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The Twelve Days of Christmas is the fourth special episode of Numberblocks. It is the eighth Learningblocks special overall.
Synopsis[]
It's the Numberblocks' version of the festive favourite – what could possibly go wrong?
Plot[]
On a snowy winter day, One hums to herself, excited about performing at a Christmas concert. She comes across Two making a snowblock of himself, and Three beckoning the both of them to hurry and not be late. They add, remarking jokingly that Three means she doesn't want to be late.
All the Numberblocks from 1-12 are at the stage of a theatre, getting everything ready last-minute. One, seeing the size of the theatre, gets anxious about remembering all of the verses, but Three reassures her that it's easy and all she needs is to count up to 12. This catches Twelve's attention, as she states that she will be working backstage to make sure everything's "running like clockwork". Everyone then leaves the stage to their proper places except for One, staying to begin the concert. Zero appears to give her more reassurance, and to delete the doors so that the audience of Numberblobs can enter.
The Christmas Concert begins! One sings her verse, and all is well. A gift prop of a partridge in a pear tree is launched from a train at the front of the stage, landing and fitting in a hole on the tree in the center.
Next is Two's verse. Two gifts, two turtle dove props, are launched and land in two holes on the tree, which rises each verse to catch the arriving gifts. As one sings her part of the verse, another partridge is launched at the tree, knocking the previous one out of place. Neither One or Two know if that's meant to happen, but Three arrives on the next train before they can do anything. An invested Three sings her verse, launching three gifts into three new spaces on the rising tree. When Two sings his verse, however, more gifts from the previous verses are launched, knocking out the gifts that were already on the tree. One and Two quickly scramble to pick up the extra gifts, irritating Three. Before they can do anything else, however, Four's verse begins.
Four sings. Four calling bird gifts are launched into four new spaces on the tree, and yet again, the gifts from the previous verse are knocked off the tree by new gifts. This really begins to throw them off, as Three says "Three french- HEY!" and Two says "Two many gifts!", with Three sarcastically remarking how smoothly Twelve's making things run. The trains just keep on coming, unfortunately, and Five's verse begins. Everybody joins with Five to sing five golden rings, and such gifts are launched into the tree as well as all the gifts from before being knocked out. All of the extra gifts are starting to make a mess, and One tries to run backstage, but Six's train arrives before she even gets a chance. Six new gifts fit on the tree, and all the previous ones are made into a mess on the stage. One makes it backstage where Twelve and Seven currently are, but she quickly is told by Twelve to get back on stage to sing her part of the verse.
Finally, during Seven's verse, One is able to tell Twelve there's a problem. Twelve's confused, as everything is going well backstage, but is quickly shown by One how much of a mess the actual stage is. Gifts are rolling and bouncing everywhere. Twelve thought she was sure the right number of gifts was being sent out. One's response is, again, interrupted by the fact that she has to be on stage to sing her part of each verse. During Eight's verse, she strives to work things out. She notices that Eight more spaces for gifts were made on the tree for his verse. She realizes here that the problem is that the tree doesn't have enough room for all the gifts in each verse. Every new day adds the next number of gifts and all the gifts given on every previous day on top of that. The tree only has enough room for the new gifts, not for any of the repeats.
To help One be able to stay backstage to fix the problem, Nine covers for her. One explains the problem to Twelve, who realizes that the number of gifts being sent out is a whole new tree full every day. This helps One come to a solution: they need more trees, not less gifts! Eleven, arriving on her train, splits into her team of Ones to get another tree for her verse.
On stage, the panic only gets worse. Numberblocks struggle in vain to gather all the gifts. One doesn't show up to sing her part of Ten's verse, and Two, thinking quickly, splits into two Ones to cover for her. Eleven, still split into Ones and holding a big new tree, quickly arrives to sing her verse, reassembling as the new tree is handed to One. One struggles to keep it up, but her friends, Two, Three, Four, and Five, luckily give her a hand.
Eleven gifts fit onto the first tree, and they manage to catch all the extra gifts launched off the first tree into the second one. They are happy about this success, but struggle to set the tree down. Unfortunately, Five lets go of the tree during the "five golden rings" segment of the verse, and this makes the rest of them lose their grip, unable to hold the tree in place. Four, Three, Two, and One are forced to let go as the second tree tips forward. The second tree topples the first one, Eight quickly having to dodge them. The first tree breaks, and all the gifts on both trees go flying, stunning the audience and concert into complete silence.
Everyone is completely silent in a moment of utter shock at the disaster. One miserably holds up the part of the first tree that broke off. On the verge of tears, she sings "and a part which fell off our tree..."
Much to everyone's surprise, the Numberblobs cheer. They shout that this is the best Twelve Days of Christmas they've ever seen. Taken aback, but cheered up, One tells them that there is more. Twelve jumps in, saying that there's still one more verse left. One asks them to give them all some time to get ready and do it properly, and the Numberblobs cheer. A montage begins of all the Numberblocks helping to set up for the last verse: Twelve and Eleven build more trees, Ten and Nine place them, Eight and Seven help clean up, Five and Six play a remix of the song on stage to add music to the montage, Four nervously sets a round gift into a basket while Three rides the last train into position, and One and Two sweep the floor.
Finally, it's time for the final verse. All of the Numberblocks recap by singing "On the Nth day of Christmas" as trees slide on stage. Every verse now has a new tree with all the respective gifts. Twelve sings her part, "Twelve drummers drumming" and all of the others sing their part without a hitch. As One finishes her line, Zero comes in saying "And zero Christmas trees!" This makes the trees disappear, and all the gifts, with Christmas Magic, float in the air and glow, wowing the audience and the Numberblocks. The episode ends happily as the audience cheers and One smiles.
Characters[]
Trivia[]
- This episode takes its name from the popular song, The Twelve Days of Christmas.
- On the BBC schedule, there is a "4/12" between the episode name and description. This was an indication that there would be twelve specials of some kind. It was never specified if this was twelve Numberblock-only specials, or if the Alphablock and crossover specials counted as part of the other eight. Later on on Andrew Barnett Jones’s doc, he revealed four new of the Specials season were being written, and Alex’s Davy website specified she wrote three 20-minute specials following Series 5, specific to Numberblocks later clarified.
- The intro to this special was redone with the current technology. It is currently the only episode to do so, as every other episode after that uses the original version instead (however, a version of the final shot is used in the Irish version).
- If one was to count all of the gifts across all 12 trees, there would be 364 gifts in total.
- This episode reveals that Zero can teleport like Alphablock P.
- On the Learningblocks website, it was mistaken as a Blue Level 5 episode, even though specials have no levelling system. Also, no one bigger than Twelve appears in this episode, so it could have as well been in Yellow Level 3.
- This episode was coincidentally released on "The 12th day of Christmas" (December).
Video[]
@Numberblocks- Twelve Days Of Christmas! 🎅🎄- Learn to Count
