Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

As Good As It Gets

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The first must-see film of the year.

11th is my favourite of all the Dr Who 'versions' (Well, sometimes. If you caught me in a different mood I might have said 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th, War or 9th instead) and I think it's safe to say that this is one of (if not THE) best of all Matt Smith's episodes. It's also his first of four Christmas outings in the role too.The title is among the least imaginative the series has to offer, which is a shame when you consider that this is Moffat we're talking about here. The plot sees Amy and Rory (the latter is officially main-cast now) on their honeymoon aboard a spaceship that threatens to crash into an unnamed planet unless grumpy old miser Kazran Sardick changes his ways.Sardick is played by Michael Gambon and he is tremendous as he steals every scene he's in. Matt Smith also manages to show himself to be an incredible actor too (again). Both characters display a huge range of emotions in this episode and the two actors do a wonderful job with the material they've got.'A Christmas Carol' is arguably Dickens' most famous work (up there with 'Great Expectations', 'Oliver Twist' and 'A Tale Of Two Cities') and this episode might appear to be biting off more than it can chew by taking on an already overdone story. This works well though because it doesn't stick to it precisely. The end result is one of the three finest takes on the story you'll see (the other two being The Muppets and Blackadder, not that you needed me to tell you that).The Doctor decides that Christmas past shall not be shown in visions; rather he literally goes to Sardick's past and changes it, whist Christmas present is done via holographic projection to and from the crashing ship with Amy, Rory and the passengers visiting the old version of Sardick before he lets them crash.Christmas past makes up the bulk of the story as The Doctor visits Sardick as a child and again as a young adult every Christmas eve for several years. Here we get to see the more fun side of the 11th in his many adventures with Sardick every year alongside the love interest Abigail, played by Katherine Jenkins for some reason. She proves that she can act well enough to not let the episode down though, unlike certain other singers to appear on Dr Who at Christmas (naming no names, Kylie). She also gets to perform on a couple of occasions (which, thankfully, Kylie didn't).It's Christmas future that will get to your emotions as Matt Smith's more serious side shows. The previous year people weren't too sure about someone so young becoming the lead actor on this show, but anyone who somehow still doubted was well and truly shut up here as he doesn't take the old Sardick to see him, as he predicts, dying alone but instead tells the miser he's already seen his future. He turns and there's himself as a child. "Is this what you want to become?" asks The Doctor. There is a feeling that the episode has been building up to a moment like this one and it does not disappoint.Hard to fault it really, it's a shame that we didn't get an episode like this one again with the next Christmas episode 'The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe' which was pathetic in comparison. This isn't just the best Matt Smith episode, it's the best Dr Who Christmas special of them all. 10/10

If you take the letter 'C' off the word 'Carol', you're left with 'Arol', the Welsh word for backside, and it pretty well sums up the 2010 'Dr.Who' Christmas 'Special'. Since Steven Moffat took over as showrunner, there has been a noticeable drop in script quality and ratings. The new Doctor and his companions ( Rory exempted ) are not likable, and it is impossible to care what happens to them. 'Special' did nothing to reverse the decline. In fact it was rivalled only for sheer inanity by 'The Big Bang' which consisted basically of people running around inside an empty building. I know money is tight at the B.B.C. right now, but come on! The basic idea - a crippled space liner with 4,000 passengers ( Amy and Rory among them ) careering towards catastrophe - is essentially a pinch of 'Voyage Of The Damned', the far superior 2007 Special. The only man who can save the vessel is Kazran Sardick ( Michael Gambon ), a miserly individual who keeps the 'surplus population' entombed. The Doctor gets nowhere with him, so he decides to go back into the man's past and tinker with it in order to turn him into a nicer person. So why did he not think to do this before with say Davros or any other of the nastier 'Who' villains?Unlike previous Specials, this is not even an adventure story. We all know Moffat thinks of the show as a fairy tale ( he's wrong ) which presumably explains why he thinks its okay to dispense with the show's format. Wrong there too. 'Dr.Who' is either science fiction or it is nothing. Had Russell T. Davies ripped off the plot of an 1843 novel for one of his scripts, he'd have been crucified by his detractors.Stunt casting reared its head here again in the shape of Katherine Jenkins as 'Abigail', Sardick's doomed love. She was not too bad, but I was at a loss to explain how her singing was able to save the liner. It is yet another in a long line of Moffat 'deus ex machina' endings.But the low point came with the flying shark. It has to rank as the most stupid idea yet seen in the show. The creature pulling a sleigh through the air in the manner of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer had me cringing. Moffat's tendency to indulge in wacky comedy went over the top here.As the end credits rolled, I thought 'thank god that's over'. We then got a taster of Season 6 ( or should that be Season 6b? ) which looks to be about as thrilling as the weather forecast. Even the most rabid Moffat zealot must now be able to see the show is doomed unless he resigns and hands over the reins to someone more competent. Smith and Gillan should go too.The B.B.C. must have sensed that this was a loser as they screened in the days that followed repeats of earlier specials. We should give grateful thanks that Davies was ever in charge of the show at all and for so long, and that he had the good sense to cast first Eccleston and then Tennant. Can you imagine 'The Waters Of Mars' with Matt Smith as the Doctor? It would have been disastrous! 'Blackadder's Christmas Carol' over on B.B.C.-2 beat Moffat's effort hands down for sheer entertainment. He should hang his head in shame!UPDATE ) As I write this ( 27/1/11 ), 'Dr.Who' has just been humiliated at the National Television Awards by failing to win anything. Let's hope someone makes big changes to the show soon before it goes down with all hands on deck.

I was really really disappointed in this episode.It was overly sentimental and not satisfying. I didn't find the overused Scrooge plot interesting. Nor did I find the time jumps for the the various Christmas Eve's past very compelling. The singing, the fish, the scenes with the father, and the rewriting of the past did not come together very well. It was like a stew in which too many ingredients have been added and none of them go together very well.I think I may be missing a sentimentality gene or something, since clearly a lot of other people reviewing this episode really enjoyed it. It lacked "Whoness" and didn't fit in very well with the types of plots and dialog from other episodes.

Dickens' story gets the Doctor Who treatment, full of mad humor and personal tragedy as the Doctor has to reclaim a damaged soul in a world of flying sharks to save Amy, Rory (Arthur Darvill getting an upgrade to Companion status with a front-of-credits listing) and four thousands other people on a crashing space ship. With the great Michael Gambon as that Scrooge-like figure, it takes only half the show to manage the effort -- but series producer Steven Moffat never makes things that simple.As a fancier of Charles Dickens and the Doctor, I am quite taken with another example of how the Doctor treats all time as simultaneous, rushing back and forth to get information from Gambon to get himself out of scrapes half a century earlier.Moffat has shown a dab hand at making Victorian stories sensible to a twenty-first audience in series like JEKYLL and SHERLOCK. I'm glad he has decided to do the same for Scrooge.Oh, and Karen Gillan makes a wonderful Ghost of Christmas Present in a short skirt.