Watching Pertwee stranded on earth, I like the idea of the Doctor being on an alien planet, In a bar/social facility.. he’s parked the TARDIS and he’s left alone in a corner.. feeling down - maybe after a tragic event on earth - and someone (alien humanoid) tracks him down for help! The doctor realising he’s in a slump and needs a challenge agrees to help and we see the doctor off earth and involved in some star wars esq adventures.. has that ever been done before?

I am under no illusions that this will realistically happen or that anyone will like it, but this is my idea for what could happen following the end of The Reality War. It ties up a few (but not all) loose ends so sorry for those who wanted it to include >!Ruby, Belinda, Poppy, Rogue, the Pantheon or the Master!<. Yes, it does retcon a few things too but that is part and parcel of the show. With any luck, it's still satisfying.

The Doctor's (Billie Piper) regeneration energy sputters out and stalls. They are struggling to stabilise and flips between faces as reality has been re-written (and quite by chance, within the first 15 hours of regeneration cycle as noted by the 16 hour clock in the TARDIS). They will flip between some old familiar faces over the course of the story.

The TARDIS^(1), recognising something is wrong with the Doctor's regeneration, warns them and states that they have seen someone is playing with this same energy so the Doctor will need to stop that power getting into the wrong hands.

A quick outfit change later^(2), The Doctor goes to the basement archives of the Time Hotel to investigate, and works out they'll need to talk to The Boss to get any answers. They are about to head back to the TARDIS, when they are invited to the Time Hotel's penthouse to meet The Boss.

The Doctor is welcomed by some senior staff who introduce them to The Boss who is revealed to be ...Mrs Flood/the Rani^(3) from the future. Following everything that happened in the Reality War, she's conducting experiments to work out how to re-create Time Lords biology. A lot of time has passed since we last met her.

She is using time sensitive, telepathic and two-hearted species^(4) to conduct her research. In her lab, we can see Ood, Meepkind, Weeping Angels, and many other species in tanks, cells and hospital beds. There is a special section of her lab where she is trying to 'weave together' these various elements.^(5)

The Doctor has another vision of Susan calling out to him, but stronger, more vivid. The Doctor finds a tank with an unconscious Susan in there. Mrs Flood explains that, due to the shifting of reality, she slipped into another timelines and managed to find and kidnap Susan, a Gallifreyan who hasn't regenerated. When she's ready, Mrs Flood will keep triggering the regeneration process until she has collected all the data she needs (i.e. until Susan's dead). She has used her psychic abilities to try and reach out to the Doctor to help her.

Mrs Flood reveals the reason Susan is so special is that she was an oddity among the children of Gallifrey and a lot about her past was unknown. The Doctor had taken her under his wing and kept her away from the Academy and other authorities, but when Rassilon took an interest in Susan, the Doctor (having snuck away from Gallifrey a few times before) decides he should take Susan with him and run away properly (although he removed most traces of Susan from the Matrix on one of his trips back).

Susan comes round, recognises the Doctor and they have a heartfelt reunion. The Doctor, appalled at the experiments, sees who is in the other tanks and also finds an older 14th Doctor.^(6) 14 reveals he was also taken from his future, long after Donna's family have all moved on. The Doctors and Susan try to save the day, sending the lab subjects back to their own time periods. 14 tries to stop Mrs Flood but she is escapes^(7). Meanwhile, Susan is critically injured.

The three of them get back to the TARDIS. The Doctor (now David Bradley) goes to Susan and encourages her to regenerate but she never learnt how. The Doctor tries to coach her but she says she thinks it's too late. They have a final heart-to-heart where the Doctor confesses that all their companions have been trying to fill the gap Susan left^(8) and may never manage it but Susan has been close to their hearts and they've never been lonely. Susan dies and her body turns to stardust.

With 15 hours almost up, the Doctor (finally Ncuti Gatwa again) needs to stabilise their regeneration. They begin to regenerate but the process still isn't working. The 14th Doctor realises it's his turn to play his part. His body (and shadows of other Doctors) merge into the Doctors glow, getting brighter and more powerful each time.

The clock in the TARDIS ticks over to hour 16^(9) and the TARDIS is overwhelmed by the glowing light as the regeneration completes. From outside, we see the light fade from the TARDIS window. A pause. We hear the TARDIS engine fire up, then the lamp on top start glowing, and the TARDIS takes off. Quiet falls again but the adventure continues.

Footnotes and clarifications:

1. This could be anyone like the Fugitive Doctor or Oodkind, but it would need to be a cameo that made sense.
2. Something a bit more robe-like that can accommodate the different body shapes, heights etc of the various people playing the role
3. Yes, I know Mrs Flood has been retconned before into becoming the Rani, so might as well retcon her to be The Boss, a systematic (Rogue mentions paperwork) two-heart curious (as the Meep states) person who is familiar with the Doctor (says "Hi" via Anita)
4. She kidnapped a lot of them herself but also used people like Rogue and the Meep as bounty hunters. Other Time Lord abilities are available.
5. Might as well tease looms again.
6. Yes, Tennant again but looking visibly older, maybe dressing a bit like Wilf. A small role but not much to explain what happens in the gaps.
7. Escapes, or is trapped, or appears to die. Doesn't matter, she's gone away.
8. A lot of other people have come up with this idea, but I really like it.
9. It started at hour 1 so we can end on 16 for the symbolism.

What the title says.

What tone should a new era go with?

Should DW go with a tone that's that's similar to big Netflix hits like Stranger Things and Wednesday.

Perhaps you would like to see DW go back to a more gothic horror tone, like the early Tom Baker years.

Or do you think DW should stick with the campy 'Yaas Queeeen' tone of the RTD2 era, do you want even more goblin songs and spaceships with bums that fart.

What do you think would work with audiences and make for a successful show?

