Doctor Who: Every Christmas Special Ranked From Worst To Best
6. Last Christmas
Tinsel Factor: 11
Star Quality: 7
Laughter Lines: 3
Thrill Meter: 3
Christmas Spirit: 6
Soapy Spoilers: 5
Total Score: 35
Steven Moffat believes that Doctor Who is naturally suited to Christmas. The Doctor, he says, is “an improbable man … the science fiction equivalent of Santa Claus.” In 2014 he finally got to fulfil his boyhood fantasies of pairing the two together.
Of course all was not quite as it seemed, but thankfully the showrunner didn’t take the obvious route of having a fake or bad Santa. Instead he is shows up in all his full glory, complete with elves, sleigh, reindeer and … tangerines.
It might be the most Christmassy of all the specials, but Last Christmas is also the darkest, drawing heavily on a host of science-fiction influences from Alien to Inception, most explicitly with the face-hugging dream crabs. The dream resolution is a technique that most writers avoid like the plague, but here it is treated with intelligence and just enough twists and turns to avoid the often levelled charge of the dreaded deus ex machina.
One issue the script had to deal with was how to incorporate Clara whose story had seemingly ended in Death in Heaven. Jenna Coleman had been all set to leave the show, but a last minute change of heart meant that Steven Moffat needed to find a new direction for her character.
In some ways the extended dream sequence with Clara and Danny Pink took away valuable screen time from the other characters, particularly Shona who might otherwise have made for a brilliant replacement.