Goblin Season

Merry Christmas again, and this year you can tell by the Doctor Who special. I always liked the tradition of a Doctor Who special for Christmas, I'm glad Russell T Davies brought it back, and to-day's was a particularly good one, despite the fact that I think the director was a weak link.

Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson are both good and, despite him being an openly gay Doctor, the episode ended with unmistakably romantic vibes between the two. Which is slightly puzzling but, whatever, it has the subtle excitement to it that distinguished the relationships in Davies' first run.

I was sold on Millie Gibson in the scene when she's on the phone with the woman informing her that her birth parents couldn't be located. I've always found that particular stock plot, of the character searching in vain for their birth parents, kind of lame. I don't know, maybe there's a fanbase of orphans out there who get really invested in these stories but I sense that's probably not the case. But Ruby trying to restrain the heartbreak in her voice was pretty effective acting from Gibson.

Gatwa has charisma and I like his big broad grin, it kind of reminds me of Tom Baker. His choice to wear a kilt is great though the scene of him dancing in the club was one of many that made me wish the episode had a different director. His cross-cutting and compositions show no evidence of instinct. Mostly there are just too many damned close-ups, which is a problem that has plagued British television for a long time.

I really liked the main goblin plot. I'm sure a lot of people will be reminded of Gremlins (which I was watching yesterday!) but I suspect even more people will be reminded of Labyrinth. When the buildup started for the reveal of the Goblin King, I half expected it to be Jareth. No such luck.

But really, it was great. I loved how the ship was run on a rope system of luck and coincidence and the Doctor had to figure out how to speak the language in minutes. It was a fresh context for the usual Doctor business and it worked great.

Ruby getting temporarily erased from time was a nice It's a Wonderful Life moment as we see how her adoptive mother and grandmother led poorer lives without her. Gatwa's performance in the scene was also marvellous. Davies still hasn't made up for the bi-regeneration thing (I gather I'm far from the only one who disliked it) and I miss the usual post-regeneration disorientation. But this was a good Christmas special.

I also didn't like the tacked on ending of the Doctor saving the woman who was killed by the falling Christmas tree. If they really didn't want to kill her, they could've shown her just managing to get out of the way. It doesn't make sense that the Doctor even knew about her or what happened to her. It feels like a hasty, late rewrite, like Clara being saved at the end of "Last Christmas". I thought Davies had strong-armed himself into a position of creative freedom. Maybe not? It would be really annoying if no-one's allowed to die now on Doctor Who. Or even regenerate!

New Doctor Who episodes are available globally on Disney+. In the UK it's on the BBC iPlayer.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone. This is about the time of year a lot of people listen to and/or post links to "Fairytale of New York".

Of course, it means a little more this year with the recent passing of Shane MacGowan. I decided to honour him I'd drink like him. With perhaps a touch more moderation.

I googled interviews and articles and found out his favourite whiskey was Tullamore Dew. So that's what I've been drinking. It's pretty good, a little more complex than Jameson, which is the Irish whiskey I usually drink.

There is an official Pogues whiskey, named for MacGowan's band, and it happens to be available at the mall right here in Kashihara, Japan, where I'd be surprised if two people have heard of the Pogues or Shane MacGowan. I guess I didn't buy it because I suspect MacGowan probably just signed a license agreement, took a check, then went off and bought bottles of Tullamore Dew. But who knows, maybe he actually went and scouted distillery locations and took discriminating sips from ladles before giving an okay symbol to his handpicked staff. I'm sure I'll try the whiskey at some point.

I also read an interview in which he said, when writing "Fairytale of New York", he ate peanuts and drank sherry to pretend it was Christmas. So I've been eating peanuts and drinking sherry. I love sherry but, as with all wines, it gives me some of the worst hangovers, I've basically felt like I was transmitting my life from another planet for three days. That's with just two glasses of sherry a night (three last night). I never realised how well sherry paired with peanuts, though.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, everyone.

