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After waiting less than a day since the original broadcast on the BBC, the Doctor returns to our screens on Boxing Day with a clever retelling of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Amy and Rory are on their honeymoon on a spaceship which gets into trouble. They send a distress signal to the Doctor who duly arrives. He quickly finds the solution to their problem only to find that the device he needs to use to save them is isomorphically locked to a bitter Kazran Sardick who declines to help.

The Doctor comes up with a plan. He will change Sardick into someone more sympathetic over time. He travels back to Sardick's childhood and learns about the fish that can swim in the air and meets Abigail Pettigrew (frozen as security on a debt). Every Christmas Eve, Sardick and the Doctor release Abigail and they go on an adventure. Until one Christmas Eve, Abigail tells Sardick a terrible secret which spoils all the Doctor's good work.

With this avenue a failure, the Doctor tries everything: getting the passengers to sing; and showing Sardick what's happening on the doomed ship. Nothing works. Tellingly, during this sequence, Sardick reveals the truth about Abigail to Amy - she only has one day left to live. We see why the Doctor's plan failed. The Doctor then shows the younger Sardick what he grows up to be. This does the trick, but now the spire's control device won't respond to Sardick. He has changed too much and his father never programmed it to allow him to use it.

The Doctor's only solution is to get Abigail to sing. Sardick has to make a fateful choice. He releases Abigail and she saves the day. Intriguingly her song contains the words "Silence will fall all around". Sardick is distraught but Abigail comforts him. Christmas Day is a great day for a last day.

All up, a very good episode, if a little slow in the middle as we celebrate Christmas Eve over and over. It's also a pity we didn't see more of Rory and Amy. It's never explained how the planet has a surplus population - it doesn't look overcrowded. It's also a little odd that the Doctor's solution doesn't involve the release of all the frozen people.

It seems the Doctor will get a new sonic screwdriver after the current one is left behind in two pieces.

Lots of little jokes throughout: the spaceship bridge and uniforms are very Star Trek, what Amy and Rory are wearing (a bit of honeymoon dress-up), the Doctor's first appearance in the episode has him coming down the chimney, the Doctor's disbelief in isomorphic controls (cf: The Pyramids of Mars), the Doctor's psychic paper shorting out when he attempts a "lie too big", ie. that he is "universally recognised as a mature and responsible adult", the Jaws-like scene of the shark-fin in the clouds, "shark-in-a-box to go", a young Sardick wearing a scarf much like the fourth Doctor's, the Doctor's continuing inability to perform card-tricks and the Doctor marrying Marilyn Monroe.