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“Run you clever boy, and remember” – Review of Christmas episode of Doctor Who The Snowmen

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Show runner Stephen Moffat chose Christmas Day to reboot Doctor Who with a new title sequence, remixed music, new TARDIS set and a scary, funny, well written romp set in Victorian England. It sets up next year’s 50th anniversary perfectly and left me waiting eagerly for series 7 part two next April.

Review of Christmas episode of Doctor Who The Snowmen
The Snowmen Movie of the Week poster

In keeping with the style of the current run, The Snowmen was a “movie of the week” complete with its own movie poster. And cinematic it was with snow bound London skylines and the BBC’s usual attention to period detail. The BBC do Victorian so well don’t they?

Usually Doctor Who Christmas specials are a little cheesey and removed from the main series story arcs. Whilst The Snowmen displayed all the usual Christmas trappings, it was definitely part of the storyline this time. Matt Smith, as usual, expertly played the role, but this time he was withdrawn from the world and almost Scrooge-like, mourning the loss of his previous companions Rory and Amy. He’s done with saving the world. Done with giant robots and killer Christmas trees. All he wants to do is be miserable and live in the TARDIS he parked on a cloud. A cloud reached by a very Mary Poppins style spiral staircase.

Review of Christmas episode of Doctor Who The Snowmen

But scary snowmen with shark teeth are popping up and devouring Yuletide Londoners. These were well done though I believe earlier versions looked a little too like Rainbow’s Zippy. I would have liked to see them on screen more. Perhaps they could have eaten a few more people. But hey this is a family show.

The villain played by Richard E Grant is using the Great Intelligence to conjure them up whilst searching for the DNA of a nasty governess frozen in a pond.

Cue new companion Clara played by Jenna-Louise Coleman (flitting expertly between posh spoken Miss Montague and her other barmaid persona with a more streetwise way of talking) attempting to suss out the Doctor and persuade him to return to his universe saving ways.

Review of Christmas episode of Doctor Who The Snowmen

Also helping the Doctor (and protecting his current desire for seclusion without agreeing with it) are Madame Vastra (“Good evening. I’m a lizard woman from the dawn of time, and this is my wife”) Jenny and the Sontaran in a butler’s outfit, Strax. The latter gets the funniest lines in the story (“Try to escape and you will be obliterated. Can I take your coat?”)

And I loved the scene when the Doctor asks Strax to go and fetch the memory worm. When Strax comes back empty-handed the Doctor sighs with exasperation, “You forgot the gauntlets!”

Review of Christmas episode of Doctor Who The Snowmen

Despite this great comedy, and despite a slightly underplayed malevolent performance by Grant – though his brief resurrection as a zombie at the end was pretty horrible – the delight of this story really lay in the developing relationship between the Doctor and Clara.

Of course we the audience know he has met her before and when she mentions her love of soufflés the penny starts to drop. She was in the season opener “Asylum of the Daleks” back in September but of course in that one, Matt Smith could only hear her voice and her name was Oswin. Only after saving the city in a typical return to form did the Doctor begin to realise. As she died Clara’s last words were, “Run you clever boy. And remember.” The same as Oswin’s parting words in the earlier adventure.

And on her grave: “Clara Oswin Oswald”.

Matt Smith is now on the run to find his soufflé girl. With a new theme tune, new TARDIS set, new Victorian inspired costume and another fascinating mystery to solve, for the first time in 8 years of Christmas specials, being part of the ongoing storyline, The Snowmen leaves us desperate for the next episodes which are still four months away.

Over to you: Do you agree with my Review of Christmas episode of Doctor Who The Snowmen?Were you right about the Clara/Oswin link and where do you think it will go next? Please share your thoughts or give a link to your own reviews. Click below where it says “Leave a reply”. Go on – share!

Daleks are scary again – review of Doctor Who Asylum of the Daleks

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Doctor Who came blazing back on TV screens on Saturday 1 September and nearly 49 years after they first terrified the nation the Daleks returned to send kids scurrying for safety behind the sofa. <Click here to Tweet this

Review of Doctor Who Asylum of the Daleks
Movie Style Poster for Asylum of the Daleks

In nearly half a century successive production teams have treated the Daleks differently. What used to be a scary monster was often reduced to a figure of fun. Especially when exploiting the fact that all you need to do to escape from one is to run up the stairs.

When Russell T Davies revived the show in 2005 he had the metal maniacs flying and they became frightening again. Stairs were no longer a source of salvation from their exterminating excesses. But as the modern programme continued the Daleks became dull again. Too easily defeated. Always wiped out. Instead of fearing them children want to cuddle them. It’s okay to go to sleep with a toy Dalek in your bedroom.

With Asylum of the Daleks, current show runner Steven Moffat, has delivered a genuinely scary script. Humans infected by Dalek nanobots sprout eye stalks from their foreheads and guns from their wrists. Even the rotting skeletal corpses of dead humans rise and deploy their sinister appendages.

Review of Doctor Who Asylum of the Daleks

Deep within the gloomy shadows of the asylum, dormant cobweb covered Daleks raise the heart rate simply because they are immobile. We know they are going to move but which one first. These scenes drag you to the edge of your seat with tension. Maybe children will be putting their toys outside the bedroom after this adventure.

