The Doctor's Daughter

Donna, I've been a father before.

The Doctor's Daughter closes the three part Martha interlude in Series Four. It is also one of the least regarded stories of the series. I don't remember it being terrible but with as provocative a title as that, it led a lot of fans to think one thing and what they ended up with was so far away that they grew resentful of the difference. That we're well removed, is it still worth all the disdain?

Plot Summary

The TARDIS is pulled through the time tunnel with the Doctor, Donna and Martha all clinging for any kind of support. They arrive in a tunnel scattered with debris and are immediately set upon by three human soldiers. The soldiers grab the Doctor and force his arm into a machine which extracts a tissue sample and uses it to create a new female soldier, genetically descended from the Doctor.

While trying to process this, the squad is attacked by a group of humanoid fish called the Hath. The two sides fire at each other while one sneaks around and grabs Martha. With two soldiers down, the squad leader detonates explosives in the tunnel, collapsing it and trapping Martha on the other side. He then takes the Doctor and Donna to see General Cobb.

On the other side of the tunnel, most of the squad was killed in the explosion. Martha tends to one with a dislocated shoulder. She pops it back into place as a second squad comes up. The Hath whom Martha tended to stops the others from killing her and together they take her back to their own headquarters. Because of her compassion in healing them, she is welcomed by the group.

At the human headquarters, General Cobb relates how the humans and Hath had come to the planet together, hoping to forge a new society. Things broke down and they have been fighting a war for generations, the origin of the war long since forgotten. The Doctor is shown a map of the complex and he is able to extract additional information, hoping to find Martha. Cobb however sees that the map is showing the lost temple where the Source is located. Believing that it will be the ultimate weapon to destroy the Hath, he decides to mount an expedition in the morning to recover it. He then orders the Doctor and Donna locked up because of their protests to the fighting. Not wanting to take chances, he also locks up the soldier extracted from the Doctor, now named Jenny, fearing her fighting spirit having been taken from pacifist stock.

Unbeknownst to any of them, at the same time, the Hath had been showing Martha the map, trying to explain where they were. They also saw the additions the Doctor extracted and form up to also head for the Source. Martha is left behind with the Hath she healed, who points out where they are going. He also rotates the map to 3-D and Martha realizes that it would be faster if they went outside. The Hath brings up the atmospheric conditions but Martha figures that she can survive the exposure for the journey and makes her way to the outer hatch.

In the prison, Donna talks the Doctor into accepting Jenny as his daughter, demonstrating that she has two hearts just as he does. The Doctor does accept her but relays his own genocidal past in trying to explain how killing the other side is simply wrong.

Jenny teases the guard and grabs his gun, allowing them to get out of the cell. They sneak into the outer tunnels and follow the Doctor's map, trying to reach the Source first. As they progress, Donna notes that each room they were in holds a serial number that is steadily going backwards.

They enter a new room just as Cobb discovers their escape and launches a raid after them. They are blocked by a series of lasers set up in a hallway. Jenny doubles back to cover them but the Doctor insists that fighting isn't the answer. Cobb calls out for Jenny to join them but she instead shoots a pipe creating a steam barrier. The Doctor temporarily shuts off the laser barrier allowing him and Donna to get through. Jenny, caught up in the euphoria of refusing to kill, hesitates allowing the lasers to cut off the path again. She however performs a series of acrobatics which allow her to get through the hallway, separating them from the Cobb's pursuit.

Martha and her Hath companion reach a hatch to the surface and open it. The Hath hesitates but follows Martha out the hatch to the surface. They make their way towards the spire of the central building. As they approach, Martha looses her footing and falls into a pit where a tar-like liquid has pooled. She is trapped and begins to sink. The Hath follows her down and tries to pull her out but can't reach her. He then jumps into the pool and pushes her out. This however causes him to sink and drown in the pool. Martha cries out for him but then crawls back to the top of the pit and continues towards the spire.

The Doctor, Donna and Jenny reach end of hallway just as they hear General Cobb break through the laser barrier. The Doctor finds a door and they enter the Temple, which is actually the control center of the ship that brought the settlers here. They find a log which details how the captain died and a power struggled formed between the human and Hath colonists. Donna also finds a clock and determines that the numbers etched into the various rooms are completion dates from when the robot excavators finished each section. From this they determine that although the war has lasted for generations, it has actually only been going on for a week of actual time.

They move further inward of the control room where they find Martha, having just entered from an exterior hatch. They also hear Cobb's men trying to break through and see the Hath cutting through another door. They also smell flowers and follow it to a center location where the Doctor discovers a terraforming globe, designed to rework the surface of the planet once the colony was established. Both armies converge on the site but the Doctor stops them, pointing out that their ancestors worked together before to create life and they can do it again. He then breaks the globe and the chemical compound moves out and begins to rework the planet.

Both sides lay down their arms but Cobb shoots at the Doctor. Jenny, seeing Cobb's movement, jumps in front of the bullet, killing her. Cobb's men disarm him and hold him down. The Doctor hopes for a minute that some of his regeneration energy passed through her but she remains dead. Angered, the Doctor picks up Cobb's gun and points it directly at his head, holding there for a few seconds before dropping the gun and pointing out that he never would and that should be the credo of their new civilization.

The humans and Hath join camps and lay Jenny out in a funeral ceremony. The Doctor, Donna and Martha then slip away in the TARDIS. They drop Martha off at her home before journeying on. However, back on the terraforming planet, a small burst of regeneration energy does trigger and Jenny leaps off the bier she was laying on. She takes a small ship and launches into space, determined to explore the galaxy.

Analysis

I don't think this story is as bad as it is often made out to be but it is a story of wasted potential. I happened to watch this one for the second time in two parts. By coincidence, it was just before the laser barrier scene and that is a bit of a key marker. Before that point, you could see the potential of the story: two races locked in a bitter war, people created just to be soldiers and perpetuate the war, the Doctor angry at the creation of an offspring that only reminds him of all that he lost. That all sounds really good. However, when the story picked back up, all the depth went out the window and the story became running, silliness and a slapped together, schmaltzy ending.

For the most part, I enjoyed the acting. The Doctor and Donna were the best both with the light teasing and the seriousness that developed when the Doctor opened up. Martha was pretty good, especially since she was interacting with a non-verbal group and had to carry most of that load herself. Most of the side characters, like Cobb, were also pretty good.

Jenny was a less good. When obeying orders and acting like a genuine soldier, she worked well. Her interaction with the Doctor was less so. I think she couldn't decide just how child-like she was supposed to be. Her enthusiasm for doing anything that pleased the Doctor seemed very much like a toddler that has just gotten praise from their parents. It made her sacrifice later seem unearned, though it did play in with the tumble through the lasers.

Let's just get it out of the way now, I hated the tumble through the lasers. It was ridiculously stupid especially as the Doctor had already cleared the path. Jenny could easily have come back after refusing to shoot just as the Doctor shut down the lasers. They beat a quick path through and just make it as the lasers come back. The worst offense of the scene though is the fact that it took what had been a somewhat thought provoking story and turned it into a cartoon. From that point on, everything they did seemed disingenuous as though they were trying to get back what they had lost. They didn't try that hard but that's a different point.

As noted above, it was after this point that the story took a different tone. Martha's little adventure was completely pointless. The story needed to have someone go to the Hath to show them where the temple was and set up the race. But Martha's overland journey and the death of her Hath companion did nothing. My impression was that they wanted to show the Hath as having similar values to the humans, including self sacrifice, but the Hath had already been established as that with their fair treatment and acceptance of Martha after healing one of their own. Martha could have been taken along with the patrol and reunited with the Doctor when the Hath showed up. It was going for an emotional punch but it just wasted time. If Martha had gone with the main group, she could have continued to show kindness and compassion with the Hath. As told, the main group could have easily assumed that Martha killed the Hath who was with her and then ran ahead to warn the Doctor to create a trap.

And that plays into the slapdash ending. I liked that the war had been going on for only a week but that the death of generations had destroyed that memory. It made for a nice twist. But I don't see how the Doctor pointing to a swirling green ball that's going to terraform the planet encourages both sides to lay down their arms. The Doctor could have dropped the ball releasing the gases and still had both sides start shooting at each other, determined to take control of the new world for themselves. Instead, they lay down because the show was nearly over.

