Santa Claus becomes a character of surprising dramatic potential when you place him under the Doctor’s perspective. No longer is he a face beaming ruddily out at you from the insincere aisles of a department store. On Doctor Who he becomes a seat of judgment, qualified to tally the sins of a being that few in the universe could conceptualize, let alone consider objectively. He knows who’s been naughty and nice, so where does the Doctor stand in that estimation? (Which Doctor are we talking about? When?) Beyond the ability to truly put our Time Lord on trial, Santa Claus also represents an equal to the Doctor. Both are creatures of myth who defy the laws of their universe with regularity and as such they are both uniquely able to discuss the burdens of their loftiness with each other.
Doctor Who’s 2014 Christmas episode “Last Christmas” does not grapple with these facets of the Doctor directly. How could it? We are only human, as is Clara, and we can only imagine what it is like to be someone who can shift the very winds of fate itself. We can only create boundary-defying television shows like Doctor Who and depict the Doctor and Santa Claus as we think they would act and the only tool we have to shape this televised reality is our belief. These stories are only as real as we want them to be.
“Last Christmas” concerns itself largely with instilling this truth through the bleary-eyed, tricksy, dreams-within-dreams-within-dreams plot, but if this was all that writer and showrunner Steven Moffat had bothered to offer, then the episode would not have grown into the ambitious and touching story that it ultimately became.
Since the plot of “Last Christmas” is borrowed, that means its initial twists are as well. It takes a little while, but eventually the episode disposes with the insistence that Nick Frost’s Santa Claus is real, or that the viewer somehow isn’t watching the Doctor and Clara claw their way out of dream after dream. Moffat crafts the episode with that irritation in mind and before the revelation that all the characters have been dreamcrabbin’, “Last Christmas” puts all of its efforts into running interference, shifting from foot to foot before we can get too annoyed with any one thing.
Jumping from non-resolution to non-resolution runs the risk of just making us all the more irritated, and in a lesser episode this would absolutely be the case, but “Last Christmas” uses these moments of distraction to add a layer of joy and emotional satisfaction so complex that they would be multi-episode arcs for less imaginative television shows. While Shona’s dance is a pure drunken-wedding delight, Santa’s rescue of the North Pole base is some tour de force goofballery. I laughed and clapped hard when those robots and slinkies rolled in, and I am someone with a 401K, so I can only imagine the utter glee a child must have experienced at this sequence.
In the same manner, that child could probably only imagine the deep well of ache I experienced at seeing Danny and Clara happy together. False ideal lives are a favorite trick of Steven Moffat’s, starting from the Library episodes of Tennant’s era and reappearing about once a season since then, but “Last Christmas” is by far his most effective use of it. The ache we experience from Clara’s dream of Danny comes from more than just waiting for her to realize that he’s not real, it comes from the opportunity the sequence creates for Clara to mourn for Danny in a way that feels honest to her character and honest to how we the viewers have been affected by death in our own lives.
It would be easy, so easy, for the episode to make a point of how cruel the universe is for making Clara watch Danny die a third time, and before this scene concludes you suspect that this might be where the ominously-titled “Last Christmas” is going. We as viewers don’t know what Jenna Coleman’s future with the show is yet, and in the fiction of the show Clara knows that Danny exists within a real afterlife. So if just lets this dream play out then she could be with him again. The happy dream could actually go on forever. We could be watching a companion, the Doctor’s best friend, choose death right now, at Christmas. Despite the presence of Santa, the episode’s setting and tone has been bleak so far.
The fact that we don’t see that happen is so important in the face of the events of this episode and in the face of the harsher, more cynical Doctor that Capaldi thus far represents. Danny, dream Danny, is not just there to provide comfort for Clara, he is there fully as himself in her memory, and that means he’s the Danny that will always sacrifice himself for her. (“The rest of you just got lucky.”) Even dream Danny tells Clara to go, to live, to remember and being able to do so because he wishes it brings her such joy.
