Rate and Discuss 7.X: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

[Dino]

Well... you have to hit bottom before you hit the top.
So hopefully next year's Christmas special might get it out of the Earth's crust?

[Jason Thompson]

That was probably the most 'meh' Christmas special so far. Didn't feel all that special. Not that it was bad, just no real anchor to it. OK, nice not to have the whole planet/universe/reality under threat, but still, lacking something.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Basically agree with Jason. I need to rewatch as I dozed off in the middle but having seen the ending don't really feel I missed anything. Right now I'd rather rewatch last year's though which is a disappointing reaction.

[Lissa]

How was that then? One of the better tree-powered jaunts through the space time vortex or a waste of Bill Bailey's mighty hair? A valuable ecological parable that is as fresh now as it was in the 1980s or a bait and switch which didn't actually feature a single operational wardrobe?

Vote.

[Lissa]

Merging posts didn't quite work as I'd hoped so the introduction is half way through the thread. Very Moffat.

I quite liked the first half - the Doctor's joy at the home he'd made for the children was really nice. But then it fell to piddle. The entire bit with the trees was pointless. It was symptomatic of the modern way of doing Doctor Who which is a number of emotional spots that can be linked together with any old rubbish as long as it has CGI in it. The trees posed no threat, there was no drama and no tension, there was a pathetic lack of logic (trees can grow to look like a tower, fine, but they can also grow into a functional rocket engine too?) and everything between going into the box and running into the husband in his plane was just drivel thrown together to link the emotional high spots of the grieving widow and her being reunited with her lost husband. It's insultingly lazy writing from a writer who is so much better than that.

I'd give it 6/10 because it was quite amusing but it was probably the most obviously vacant story we've had so far in the new series. Uncle Terrance and Uncle Barry would've thrown that script away in less time than it took to read it because it didn't have a plot.

[Nyder]

I always find it difficult to judge a first viewing of Christmas DW because of all the turkey, booze and snooze getting in the way! So I'll get back to you. Merry Christmas!

[Dino]

I've given in 5. There were a lot of good elements in this episode. Some good performances as well, it just... didn't take off. I might watch it again to see if there's anything I missed. Probably as good as it was going to get on my first view. They mentioned Androzani! And then didn't really do anything with it.
Sorry if you liked it. Just didn't click with me.

[Rob McCow]

I thought it was pretty good, actually! More straightforward than I thought it was going to be and very funny. Some great imagery too. But, but, but, I came away thinking of what they could have done to make it better.

- More of Bill Bailey and Arrabella Weir.
- Give the glasses kid an argumentative brother to talk to rather than send him on his own.
- One more twist at the end.
- Make it less.obvious that Alexander Armstrong was going to get resurrected.
- Have the spaceship at the start become significant at the end.
- More funny driving stuff with Madge.

All of that said, I *loved* the Doctor's reaction to seeing the Ponds again.

Sent from my LT15i using Tapatalk

[Andrew Curnow]

It was pleasant enough - I need to watch it again, as I just felt a little dozy from the day halfway through. But I particularly liked the early bit where Madge was helping out the 'backwards' Doctor, and the very moving bit where she & the Doctor are talking about "being sad later" and I was even pleasantly surprised to see the Ponds pop up at the end. It didn't grab me like last year's I'll admit, and I found the Androzani reference bizarrely niggling, but the wood people looked, and creaked, fantastically, and there were lots of twists and turns.

Very different from previous Christmassy specials, but still very nice for a Christmas evening.

[Matthew T]

I was half asleep through most of it.

[Alex]

A 7/10 from me, there were elements I enjoyed a lot, but as others have mentioned there was never any real feeling of danger, nor tension to save the day in time. The script felt a bit off to me as well, with some of the Doctor's lines feeling a bit...I don't know, just not quite right (Human-y wooman-y especially) and Matt was a bit too manic at the beginning. Still, it looked lovely, had some fun performances, and the ending with the Ponds was incredibly touching, as the Doctor realises he can still feel as he once did. A single tear rolling down his face had me blubbering, but in a happy way.

[Alex Me]

It was ok, but not as good as some of the other christmas specials have been. Some rather odd plot holes (like why the children did not look any older between the opening and the main body of the story 3 years later :s ), but nice happy tale to have at christmas. 7/10

[Nyder]

Ok I've thought - I'll give it 7. I enjoyed it more than last year - ok so it was schmaltzy in parts - but hey that's what Christmas is for! Only two things irked me - the way Mother Madge got the hang of the ship's controls rather too quickly (ok so she did end up "crashing" it!), and "humany-wumaney" - arghh! But apart from that, I enjoyed it! I've got a feeling the first scene with the Doctor fleeing the ship will feature in the next season....