Jenny's death was also hastily done. I think they were going for poignant sacrifice but her range of emotions had been all over the map so far that there wasn't much of a connection to her. It also felt like a very stagey death and I couldn't help but draw mental comparisons to Talia's death in The Dark Knight Rises in how silly it felt. Then what little emotion had been established, especially in the Doctor's threat of Cobb, it thrown completely out the window by Jenny's healing regeneration and liting out into space. That especially felt slapped on and out of place as it felt like she had been completely self aware of everything around her, knowing that the war had ended and that the Doctor had left. What little goodwill I could have had for the death scene was just washed away in that moment.

I hate to be so negative but there was a good amount of potential for this story in the first half and it all just fell apart in the second half. Now, I don't think it's the horrible thing and stinks up the series the way many fans do. It's an ok watch and if you're in the mood for something silly and light, it'll be fine. It's just a whiplash in terms of the tone. I will say that I think it's the worst of the series and if going through, I'd be eagerly looking forward to The Unicorn and the Wasp, which might explain some of the bad feeling on that one too.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5

Twice Upon a Time

Oh, Brilliant!

At long last we come to the Christmas special, the end of the Twelfth Doctor era and the end of the Steven Moffat tenure. We also get a full edition of David Bradley as the First Doctor, something speculated at ever since An Adventure in Space and Time but only realized now (coinciding with the release of new Big Finish adventures with David Bradley as the First Doctor). The previews have hinted that this will a comedy so I'm not expecting anything as dramatic or as deep as we've seen with the first couple of Twelfth Doctor Christmas specials. Personally, I'm hoping for something closer to The Husbands of River Song rather than The Return of Doctor Mysterio.

Plot Summary

The First Doctor stumbles out of the Cyberman shuttle and towards his TARDIS, determined not to regenerate. As he moves, he hears a voice out of the snow and moves towards it. He sees the Twelfth Doctor struggling to not regenerate but does not realize it’s a future iteration, though he suspects him of being a fellow Time Lord. As the two talk, time suddenly freezes with snowflakes held in the air in suspension.

Out of the mist of frozen fog stumbles a British Captain from World War I. He had been in a shell hole face to face with a German soldier when time froze for him. He had been approached by a transparent female form and then scanned. However, instead of time reverting when she finished, an error occurred and he was thrown forward to the point of the two Doctors meeting.

The two Doctors take him into the TARDIS, although the First Doctor is shocked when he sees that it's not his TARDIS. It is only after seeing this and further interaction with the Twelfth Doctor that he realizes that the Twelfth Doctor is his future self. Before they can continue their discussion, the TARDIS is grabbed by a crane and hoisted up into a ship hovering overhead.

Upon being deposited into the bay, the First Doctor steps out to investigate while the Captain and Twelfth Doctor monitor from the inside. The transparent female silhouette appears, identifying him as the Doctor of War, to which the First Doctor is appalled. The female figure identifies herself and the ship as Testimony and promises to allow the Doctor to visit with someone if he cooperates with them. Bill emerges from a side corridor and the Twelfth Doctor bursts from the TARDIS to greet her.

Enthused as he is to see her, the Twelfth Doctor is suspicious that she is not the real Bill. Bill explains that Testimony travels through time, gathering the thoughts and memories of people just before their death. It had done so with the Captain but an error occurred causing his time jump. Time would remain frozen until he could be returned to his proper location. The two Doctors conduct their own investigation, suspicious of Testimony's motives and the First Doctor notes that the glass form is modeled after a real woman and not computer generated. This means there is a source behind it all.

The two Doctors, the Captain and Bill release the winch holding the TARDIS and shimmy down. Testimony corrects the fault and begins to haul it back up again. But it is still low enough to the ground that they are able to jump to the ground. The group then enters the First Doctor's TARDIS where the Twelfth Doctor feeds it coordinates to follow.

They end up on the planet Villengard, near the center of the universe. The two Doctors head out while Bill and the Captain stay in the TARDIS. Time has unfrozen in this new location and the Doctors come under fire from a tower. The Twelfth Doctor shows himself and tells the occupant to scan him and realize he is already dying. The firing stops and the Twelfth Doctor heads up while the First Doctor stays below.

In the TARDIS, Bill is revealed to a glass figure just as the lead figure of Testimony, but with Bill's memories up until he was transported away with Heather. She calms the Captain and then leaves the TARDIS where she talks with the First Doctor.

In the tower, the Twelfth Doctor finds Rusty, the Dalek he and Clara "healed" so many years ago, now having created a trap to destroy Daleks who come to kill him. He allows the Doctor access to the Dalek database where he learns that Testimony was a project set up by a scientist on New Earth to collect the memories of the departed so that they could learn and archive them. The Twelfth Doctor is shocked to find their is no malicious intent and then notices that time has frozen again.

Bill comes up the stairs, though the Twelfth Doctor still refuses to recognize her as anything but facsimile. But with no evil to thwart, the two Doctors agree that they must return the Captain to his death. The Captain goes with the Twelfth Doctor in his TARDIS to act as a guide for the First Doctor's TARDIS, as the navigation controls haven't been repaired yet. As they near the point of the Captain's death, the Twelfth Doctor gets an idea.

The two TARDISs land and the Doctors promise the Captain to look in on his family for them. He tells them his name is Archibald Lethbridge-Stewart (grandfather of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) and the Twelfth Doctor promises that they will look on his family quite a bit. As the Captain settles back to his spot, time resumes and he faces down the German across from him. Before either can fire, they are distracted by the sound of singing from the German lines. A few moments later, the British start singing as well. Men from both sides emerge from the trenches and start interacting. The Captain puts down his gun and whistles for a medic. Germans come over and carry the wounded man back to their lines while the Captain's men help him back to their lines. The Twelfth Doctor had come forward in time by a couple hours, dropping the Captain off just before the start of the Christmas truce, saving his life for at least one more day.

Having talked to both the Twelfth Doctor and Bill, the First Doctor elects to face his fear and subject himself to regeneration. He reenters his TARDIS and uses the fast return switch to return to the south pole. He opens the doors briefly to allow Ben and Polly in before reactivating the TARDIS and collapsing to the floor to regenerate.

The Twelfth Doctor continues to watch the truce, unwilling to regenerate, tired from all the fighting and saving that needs to be done. Bill talks to him about his work, changing her appearance to Clara as well for a short time. A second avatar in the form of Nardole also appears. The two avatars, the first having resumed the Bill form, embrace the Doctor and encourage him to keep going. The Doctor walks back into his TARDIS, leaving them behind.

Seeing more trouble on the monitor, the Doctor tries to keep himself motivated, but decides to give himself over to regeneration for "one more go around." He reminds himself of things the Doctor stands for and things to focus on and regenerates into the Thirteenth Doctor.

The Doctor stumbles forward and sees in the monitor that he has become a woman. She is intrigued by this but on trying to take control of the TARDIS, it rebels. The TARDIS rocks violently with the central column exploding. The Doctor falls backwards and is thrown out of the TARDIS. She falls through the air while watching the interior of the TARDIS continue to explode while hovering in midair.

Analysis

I'm having a slightly difficult time processing how I feel about this episode. I did enjoy it, though I think I would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't had all the BBC America commercial breaks inserted in. But for all the run-around that was done, the was very little plot and an even thinner reason to why the Twelfth Doctor was trying to stop his regeneration. It just felt a bit out of place.

It is my understanding that this story was a last minute stopgap. Because of the work on Broadchurch, Chris Chibnall was unable to take over Doctor Who until 2018 so Steven Moffat was asked to produce Series 10 and did a fine job in my opinion. However, Moffat clearly had things wrapped in such a way that the Doctor would regenerate after being mortally wounded as shown in The Doctor Falls. But it seems that Chris Chibnall asked to not start off his tenure with the Christmas episode, preferring to start from scratch with Series 11. That's fine, but you can see the hole that Moffat suddenly found himself in and I'm not sure he quite gets out of it.

