So, how was your Christmas? Really? I’m glad to hear it. Anyway before we put 2010 to bed completely and start looking forward to the many pleasures the new year has in store, there is the small matter of the year’s Doctor Who Christmas special to attend to – the first for Steven Moffat and Matt Smith. And a rather middling effort it was too.

It certainly wasn’t ‘bad’ – that distinction goes to last year’s two parter which was so determined to live up to being a big event – being David Tennant’s final adventure (until the much-rumoured film version anyway) that it got bogged down by over-importance. For the most part, this year’s special was quite fun, it just didn’t have much of a story, and what there was had already been used in previous episodes of the new Doctor Who (Dickensian Christmas – check; starship cruise liner about to crash into a planet, at Christmas no less – check; the doctor popping in and out of someone’s life as they grew older, with tragic results – check).

At least it wasn’t, as the advance word suggested merely A Christmas Carol in Space – for one The Simpsons already did that with their Star Trek meets Dickens bit years ago. And, it did feel more Christmassy than most TV specials over the holiday, even if it was laid on a bit thick in places (this is the second time that Doctor Who’s had an unlikely white Christmas in recent years). In fact, with its dark and maudlin tone in the second half, it probably matched quite a lot of people’s family celebrations.

Most importantly there was Moffat’s wonderfully witty, albeit slightly overwritten, dialogue to punch the episode up a bit, ably delivered in motormouth style by Matt Smith – who, despite initial misgivings, really does seem to be the perfect actor for the new Who. There was also a bit of saucy Amy related humour for dad’s (and I suppose Rory in a Roman costume for the mums – although I get the impression that Smith’s more of a heart throb than Arthur Darvill), although unfortunately she was pretty much relegated to the sidelines for the rest of the episode, merely popping up later on to play the role of a holographic ‘Ghost of Christmas Present’ – when you’ve got a companion as strong and charismatic as her (and to a lesser extent Rory), I don’t really understand why you’d pretty much keep her out of one of the biggest episodes of the year.

The story? Well…. there wasn’t much of it. The ship Amy and Rory are honeymooning on looks set to crash into a planet, unless the surface’s ruling miser, Kazran Sardick (played by the ever-reliable Michael Gambon, even though his appearance did bring up unfortunate memories of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover over Christmas dinner) uses his fabulous contraption to control the cloud belt and help the ship land safely. Except he won’t – which is where the first problem with the episode came about (well, actually the very first problem I had with the episode was the steam-punky Victorian setting, where even though humans have managed to settle on other planets 2000 years in the future, they go back to a rather low-tech grimy and austere world, and even more strangely, still have a traditional Christmas) in that Gambon had no real reason to not allow the ship to land. There was some stuff about the planet being overpopulated, but basically it was because he can’t be bothered, and as we were clearly shown that the character wasn’t completely evil, this seemed rather unbelievable – surely it wouldn’t have hurt for Moffat to give him a bit more of a reason to not have saving the ship being in his own best interest? Meaning that the Doctor was forced to play the role of the ghost of Christmas past and revisit Sardick during his childhood years to change his mind (quite literally as he formed new memories for the man). Which is the second problem with the episode – as it set something of a dangerous precedent by showing that the Doctor can go back and forth to very specific points in time and very deliberately alter future events, so every time he’s caught up in some impossible race-against-time dilemma, surely the audience is going to think that he can just hop in the Tardis and go back a little bit to solve it (even if it is in a dramatically unsatisfactory way). Admittedly I can’t remember the reason that was given back during Christopher Eccleston’s era (and indeed long before that) as to why this wasn’t an option, but I can’t help but think that this story broke the rules anyhow.