X Sonnet #1801

"But that's the tree," she said, recalling late.
Another sign the crooked road returned.
She paused and checked her book; another date.
"It's wrong," she said, "as prying eyes'll learn."
A stolen car commenced the extra slice.
A touch of blue could chill a drowsy room.
"We need some tools," said she, "and something nice.
"A string of lights could sew a gangster's doom."
Divesting her of tinsel traps, she starts.
A dozen twink'ling eyes beheld her path.
"You see the plan," she traced her scribbled charts.
"We wake with love then sleep with spirit wrath."
Her bank was built of metal orbs and canes.
"The blizzard comes," she says, "and evening wanes."

Good Will Towards Cats, Bats, and Penguins

Now appearing on many ironic Christmas movie lists is Batman Returns, and that's what I watched last night. Honestly, though, the best ironic Christmas films don't feel exactly ironic. Batman Returns and Eyes Wide Shut seem more like atypically mature appreciations of the holiday. Brazil, okay, that one's ironic.

Batman Returns actually touches on some honestly Christmas themes; how do people get along with each other, how do you practice generosity in a world of heartless competition?

Both Catwoman and Penguin are genuinely sympathetic villains, out for revenge. Batman is also famously out for revenge against the criminal element but, as we see in this film, he's governed more by a sense of justice. It's important to acknowledge the reality of the pain that compels people to take vengeance before you talk to them about the wisdom of refraining from perpetuating it.

The dialogue in this movie is so fun. I love the key lines about mistletoe between Bruce and Selena. And Penguin is so wonderfully vicious. I love when he finally turns the Elephant Man line; "I am not a human being! I am an animal!"

Batman Returns is available on Max.

Time is Here Again

My Christmas tree this year. To-day's feeling fairly Christmasy, too; it's been snowing for the past couple hours. Proper cold came late this year. I said it'd come a few weeks ago but that one day turned out to be a fluke. It's only this week I've been wearing my heavy Inverness coat and long underwear.

Yesterday was my last day at my current school and it was also the day the school's English club had a Christmas party. I was especially sad to say goodbye to them as most of them are second year students and will therefore be third year students, and no longer participating in club activities, if I go back next year at the same time. They read from "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" and I showed them A Charlie Brown Christmas, which one student particularly seemed to like. The same student student brought balloons and had come up with a balloon volleyball game which we played. The kids really enjoyed it and I was happy to see some of the quieter ones coming out of their shells.

On Monday, we played our last Dungeons and Dragons game, from the original Dragonlance module I started them on last year. They voyaged to the heart of Xak Tsaroth, which I copied onto large sheets of graph paper, and faced the black dragon Khisanth, for which I'd made a little origami dragon. It was a hard battle, but they prevailed.

I also gave them candy canes I'd gotten on Amazon, just like last year. I remember last year it was so cold and snowy that I slipped on the ice outside my door, breaking some of the candy canes. No broken candy canes this year, so that's something.

X Sonnet #1800

Deceptive colours slice the temple lime.
With thoughts of horses, sleep at night descends.
A distant word reduces thought to time.
On shaky ropes, the fate of tongues depends.
A frigid castle broke the ice for kings.
No naming code could talk to me of words.
The eyes denied the worth of golden rings.
Dissolving shops amassed a dozen herds.
Balloons rebound from busy fingertips.
A table net preserves the space of play.
A fearful sky is full of watchful ships.
Conceptions ever dampen down the day.
Beyond the grasp of tortured brains it shines.
Escape was hid on garbage destined rinds.

Is Any Diary Safe?

Reading MR James has gotten to be a seasonal tradition with me. This year, my mother sent me a hardback collection of his ghost stories, which makes the experience of reading them even better. When you're reading stories about antiquarians poring over manuscripts and carvings and abnormal adornments in abandoned churches, it's nicer to do so on real pages instead of on an electronic screen.