I have no problem with the hesitation of the First Doctor in his regeneration. It fits his personality and he has never regenerated before so a fearful defiance and needing to be coaxed along makes sense. The Twelfth Doctor, by contrast, is the first of a new set of regenerations. He has been almost cavalier with regeneration energy in past stories and given his renegade attitude, he would seem to be the most open to giving up and letting the next version come forth.

I'm also unsure how the Twelfth Doctor could be so energetic as he moves around while trying to repress regeneration. He was blasted with the Cybermen energy weapons and essentially had to have Bill restart the regeneration process for him after he blew them and himself up with the level. This feels a bit more like the regeneration that the Tenth Doctor funneled into creating the hand clone Doctor. A wound that bad has to be dealt with and I have trouble seeing how the Twelfth Doctor could allow the regeneration go forward enough to prevent immediate death but then suppress it enough to have an adventure with his prior self. Yes, explanations are offered, but the seem a little thin to me and it just casts a bit of a shadow on the story.

From a performance standpoint, I highly enjoyed it. The Twelfth Doctor was his usual entertaining self, wanting to embrace Bill but also with a simmering anger at Harmony's synthetic Bill trying to justify herself as the original Bill. I really enjoyed his interaction with the First Doctor, who was done as a nice echo of William Hartnell by David Bradley. I enjoyed it, especially the anachronistic jokes made at his expense. I did wish there could have been a bit more emphasis placed on the First Doctor's better qualities as it was easy to let the sexism or curmudgeonism take point.

I did like David Bradley's version of the First Doctor. It is different than William Hartnell but still good. Bradley is softer and less pointed than Hartnell though I felt that Hartnell held a deeper level of emotion. Bradley always felt like someone playing the Doctor while Hartnell simply was the Doctor. They are both good in their own ways and I thought Bradley played well against the Twelfth Doctor.

Bill was enjoyable but I sided with the Twelfth Doctor that she wasn't really Bill. The avatar Bill was always relaxed, calm and confident. Bill as we knew her in Series Ten was always a roil of emotion: excitable and fearful, filled with wonder. This Bill was much closer to the post regeneration by Heather. It was subtle and an excellent job by Pearle Macke but still a different performance than the Bill we know.

Though he didn't do much, I also enjoyed Captain Lethbridge-Stewart as well. He was mostly the object of distress, though not quite the damsel that is typical of this story. I didn't see it coming but I could see the inspiration from the Brigadier once the name was revealed. He was very much the "stiff upper lip" type that you would expect to be the Brig's grandfather and he was fun to be with especially as he slowly rationalized himself to accept his forthcoming death.

The return of Rusty was amusing but it didn't really have a whole lot of point other than as a neat bit of trivia and a place to run to to avoid Harmony. In fact, the lack of a villain was another small point of problem in this story. There are a number of good stories that don't have villains but this one was trying both to have a villain and not a villain at the same time. Harmony came in and they are initially perceived as hostile, though they change to complacent quickly. Then you have Rusty, who is only a villain while shooting at the Doctor. Then he becomes a reluctant ally. So the story was constantly trying to have someone in the villain role but then pulling the rug out from under it. It didn't quite work for me and it gave the overall story a feeling of running around for no real reason.

Like the Tenth Doctor and the departure of Russell T. Davies, I thought the Twelfth Doctor's regeneration was a bit long and self indulgent. I know they wanted to give him a good long speech to have his final say, but I thought it should have been a bit shorter. As entertaining as his final speech to himself was, I thought it would have been more fitting for the Twelfth Doctor to have had a little say and then regenerate after, "Well, what's one more lifetime?" The Twelfth Doctor was arrogant and self possessed but it would have felt more in character to have accepted his fate and left when the decision had been made. As good as the speech was, I thought the moment lost poignancy by lingering as opposed to the Eleventh Doctor's regeneration which gave itself one lingering moment and then moved on.

All that being said, I did enjoy the regeneration and I loved the fact that the Twelfth Doctor's ring dropped off. There was a suspicion that would happen and it was one of those things that was truly symbolic of the passing of the Doctor. I liked the Thirteenth Doctor's appearance and especially the wait for the reveal of her change of sex. I also like that it seems she will keep her native accent, although that could be a problem for me if I'm not fully paying attention. Because of the low tone, I swore she said "Of Berlin" rather than "Oh Brilliant." I'm not sure why the TARDIS took that moment to explode and reject her the way it did but it was reminiscent of the Eleventh Doctor's start so I'll be curious to see what they end up doing with that. I am going to be highly annoyed if the Doctor falls all the way to the ground and then just gets up a la the Tenth Doctor in The End of Time as it would continue to make a mockery of the Fourth Doctor's death in Logopolis but we won't find out until the Fall for that.

Overall, I think I enjoyed it well enough. Moffat's true goodbye was The Husbands of River Song and this was more of an extended coda. Self indulgent and not quite getting out of the holes that had been dug, it was still an enjoyable experience to be with these characters and it gave out the appropriate feels for the season. Most importantly, it whet the appetite for Season Eleven and that's the most important thing.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5

A Christmas Carol

When you're alone, silence is all you know...

A Christmas Carol is the first of the Eleventh Doctor Christmas specials and set the mode for what the Christmas special would be during his tenure. It would continue in the RTD tradition of being a one-off romp but Moffat seemed to put a greater emphasis on both Christmas and comedy, something to which the Eleventh Doctor was well suited. Expectations were mixed as the appearance of Michael Gambon (known especially for playing Dumbledore) excited people but the inclusion of operatic singer Katherine Jenkins (and the knowledge that she would be singing) caused consternation as fears of a Kylie Minogue style stunt cast rippled through fandom. In the end, it paid off with the fans as this is generally considered the best of the Eleventh Doctor Christmas specials and some argue the best of all the Christmas specials.

Plot Summary

Amy and Rory are spending their honeymoon on a space luxury liner that is suffering mechanical failure and crashing through the ice cloud layer of a colonized planet. Amy sends a distress signal and the Doctor lands on the planet to help them.

Control of the cloud layer is done through a machine owned by an old man named Kazran Sardick. As the Doctor leaps out of the fireplace, he is dismissing a family that had asked for the wife's sister, Abigail, to be released for Christmas as she had frozen herself as a deposit against a debt the family had taken out. Kazran declines to stop the machine, indifferent to the potential deaths of the 4,000 people aboard the liner. As the Doctor and the family are shoved out, the young son hits Kazran with a piece of charcoal. Kazran moves to strike the boy but can't bring himself to do it. They are then taken out.

The Doctor notes Kazran's restraint and puts together quickly that Kazran's hatred of Christmas and indifference to people are by-products of his upbringing and hatred of his father. That he could not strike the boy was evidence that he was not his father and not beyond hope. He calls Amy to update her on the situation but having failed to turn off the isomorphic controls is now working on a different plan. He gets an idea by using the Christmas Carol story to change Kazran's mind and salvage his soul.

The Doctor salvages a recording Kazran made one Christmas Eve where he had hoped to see a fish flying in the fog, a natural occurrence on that planet. His father berates him when he discovers him and closes the window. The Doctor dips back into Kazran's past and begins to change things, changing Kazran's memories as he does, also allowing him to watch the recording of the past as it follows the Doctor.

The Doctor arrives outside Kazran's window and after telling him he is his new babysitter, they set a lure for a fish using the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. The lure brings in a small fish which nips at it but it also brings in a shark which eats the smaller fish and the sonic screwdriver before turning to attack the Doctor. It tries to break through the closet door but the Doctor is able to trigger the sonic screwdriver inside to stun the large fish.

Kazran is sad that the fish is dying and wants to try and save it. To do so, they would need a mobile freezing chamber like the Doctor saw earlier. Kazran takes the Doctor to the vault in the basement where the freezer chambers are kept and after getting the passcode from the old Kazran, they enter the chamber. Kazran picks the unit with Abigail in it, knowing that she wouldn't mind as her recorded message included the fact that she is fond of the fish.

The Doctor notices his sonic activating, trying to repair itself as Kazran opens Abigail's chamber. They notice the shark has woken and followed the sonic down. As they hide, Abigail steps out and begins to sing, calming the shark into a docile state. That allows them to get it into the chamber and into the TARDIS where they release it into the clouds.