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: 2012 Christmas Special
• Airdate: 25th December 2012
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: None
• Other Notable Characters: Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), Jenny (Catrin Steart), Strax (Dan Starkey), Clara Oswin Oswald/Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman)*, Dr. Simeon (Richard E Grant)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Saul Metzstein
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

* Credited as Jenna Louise-Coleman

Review

Good evening. I'm a lizard woman from the dawn of time. And this is my wife. – Madame Vastra

For two and a half series, one thing remained constant in the 11th Doctor era: Amy Pond. Amy and her fiancé/husband Rory were central to this period of Doctor Who. They were, as I've said before, the Doctor's family. It became hard to imagine the 11th Doctor's TARDIS without Amy and Rory in it.

But, in the lead up to Series 7, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill informed showrunner Steven Moffat that they would be leaving after 2012. And as Moffat was planning on splitting Series 7 into two parts, one in 2012 and one 2013, in order to help with the extra workload he had taken on due to Sherlock, that meant that midway through Series 7, Moffat would have to find a new companion. His first idea was a Victorian governess called Beryl Montague. However, concerns were raised about having a companion from so far back in the past that most technology would have to be explained to her (a bit like the reason Katarina never became a companion). So, a modern character, named Clara Oswald was developed.

As Clara was being developed, Steven Moffat started developing the idea for the "Impossible Girl" storyline. And so the Victorian story he had been developing to introduce Ms. Montague was repurposed into that storyline. And with that, a new version of Clara, Clara Oswin Oswald was introduced in that story, played by Jenna Coleman. With "Asylum of the Daleks" introducing, and then killing off an Oswin Oswald, the shape of the Impossible Girl storyline was set. So "The Snowmen" has three jobs. First is to establish what life looks like for the 11th Doctor after the Ponds. The second is to give the audience a first taste of Jenna Coleman in the companion slot, before giving us the version we'd follow in the next episode, thus acting as set up for the storyline that would follow. And the third job is to be a Christmas episode, with all that that implies.

Anyway the thing I came away from this episode thinking about the most was how much I like the Paternoster gang.

So back in "A Good Man Goes to War", Steven Moffat introduced three new characters: Jenny Flint, Madame Vastra, and Strax. Vastra was a Silurian who had taken up residence in Victorian London, Flint was her maid/wife and Strax was a Sontaran forced to work as a nurse. "Good Man" gave all three a pretty good introduction, but with so much focus on everything else that that episode had going on, they were never going to get the proper focus that would be required to make them into truly memorable characters. Plus Strax died at the end, so nobody would think to associate him with the other two except as the three characters that were introduced as the Doctor's allies in that episode.

Moffat wrote a couple prequels to the episode, both focusing on the trio in question. The first of these was used to explain just how Strax survived (answer: Jenny and Vastra brought him back), while the second was more used to set up Vastra. But in the episode itself…these three are great. Like in "Good Man", Jenny is still getting the least focus, although in this case it's less of an issue. It's just that a Victorian maid who occasionally shifts over to a catsuit and dual wields swords is still the least memorable of the group. Still, she does admirably in her role as support to Vastra and the Doctor. Each of the Paternoster Gang has different ways of trying to get through to the Doctor during his retirement from saving the universe. For Jenny, while she interacts with the Doctor less than the other two, there's an appeal to emotion there. But really, she mostly interacts with her wife. In a way, she reminds of Rory. The most grounded character of her group, who's very likable and probably the most morally solid, but is still an ancillary character to her spouse.

But before we get to said spouse, we have to talk about Strax. While in "Good Man" there were hints that Strax might function well as a more comedic character, it's here that we get a proper look at the humor that Strax brings to the table. The conceit is simple: Strax is a fish out of water. A Sontaran who is used to the Sontaran way of doing things is now tasked with being a Victorian butler. While you get the impression that Vastra and Jenny enjoy flouting the societal expectations of Victorian England while staying just barely on the right side of respectability to keep up appearances, Strax is genuinely trying, God bless him. It's just that he looks weird, and struggles with concepts like multiple genders and not approaching every problem – and indeed things that aren't problems – with extreme violence. This could be played for drama, and if there ever had been a Paternoster Gang spinoff (no, I have not yet listened to the audio dramas, I intend to get there eventually) I would argue that it should have eventually been. But in his short appearances on the television series, the comedy just kind of works. Strax wants to do his best, wants to be helpful, and at times he actually is. His medical training, while ultimately futile in this episode, could be genuinely useful at times. When the action starts to pick up, and our heroes are about to be in a combat situation, his tactical insight is actually on point. But as a Victorian butler…he struggles a bit. And honestly, given what Vastra and Jenny's approach to the Victorian period seems to be, I suspect that they enjoy that about him.

But the star of this trio is absolutely Vastra. Apparently having been the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes (at least, that's what main villain Dr. Simeon seems to believe), you might expect that she'd take on a persona similar to that of Steven Moffat's actual adaptation of those stories or, failing that, be similar in personality to the version seen in Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories. Instead, while we can assume that her methods are similar to those of Mr. Holmes, the only similarity in personality that we see is that it's very easy to read Sherlock Holmes, even in the original stories, as being gay (or at the very least, very interested in Dr. Watson), and, well Madame Vastra has a wife. What stands out about Vastra though, isn't her deductive abilities, which are left more in the realm of implication than anything, but rather her extraordinary insight.

In "A Good Man Goes to War", we learned that the Doctor first met Vastra when she was in the London Underground taking out her revenge for the deaths of her family on innocent people. She used that experience to point out how the Doctor was perhaps making mistakes. And that's what Vastra does throughout this episode. As I mentioned, each of the Paternoster Gang has their own approach to pushing the Doctor into action. Jenny tries empathy. Strax, direct as you might imagine he'd be, just states what he thinks the Doctor should do. But what Vastra does, constantly, is psychoanalyzing the Doctor to an extraordinary degree. And you might think that this would feel a bit forced. The writer using a character to explain another character's state of mind. Telling, rather than showing. The reason it works is twofold. First is that we have that understanding of Vastra as something of a tragic figure, having lost her own family. She can connect to the Doctor on some level, and has as good an insight into people's emotions as anyone, thanks to her own experiences. Being a lesbian lizard woman in a period famous for its social repression implies that she'll have seen a lot of what it means to be human, both good and bad.

