No review of A Christmas Carol here I'm afraid as I'm reviewing it for TTZ10 (Double digits! It looks so odd!)
Those of you who know me in real life will know that alas I was one of those poor unfortunates you saw on the news sleeping on the floor of Heathrow airport because I'd been stranded there by the snow storm and hadn't managed to catch my flight to Florida.
As a result my planned holiday was cut in half but my sister and I did eventually get out there, arriving just before midnight on Christmas Eve so the good news is we did spend Christmas itself with family.
If you've been following my Twitter (Ahem, TTZ's Twitter feed that is) you'll know I kept making jokes about how I was gonna be able to watch the Xmas special as I didn't know if my uncle had cable. On Christmas morn and after we'd had breakfast my 15 year old cousin Adriana switched on the TV. "How many channels you got?" I asked, subtly I thought. My sister however saw straight through it and got straight to the point: "He wants to know if you've got BBC America".
She didn't think she did but carried out a channel search and actually yes they did. She went to it and up popped Nine and Charles Dickens in The Unquiet Dead. My sister signed at the inevitability of this turning in to another Doctor Who Christmas.
Adriana has never seen Doctor Who before but has heard me talk about it often so she left it on for a few minutes to see what it was about. I voiced the opinion that it was great she'd found the channel but I didn't want to interupt what she was doing but she shushed me because she was already intruiged by the seance. Although it was not my plan at all and surprising though it may seem I wasn't actually up for watching old Doctor Who as my brain was still mushed from jet lag, we ended up taking in The Girl in the Fireplace and The Shakespeare Code. Quite unintentioanlly I've converted my cousin and she asked a million questions afterwards - "Have they even gone back to see the dinosaurs?", "Are there any World War 2 episodes?", "How come he changed his face?"
That evening I sat down to watch A Christmas Carol LIVE! (I mean "as broadcast" of course) on BBC America. I think it's pretty amazing that it was shown a mere few hours after the UK and is a resounding testament to the success of Doctor Who in the States. My sister and Adriana both watched it with me. Unfortunately jet lag was really taking its toll and both Liz and I found it hard to concentrate and whilst I did enjoy the story I did not enjoy the fact that the commercial breaks made it even longer. It was weird full stop having commercials and they are one of my many bugbears and one of the reasons I don't really watch ITV. Although of course the bigger reason for not watching ITV is they've got absolutely bloody nothing on. When was the last time they ever did a decent drama? (Primeval doesn't count). I'm a life long fan of The Bill but I had to stop watching c. 2004 once it turned in to an unrecognisable and ridiculously overblown soap.
I don't know if it was cuz of the holidays or because I was in a different time zone but I was getting way more replies to my #DoctorWho tweets over the week I spent in Florida and really got some interesting conversations going with people.
I love chatting about this show!
The one regret was not having the time to meet Lillibet from Professor Dave's Ark in Space Podcast but maybe this summer if she comes over as planned. Actually I'm really looking forward to the next Flashing Blade get together. At the Winter Warmer one of the guys I met called Marcus did tell me about the regular Tavern meets and I'm tempted to go along. Probably won't be able to get to one till March at the earliest though.
So yeah that was my Doctor Who Christmas. I've not rewatched the episode yet but it does deserve it. I'll need to anyway to review it! Nope, I'm waiting till my Dad comes over from Colombia next week to watch it with him.
I didn't make one "jump the shark" joke either in this entry. Go me!
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