The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

Who opens their Christmas presents before Christmas? Okay, everyone.

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe in generally regarded by fans to be the worst of the Moffat Christmas specials to date, though The Return of Doctor Mysterio might give it a run for it's money. I remember very little from the first and only time that I watched it except that I recall it being rather schmaltzy and that it took place in the Androzani system. I also recall not disliking it the way I recall other fans doing but that might just be a first impression. Either way, I'm going in with slightly lower expectations based both on fan reaction and my own memory.

Plot Summary

The Doctor dives out a spaceship above Earth after activating a self destruct button. He grabs a crash suit and puts it on as he tumbles into the atmosphere. He crashes in England on Christmas Eve, 1938 where he is spotted by a woman named Madge Arwell. She helps him out of the crater and then takes him around town to find his TARDIS. However, as the Doctor had put his helmet on backwards in his haste, she never sees his face.

Three years later, just before Christmas, Madge receives a telegram that her husband's plane disappeared over the English Channel. Not wanting Christmas to be ruined by the news of their father's death, Madge refuses to tell her children, Lily and Cyril, the news. Because of the London air raids, they are forced to leave their house and head to an old manor house owned by an uncle who is now in a rest home. Prior to their departure, Madge makes a wish for a good Christmas, which is picked up by the Doctor.

Upon arriving at the manor house, they are surprised by the Doctor who claims to be the caretaker. He has updated the house to be more whimsical, which impresses the children but agonizes Madge. Privately, she tells the Doctor of her conflict in wanting the children to have a good Christmas and knowing that immediately afterwards she will have to tell them of their father's death. The Doctor offers a small comfort in trying to make Christmas a happy time for them all.

While the Doctor and Madge are talking, the children discover a large wrapped present in the sitting room which glows periodically. Though fascinated, Madge shoos them away to other things in the house. That night, Lily creeps out of bed to look at the present. She is distracted though by sounds and lights coming from upstairs where she discovers the Doctor working on wires outside the TARDIS. Unbeknownst to them, Cyril also gets up and sneaks downstairs to open the present.

Cyril opens one side and discovers a hole to an evergreen forest covered in snow. As he steps through, a silver bauble forms on a tree. Cyril picks it but drops it when it starts to crack open. He dashes back through the hole but comes back when he sees that the thing inside walked away from him. Curious, he follows the tracks in the snow.

Upstairs, the Doctor notices activity on his instruments and finds Cyril has gone through early (he had planned to take the whole family Christmas morning). He and Lily follow Cyril into the forest and trace his tracks. They also see that whatever Cyril is following is growing at an accelerated rate as the tracks continuously grow in size.

Unable to sleep herself, Madge gets up and checks on the children. Finding them missing she goes to the present and finds the passageway to the forest. She also steps through and follows the now set of four prints. Madge however, runs into a team of three factory harvesters who tell her that she is nearly 3,500 years in the future and on the planet Androzani Major. She tricks them into thinking her harmless and then pulls a gun on them, demanding to know where her children are. She takes them back into their harvester and ties the two men to pillars in the cockpit while interrogating the woman as to how they can use the machine to track her children. The leader of the team, Droxil, informs Madge that the whole forest is scheduled to be melted down by acid rain from a set of satellites to harvest the tree's power.

Cyril follows the tracks to a wooden tower. Inside he finds a wooden statue of a bearded king sitting on a throne. He follows the spiral staircase to the top where a wooden queen is, holding a circlet over a throne. Distracted by the view, he doesn't notice the queen step towards him. Startled, he backs into the throne where she places the circlet on his head.

The Doctor and Lily arrive at the tower where the Doctor notes that the bearded king is actually what Cyril was following. They race up the stairs but are locked out of the top room. Lily notices bright lights emanating from the trees just as the door opens of its own accord. They find Cyril and the queen and are joined shortly afterwards by the bearded king. Lily notices the tree lights getting larger and brighter while Cyril, under the influence of the circlet, asks if they can hear the trees screaming.

The statues use Cyril's voice to note that they have been preparing for them but that they can't use Cyril. The Doctor realizes that the vessel they are in is designed to take the living energy of the trees away from the destruction but that Cyril is not strong enough. He tries, though the circlet rejects him. Lily picks it up and is more accepting. The Doctor realizes that the transporter must be female.

They are interrupted by the approach of the harvest machine. The work team had teleported out and Madge had taken over it when the acid rain started. She gets it close but crashes at the base of the tower. She rushes in and receives the circlet from the wooden queen. Upon becoming the receptacle, Madge receives the essence of the trees into her mind and the ship at the top of the tower launches into space.

The ship flies into the time vortex and the Doctor coaches Madge to focus on home and the good things there. Madge's mind drifts to her husband and lets slip that she believes he is dead. The Doctor pulls her focus back and they land outside the manor house on Christmas morning, the essence of the trees having dispersed in the time vortex into the stars.

Lily and Cyril and tentative with their mother and she starts to break the news that their father is believed to have died. Before she can finish, the Doctor reenters the ship and insists they come outside. Outside they find their father's plane and him having climbed out of it. Madge's pull of focus had created a hole in time for him to follow in the damaged plane and he was pulled along with the ship to the manor house.

