Last Christmas Review

My biggest question about this episode comes from the tangerine at the end. Obviously, we're meant to suspect that Santa is still involved. Now, either the Doctor and Clara are still dreaming or the real Santa entered their dreams to help them out. I doubt Moffat would extend the dream sequence into series 9 unless he had something super clever planned. I suppose them dreaming and slowly figuring it out could make for a story arc. However, I'm hoping the arc has more to do with Gallifrey since they seemed to have largely ignored that last season. Until we see evidence otherwise, I'm going with the theory that Santa entered their dreams.

I may be overthinking this, but I find myself wondering where the Doctor was when he was attacked by the dream crab. It was probably just a cave in Utah or on Mars (someplace with red rocks). However, it might have been Gallifrey or Sarn. I doubt Moffat would have the Doctor find Gallifrey without us seeing, especially so soon after failing to find it. He could do it through an extended flashback sequence, but I doubt that. It's possible the Doctor returned to the Sisterhood for help and found them all victims of the dream crabs, before falling victim himself.

It's clear that the rumors about Jenna changing her mind were true. Some news publication (I forget which one) posted that Jenna was leaving, then a few months later reported that she had changed her mind and was staying for series 9. The ending of the episode seems to suggest that Clara was supposed to stay an old lady (as the rumors suggested), but Moffat rewrote the last page or two of the script. All he had to do was add another layer of dreams, and Clara becomes a young woman again. The major problem is rewriting the series 9 scripts to keep her character in.