But the second reason is that Neve McIntosh is just perfectly cast for this role. What's funny is that she of course this wasn't even the role she was initially cast in. She was cast to play a pair of Silurian sisters in the "Hungry Earth" two parter, which led directly to her getting the role of Madame Vastra. But she is so good in the part. I've talked a lot about Steven Moffat's tendency to write very poetic dialogue, and McIntosh just has a knack for making those lines feel as profound as they're intended. I even think some of her stuff is pretty meaningless on a strict dialogue level, but McIntosh invests them with the kind of sincerity that the lines require. Plus, she's just got a good voice for the part. There's something about it that really suits Moffat's dialogue. Maybe it's that she, like Moffat, is Scottish. Seriously, I think that, while she's using an English accent for this part, there's enough of a Scottish lilt that comes through that makes Vastra's language feel very melodious, in a way that suits the dialogue she's given.

It all comes together to form a character that legitimately feels like she can interact with the Doctor on even footing. Characters that could behave as the Doctor's peer are exceptionally rare throughout the history of Doctor Who, especially when you limit it to recurring characters. The Brigadier was arguably the first. Romana, naturally, was another, though only once her character underwent some progression. River Song and Jack Harkness functioned in this role as well. In that list of characters, Vastra stands out to me as maybe the most successful at genuinely understanding the Doctor. Her psychological analysis of the Doctor is even more on point than Romana (who tended, in her first incarnation at least, more towards psychobabble than anything). I think it helps that she is a character with some distance from him.

And also, it has to be said, this trio are just fun together. Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart and Dan Starkey have phenomenal chemistry with each other. McIntosh and Stewart are believable as a legitimate married couple, and I do think the fact that Vastra is a lizard woman helps avoid some of the tendency towards titillation that often happens when Moffat writes non-straight women. More than that there's a genuine sense of three people sticking together because they do care about each other, and no one else will have them. Vastra is millennia out of time, Jenny is a gay woman in a period where that was not accepted, and Strax surely cannot return to his people. So they've formed an odd little family. Found family is one of my favorite tropes, and while we don't get to see as much of it as I'd like with these three, you can still feel it in this episode.

But I should actually turn to the plot at some point. While the first half of Series 7 didn't have a plot arc so much as focusing around a character arc, the second half would have something closer to the standard story arcs of the Revival. And for the the first time since Steven Moffat became showrunner, that plot arc would also center around a Classic era villain that had not appeared in the Revival; in this case, that would be the Great Intelligence. A big reason for this was that one of Moffat's favorite Classic-era stories was The Web of Fear, which was the second, and final, appearance of the Great Intelligence in the classic era. With "The Snowmen", Steven Moffat would explore the origins of the disembodied intelligence that the 2nd Doctor had faced on two separate occasions.

That origin sees some alien not-snow land on Earth in 1842, where a lonely boy is making a snowman. And then the snowman starts talking to said lonely boy, and rather than running away screaming (okay he does initially run away), the boy, Walter Simeon, engages with it. The snowman convinces Simeon to help it grow stronger, and as an adult, the now-Doctor Simeon is fully dedicated to that cause. It seems like Simeon is a servant to the entity made of snow that he has inside a giant snowglobe…but it turns out not to be the case. Thanks to some clever deductions, the Doctor realizes that the snow is in fact simply mimicking Simeon. As a little boy, Simeon had a certain antipathy towards his peers, and the snow fed off of that, trapping Simeon with that same emotion. But the snow is just mirroring Simeon, and so the Doctor uses the memory worm (established earlier in the episode in a fun scene with Strax and Clara) to remove all of Simeon's memories to before he met the snow, thus severing the link. It's a clever solution. Except that this is an origin for the Great Intelligence, and so, of course, rather than dying, the intelligence within the snowglobe is able to retain purpose and take control of Simeon's body. And while by the end of the episode that set of circumstances is ended, the Doctor is well aware that the intelligence will have survived, becoming the Great Intelligence – taking its name from the institute that Simeon set up.

As an origin for the Great Intelligence, I mostly like this. I do feel like it feels a bit too human. In its 2nd Doctor stories, the Great Intelligence always felt like some fundamentally alien intelligence. Now we learn that it is at its core the darkness within a little boy made manifest. It's a very Moffatian take on the idea of course, and I don't entirely hate it. It's just that I did prefer the idea of the more alien intelligence. I do think some of that is preserved in a few ways. First of all, I have to credit the performance of Ian McKellan, who voices the Great Intelligence for this episode. He makes the Great Intelligence, especially after it is separated from Simeon, feel like its evolved into something beyond its origin, which prevents the Intelligence from being too human. To that point, the line that the Intelligence delivers upon being separated from Simeon, "now the dream outlives the dreamer" is yet another example of Moffat's more poetic writing that also helps the idea of the more alien Intelligence manifest. Oh, and while I'm praising performances, I have to give credit to Richard E. Grant for a phenomenal job as Dr. Simeon – just pitch-perfect casting.

Though one thing that does hurt this plot is that the story doesn't get a ton of focus. That's because most of the focus is given to Clara and the Doctor. Both establishing who Clara is, and showing how she ends up pulling the Doctor out of his melancholic detachment. Clara is first introduced as a barmaid, but it turns out she has a secret identity as Ms. Montague, a governess to two children. Obviously this is pulled from Moffat's earliest ideas for the episode that I described up above, though Clara being a cockney barmaid who leads a double life seems like it's original to the later versions of the character. What's frustrating is that we have no sense of how this barmaid became a governess. That's a job that requires a lot of education. Who paid for her education? Where did she get it? Why does she keep it a secret? This are questions that do not get an answer, and I think that it's a shame the episode doesn't have the time or interest to ask them.

