Very meh. This was my least liked Christmas Special of all of them. Way too sappy and there really wasn’t much if any conflict. The Doctor didn’t even really do anything. This would have been lame enough as just a regular mid-season episode but as the Christmas Special it was even worse.
Here is what I like about it as a Christmas special.
The Doctor was just trying to be like Santa (and of course crazy scary shit happens instead). Trying to show kindness and joy and excitement to some strange kids for one day. For one day, kids get to dream and have kid like fun rather than suffer the shitstorm (or future shitstorm) life can be.
yeah - he just happened to pick (or have picked for him) the wrong day to visit the safest planet in the universe - conveniently about to be strip mined by humans for some power source.
I liked it, I hated it - it seemed to hit all the needed cliche aspects that were expected of it -
Its trees disguised as a building - with a door, cause people have to open doors!
Well, of course the Doctor is always going to save the day, but it’s more fun when the resolution flows naturally from the set-up. The wrap up this year felt really arbitrary.
A people trap!
Last year’s Christmas Carol was, IMO, the best of the Christmas specials, with The Next Doctor in a close second and this one a distant third. I liked it okay. The Doctor was appropriately mad cap (and a little more manic than usual, which I liked, seeing as how he’s been without a constant companion for about 200 years at this point). The “monsters” were a lot of fun. The little boy and girl were appropriately adorable and not annoying. But the story seemed a little overly rushed, and the ending was nearly unforgivable. They could have cut so much unnecessary fat (the padded begining, the stupid ending, and, I’m sorry to say, Bill Bailey, who was wasted) and written a story about a woman trying to come to terms with her husband’s death and paralleled it with the Doctor’s loneliness.
But still, it was good for a Christmas special. I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but Doctor Who Christmas Specials tend to be kind of awful. I’m not sure how much of it stems from me being an American and not getting the “zaniness” of UK Christmas (for example, Panto plays, or nativities with lobsters 
) but I hate the first three Christmas specials. Killer Christmas Trees? Robot Santas with trumpet guns? Angels attacking fat people in gaudy western wear? Uh, no thanks. They’re just too silly, and not in any good way. So I can almost forgive The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe for being smalzy, because at least it could be taken seriously.
That sums up the Doctor’s life very well. I feel sorry for the guy. He invites somebody along for a nice day at the beach and something horrible happens. Life never gives the Doctor a break from tragedy.
I think since faking his death the Doctor really is trying to avoid trouble. He choose the safest planet in the galaxy and bad stuff still happened. It all worked out and they even saved the dad that was about to crash.
If it helps, I am British and think all the Christmas specials rank amongst the worst Who ever. Last year’s was a low point for Who all round.
Amanset - you need to put the crack pipe down. If you think last year’s was the worst ever you clearly didn’t see that foolishness with the space Titanic and Kylie Minogue.
But what happened to the two other guys on the plane?
Were they just left somewhere over the Channel? Did I miss that?
No, I meant it literally. The Doctor is a God in the Machine. If ever there was a Deus ex Machina, it’s Doctor Who.
It was Christmas. They had to bail early to go see their own families.
Largely because you’re an adult, I suspect. Of all the Who episodes, the Xmas Specials are the most specifically designed for kids.
I may have blocked it out.
Yet I can enjoy other stuff targeted towards kids. It is more the sickly sweetness of them and the stunt casting (see Kylie as mentioned earlier and that Opera singing lass from last year). As a kid I doubt I would have liked them and friends’ kids (I am childless myself, most of my friends seem to have kids around 12 years old) seemed to be disappointed as well.
And wasn’t Anderson “in a bad way”? When the bomber showed up on the lawn I yelled “Quick! Someone get Anderson to a hospital!” but no one did. I guess he was already dead.
It reminded me in a lot of ways of Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” from 1985, where a B-17 bomber was set to crash land until something “magical” happens (the episode “The Mission”).
is that the one with the cartoon wheels? i loved the ep - until **those **appeared. :rolleyes: completely and utterly took me out of the story. very disappointing.
Nitpick - This being a British show, shouldn’t that be "the Doctor was just trying to be like “Father Christmas”? That’d also fit in with the theme of the Doctor trying to fill the void left in the family when Madge’s husband went missing.
I liked it. I wouldn’t want some dark weighty intense episode on Christmas day of all times. I liked that it was a lightweight, breezy story with an obvious but still effective outcome. Although I was trying too hard to guess the ending, since I had some notion that Cyril (who had red-hair) would somehow turn out to be the grandfather (or great grandfather) of Amy.
And speaking of Amy, she & Rory are aging extremely well for humans. Every time the Doctor pops back into their lives, it’s been a year, two, six…and yet they never seem to get older. Granted, they’d probably be in their late 20s / early 30s by this time in the series chronology, so she woulldn’t look like “the Girl Who Waited”, but Amy still looks she’s barely 20. I suppose it’s all that Time Lord DNA they absorbed while fornicating in the TARDIS. 
I’m surprised that the reaction is tilting so negative on this one! I thought this was the best Christmas special so far, and an excellent Who episode all around. I came here expecting to compare all of our favorite bits. This had such good dialog! Especially this bit (paraphrased from memory):
MOTHER: What are you doing with your telescope?
BROTHER: Astronomy!
SISTER: You make words up! You’re always making things up!
MOTHER: Where’s your father?
BROTHER: In the garden.
MOTHER: What’s he doing there?
BROTHER: Agriculture.
SISTER: You’re not fooling anyone!
I loved the kids, especially the girl, who was did some great acting when she and the doctor were looking at the “stars” forming on the trees. And the look she gave when the Doctor asked “Who opens their Christmas presents early? . . . . Oh, shut up! Everyone!”
I usually don’t like the Christmas specials nearly as much as the other episodes, but this one was just about perfect, IMO, and made up a lot for the last season finale, which was a big, big disappointment to me, though a lot of people liked it. Oh, well. I loved Victory of the Daleks, too, and no one else did.