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Charles Dickens’sA Christmas Carolis one of the most recognizable stories in the world. The story of Scrooge being visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve to change his ways is so iconic that it has been adapted into nearly every medium, or to quote Bart Simpson regarding the story,“TV writers have been milking that goat for years.“From the Muppets to Mickey Mouse to Batman,A Christmas Carolcan seemingly fit any story. Alastair Sim’sScrooge, George C. Scott’s 1984A Christmas Carol, the modern retelling ofScroogedwith Bill Murray, and evenJim Carrey’s Uncanny Valley 2009 versionare just a few of the iconic retellings ofChristmas Carol. There is seemingly a version for everyone… even that strange musical version from 2004 with Kelsey Grammer and Jennifer Love Hewitt (yes, that is real, and it is something).
For my money, the best version ofA Christmas Carolis theDoctor Whospin on the material.2010’s “A Christmas Carol” was the series' sixth Christmas special following its revival and the first for Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith. Every year since it was first broadcast,Doctor Who’s “A Christmas Carol” has been a staple during the holiday season, and it doesn’t feel like Christmastime without it. It captures the spirit of the original story while putting a unique spin on it in a way that onlyDoctor Whocould. It not only stands as one of the best episodes of the series but it is often regarded as the bestDoctor WhoChristmas special and arguably the best version ofA Christmas Carol.
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‘Doctor Who’s’ Unique Time Travel Mechanics in ‘A Christmas Carol’
Doctor Who’s “A Christmas Carol"shows The Doctor(Matt Smith) attempting to stop a space liner carrying more than four thousand people, including his companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Duvall), from crashing into a planet after it is caught in a strange cloud belt. Below, on the planet’s surface, which resembles Victora-era Britain with a bit of sci-fi tech, the miserly Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon), controls the cloud layer but refuses to help the Doctor. With it being Christmas Eve, the Doctor decides to take a page out ofA Christmas Caroland use time travel to alter Kazran’s past and make him kinder so that he will save the spaceship.
From that description,it is clear that “A Christmas Carol” uses the broad outline of Dickens’s original work but usesDoctor Who’s unique setup of an alien time traveler to put a spin on it that can only exist in this franchise. The Doctor can travel back in time and be The Ghost of Christmas Past in the story, visiting a young Kazran with the older Kazran, watching his own timeline be rewritten through old video recordings he took as a boy, watching his change unfold while the memories rush in. The Doctor does seemingly change Kazran, thanks to him introducing her to Abigail (Katherine Jenkins), a young woman who froze herself in cryosleep to pay for a loan her father took out while seemingly keeping her from dying of a rare disease.
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At the beginning of the episode, Kazran has no connection to this woman, but the Doctor changes his past to the point where Kazran falls in love with her. However, Kazran turned the Doctor away, realizing that Abigail’s time was fading every time they took her out of her cryo chamber, leaving her with only one day left to live. Kazarian couldn’t bear to lose her, so he kept her locked away and now became shut off from the world, not out of greed but out of fear of losing the one he loved.
While most of the episode sees The Doctor occupy theGhost of Christmas Past role,the episode also excels at putting a new spin on the other three spirits. The Ghost of Christmas Present is personified by a hologram of the passengers on the space liner, including Amy, who appears in a green glow and even has the power to project Kazran onto the crashing ship. Yet the best twist comes from The Ghost of Christmas Future. In most versions of the story, The Ghost of Christmas Future shows Scrooge his grave, dying alone and without any love, something Kazran even mocks when the Doctor arrives.
Instead, the Doctor uses his time machine to bring the young Kazran to the present day and see the man he will grow up to become. Kazarian himself is his own Ghost of Christmas Future, as he remembers his ultimate fear as a young boy and even as a man of being anything like his abusive father. This is hammered home by the idea that Gambon plays both Kazran and his father, Elliot Sardick. When the younger version of Kazran mistakes his future self for his father, it breaks the older Kazran’s realization of what he has become. He has changed.