The Doctor takes them back where Kazran tells Abigail that she has been released for Christmas and they will do it again next year. The Doctor jumps forward another year where he and Kazran release Abail for further adventures including seeing sights on Earth and hooking a carriage to the shark and having it pull them through the clouds. Every year that they release Abigail, the counter on her chamber ticks down by one.

One Christmas, when Kazran is a late teenager, Abigail a more feminine interest in him. She asks that they visit her family, the same one that asked for her release at the Doctor's first arrival. Abigail only watches at first with Kazran standing stoically with her until the Doctor barges in. They have Christmas dinner and celebrate. That night, before going back into her chamber, Abigail kisses Kazran.

The following year, the Doctor takes them to 1950's Hollywood where Abigail discloses her illness to Kazran. Her chamber counter has dropped to 1, indicating that when she goes back in, the next time she is released, she will die. Kazran embraces her as the Doctor tries to get out of marrying Marilyn Monroe. Upon sealing her back in, Kazran informs the Doctor that he is too old for Christmas now and that he should not come back. Puzzled, the Doctor give Kazran the broken half of the sonic screwdriver and tells him to summon him when he needs him. Kazran puts in a drawer, pulling it out only once when his father is about to give him control of the sky machinery. The Doctor appears outside the window but Kazran closes the curtain.

Modern Kazran reflects on these changed memories. The portrait of his father had briefly changed to Abigail before she had told him of her illness but it had changed back to his father. He raged at the Doctor for giving him hope only to see it dashed. As he rages, a hologram of Amy appears acting as the Ghost of Christmas Present. She indicates for him to head to the vault where the passengers of the liner are singing Christmas carols.

Kazran dismisses them and tells Amy how Abigail will die the next time she is let out. It's not fair to him and he feels no obligation to give fairness to anyone else. Amy then tells Rory to expand the hologram field, bringing Kazran's field of view from the vault to the bridge of the ship as it is crashing through the cloud layer. They tell Kazran that the passengers are singing, hoping to manipulate things as Abigail did but it not enough yet. Kazran is still indifferent and Amy signals the Doctor.

The hologram cuts out and Kazran finds himself back in the vault with the Doctor who now invokes the Ghost of Christmas Future. Kazran angrily rebuffs him, railing about how he doesn't care while the Doctor stays silent. When Kazran asks what future he could possibly show him, he steps aside to reveal Kazran's child self watching him, stunned. He whispers his father and the older Kazran moves to strike him in a rage but breaks down crying. He hugs his younger self and apologizes.

The older Kazran moves to deactivate the cloud controls but finds himself locked out. The Doctor changed him too much and his father never gave him access in this form. Kazran offers the half of the sonic screwdriver to help. The Doctor gets and idea to signal the other half of the sonic in the shark which would echo throughout the clouds but he needs the perfect vibration to make it happen. Ruefully, Kazran opens Abigail's chamber once again.

Abigail gently chides Kazran for hoarding her last Christmas like a miser but embraces him nonetheless. The group heads outside where the Doctor connects his sonic to the PA system and has Abigail sing into it. The sharks is attracted by the singing and it resonates throughout the clouds, overriding the cloud controls. A path opens up and luxury liner is able to land safely. It also causes the clouds to break apart and snow falls to the ground.

Rory and Amy meet with the Doctor and enter the TARDIS while the Doctor says goodbye to Kazran and Abigail. The TARDIS vanishes leaving the old carriage with the shark hookup behind. The TARDIS flies through the atmosphere and the Doctor spies Kazran and Abigail flying through the clouds, pulled by the shark.

Analysis

Despite the changes to a personal past being a bit confusing at times, this is a damn fine story. It is well acted, well paced and poignant all at the same time. It is also very hard not to be moved by Abigail's song no matter what your opinion of it is in the context of the story at the time. It's just a story that works well on so many levels.

This story gets the Eleventh Doctor at probably his best point. He is zany, manic and funny. But there is also a slight edge to him, a darkness that will be embraced from time to time. That dark edge is only really seen in the Ghost of Christmas Future scene where the Doctor has an "I've tried to be nice" look to him and then unleashes the killing stroke of letting him see that he has become the man he despised. But for the most part, he's fun and a good guide through the romp. He even gets chided when trying to give exposition that is to be used later but disrupts the mood by the biting fish and that is quite amusing. It's just a fun performance.

Amy and Rory don't do much other than be objects of rescue and provide a touch of comic relief here and there, especially with the callback costumes that they were evidently using for some role play. But they are true to character and their comedic timing is quite enjoyable.

The true companions of this story are obviously Kazran and Abigail. Michael Gambon is as excellent as you would expect with a familiar but still subtly different take on Scrooge. He mixes indifference to others with a bitterness that fleshes out the true source of his refusal to help: he has been brought pain by life so why alleviate that pain for others. I also found it interesting that the Doctor nearly succeeds in replacing the bitterness of the fish experiment night with love of another only to have that bitterness returned and hardened by the knowledge that the development of the love between Kazran and Abigail also contributed to her being taken away from him. Unlike the steady softening of Scrooge throughout the story, Kazran is initially redeemed by the past only to have his old character reinforced. It's just such an enjoyable and compelling arc to watch.

Abigail is also an interesting performance as it could have easily gone so wrong so easily. She is pure and joyful to a point that oversaturation could easily make her annoying. It was very important to have that scene of melancholy, her looking wistfully over her sister's family and seeing something she could never have. It humanized her and gave her joy in the face of sorrow more poignancy. That poignancy comes through so well in her signing, especially the last song which is so swelling and (to me) extraordinarily moving. It is very hard to not well up just slightly whenever I hear that song.

The direction effects were also pretty good in this. Yes it's obvious that the fish are CGI but you go in expecting that. It's only painfully obvious when looking at the schools in the clouds. The individual fish work rather well in my opinion. I also like the constant dark atmosphere of the piece. There is a coldness that reflects Kazran very well as well also hiding some limitations in the production values I'm sure. But it all just flows together and meshes nearly perfectly.

About the only negative bits I can come up with are the lack of detail in the effects of changing the past. The Doctor's initial change of the past had a singular effect that was still alterable. But how will doubling up on it change things further? Boy Kazran now knows that his and the Doctor's adventures will accelerate Abigail's death so will be more resistant and try to change that? Will he remember still having the later adventures with the Doctor and Abigail under that changed condition? Does he remember additional beatings from his father as he refused to become the hard man his father wanted and thus was not given control over the machine controlling the clouds? It's all such a swirl of odd logic that you ignore at the time because you are wrapped in the emotional arc of the story but can come back and niggle at you when you think about it.

Fanboys will also grouse about how the old and young Kazrans are able to hug and fix each other without setting off a massive discharge due to the Blinovitch Limitation effect. But that's something you throw out the window because it doesn't help the arc of the story at all.

So I would highly recommend this one. It's definitely the best of the 11th Doctor specials and probably the best of any that are of the romp-y variety. It's just a fun story that you can go back to without any problem time and again. It's also nice to see just a different take on the Scrooge story when most versions are just window dressing on the same body. This is at least a new view. Watch this one both at Christmas and anytime you're in the mood for a solid, entertaining story.

Overall personal score: 5 out of 5

The Snowmen

I'm the clever one; you're the potato one.

The Snowmen was the third Christmas special of the Moffat era and was the bridging episode between the two halves of Series Seven. Like The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, there was a lead-in short where the Doctor is shown to have retired to late Victorian London in a fit of melancholy. Because of the bridging nature of this episode, the usual stand alone romp was not permitted and a more in-depth story was required. That suited fans and this episode was received much better than it's predecessor. It also added to the mystery of Clara, who made her return here following her introduction in Asylum of the Daleks.

Plot Summary

In 1842, a young boy is building a snowman, refusing to play with the other children as he views them as "too silly". The snowman begins to echo the boy's thoughts and offers to help him if it helps it. Fifty years later, the boy has grown to become the cold Dr. Simeon. He hires workers to collect the snow and bring it to a workshop where he collects it in an electrified glass globe. When the workers come to his house to be paid, snowmen manifest out of the ground and tear the workers apart.