Yesterday I read "The Diary of Mr Poynter", first published in 1910. A young man and his elderly aunt move into a new manor so the young man purchases a diary of someone who resided in the neighbourhood over a century earlier. Inside the diary, he finds a scrap of cloth with a pattern that enchants his aunt who insists that drapes be made from the pattern. Like all of James' stories, he finds ways of letting the horror elements subtly creep in while you read about a fairly normal, but slightly unstable, academic or domestic situation. This one ends up being a bit more explicit than usual and delightfully so. The ghost that manifests reminded me of Sadako from The Ring or any number of other Japanese movie ghosts with long hair veiling their faces. Or Cousin It, I suppose, but effectively eerie.

Previous to "The Diary of Mr Poynter" I read "The Residence at Whitminster", a story about a young Irish lord who comes to stay in England and brings some kind of shiny tablet with him he apparently procured from a witch. The story ends in a remarkable way with a housemaid, speaking with transcribed colloquial dialect, rattling off suggestive reminiscences. That one may have been too subtle but it was entertaining.

Illuminated Christmas

Merry Christmas from the top of Umeda Sky Building! That's me last night (which was December 25th in Japan). Isn't it marvellous that masks have been normalised? I had to hold onto my hat because of the heavy wind.

I went with some friends to Osaka last night to look at Christmas lights.

The city really goes all out. We watched an amazing hologram light show at Osaka City Hall. There were lights everywhere.

There were blue lights on the street:

It was nearly 9pm when I got home but I managed to get to the supermarket in time to buy one of the last Christmas cakes:

Christmas cakes are traditional in Japan. Many Japanese people believe this sponge cake with strawberries is traditional on Christmas in America (it's not). But I'm happy to partake in this.

For my Doctor Who Christmas special, I watched "The Runaway Bride", the Tenth Doctor's second Christmas special from 2006. I realised that, for the first time in many years, I could watch Doctor Who with hope for the future. For the future of Doctor Who, anyway. A trailer for the upcoming 60th anniversary specials was released yesterday, too:

Donna was always my favourite of Ten's companions (in no small part due to "The Runaway Bride"). If they were going to bring back a Doctor/Companion combo from the modern era, I think this was probably the best one for it.

If I were to theorise, I'd say Neil Patrick Harris has something to do with the Doctor turning into Tennant again and he's deliberately trying to bring back Donna's repressed memories of him. For what diabolical purpose, I know not! I'm looking forward to it, though.

Yesterday I also read Washington Irving's "Christmas" from The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon and a bit of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Not a bad Christmas at all.

Your Christmas Egret is Waiting

Merry Christmas, everyone. Here's a brave Christmas egret I saw yesterday. This was near the mall where I went to see the Christmastime shoppers. I had ramen at nearby Marugen, I had tonkotsu (pork bone broth) ramen with extra onion. So good on a cold winter day.

I watched Frozen and Batman Returns for Christmas movies and only during my viewing of Batman Returns did I realise Selena Kyle and Elsa are actually pretty similar. We need to get these two together. What is it about Christmas that invites the liberated anti-heroine?

I don't have a lot of big expectations for Christmas this year. I really had my yen for it sated by the English club at my latest school. Introducing Christmas to those six 13 to 14 year old students was such a pleasure. Listening to them recite "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" and hearing the reverence they have for Santa was just an endless delight. I also showed Mickey's Christmas Carol to them and to the third year classes. There's something really satisfying about seeing a group of too-cool-for-school fifteen year-olds stunned to silence by Peg Leg Pete laughing over Scrooge McDuck in a fiery grave. You know, Disney's so popular in Japan, it amazes me hardly anyone's heard of Scrooge McDuck.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, everyone.

