Evening Wood

It's funny, but one of the things I particularly loved about this past series of Doctor Who was the way that some of the stories subtly evoked the Curse Of Fenric in various ways. Nothing overt, just these little nods in theme and tone that, in all probability, only overanalytical fanboys with too much time on their hands such as myself would ever misread into the proceedings. It's interesting then that The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe begins with an oblique reference to a past story.

The only problem is that this time it's Four To Doomsday.

I find your lack of oxygen disturbing.

There's a giant spaceship threatening the earth, and the Doctor is swanning around in a hard vacuum, seemingly oblivious to the fact his lungs should probably have exploded? Gotta admit it does sound a little familiar, although at least Peter Davidson had the decency to not talk when there's no atmosphere to carry the sound, but we'll put that down to being part of the opening Star Wars pastiche and move on with our lives. There's only such much quibbling about realism one can do with a show like Doctor Who after all, especially if one actually wants to remain sane.

Pfft, that's totally photoshopped. I can tell from the pixels.

After all, it's not like I actually find any problem with the part where he falls from orbit and get's up afterwards. Although, what with David Tennants plunge from 3 miles up in the End Of Time you've got wonder if everyone isn't just taking the piss out of Tom Baker at this point.

Anyway, enough of that. What about the episode itself? The story is a bit of an odd beast. The problem with these Doctor Who christmas specials is, if I can be blisteringly obvious for a brief moment, their instance on being overly christmassy. There is simply only so much you can do on the christmas theme without stretching the bounds of credulity to breaking point. Considering that this follows on from the unashamedly balls out hyper christmasness of the previous years special many might have thought it better to keep the festive element in the background a little more. I mean, even in The Christmas Invasion, the fact that it's set at christmas is rather incidental.

Obviously this year the big thing is the Narnia motif. Frankly this isn't really a major thing beyond the fact that there's a forest, snow and the kids are in their pyjamas. It's Narnia-centric in the same way that Planet Of Evil is a faithful retelling of the Story Of Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde. The influence is there to be sure, but it's very much it's own thing.

Whilst there is a lot to like on offer though I can't help but feel that it's missing something. We have some decent characters, and a lot of nice moments to be sure. The lead actors are all very good, and there's some good dialogue and ideas. But it has to be said that if there's one thing that's really missing it's a proper villain. A hero is, after all, only as good as his enemies are bad. The wooden king certainly looked creepy in the trailers, but isn't actually any sort of threat. It is the forest after all that is the victim here. Then there's the space marines. Making them come from Androzani Major is a nice touch, as we know full well that's a planet of capitalist bastards. However they still don't manage much in the way of threat or menace since they are in fact the comic relief. I wouldn't really have a problem with this if they were actually in it for more than five minutes. But for all the publicity of having Bill Bailey and company involved the screen time afforded them is cruelly brief. This is quite tragic as the scene with them in is actually really funny. There's also a definite hint that Bill Bailey could actually pull of an unexpected villain part quite well, but sadly it's not something we ever get to see.

Something else that's missing from this story is the following episode of Doctor Who Confidential. This is, after all, the first episode to go out after Confidential was given the chop. I admit that when it was first axed I wasn't overly fussed, as many of the episodes were frankly overlong and padded to hell. However for all the filler they still showed a lot of good stuff and gave some interesting insights into the production process. It's actually kind of odd to be suddenly deprived of that. There is, after all, things I would like to know about the episode still. For example, according to wikipedia a Lancaster Bomber has a crew of seven. Whilst we don't know exactly how many of Regs crew were killed, we know at least one of them was in urgent need of medical attention. So whilst our heroic pilot was having a happy christmas with his family in a giant mansion, what the hell happened to his comrades? Left to freeze and/or bleed to death in the plane? Or did they just fall out before they landed? There's a cheery christmas thought to leave you with.

Overall this episode feels like an odd throwback to the previous era, having several qualities of an RTD script. It's more about the moments than the overall story, the final resolution is a bit abrupt, the ending is rather cheesy and none of the plot holes are dealt with. But somehow it hangs together and remains enjoyable.