Still, Clara's fun…to a point. After a while I grew to find the extent of her flirting with the Doctor a bit tiresome. No individual moment is bad necessarily, but the episode just lays it on a bit too thick. What does work is her governess persona. There's an obvious allusion to Mary Poppins in all of this. She's a governess who relates very well to the children in her charge, and has the attitude of someone who might secretly be magical. Plus there's something in the speaking style that she adopts as Ms. Montague that very much reminds me of the Disney movie. But more than that, you get the sense that Clara does genuinely care deeply for the children in her care, all while pushing for their father Captain Latimer – a widower who finds it hard to relate to his children – to become closer to them. It's perhaps unlikely that an employee of a wealthy man to be quite so willing to challenger her employer, especially someone who presumably is getting more money from this profession than she would otherwise have any chance of seeing in several lifetimes. But it works because it establishes that Clara's number one priority is the children.

There are other issues. For one thing, I wasn't entirely convinced by Jenna Coleman's cockney accent. I do think some of this may be because it's pretty subtle compared to most actors I hear doing cockney accents – and I have no doubt that that gets exaggerated for film, television or theater. Still, Coleman never feels entirely comfortable doing that accent, and considering it's supposed to be Clara's natural accent, which comes out when she's under stress, that does feel off.

And I suppose we need to talk about the "one word test". This whole scene feels off to me. Madame Vastra, apparently, believes that "truth is singular", by which we are to understand that she prefers if her questions are answered in a single word. Of course she and her compatriots are Moffat-created characters, which means they all speechify at the drop of a hat (well except Strax), so that already feels like a disconnect. But really, I don't buy that these single word responses carry much insight. It's something I've mentioned before, Moffat's ability to create beautiful poetic language to express ideas that just do not feel true.

Moreover, Clara is asked to communicate the plot going on in a way that might reinvigorate the Doctor…using only a single word. The word she chooses, "pond", makes sense in context. There's a frozen pond with a dead body in it that, due to some specifics of the plot, the villains can use to create a massive army of snowmen to take over the world (okay, this is still, in fact, a Christmas episode). But of course, when used as a surname "Pond" has a special meaning for the Doctor, a reminder of the family that he lost. It's exactly the word needed to pull him out of his apathetic state…and Clara has no way of knowing that. One could argue that Vastra has manipulated Clara into this…except based on Vastra's subsequent call to the Doctor, this is an established thing that Vastra has tried to use on him before. Was she just hoping that a case involving a pond would come up to get the Doctor's attention? No, it's a contrivance, and a pretty blatant one at that, and it annoys me.

The Doctor's apathy on the other hand…I'm of two minds about. For much of this story, the Doctor has retired, refusing to involve himself in the affairs of others. After the loss of Amy and Rory, he's had enough and just wants to be left alone. So yes, the Doctor spends a lot of the episode sulking. Admittedly, it's some pretty spectacular sulking. The Doctor has parked his TARDIS…on a cloud. A cloud accessible via a ladder to an invisible, taller-on-the-inside, staircase. It's a really cool visual, definitely speaking to Steven Moffat's ability to create memorable imagery for the show. But as for the Doctor's retirement…

So, on one hand, the Doctor's decision here feels somewhat out of line with his character. The early 5th Doctor family was a kind of found family in its own right, albeit a very dysfunctional one, yet when Adric died the 5th Doctor didn't give up adventuring and sulk for several decades. And sure, I'm not happy with the reaction Adric's death does get in Time-Flight (a couple moments mourning then moving on as though nothing ever happened), but I didn't necessarily want him to swing to the other extreme. And when the 10th Doctor lost Rose, who he loved, he didn't give up adventuring either. Sure, the Ponds are special to the Doctor their own way, but so was Adric, a young boy who the Doctor couldn't protect, and Rose, the love of the 10th Doctor's life. The Doctor's always managed to bounce back from losing people. So why not in this case?

Well, on the other hand, maybe that's the point. Maybe after so much time spent losing people, the Doctor's finally suffered one loss too many. Maybe the fact that the Doctor made the hard decision to let the Ponds live their own lives in "The God Complex"…but then just couldn't quit them, as much as they couldn't quit him, is making him feel extra guilty. He got them out of danger…and then dragged them right back into it. And maybe, after centuries of having to say goodbye to friend after friend, some goodbyes happy, some sad, some tragic, the Doctor just can't take another loss. It's an interpretation that, frankly, I'm not sure I entirely buy. It just feels like it's rooted in an amount of the show's history that we just don't see during this period. But it's an interpretation that I still like when I am willing to buy it.

It does mean that it takes a long time for the Doctor to get involved in the action. And once he does, he's still insisting that this is a one-off and that he's going to go back to sulking on his cloud thank you very much. But he does get more and more invested in the plot. When he first goes to confront Simeon, he does so pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. He initially gets literally every deduction wrong…but of course it's a feint. Once he actually starts making deductions about what's going on, he very quickly works out the basics of what the snow is, showing that the 11th Doctor's deductive powers are still very much operating. Admittedly, I'm not too fond of Matt Smith's performance in this scene. I actually tend to like Smith's later-series performances a good deal, but this is just a case of him laying on the goofiness a bit too thick. That being said, if you can look past that, the scene is good, and Smith is still able to put some menace into his performance on a few occasions.

Really, once the Doctor gets back into the game, Smith does seem to be trying to sustain his performance on pure whimsy. A lot of the scenes at the Latimer house take on this overly energetic quality that kind of hurts the episode. For all that he can go into the hyperactive, Smith's Doctor is best when that hyperactivity is regularly being contrasted with a calmer, more poised demeanor. The contrast is part of what makes the 11th Doctor fun, and here we find him going too frequently, and too far into the hyperactive. There are some exceptions, most notably his quiet realization that he'd put on his bowtie without even realizing it, genuinely a great way of showing the Doctor is healing.

