A Little Xmas Who
Somehow I always expect to love the Who xmas specials far more than I actually do... the combination of Moffatt trying to write xmas in the middle of summer (after a typically brainmelting season finale), plus catering for all the casual viewers that inevitably drop in, ends up leading to something that's oddly neither fish nor fowl. And hey, RTD very rarely pulled it off either (I'd say The Christmas Invasion worked as a classic ep, but that's about it...).
So, this year's effort: not... great. There were some lovely one-liners, the pimped up rooms were inspired, Claire Skinner did sterling work with some truly daft dialogue/plotting, kids managing not to be annoying, and the last freaking two minutes were an epically gorgous case of Moffatt writing his own fics yet again.... but mostly before that, the plot was flailing madly and falling into deep dark pits of cliche that I couldn't quite find enough xmas spirit to overlook. Shame :o(
There was a cool idea there somewhere in the middle, but it all relied so heavily on people doing daft things, and especially the Doc being careless and clueless, that I lost patience with it. I wanted more obvious fall-out from the big ending of TWORS (unrealistic as that probably is) from the last ep before the Great DW Drought of '12.... Well, we got a little of that, I guess.
2 years in real time then, since Amy and River in the garden? And how long before that, considering we lost 200 years already in his timeline, and who knows how much in the Ponds' linear timeline? And either he hasn't seen that era River (except he has, going by the DVD scenes?) or she hasn't told him she told Amy he's alive... and obviously it hasn't been that long for him? Brainmelting.
But omigod, that ending. The Ponds, and always setting a place for him, and River!namecheck (where is that girl, it's xmas and she's not there?!), and crying - at that point, yep I was welling up. WW2 back from the dead dads and trees turning into stars weren't doing it for me, but a last minute Doctor/Ponds xmas reunion just killed me stone dead. Because it feels like the end of an era; no matter how long we've had to get used to the idea that we're due a new world order, it's just so freaking sad. And the whole thing just came alive and came together and meant something in that final scene, and it really hadn't worked before that. A Christmas Carol last year stood up to watching again, but I'm not feeling the need to sit through this one anymore.
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