The Night Before Christmas

Subscriber Short Trips #2017-4

Released: 18 December 2017

Listened: 3/21/21

This is one of the annual Christmas short trips, this time dealing directly with Clement Clarke Moore, author of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”...in our world, anyway. In this case, reality has been altered so that Christmas is known as a time when demons walk the Earth and steal away the wicked, which people are mostly acclimated to, but Moore has a nightmare (and a poem) about the Krampus, a gigantic evil monster made of candy. Of course, the Doctor has experience with candy monsters, and shows up to put things right. His outfit is rather vaguely described as an early-season one, but he’s traveling alone, and has a sonic with a red light, so it must be later in his tenure. As often happens with Short Trips, Stephen Critchlow narrates, and gives the Seventh Doctor a bit more stereotypical Scottish accent (some of his lines sound like Peter Capaldi delivering them), but does a good job with Moore’s American accent. Writer Nic Ford tells the story from Moore’s point of view, so the language is somewhat colorful and writerly, but only veers over into poetry when Moore is describing his actual poems. It’s a decent Christmas story in the Doctor Who style -- the right trappings, but twisted and just scary enough. Sadly, because “Better Watch Out” exists, this is the second-best Big Finish story to feature the Krampus (and there are several appearances in print and comics too), but that’s OK.