The Doctor and Clara eventually retreat to the TARDIS cloud – the Doctor doing so partially to lure the ice lady (that body I mentioned earlier) that's coming after them away from the snowmen and Dr. Simeon who need it to complete their plan. And the Doctor offers Clara a TARDIS key and a place on the TARDIS. She accepts. It's all going a bit too well…and so naturally the ice lady grabs Clara and falls to Earth from the cloud. Clara's dead on the ground, but Strax, presumably using the same technology that revived him and his medical training, is hopeful he can save her. What follows is that really great confrontation between the Doctor and Simeon and then the Great Intelligence taking over Simeon body, which I've already covered. What saves the day…is a bit of a cheat. Clara cannot be saved, and the children are crying, and because of the telepathic nature of the "snow" which has a "critical mass" near the house, it turns the snow into tears, raining down. It's undeniably an affecting visual…but it just feels like a bit of a cheat as a way to end the threat, though Clara's death does give the moment some real weight.

Though her death is soon revealed to be not so permanent as it initially seemed. The Doctor sees her full name, Clara Oswin Oswald, and realizes that "Oswin Oswald" was the name of the Starship Alaska crewmember-turned Dalek from "Asylum of the Daleks"…and also that they shared a voice…and also that Clara had mentioned something about soufflés…and also that Clara and Oswin shared the same last words ("run you clever boy, and remember). And so, giddy again, the Doctor goes off to find Clara. It's an ending that mostly serves to build intrigue for the rest of Series 7, and for that, it works. It does somewhat undermine the somber tone that the episode had built, but this is a Christmas episode, and honestly, Clara, or this version of her anyway, still died, so it only undermines it a little.

One the whole, I do like "The Snowmen", but it's got some pretty big flaws. Some of the storytelling beats feel a bit off. Matt Smith's performance goes a bit over the top at times. And the episode is pretty packed with a lot of different ideas, all competing for space, and none of them feel fully developed. Well, except for the Paternoster gang, who are the big success story from this episode. A genuinely entertaining trio with a surprising amount of depth, they, more than Clara or the Doctor, are the engine that keeps me invested in what otherwise is a fairly mediocre adventure.

Score: 6/10

Stray Observations

• After both "A Christmas Carol" and "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe" were based on already existing stories, shworunner/writer Steven Moffat wanted to avoid always doing that for the Christmas specials. So the Snowmen was just set in Victorian London, with no prior work directly inspiring it.
• Early ideas were to give Jenny, Vastra and Strax their own spinoff, but with Steven Moffat already busy between Doctor Who and Sherlock he didn't have time for an additional series, so instead he incorporated them more on Doctor Who. I would have loved a Paternoster Gang spinoff, but this probably would have been a bit early. If the spinoff were to happen, it would have been best to establish them a bit more on Doctor Who.
• The idea of the Doctor retiring and going into seclusion was based on a pitch that then-Script Editor Douglas Adams made in 1979, which was ultimately rejected by then-Producer Graham Williams. Adams would instead end up writing Shada, which would instead have another retired Time Lord character.
• This episode was filmed after several later ones due to Steven Moffat's slow progress on the script.
• To avoid spoiling the return of the Great Intelligence, the Radio Times had Ian McKellan credited as the "Voice of the Snowmen".
• There was some difficulty finding the right look for the Snowmen. Early iterations were too "cute" according to director Saul Metasetin, hence the use of CGI faces.
• Francesca and Digby Latimer were played by actual siblings Ellie and Joseph Darcey Alden
• I quite like the "GI" logo for the Great Intelligence Institute. It looks quite elegant and imposing.
• Both Steven Moffat and Matt Smith compared the Doctor's Victorian outfit to the Artful Dodger's outfit from Oliver Twist. Similarly, Clara's barmaid outfit was based on Nancy from the same novel.
• New title sequence time! It's the first starfield title sequence of the 21st Century, though it eventually transitions into a time vortex. The logo remains largely unchanged, but by now the "DW" TARDIS is no longer in the title sequence at all. Probably most memorable is the return of the Doctor's face to the title sequence and the TARDIS doors opening up at the end onto the first post-title sequence scene.
• This episode also retains a practice from Series 7A, where the logo has been textured to suit the episode, in this case looking like it's made of snow.
• As for my thoughts on the title sequence? I recall at the time this title sequence got a fair amount of hate, mostly for the backgrounds being very flat and the TARDIS model looking a bit off. On the first point…fair enough, but the TARDIS model looks fine to me. However, I am on record not really liking the starfield title sequences. They just feel a bit too literal for my tastes, especially on a show where we don't actually get a lot of zooming around amongst the stars. What's odd is that in this case it's kind of hard to tell what you're supposed to be looking at at first. It's the most overdesigned version of "space" I think I've ever seen.
• The Doctor's face bit is quite good. It's a much more subtle take on putting the Doctor's face in the title sequence, and especially feels like a clever update on the "Doctor constellations" of the 80s.
• The time vortex is…fine. Yeah, that's all I got.
• Meanwhile the gimmick of the TARDIS doors opening up…I hate it. It feels cheesy, but not in a fun way. Also, every time I find myself thinking that the TARDIS doors open on the TARDIS interior, but mostly we see them open onto exterior shots. It's the wrong way round.
• Also, new iteration of the theme. I got nothing on this either, it's a slightly worse version of the original 11th Doctor theme. Less mysterious, more bombastic. At least there aren't lightning sound effects crashing in so I can actually hear the theme.
• So "winter is coming" is said a handful of times throughout this episode. Boy that dates this thing a bit. I too remember when Game of Thrones was a cultural phenomenon and not a disappointing television adaptation of a book series that will almost certainly never be completed. But even at the time, the reference felt gratuitous.
• New TARDIS interior. Much more mechanical feeling to this one, with the lack of the glass floor and a console that looks a bit more like something you might actually pilot a spaceship with. There's also additional banks of controls surrounding the central control panel that will get used approximately once then just sort of forgotten about. We're still playing around with levels, thanks to the elevated walkway ringing around the console room. I like it, but it's not the best version of this particular console room.
• The Doctor calls the London Underground a "key strategic weakness in metropolitan living", somewhat facetiously. Of course, the Great Intelligence (in its future from this episode, but the Doctor's past) did in fact try to take over London via the Underground in The Web of Fear. It's made somewhat clear later on that the Doctor didn't actually remember the Great Intelligence at this point (fair enough, it's been a while), so this was entirely accidental on his part.
• There was some debate over whether or not to include the short scene of modern day Clara at the end of the episode. Personally, I think it was the right call, but I wouldn't have had her walk right next to the gravestone of her Victorian equivalent. Just show her near it.
• For some strange reason the original 11th Doctor era version of the theme plays at the end of the episode, rather than the updated version.

