(790) The Snowmen

I have now arrived at the eighth Christmas Special of the new era and one thing is clear and it’s that the Moffat Christmas Specials feel more Christmassy than the RTD ones. We get a new title sequence which is rather good and sees Matt Smith’s face in the credits. That is the first time since Sylvester McCoy’s era that a face has appeared. We also get a new TARDIS console room and I quite like it. There is a small glimpse in the middle of the story but its not until towards the end that we get to see it in all its splendour.

In this story we get not one but two big names in this Christmas Special. The first is Gandalf. Ian McKellen is one of the big names in the world at the moment and obviously famous recently for the Hobbit and Lord of the Ring films and he does the voice of the Great Intelligence. I think that McKellen probably deserved a better role than just being a voice. It’s becoming a regular theme for casting big names and giving them less than ideal character. Someone that this doesn’t apply to is Richard E Grant who ironically played the Doctor in Scream of the Shalka. His first scene ends with him watching over a group of workers being killed by Snowmen and it’s a great opening bit. He was superbly cast and played it brilliantly.

Jenna Coleman makes her second appearance in Doctor Who although its as Clara. Coleman is rather good as she seems quite confident in the role so soon after joining. In this story she has to play two different version of the character and does it quite well. Oddly she dies and its only when she dies that we know that she is called Clara Oswin Oswald who was born on November 23^rd. As much as I have enjoyed the character of Clara/Oswin, I would like a companion to be introduced to Doctor Who that didn’t have some backstory

There are great visual in this story. The first is obviously the killer Snowmen who look quite scary and not the sort of Snowmen that you would want to stick a carrot in the middle of its face. The next is when Clara climbs the staircase and sees the TARDIS on the clouds. Another was the Ice Nanny

Ok I have been whinging about how the Strax/Jenny and Madame Vastra gang and how its terrible but watching this story I found myself liking it and in particular Strax. I thought that Dan Starkey played the role perfectly and there was a nice vibe from the character. Strax’s interaction with the Doctor was highly amusing because they were quite dysfunctional.

There is a funny moment where the Doctor is pretending to be Sherlock Holmes and its funny because of Steven Moffat’s involvement with the current BBC version of Sherlock. There is another funny (not ha ha funny) bit where the Doctor pretty much sets up the events of what will happen in The Web of Fear. He has a lunch box with markings of the underground and the Great Intelligence says he doesn’t recognise the markings and the Doctor tells him that is it strategic weakness

I liked this story a lot more than I thought I would. It was a Christmas special that was more about the characters than the actual story. Despite this it’s still a better Christmas story than the previous one and somehow I think its better than Smith’s first Christmas Special. Even though there will be less than twelve hours between todays episode and tomorrows, when the shows aired there was three months before Clara would return properly. The show is now entering its 50^th year and the build up to the Anniversary special starts now.