[Larry]

threat, there was no drama and no tension, .

but why do we even need any drama or tension as I've said on many occasions the Christmas special should be some thing detached from the normal series. It should be fun and soppy entertaining and leave you with a nice warm feeling and this one did the job perfectly.

[Anthony Williams]

Honestly, I thought that it was really rather poor, disappointingly. Which is a shame, as I seem to be one of the few people who actually enjoyed last year's Christmas episode.

It was disappointing from the very first few scenes. The Doctor being ejected from a spacecraft without any sort of breathing apparatus and somehow managing to get his way into the space suit while falling to Earth, and then that space suit somehow helping him survive? Ugh, ugh, ugh!

I actually liked the idea of trees that could consciously grow into structures, but then for them to have somehow be able to make part of the structure travel though space using pure thought? THAT seems rather far-fetched to me. Which is a rather bizarre feeling to have while watching Doctor Who.

Likewise, there was Madge somehow being able to pilot the walker, when Arabella Weir's character said that it takes years of training. I mean, really? That could've been explained so much better if they just hadn't had the line about it being difficult to pilot. Yuck.

Then, there was the criminal underuse of both Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir and Alexander Armstrong. These should have been big and important guest-spots. But what we get instead were essentially cameos. Rather long cameos, but cameos all the same. And I was left feeling thoroughly disappointed.

The sad thing is that there were some really great scenes in this, but with absolute tripe filling the parts inbetween. It's almost as if Moffat had come up with several scenes in his head, and then tried to find a way to smash them together into one story. I mean, the scene with the Ponds was brilliant, the scene where the Doctor was showing the family round the house, too.

That's the problem... the writing was fundamentally lazy. And I was thoroughly disappointed.

3/10.

[Andrew Curnow]

I seem to be one of the few people who actually enjoyed last year's Christmas episode.

YANA Ant, I thought it was one of the very best of Moffat's episodes, and definitely one (if not the) best of the Christmas ones.

Going back to this year's though, I thought Alexander Armstrong was particularly good - really 'actory' rather than any hint of his comedic background (and it would have been awfully tempting, I suppose, for him to start doing his British Airman bit: "got back home, ya, all timey-wimey and shit").

I think it's dangerously harsh to call it "lazy writing" though. Maybe, just thinking about it now, it's less satisfying than last year's because, unusually for a Moffat story, it was a fairly straightforward plot. Other than the business with the plane near the start being saved at the end, it pretty much went in a straight line from point A to point B, rather than Moffat's usual technique of going from point G to point D, back to point B, then to points E and F before coming round to point A and point C, before finally ending up at point R.

[Anthony Williams]

Well, it's more like it went from A to B to C, back to A. In a way - what with the husband's disappearance being a direct result of the wife later being in the time vortex and thinking of him, thus dragging him into it.

Oh and "humany-wumany"

[Andrew Curnow]

Oh and "humany-wumany"

That was, admittedly, lame. And, as I said above, I didn't like the mention of Androzani because it sort of jarred - bit like referencing the Eye of Harmony in the TVM really. Also, rather bizarrely, I felt that when Alexander Armstrong's character says (about to crash) "I'm sorry, my love" it was a bit laid on with a trowel - wouldn't "I'm sorry" have been a better line? And lastly, I was sort of expecting a pay off to the Doctor's reiterating of "I know" in the early stages - not sure what, but maybe Madge getting them all back home in a flurry of pyrotechnics, and then saying to the amazed-looking Doctor, "I know".

But those minory-minor niggles aside, I rather liked its more simplistic approach, and really did enjoy it 'on the night'. Lady from Outnumbered (I'm awful with names) and Alexander A were both very well cast, which always helps!!

[Nyder]

I thought casting was just right. Although I have to agree with the comments that BB & AW should have been given more to do.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

That was a load of baubles, 1/10 from me. If it hadn't been slathered in mood-destroying, utterly banal, generic, bibbly bobbly oompah oompah music it might have managed a 3 or a 4, even if it had no soundtrack whatsoever. The music really was awful and totally ruined it for me, not that there was all that much to ruin anyway.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

but why do we even need any drama or tension

!!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Oh and also, although it was never stated how old she actually was, it did seem rather odd and offputting to have a daughter who seemed to be about 13 from a plot point of view, but looked more like 20.

[Larry]

Oh and also, although it was never stated how old she actually was, it did seem rather odd and offputting to have a daughter who seemed to be about 13 from a plot point of view, but looked more like 20.

seemed to me to be the other way around the girl playing her is actually 19 but to me looked more like a girl of 14.

[Nyder]

Was she really 19? She had me fooled too :-)

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Have any of you ever seen women before?