the dr the widow and the wardrobe

[mogzilla]

no thread for this yet? enjoyable but nowhere near as good as last years with mr gambon...i do have to watch it all the way through without daughter and puppy interuptions...

[JamesC]

I thought it was pretty lame to be honest. From the trailer I thought the Doctor had managed to get the chameleon circuit working and that the big blue pressie was actually the Tardis - which would have been better IMHO.
The whole magicky wagicky thing with the trees souls was a load of bollocks and was just another example of the Doctor-as-messiah thing that I thought the new series was trying to get away from.

The forced comedy with Bill Bailey and the other forest workers was pretty cringe-worthy.

Surprised we didn't see a trailer for the new series too.
 

[SmallBlueThing]

They havent shot any of the next series yet- i think they start filming in feb.

As for the xmas spesh, i thought it was remarkably inoffensive for this sort of thing, and probably my 'favourite' since the first tennant one. It certainly looked cheaper than last year's, but benefited from having a story not relying on moffat's annoying trademark time-travelling nonsense. The dialogue was still ear-gratingly awful when he was trying to be funny, and as usual all the characters spoke with the same voice, which is par for moffat across all his scripts whether dr who or not.

But as an hour's pointless xmas day fluff it did its job, and as i say, was possibly the best since 2005.

SBT

[Greg M.]

It didn't do much for me, even with the throwaway Androzani reference. A bit of a non-event really. Dunno why I'm surprised though - last year's may have been the best of 'em, but I can't say there's really been a Xmas Who I've thought was wonderful. Even the first one, which should have been the best since it was introducing a new Doctor, ended up deeply frustrating by keeping him out of action for most of the episode.

[Goosegash]

I thought it was pretty lame to be honest. From the trailer I thought the Doctor had managed to get the chameleon circuit working and that the big blue pressie was actually the Tardis - which would have been better IMHO.
The whole magicky wagicky thing with the trees souls was a load of bollocks and was just another example of the Doctor-as-messiah thing that I thought the new series was trying to get away from.

The forced comedy with Bill Bailey and the other forest workers was pretty cringe-worthy.

Surprised we didn't see a trailer for the new series too.

There's no trailer because they haven't filmed any of yet - I believe the main shooting block begins in February and carries on all the way through to the start of the new series in the Autumn.

On the whole I felt this was a sadly weak episode to lead into an extended period of no Who. It felt like Moffat was just ticking off a checklist of Christmassy plot elements without any real enthusiasm. And it just seemed so...small, lacking in ambition. At times like this I actually start to miss RTD and his big, stupid ideas.

[Noisybast]

I wouldn't go that far.

[Tiplodocus]

So so but with some great little moments (the tour of the hiuse, the chat with the widow about 'how can they be happy?').

Matt Smith was great as ever but Claire Skinner was terrible and one note.

But i really liked the fact that , like last year, it was ABOUT Christmas rather than just set at Christmas

[Dandontdare]

I don't usually like the over-sentimentalised christmas specials - last year's with the opera-loving dunesharks was awful IMO. I found this one surprisingly enjoyable however, with very little that annoyed me. It was a slight story, but was full of nice moments, such as finding the wrong police box. I thought Claire Skinner was great. Kinda got the iompression that some scenes featuring Bill Bailey and the others were cut - after she handcuffed them , we never saw them again.

[Colin_YNWA]

I thought Matt Smith was the best thing in it by a country mile. That aside pretty mediocre stuff this one.

[Emperor]

I thought it was pretty lame to be honest. From the trailer I thought the Doctor had managed to get the chameleon circuit working and that the big blue pressie was actually the Tardis - which would have been better IMHO.
The whole magicky wagicky thing with the trees souls was a load of bollocks and was just another example of the Doctor-as-messiah thing that I thought the new series was trying to get away from.

The forced comedy with Bill Bailey and the other forest workers was pretty cringe-worthy.

Pretty much this ^^^

It was packed to the gills with cloying sentimentality and the ending was pretty obvious from the start. They didn't even try and get in a bitter sweet moment (like Kylie dying at the end of the 2007 one, for example, or the end of last years which was basically "space Scrooge with a bittersweet ending". There is often that feeling of sacrifice,* Hell the Doctor has been getting to Hellblazer-like levels of throwing people under the wheels to stop the runaway cart), they just got their heads down and went straight for the predictable denouement. Then they shoehorned Amy Pond in at the end!!

I also thought the casting was either uninspired or just poor, you can almost here the one dimensional thinking that went into it:

• The Mother - "well I suppose she plays a mother in Outnumbered, so she'd be perfect for playing a mother here" despite the fact that the part fits here in Outnumbered because she gets to bring in lots of angles and "stiff upper lip, keep going for the kids" doesn't give her much to play with.
• The Father - "Alexander Armstrong was a WWII in those Armstrong and Miller sketches, and is awfully posh, so he'd be ideal," which completely missed the point that the point was to undermine exactly the stereotypes that he was then forced into
• Bill Bailey - "we like Bill Bailey, let's shoehorn him into a role" because I'm his stunt double I am obvious a fan, and other roles show he can act, but it seemed a poor role for him and the way he delivered his lines showed he thought so too.

The upside: Matt Smith acted his socks off, presumably to help distract from all the other inadequacies of the story.

* Thinking about it, the bittersweet ending would have involved them not being able to get home and it turned out that the real reason The Father died was to give them the last boost they needed to get back. Or something.

[Judge von Boom]

Not one of the better specials IMO. It sucked me in with the huge alien craft over the Earth, but then blowing up and the Doctor screaming in vacuum while trying to put on a spacesuit felt dumb. It was very monotone and had few surprises (i.e. none). It's too bad about Bill Bailey. When he showed up I was hoping for some improvement, but my hope was in vain. Maybe next year.

JvB

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Commited the cardinal sin of being boring.

In the words of my 6 year old: "Why did it have no baddies in it?"

Which is a dashed good question.

[Emperor]

Commited the cardinal sin of being boring.

In the words of my 6 year old: "Why did it have no baddies in it?"

Which is a dashed good question.

From the mouths of babes...

Although it could be argued a group committing ecocide are the villains, even if they don't mean to do evil - a parable for the modern world perhaps?

Still... it needed a more obvious baddie.

[Greg M.]

Still... it needed a more obvious baddie.

I demand the scary Yeti. Make it so, Moffat.

[Grant Goggans]

I'd be happy with a Christmastime-transmitted special that isn't set at Christmas.    Just to make a change.