It’s the most wonderful time of the year. And, of course that means it’s time for a Holiday tradition, the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

The Christmas Special has, traditionally, been an all out romp. In all but two, the companions have been one-off people. This year will mark only the second time that the companion after the Christmas Special carries over the the following series. Jenna-Louise Coleman will be the companion in the second half of Series 7, which begins in the Spring. This time out, the Doctor will face living Snowmen, the evil Dr. Simeon and another unknown adversary. Joining the Doctor and the new companion Clara in this Victorian Christmas adventure are fan-favorite characters Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax. So, is it worthy of being called a Doctor Who Christmas Special? Read my review and find out.

FIGURES AND MORE EXCLUSIVE REVIEW

Doctor Who: The Snowmen

Starring: Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman and Richard E. Grant

Written By: Steven Moffat

This year, it’s a special full of “NEW.” There are new opening titles, a new arrangement of the theme music, a new TARDIS interior and, most importantly, of course, a new companion. This is the “official” introduction of Clara, the new companion played by Jenna-Louise Coleman. This is NOT however, the first appearance of Jenna-Louise Coleman. That came in a surprise guest starring roll in the first episode of Series 7, Asylum of the Daleks. The character she played in that episode was named Oswin, and she dies at the end of the episode after having been turned into a Dalek.  So, what is Oswin’s connection to Clara? I would bet we will probably have to wait until spring to find out. The Special finds the Doctor mourning the loss of Amy and Rory. The heartache is so bad that he has decided to retire from saving the world. What could possibly shake him out of his stupor? It is time to find out.

NOTE: Beginning with this review, I will be debuting a new review format. Each review will be divided into 3 parts: The Plot, which will provide a story summary, My Take, which will consist of my thoughts on the episode, and The Score.

The Plot:

In England 1842, a young boy builds a snowman but refuses to play with the other children. The snowman starts speaking to the boy, repeating his assertions that the other children are “silly” and that he “doesn’t need anybody.” Fifty years later, the boy has grown up to be Dr Simeon (Richard E. Grant), proprietor of “The Great Intelligence Institute”. He hires men to collect samples of snow, which he places in a large snow-filled globe in his laboratory, and later feeds the men to a group of animated snowmen.

The Doctor (Matt Smith), still despondent after losing his former companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams, has parked his TARDIS above London among the clouds, descending to the surface via a long circular staircase. He has gathered his allies, the Silurian Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), her human companion Jenny (Catrin Stewart) , and the Sontaran Strax (Dan Starkey), to scout around London to look for any oddities. Vastra and Jenny encounter Dr Simeon and follow him, curious as to his interest in the snow.

Elsewhere, Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman), a barmaid, investigates a disturbance outside her tavern to find the Doctor walking by. She accuses him of creating a snowman nearby, but the Doctor realises that the snowman is made of snow with some type of memory. The Doctor attempts to leave discreetly, but Clara follows him to a coach, curious to his actions. The Doctor instructs Strax, waiting nearby, to bring a “memory worm”, with the intent to use the creature’s touch to wipe away the last hour of Clara’s memory, in particular her knowledge of him. As more snowmen start to appear and become animated with intent to harm the pair, the Doctor tells Clara that her thoughts are creating the snowmen, and to think of them melting; after she concentrates, the snowmen turn into water. After Strax accidentally wipes his own memory, twice, Clara retorts that if the Doctor does the same to her, she will forget how to deal with the snowmen should they appear again. The Doctor lets her go, and then evades her, taking his stairway back to the TARDIS; Clara follows, finding the TARDIS locked and knocks, then hurries around the TARDIS when the Doctor comes out to investigate. While the Doctor follows her around, still unaware that she’s the same girl he met earlier, she returns down the staircase.

Clara returns to her other job as governess for the children of Captain Latimer, replacing the former governess who had drowned and been frozen in his mansion’s pond a year before. She finds out that Latimer’s daughter has been having horrible dreams about the old governess returning from her icy grave in the pond and killing them all. Clara attempts to contact the Doctor but instead attracts the attention of Jenny, who takes her to see Madame Vastra. Vastra tells Clara she gets only one word to impress the Doctor with if she wants his help. Clara tells him “Pond”, which spurs the Doctor into action.

The Doctor visits Dr Simeon’s laboratory, and finds that the giant snow-filled globe contains the Great Intelligence (voice of SIR IAN MCKELLEN) , the entity that has been speaking to Dr Simeon since he was a child. The Doctor learns that the Great Intelligence has been controlling the snowmen and has taken great interest in Latimer’s pond, and goes there to investigate. As Clara and the children are waiting, a humanoid ice creature in the form of the former governess rises out of the pond and enters the mansion. The ice governess attacks Clara and the children, but the Doctor appears just in time to destroy it. Vastra, Jenny and Strax arrive as Dr Simeon and his snowmen cover the mansion in ice, and the reanimated ice creature resumes its attack. After ensuring that his allies will protect Latimer and his children, the Doctor flees with Clara to the roof of the mansion followed by the ice creature. The Doctor and Clara take the circular stairway to the TARDIS followed by the ice creature, and the Doctor creates a barrier at the top to halt the ice creature’s advance.

