In which the Doctor finds himself on an alien spaceship which is about to attack and destroy the Earth. He sabotages the vessel but gets cut off from the TARDIS. He is forced to don a protective impact suit and leap from the exploding ship into space. he plunges to the Earth below, where is is found by a woman named Madge Arwell, who agrees to give him a lift to where the TARDIS has materialised. This is England, in 1938. Madge drops him at a Police Call Box, never seeing what he looks like due to the suit's helmet being on backwards. After she has gone, the Doctor discovers that it is a real Police Box and not his ship. Madge returns home to her family, where husband Reg is worried about rumours of war in the newspapers.
Three years later, Madge has just received news that Reg is missing in action. He was a Lancaster bomber pilot. She decides not to tell her children - Lily and Cyril - as she wants them to have one last happy Christmas before learning the tragic news. They have arranged to stay away from London at Uncle Digby's sprawling country house. Digby is away at the moment, and they are greeted by the Doctor, who is posing as the caretaker. He has made some adaptations to the property, including lemonade on tap and filling the rooms with toys and games. In the main living room is an elaborate Christmas tree, under which is a large blue box, which must not be opened until Christmas Day.
Madge admits to the Doctor that her husband is dead, but she has not told the children yet.
That night, the curious Cyril decides that he cannot wait to find out what the blue box contains. He sneaks downstairs and opens the package - and discovers that it contains a tunnel. He crawls through and finds himself in a snowbound forest, under bright moonlight. Lily realises that her brother has gone and goes to the living room, where she meets the Doctor. He realises that Cyril has gone into the box, so he and Lily must follow and find him. The box acts as a portal to another planet, in the 54th Century. There is a temporal difference to the tunnel, so Cyril will have been on the planet longer than the few minutes since he went into the box. Silver spheres grow on the trees, and the Doctor catches a glimpse of a wooden figure in one. One of these spheres has hatched out, and they see massive footprints in the snow, along with Cyril's. Madge has discovered that her children have disappeared from their room, and searching she also comes across the box. She crawls through and arrives in the forest. Exploring, she comes across a large machine which towers over the forest on giant legs. She is confronted by its three person crew - Droxil, Ven-Garr and Billis.
They explain that they come from the planet Androzani Major and their job is to harvest these trees. Satellites above this planet are about to cover the surface with acid to melt the forest down. Madge takes control over the harvester vehicle, determined to find her children. The harvesters teleport up to their mothership, leaving Madge to attempt to drive the vehicle. The Doctor and Lily, meanwhile, have followed the footprints to a tall tower. They see what appears to be a huge carved wooden figure of a king seated within. They go up the stairs to a dome at the summit, where they find Cyril with another carved figure - this one resembling a queen. She holds a circlet which she places on Cyril's head as he sits on a central throne. The wooden king comes up the stairs to join them. It appears that they figures cannot get what they want from Cyril. The acid begins to rain down on the forest and the Doctor and Lily see millions of tiny lights emerge from the trees. The harvester then arrives, driven erratically by Madge. It crashes to the ground, and she hurries into the tower.
The Doctor realises that the trees contain lifeforms which have animated the king and queen, to find them a means of escaping the destruction of the forest. They require a pilot to fly the dome from the top of the tower. Madge discovers that she is the ideal candidate for this, as she is a mother. The tree lifeforms enter the dome as it takes off. Madge longs to return to Earth and so this is where the ship travels. En route, she thinks of her husband, and in his aircraft - lost over the Channel and about to run out of fuel - Reg sees the sphere ahead of him, giving him something to aim for. The strange ship arrives outside Uncle Digby's house on Christmas morning, and Madge is delighted to see that a Lancaster bomber has landed nearby. She is reunited with Reg. The tree lifeforms have departed to a new home. That night, Madge goes to the attic to see the Doctor, and finds he has the TARDIS there. She realises that he was the spaceman whom she had helped back in 1938. She encourages him not to be alone at Christmas, and to go and find his friends.
The TARDIS arrives outside Amy and Rory's house, where his one-time travelling companions reveal that they have always kept a place for him every Christmas since they last saw him, two years ago, in the hope that he will visit...
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on 25th December, 2011. It is Moffat's second Christmas Special, and once again its inspiration is a literary one - this time C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, first published in 1950.
The clue is in the title, obviously, but Lewis' story also deals with children evacuated from London to avoid German bombing, going to stay at the home of their uncle Digory. A magical wardrobe contains a portal to the land of Narnia, where time moves at a different rate to that back at the house. This story has a blue box act as the passageway to a magical planet - clearly a metaphor for the TARDIS.
C.S. Lewis's death was overshadowed by the assassination of JFK, one the eve of Doctor Who's first broadcast, and many have seen his story as a major inspiration for the programme, where the TARDIS acts like his wardrobe.
As with his previous Christmas Special, the Doctor is given a one-off companion by Moffat - something which RTD usually did as companions departed at the end of the previous season. Amy and Rory have not left the series yet, but they have stopped travelling with him on a regular basis and now live in the house he set up for them at the end of The God Complex. As such, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill only appear in the coda, set in the present day.
The companion role is primarily filled by Madge Arwell, played by Claire Skinner. She is best known for her long-running role in the BBC sitcom Outnumbered. She is separated from the Doctor for much of the story, so the Doctor also has to interact with Lily Arwell as a surrogate companion. She's played by Holly Earl, who was fresh from a recurring role in Casualty. Maurice Cole plays her brother Cyril.
Portraying Reg is the other main guest artist Alexander Armstrong. He had been voicing Sarah Jane Smith's computer Mr Smith for the previous 5 years, in The Sarah Jane Adventures as well as The Stolen Earth / Journey's End.
Other guest artists, who are wasted in what are little more than cameo appearances, are Bill Bailey, