The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
review

Holistic Review: The setup has some promise, but once the answers start coming, they're all ludicrous or saccharine.

Sometimes, before an episode airs, I get a gut feeling about it. The minimal advance publicity for Blink, for example, led me to anticipate potential greatness, which was delivered in spades. In contrast, the "scariest yet" hype for The Waters of Mars set it up for a fall, which, in my opinion, it suffered. Likewise, I was wary about The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe. Even the title gave me pause for concern — it's a clear reference to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and a slightly cheesy one to boot. But then, I know not to judge from titles alone. To give a relevant recent example, take Vincent and the Doctor, which turned out to be far more affecting than the title suggested. No, what really worried me about this episode was Steven Moffat's interview on 06 December 2011, as reported on the BBC America website, in which he said, "You can expect to cry your eyes out for about 20 minutes solidly." I don't like spoilers of any kind, and that includes people telling me that the next scene is great, or the upcoming joke is really funny, or that a particular movie made them cry. I don't want to know in advance how a movie or TV episode is supposed to affect me. What that actually makes me think is "Oh yeah? We'll see about that." And it's not as if I'm even a tough nut to crack; for goodness' sake, I cry every time I watch The Curse of Fenric lately. But my rarely-seen natural skepticism comes crashing down at the merest hint of emotional manipulation, and that's what happened to me here. By all means I was ready and willing to bawl my eyes out for twenty minutes straight, but that kind of emotional payoff has to be earned, and in this story, it simply wasn't.

It's not enough, you see, to present me with a woman who has lost her husband in the war (which is very sad) and then return him miraculously unharmed (which is a lovely surprise, and indeed very happy). That only makes me sad, and then happy. It does not make me sob for joy. I need something like the Buffy episode "Becoming, part 2", where all the necessary background knowledge has been presented so that when the wonderful (or horrible) twist is sprung, everything clicks, and you suddenly realize the full implications in a rush of emotion. In The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, there's so much plot confusion that it's simply not possible for things to click into place, and sometimes we're not even given the relevant background information far enough in advance. For example, we don't learn the cause of Reg's crash — that he didn't have enough light to navigate by — until after he's been rescued by the light of the tree-ship, so his emotional reunion with Madge doesn't have sufficient setup and therefore can't pack much of a wallop.

So, Moffat's attempt to tug at my heartstrings fell flat. But that's far from my only problem with this year's Christmas special. I find myself echoing my thoughts from Space and Time: I know it's "only" the Christmas special, but that shouldn't be an excuse to write a less-rigorous script. The initial setup is interesting — I like the idea of the Doctor as the caretaker of a creepy old estate, and the Narnia homage is subtle enough to feel like an appropriately fantastical plot element rather than a direct lift. This part of the plot is also slow, and of no real consequence to the overall storyline, but it has potential. The real problem occurs when the storyline tries to answer any of the questions that it raises. Almost without fail, every one of these answers either falls apart under scrutiny, fails to adequately explain anything, or is designed for maximum glurge effect rather than honest and well-earned emotional payoff. Honestly, it's as though Russell T Davies never left. Moffat's storyline is indistinguishable from one of his all-atmosphere no-logic freewheeling plots, which means that I spent the last twenty minutes of the story repeatedly huffing and groaning and rolling my eyes rather than sniffling and going "aww". At this point, I need to give examples so that you can clearly see how my capacity for nonsense was sorely tried. (Or, as Lupita would say in the MST3K version of the holiday-appropriate 1959 Mexican film Santa Claus, "Allow me to illustrate my point for you.")

Any two or three of these plot elements would have been enough to annoy me. Put them all together, though, and the script begins to resemble nothing more than word salad on a prettily-decorated table. (Again, I quote Santa Claus: "Moffat, honey, no.") And these are just the ones that really bothered me! There are more below!

Poor Matt Smith. Usually the eleventh Doctor is written quite well, and even if he isn't, Smith is more than able to salvage his scenes. This time around, though, there's such an overload of embarrassing characterization and dialogue that Smith has no choice but to throw himself into it wholeheartedly, and for me, it really didn't work. I'm laying the blame at Moffat's feet, and I'm going to follow this charge with several paragraphs of reasons why. Ahem. I've decided that the eleventh Doctor is best when he's being quietly quirky, and cool in his very uncool way. Manic, however, is just not a look that suits him. It makes his Doctor feel like a caricature. To be honest, it hasn't really suited anyone since Tom Baker, although even Baker never had to endure the unending monologue of absurdity that Moffat scripts for Smith as the Doctor gives a guided tour of the house. The worst moment, by far, is the Doctor's disgusted declaration that they have encountered a "Staircase! It seems to have broken down. We'll have to walk up." (To which my reaction was... yeah, you just were walking up it. Don't be idiotic.) There's a fine line between making the Doctor delightfully childish (or quirky in a Willy-Wonka-esque way) and making him moronic, and that line sailed right past it.

For that matter, the Doctor's dialogue in this story is loaded with utter clunkers. They're meant to be funny, but anyone over the age of eight will find them cringe-inducing. Exhibit A: "Come here, spacesuit. Come to Doctor!" Exhibit B: "You go, girl!" Exhibit C: "Stupid me! Stupid old Doctor!" Exhibit D: "How else does life ever travel? The mothership!" Exhibit E: "Think of home. Just picture it, feel it. You have to really feel it. Can you do that?" Yeeees, I think anyone could. Exhibit F: "Your mother is flying a forest through the time vortex! Be a little impressed!" Exhibit G: "Look what you can do. Mother Christmas." And Exhibit H, worst of all: I loved 'timey-wimey', and 'spacey-wacey' was cute, but 'a sciencey-wiencey workbench'? Really? And if I thought that was bad, oh, you should've heard the noise I made when the Doctor described happy crying as "humany-wumany." Again: is this what we have to expect from the words "Christmas special"?

The first time I watched The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, I found myself getting increasingly annoyed with the characters' habit of referring to the Doctor as "the Caretaker". I must admit that it's a more appropriate title for the Doctor, and it's no different, really, from Ace's habit of affectionately calling him "Professor", but after a while it got my eyes a-rolling, particularly — for some reason — coming from Madge. Likewise, his new catchphrase of "I know!" grated a bit, probably because the Doctor usually said it in response to absolutely nothing. Let's just quietly drop that one, okay? (Time for Moffat to script himself one of those lines of which the tenth and eleventh Doctors have been so fond: "Okay, I'm never writing that line again.") And as long as I'm ripping apart the dialogue, can I just reiterate how much I hate it when role-model characters "nicely" insult one another? It's a perpetual failing, in my eyes, of Moffat's scripts. This week, the Doctor tells Lily to "pay attention", "shut up" and "grow up", and scolds her with "Have you been listening?", along with the insulting Exhibit F above (they didn't say they weren't!). Madge tells the Doctor to "Shut up, you ridiculous oaf!", and Amy calls him a moron. Way to set a good example for the impressionable kiddies. (I'm reminded of the time I was around six years old, in the middle of a church service, and tossed the bulletin over my shoulder after I'd finished reading it — á la the Doctor with Fenric's flask, although that scene wasn't to blame — just because I'd seen people do it on TV and thought it looked cool. My mother, as you can imagine, was mortified. So I can easily imagine kids going around being rude to one another after watching this, because if the Doctor does it, it's all right.)

Smith does, of course, rescue some lines with his brilliant deliveries: "I can't see! I'm blind!", "I agree" (that he's not Mr Cardew), "Dolls with comical expressions!", his creepy "Look at the floor.", "I look great in a hat.", his mid-stream attempt to re-word his explanation of the trees' fate to Madge, and "Yes, mum. I'll think about it." And he's great with the physical comedy in the beginning, when the Doctor tries to lean against the police box but nearly misses, and when he tries to shake Madge's hand but incorrectly guesses where she's standing.

Madge Arwell is an odd character. On one hand, she's so scatterbrained that she keeps running into things and blames her clumsiness on them (like the car-crash insurance claimant who reputedly said "I collided with a stationary tree coming the other direction"). It's unclear whether her immediate acceptance of a spacesuited alien is meant to illustrate her naïvete and ditziness, or her pragmatism and inner strength. You could argue for either option, since it's clear from her determination to help the Doctor and her touching desire to cocoon her children by putting on a brave front that she's got some rarely-tapped reserves. She's also more clever than her behaviour would suggest, quickly sussing out that the platform's tracking system is akin to radar. And of course she can fly a plane, but we've already talked about that.

