Water’s Edge

Water's Edge is a strange one. On the one hand, I like some of its ideas, and its focus on a Maori family across two time periods in New Zealand. That's a nice change of pace from your average Doctor Who setting and they even incorporate a real historical event - the Tangiwai disaster. Little details like that and this taking place during the Sixth Doctor's blue coat era and thus take place later in his timeline make this story at least a little bit interesting, but I'm not sure any of it overcomes the short's frantic pace and lack of an internal thesis statement.

The Sixth Doctor encounters a fellow time traveller, but one on a deeply personal mission, wanting to learn the fate of his grandfather that disappeared during the disaster, only to find it was the obvious - he died in the accident trying to help people. It's all a tad predictable, but still a pleasant enough story and just thoughtful enough it largely works as a Doctor Who experience. It is a bit of a harsh tone shift from the other Christmas stories in the anthology, and really feels like the most threadbare of connections to anything holiday oriented, which is a little bit jarring but I don't hold it against Water's Edge too much, since, at the very least, it is compelling enough of a narrative.