I feel it's time to finally write my long delayed thoughts about 'The Snowmen', Doctor Who's 2012 Xmas special. My expectations for this episode weren't threw the roof this time as 2011's effort 'The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe' was easily one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who I have ever seen, to the point where it's the only NuWho episode that I've only watched once. 2010's Christmas treat 'A Christmas Carol' however was amazing, so I didn't know if this episode was going to be complete garbage or brilliant telly. It certainly had a lot going for it beforehand, boasting a cast that features talents like Sir Ian Mckellen and Richard E Grant, a few fan favourites from Series 6, the promise of a completely redesigned TARDIS and title sequence and let's not forget a new companion! It's almost like Steven Moffat is trying make up for last years terrible effort, no?
So there definitely seems to be a lot going on here (typical Moffat), but what did I think of the actual episode?
Well....yeah I liked it a lot! It was witty, fast, funny and entertaining. It had all the hallmarks of a good Moffat script, complete with all of his weaknesses of course but I'll get into that in a minute.
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| Wonderfully DW, shame they were never used. |
Speaking of harking back to old Who, have you seen that new TARDIS? They've gone back to basics with this new one. It seems a lot more functional as a time machine now, having got rid of all the team-punky junk plastered onto it and resemble some of the earlier versions. This seems to be an effort by the production team to go back to the shows roots, and this being the 50th anniversary year I can't think of a better time to do it. I do miss the size/multilevel's of the old one though, it seems a lot smaller now.
Now going back to the actual episode, what's it actually about? Well I'll give an abbreviated version of the Episode as a refresher but essentially after Amy and Rory's sudden departure the Doctor's been kinda grumpy since then. Why he would go to Victorian London and live in the clouds for a while is a bit beyond me but hey even a Timelord has his bad days. His three friends from 'A Good Man Goes To War' are there to help him get over this Scrooge mentality and back onto his feet but he's having none of it so they've started investigating local mysteries to pass the time. One of those mysteries focuses on Dr Simeon played by Richard E Grant, a rather cold fellow (both inside AND outside as we find out by the end of the ep) who wants to take over the world with an army or unmeltable ice people...remember, this is Doctor Who we're watching. The Doctor investigates but refuses to give a damn and the only thing that can bring him out of this mood is a barmaid/governess called Clara, the kinda-sorta new companion for this year. So impossible Clara is of course caught up in this adventure when she first meets the Doctor in an alley outside of her bar. The 'Snowmen', a prototype version of Simeon's army that can be influenced telepathically (or something) try to attack them and having survived that ordeal she goes back to her second job, being a 'Governess' in a house owned by a retired sea Captain who had to take care of his kids after his late wife drowned in a pond outside his house. Dr Simeon's template for his unstoppable ice army is being created in the pond (again something to do with memories of the previous Governess something something) and Clara has to go to The Doctor for help. This leads to a wonderful scene, the 'one word' game with Madame Vastra where of course the only word that can get the Doctor riled up and back into action is 'Pond'. Hijinxs ensue, with the Ice lady coming out of the pond and chasing Clara and the Doctor out of the house and into the clouds while Simeon and his Snowmen patiently wait outside....for some reason. After being introduced to the new TARDIS (gorgeous camera shot) and being given the TARDIS key (so officially given 'companion' status) Clara is unfortunately grabbed by the Ice Lady and falls off the cloud to her doom. Well okay, for SOME reason she isn't splattered to a pulp and is still alive (albeit critically ill?) and the Doctor meets with Simeon at The Great Intelligence Institute *HINT HINT* and defeats him with a memory worm (The Intelligence controlling the Snowmen is essentially Simeons cold and spiteful personality being reflected by the snow, a twisted imaginary friend of his own creation, so the logic is that by erasing his memories the GI can't possibly exist). Of cource the Intelligence uses Simeon's empty mind to possess his body, outliving and overcoming his creator. He was about to freeze the Doctor to death before collapsing into a crumpled pile, due to the snow somehow being turned into tears (the snow was concentrated around the Captain's house, so the family crying had an impact on it or something). Clara dies but not before uttering the same last words that Oswin muttered 'Run, you clever boy, and remember' leading the Doctor to believe that a version of Clara Oswin Oswald still exists out there in time and space just like the two previous versions. He rushes back to his TARDIS to find another 'her' again and that's the end of the episode, it's not an easy one to recap.