Reunited, they celebrate Christmas together while the Doctor prepares to leave. Madge finds the Doctor and the TARDIS upstairs and realizes he was the spaceman she had met before. She thanks him for his kindness and offers to have him stay for dinner. Upon learning that he has close friends who think him dead, she insists that he go have Christmas dinner with them and shoos him away. The Doctor leaves in the TARDIS and knocks on Amy and Rory's door two years after the incident at Lake Silencio. After some ribbing, they invite him in for dinner.

Analysis

This story is heavily dependent on the viewer being both patient and very familiar with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The funny thing is that it reads like someone who has read a summary of the high points of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as you see symbols or hear a phrase rather than having any real connection to the story. But for even someone (like me) who fits those two criteria, this story has two rather large sins that are difficult to get past. The first is that it is very schmaltzy, to the point of almost being sickening. The second is that it is rather boring in the middle. The ties to C. S. Lewis are meant to string the viewer along, but they don't alleviate the sense of tedium that permeates the central part of the story.

The one thing that this story sets up right away is that it is going to be a comedy romp and that is not a bad thing. I have no problem with stories being silly or fun, especially at Christmas, and I would rather that be established right at the fore. Here we get that with the Doctor and Madge's introduction. This is even more so if you watch the one-minute prologue available on-line where the Doctor calls the TARDIS looking for Amy just before the ship blows up. This is all fine and it maintains the comedy and silliness, even with the presumed death of Madge's husband after the intro.

However, the comedy starts to go away once Cyril crawls through the porthole and that's where the slow down begins. I get that the comedy is supposed to be replaced by dramatic tension but it doesn't play that way as much. There's still a bit of whimsy in it. I also get that we're supposed to be pacified by the allusions to Narnia with the living trees, the lamppost in front of the tower, the lion's head knocker and the enthroning of a child, but it's just not enough, especially if one is not into the Narnia books.

Things pick up again comedicly with the trio of harvesters but they are only around for one full scene with Madge. Their appearance is so short that it's almost pointless. They tell about the acid rain that will destroy the trees and that's it. Comedic exposition and then vanish. At that point, all comedy ceases and we are given over to treacle.

I got the impression that Moffat tried to massage some more comedy in through the Doctor's dialogue but the heavy hand of the father's death casts a pall on everything. In a way, I think the reason the reason the schmaltz doesn't work is that the tone was too light in the beginning. We got allusions to Madge's loss with the telegram but with the romp-y tone at the beginning, there wasn't enough of a dark tone to counter the volume of sappiness. Instead it just comes across as too much, too thick.

Another small problem is that the Doctor is sidelined for a part of the story. I have no problem with him showing up as the caretaker after introducing Madge and the children, but once that happens, the Doctor needs to be the main focus. Instead you have a portion of the story where the Doctor only interacts with Lily. Cyril wanders on his own and Madge follows, interacting with the harvesters. The whole group is not reunited until about five minutes before the end when Madge finally arrives in the harvester. This can work when you have a companion that we are comfortable with but with a one-off companion, the Doctor should be at the fore, driving the action for most of the story.

In that regard, the Doctor is far and away the best thing in the story. He has the full Eleventh Doctor charm and zaniness that make him perfect for romp-y stories. He also makes him an excellent stand-in for Professor Kirke, who understands what is going on and remarks about the lack of children's knowledge. You also have a few jokes at the Doctor's expense where he acts as though he knows what he is doing and is just completely wrong. His moments of quietness and seriousness feel more earned because of how zany he is for most of the story.

Madge is not bad but she is so yanked around. She is very likeable and funny in that subdued way in the opening scene. But the loss of her husband turns her into a wet blanket who then becomes one note about trying to preserve Christmas and protect her children. It overwhelms other aspects of her character that would be more interesting to indulge in, such as the cold, quiet determination in tricking the harvesters to disarming themselves but then pulling a gun on them. These can play as both interesting and funny but there are too few of them to pay off properly. Her acting in the climax when piloting the ship into the time vortex becomes a bit over-the-top for my taste.

The children are okay but they have their limitations. Cyril is what you would expect and he plays fine for me. Lily is good up until the climax. At that point she gets a little dumb for me. Lily seems like she is an astute girl and she should not be in such denial about the possibility of her father's death, nor should she be getting into that pleading state with her mother where she denies what she should be easily aware of. It's what you would expect from a child much younger than what Lily is.

I will say that the direction and scenery are nice. The sets were also good and I'd love to live in a house the Doctor set up. The core problems are in the writing and it is just too sappy without enough darkness to counterbalance it. The story needed to be either a funny romp the whole way through or given some real darkness in the middle to counter the sap. It also should have accelerated the trek through the forest in the middle to give a bit more time to explain what was going on at the end as that felt rushed.

Now, despite my negativity, this is not a horrible story. It has larger than normal flaws but it is entertaining to some degree and I think it would be something better appreciated by children than adults. I think it is the weakest of the Moffat Christmas specials but it's not something to be avoided and not enjoyed. If you don't mind the treacle, it's a serviceable story and entertaining enough for an hour.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5