Day 784: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

After I first watched The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe on Boxing Day 2011, my first thought was to get up from the position where I had been lying in the lounge room, turn to the family members who were watching it with me, and say that words to the effect of "Well, that was rather awful, wasn't it?". My grievances were generally that the harvest rangers were under-used characters, that the section in the forest felt a bit dull, and I disliked the sentimental ending. But, I've got to be honest, maybe I was too harsh on this story on first viewing. Because, even though I'm still not overly fond of the episode, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

A vast portion of this is due to Steven Moffat's script. Whilst his overall story isn't exactly strong (I still can't quite bring myself to like the sentimental ending), the individual scenes within the episode are all constructed strongly. I'd forgotten that he'd written the story as a comedy, with a fair few scenes ending on some form of punchline, such as the splendid police box scene at the beginning or indeed the entire basis of the conclusion being centred around a pun on the word 'mother-ship'. And whilst the other characters in the story are fairly flat, Moffat ensures that the Doctor sparkles, being a glimpse back to the magical figure that we saw in Series 5 before the darkness of Series 6 happened, with the Doctor dashing about the story doing impossible things and, perhaps most importantly of all, having fun.

And I have to admit, I did have a lot of fun watching this story. It's not perfect, but it's not awful. The forest sections take up far less time than I'd remembered and mostly have Smith's acting to compensate for any dullness in plot at that time. The harvest rangers, whilst under-used, at least have Bill Bailey amongst them who plays his character like a parody of a Doctor Who character (there's something so simple yet satisfying in seeing a character place the emphasis on the word 'year' in the phrase "The year is 5345", making the entire line feel as silly as it should - and I unconsciously ended up using that same trick in one of my last Uni assignments, to great effect). And whilst the ending is overly sentimental and a bit rubbish, it's certainly not as bad as sending Kylie Minogue off to live amongst the stars. Overall, it's not that bad, and I wouldn't mind watching it again next Christmas.