I really enjoy rewatching the proto-Christmas Special The Unquiet Dead. The last scene with Dickens is so bitter sweet when he has gotten back his joy of life just to die soon after.
The Doctor: There’s a portrait on the wall behind me. Looks like you, but it’s too old, so it’s your father. All the chairs are angled away from it. Daddy’s been dead for 20 years but you still can’t get comfortable where he can see you. There’s a Christmas tree in the painting but none in this house on Christmas Eve. You’re scared of him and you’re scared of being like him and good for you, you’re not like him, not really. Do you know why?
Kazran Sardick: Why?
The Doctor: Because you didn’t hit the boy. Merry Christmas, Mr Sardick
As someone whose grandmother yelled “leave the boy alone” as my father beat me as a child, I couldn’t stop crying at that sentiment when it aired. Thinking about it makes me tear up.
Pretty much all of “A Christmas Carol”. The “halfway out of the dark” speech is great, and I mean… saving the day by retroactively making the villain your friend? What’s more Doctor than that?
“Lily and Cyril’s father, my husband, is dead, and they don’t know yet because if I tell them now, then Christmas will always be what took their father away from them and no one should have to live like that. Of course, when the Christmas period is over, I shall… I don’t know why I keep shouting at them.”
“Because every time you see them happy, you remember how sad they’re going to be… and it breaks your heart. Because what’s the point in them being happy now if they’re going to be sad later? The answer is, of course, because they are going to be sad later.”
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