So of course he has to show up in Clara’s dream and remind us of Clara’s painful state of mourning and how much she misses him. But it was fitting for us to see him one last time as a bit of closure in the season. There’s no way the writers would let us off this easily with the sorrows of Danny Pink’s death. Nick Frost’s Santa, brilliant and a bit arrogant, is a good match for the Doctor, and the elves are aptly identified as comic relief.
As I said, this felt like a bit of an Inception rip-off, with the nested dreams and the personified subconscious.In the spirit of the holiday season, here are my naughty and nice lists for “Last Christmas”: So much so that I could call several twists in the episode-I’ve seen Inception enough times to know how dream stacking works-but this special still kept me guessing at times, especially toward the ending. So this episode’s all about illusion versus reality and we’ve got the whole dream-within-a-dream multiple twist set-up that feels a lot like Inception … because it’s pretty damn close to Inception. Oh, and Santa pops up to argue with the Doctor occasionally and save the day whenever they need help. There are a bunch of Alien-esque telepathic facehugging aliens who suck your brains out and induce an euphoric, dreamlike state on the host.
The Doctor shows up, whisks Clara away in his Tardis, then all of a sudden they’re in the North Pole as a group of scientists are in the middle of some vague, unknown mission (again, “it’s a long story”). So we start off with Clara encountering jolly old Saint Nick himself with his reindeer and two comic relief elves. No, I don’t need Clara and the twelfth Doctor to be together forever, but at least give me some closure. We thought it was the end of Clara and the Doctor, but with the horribly sad way season eight ended, I was hoping it wasn’t true. How? It’s a long story, but let’s get into it… This year, we got a tangerine-loving hero Santa, Alien and Inception plot knock-offs, and a touching reunion. It’s the annual tradition, and this year was no exception: the Doctor Who Christmas special.