A Christmas Carol

You may be looking for the television story.

A Christmas Carol was a book written by Charles Dickens. The story featured ghosts and confrontations with past, present and future.

"Now, it is a fact that there was nothing particular at all about the knocker on the door of this house, but let any man explain to me if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change, not a knocker, but Marley's face. Marley's face! It looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look. It looked like..."

―An excerpt from A Christmas Carol as read by Charles Dickens. (TV: The Unquiet Dead)

Characters in A Christmas Carol included Scrooge (TV: The Unquiet Dead) and Jacob Marley. (PROSE: Bay of the Dead, TV: The Unquiet Dead) Tiny Tim was also a character in the book. He was, as Susan put it, a "young cripple". (PROSE: The Edge of Destruction)

The Twelfth Doctor noted that A Christmas Carol was a story which everyone knew. (PROSE: A History of Humankind)

In 1869, Dickens gave a reading from this story in Cardiff. It was interrupted by the Gelth-possessed corpse of Mrs Peace who, in life, had been a fan of the story. (TV: The Unquiet Dead) Posters for this reading were dotted around the city, and one remained outside the Torchwood hub thirty years later. (PROSE: The Baby Farmers)

Alternate timeline

In a world where all of history occurred at once because River Song refused to kill the Doctor, Charles Dickens gave some details about his "new Christmas special" on TV, at 5:02pm 22 April 2011, as that was always the time and date. He said that it would involve ghosts and the past, the present and future, all at the same time. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)

References

The Eleventh Doctor used the story as a basis for a plan to convince Kazran Sardick to save a crashing starliner. (TV: A Christmas Carol)

The Tenth Doctor compared his past and future incarnations "getting dumped on [his] head" while tracking Zygons in Elizabethan England to the story, commenting "Very Christmas Carol". (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)

Behind the scenes

• One idea for the first two stories of Doctor Who was a take on a Christmas Carol, with the ghost of Jacob Marley really being the Doctor, only slightly tipsy. [1]

Connections in screen adaptations

• Simon Callow who portrayed Charles Dickens in The Unquiet Dead, previously portrayed both Dickens and Ebenezer Scrooge in the 2001 animated Christmas Carol: The Movie. The movie began with a live-action sequence of Callow as Dickens performing a live reading. Michael Gambon, who played Kazran Sardick in A Christmas Carol, voiced the Ghost of Christmas Present.
• David Collings played Bob Cratchit in the 1970 musical film Scrooge.
• Richard E Grant played Bob Cratchit in the 1999 TV film A Christmas Carol.
• The 1984 TV film A Christmas Carol starred David Warner as Bob Crachit and Mark Strickson as young Ebenezer Scrooge, Susannah York as Emily Crachit, Frank Finlay as Jacob Marley, Derek Francis (in his final role) as Mr. Pemperton, Michael Gough as Mr. Poole, Angela Pleasence as the Ghost of Christmas Past, John Quarmby as Mr. Hacking, Timothy Bateson as Mr. Fezziwig and Peter Woodthorpe as Joe.
• Rowan Atkinson, Jim Broadbent, Nicola Bryant, Miriam Margolyes and Stephen Fry all appeared in the 1988 Blackadder Special Blackadder's Christmas Carol.
• In the 1992 film A Muppet Christmas Carol, Steven Mackintosh played Scrooge's nephew Fred, Robin Weaver played Fred's wife Clara, and David Shaw-Parker voiced Old Joe.
• Derek Jacobi played, or was one of multiple actors to play, Scrooge in the comedic adaptation, A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong. Diana Rigg also appeared as herself.
• Catherine Tate wrote and starred in the 2009 parody Nan's Christmas Carol, in which her The Catherine Tate Show character Joannie Taylor (or "Nan") goes through an experience identical to that of Scrooge. The special saw her once again appearing opposite David Tennant, who played the Ghost of Christmas Present, and also saw appearances by Ben Miller as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Roger Lloyd Pack as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Dominic Coleman as Jake Taylor (Joannie's late husband, who takes on the role of Jacob Marley), and Rosie Cavaliero as Mrs Cratchit.
• Mark Gatiss, writer of The Unquiet Dead, wrote a 2021 stage play A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story, where he also played Jacob Marley, Joe and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Geoffrey Beevers played Tim and the Narrator.
• Christopher Eccleston starred in a 2023 stage production at the Bristol Old Vic.
• The 2023 stage play A Christmas Carol – A Radio Play Live on Stage starred Colin Baker as Scrooge, Peter Purves as Dickens, and Tom Baker as Jacob Marley.