Doctor Who is an extraordinary television series – it is, to be sure, my favorite. The newest head-writer-producer, Steven Moffat, is one of the best writers the series has ever had. Even though I sometimes think he adds too many double-entendres, thinking they will please the parents, his stories are filled with so much wit, and intelligent plotting, that the more one views them, the deeper and more thought out the story ends up being. This year, he wrote the Doctor Who Christmas special, based it upon A Christmas Carol (even gave it that title), and in many ways, you have what one expects in a story based upon Dickens: a grumpy old man is changed, and goes from hating Christmas, to being a kind, benevolent benefactor of humanity.
But what makes this Christmas story so special is that, while taking on the story and theme of a Christmas Carol, Moffat, probably without knowing what he has done, has produced an episode of Doctor Who which can be used to help explain the notion of grace. Grace perfects nature, taking what good they have and using it to transform the person, sometimes very slowly, into a new creation.
Because this is a science fiction story, and the Doctor is the person who takes on the persona of the “ghost of Christmas” to change this story’s Scrooge (Kazran, expertly played by Michael Gambon), what we see is the presentation of how grace changes people in a way that could have been written by Philip K. Dick. Philip K. Dick is the expert of alternative realities; he felt he experienced them, and saw worse worlds than our own, and he felt there was some force which was interacting with history, changing it, perfecting it, and some people like him have memories of both realities. Sometimes he thought it was God, sometimes an alien, sometimes a computer, sometimes Sophia – he was never quite sure what it was, but he felt it had been guiding him and his life. In this story, the Doctor does what Philip K Dick’s “VALIS” or “Zebra” would do: change time. He took the good he saw in Kazran (when, at one point, the Doctor saw Kazran stopped himself from hitting a small child), and worked on it to create the new man. By going back in time, and, starting with Kazran in his youth, the Doctor befriended him and showed him a new way of looking at the world. Kazran remembers his past before meeting the Doctor, and yet finds himself with the new memories; it is having some change on him, but it is only something else, something even greater, which can bring his full redemption: beauty.
Beauty will save the world, and in here, beauty saved Kazran. His father had a collection of frozen people, used as collateral; one of them was Abigail. When Kazran first meets her, he is a young boy, and she is a woman who was let out and charms a flying shark (cue Saturday Night Live); it was wounded and Kazran wanted, with the Doctor’s help, to find a way to save it. Through her ability to sing to the shark, she was able to help lead it back to its proper place and live. Afterward, she had to go back to her frozen state, but not before the boy Kazran says this is going to happen every Christmas Eve: that the Doctor and Kazran would let her out, and have fun together. And so we see a series of adventures they have, as Kazran grows older and, eventually, becoming a young man falls in love with her – and she with him. Her beauty, internal and external, has an effect on Kazran, and makes him different. Through her beauty, he learns love, and knows love. Von Balthasar’s aesthetics are shown in dramatic form here. But then, it becomes a wounded love when Kazran learns she is dying. He then wants to stop his association with the Doctor, and loses his hope, his love, and follows his father’s ways once again. What the Doctor tries to do, to help change him, seems to backfire, and yet, in the end, the Doctor has one last trick. I don’t want to ruin the story for those who have yet to see it: but it is a unique twist on “The Ghost of Christmas Future.” It brings out all the good the Doctor has nurtured in Kazran. The ending is the marvel of a redeemed soul, redeemed by the aid of the Doctor, but more importantly, by the power of beauty to produce love, a love which, once pure, leads to spiritual healing.
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