Dickens' story gets the Doctor Who treatment, full of mad humor and personal tragedy as the Doctor has to reclaim a damaged soul in a world of flying sharks to save Amy, Rory (Arthur Darvill getting an upgrade to Companion status with a front-of-credits listing) and four thousands other people on a crashing space ship. With the great Michael Gambon as that Scrooge-like figure, it takes only half the show to manage the effort -- but series producer Steven Moffat never makes things that simple.
As a fancier of Charles Dickens and the Doctor, I am quite taken with another example of how the Doctor treats all time as simultaneous, rushing back and forth to get information from Gambon to get himself out of scrapes half a century earlier.
Moffat has shown a dab hand at making Victorian stories sensible to a twenty-first audience in series like JEKYLL and SHERLOCK. I'm glad he has decided to do the same for Scrooge.
Oh, and Karen Gillan makes a wonderful Ghost of Christmas Present in a short skirt.