Other Doctor Lives: DuckTales: Season 3, Episode 18 – “How Santa Stole Christmas!” (2020)

I really liked season 2’s Christmas episode, which riffs on Mickey’s Christmas Carol in an inventive way, but this one is even better! Equal parts entertaining and heartwarming, it explores the longstanding feud between Scrooge and Santa Claus, offering up a great showcase for David Tennant.

It’s Christmas Eve, and the usual traps have been set up around the mansion to prevent Santa from coming down the chimney. Instead, he shows up at the front door, injured and begging for Scrooge’s help to get all the toys delivered before morning. Scrooge begrudgingly agrees, and as they travel around the world, Santa and Scrooge tell Webby the story of their meeting and subsequent falling-out.

Hugh Bonneville voices Santa, and he’s got it down pat. His is a very warm kind of jolliness, and you can feel him brimming with heart and good cheer. It offers an excellent contrast to the scowly Scrooge and suspicious Webby. As the ultimate Scrooge fangirl, she’s ready to accept his “Santa=the enemy” stance without question, but the “rainbows and unicorns” side of her personality isn’t immune to Santa’s pleasant, caring nature.

The episode is largely focused on Scrooge, Santa, and Webby, so there’s not a whole lot of the other characters today, but they get a few good lines in. Della is 100% down with the anti-Santa rhetoric, saying, “That man is not allowed in our home. He knows what he did.” And when Santa first shows up at the mansion, of course Louie asks, “How much would it cost to get bumped up to the Nice list?”

An amusing side note: we get cameos from some recurring characters while their presents are being delivered. But, since it’s the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, they’re all sleeping. That means actors like Lin-Manuel Miranda got a guest starring credit purely for snoring and other sleep sounds! (Oh, and kisses both Lena and Violet on the cheek as she drops off their presents—it’s adorable.)

Scrooge flashback episodes are always entertaining, and his backstory with Santa is great. This goes way back, to when Scrooge is still pulling himself up by his bootstraps, going around selling coal in the midst of a harsh winter. At this point in his life, he is not much of a salesman, but when he meets Santa, ol’ St. Nick’s natural charm and welcoming nature gets him invited in anywhere, and Scrooge is able to reap the benefits of his new acquaintance’s charisma.

We see how they help and aggravate each other almost in equal measure. Scrooge is annoyed by Santa’s jolly Christmas routine, but he sees how his potential customers respond to it. Santa is way too optimistic in overpromising Scrooge’s ability to deliver coal to everyone’s house before Christmas, but Scrooge has a bead on a mystical relic that could handle the “visit every house in one night” thing. Both of them cause scrapes at different points, and both of them save the other on occasion.

Excellent episode for David Tennant. All my favorite line deliveries from him today relate to his saltiness toward/distrust of Santa—here are a few choice bits!

·        Classic alliterative insult (with bonus assonance!) – “Every year, that present-peddling prowler tries to put his sooty boot on my roof.”

·        When he hears a knock at the door, he grumbles, “Probably a bunch of carolers spreading lies.”

·        This is the reason only Webby is allowed to accompany him and Santa – “You boys are not going! You’re too susceptible to his charms.” Tennant’s sneering delivery here is everything.

His interactions with Santa are really good throughout. Scrooge is cranky but pragmatic while Santa is charming but naïve. We see how it irritates Scrooge when Santa makes friends wherever he goes, even as he doth protest a little too much about not needing friends himself. It’s interesting to see him gradually getting drawn in over the course of the flashbacks, although we already know it’s destined to end with Scrooge declaring them enemies.

Favorite Characters: Fang (Our Flag Means Death)

*A few spoilers.*

Aw, Fang! What a delightful character. Like a number of the crew members, particularly from Ed’s crew, his role isn’t huge, but he adds to every scene he’s in.

When Izzy first encounters Stede and the crew of the Revenge, Fang and Ivan are along with him. Izzy is framed as the soft-spoken, menacing baddie, while the other two are the threatening muscle. After they snatch Stede’s British naval hostages out from under him, I believe Fang’s first line in the series comes as he’s hitting one of the hostages—as the hostage promises favor from the king if they’re released, Fang yells, “I’m your king now, bitch!”

But by the end of that same episode, Fang is whimpering after Izzy grabs him by the beard. Rather like Wee John, he can sometimes be framed as a big bad dude but is actually quite the softie. Despite his strength and capacity for violence—during the mutiny in season 2, he picks up Ed and body slams him to the deck—Fang is a gentle soul, a man who’s sweet and caring.

He flourishes under kindness and attention—Lucius easily gets out of doing laborious grunt work by complimenting Fang’s cheekbones and offering to sketch him. Fang is bashfully flattered by the sweet talk, and for the rest of season 1, he’s totally Team Lucius.

By contrast, Fang struggles a lot with sailing under Ed during the Kraken era of season 2. He still does what he can to help others, comforting Izzy when he’s at his wit’s end, but the despairing attitude that pervades the ship drags him down. When Ed shoots Izzy in the leg, Fang breaks down crying—both because Izzy has been shot and because Ed would do such a thing. It takes Jim telling him their own version of the wooden boy story to help calm him down.

However, once they rejoin the Revenge, Fang is one of the only members of the crew not to be suspicious and frightened of Ed. Because he regrets his own actions during the mutiny, he doesn’t define Ed by what he did during the Kraken era. In fact, when he sees Ed Doing the Most and kind of flailing in his attempts to make amends to the rest of the crew, he takes Ed under his wing and helps him find time to sit and reflect on his thoughts. Even if Fang doesn’t actively resent Ed for everything that went down, he’s under no obligation to help him. But he does, because Fang is a kind, caring person, and he’s able to get through to Ed with his gentle, nonjudgmental honesty.

I’ll end with a few favorite line readings from David Fane!

o   When Fang is crying over the dog he was forced to put down, Ivan tries to comfort him, pointing out that he’s in doggie heaven – I love how earnestly Fang wails, “Yeah, but we go to different heavens!”

o   After Lucius’s infected finger is amputated, Fang gives it a lovely eulogy before shouting, “Begone you foul thing!” and chucking it into the sea. Hee!

o   As Jim is telling the wooden boy story, I like the softness in Fang’s voice as he gets a hold on his crying and gently urges them, “Do the voice” – So sweet!