One of the main points of the story seems to be female empowerment: that even Madge, who's a bit of a ditz on a good day (which, by the way, I love), has reserves of inner strength that drive her to inconceivable lengths in order to protect her children, is considered to be "strong" and capable by the wise old forest, and is more than able to rise to the task of saving the day (and even her husband). While I love the idea that a repressed and underestimated 1940s housewife turns out to be a hero, the message is a little heavy-handed (particularly when the Doctor crows "she's female!"), and Madge's character isn't set up as quite enough of a nincompoop for the contrast, and her character growth, to be effective. These issues muddle Claire Skinner's portrayal of the character — one minute she's carelessly driving into posts, the next she's pulling a revolver on armed aliens, and then she's absent-mindedly allowing a bunch of trees to take over her brain — but Skinner is likeable in the part. I enjoyed her delivery of "There's a street lamp." and the perfect mournful look on her face after she convincingly assures her kids that "This Christmas is going to be the best Christmas ever." However, she also gets the dreadful lines "My head is full of trees, Caretaker. Can't you fly us home?" and, in a direct quote from the RTD playbook, "Yes, Cyril, he got so very lost."

I actually expected Maurice Cole, as Cyril, to be the main character of the story, perhaps because he's the youngest actor in an episode that's clearly being aimed at children, and perhaps because Doctor Who champions the underdog and usually reveals the hidden superstar within the geeky ginger boy in thick glasses. As it turns out, Cyril does next to nothing in the story. Once he sets the plot in motion by crawling through the time portal, he's entirely sidelined, which is a shame, because I liked Cole's performance.

For me, the standout member of the cast was Holly Earl, no competition. Lily starts out as an (amusingly) put-upon big sister, but I liked her backbone, as when she calmly informs her mother "You don't need to shout." Once she starts tagging along with the Doctor, it becomes clear that she's the most competent member of the family. She's very bright, always asking astute questions and picking up on the Doctor's every insinuation. She's brave enough to risk her life by grabbing the circlet out of the Doctor's hands, and she shows great caring for Cyril when she thinks he's in danger. Yet again, it makes me wonder what the show would be like if the Doctor had a child or teenage companion, if the actress were of Earl's calibre. She even reminds me strongly of Sophie Aldred, particularly on the line "She is strong, but she is young." If they ever needed an actress to play a younger Ace, Earl would be a natural choice. Among her many great deliveries: "He's always making up things, and breathing.", "I like him.", and "What does it say?!"

The crew of the Androzani harvester are fairly undistinguished. I really like Arabella Weir, and was delighted to see her in Doctor Who after her Unbound play for Big Finish, but she's dreadfully underused. Comedians, as they say, often make the very best dramatic actors, but particularly at Christmastime it seems like a waste not to utilize the natural comedic gifts of your cast. It's nice that Billis is the voice of reason, but I was a little skeptical that she would so readily disobey direct orders, and her expression of female solidarity with Madge was laid on a bit thick. Bill Bailey gives a solid performance as the commander, Droxil, but he's essentially the straight man for the other two characters. The most memorable of the trio is Paul Bazely as Ven-Garr, but not entirely for the right reasons. Ven-Garr is scripted to be a ham, and his crying jag comes across as very unconvincing. Between that and his "mother issues", Ven-Garr was yet another catalyst for my frequent eye-rolling, but I did enjoy his attempt to overcompensate for his emotional reaction with "Do you want me to shoot her, sir?" In general, the three of them have such limited screen time that they practically might as well have not been in it at all.

We're so used to only hearing Alexander Armstrong's voice (as Sarah's supercomputer, Mr Smith) that it's a blast to finally see his face as well. Sadly his part as Reg Arwell, like Cyril and the Androzani crew, is practically nonexistent, but that's understandable since Reg's death provides the catalyst for most of the plot. I enjoyed Armstrong's performance, and that of Sam Stockman as Reg's concerned co-pilot.

We also get a nice surprise appearance by Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill in the coda. Again, the emotional heft that Moffat was counting on is completely absent, because Amy already knew that the Doctor was alive, but it gives some welcome resolution to series 6. I enjoyed their determination not to be the one who hugs first, while Amy deliberately contemplates her squirt gun and refuses to meet the Doctor's gaze, but I wish it had been Rory who broke the stalemate. If nothing else, it would've given Darvill a bit more to do, and it would've been a nice reinforcement that he actually does consider the Doctor to be a treasured friend. (After series 6, I'm starting to wonder!) I like Gillan's delivery of "You don't wanna be all wet on a night like this..." and "She's a good girl!" On 15 December 2011, the news broke that Amy and Rory would be departing the TARDIS for good sometime next year, and I find myself unambiguously relieved. Naturally I'll be pleased as punch to see the back of Amy, but I had thought that I would be more sad to see Rory go. In thinking back on the last season, though, I decided that Rory has been underutilized. In most stories, he either gets practically nothing to do, or he argues with the Doctor, to the point that Rory has become much less likeable than he was when he first appeared. The character had so much potential, but he's becoming both peripheral and antagonistic, so if this is how the writers choose to use him, then I can't say that I'll miss him either, and I find that to be a real shame. It's about time for some fresh blood in the TARDIS. Hey, how about Lily Arwell?