Twitter Sonnet #1653

A murder took the place of Banquo's ghost.
Amorphous time so quickly took the stairs.
A knife becometh not the gracious host.
And from the very stones a spirit stares.
Between the softened teeth a hardness grew.
A string of meat became a muscle test.
Above the tongue the mouth of sharks was new.
A row of heads became the noted best.
Returned to clouds, the snow advanced to storm.
A glowing nose disturbed the shrouds of night.
Beside the hearth, the elvish hearts are warm.
A peace pervades beyond the heat of sight.
The mythic cane arrived across the sea.
Presiding over all's a pencil tree.

Monday Morning Snow

Yesterday's Christmas miracle was the most snow I've seen in Kashihara since I moved here in 2020.

It was all melted and gone by the afternoon but it was cool while it lasted.

When I arrived at school, after a train journey and a walk through snow covered rice fields, the kids were making snowballs and running around with them.

Yesterday was my last day for a while at my current junior high school. We had a Christmas party in the English club. The kids played Christmas songs on the piano, recited "A Visit from Saint Nicholas", exchanged treats, and played Dungeons and Dragons.

It's a shame it was our last session. After a battle with Draconians on a bridge, I really felt like they were getting into the spirit of the thing.

No snow to-day, which is good for my laundry hanging out on the line, but I'm hoping it comes again later this week. Saturday or Sunday would be nice, or so I heard from Bing Crosby.

Can You Play Jingle Bells?

There's an extraordinary lack of momentum in 1965's A Charlie Brown Christmas. That famous Vince Guaraldi score is so good, so chill. The special's like a childhood equivalent of a circle of barflies gathering in the local tavern for the holiday.

Holiday specials tend to have plots striving for cosmic significance or grand absurdity. All of the problems the characters face in A Charlie Brown Christmas are firmly locked in childhood. Sally's desire for money, Lucy's desire for real estate, even Charlie Brown's desire to know the meaning of Christmas seem impossibly isolated in the childhood experience.

There's supposed to be a contrast between Charlie Brown's anti-commericalism (ironically in a special paid for by Coca-Cola) and the desires of the other children. But all of their motives equally come from such a perfect sense of childhood innocence, from such a simple-hearted lack of understanding and yet perfect confidence, it ultimately boils down to witnessing a disagreement amongst kittens.

Linus' famous biblical recitation doesn't actually answer Charlie Brown's question and most children watching the special--I include myself when I was a kid, I don't know about you--didn't understand what Linus was saying. But the atmosphere of the speech, from his voice and the light echo effect, give it the effect of a magical incantation. There's a sense of something vast and real that can't be understood, even as it's of crucial importance.

Charlie Brown's young sense of spiritual void prompts him to identify the problem vaguely as "commercialism". He seems to include Snoopy's decorations in this problem, and yet it's a magnificent solution when those same decorations are used to enhance his little living tree. Of course, it's the fact that his friends were willing to help him after all that really lifts his spirits. His problems are solved because he didn't actually understand them, a fact which somehow doesn't dispel the fact that his depression is really evocative. Again, it feels like people, gathered in a bar, chilling to some light jazz, marinating in quiet camaraderie and a shared sense of not really understanding anything. Actually, it really reminds me of the lyrics to "Lush Life".

A Charlie Brown Christmas is available on AppleTV+.

Yule Approacheth

On the train lately, I've been reading MR James stories but I mixed it up a little bit a few days ago and read HP Lovecraft's "The Festival" again. I'd totally forgotten it's a Christmas story.

As the road wound down the seaward slope I listened for the merry sounds of a village at evening, but did not hear them. Then I thought of the season, and felt that these old Puritan folk might well have Christmas customs strange to me, and full of silent hearthside prayer. So after that I did not listen for merriment or look for wayfarers, but kept on down past the hushed lighted farmhouses and shadowy stone walls to where the signs of ancient shops and sea-taverns creaked in the salt breeze, and the grotesque knockers of pillared doorways glistened along deserted, unpaved lanes in the light of little, curtained windows.

