ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
This is one my less favoured Christmas Doctor Whos. I find
it rather overly sentimental and sickly and some of the acting – although not
from Matt Smith – is a bit off. The story is also blatantly a Narnia rip off
and although the previous year we had A Christmas Carol it was done with more
style and care, this one seems a bit lazy.
It is Christmas Eve 1941 and the Doctor is acting as
caretaker to Madge Atwell (Claire Skinner) and her two children, Lily (Holly
Earl) and Cyril (Maurice Cole). Madge has just had a telegram informing her
that her husband has disappeared over the Channel and is presumed dead, but she
is trying not to let the children know before Christmas.
In the night, Cyril is lured into opening a large present
under the tree which opens up and takes Cyril to a snowy landscape in another
dimension. The Doctor and Lily follow him and track him down to a
lighthouse-like building where Cyril is met by a wooden King and Queen figure.
Madge follows later on but encounters a group of intergalactic miners (Bill
Bailey and Arabella Weir) who inform her that the planet is about to be
destroyed by acid rain. When the Doctor and Lily meet up with Cyril they find
he has a circlet put on his head but the wooden beings who reject him as not
being weak.
When Madge arrives the Doctor surmises that the wooden
creatures need a strong human mind to help them escape the oncoming acid rain.
They identify Madge as ‘strong’, which to them equates to female, and she gives
them the necessary power to pilot away from the coming destruction.
Using the lighthouse beacon Madge’s husband, Reg (Alexander
Armstrong), pilots his crashing plane back to his home and the family are
reunited for Christmas. The Doctor then travels to Earth to have Christmas
Dinner with Amy and Rory.
The rather over-cutesy end to this story is one of the
things that make it a bit cloying, add to that a ‘super protective’ mother
figure who seems obsessed with her children – her son in particular – and a
rather cliched naughty little boy and you get a story that is a bit too
predictable and a bit too sugary.
As ever Matt Smith is great as the Doctor, no more so than
in the early parts of the story when he is eccentrically trying to make the
family’s Christmas go smoothly. He has a good relationship with Lily who is
ably played by a very young Holly Earl. Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir are
rather underused in their roles but to be honest they are both playing their
usual ‘stock’ character, so it feels more like a cameo.
At the end of the day, I find this story a bit flat and
certainly not to the usual festive Doctor Who standard.
NEXT UP: ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS
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