Next Time: In search of the next version of Clara, the Doctor finds himself in modern day London. Honestly, given his track record, he probably should have started there.

Keeping in mind, that the BBC are struggling with independent finance, having to find outside funding, explaining the tender process, not being able to make it in house, alongside whether or not the BBC are curious to see the same things we might; maybe they want to revel in the past and chase trends.

This can obviously impact a lot, from episode count, to sets, CGI and how ambitious they could be. It could be the show at its most tight, at least since 2005.

So yeah, in general, what would you like to see, that you think would massively benefit the show, and what are you expecting to see, that may be a natural consequence of the economic and creative position of the show and those running it?

Whoever they may be...

Basically where it's obviously supposed to be regeneration, but the name and a few details are changed?

I can't think of any, but I feel like something like that must exist out there. And I'm curious as to how it's handled in other shows, both from a storytelling perspective, and how they avoid getting sued over it

I was at the last Long Island Doctor Who convention over the weekend and Philip Segal said that the TVM movie rights are back with the BBC after 30 years. That was brought to the attention to Daphne Ashbrook and Jason Haigh Ellery who were both there as well.

Does this mean we might finally be getting Grace and Chang Lee over at BF Towers?

Would be cool to see some sort of natural carry on of stories right after the TVM with those characters. As long as they weren't some of the more continuity breaking idea that were presented in the Leekey Bible. Easily a few box sets out of this! Fingers crossed!

What are your favourite or funniest Doctor Who examples of characters meeting each other before their established on screen meeting?

I’m thinking of things like River Song having already met Doctors we never saw her meet on TV, the Doctor meeting the “wrong” incarnation of the Master, or stories that reveal two characters have crossed paths somewhere in the Doctor Who timeline that we simply weren’t aware of.

I’ve already posted this over on r/BigFinishProductions, but I thought it would be interesting to ask here too.

The more ridiculous the continuity gymnastics, the better.

What are your favourites?

What the title says 🙂

What is your favourite Decade of DW to watch?

Is it the 70s, the 00s, or something else.

.......................................

Edit - Some observations:

No one has put the 2020s as their favourite decade.

70s DW is the most popular decade

The 80s has been said more than I was expecting (which is nice 🙂)

00s has been said less than I expected, with more people saying the 10s over it.

Exploring 70s Who and fell down the rabbit hole of the Gothic stories while Holmes was script editor with Philip Hinchcliffe producing some amazing stories in the Baker era ao this is always the part of 70s Who I love.I do wished NuWho had Gothic stories if they had any because there’s so much Who could do nonetheless Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe made some great Gothic stories for 70s Who

So what’s the best or favorite(s) 70s Gothic story?

For example: Alternate universe. We got introduced it in 10ths series but never again?. Imagine the doctor being trapped in another parallel universe saving people, new monsters, new history etc.

I really hope if the show comes back we get more glances at that, It spices the show up and also makes the doctor lost as they wont have knowledge on that universe.

The new Doctor is a woman, but her regeneration does not feel like a rejection of the Doctor she was before. She wakes up already knowing who she is. What changes is what parts of herself have come back to the surface.

This Doctor has the energy of a late-1980s or early-1980s New York lawyer: composed, sharp, intimidating without trying to be, and seemingly impossible to approach. She dresses almost exclusively in black and muted colors. She has seen the underbelly of the universe and somehow still knows how to file the paperwork. There is something corporate and dark-academic about her—not because she is cold, but because she has learned to keep herself controlled.

Yet beneath that reserve, she is still unmistakably the Doctor. She is curious. She is compassionate. She still wants to help people. Her particular journey is about rediscovering her humanity: the flawed, messy, emotional parts of herself that earlier incarnations were allowed to possess more openly. The classic Doctor could be arrogant, ridiculous, petty, sentimental, rude, frightened, or wrong. Those flaws did not make the Doctor less heroic. They were part of what made the Doctor the Doctor.

That is what this era wants to recover.

After the upheaval of the previous incarnation and the years of increasingly disconnected mythology surrounding the Doctor, she deliberately spends much of her time in 1980s New York. She is not running from being the Doctor, and she is not having an identity crisis. She simply wants to reconnect with older parts of herself without constantly confronting her own history. The series remains a Doctor Who story in every sense—she travels through time and space and eventually across the United Kingdom and the wider universe—but New York becomes the emotional center of her early life.

Her first major companion is a young Black boy from the neighborhood, a street-level kid who has fallen into dealing drugs because he does not know what else to do with himself. When the Doctor's TARDIS crash-lands in New York and becomes temporarily unavailable while repairing itself, she has no TARDIS and eventually no sonic screwdriver. She meets him while investigating something strange and asks him to show her the city. He initially assumes she is a cop; everyone around them seems to think she is a cop. Eventually he tells her, in disbelief, that she is the strangest white woman he has ever met.

He changes her life as much as she changes his.

The series uses a rotating companion structure that combines the best of classic and modern Doctor Who. There is no single permanent chosen companion who becomes the center of the universe. Instead, different people enter the Doctor's life for different lengths of time. Among them are a gay couple, a street dog, a working-class chef who owes money to the mob, and a single mother fighting for custody of her child after overcoming addiction. These people are not important because destiny selected them. They are important because they are people.

At the beginning, the Doctor calls them her wards. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, that language changes. By the end of the era, she calls them her friends.

