Does it feel like Chistmas, whatever that is?

The thing that gets me about the end of A Christmas Carol, and makes me think there ought to be a sequel that covers it, is the thing about Scrooge then keeping the spirit of Christmas - of kindness and helping and stuff - all year round, now that he feels Christmassy.

See, let me explain. If you're doing all these things and getting the Christmassy vibe from the fact that doing good things does actually make you feel good, then what actually happens when the calendar hits the Christmas season?

I'll tell you what happens - it feels like something is missing, cos you know what it should feel like, but most likely it''s actually going to work out to be a day which you don't get that good feeling, cos everything's shut and you're at home....

I mean, The most Christmassy I've felt this year was at times like the aftermath of pulling that random woman from the canal, or some things that happened at times like Yule Ball.. Which means by the time we reach this weekend - and especially when one is self-employed working from home - it feels like just a day when I'm sitting at home... It feels, basically, *less* Christmassy than other times of year. If this makes any sense at all.

They need to do a sequel that covers that. And that sounds less arsey, cos I know that probably comes over as some weird comic book bollocks that Peter Parker would have a problem with.

I dunno, I should do a novel or a script themed around it. Very odd.

The Return Of Doctor Mysterio (no spoilers)

Well, that was better than I expected from the trailer. Good fun, filled with geeky if somewhat obvious comic books references (I especially liked the moment where Grant did the one-finger Christopher Reeve glasses-push. A tiny irrelevance I know, but I reacted immediately). Capaldi was on top form, and Nardole was... er, OK, actually. I quite liked him in this, a lot more than I did last year. There's hope for him in season 10, then. It was funny, and entertaining. I like that they acknowledged within it that the Doctor has been away - i.e. that there's been a year without a season - though I'm not sure that tying it so much to last year's special will have made much of an impression on the casual viewers, who won't remember it and will think those bits were padding. Though Lesley immediately went "that's you! That's you at Yule Ball!" in the last bit.

So, overall... Not a really *special* Special, but a fucking good season premiere episode, if you see what I mean - just a shame we have to wait till April (AIUI) for the second episode... I suspect that will work even better next year if the season 10 DVD set includes this as the first episode.