Ranking the Doctor Who Christmas Specials
By Lacy Baugher
Jenna Coleman, Peter Capaldi and Nick Frost in “Last Christmas”. (Photo: BBC)
3. Last Christmas
Nick Frost guest stars as Santa Claus in a Doctor Who holiday outing that does its best to combine the warm fuzzies of Christmas with a rather terrifying thriller. And just underneath all the holiday frivolity is a fairly dark Inception-esque story about loss, nested dreams, and the joy and melancholy that go hand-in-hand every holiday season.
The episode involves monsters colloquially known as dream crabs, which trap you in a dream state while they kill you and dissolve your brain. (Happy holidays, kids!) The episode is quite scary, as it’s based on not being able to trust your own reality. You could be dreaming and dying and never know it. (As happens to our heroes several times.) The way the episode plays with viewers’ expectations — both as a Christmas story and a Who episode — is very clever, and well done.
The dream setting allows us to add Santa, his elves and even Rudolph as actual characters. There’s even a wild, happy sleigh ride through the night at one point. But there’s also a bittersweet goodbye to Clara’s boyfriend Danny Pink, who died saving the world in the previous season’s finale. And there’s a particular sadness over everything. The refrain that “every Christmas is Last Christmas” hangs over everyone.
At the time this episode aired, rumors swirled about whether companion Jenna Coleman would leave the show. The ending of “Last Christmas” would actually have been an excellent farewell for the character, giving Clara both the experience of a full life and a final goodbye with the Doctor. The sudden revelation of yet another dream sequence designed solely to put Clara back in the TARDIS feels a bit like a cop-out, but it’s the only cloud on an otherwise great episode.