Her new sonic screwdriver appears near the beginning of the series. It is inspired by a fountain pen: elegant, narrow, dark, understated, more like an instrument of precision than a gadget. It suits a Doctor who approaches the universe like an investigator, lawyer, and scholar. A pen is also an appropriate symbol for an era increasingly concerned with contracts, institutions, history, and who gets to decide what something is worth.

The monster-of-the-week structure is deliberately rooted in classic Doctor Who. Rather than constantly recycling the most famous enemies, the series digs into the enormous catalogue of classic creatures that have been forgotten or barely revisited. The Doctor begins encountering enemies she recognizes from her past, except they are not exactly the same anymore. They have adapted. They have evolved. They have learned from their encounters with the Doctor.

The mystery becomes: why?

Classic monsters receive modern interpretations rather than simple redesigns. The point is not nostalgia. The universe has changed, and so have the Doctor's enemies.

Eventually, these seemingly disconnected stories begin revealing a larger pattern.

Behind them is a faceless intergalactic corporation, provisionally called Galactic Corp. The corporation is never represented by one obvious supervillain. There is no evil executive waiting in a throne room. It is an enormous bureaucratic institution that treats civilizations, planets, resources, and even conflicts as assets.

The Doctor eventually discovers something almost incomprehensible:

Earth has been sold.

Humanity does not know.

There was no invasion. No declaration of war. No alien fleet hovering over the planet. Somewhere, somehow, a transaction occurred on a galactic scale, and Galactic Corp. possesses the paperwork proving that Earth now belongs to an alien empire.

The Doctor is forced into the middle of a dispute that humanity does not even know exists. She has to figure out who sold Earth, who authorized the transaction, what the contract actually means, and whether an entire civilization can legally be treated as property.

The Doctor is also haunted by mysteries from her own history.

The Timeless Child storyline is revealed to have been based on a lie. The Master genuinely believed what he had learned, but the information he received had been deliberately manipulated. The Time Lords knew he was coming and fed him a false narrative designed to make him believe he had discovered the ultimate secret of the Doctor and destroyed Gallifrey in response. In reality, the Time Lords had hidden themselves away, potentially within a strange temporal snow globe.

The Doctor eventually finds and frees them, restoring Gallifrey.

The Fugitive Doctor is part of this larger mystery, but she is not a pre-Hartnell Doctor and the Doctor never secretly served the Division. Instead, she is a forgotten incarnation somewhere after the First Doctor whose existence was deliberately concealed. Like the War Doctor, she represents a period when the Doctor had to adopt a different stance because something was so serious that the normal Doctor could not deal with it.

Her forgotten role may have been investigating the Division itself.

The secret is not that the Doctor was secretly something other than the Doctor. It is that one of her forgotten lives may have been one of the most Doctor-like of them all: a person who saw a powerful institution doing something wrong and decided to investigate it.

The season also makes room for the wider Doctor Who legacy -Clyde and Rani from The Sarah Jane Adventures, for example, can finally return in a genuine adventure with the Doctor.

Nine was quite strict when it came to the rules and didn't get attached enough to Adam to give him a second chance but what Adam did was very serious. Which doctors would have acted the same as Nine in the same situation and which ones would have been more lenient? Would any have been harsher than Nine?

This book was a pleasure, but it seems Moffat hasn't done much commercial prose fiction.

Does anyone know any other writers out there with a similar flavor of narration, who could scratch the same itch?

I love doctor who but it is impossible to deny that it has been going through a tuff spot for a few years, some bad creative decisions were made and because of those choices the show has been backed into a corner. Beginning from Tennent taking on the role and ending with Witicas second season we were lucky enough to have a great team running doctor who but sadly that changed and created what can charitably called a mess.

How to save the show has become such a problem now that there are people calling for an out right reboot of everything right to the beginning but I don’t believe that’s the answer. That said though there is a problem of what to do with the show in regards to the story and because of previous mistakes that is sadly very difficult to the point some are saying it can’t be done however I don’t believe that’s the case. I believe there are things that could be done and that is what I’m looking to demonstrate here plus I’ve always believed if you are going to criticize a choice you should be able to propose an alternative.

 

The problem

There are several issues that were introduced to doctor who that need to be corrected and in order to do that they need to be identified first. The retconning of established cannon being the most obvious examples being the reveal of so called unknown doctors or the changes to the history of Galafray I do believe there are others though. Killing off the time lords again I believe undid character and story development that had brought something good to the show that created problems when it was removed. Also I feel in a general sense the idea of what doctor who is supposed to be was lost a little by certain individuals, doctor who is meant to represent certain ideals and that kind of stopped happening.

There have been other bad storylines as well but I’d argue those came out of these previous mistakes and are examples of people attempting to fix the show while retaining certain changes which is a nearly impossible task. To truly fix the show I’d argue a lot of this stuff needs to be undone, sadly you can’t really keep these elements and have the show still be what it’s meant to be especially not if we all want it to be great. However doing that convincingly has become hard due to the fact the changes to the cannon of the show have altered the rules of the time travel element creating another problem that needs to be overcome to save the show.

 

The beginning of the fix

In a show like doctor who the obvious answer to fix things would be to use the time travel element however because of several elements that has become hard which is why I believe the start needs to be the multiverse. To save the show unworkable elements need to be removed so it occurred to me that they need to be treated as what they essentially are, elements of a different kind of show. A storyline where different dimensions have begun to merge with the past present and future having elements of different worlds appearing and creating problems would allow the show to try and find a way to correct these problems. The result of this would be at the end of the season the show could truly been said to have been reset and the next season could in a sense rediscover the kind of show doctor who is meant to be.

In terms of the story I imagine it could be explained that in a different dimension someone changed something they weren’t supposed to change using time travel and as a result several new dimensions were created due to the knock on effects of that said change. Then the problems would be revealed that because those dimensions weren’t supposed to exist they were filling in the space other dimensions were meant to fill and because of this dimensions were beginning to merge. Due to this lack of space two or even more dimensions would slowly be becoming one which would be creating problems because stuff would be appearing that isn’t meant to be where it finds it’s self. Also it would be made clear time has no relevance on this problem so the doctor would be left to worry how much in their past might be a result of these dimensions bleeding into each other.

