Merry Timey Wimey Space Christmas!

Less than a decade ago, had anyone said that Doctor Who would not only be back on the telly but would be a staple of Christmas viewing for large swathes of average, non-geeky Brits, most saner people (myself included) would have laughed at them or looked upon them with the pitying look generally reserved for the delusional.   Then again, my 7 year old daughter is now an ardent Muppet fan after seeing their brand new movie, and I never would have seen that one coming either. 

So I just watched the latest Doctor Who Christmas special, the second for the team of Matt Smith and Stephen Moffat.  Whereas Russell T Davies, the previous showrunner, went for “event” TV at Christmas (and much of the rest of the time, to be honest), Moffat has taken a different, I think more interesting, approach.  To be sure nothing has yet surpassed the original Christmas special that functioned as a regeneration story introducing David Tennant, but Moffat isn’t trying to “top” the spectacle of the earlier stories.  Rather, he has focussed for the last two holiday seasons on smaller, more personal, stories.  And the stories have been linked to, if not strictly based on, classic Christmas tales – last year “A Christmas Carol” and this year “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” (although thankfully lacking thinly veiled lion-shaped allusions to Jesus).  And they are all the more charming for it.  

The other pattern that seems to be forming is that, for Christmas at least, there are no real villains in the classic “evil monster” sense.  Last year the “villain” was a selfish, mean- spirited old man whose lack of compassion would have doomed a crashing spaceship.  This year the threat involves unthinking humans whose interplanetary foresting threatens a forest of sentient trees.  No really.

[Spoilers ahead.  You have been warned!]

But that really isn’t the main point of the story at all.  That is merely the threat that propels the much more significant human drama of a widowed mother and her children. The story starts before WWII when  Madge Arwell (Claire Skinner) then happily married with two children, Lily and Cyril, finds an astronaut fallen from the sky in a backwards spacesuit (to understand why you have to watch the opening sequence which is a glorious homage to the opening scenes of Star Wars).  She helps him out and gets him back to a Police Box.  This mysterious astronaut is, of course, the Doctor who decides to help Madge out a few years later, after her husband has been killed in the war.  Of course, being the Doctor, his plan to give her and her children the best Christmas ever, goes horribly wrong and leads them to a planet filled with sentient trees in the midst of deforestation by bumbling lackeys of an intergalactic corporation (a wonderful comedy trio played by the marvellous Bill Bailey, Arrebella Weir and some other guy I can’t be bothered to google).   

If you’re wondering what all this has to do with the CS Lewis book on which the title of the episode is based, the main connection is in the imagery of the era and the children entering an alien world through a portal in a large family house.  Beyond that it’s really its own story.  Does the story work?  Mostly.

The lack of true villain is both a blessing and a curse.  On the downside it leaves the viewer without the clear narrative focus a villain provides and the sentient trees are, pun intended, rather wooden and unsatisfying as protagonists.  On the other hand it allows the story to focus on the wonderful interplay of the Doctor, at his mostly childlike and enchanting, and the children and their mother.  And it is this relationship that is central to the story in every way.  The story is, at its core, about the love of a mother for her children and the strength that gives her.  At one point Madge points a gun at her human captors who do not believe she will shoot until she reveals to them that she is looking for her children, at which point they looked justifiably terrified of her.  And the resolution of the plot involves the idea that as a female and as a mother she is the strongest person there, stronger even than the Doctor.  My wife looked pleased at this point in the story so clearly the message hit home! Madge even “mothers” the Doctor at the end convincing him to do what he should have done at the end of last season – go to his friends and reveal to them that he is not dead as he had left them to believe at the end of the previous storyline.  Oh, and of course, due to some” timey wimey” plot turns, Madge is no longer a widow at the end of the story, so we get a happy ending on all fronts.  

So, all in all, a very satisfying slice of holiday cheer courtesy of our favourite madman in a blue box. 

8 out of 10

Best lines -

Lilly: Where are we?

Doctor: In a forest, in a box, in the sitting room.  Pay attention!

Doctor: This is one of the safest planets I know.  There’s never anything dangerous here. [Ominous thud] There are some sentences I should just keep away from.

Doctor: Hold tight and pretend it’s a plan.