Matt Smith is totally at ease in the role in his third series, a darker Doctor but still flitting effortlessly between humour, sadness, anger and happiness. He develops a strong bond with Oswin, the girl in the red dress who is hiding out deep in the asylum. She guides him through the maze, opening doors and hacking into systems. When the Doctor finally finds her his face is one of complete desolation as he realises that she is in fact a Dalek after all. A Dalek still dreaming of the time it was still a human. And in that sadness is still loathing. Loathing of what she has become. What a strong moment in a stand out script.

Review of Doctor Who Asylum of the Daleks are scary again

But of course the big surprise is Oswin herself. Played by Jenna-Louise Coleman the BBC has promoted her as the Doctor’s new companion replacing Amy and Rory and that they will introduce her in the Christmas episode. So what is she doing here in the first episode of the new series when Amy and Rory’s story is still incomplete? And if she is a Dalek how is she going to become a companion?

As usual Steven Moffat messes with our minds and sets up many questions that we may or may not find answers to as the weeks go by.

Over to you:  Do you agree with this review of Doctor Who Asylum of the Daleks that the show made the monsters scary again? How will Oswin become the new companion if she has been blown to bits as the asylum exploded? Leave a comment. Let me know your thoughts.

Why the Backlash against the Detective and the Time Traveller?

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Given that both Doctor Who and the first episode of the second series of Sherlock gathered nearly 10 million viewers each, you would think that they must have been pretty popular. But whilst there have been positive reviews of both in the traditional media, online it is different.

Tweeters are angry at how the Christmas day episode of Who presented an unsubtle environmental message and resolved the storyline with a “men are weak, women are strong” device. They also felt that there was a forced happy ending by wimping out on the implied death of Reg Arwell, the father of the children in the story.

Bloggers are fuming with anger over the way the same writer, (Stephen Moffat for he wrote both) recreated Conan Doyle’s original Victorian opera singer, Irene Adler, as a modern day dominatrix prostitute. Even the mainstream media were furious over her nude scenes shown before the watershed. In fairness her hands and the camera angles hid anything “rude”.

Is Moffat being too stereotypical in his portrayal of the women in his stories? Or are we reading to much into it and what we actually did was to create two great stories which actually entertained huge audiences?

Think about the Christmas day episode. By the time it came on air at 7pm, most people will have eaten a huge Christmas feast, drunk wine and champagne, guzzled Quality Street chocolates and eaten them even more Twiglets. Some may even have had a second plate of turkey for supper. Brains were fuzzy. Eyes were heavy. What we did not need at this point was the usual complexity of a Moffat plot weaving different time streams and interlinked stories of incredible intricacy. We wanted a light, family oriented story that would fit with our Christmas evening stupor. It’s what we got.

Doctor Who and SherlockIn 1941 Madge Arwell receives a telegram. Her husband is missing in a presumed crashed Lancaster bomber. She takes her children to a remote country house where they are entertained by a mysterious “Care-taker”. They get transported to a “Narnia” inspIred snow filled forest where they help the trees to escape from an imminent environmental catastrophe. Only Madge is strong enough to operate the spacecraft that is their salvation. And as she flies the children home the ship becomes a beacon that her husband Reg can use to make a safe landing.

For those who accuse Moffat of wimping out on the father dying, they miss the point. The episode raises the possibility of the death of loved ones and that’s something that any child has to face eventually. But it doesn’t go all the way and for a Christmas day family episode that is exactly right. Reg Arwell was “missing” but he wasn’t dead. As it turned out he followed the space craft -time jumped over a few days and arrived at the country house. For him, he was never missing at all.

Doctor Who and SherlockSherlock’s episode was a modern re-imaging of “Scandal in Bohemia” and unlike Christmas Who, was multi-layered, complex and therefore satisfying. I suppose I can understand the critics of the modern Irene Adler being a sex worker, and that it might have been done purely for titilation. Is this indicative of our society that modern writers have to reinvent heroines of old to conform to the plastic sexuality of the Reality TV world? Actually, I don’t think Moffat had these debates with himself. I think he just wrote two great stories both of which demanded very strong female lead characters and it was the stories that decided their circumstances .

Taken separately they might appear stereotypical, but separately they were just two examples of different women. Madge was a loving mother protecting her children at Christmas, Irene was an ambitious woman using her sexuality to make herself safe in a dangerous political world.

Doctor Who and Sherlock

“Doctor Who and Sherlock carried by two strong women.”

So two strong stories carried by two strong women. As for the males  I thought the leads, Matt Smith and Benedict Cumberbatch were both at the top of their game. Pages could be written on the relationship between Holmes and Watson, and even the most ardant critics must have shed a secret tear when the Doctor was reunited with Amy Pond for Christmas dinner.

Stephen Moffat served up two exquisite slices of Christmas pudding. Okay so Doctor Who might have been a little too syrupy, but I was one of those with a wine softened brain who needed something light, happy, family oriented and above all “nice” to enjoy on Christmas night. It worked for me.