The Time Lord Saves Christmas again in "The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe"

Written By Adam A. Donaldson

This year’s Doctor Who Christmas special wasn’t a rolicking rollercoaster of emotion and time travel sleight of hand that last year’s A Christmas Carol was, but it did however suite the tone of where we left The Doctor earlier this fall, and is perhaps a sign of where the Time Lord’s adventures will take him next.

Of course, we begin with something right out of the old Doctor’s playbook: a giant alien ship is threatening the Earth, The Doctor blows it up, and before you can say “TARDIS” he’s trapped in a section where the hull is breached. On the verge of being blown out into space, The Doctor grabs for a space suit and frantically starts getting into it as he flies out the back of the ship and heads hurtling towards Earth. Cue the opening credits.

The year is 1938, and a British woman named Madge Arwell (Claire Skinner) is cycling down the road when she hears a scream and crash. Nearby, she finds a man in a crater wearing a funny silver space suit. She opens the helmet and sees only the back of The Doctor’s head. You’ve got your helmet on backwards, she remarks, how did you manage that? “I got dressed in a hurry,” he says.

The Doctor asks Madge to take him to a police box, which is all the help he needs. She does so, and as she leaves The Doctor to his phone box, she asks the space suited man if he’ll be alright, and that he shouldn’t be alone on Christmas. But The Doctor says he’ll be fine, and tells Madge that should she ever need anything, just make a wish and he’ll be there.

Three years later, The Doctor gets his chance to pay back Madge and her two kids, Lily and Cyril (Holly Earl and Maurice Cole), when husband and father Reg Arwell (Alexander Armstrong) goes missing and is presumed dead over the English Channel. With the blitz going on in London, Madge moves herself and her children to the countryside estate of a relative, and when they arrive they’re greeted by the estate’s caretaker, a funny looking man in a tweed jacket and bow tie. And boy, does he talk fast.

Yes, in the midst of a family tragedy, at Christmas, as Midge tries to find a way to tell her kids that their father isn’t coming home, The Doctor has arranged a little surprise. In a big box, wrapped in Christmas paper, Cyril discovers a gateway to a snowy, forest filled world. The Doctor and Lily follow and soon realize that there’s something dangerous going on in this world. Cyril follows a set of giant footsteps in the snow to a tower with a geodesic dome on top. The plot thickens.

When Madge enters the forest, she encounters a trio of soldiers making sure that the forest is clear; all the trees are about to be harvested, and the planet is no longer safe. With the news that a whole planet full of trees is about to be obliterated with acid rain, Madge becomes even more desperate to find her kids. Meanwhile, in the tower, The Doctor and the kids discover that the trees, themselves are hosts to a sentient lifeform who are trying to escape the planet before the acid rain comes. The Doctor offers himself as a vessel for the trees’ escape, but they deem both him and Cyril too weak. Lily, however, is the strong one according to the trees.

Eventually, the family is reunited, and the trees dub Madge as the strongest of all, with The Doctor realizing that, from the trees’ perspective, Madge is the strongest because she’s a woman and a mother. The energy from all the trees across the planet take refuge inside Midge’s mind and the dome takes off as the acid rain falls.

The trees use Midge’s memories and emotions to guide the dome through the time vortex, she has to feel it until it hurts, The Doctor says. On the window of the dome, Madge, The Doctor and the kids see the last moments of Reg’s life, flying over the Channel, trying to make his way home. But the painful memory and the emotions work, the trees’ energy has escaped into space, and the dome safely lands in front of the country estate on Christmas morning.

The Doctor leaves Madge to talk to her children about the fate of their father, but when The Doctor leaves the dome, he discovers a happy side effect. On a dark and cloudy night, with not a single light in the sky, Reg and his crew followed the light of the dome to arrive safely at home. The Arwell family is reunited for the holidays, another Christmas miracle courtesy of The Doctor.

With Christmas evening falling, The Doctor prepares to depart. The sight of the TARDIS in the attic makes Midge realize that the caretaker is the same man she helped in the space suit years earlier, and The Doctor tells her that he was returning the favour for her helping him in 1938. Madge assumes that The Doctor is departing to spend Christmas with his friends and family, but The Doctor tells her that his friends think he’s dead. Madge tells The Doctor that he can’t let his friends think that he’s dead on Christmas and insists that he tells them the truth. The Doctor promises to think about it, and disappears in the TARDIS.

Apparently taking Madge’s advise to heart, The Doctor arrives on the steps of the Ponds, two years after he last saw them. The awkwardness is broken somewhat when Amy tells The Doctor that River spilled the beans that he was still alive, but they still both refuse to be the first one to go in for a hug. But who are they kidding? They both hug, and the commotion brings Rory to the door, and he too happily greets The Doctor. The Ponds invite their old friend to join them for Christmas dinner, but The Doctor wonders if they’ve even set a place for him. We always set a place for you, says Rory.

The Ponds invite The Doctor to come in, and as they disappear into the house, The Doctor follows, and then realizes that tears are falling from his eye. The Doctor smiles, realizing that he’s happy to be amongst the company of friends – of family – once more.

The story, penned by current Who showrunner Steven Moffat, is a more demure and low-key entry into the Doctor Who Christmas special pantheon. There’s no saving the world adventure in this one, but a more, ahem, down to Earth story about the value of family and the power of love, which are very, classically, Christmas themes. The episode was at times funny, and at other times heartbreaking, and all the while Matt Smith is the tremendously versatile ringleader of the entire story.

Moffat continues to show a deft hand at expanding the meaning of a Doctor Who story. He mixes the dark and the light, the personal and the epic, and human storytelling with the timey-wimey adventure stuff with incredible balance. But the result in the case of “The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe” is a special that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to get your attention, it just does.

Claire Skinner is great as this entry’s “companion” and it was certainly refreshing to see someone who isn’t immediately enamoured with The Doctor when he appears. The kids are good too, and not typical Christmas special kids, neither bratty, nor overly earnest; Maurice Cole, wearing thick glasses that magnifying his eyes as Cyril, was especially endearing. And the sight of Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill in the end was a most welcome one, even if, sadly, they’re not long for continued adventures with The Doctor.

I’m not sure if this Christmas special is an indication of where Moffat is going to take Who in series 7 – more personal stories, a more emotionally invested Doctor, and less dire, world-destroying consequences – but if it is, I’m more than fine with that. This Christmas special was short on frills, but it had tremendous depth and cheer, and to the viewer that enjoys sentiment over spectacle, the rewards were rich with this Doctor Who Christmas.

Written by :

Adam