This is one of several stories, most famously The Shadow Over Innsmouth, in which the horror is intimately related to the narrator. Revelations of his own heritage slowly increase his anxiety and give meaning to his actions beyond those directly ascribed by the narrator.

As I hung back, the old man produced his stylus and tablet and wrote that he was the true deputy of my fathers who had founded the Yule worship in this ancient place; that it had been decreed I should come back, and that the most secret mysteries were yet to be performed. He wrote this in a very ancient hand, and when I still hesitated he pulled from his loose robe a seal ring and a watch, both with my family arms, to prove that he was what he said. But it was a hideous proof, because I knew from old papers that that watch had been buried with my great-great-great-great-grandfather in 1698.

He hangs back, yes, but what drew him this far? The real horror is unstated, that he may not be in control of himself, or he may not understand his own motives and essential nature. It's a tormenting, existential problem.

I suppose the story would be a good example to present to someone who wants to know why HP Lovecraft is considered great. The simultaneous love and fear he evidently felt for old New England is endlessly compelling.

. . . endless labyrinths of steep, narrow, crooked streets, and dizzy church-crowned central peak that time durst not touch; ceaseless mazes of colonial houses piled and scattered at all angles and levels like a child’s disordered blocks; antiquity hovering on grey wings over winter-whitened gables and gambrel roofs; fanlights and small-paned windows one by one gleaming out in the cold dusk to join Orion and the archaic stars. And against the rotting wharves the sea pounded; the secretive, immemorial sea out of which the people had come in the elder time.

I get that feeling often where I live now in Nara, Japan. There's no shortage of old buildings around here, some hundreds of years old, "scattered at all angles". I don't quite get the same impression of malevolence that comes through in the impressions in Lovecraft's fiction. I haven't been everywhere in Japan, so there may well be such places, but mostly the places in Japan feel sleepy and sedate, a contrast to the always hustling and caffeinated people. I've been thinking lately of how much this place will change once the diminishing population and economy will finally loosen immigration policies. When I came to Japan, I felt happy to be leaving a dying U.S. to come to a place resting on a more solid foundation. Yet, even then I suspected my perception wasn't accurate and now I can see how this place is dying, too. I think a lot about the tragedy of Japan's weak English education system, how necessary the language will probably be to these kids who are dissecting English grammar like frogs in a science lab; a weird, alien curiosity. To-morrow that frog will be Cthulhu.

The Highest Christmas Tree Star

Thanksgiving is over and so Christmas has begun. This we can observe from the release of The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. It must have been good because I was absorbed in it, I was never bored.

Mainly it's the story of how Drax and Mantis kidnap Kevin Bacon as a Christmas present for Peter Quill. Dave Bautista and Pom Klementieff are still sweet and funny together.

Klementieff, in particular, is adorable. The standout scene for me was her beating up a bunch of cops and telling Drax he's not allowed to kill anyone. But the funniest gag was actually Nebula's Christmas present to Rocket. I won't spoil it for you but I hope it has real repercussions for the MCU.

The music was good, of course, even if The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" has gotten to be kind of an obvious choice. That's how traditions start, I guess. In a twenty years, it'll be a standard for childrens' choirs, minus that one politically incorrect line (which was absent from the special, of course).

It was good, but not as good as Peacemaker. The DC universe really is a better fit for Gunn. But you can be sure I'll be checking out Guardians of the Galaxy 3.

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1645

Vermilion coins deposit bronze in weight.
Respected stones revoke amounted guts.
Amorphous fish deny alluring bait.
Prodigious cherubs chart enormous butts.
Assembled kings denounce assembled bards.
Egregious writing broke the crumbling wall.
Resplendent hands accept the standard cards.
Aggressive kicks propel the soccer ball.
Accosted guys relinquish 'staches trim.
Delighted lords remove to verdant shade.
Electric lights arranged to pleasure's whim.
Successful deeds deserve their troubles paid.
Disrobing trees reveal a Christmas prank.
Beneath the snow the candy vessel sank.