For us, the emotion of re-experiencing the loss of Danny is overshadowed by the bursting, spiraling shine of seeing that Clara remembers the very best of the man she loved. She honors him by mourning him in this way. She believed in Danny, really truly, and this is what sustains her as the darkness closes in around them in a bleak base in the North Pole.
This is the real plot twist of “Last Christmas.” The revelation here isn’t that Danny isn’t real, it’s that Danny is the only thing that is real. This makes the monsters that she and the Doctor face all the more scarier. Now we know that those Legend of Zelda Wallmaster creeps are capable of trapping their victims in dreams where they fight for and realize what they actually want. Okay, I’ll be straight with you now, says “Last Christmas” to its viewers. It’s all dreams-within-dreams like you thought and Santa isn’t real, but this episode isn’t actually about that! It’s not even about Christmas or Santa! They are incidental totems representing the real story here: Who do we believe in? Why do we believe in them? What quality of the universe does their existence promote and sustain?
Santa is an excellent answer to this question. He is purity; a reward for spreading goodness and cheer in a universe that is 99.99% darkness. He is an ideal that there can be something more beyond what you can see and touch, and that this “something more” can be encountered without fear. Of course Clara has always believed in Santa. She travels with the Doctor.
Learning the kind of people that Clara believes in gives us a much clearer idea of what Clara believes in herself, a piece of information that, despite the substantial character-building Clara has undergone in season 8, was still missing from the series. Seeing this revelation construct itself is also why we don’t see who the Doctor believes in until the very end of the story. This isn’t the Doctor’s story; it’s Clara’s, it’s ours. Our belief shapes the story and that story becomes reality. We believe that the Doctor gets a boy-ish thrill in being asked to drive Santa’s sleigh, so he does. (And it’s great.) Shona believes that she’s a scientist and that her North Pole base compatriots should all be friends in real life, so she takes charge of that narrative upon waking.
Most importantly, by the end of “Last Christmas” everyone real and fictional and Santa believes that the Doctor believes in Clara. And so, when season 9 appears next August, this will be the reality we watch unfold.
What begins as a by-the-numbers tale about dreams, fear, and believing in the spirit of Christmas ends up as a deeply honest exploration of why it’s important to believe in others in the first place. It’s one thing to believe in Santa, Moffat seems to be saying in “Last Christmas,” but you should know just how important that ability to believe really is and the profound affect it has on the way you live your life. When we come into this life we are granted time and space, but believing and connecting with others—our loved ones and our beloved fairy tales—is what gives that life its relative dimensions.
Merry Christmas!
Thoughts:
- Okay, when the Doctor woke up on the fire/volcano set from “Dark Water” did anyone besides me FLIP OUT at the possibility that most of the season 8 finale had been a dream and that the Master hadn’t been vaporized yet and Danny could be saved? I really thought they were going to go there.
- But it was probably just bad set continuity, which is odd, because I thought Clara’s last Christmas with Danny was one of the best shot and designed sequences they’ve done lately. Check out how Clara gets smaller and more childlike the more she refuses to accept that she’s dreaming. Then the pet carrier in the background under the tree after she follows Santa-Danny downstairs…so perfect.
- “There are all kinds of dangerous creatures on Earth. You eat most of them.”
- That’s a hat trick for the Troughton family! Both sons of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton have now appeared on the program. Michael Troughton was the ill-mannered Professor Albert in this episode and his brother David Troughton was similarly ill-mannered professor in Tennant-era episode “Midnight.”
- I thought this was a dodgy episode at its outset but it cohered into one of my favorite Who Christmas specials ever. The only thing that really didn’t land for me was Nick Frost’s performance as Santa Claus. He was okay, but the role was seemingly written for a performer with an imperious wry humor, and not the bumblingly innocent coiner of “fuck ugly”s that Frost is so great at playing.
Chris Lough‘s gift to you is the absence of any Inception jokes in this recap. You can read his other recaps of Doctor Who and other shows here on Tor.com, or watch him tweet about once a month.
It was a little bit “X Files 6×21 (Field trip) meets Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather”, wasn’t it?