I'm probably retreading ground by saying that Matt Smith is again fantastic as the Doctor in this, but he does such an excellent job in each episode that you stop noticing just HOW good he is in some of these scenes (the scene with him talking to Clara on her deathbed comes to mind). Saying 'Matt Smith was great in this episode' is just like describing the sky as being 'blue' at this point, and I could happily watch him be the Doctor for another few years (LONG MAY HE REIGN!).
NOTE: This review was written AGES ago, long before the announcement of Matt Smiths departure this Xmas. So unfortunately he won't be staying on as the Doctor for a few more years :( Consider this fan heartbroken.
Jenna-Louise Coleman is fantastic in the part, and while the character (intentionally) shares most of Oswin's traits from 'Asylum Of The Daleks' they got rid of her cocky remarks that really grated with me from that episode. It's like she's the same character but isn't the same character at the same time, almost like Oswin Oswald reincarnated. It's a great twist to proceedings and the chemistry she has with Matt Smith is top-notch, they clearly light the screen with glee. I'm not going to say she's the BEST COMPANION EVER! or anything just yet but as far as first impressions go I think we're in for a winner here. The duality of her character (acting posh and cockney) was a nice touch and she even reminded me of Mary Poppins in one scene with the two kids!
Aside from the new companion the thing I was most excited about was the return of Vastra, Strax and Jenny, who are quite simply some of the most entertaining side characters I've seen on Doctor Who. The comedy trio are gold on the silver screen, aided by the punchy dialogue that Moffat always executes so well. Neve McIntosh's Lady Detective/Lizard woman from the dawn of time Madame Vastra gets the lions share of the material here, you can add the 'one word' interview scene onto my list of favourite Doctor Who moments (might do that some day), and lets not forget the constant Sherlock references being littered around the episode. The fact that this episode hints at Madame Vastra being an inspiration for Sherlock Holmes has caused some fan outcry it seems, because now that they've established Sherlock Holmes as being a fictional entity in the DW universe we'll never get that Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover we so desperately need! To this I say: it's Doctor Who. If they want to do it, they'll find a way to do it. Then we have Vastra's wife Jenny, played by Catrin Stewart, who is probably the weakest out the three returning characters, simply because her only joke is the fact that...well....she's married to a lesbian lizard lady. And last but not least is Dan Starkey's Strax. The 'potato head' was great comic relief as in 'A Good Man Goes To War', although it's a shame Sontaran's are being portrayed in a much more comedic light recently, I would like to go back to those mean thuggish potato headed brutes we saw in Series 4 and not have them as a subject of parody. I'll make an exception for Strax though, simply because he's awesome.
The episode does have a few other supporting characters such as Tom Ward's Captain Latimer and his kids, but aside from a small arc about the Captain having a crush on Clara and wanting to connect with his children they were basically there to serve the plot, much like Collector Grayle from 'The Angels Take Manhattan'. I thought he would have a bigger part to be honest, a lot of the publicity beforehand was focused on his character and he was only in it for three minutes! It seems odd to have wasted a good actor on such a small role. And speaking of wasted potential...
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| Just f*cking kiss already! You're not a companion til' you snog the Doctor, apparently. |
Let's start with Richard E Grant's character, the 'main' villain for the episode. Dr Simeon isn't given any recognisable traits other than being a 'cool headed' character that rarely expresses any emotion or surprise to anything and wants to fill the world with his emptiness by turning the whole world into an 'everlasting winter'. This type of villain might work in a fairy tale setting but here he comes out as being bare-bones at best and aside from ruthlessly killing a group of workers at the very start of the ep he doesn't do much other than walk around and look sulky all the time. I would call his plan for world domination silly, but this is Doctor Who we're talking about here so I suppose by DW standards it's not the worst invasion plan imaginable. I mean we've already had killer satnav's, black cubes, giant robots, farting aliens and mannequins so why not a few killer snowmen here and there? It could work, and DW has had a history of making the seemingly mundane and silly into deadly monsters, while still being just a tad silly. But the killer Snowmen in this episode, Simeon's privately controlled monster army aren't the most threatening of villains are they? They look creepy enough with their toothy grins and menacing look but again, THEY JUST STAND THERE AND DO NOTHING. FOR THE ENTIRE EPISODE!! This is the same problem that 'The Angels Take Manhattan' had, where the Weeping Angels didn't do anything outright evil or menacing in any way, they mostly just looked the part. Actually come to think of it, what did the Daleks do in 'Asylum Of The Daleks'? They didn't even exterminate anyone! DW is getting increasingly child friendly under Moffat's reign and his villains are suffering for it because aside from killing one bloke off-screen they appear harmless and are far too easy to defeat nowadays. At least in TATM the Angel's appear quite frequently, here the Snowmen barely feature and THEIR NAME IS IN THE TITLE! It's seriously slim pickings for villains this year...