With Some Kind of Light in Their Eyes

A lot of people list Eyes Wide Shut as their ironic favourite Christmas movie. Is it really so ironic, though? Like a lot of Christmas movies, it's about family bonds being tested. And it gets at something most Christmas movies lack the courage to--the questionable reality of any feeling of connexion between two human beings.

I guess I've written about this movie enough already. I wrote a long analysis back in 2007. I've certainly read plenty of analyses. In earlier attempts to write about the film, I've focused on Tom Cruise's character, Bill Hartford, as being a kind sexual alien. Yes, maybe he is, but I find him much more sympathetic now, perhaps because I've lost more of my youthful confidence that two people can ever truly know each other. People have impressions, and sometimes we seek to validate the impressions other people have of us because we like them or at the very least don't want them to feel disturbed. That's why Alice (Nicole Kidman) wears her mask. Bill is so innocent he doesn't even realise he wears a mask until a literal mask is put on him and he's forced to take it off.

It's brilliant how the film continually presents new situations that test the boundary between sexual motives and chaste interaction. To establish a doctor as the main character, a man whose profession requires him to examine naked women from time to time, is a perfect choice. Here's a man with complete confidence in how he's compartmentalised his life. He finds that confidence continually undermined as he finds himself put off-balance again and again.

Actually, I only wanted to talk about the Christmas lights to-day. If the movie doesn't make you believe in the true meaning of Christmas, it can at least make you believe in the power of Christmas lights. My goodness, Stanley Kubrick knew what he was doing. All that diffuse, colourful light is simultaneously fantastic and ordinary, sensuous and childish, hedonistic and civilised.

I hope you're enjoying your Christmas or one of the other holidays celebrated on December 25 or 26. Eyes Wide Shut is available on Netflix in Japan (and yes, it's the rated X version).

Deer Christmas

Happy Christmas, everyone. It's been the 25th for over eleven hours here in Japan. Christmas is plenty popular at the department stores, less so at the temples. But I went to Nara Park, which has a cluster of temples, anyway because it's crawling with friendly, wild deer.

Because of this, deer are the mascots of Nara prefecture so it's always kind of incidentally Christmasy here, at least to Western eyes.

Also, sometimes there are Christmas trees in the official buildings. The boy with the antlers is Sento-kun, Nara's mascot.

Other wildlife was scarce on my recent trip but I did see two herons.

The deer are very hungry. They're used to people giving them special deer cookies you can buy throughout the park but crowds have been scarce due to Covid. Fortunately, there are acorns for deer who aren't too lazy to forage for them:

Here's a deer coming down the steps of the Great South Gate of Todai-ji Temple:

Here's the gate:

There are two massive wooden statues from the 13th century under the gates:

They looked nice and sinister in the sunset:

May Heaven's guardian warriors keep your Christmas safe.

Twitter Sonnet #1505

The dotted egg completes the grammar tank.
To sleep in softer shells we cooked the bird.
We kept the feathers hidden near the bank.
We know a flaying paper breathed a word.
In icy walls the strings of light awoke.
The timing chimed with turning glass and dust.
A ragged tyre gripped a broken spoke.
The forest changed in sudden bursts of rust.
The same movie's changed its bands of hue.
Where hopeless steps were looped around the arm.
The campers left some wrappers plus a clue.
The hidden monkey's sandwich was on a farm.
The red and green were cookie colour sweet.
The pulsing lights became electric beat.

The Sky Demons of Christmas

Happy Christmas, everyone. This morning and yesterday I've been watching various Christmas movies and shows; Donald Duck cartoons as usual, among other things. I've been in the mood for anime lately, probably because it's been a year now since my last Japanese class, so yesterday I watched the second Tenchi Muyo movie, Daughter of Darkness from 1997. It was also another example of a Christmas demon who isn't Krampus, following up from watching the Russian Christmas devil film, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, the previous day. Daughter of Darkness is also wonderfully weird and silly with an odd undercurrent of deadly serious perversion.

