The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe: A Borrowed Spacesuit and a Box Under the Tree

Bah Humbug

It’s extremely sad when a dream is shattered and left on the ground in pieces. Unfortunately that is exactly what happened with this year’s Christmas edition of Doctor Who. Right from the beginning, as the Doctor plunged through the vacuum of space (apparently without needing to breathe at all), struggling to make his way into a space suit as it plummeted towards the Earth, it was bad, and it just got worse as the episode progressed.

I know the Christmas specials are generally even more camp and family oriented than the other episodes of this show. It’s the one time of year when my wife and both children join me in watching one of my favorite shows, so I go in wanting to like it. I also know I definitely shouldn’t expect any actual “science” in this iconic science fiction show. Even allowing for all of that, this most recent episode was just annoying from beginning to almost the end, and it’s a strange feeling to sit with your family on Christmas night wishing this Doctor Widow Wardrobe special would hurry up and finish.

The thing is, a Christmas special isn’t asking much of me. I don’t need a season-arc payoff or a big mythology reveal, and I’m happy to forgive a lot if the story has some heart and some fun in it. What I can’t forgive is the sense that nobody cared whether the pieces fit together, and from that opening fall onward I kept noticing the seams. By the time the family arrived at the house I’d already decided it wasn’t going to be a good night, and the hour that followed didn’t do much to change my mind.

Science Doesn’t Matter!

In a nutshell, the Doctor plunges to Earth in the borrowed spacesuit and somehow manages to get his helmet on backwards, surviving re-entry with nothing broken or damaged and leaving only a very small and shallow depression. He’s succored by a passing motorist (I’m not going to bother with names, really, as none were that memorable. Well, that’s not quite the case. Like most specials the BBC has managed to rope in some of the best talent in the UK, but I really don’t care about them in this episode so I’m not going to mention their names!) who helps him back to the Tardis.

She somehow manages to pick the lock of the Tardis, although I’m not sure whether she’s actually picking the lock or not, since they show a scene seconds later where the Doctor seems to indicate he’s in the wrong place. I hope not, because if she can pick the lock of the Tardis with a bobby pin, this episode is even more wrong than it would otherwise be! The Doctor thanks her for her help and says that if she ever needs any, she just needs to “wish” for him.

Returning home, the lady, the wife and mother, meets her husband, who is reading a paper about the war (the Second World War) and says he shouldn’t be talking about it. Jumping ahead three years we see that the husband, father and man is now the pilot of a British bomber on its way back across the channel. With one engine blown out, his plane crashes somewhere over the channel and the lady gets a telegram informing her of his death. With two children in tow, she sets off to her uncle’s home so that the children can have a happy holiday and not think of Christmas as the day their father died.

I did say I wasn’t going to expect real science, and I meant it, so it’s not the helmet or the re-entry that bothers me on its own. It’s that the episode seems to treat every problem the same way, as something to be waved through so we can get to the next set piece. A passing motorist, a lock that doesn’t hold, a husband who dies and then doesn’t: each one is solved by the story simply needing it to be, and after a while that stops feeling like a fairy tale and starts feeling like a shrug.

The Caretaker

Arriving at the home, they meet the Doctor, or as he calls himself in this episode, the Caretaker. I have to ask, and I know that at the end of this most recent season, in The Wedding of River Song, he indicated that he needed to be more in the shadows, but is calling himself by a different name sufficient? After all, with all of time and space, eventually people will realize that “the Caretaker” seems to do the same things the Doctor used to.

He leads them around the house showing them lots of weird and wonderful things. Honestly though, what was the point of the room with the dancing chairs? And while the children’s room was nice, it wasn’t exceptional. I also know that Matt Smith is meant to be a bit manic as the Doctor, but he was talking much too fast when he was describing this room, and it was just annoying. Anyways, eventually he shows them a big box which is their Christmas present and everyone goes to bed.

The little boy sneaks down to open the Christmas present early. I know that all kids want to do this, but mine aren’t allowed to. Christmas is fun when you open the presents together around the tree and throw the wrapping paper all over each other, and I think most kids realize this also! While his sister is upstairs talking to the Doctor, the boy climbs into the box, which takes him to a planet inhabited by sentient Christmas (pine) trees. The trees are about to be mined by a company and need to figure out a way to save themselves.

Eventually the Doctor, the little girl and the mother make their way to the planet also through the Christmas box portal, and it turns out the savior of the trees is the mother, because moms are “strong.” Somehow she’s able to navigate the ship that the trees have created and grown for themselves through the time vortex back to Earth, indirectly saving her husband also (yeah, happy Christmas!!). There’s lots of stuff here about the trees creating a wooden King and Queen in human form (why?) and the company that is strip mining the planet using acid rain to do so (umm, ok?), but pretty much what I said earlier covers it.

Finally, the Good Stuff!!

Back on Earth, the mom tells the Doctor that he needs to see his family, as everyone needs to be with family on Christmas, and the Doctor listens to her. That was pure and utter horribleness throughout, and the only saving grace of the whole episode was literally the last three to five minutes.

The Doctor knocks on the door of a house and Amy Pond opens it. They have a very touching reunion, and when Rory joins them he says that they always set a seat at their table for the Doctor. Rory looks a bit older but Amelia looks exactly the same, and the Doctor has a tear in his eye as he closes the door to spend Christmas with his family. It’s a small, quiet scene and it did more for me than the previous hour of trees and mining ships put together, which tells you everything about where the episode’s effort went.

That’s what makes the ending so frustrating. The last few minutes show exactly what this special could have been: a tired, funny, warm Doctor who has somewhere to be and people who love him. I wanted that version for the whole episode, with the family and the box as a way into it rather than the whole point.

I know that Christmas episodes generally have nothing to do with the overall story arc or mythology of the Doctor Who universe, but I really, really hope they never show another episode that is as disjointed and annoying as this one. Please listen to a lifelong fan of the show and give us more. Matt Smith was good, and I’ve liked him almost from the first, but he needs the right materials to play with, and you have really not given them to him here, and I’m not the only one who found it thin.

I’d love to hear whether the Christmas special worked better for your family than it did for mine, and whether you think the last few minutes were worth the wait. Tell me in the comments.