There's not really a monster to speak of this week, unless we count the Wooden Queen and the Wooden King, but their position is precarious to say the least. The Wooden Queen serves as the spokesperson for the trees, but the Wooden King is absolutely superfluous. Why does he march to the tower? We don't know. Cyril and the gang didn't need to follow his footprints; the tower is, after all, plenty tall enough to be seen above the treeline, so surely they would have found it on their own, after some exploration. Why does he sit down on a throne in the foyer? (For that matter, why is there a throne in the foyer?) He looks so intimidating and creepy that he nearly scares off their intended "victims", so he's doing more harm than good to their plans. And when Cyril somehow reactivates him by putting on the circlet, the King walks menacingly up to the dome and... just kinda hangs out with the Queen, doing nothing important.

Farren Blackburn turns in an enjoyable directorial début, solid but not flashy, although I was struck by his amusing angle on Cyril as the boy says that Madge has gone "Out." I also loved the beautiful shot of the police box in front of a large home and glowing streetlight, the painful (but well-filmed) shot of the Doctor trying to leap onto a hammock, and the slow zoom out from the time vortex to reveal the dome interior. The building used for Uncle Digby's estate is gorgeous, and delightfully imposing. It's a shame that the home itself isn't a more integral part of the plot, because it's got a lot of character and ambience.

Aside from Holly Earl, the one unquestionably successful aspect of The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe is its effects, which are stunning and realistic from beginning to end. The explosion of the ship in the teaser looks fantastic, as do the snowflakes whirling out of the open present, the box hanging in midair in the forest, the detachable silver baubles on their slightly-stretchy tethers (which gave me pleasant childhood vibes of the lunchpail trees from Return to Oz), the bauble displacing snow as it expands, and the twinkling stars coming out of the treetops. Likewise, the harvester platform moving through the forest, with lights twinkling all around it, is a superb effect. The interior of the dome is beautifully-designed, particularly the patterned floor and the simple-but-unusual muntins (there's a new word I've learned!). The tree people, in particular, are super-impressive. They look absolutely real, as if carved wooden statues had come to life and been hired by the Doctor Who casting team. Major kudos to The Mill for their expert work!

I'll also give due credit to the special for its evocative Christmas atmosphere. The 1940s decorations are charming and nostalgic, and the tranquil snow-blanketed forest, with trees that sprout silver baubles, are pleasantly reminiscent of crisp outdoor strolls during the holiday season.

Overall, though, a huge slap on the wrist to Steven Moffat, for forgetting yet again that Christmas jollity doesn't require you to abandon internal logic. This story is plagued by RTD's freewheeling style, with numerous plot elements that remain unexplained and confusing, jumping through hoop after hoop in a vague attempt to justify how Madge is able to save her husband. Many of these are also totally superfluous to the story, and could have been excised with no effect on the plotline. The inconsistent characterization makes it difficult to understand, much less truly like or relate to, many of the characters. There's so much overblown and cringe-inducing dialogue, which is clearly full of itself and trying to be too clever for its own good, that the few good lines in this story are swamped by the dross. There are a lot of lines that make you smile, but they're not hilarious like they clearly want to be, and the story tries for deep emotion but winds up merely with superficiality and cliché. The story's final moment — in which the Doctor discovers that he, too, can be happy enough to shed a tear, and is thus a little bit humany-wumany himself — is (thankfully) the final straw, yet another eye-rollingly mawkish moment in a script that's already full of artificially-exaggerated sentimentality.

Minor points:

In my opinion, the only things that The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe have going for it are the Christmassy period atmosphere, the impressive special effects, and Holly Earl. The plot and the script doom pretty much everything else. And when even Matt Smith struggles to make a story entertaining, you know something's gone wrong.

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