An alien demon named Yuzuha (Yo Inoue) decides to get revenge on Tenchi's alien grandfather for seemingly rejecting her affections, thousands of years ago, by tricking Tenchi (Masami Kikuchi) into sleeping with his own daughter. Tenchi's still a young virginal fellow so there's a mystery as to how the young woman who shows up, Mayuka (Junk Iwao), can be Tenchi's daughter, especially since the two seem to be about the same age.

Most of the movie is set during summer, in fact the Japanese title is 真夏のイブ, "Midsummer Eve". There's a festival, called Startica, on the homeworld of Tenchi's grandfather and the demon that happens to resemble both Christmas and the Japanese midsummer festival. The film is bookended by very Christmasy scenes, though, the climactic battle involving Christmas toys shooting knives from their bellies and deadly tree garland tentacles.

Well, it's someone's idea of Christmas.

Usually Tenchi Muyo is more effective in its domestic comedy scenes involving Tenchi's embarrassment as he deals with his harem of aliens and monsters. Usually plotlines dealing with cosmic conflict are less interesting but the best episodes successfully combine the two elements, as this one does. Among Tenchi's harem, the former space pirate, Ryoko (Ai Orikasa), is generally the most popular, with good reason. With all of the slapstick fighting, there's always a chance Ryoko might go too far, as she does here when she tries to murder Mayuka. There's always an effective tension with Ryoko for this reason and it gives a lot more emotional weight to her affection for Tenchi. Her psychological obstacles are more interesting than her rival's, Ayeka's (Yumi Takada), business with her royal family.

The writers seem to have learned from the early episodes what works because the demon's motivation, being unable to deal with rejection, and taking revenge too far past a place where she can plausibly be forgiven, is like a more extreme version of Ryoko's story. At just under an hour, Daughter of Darkness is a very short movie but good, its action sequences almost as good as its comedy.

Anyway, here's wishing everyone a good Christmas, humans, demons, and aliens, too.

The Late Lamented Great Intelligence

I thought last night I might give another chance to one of the Doctor Who Christmas specials I didn't like so much the first time I watched it but I just couldn't help myself. I had to watch 2012's "The Snowmen" again. I love this one more every time I watch it. The only real flaws I see in it are that it has too many good things, making it feel a bit cluttered; it's too short; and it has modern Who's chronic problem with dopey looped dialogue--the worst offender in this case being an awkwardly inserted line about a whole family crying on Christmas Eve, though a close runner up is a needlessly expository line from Vastra to establish that the Doctor is bringing Clara into the house with the TARDIS. But otherwise I just marvel that an episode with so many independently good elements works together so well in a single unified atmosphere. There are so many, I thought I'd rank the top ten.

10. Strax

My general feeling about Strax (Dan Starkey) is that his broad comedy takes too much away from Jenny and Vastra, not giving them time to develop their chemistry, but that doesn't stop his broad comedy from making me laugh from time to time, nowhere more so than in "The Snowmen". His double act routine with the Doctor over the Memory Worm while the bemused Clara looks on is great, especially layered with his typical alien warrior misinterpretations.

9. The Evil Ice Governess

What a perfect nightmare for a couple Victorian children, and a bit of a mischievous Mary Poppins subversion as the brilliant, comforting new governess, trying to pluck up the kids' spirits with her storytelling, is unsettled by the sudden appearance of the ice demon in place of the Doctor. Her eerie parroting of the Doctor's Punch impression, "That's the way to do it!" is a nice creepy cherry on top of the nightmare sundae.

8. The Great Intelligence

A menace from the Second Doctor era returns, now played (most of the time) by Ian McKellen. Even knowing he's the Great Intelligence doesn't detract from the unsettling moment when the Doctor realises the entity isn't simply a reflection of Simeon's psyche.