The Doctor introduces Clara to the TARDIS and explains that he has been reluctant to gain a companion, but now considers her to be one, giving her a TARDIS key and saying “I never know why — I only know who”. However, just as she takes it, the ice creature, having broken through the barrier, grabs Clara and pulls her over the edge of the clouds, causing her to fall back to Earth before the Doctor can save her.

The Doctor helps to recover the barely-alive Clara from the army of snowmen with his TARDIS and returns to the mansion, giving her to Strax to care for. He collects the ice fragments from the creature, ensuring they remain dormant but finding they contain ice-based DNA, the material that the Great Intelligence is looking for, and apparently places them in a souvenir London Underground biscuit tin. He and Vastra travel to Dr Simeon’s lab, where the Doctor reveals the Great Intelligence’s plan to replace humanity with ice creatures, and holds up the tin, stating that it contains the ice DNA that is necessary for the plan. Dr Simeon grabs the tin, but opens it to find it contains the memory worm. It bites Simeon; the Doctor (who previously noted that the worm’s bite would erase decades of memory) states that the Great Intelligence, which has been existing as a mirror of Dr Simeon’s thoughts, will vanish with the erasure of Dr Simeon’s memories. Instead, the Intelligence reveals that it existed long enough that it can now control Dr Simeon’s body, which it uses to attack the Doctor.

Just as Dr Simeon is about to kill the Doctor, the influence of the Great Intelligence wanes greatly, and Dr Simeon, now dead, falls to the floor. Outside, a salt-water rain has started, and the Doctor realises that some other, more powerful psychic ability has taken control of the snow from the Great Intelligence. The Doctor deduces that it must be Clara, crying as she nears her death, and with Vastra, he quickly returns to Latimer’s mansion in the TARDIS. Strax informs the Doctor that Clara only has moments left. The Doctor tries to cheer Clara up, returning the TARDIS key to her before she dies.

At her funeral, the Doctor reads Clara’s full name, Clara Oswin Oswald, on her tombstone and finally realises she is the same woman he met, turned into a Dalek, in “Asylum of the Daleks”, before she died. He gleefully announces that the same person dying twice is an impossibility he must investigate, and says his goodbyes to his allies. In contemporary times, a young woman resembling Clara walks through the graveyard. Meanwhile, the Doctor dashes around the TARDIS console, echoing Clara’s dying words, “watch me run!”.

My Take: I LOVED this special. The plot was much more straightforward than last year’s special. Also, I love Clara. But then, I also loved her when she was Oswin. I love how the usual dynamic of the Doctor and his Companion looks to be turned on it’s head with Clara. It seems as if the Doctor make have to work to keep up with her and it looks like she will be more than a match for the Doctor. Jenna has an infectious attitude that makes you want to like her. I was amazed that Clara turned out to be Oswin. I though for sure that it would be a relative or an alternate universe version. So, bravo to Moffat for fooling me again. And, while we’re giving Moffat kudos, let me congratulate him for a script that both acknowledges the effect of the loss of Amy and Rory and gives us the means to move beyond it. It is incredible to see how much of a change the Doctor had undergone following the Pond’s loss. He is aloof and withdrawn now, in so much pain he can barely bring himself to associate with anyone anymore. The light is gone from his eyes, the spring gone from his step. He is as far removed from the Eleventh Doctor we have known as it is possible to get. Consequently, we are immediately rooting for Clara to bring back “our” Doctor. The special is also packed with some great humor. From Strax’s hilarious experiment with the “memory worm” to the Doctor and Clara’s first conversation in the TARDIS: “It’s smaller on the outside.” “Is there a kitchen?” Matt and Jenna have such an easy chemistry together and I am really looking forward to seeing more of the pairing in the Spring. This special is also notable for one of the biggest guest stars ever. The Great Intelligence was voiced in this special by Sir Ian McKellen. Yes, the same Ian McKellen of Lord of the Rings and X-Men fame. This is the first time he has ever appeared in Doctor Who, and it will hopefully not be last. It was also great to see Vastra, Jenny and Strax return, by popular demand I might add. In fact the characters were so popular, a spinoff series was briefly considered. I hope we see them again as well.  Finally, I would like to talk about the other “new” things introduced in this schedule. First, the new theme music arrangement and title sequence. They are befitting of the 50th Anniversary year, a perfect mix of the old and new, with the theme music being stripped down a bit to sound a bit more raw, but still striking, and the new title sequence reincorporating the face of the Doctor combined with some other trippy imagery culminating in a new version of the vortex. I love it. Second, the new TARDIS interior. Just when I thought the production department couldn’t make the TARDIS any more impressive, they prove me wrong. I love the more mechanical futuristic look and it looks even bigger on the inside than before. I can’t wait to see what new rooms the Doctor and Clara will find in this version of the TARDIS. Let the long wait until Spring begin!

The Score: 5 out of 5. The Doctor is indeed back. And with Clara by his side this Spring, it should be a wild ride indeed.