I quite liked it :)
The “old Clara” was too much for me though. Like Moffat yelling at fans who want her to go: Look! Look, what if Clara grew old and never met the Doctor again! Doesn’t it make you super sad? It does! So I can keep her on the show, OK? OK!
There’s such thing as subtlety, and this isn’t it, is all I’m saying.
Did the Dream Crabs remind anyone else of the Wall/Floor Masters from Legend of Zelda?
@1: The rumor is that the episode was supposed to end with Clara really dying of old age, but then Coleman changed her mind and decided to stay with the show, so the happier ending was tacked on in a reshoot. I’m skeptical of that, though.
I can’t help thinking that we never saw the wounds that were supposed to be on the Doctor’s and Clara’s heads when they finally awoke for real. What if all of Clara’s further adventures with the Doctor are just her dying dreams?
My favorite line: “You have a horror movie called Alien? That’s very offensive! No wonder your planet keeps getting invaded!”
In the “old Clara” sequence, I was thinking about Sarah Jane.
Favorite line–can’t remember it exactly, duh, but when Danny mentions Christmas, Clara says something about ‘oh now I want to eat chocolate.’ lol.
Intriguing was the real lives of the three people who were dreaming and who survived.
@3: I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing, but thought it’s just me being influenced by the abovementioned X Files epizode.
Not that I wanted to see Doctor and Clara with faces half eaten off, but the Dream Crabs were supposed to be eating them while they dreamed, weren’t they? So basically if you wake up from the Crabdream and you are still wearing makeup, something is terribly wrong… “Am I young?”? Seriously? That is the first question on Clara’s mind?
@@.-@: Danny’s line was sarcastically saying he was dressed up as Santa for Easter, and Clara said that now he’d made her expect chocolate. Easter is apparently associated with chocolate in the UK as well as in America. Which is reassuring, because their Christmas traditions are rather strange to me. I had no idea what a Christmas cracker was until “The Time of the Doctor” aired last year. And now we get this tangerine thing. Tangerines? Associated with Santa? That’s new to me.
I think it would have been a stronger episode if this had been Clara’s exit. Apart from that the only thing that bugged me was the appearance of Danny, which I felt dragged abominably, but then I’ll admit I never cared for or warmed to the character at all so that might just have been me.
I’ve seen a lot of complaining in the usual places about Maureen Bettie’s character being in a wheelchair in the real world but able to walk in the dream world, saying that Moffat is being tone deaf to the disable. However I am disabled myself, not to the point of a wheelchair (yet, although that day is coming), and I can attest that in my dreams I can still go hiking and mountain climbing the way I used to ten years ago. It may be a downer, but it is real.
ChristopherLBennett@6: Tangerines associated with Santa is a WWII -era rationing thing, luxury food for Christmas is the emotional association.
No, you’re not the only one who thought of the possibility that all of season 8 might be a dream and maybe Danny could be saved. Dear good gods, I was hoping for that, because I love the hell out of Danny. But it was too good to be true. :(
Speaking of loving the hell out of Danny, I truly and honestly believe that the Danny in Clara’s dream was the real Danny. If it’s acknowledged that he still exists in a viable afterlife wherein Clara can join him someday, then why not? Why couldn’t he be the real Danny, communicating with her the only way he can, in her dream? Maybe the dream world crosses the afterlife, and maybe Danny believed that she had lived her life and had joined him, because dream time and afterlife time are different, you see. Right up until the Doctor showed up. Because that’s when Danny turned into the Danny who died to save Clara–when the Doctor showed up, and Danny realized Clara wasn’t already dead, that she hadn’t lived a long life. That’s when he stopped being chipper, when he stopped pretending to be alive.
That’s when he admitted no, he hadn’t died saving the world, he died saving her.
I believe. I believe in Danny, and I believe he was the real Danny.
I had the same simple thought about the use of the volcano planet”set”: while filming at Lanzarote earlier in the season (for Kill the Moon), not only did they do some quick filming over at the Volcan del Cuervo for the Dark Water volcano scene, but for this shot (nice and alien-planet-looking).