7. The Memory Worm

A delightful bit of comedy with Strax earlier serves both as introduction for and misdirection from the device the Doctor ultimately uses to foil Simeon. That's one of the advantages of having so many things in one episode; it's easier for the audience to forget about wondering what's up the Doctor's sleeve.

6. Dr. Simeon

Richard E. Grant plays the twisted scientist who was seduced as a child by a weird, flattering, reflecting phantasm, and he's clearly remained psychologically a child. In his later appearances, when he's simply the Great Intelligence inhabiting the body, it's a different performance. Grant creates a Dr. Simeon who's always speaking through clenched teeth, barely restraining a constant hatred for humanity, his isolation a dark reflection of the Doctor's withdrawn state at the beginning of the episode.

5. Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra

The spin-off everyone wanted but the BBC didn't consider proper (so we got the boring Class instead), the somehow both anachronistic and pitch-perfectly Victorian detective duo of the human Jenny (Catrin Stewart) and the Silurian Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) were finally introduced in their element with this special after their promising appearance in the previous season. Now they have a whole setting and profession to go along with their glamour. It's a shame they were never given the chance to really breathe on their own but we can take some consolation in the fact that they will be appearing, along with Strax, in a series of their own audio plays starting next year.

4. Clara, the Class Deviant

After the brief, tragic appearance of another of her incarnations at the beginning of the season, we're finally introduced to the Doctor's new companion, Clara (Jenna Louis Coleman), properly. Or are we? Clara's story is bound up with the Doctor's long life, a bit like River Song, but the concept is appropriate since this whole 2012/2013 season is a prelude to the 50th anniversary special. It makes sense that the Doctor's new companion would in some way be involved with his whole history. Still, it's less satisfying when we finally learn the truth than it is when it's still a mystery. She's more intriguing and complex than River because at first she seems only to be aware of her strange nature on a subconscious level and yet it manifests in her life. This Victorian Clara leads a double life as a barmaid and a governess, switching attire and accent when she goes from one life to another, like a microcosm of this character who somehow exists on multiple points in the timeline. Jenna Coleman, one of the most intensely pretty of the Doctor's companions, also establishes herself as a sharp performer, conveying the intelligence that makes her eager pursuit of weirdness and challenge so believable.

3. The Sullen Doctor

It's a joy watching Matt Smith bring his Eleventh Doctor slowly out of his funk he's been in since the loss of his previous companions. We first see him grumpily walking right past Clara and the sinister snowman but one question after another slowly pulls him along until the delightful moment when he realises he'd put on a bowtie without even thinking about it. His emotional state is wonderfully reflected in the TARDIS being kept up in a cloud where he goes to be alone and brood all the time; it provides a great "in" for Clara too as she discovers these elements and gets her first impression of the Doctor through them. This episode works as a nice introduction for people who've never seen the show.

2. The Vertigo Romance Stuff

I don't know if Steven Moffat was consciously influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo--it was voted the best movie of all time the same year "The Snowmen" came out--but a lot of the elements are there; the male protagonist, suffering from a loss of self-esteem following his failure to save someone else, falls in love with a woman at the centre of a sinister mystery only to watch as she falls to her death--but then there's more to it than meets the eye. The Doctor is never subject to the same level of deception and manipulation as James Stewart's character in Vertigo, but there is something of the same dynamic at play, particularly with the emphasis on Clara's shifting identity and how her identity relates to the Doctor. Considering this, her ultimate fate in the Twelfth Doctor era takes on a new resonance. But aside from all that, it's refreshing to see a companion just through caution to the wind and kiss the Doctor as Clara does in "The Snowmen".

1. Everyone can Act

This is a bit of a retroactive virtue. At the time, we had no reason to expect the Bradley Walshes and the Mandip Gills who populate the show now. But even if not everyone's Laurence Olivier, there's at least a basic level of competence in every member of the cast. It may be this more than everything that makes all the many elements of "The Snowmen" work in concert so well.