EVER be sure you are really back in reality? Hell how can you ever be sure where the unreality started? It is rather horrifying if you think of it. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/48 "2014-12-30T00:23:03Z")
> [@WolfpackJeep](#): > > So how far back does the dream go? It’s dream crabs all the way down. ---
**Author:** ![Octarine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/22d042/32.png) [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/49 "2014-12-30T01:16:00Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > Actually, the fact that in “reality” the creatures looked so close to Facehuggers/Headcrabs means that everyone was _still_ drawing on shared references on what the aliens actually looked like, just as much as they shared a common cultural source for the images of the North Pole base. We still have no idea what the aliens _really_ resemble, and the happy ending where they just fall off and shrivel away was just part of the dream state they are still inducing. Huh. I guess I’m completely naive, because the idea that the ending wasn’t really the ending didn’t even occur to me, although I agree it would tie up a lot of the loose ends (no wounds from the creatures, no explanation of where they came from, etc). Moffat’s said that everything but the last scene [was a dream](http://www.cultbox.co.uk/news/headlines/doctor-who-writer-moffat-confirms-what-was-real-in-last-christmas) - would that include each of the people “waking up”? His trustworthiness in press conferences in approximately 0%, so I’ll take it with a grain of salt. > [@Infovore](#): > > I wonder if they’d be brave enough to have Season 9 all end up being a big dream, Clara really DID leave at the end of Season 8, and all the adventures they had together in Season 9 didn’t really happen? Maybe he gets awakened by Shona (who gets my vote for next companion when Clara does leave). That would be _really_ cool, but it’d take guts. I could see Shona being a great companion - for some reason I see K9 and her getting along well (though maybe that’s just me and my K9 obsession). > [@dropzone](#): > > It’s dream crabs all the way down. And the award for the Most Terrifying Great A’tuin goes to . . . ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/50 "2014-12-30T01:29:26Z")
Hmmmm… Assuming the method the Doctor worked out in the dream for telling if it was a dream really works, I guess he could have Clara close her eyes and then he enters a specific time and place in the Tardis console, one she has no memory of but he does, and then once there tell her to open the doors and come back in and describe it to him while he closes his eyes. If he went to a desert, and she describes a jungle they know something is up. Or was that proven not to work inside the episode? ---
**Author:** ![Octarine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/22d042/32.png) [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/51 "2014-12-30T01:56:26Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Hmmmm… > > Assuming the method the Doctor worked out in the dream for telling if it was a dream really works, I guess he could have Clara close her eyes and then he enters a specific time and place in the Tardis console, one she has no memory of but he does, and then once there tell her to open the doors and come back in and describe it to him while he closes his eyes. > > If he went to a desert, and she describes a jungle they know something is up. > > Or was that proven not to work inside the episode? That’d work - they could also just do the book trick (since, knowing Doctor Who, the minute Clara steps outside to see what’s there she’ll get abducted by aliens or something). The book test worked in proving all the dreams to be dreams - the uncertain one is the last stage, where they were all separated and couldn’t do it. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/52 "2014-12-30T02:26:44Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Tangerines. British thing, or random dream weirdness like the cheese guy on Buffy? Someone I was watching it with said it’s definitely a British thing. The fact that I got them in my stocking as a child was immaterial; it’s a British thing. She’s sometimes accurate. > [@Penfeather](#): > > . . . They came down the chimney, of course. Wonderful. I vote that we make this cannon. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/53 "2014-12-30T02:44:37Z")
"Face - _Huggers?"_ gets the Capaldi line delivery award. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/54 "2014-12-30T02:44:45Z")
Thinking about this I can come up with only one suspect for who put the crabs down the chimney. The Doctor himself did it, hear me out! Did they state definitively how long it had been since Clara left him? The Doctor lonely and missing Clara invents an excuse for an adventure, he tosses a crab in her and four other random Londoner’s chimneys so Clara won’t get too suspicious. Then he goes to the volcano or wherever he was and crabs himself so he can join in the shared dream, since he is the only one who knows what is going on. Clara couldn’t just say f\*\*k this and demand he return her because they weren’t in normal reality, she was trapped with him in this adventure. The fact Clara chose to rejoin him at the end was just gravy. ---