With the Clara’s question to the Doctor over who gave him that second chance to save her, I don’t see how we’re supposed to doubt that Santa Claus is real. Yes, the image of him that see in the dreams is the classic red suit version, and that image is a construction (the same as the images of the people within the dream), but it was well established over the course of the episode that Clara believes in Santa – even if he sometimes looks different for – and we all remember what came of her believing in Robin Hood when people like the Doctor didn’t… ;)
I know firmly believe that the Doctor, uppity TIme Lord “officer” that he is, honestly deserves far less credit for Earth’s survival than we give me. He might burst onto the scene and call us all Stupid Monkeys or something in his Magic Police Box, but meanwhile a fat man in a tiny sleigh (with eight tiny reindeer) is hard at work behind the scenes saving the day so that children can sleep sweet dreams of sugarplums at night…
@10: When Clara said she believed in Santa but he looked different to her, she was talking about the Doctor — which is why she hugged him immediately after saying that. He’s her Santa Claus, a magical figure who transcends space and time in his flying craft and brings gifts to the world.
After driving a sleigh with a shark, The Doctor has a hard time steering raindeer? It was nice change, though, to see him smiling and goofy like Matt Smith.
Clara’s comments and actions say that Santa and The Doctor are the same person, the one you trust to make things right, and the reason she didn’t want to leave the sleigh is that she wanted to travel with The Doctor again.
The tangerine appearing in the window display of Clara’s window at the end affirms Santa’s reality to all the kids, old and young, out there watching. A nice touch.
The volcano landscape seems to harking back to Capaldi’s role in “Fires of Pompeii” which Moffatt said would be addressed but never really has. Not that anyone cares at this point.
This was a very dark episode, and the dream crabs were quite a horrible monster. I liked the scenes with Danny, and glad that Danny remembered was just as loyal and self sacrificing as Danny in life. The episode was a bit too tricksy at times for me, but most Moffat-penned episodes of late feel that way, at least in my opinion. It was nice to see the Doctor being happy as he drove the sleigh. Doctor Who, especially during this last season, could use a bit more whimsy and joy from time to time.
It seemed that the episode could have more easily ended with old Clara saying goodbye to the Doctor. I wonder if it was even filmed that way originally. But she has decided to continue traveling with the Doctor, at least for another season. I am fine with that, but my wife for some reason does not like Clara at all, so she was disappointed to see she was sticking around.
ChristopherLBennett (@6), EmmetAOBrien (@8): I come from an era (1960s USA) in which actual stockings were filled at Xmas and one choice of stuffing was clementine oranges. I still associate them with Xmas, no matter what time of the year I eat them.
There does seem to be a convergence of British and American Xmas traditions. I counted only 2 “Father Christmas” references, amid a blizzard of “Santa Clauses”.
@14 The Father Christmas/Santa Claus thing might sinply be a result of Moffat being Scottish. I’ve noticed that Father Christmas seems to be more an English preserve than a Scottish one. Possibly this is as a result of Scotland’s festive blowout historically being Hogmany/New Years Day/Jan 2nd (Scotland needs three days to celebrate the new year properly) rather than Christmas and thus having less of a specific personifcation of its own for Santa to replace and instead just let him move right in. IYSWIM.
Great special. It confirmed for me that this is now my favorite Doctor and capped off my favorite season since season 3.
My nu-Who Doctors, Ranked:
1) Capaldi
2) Tennant (very close second)
3) Eccleston
4) Hurt
5) Toby Jones
6) The tub of Flesh right before it became the ganger Doctor
7) Mmmm…have to be forgetting someone
8) Smith
@@@@@ 9: i will certainly agree that was really danny, or the spirit of danny at least. we’ve already established his existence in the “afterlife”; so solid that he could have crossed back physically to our world. if we also consider the nesting doll nature of the dreams, then clara’s danny dream was the center for her; the smallest, most personal dream and the closest she was to death. closer to death, closer to where danny is, easier it is for his remaining conciousness to assert control over clara’s dream version of him. makes perfect sense to me.
The series finally jumped the shark with me at the end. Clara’s back for the next season. I won’t be watching it again until the show changes hands in a major way.
