Tony’s singing carols.
O Christmas Tree, O
Christmas Tree, how lovely are your branches.
Wellll…
The loveliness of tree
branches of course depends on your relationship to the trees. O Tannenbaum, the
Christmassy short trip from Big Finish plays with some tropes we’ve seen in New
Who Christmas Specials – in particular, Christmas trees that are possibly more
than they seem to be.
The story by Anthony
Keetch balances on a knife-edge of sweet and twinkly, threatening now and again
to tip over into properly dark and scary. But this is a First Doctor story, and
more than that, it’s a later First Doctor story, with Steven Taylor in it, and
that gives a certain reassurance that the old man with the magical blue box is
in control of events, at least enough to wring a happy ending from the scenario
of an isolated cabin in the woods, with a lonely little girl whose father went
out hunting on Christmas Eve, and who hasn’t come back.
Let’s put this on record.
The continued existence and excellence of Peter Purves makes an audio recast of
the First Doctor entirely redundant.
Purves has been excellent for years now when it comes to evoking the
twinkly-but-still-potentially-cross later First Doctor, as well as Steven, and
he brings both performances beautifully to bear in this Short Trip too, making
for a wonderful short listen.
If there’s an issue with O
Tannenbaum, it’s in storytelling that telegraphs its surprises a little too
hard to early, and a sense of a very guessable punchline looming up ahead of
you at least as early as halfway through.
But it’s Christmas, at
least in this story, so don’t be a grouch, just embrace the joy of Purves
telling a wintry, piney, deep snow story of the old man with a box, his space
pilot sidekick and putting right the things that have gone unfortunately awry
in the universe. For those listeners who felt David Bradley’s First Doctor had
a little too little of the limelight in Twice Upon A Time, this is a perfect
antidote, the original Doctor here unleashing some of his schoolmasterly
severity to extremely effective advantage – there are moments in every Doctor’s
era where they stand there and suddenly you feel that fundamental character
coming through – Paul McGann’s shoes fitting perfectly, Tom Baker dressing down
the Cybermen, Christopher Eccleston feeling the Earth turning, David Tennant
giving no second chances because he’s that sort of a man, Peter Capaldi’s war
speech…
This story gives us is a
solidly 21st century First Doctor proving moment, a moment when the
white-haired old Time Lord stands up, lays down the law and brings back
Christmas for a scared little girl and her daddy. For that, it’s a glorious way
to spend a very small amount of your money, and despite its sugary Christmas
notes, it’s one you’ll return to year-round for that moment of the First Doctor
doing things as they should be done.
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