Outside a pub in London, a new version of Clara emerges and spies a snowman in the alley. She asks the Doctor, who is passing by, morose after losing Amy and Rory, if he built it. He says no but takes a look at it. He tamps down his curiosity and walks away. Clara, unable to contain her own, follows him as he is taken away in a hansom driven by Strax. She is discovered and they are forced to stop to examine the snow while locking her in the cab.

Elsewhere, Dr. Simeon leaves a local residence, warning the owner, Captain Latimer, that within the pond where the prior governess drowned, is something that belongs to his institute and that they will be coming to collect it soon. As he walks away, he is confronted by Jenny and Madame Vastra. Simeon is unperturbed by their suspicions into his activities and the snow that seems to have been infected with an alien, low level telepathic field. They warn him to stop or he will be stopped by another. Simeon walks away.

After taking a closer look at the snow with Strax, the Doctor decides to wipe Clara's memory with a memory worm. Strax however bobbles the job and wipes his own memory. Before the Doctor can apply the worm to Clara, several snowmen manifest and attack Clara and the Doctor. The Doctor realizes that Clara is visualizing them, causing them to appear and orders her to imagine them melted. They do so. She then uses this information to convince the Doctor that if he wipes her memory, she'll be in danger again. He agrees, puts her back in the hansom and orders Strax to take her back to the pub.

Clara slips out of the hansom and follows the Doctor at a distance. She sees him head to a park where he plucks a ladder out of the air and climbs up, disappearing as he does so. Clara walks over and plucks the same ladder out of the air. At the top she finds that while she can see people, they cannot see her. She climbs a spiral staircase to a cloud above London where she finds the TARDIS. She knocks at the door but hides when the Doctor opens the door. She heads back down the staircase though the Doctor spies a scarf she dropped on her way down.

Clara wakes the next morning and leaves the pub job, with the owner begging her to stay. Clara changes clothes in the cab and is dropped off the house Dr. Simeon visited the night before where she returns to her job as a governess of the owner's two children, though under the fake name of Ms. Montague. Captain Latimer is relieved at her return and asks that she talk to his daughter, Alice, as she has been having nightmares lately. Clara speaks to her and Alice tells her of their old governess emerging from the pond as woman made of ice and terrifying them once again. Clara notes that while it has warmed up enough to melt most of the snow, the pond is still iced over.

Recalling her encounter with the snowmen, Clara returns to the park and tries to call out to the Doctor or even grab the ladder but is unable to. She is spotted by Jenny who takes her back to Paternoster Road where Vastra quizzes Clara but forces her to only answer in single words. After finishing, Vastra calls the Doctor and fills him in, triggering his interest by noting that Clara used the word "pond" to emphasize her problem.

The Doctor heads to Dr. Simeon's house where he sees the sphere of the Great Intelligence. He deduces that the snow is a crystalline life form that expresses itself through a telepathic field. He also realizes that it plans to transfer it's consciousness into a blend of ice and human DNA, animated in the form of the governess who drowned in the pond outside the Latimer home. He then dashes off before Simeon's servants can restrain him.

He investigates the pond and heads inside the home when Clara spies him outside. While Clara is putting the children to bed, the ice figure of the governess bursts and attacks them. They run and the Doctor emerges and shatters the figure with his sonic screwdriver. The Doctor starts to realize how much he has missed this life but before he can reminisce, Dr. Simeon begins to pump snow and cold air towards the house from a machine he has parked nearby and the governess begins to reform.

Immune to the screwdriver now, the group dashes downstairs where they find Vastra, Jenny and Strax entering the home along with Captain Latimer and the housemaid Francesca. Jenny lobs a field grenade and traps the ice governess in a force field. The trio then usher the house residents into the study to defend them, although Clara slips out to stay by the Doctor's side. Dr. Simeon knocks at the door and warns them to turn over the governess in five minutes or he and the snowmen who have formed outside will attack the house.

The Doctor and Clara create a small hole in the force field and slip through, causing the governess to chase them upstairs to the roof of the house. They then climb up the ladder and staircase to the TARDIS, the Doctor having moved it over the house. The governess pursues but the Doctor slows her down by thickening the water vapor of the cloud the TARDIS is resting on. He takes Clara into the TARDIS and gives her a key, wanting her to become his new companion. While distracted, neither of them see the governess pass through the TARDIS door where she grabs Clara. She pulls her away but doesn't know where the stairs are and instead pulls her back to the edge of the cloud where they both fall off.

The governess shatters while Clara is killed on impact. The Doctor materializes the TARDIS around them and then moves them into the house. Strax is able to revive Clara and continues to work on her while the Doctor isolates the pieces of the shattered ice governess. He teases Simeon with a piece of the ice and orders him to meet him back at the Institute.

When Simeon arrives at the Institute, he finds the Doctor and Vastra waiting for him. The Doctor then confronts Simeon, forcing him to realize that the snow was actually just a parasite and that it has merely been reflecting his own thoughts back on to him. Initially shocked, Simeon regains his composure and rips open the box the Doctor claims to have the ice crystal in. Instead, it is the memory worm, which latches on to his hand and begins to drain the memories from him. Simeon collapses and the Great Intelligence is also weakened by it's host's loss of mind.

However, the Great Intelligence has grown in strength and as Simeon becomes and empty shell, the Great Intelligence is able to transfer it's own mind into his body. The reanimated body knocks Vastra down and attacks the Doctor. The Doctor tries to fight him off but he is too strong. But just as suddenly as he attacked, he stops. The crystalline form of the Great Intelligence collapses into water and Simeon loses all strength and falls to the ground. The Doctor and Vastra check the rain but discover that it is salty, like tears.

The majority of the crystalline form of the parasite was around the house where Clara is dying. Her impending death and the sorrow felt by the family has overcome it's own telepathic field and replaced it, causing it all to collapse in tears. The Doctor and Vastra return to the house to see Clara just before she dies where she whispers to the Doctor, "Run you clever boy and remember."

After she is buried, the Doctor confides to Vastra and Jenny that he never saw the girl from Asylum of the Daleks' face but he did recognize parts of her voice and her words. He now realizes they were the same girl but in two different places and times. Invigorated with the mystery, the Doctor takes off to search for her. Over a hundred years later, Clara walks past the gravestone as a shortcut to meet a friend of hers across the field.

Analysis

Because of its bridging nature, The Snowmen could not be a stand alone romp as had been the tradition of most Christmas specials. I think this made it much better as it gave Steven Moffat something to focus on. There are small flaws but on the whole, this is an excellent story and a good fun ride.

We get two different phases of the Doctor in this story. In the second half, we get the traditional zany Eleventh Doctor that we all know and love. But in the first half we get a morose Doctor who is determined to wallow in melancholy. That would probably be a bit boring if that was it, but most of the Doctor's scenes in the first half deal with him being morose and yet slowly becoming interested in Clara and the events regarding the snow. It helps that he has both Clara and Strax to play off of but it's just interesting to see the Doctor trying to resist investigating and stay miserable when he is clearly being tempted to return to his old ways. "I don't do that anymore" is more the Doctor reinforcing himself rather than an actual tell off of the people trying to persuade him.

I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out why I like this version of Clara so much more than Clara prime. I mean, I don't hate Clara but I always found her a bit annoying, especially in her arrogance. This Clara has arrogance as well but I think it's a touch more tempered. She is bold but you see a bit restrained, like she is giving in to fear a bit more. She has wit and can argue but she also has restraint. I go back to the "one word" scene with Vastra and this Clara understands the rules immediately. I think Clara prime would have resisted and given into exasperation first before manipulating it to her advantage.

I also think that having a more overt attempt at romance between them played better. Unlike the Tenth Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor would not have responded to it in any fashion other than his awkward manner so it's safe to say that the Doctor and Victorian Clara would not have become a Ten/Rose type thing. But in the Victorian attitudes, it makes sense that the Doctor's reactions and attitudes would be confused for romantic intentions and they would have been in line with her own sense of adventure. Had she not died, he would have rebuffed her affections and a more traditional friendship would have developed. Modern Clara by contrast was much more wary and held the Doctor at arm's length which made for some funny scenes but did not seem to enhance the friendship that well. It's hard to put into words but there was just something more natural and perhaps traditional in Victorian Clara's interaction with the Doctor than modern Clara and that just put be off.

