10 Criminally Underrated Doctor Who Stories

9. Last Christmas

Doctor Who Last Christmas
BBC

This dark Christmas special is essentially Ridley Scott’s Alien mixed with Steven Moffat’s take on Christopher Nolan’s Inception, and if that’s not high-concept sci-fi enough for you, I don’t know what is.

The Doctor and Clara venture to the North Pole, where a scientific research base is studying alien creatures known ominously as the Dream Crabs. Or is it? As it turns out, the research base is actually a dream… within a dream, as caused by the Dream Crabs latching on to the Doctor and Clara’s brains and essentially causing them to hallucinate a Doctor Who episode into existence. This is Doctor Who at its most self-aware, with a slew of meta-commentary on the Doctor, the show, and the concept of Christmas itself.

The multiple layers of dreams lend this episode a surreal quality amplified by the reality-warping presence of Father Christmas, played by the legendary Nick Frost. He plays a sarcastic Santa worthy of Peter Capaldi’s gruff Doctor, and the two bounce off each other brilliantly. This festive offering tends to fly under the radar compared to other more eventful Christmas specials, but if you pay attention to its complexities you’ll be rewarded with a delightfully dark treat.

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Patch is a pop culture enthusiast and purveyor of puns. He writes about media in a vague attempt to justify the alarming amount of time he spends consuming it. Nobody's convinced... but nobody's told him that yet. He spends his spare time working on Portal 2: Desolation, an ambitious fan-made sequel to Valve's beloved puzzle games.