I get an orange in my stocking every year I spend Christmas with my folks, the association of tangerines with Santa was no surprise to me.
It was obvious it was a dream from the moment they got into the base: when the Doctor tries to distract Clara with maths, the results don’t make any sense, yet she says them with confidence and the Doctor is find with them. It seems Clara is incapable of counting while she sleeps. I’m sure Zoe Heriot would never have that problem; 21st century companions were much better in the 60’s.
@20 – What? Everyone does things that don’t make sense in dreams, but seem perfectly logical while you’re dreaming. Clara’s answers don’t make sense but, as you say, the Doctor doesn’t find a problem with them either. It doesn’t make Clara stupid, it’s just a subtle hint to dream logic. Why does it have to be a reflection on her maths skills? I’ve had dreams where I’d gotten the next Harry Potter book and found out I can’t read. Does this mean that I obviously can’t read when I’m awake?
@@@@@ 20: YES to the 21st cenury companions being better in 60’s – even the 21st century looked better back then :)
@@@@@21: Had the same dream about Harry Potter only I could read in it. I still like the one I read in the dream better than the real one.
Dream logic being such fantastical thing, a lot more stuff could have happened in this episode. I mean – Doctor Who + Dream-within-dream-trope? Could have been positively surreal!
I love Peter Capaldi and I’m in agreement that I think that the whole Clara arc seemed to be a good place to end things and I t really wonder what Clara is going to develop.into after series 8. It is going to take some damn creative writing to keep things fresh.
A priceless moment was the doctor looking so uncomfortable when Clara huggef him! How very refreshing after the touchy feely geek of #11. And that he would hold Clara’s hand but nobody else’s. This was not an allusion to romance in the TARDIS but more like a beloved uncle who just.isn’t comfortable being touched. Priceless.
I liked this Xmas episode. I usually hate them with a passion. It was dark and scary but still manged to be a bit about Xmas. The dream crabs scared me as much as The Silence, who they resembled on the corpses with crabs on them. I think Danny and Clara finally got to how us their love like two people deeply in love only in this and the previous episode.
If the writers can write good material for Clara, I will give her a chance to stick around.
I enjoyed the episode very much, and liked Frost in the role — just the right amount of funny, snarky, and sincere. The elves were great, too.
The Doctor: Beardy Weirdy?
Santa: Yes?
The Doctor: How do you get all the presents into your sleigh?
Santa: Bigger on the inside.
Elf: Oooooh!!
PS from my Scrooge-like self: I really do hope everyone who hates Moffat/Clara/Danny/this ending (and who so enjoys constantly reminding everyone else of it) will truly tune out next season so I don’t have to roll my eyes over your comments on each and every recap. Maybe start your own “I Hate the Doctor” thread somewhere, where you can more heartily laugh at all of us who enjoy it? Happy New Year!
Happy to see Nathan McMullen (late of Misfits) as one of the elves.
Personally, this left me just as flat as his death in Death in Heaven did, because Season 8 never developed a proper relationship between the two. We were told they were together, but Clara was so busy lying to Danny, and running off with the Doctor, that they never made me feel the Clara/Danny relationship was real or important. So, her loss of Danny was a non-event for me both times.
I guess I was watching a different Season 8, as I saw little character building for Clara. Through much of the season she was just an annoying plot device to me, and the least likeable companion since the reboot.
In the end, the worst part was the confirmation that Clara will be returning for the next season. Once again, Danny’s death is trivialized and she just jumps back into the TARDIS like it had no more effect on her than it did on me. I really thought we were rid of here after Death in Heaven. :-(
So I was convinced that Clara being old was the real ending. Then when they “woke up” again, it felt too neat and I was sure that they were still trapped in the dream and would never get out, ever. I seriously still think that they ended this episode still dreaming with crabs on their faces, or that the crabs were fiction all along, and something else was causing the dreaming (why would the crabs put themselves in the dream?). Or maybe it’s a meta statement about how this show, after all, is fiction, and the Doctor and Clara are no more real than Santa Claus. Whether they are dreaming or not, it’s still not real.