Dr Simeon's 'imaginary friend' The Intelligence (and the baddie that controls the Snowmen) is severely underused as well, and apart from Sir Ian Mckellen's voice just feels completely unnecessary. It's a weak origin story to an old Doctor Who villain. And even then, the origin makes no sense. In the classic DW stories that featured this monster like 'The Web Of Fear' The Intelligence is depicted as being a ridiculously powerful disembodied entity in another universe trying to claim physical form in ours by possessing people and controlling an army of robot Yeti's. It's a cool idea, but 'The Snowmen' discards this idea in favour of it being an unsociable child's imaginary friend that was imprinted onto imaginary telepathic snow to make an actual sentient being. So is the GI still this all powerful disembodied intelligence from another realm of existence or a figment of some child's imagination? Cos' I prefer the first one, don't you? And what exactly happened to it at the end, after it was turned INTO FUCKING TEARS?! (WTF STEVEN MOFFAT?) I kinda-sorta get the reason why this happened but it's basically another excuse for a conclusion where the villain gets defeated by emotion. You know what? I'm sick to death of these lazy ass villains with their stupid ass plots and their equally lazy ass way of being motherfuckin' defeated! Nowadays it's all about 'love' and sonicscrewdriving your way to victory (I'm looking at you 'Power Of Three'), I mean granted it's always been that way but Moffat's reign as of late has been increasingly blatant in it's use of these resolutions. A bit of variety please? Actually no, variety isn't the problem, it's called lazy over-sentimental writing that's banking on the fact that you're to swept up in the story to care. AND YOU DON'T GET IAN MCKELLEN AS A VILLAIN AND ONLY HAVE HIM SHOW UP FOR A FEW LINES OF VOICE OVER!
I probably should mention the Ice governess as well. Unlike the three others in our rogues gallery the Governess didn't bother me as much, if anything she's the only villain in the episode to actually accomplish anything in this episode and that's taking into account the fact that she's as thick as Punch & Judy. I wonder why Dr Simeon and Co just waited outside the house for her to come outside rather than just go INTO the house and pick her up? This could have been an opportunity to showcase how menacing the villains are by having them siege the house with Vastra, Strax and Jenny fighting them off while the Doctor and Clara were escaping to the clouds. It would have added a bit of action to proceedings and would have made the episode a bit more climatic than just 'woops we turned into tears and Clara died THE END'.
I think there's a very good reason for why the baddies for this episode are so underdeveloped and underutilised (even if we take out the fact that they're not menacing in any way), it's simply because TOO MUCH SH*T IS GOING ON!
The fact that the rest of the episode is so good just highlights the flaws that the individual villains have. Moffat is good at writing witty dialogue, endearing characters and convoluted plots but he's not giving the villains or the 'threat/monster' aspect of Doctor Who any thought anymore and it's bringing the show down a bit. And remember, this is the guy who gave us the Vashta Nerada, Gas Mask Zombies, Clockwork Robots, Weeping Angels AND the Silence, all of which are fantastically realised and some of the best monsters DW has ever seen.
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| Now that's a TARDIS! Very classic Who. |
So it's a good thing that the villains aren't really the sole focus of the episode. A lot of it spent building the relationship between the Doctor and Clara and having fun with the Pattenoster gang (Strax, Jenny and Vastra), which are the GOOD aspects of the episode so overall yes, I enjoyed it for about 80% of the episode, which means 'The Snowmen' probably deserves an 8/10:
Positives:
+ Stellar cast, great ensemble
+ Witty, fast paced script
+ Strax, Vastra
+ Fantastic visuals (TARDIS in the clouds, ect...)
+ The 'one word' scene
+ Redesigned TARDIS, title sequence
Negatives:
- Poor villains
- Weak central plot
- Lack of threat
- Telepathic snow? REALLY?
Overall score: 8/10
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