The Seventh Christmas Special of the new series marks the
first time since Matt Smith became the Doctor that Karen Gillan’s name wasn’t featured
in the title sequence. Instead it was Claire Skinner who gets the co-star
credit. The episode starts with a bang and the Doctor flying towards the earth
whilst trying to put on a spacesuit. This suggests to me that Steven Moffat
sometimes doesn’t care about the laws of space.
Claire Skinner plays a widower called Madge who loses her
husband in the war and is trying to protect her children from the news. I thought
that it was a lovely performance from Skinner and thought that she bought
something different to the story. Alexander Armstrong makes a physical
appearance in Doctor Who after voicing Mr Smith in the Sarah Jane Adventure and
in the Journeys End/Stolen Earth two-parter in 2008. He doesn’t feature too
much in the story but when he does then he is rather good and I liked how they
got reunited in the end and that it was Madge that unknowingly got him back
home alive. Madge opens the TARDIS with a hair pin and this works and the
Doctor makes a joke that 900 years of time-travel seems less secure. I would
expect this got a lot of Doctor Who fans in a lather as it writes off nearly 50
years of history. I remember in The Sensorites (1964) that it was mentioned
that the TARDIS lock has millions of combinations and the wrong turn could melt
the lock so it seems that in the intervening years that the lock was changed.
It takes about 20 minutes for the story to get going. It doesn’t
really begin until Cyril goes into the box and ends up on a snowy world. The
world is rather impressive and looks lovely. Even in early July it still looks
like a nice place to visit and is very Christmassy. The look of the entire
episode was quite nice and showed that a decent amount of money was spent on
making it look nice.
If there is one aspect of this story that is a bit disappointing
then it’s the inclusion of Bill Bailey and Anabella Weir who are underused. Now
sooner had they arrived then they had to leave and it seemed to me to be of a
waster because you could have given these roles to less known actors. The
performances from Matt Smith and Caroline Skinner were good and they worked well
together and the dynamic was different. Normally when I write this I would say
that Madge has potential as a future companion but on this occasion that isn’t the
case because the usefulness of the character wouldn’t work in a normal circumstance.
Amy & Rory don’t appear until the end of the episode.
The Doctor arrives at her door two years after the previous story. It’s a nice
reunion and ends with the Doctor wiping away a tear which I suppose is
something different for the Doctor to do at Christmas. I have liked the fact
that Amy and Rory didn’t feature until the very end because it meant that the
show got to have a different feel to it. I thought that the episode wasn’t the
greatest Christmas Special but I have enjoyed it more than I did back in 2011. The
thing is that the next series is one of change and one that for the first time
since the Tom Baker era would take place over two years.
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