The Paternoster Gang was fun as always. Strax is the major comic relief in this one but it was nice to see Vastra get a little more prominent role. I also liked the fact that they had a significant role in this story in terms of getting the Doctor back involved. There are a couple of stories where their involvement seems to be only because the story is set in late Victorian London. Here though, they are going about their way but trying to get the Doctor back involved. They supply backstory to him, provide a means of getting him back with Clara as well as their usual armed back up. I do wish Vastra had put up a better fight with the possessed Simeon because she is somewhat useless other than a person to talk to when they return to the Great Intelligence globe.

Speaking of the Great Intelligence, that is probably the weakest point of the story in two ways. The more direct problem is that its plan and even its nature is passed off with only a rushed line or two. A bit more development would have been nice, especially with Richard E. Grant and Ian McKellen playing off each other. I also think their plan is somewhat dumb in the fact that they could have recreated a person being frozen in a pond without involving outsiders. There had to have been room on the Institute grounds to make a pool of water and freeze it with a person inside. That would have allowed everything to happen without outside interference. We certainly had already seen that Simeon had no qualms about murder so killing someone else to create an ice creature should have been easy. It's just another aspect of the villain's plan being overly complicated for the sake of the hero.

The less direct problem with the villain as portrayed is its effect on other stories. Mr. Moffat clearly had a plan in how he wanted to use the Great Intelligence as the overarching enemy in Series 7B and he also clearly wanted a tie in to The Web of Fear. That's all fine but it neglects the first Great Intelligence story: The Abominable Snowmen. The Snowmen has the Great Intelligence created as a mirror of the antisocial thoughts of Simeon in 1842. However, the Great Intelligence is noted to have taken possession of Padmasambhava not long after the Doctor was given a bell by him, which would have occurred in the first half of the 17th century. I very much doubt that without the influence of the Great Intelligence, Padmasambhava would have lived even 100 years beyond that time, much less the nearly 300 he needed to match the 1892 time frame where the Great Intelligence is freed as its own consciousness. This point has no bearing on the enjoyment of The Snowmen, but it is unfortunate that Mr. Moffat was so attuned to The Web of Fear that he forgot The Abominable Snowmen.

The direction and graphics were fairly nice. The ice governess is obviously the weak link in the chain but it was pretty good for 2012 and still holds up if given some leeway. It's not so janky as to cause any problems and everyone's reaction to it sells it a great deal more than any kind of perfection within the computer. The pacing of the story was also nice with a good balance between humor and tension. Again, I think the only real flaw is the development of the villain and the nature of their plan.

Overall this is a good story. It's fun with a good mix of comedy and drama. It's a good intro into Clara as a companion as well as a transition to the slightly less manic Eleventh Doctor that had dominated the prior two and a half series. With the exception of the Doctor's reference to the Clara that was in Asylum of the Daleks, it can also be watched as a completely stand alone story, which is also good for a Christmas special, even if it is a bridge. I think this would be an excellent story to pop in any time you had the itch for a bit of Victorian adventure.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5

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

The Next Doctor

TARDIS. It stands for Tethered Aerial Release Developed in Style.

The Next Doctor is a story that suffered from a bit too much hype when it first went out. David Tennant had announced that he would be leaving at the end of the following year, where the only episodes would be a set of specials. Then it was announced that David Morrissey would be playing "the other Doctor" and the rumor mill went wild with speculation about whether Morrissey was actually going to be the Eleventh Doctor, an iteration beyond that or some other explanation. All this led to high viewing figures but the resolution gave some fans a feeling of being cheated. So I think a fair evaluation of this story can only be done in a context far removed from all the hype of that particular Christmas.

Plot Summary

The Doctor lands in London on Christmas Eve, 1851. While wandering around, he hears a woman call for the Doctor. He rushes over but she continues to call. Another man in Victorian dress arrives and calls for the woman to give him his sonic screwdriver. Amazed, the Doctor steps in as the door bursts open to reveal a animal with a copper Cyberman faceplate.

The other man lassos the creature but it pulls him along as it climbs the building. The Doctor also grabs the rope but both men are pulled along up the side and into the building. The Cyber-shade pulls the two men and jumps out the window on the opposite side. The woman, named Rosita, cuts the rope with an axe just before they are pulled out with it.

The other man, calling himself the Doctor, sends Rosita back to his TARDIS and asks the Doctor about himself. The Doctor initially believes he might be a future version of himself but is wary given the man's memory loss, due to an incident with the Cybermen, and gives his name as John Smith. The other Doctor is aware that the Doctor is a different man given his lack of astonishment at the talk of Cybermen but runs off to check out a funeral. Curious, the Doctor follows at a distance.

The funeral is for a prominent reverend and as the carriage leaves, the other Doctor tries to break into the man's house. The Doctor opens the door from the inside, having gone in through the front. He notes that the other Doctor's sonic screwdriver is an actual screwdriver. As they look through the study, the other Doctor tells the Doctor that the reverend was murdered by the Cybermen and that he is investigating other murders and disappearances. He states that it began several weeks ago with the murder and disappearance of a teacher called Jackson Lake and has continued with the disappearance of a large number of children.

The Doctor unlocks the roll top desk and finds two info-stamps. The sight of the stamps cause the other Doctor to fall into a jumble of memories. He recalls their presence at his regeneration and that the Doctor was also there. The Doctor reassures him that he will help him but uncovers a Cyberman waiting in a closet. They run upstairs, pursued by two Cybermen. The Doctor tries to fend them off with a sword but they advance on them. The other Doctor releases the core of the stamp which overloads the brains of the two Cybermen and causes both their heads to explode. The other Doctor collapses, recalling he did something similar the first time. Curious, the Doctor pulls out a stethoscope and checks the other Doctor's heartbeat, promising that they will find what was lost.

At the gravesite for the murdered reverend, a woman, Miss Hartigan, matron of one of the workhouses, approaches, disrupting the service. She notes that killing the reverend was the only way to get so many men belonging to charitable organizations in one place. Cybermen appear out of the fog and attack the men, killing all but the four who run the largest children's homes in London. They are partially cybernized and sent to bring all their children to a central location.

The two Doctors meet Rosita at a stable nearby where the other Doctor has set up headquarters. He has held Jackson Lake's luggage which the Doctor takes a quick rustle through and finds another info stamp. He has the other Doctor show him the TARDIS, which it turns out is a hot air balloon. After that, the Doctor takes the other Doctor and Rosita, sits them down and explains what happened.

Pulling out the fob watch, the Doctor shows the other Doctor that he is in fact Jackson Lake. He was attacked by the Cybermen and defended himself with the info stamp. But that info stamp was the Cybermen's record of the Doctor and that information was downloaded into his head. The Doctor also tells Jackson that his brain accepted the information because he was retreating from trauma. Jackson Lake then remembers that his wife was killed by the Cybermen.

They are distracted by a mechanical beeping and the Doctor finds a belt of info stamps in Jackon's luggage. He also sees a group of children being escorted by a man with cyber plants in his ears. The Doctor tries to remove them but spots a Cyber-shade and opts to just watch. Rosita comes with the Doctor while Jackson tries to sort through his grief. They spot the children entering a building where the sewers connect but are confronted by Miss Hartigan and two Cybermen. The Cybermen take the info stamp and recognize the Doctor. They advance on him but Jackson surprises them with another info stamp and kills them. Rosita knocks Miss Hartigan down and the three escape.

Jackson shows the Doctor a deed to a property nearby which is the house he had bought. Realizing that the Cybermen attacked him in the basement of that house, they suspect there is an entrance from the house to the building where the Cybermen are preparing. Jackson also tells the Doctor that he is sure there was something else in the basement that was taken but he can't remember what. They head to the house, destroying one Cyberman guard. The Doctor finds a dimensional machine, explaining how the Cybermen escaped the void and a passage into the sewer.