 

The doctors

A benefit of this idea would be that it could create away to explain undiscovered doctors with them being revealed to be doctors from different dimensions. In fact for this season I could imagine leaning into this concept with not just established other doctors being brought back but doctors from other dimensions being seen on the show. This way we could have for part of the show a team of five, six or even seven doctors working together to figure out what is going on with the multiverse and how working together they could fix it.

I should also say for these doctors casting restrictions should be removed for these ones, spider man into the spider verse is a good movie and there is some inspiration that could be had there. I imagine that there could be a gun slinging American doctor who, there could be a Teckpunk south Korean doctor who, there could be a black Africana doctor who, there could even be a teen girl Teck wiz doctor who.

 

The villain

The primary problem to solve this season would be the forces that are beginning to tear the multiverse apart so beyond the villain of the week there wouldn’t be an especially big bad but there is still room for a villain I think. One a villain that has already been established because of these changes to the show could be folded into these ideas as an individual who doesn’t want the doctors to save the multiverse or in deed a new villain could be created. The cause of these changes could be said to be giving someone power somehow and as a result they don’t want things to be changed back which would in turn build them up as someone the doctors have to work around.

 

The companions

When it comes to the companion of the season I think it would be most effective if the show has someone new so at the beginning of the season this way the doctor could connect with someone new because of the changes happening in the main universe. Due to what’s happening they would start working together to try and solve the problem and as the season progressed they would meet other doctors and as a result other companions. Here I’d also add an enemies to lovers element with this companion getting off to a bad start with the American doctors companion but gradually they would start to work together and the two could even lead the other companions.

With the other doctors I’d largely just let that be a matter of who could be cast but I also think this would be an opportunity to revisits certain highlights such as an alternate version of K9 appearing with one doctor. Also some shock value surprises could be considered such as the south Korean doctor having a blue tiger or maybe one of them somehow being friends with a reformed dalek or maybe something in that vain. Whatever choices were made though I’d want to make sure the companions were built up as a team because going with old femes of the show I’d want them to be the ones who saved things in the end.

 

The showdown

As I’ve said previously I don’t think the villain would be the most important part here but I’s still want there to be a showdown where the villain confronts all the doctors at once. In the episode the doctors would have figured out which dimension it was where things started but not what was changed however just as they were making their plans to go and find out what happened the villain would attack.

While the villain was laughing at the doctors though in front of various Tardis I’d want to see the doctors start laughing and point out one Tardis is missing and that there are none of their friends in the room. Only then would the villain realise that the doctors have been distracting them while the companions all prepare to go to the world where the change happened and try and undo the change. All the doctors would have to battle the villain with this idea but I think an episode where the companions have to work together and save the day without any doctor could make for a really good episode.

 

The change

Now in terms of the dimension where the change happened to make things tragic I wouldn’t want the change to have been bad. I’d want it to be revealed that an assassination or something like that was prevented and as a result the group needs to let it happen in order to save the multiverse. Now I don’t know what in history this change would end up being because the one I’d use would be too political however the message would still be the same because the point would be you don’t erase the mistakes of the past, you learn from them so you do better today than you did yesterday.

 

Final scenes

After the change had been prevented I’d have a typical tragic time correction where time and the multiverse begin to reset, the team of companions included with them beginning to disappear. Eventually it would be left with the main two enemies to romance characters getting a moment to share a kiss before disappearing with a fade into black where things would pick up with the main companion back at the beginning of the season. I’d wanted to be built up like it’s the moment she met the main doctor but without the change that created the chain of events that led them to meeting possibly with them passing the Tardis in the background. I’d want this to continue just long enough that the viewer thinks this is how it’s going to end however there would be a chance meeting where the two companions end up meeting again now that things are how they are meant to be.

As to the doctor I think there would be two options for a final scene of the show with there either being a mysterious shadowy scene or there being a comedy pretend scene. There could be a scene where a shadowy figure is seen picking up a lost sonic and leaving in the Tardis which would mean the next season the show could pick up somewhere new with the correct cannon reestablished. There could also be a scene where we see all the doctors together wondering what they should do now while they wait for them to disappear and then one could say they could have a sing off where they literally sing off the season on stage singing something like time warp. Both endings would leave the show in the same place next season but there is a choice of ending note that is hard to settle on I find.

Conclusion

The point of all of this is to allow a way to have the show drop stuff that doesn’t work and get back to what made the show great with a soft reboot of sorts which I believe you get here with these ideas. Ultimately these are just a few ideas though and a possible way to fix the problem and I can’t be sure if it would work without a second opinion so I put it out to people here, do you think this would work?

And would it salvage Missy's arc?

What if the show proceeded with The Master, as two sides of the same person, constantly fighting to be on top, to rule the regeneration?

The Friend v The Rage

They could turn it into some tragic fluctuation where these two sides of The Master are constantly fighting against each other, scrambling to be the one on top: The earnest, devoted, and heartfelt friend v The one in pain, bathed in rage and cloaked in hatred. Each regeneration one wins out over the other. And then that war of selves could turn into a struggle and commitment to being The Friend, permanently. But no matter how much The Friend succeeds, every now and then Rage takes over. It would make The Master an eternal wild card, with each new regeneration. The question always being: Which side has won out, in the person now standing before me?

The tragedy being that The Friend won't always win out, The Rage drives the wedge deeper between The Master and The Doctor, with The Friend always trying to fix it/ redeem themselves/ make up for it.

This fight could go on, even within the same regeneration. Changing the focus of The Master from being a recurring villain who's CrAzY, to the struggle between their best and worst sides. A struggle they're doomed to live out, forever.

I felt that part of the tragedy of Missy's death, was that a new person took over her body, and undid everything she worked toward.

Idk does anyone think this would work, if they did it? And could is salvage Missy's arc? Hell, could it simultaneously salvage all of The Master's regenerations at once?

It'll likely never happen. But if it did, I feel like it could work. But what about y'all?

Thoughts?