**Author:** ![Toucanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Toucanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toucanna)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/55 "2014-12-30T16:41:52Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > {snip} Slade must have earnt a fair few quid off Doctor Who over the past ten years or so; I’m pretty sure that song has been in every Christmas special. {snip} And, the non-Xmas episode, _Turn Left_, S04E11 (in an alternate-reality scene set during Xmas 🙂 ). > [@dropzone](#): > > It’s dream crabs all the way down. \>\>golf clap\<\< Well played. > [@Octarine](#): > > {snip} Moffat’s said that everything but the last scene was a dream - would that include each of the people “waking up”? His trustworthiness in press conferences in approximately 0%, so I’ll take it with a grain of salt. {snip} I agree. BTW, imo, the dream must have started with the post-credits scene in _Death in Heaven_. > [@Octarine](#): > > {snip} The book test worked in proving all the dreams to be dreams… “Lots of people find they can’t read text in a dream, that if they see text it’s almost always garbled or hieroglyphics or doesn’t make sense or it’s fuzzy. People who can read in a dream will still report that the text is not stable; if they look away and then back, it says something different or there’s no longer any writing there.” Source: [How Can You Control Your Dreams? | Scientific American](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-control-dreams/) > [@grude](#): > > {snip} Then [the Doctor] goes to the volcano or wherever he was and **crabs himself so he can join in the shared dream, since he is the only one who knows what is going on**. {snip} (Emphasis is mine.) You raise a good point. And there is precedent for him behaving that way. See: _Time Heist_, S08E04. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2014, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/56 "2014-12-31T22:44:53Z")
> [@Toucanna](#): > > “Lots of people find they can’t read text in a dream, that if they see text it’s almost always garbled or hieroglyphics or doesn’t make sense or it’s fuzzy. People who can read in a dream will still report that the text is not stable; if they look away and then back, it says something different or there’s no longer any writing there.” > Source: [How Can You Control Your Dreams? | Scientific American](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-control-dreams/) I have no problem reading in a dream. I generally doesn’t come up, but if it does, I can. I get pretty sick of the trope some shows use where “you absolutely cannot read in a dream because right brain left brain”, because it’s just not true. Also not true, if you die in the dream you die for real. How would you know? If that was the case anyone who dreamed they died wouldn’t be able to tell you what they were dreaming of! Also I have died in dreams. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2014, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/57 "2014-12-31T22:48:03Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > Tangerines, clementines and satsumas all seem pretty much the same thing to me. 😕 I was asking about why the episode kept bringing them up, not how they relate to other orange like fruits. ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2014, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/58 "2014-12-31T23:15:38Z")
> [@WolfpackJeep](#): > > At one point, the Doctor points out that the face huggers are physically linked to each person’s brain…that there was some _thing_ jabbed into each person’s skull. Sometime shortly after the first ‘removal’ of a face hugger, it’s even remarked that there’s no sign of a wound, which turns out to be a clue that they’re still dreaming. So why are there no visible wounds at the end, when the dream has supposedly ended? > [@Penfeather](#): > > Actually, the fact that in “reality” the creatures looked so close to Facehuggers/Headcrabs means that everyone was _still_ drawing on shared references on what the aliens actually looked like, just as much as they shared a common cultural source for the images of the North Pole base. **We still have no idea what the aliens _really_ resemble** … These two points (the second of which I hadn’t thought of before; bolding mine) make me suspect this story may not be over yet. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/59 "2015-01-01T00:10:54Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Tangerines. British thing, or random dream weirdness like the cheese guy on Buffy? Tangerines are a common stocking stuffer. I got them in the US, but that may just be because I really like them. It might be a British thing. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2015, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134/60 "2015-01-01T00:12:54Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > 😕 > > I was asking about why the episode kept bringing them up, not how they relate to other orange like fruits. Oh right. All three small orange-like fruits are a common stocking stuffer in Britain. Possibly nectarines too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-last-christmas-episode-discussion/708134.md?page=4)