Inside the main building, the Cybermen put the children to work at the machinery. Miss Hartigan kills the four cybernized men but she herself is taken by the Cyberleader and placed in the command chair of the Cyber-King. Rather than completely taking over her, her mind begins to rewrite the software of the Cyber-King, harnessing the emotions of hate and rage. She kills the Cyberleader when he attempts to disconnect her, taking command of all other Cybermen. She orders the killing of the children when the power has reached 100% capacity and prepares to launch the Cyber-King.

At the other end of the sewer tunnel, the Doctor, Jackson and Rosita find the children working. They also discover the power rise and see Miss Hartigan overwriting the programing. The three storm into the factory using the info stamp to kill the Cybermen guards. The Doctor orders all the children to flee with Rosita leading them to safety. Jackson hesitates and remembers that his son was stolen when he was attacked. He sees his son trapped on a platform above. The Doctor rescues the boy and both of them flee the area as it destroys itself.

They emerge outside to see a large robot, the Cyber-King - a dreadnaught with internal Cyber factory - rising from the Thames. The Doctor orders Jackson to take his son and find cover while the Doctor runs to the TARDIS balloon. He launches it after having grabbed another belt of info stamps and the dimensional control from the machine that brought the Cybermen to London. He launches the balloon and offers Miss Hartigan a chance to surrender where he will take them to an empty world to live on.

Miss Hartigan scoffs and orders an attack. He then fires a group of info stamps, disrupting her connection to the Cyber-King. The disruption allows her emotions of horror and fear to manifest. They create a feedback loop as the Cyber-King program tries to reestablish itself and both she and the Cybermen are destroyed. The Cyber-King prepares to fall but the Doctor uses the dimensional control to teleport it back into the void. From the ground, Jackson sees the Doctor and proclaims cheers of thanks from the crowd.

Afterward, Jackson offers the Doctor a chance to come to Christmas dinner but he declines. The Doctor in turn offers Jackson a chance to see the TARDIS, to which he accepts. He is overwhelmed and scampers out. However, he also notes that the Doctor is alone, despite all the memories of companions. Jackson insists that the Doctor come to dinner as a memory of those whom he has said goodbye to and the Doctor accepts.

Analysis

The Next Doctor is probably a story best described as a tale of two halves. The first half of the story where the mystery of the other Doctor is engaging with a lot of run around and also some nice back and forth between the Doctor and Jackson Lake. The second half though, once Jackson Lake remembers who he is, loses steam and descends a bit too much into the hero worship of the Tenth Doctor that marked the year of the specials. The second half isn't bad but it just doesn't hold the interest in the same way the first half does.

The Doctor is fun in this story. It's amusing to see his vanity stroked a bit when he thinks Jackson is a future version of him. But you can see the wheels turning swiftly and as he goes into investigative mode, the cracks and interaction with Jackson become even more interesting. Once the mystery is solved, it's back to action Doctor and that is still entertaining, even if it something we're overly used to by now.

Jackson Lake is also interesting in his two halves. He doesn't actually change his performance much between when he thinks he's the Doctor and when he's back in his right mind but I think that's a bit to his detriment. Impulsiveness and brashness work well with the Doctor as it usually is done for comedic effect. Having two Doctor personalities bounce and interact with each other makes for a great deal of fun. But once Jackson gets his memory back, his brashness seems oddly forced and makes him less likable. It also doesn't help that he oscillates between this brash action-hero type and someone frozen by fear and indecision. I especially didn't like the leading the crowd in praise of the Doctor after defeating the Cyber-King as it crossed the line into just too much schmaltz for my taste. But I did like his reaction to the TARDIS and his actual convincing of the Doctor to stay for dinner. So he's just a mixed bag all around.

There's not much to say on Rosita except that she was at least consistent through the whole story. I liked her given that nice mix of sass, adventurousness and caring. I actually wish she could have gotten a bit more screen time, although I'm sure that would have detracted from the time between the Doctor and Jackson. I also wished Jackson had not been so quick to talk about her being a governess and not add anything after the Doctor gave him a bit of a look. I'm sure the line was probably more written as a class joke but with her being black it took a slightly different tone with me. Probably not how it was intended but still it did hit that note.

Up until the launch of the Cyber-King, I rather enjoyed the Cybermen in this story. They were quite menacing and their attack on the funeral through the fog was a nice touch on top of their normal menace. I also liked the fact that the Cyberleader, despite all other intentions, still seemed to have traces of emotion and wit. His manipulation of Miss Hartigan was rather amusing in that dry way.

Miss Hartigan herself wasn't too bad except for the total lack of development she gets. She has that scene by the graveside and her moment of bossing the four cybernized men around but almost nothing else prior to her conversion. Obviously she harbors great hatred for those who have overlooked her and dismissed her powerful mind and wants revenge on society, but how she came to be in league with the Cybermen, understood them and convinced herself that she would not be cybernized is left in the dark. It makes her feel mostly like wasted potential.

Then there is the Cyber-King. That is the point where you knew this story crossed over from being a regular Doctor Who and officially became a Christmas special because it had to have something overly silly as the climax of the story. The Doctor tries to pass it off as an actual ship with a conversion factory in the belly but you can't deny that it's a giant metal robot wandering around 19th century London like Steampunk anime. There is also that fact that it is another example of Cybermen technology being overpowered by emotion; twice in this case. You have Miss Hartigan's mind and the combination of hatred and pleasure at the power she has been grated take over a rewrite the Cyber-King's software and then the whole thing is defeated when the Doctor overrides the fear suppression, allowing that emotion to override everything and destroy both herself and the Cybermen. It is both simplistic and a bit too pat for my taste.

My personal preference would have been for the Cyber-King to just be a conventional Cyber warship that was damaged and that the children were being collected for conversion. This is similar to other plots and I'm sure RTD wanted to avoid something that would have been seen as too close to Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, but something grounded in a bit more reality would have been nice. A Cyberman version of Godzilla is just a bit too much for me to swallow.

I also think it very strange for the Cybermen to expend so much effort on getting all the children only to work for just enough time to get the Cyber-King powered to maximum. Why not use Cybermen or even the Cyber-shades for that? What's more, why talk of killing the children if you have a conversion factory in the belly of the beast? They went through all that effort to get all those children, why not convert them and suddenly there are hundreds of Cybermen and not just the six to ten that seem to be in the facility. It's one of those plot points that just seem a bit too poorly thought out for my taste.

So I guess it comes down to your tolerance for silliness. If you're in the mood for a fun romp with slightly dark undertones, this will do. But with the dark and slightly comic set up in the first thirty to forty minutes, I felt that the ending was just too sharp of a turn for my taste. The set up was good, the acting also pretty good (save perhaps Jackson's son who looked dead inside) and even the direction was pretty nice. But the tone of the writing just took too much of a hard turn for my taste. Enjoyable, especially at Christmas, but nothing to give much overall thought to.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5

Vampires of Venice

Most people just nip stationary from work.

I'm not that big into vampire stories. In fact, I'm not that big into much of any kind of horror monster so a sci-fi twist on historic vampires is not necessarily going to grab me. But I do like Rory and Amy and the Eleventh Doctor so I'm trying to go into this one with a more open mind. I recall it not grabbing me with any great gusto the first time but it's also sandwiched between two stories that I really, really like (Angel two-parter and Amy's Choice) so it may be more of a case of being lost in the shuffle.

Plot Summary

A man named Guido petitions the patron of the city of Venice, Rosanna Cavlierri, to accept his daughter Isabella into her school. Rosanna accepts and Guido is promptly thrown out while Isabella is sequestered with the other girls. Guido later tries to see her but he is rejected from entering and Isabella reacts with no recognition when he approaches her on the street.

Meanwhile, the Doctor crashes Rory's bachelor party, concerned when Amy tried to kiss him. He takes the two of them to Venice in 1580 for a romantic getaway. The Doctor is immediately put on his guard when the city magister informs them that the city is in quarantine due to plague outside the city, despite the Doctor knowing that the plague has receded in Italy by this time. He is even more intrigued when he sees Guido being rejected by the passing mass of girls coming from the school. He approaches Guido to learn his story.