The Power of Christmas Music
One of the best elements of theDoctor WhoChristmas specials was how they put unique spins on Christmas iconography. “The Christmas Invasion” included a killer Christmas tree, “Voyage of the Damned” featured killer robot angels, and “The Snowman” had, fittingly, monster snowmen. With “A Christmas Carol”, showrunner Steven Moffatt instead opts for a different symbol:Christmas music or specifically, Christmas Carols, as the title has two meanings.
Not only is “Christmas Carol” a new spin on the Charles Dickens story, but it is also about the power of Christmas carols as an instrument to spread cheer. In this Victorian-era-inspired planet, the sky’s thick clouds also contain both fish that fly in the sky and sharks (a Christmas special that not only contains flying sharks but ones that they use to pull a sleigh should be enough to warrant it as a must-watch).
Guest star Katherine Jenkins is a renowned singer, a mezzo-soprano with a powerfully beautiful singing voice that plays a significant factor in the episode, as Abigial’s singing voice, and the music itself, is part of the key to saving everyone. Abigial’s singing first calms down one of the flying great whites that was trying to kill the Doctor. That shark ate part of the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, and because that shark is still alive swimming in the cloud belt, The Doctor has Abigail sing into the other broken half, as the part inside the shark will pick up the song and allow the cloud belt to disperse and let the ship land safely.
The episode features an original song, “Abigail’s Song (Silence Is All You Know),” a beautiful composition that, paired with Jenkins’s soft but booming voice, sounds right at home on any Christmas playlist. Lyrically, the song matches the theme ofA Christmas Carol, the original story, and theDoctor Whoepisode, about what happens when you shut people off and how life, particularly the holidays, can be better when one opens up to love.
“When you’re alone, silence is all you see/When you’re alone, silence is all you’ll be/Give me your hand and come to me/When you are here, music is all around/When you are near, music is all around/Open your eyes, don’t make a sound/Let in the shadow, let in the shadow/Let in the light of your bright shadow.”
One Last Christmas Together Means More Than Many Apart
It has been 19 years sinceDoctor Whoreturned to television, and there have been a number of holiday specials.Every frame of the episode is brimming with Christmas magic. Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor was the version of the character that seemingly felt the closest to a Santa Claus-type figure, a wise man with the enthusiasm and heart of a child. The show even makes this comparison as The Doctor ends the episode by coming out of a chimney. If The Doctor wasn’t 900 years old, one could easily see the character asyoung Santa Claus(and it feels like a real shame nobody cast Matt Smith in a Santa Claus Begins-type movie).
However, what makes this episode so powerful and, in the end, so beautiful is its ending. Abigail will die; there is no saving her. Kazran originally rejected releasing her from her cryo pod because while it might save everyone onboard the ocean liner, it meant he would lose her. When faced with the choice, Kazran says:“Could you do it Doctor? One last day with your beloved. Which day would you choose?“Eventually, Abigail answers for him as the pod opens"Christmas Day.”
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Even though Abigail knows she will die, she not only has the chance to provide for a Christmas miracle and save lives but also spend the last moments of hers with someone she loves. Like how the joy of Christmas must come to an end as night falls and December 26 approaches, but knowing something will end allows us to savor and appreciate the time we have. It is what makes Christmas so unique, and it also is what makes the love story between Kazran and Abigail meaningful. It might be their last Christmas together, but in the end, what matters is that they are together.
For as great as manyversions ofA Christmas Carolare, none of them have been as unique asDoctor Who’s interpretation of the material.A Christmas Carolis, in many ways, the original story about time travel, so it only made sense to have fiction’s greatest time traveler put his own spin on the material.
“A Christmas Carol” isDoctor Whoat its finest. Taking a classic story that everyone knows as the basic template but filling it with plenty of unique elements can only be possible because of the rich storytelling possibilities ofDoctor Who, one that mixes the classic visual aesthetics of Victorian-era London that are so commonly associated with Christmas with the sci-fi storytelling of an ocean liner in space crashing into an alien planet with flying sharks and a man who can rewrite one man’s entire life history by being there for a young boy who was alone on Christmas and opening him up to the idea of love.
There is no version like this, and it shows that even after countless retellings and nearly two centuries,A Christmas Carol’s message still endures after all this time.StreamDoctor Whoand theA Christmas Carolspecial onMax.
