To omit a nod to one book about snow, Mr Moffat, may be
regarded as a misfortune. To omit a nod to two looks like carelessness.
And to be fair, Mr Moffat probably doesn’t care – might
not even have been aware that Kim Newman’s TimeAnd Relative featured sinister snowmen and my novel, Drift, featured sentient, psychically sensitive snow. But in a
series that has casually dropped in past continuity references since its
return, it seems remiss that someone on the production team didn’t apprise the
man at the helm of two books that predate his 2012 Christmas special by 10
years.
Still, the grumbling you hear has more to do with one too
many mince pies and clotted cream than with the engaging, charming and
generally magical Doctor Who Christmas
present that was The Snowmen.
Drift and
The Snowmen are different beasts,
written for different audiences, after all. The snow here is not the subtlest
of enemies, depicted from the outset as crystalline flakes straight off your
Christmas cards – but with literal teeth. Likewise, the titular Snowmen are
fairly bluntly realised and given a rather obvious Jack Frost O’Lantern menace
guaranteed to counter the densest of alcoholic hazes that viewers might find
themselves in by tea-time on Christmas day. Although after their initial
(implied) savaging of the workers at the beginning they don’t do much other
than crop up out of the snow sporting a mean expression.
But despite whatever the title tells you, the episode
isn’t really about them. This is a tale of new beginnings and, by way of
driving that home (for Christmas), is a Doctor
Who story about the creation of a monster rather than the defeat of one.
The way in which the Great Intelligence is born, neatly
wrapped in a single - practically throwaway – line about a disembodied
intelligence that uses snowmen with a focus on the London Underground is a deft
spot of frosting on the cake. (Continuity clashes with The Abominable Snowmen dating notwithstanding.) Enlisting the vocal
talents of Sir Ian MacKellan is nothing short of masterful, as any lesser voice
might have rendered a large malign snowglobe a rather impotent centrepiece to
several key scenes.
If that wasn’t enough, heading up the army of this
disembodied Sauron The White, we are treated to Richard E Grant as the
embodiment of evil. A sure way to win me over, as not only am I a fan of REG,
but he was always my first choice to play my own meister-villain, Dexter Snide.
He gets relatively few opportunities here to properly flourish his villainous
credentials, but he oozes sinister whenever given the chance. His exchange with
Lady Vastra and her missus is especially worth savouring and it’s only a shame
that a bit more isn’t made of his scenes with the Doctor. When the Doctor
comically waltzes in as Sherlock Holmes, for example, a villain with Grant’s
screen presence shouldn’t spend so much time just trying to get the doors open
to let in his minions.
Still, we have additional helpings of menace in the form
of the Ice Governess and she works pretty well for the most part, again
reinforced by some well-chosen and distinctive voice acting – albeit I’m not
sure the Punch & Judy line she is given to repeating provided quite the
chilling counterpoint the writer was aiming for. Silence is golden, they say,
and she may have been more effective as an inexorable – and taciturn –
advancing cold front. Indeed, it was probably a mistake to have her caged
behind a force field at the top of the stairs for quite as long as she was, as
something is inevitably lost when an unstoppable force is stopped. As with the
underuse of Dr Simeon, it’s another pulled punch, if you’ll pardon the
expression.
Even its proclaimed theme of the Doctor having retired is
underplayed to some degree, as he is seen to be taking a fairly active interest
in everything – despite his protestations to the contrary – from the outset.
There’s never any persuasive conviction to it and it smacks of feeble (if
understandable) denial at best. Given that this was the core (Douglas Adams)
idea that so inspired Steven Moffat I might have liked to have seen a gloomier,
more resistant Doctor than we were given.
The ending, with the enemy defeated by the tears of ‘an
entire family crying on Christmas Eve’, was in some respects resonant of last
year’s power of a mother’s love guiding the children home to a time before they
lost their dear old dad. But on the whole this wasn’t nearly as saccharine and
that’s a good thing, what with having overdone the sugar in general at this
time of year. Clara’s death feels like a real price paid – even if she will be
coming back in some form or other, the children have lost their beloved young
governess – and that offers a dramatic counterweight to the relative ease with
which the Enemy’s plans are scuppered.
Minor shortcomings aside, that might have played too far
against the episode’s ultimately winning ingredients, which included an
abundance of sparkly wit, strewn throughout like tinsel and oodles of charm
piled as high as any Christmas dinner plate.
Smith himself is on excellent form, revelling in the ride
on the emotional rollercoaster far too much (as though it was already Christmas
during filming) and with that avuncular way of his that shouldn’t be so readily
apparent in such a young Doctor. And his ‘league of extraordinary allies’ –
Vastra and her girlfriend (no, wife) and Strax – provide a wonderfully colourful supporting cast.
Moffat clearly delights in writing for them and the actors fully embrace their
roles. Strax does appear to have reverted to more soldier than Sontaran nurse,
with much of the comedy built on his blunt, militaristic approach to
everything, rather than what made him different to others of his race. But at
the end of the day it is comedy and it’s darned funny. The memory parasite skit
might be basic, but it made me laugh. Repeatedly.
The real Christmas star though is Jenna Louise Coleman as
Clara (Oswin Oswald). For the record we didn’t believe those denials for a
second either – all that blarney about them being totally different unrelated
characters. But heck, it must be close to impossible to preserve the element of
surprise in today’s world. So, ultimately, no surprise at all – but hats off to
Mr Moffat, he still managed to create a thoroughly intriguing character and
Jenna gives us a thoroughly engaging performance. For me, she’s genuinely the
heart of this episode and she seems to have completely overlooked the fact that
Amy Pond was going to be a tough act to follow.
Of course, wherever Mr Moffat is headed with this
‘impossible companion’ thread, I hope she’s not going to be dying all the time
– a retread of “They killed Rory!” Safe to say, we know to expect better than
that and I’m optimistic that the revelation will be equal to the hook. It’s
perhaps a shame we won’t be getting the Victorian version of Clara for the
longer term – in terms of companion background, it would have been a welcome
change, but it seems at this stage that she brings enough new to the mix to
make up for that.
What’s not new is the Doctor-companion kiss. Taken
individually, there is nothing wrong with any of these, but the fact is we’ve
now seen enough of them that Channel 4 could do its own chart show for them. Doctor Who’s been back on our screens
for seven years and as a trope it’s already old and tired. It’s as though with
every new companion we have to have these emphatic declarations like a
Doctor-companion relationship status update right away. But then, it may just
be that subtlety is too time-consuming in the fast-food TV age.
At least here, it is a fresh twist on the formula and a beautiful, funny
moment, born in part out of a clumsily offered cover story from the Doctor.
Similarly, Clara’s first encounter with the TARDIS interior is a fresh spin on
an old(er) favourite.
Obviously I can’t speak from the viewpoint of a novice, but I imagine if
seen by anyone who’d never seen Doctor
Who before this would make a good starting point. Touches like the spiral
staircase to the clouds are an entirely frivolous and magical invitation for
new audiences to climb on board – while also perhaps something of a promise to
those of us who’ve been on the journey a while already that there will always
be something new to see.
The TARDIS interior has had a fitting makeover to back
that up and I have to say I rather like the new model. It’s very clean and less
cluttered, but retains a certain eccentricity. The opening titles initially
struck me as a tad too busy, in contrast, but may well grow on me.
All in all, my favourite of the Christmas specials to
date. And that’s with all the flaws and the lack of even a passing nod to Drift.
Christmas is a time for forgiveness, after all. And the
Coming Soon trailer makes 2013 look like a Happy New Who Year.
SAF
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