Rory and Amy begin to walk through the streets and enjoy themselves when they hear a woman screaming. They rush to the scene and chase off Francesco, son of Rosanna who had attacked and bitten the neck of a flower selling girl. Rory gives chase but Francesco dives into the canals and Rory loses him. The two then go looking for the Doctor.

The Doctor has Guido distract the front gate guards while he slips in via a side gate. The Doctor makes his way down to a chamber where he becomes distracted by a fancy mirror. He is approached by several girls who do not reflect into the mirror. They are puzzled by him but give him the chance to flee as they have no orders concerning him, though they do bare long teeth at him as he lingers.

The Doctor reunites with Rory, Amy and Guido where Amy is excited about the possibility of vampires. They return to Guido's house and devise a plan where Rory will pretend Amy is his sister and he is asking for her to be admitted. Once she is in, she will let the Doctor and Guido in. Guido also notes his stockpile of gunpowder that he had amassed in order to blast his way in if left to no alternative.

Rory takes Amy in and she is accepted due to the psychic paper giving her reference from the King of Sweden. Rory is thrown out while Francesco takes Amy away. She is taken to the girl's room. Most of them slip out when called but Isabella hesitates, allowing Amy to talk to her and tell her about getting her out. Amy then slips down to the ground floor and unbolts the door leading to the cistern from which the Doctor and Rory are climbing.

Amy is grabbed by one of the servants and taken to a chamber. Rosanna was not fooled by the psychic paper and has Amy tied to a chair. She bites Amy's neck and drinks fluid from her. She tells her that others will do the same and her blood will be replaced by that of their kind, transforming her body into them. Amy angrily kicks Rosanna, hitting a perception filter on her body. Rosanna's form transforms briefly into a large fish creature before going back.

Before they can suck Amy again, they are alerted to the Doctor and Rory's presence. The Doctor and Rory work their way through, holding off the vampires with a large UV light. As they are chased, Isabella frees Amy and escorts all of them to an exit. Rosanna orders Francesco to seal the building. The Doctor, Amy and Rory rush through the door to Guido's waiting boat. Isabella comes to but shrinks away from the rising sunlight. This allows the others to grab her and drag her back in. The Doctor tries to follow and grab her but he is electrocuted and knocked out by the door security.

For refusing to fully obey, Isabella is knocked into the pool internal to the building where she is eaten by the brothers of Francesco, too immature to be brought and hidden by perception filters. Rosanna heads back to the throne room to find the Doctor. They interrogate each other and the Doctor learns not only that Isabella has been killed but that the aliens are from the planet Saturnyne and escaped through a crack, similar to that in Amy's bedroom, when their planet was destroyed. With no female survivors, she has transformed girls to repopulate the race after sinking Venice.

The Doctor vows to stop her but she sends the girls to kill him in Guido's house. The Doctor, Rory and Amy escape but Guido kills the lot by luring them in and exploding his store of gunpowder. Unaware of the girls' death, Rosanna activates a weather augmentation machine, designed to sink Venice. The Doctor sends Rory and Amy back to the TARDIS while he tries to stop the machine.

As Rory and Amy run past the Cavlierri palace, Francesco sees them and decides to finish them. He corners Amy but is lured into attacking Rory instead. Rory tries to hold him off but is eventually knocked down. As Francesco leaps on Rory, Amy catches a ray of sunlight in a mirror and shines it directly into Francesco's face. The concentrated sunlight causes his entire body to burst into flame, killing him. Amy and Rory then run back to the palace to help the Doctor.

The Doctor meets Rosanna where she gloats at him until he informs her that her girls are dead. She flees below to the pool where her other children are, leaving the Doctor alone. He uncovers the control mechanism in her throne. Rory and Amy enter and he tells them to destroy the chair, which will send control back to the generator. The Doctor follows the signal of the generator to a ball ornament on top of the bell tower. He deactivates it, causing the storms to stop immediately.

The Doctor finds Rosanna standing near the edge of the pool, having stripped down to her undergarment but also stuck showing her human form due to the damage done to the filer by Amy's kick. With no hope of continuing her race, she jumps into the water where she is eaten by her own children. The Doctor then recollects Amy and Rory where Amy insists that Rory travel with them for a few more adventures. Rory agrees and they depart in the TARDIS.

Analysis

Typically when I find a story that I give middling to low scores for, I can usually cite a number of things that just bothered me or mistakes that were made. In this particular case, I can't really do that except for a few minor niggles. However, this story just doesn't do much for me. I don't think it's the fault of anything particular with the story as much as it is that I'm really not into the gothic vampire genre. Aspects of it worked for me in State of Decay, but here it just came across as more boring than anything else.

What really annoys me about not being engaged with this story is that it's the start of the dynamic between Rory and the Doctor. I'm not much into the whole "Amy choosing between Rory and the Doctor" dynamic but it is a simple fact that the interaction between Rory and the Doctor was very funny and had a smoothness that I just loved in later stories. You can see it already forming in the quiet moments between the two, but the rest of the story just doesn't engage me and I found myself wishing they would ignore Amy and just go back to Rory and the Doctor.

As is the case for most of Series 5, the Eleventh Doctor is in top zany form. He is a nice mix of excitable and happy but also attentive to detail. You can also see a trace of that dark detail that was more prominent with the Tenth Doctor in that he opts to fully deal with Rosanna when she confirms that she didn't know Isabella's name, even after having her killed. He also offers little help when Rosanna opts to let herself be consumed by her children. Though the tone shifts here and there, he shifts and sways with it.

Rory and Amy are also quite good in this story. Rory does the man caught on his heels very well along with the jealous and slightly jilted lover. It gets a touch overplayed in other stories but given that this is his first exposure to it, it's understandable that this would be the driving emotion for him. He is bumbling but also fully committed, the way someone who is trying beyond his means would be.

Amy, by contrast, is acting more in the role of the established veteran. She is seasoned but still impressed by each new situation. She is also confident but still lets the Doctor drive nearly all the decisions. She did not set herself as bait until the Doctor agreed nor did she fight the Doctor about going back to the TARDIS, though she and Rory did go back to the citadel after the fight with Francesco. It's a nice balance for a companion who can be bold but also deferential to the experience of the Doctor.

The villains were very generic in terms of the vampire tropes and the only one I found even partially interesting was Rosanna. She at least had a planning mind and seemed like she could match wits with the Doctor for a time. But even she gave into trope after a while. It made no sense to send all of the girls after the Doctor, knowing there would be a risk of loss in the attack. Likewise, where did Rosanna go after the Doctor told her all the girls were dead and he made to stop the submersion of the city. She could have tried to stop him and nothing was preventing her from starting over once the Doctor had been dealt with. Of course, it made it easy for him to stop the thing without being attacked.

Speaking of attacks, I also didn't like the cop out fight between Francesco and Rory/Amy. It had it's funny moments, especially the makeshift cross of Rory's, but it had too simple a conclusion. We had been shown that the aliens, while they did not like sunlight, could shield themselves from it pretty much through veils and hats. The reflection of a mirror does not intensify sunlight into a concentrated beam but would just reflect the same light that they would have been exposed to if there were no clouds or Francesco was not wearing a hat. It could have easily driven him off but it should have not have caused him to burst into flames. It was a point that gave into the vampire lore a bit too much and was done for a cheap thrill.

The direction was fairly nice, especially with the use of a historical city to stand in for Venice. There was some unfortunately obvious blue screen work but it's at a moment of high action and doesn't detract too much. What detracts more is how it gets prolonged and the lack of other obsticles. Rather than have the Doctor fumble about because of the wind or the height, have him deal with an attack from one of the aliens. That would have probably required a bit too much CGI and been out of budget but it would have been an improvement.

This is not a bad story but if you're not a fan of gothic vampire stories it's not going to do too much for you as that is the only real hook. There is no real twist or surprise save the reality of what the "vampires" actually are. It has action and adventure as well as some comedy but it's pretty rote and can get boring in the middle. Even the ending is something of a let down as Amy and Guido are the only ones who take active steps to actually kill the aliens. It's fine for a mindless watch but the two stories on either side of this one are far better in my opinion.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5