Unsurprisingly it turned out that the young Kazran was a sad, lonely boy, terrorised by his elderly father (also played by Gambon). The Doctor won over the boy by posing as a babysitter (the psychic paper ’shorting out’ after the Doctor told a lie too big for it to handle – that he was a responsible adult – was a nice touch, although I do hope that that’ll be the last we see of the bloody gizmo) showing him a bit of excitement and adventure, in the form of the ‘fish’ that travelled down through the cloud belt on this planet, or rather a great big shark. The promise of a flying killer shark in the episode trailers was a ludicrously exciting one, but in practice, it did give the episode an air of something a child would write (“…and then some fish came down from space, and one of them was a shark, and then the Doctor saved everyone by using his screwdriver, but the shark ate half the screwdriver and the Doctor couldn’t get it out”). Anyway, in all the commotion, the shark was stuck down out of the cloud belt and looked like it would die there, causing young Kazran to get rather upset – a nice way to introduce the emotional heart of the episode by getting the Doctor and the boy down into the basement to come face to face with the many bodies kept in ice boxes as ‘insurance’ for ‘loans’ by Kazran’s father, one of these frozen bodies being Welsh singing sensation Katherine Jenkins. Jenkins was pretty much fine – as Abigail she didn’t have much of a character, but seemed quite likeable, obviously stunningly pretty – a handy thing considering the rest of the plot revolved around young Kazran falling in love with her – and the producers justified their hiring of her by making her sing a lot, as apparently the tone of her voice resonated the ice crystals in the cloud belt at just the right frequency to calm angry fish (this later on proved to be a nice way to shove in a Christmas carol as well as Amy, Rory and the rest of the cruise liner passengers attempted to straighten the ship by singing Silent Night, rather eerily too).

In his continued efforts to change Kazran’s mind, the Doctor came back every Christmas Eve to let Abigail out and take her and Kazran off on a wonderful trip somewhere (including a rather inspired trip to 50’s Hollywood – even if I can’t help but think they did poor Marilyn Monroe a bit of a disservice merely painting her as some marriage crazed loon). Inevitably this jumping forward led to tragedy as Abigail revealed to Kazran that she was dying and only had a few days left, which had been signposted from the very start what with the ominous countdown on the door of her ice box. Needless to say, this raised a few questions – 1) How come a fairly technically backward society has medical technology good enough to pin-point exactly when someone will die; 2) Why did the elder Sardick agree to take Abigail as insurance for the loan as she was pretty much a goner anyway, and he’s meant to be an evil bastard far worse than his son; 3) Why do the ice boxes have a countdown on them anyway, what possible use could Sardick have for knowing how long his cryogenically frozen hostages would live if they were thawed out? The reveal also reminded me awfully of the demise of the Madame de Pompadour in The Girl in the Fireplace (still, in my opinion, the new Who’s finest achievement), just without the emotional weight.

So, young Kazran rejected the Doctor, and the old Sardick was grumpier than ever, and Amy was called in to do her Ghost of Christmas Present thing. When this didn’t work, the Doctor went for the even tougher approach and took on Christmas Future by bringing the young Kazran forward to meet his older self, I’m sure this was definitely against the rules, as we already discussed when Amy met herself at the end of the last season. Although successful, it was pretty much pointless as Kazran had changed so much he could no longer operate the machinery. And so we ended up with the last resort – Katherine Jenkins wielding half of the Sonic Screwdriver like a microphone while she sang to the other half of it that was still inside the shark, which vibrated the ice crystals just right so the ship could land. Now thawed out, but destined to live for only another day, she and the elderly Kazran took off in a shark driven sleigh, while it snowed as Abigail had ‘unlocked the clouds’. It was in short, all incredibly cheesy, but forgiveable as it was Christmas.

What else did we get? Some little nods to the more obsessive fans (nice to see the reappearance of the Doctor’s fez, although you think if they were going to put in references to earlier episodes they could have thrown in a line about the doctor already having had to deal with a crashing cruise liner at Christmas); another case of the terms ‘isomorphic’ and ‘quantum’ being bandied about as they sound a bit science-fictiony (see also: Tron Legacy); Michael Gambon being his usually brilliantly grumpy self; and a very exciting promo for the new season (I’m willing to bet that Moffat didn’t put quite so much effort into writing this special as he was busying himself with the rest of the season). Which I hope to see you all here for in late March/early April/whenever it starts.

But not before you share your thoughts about the episode in the comments section below…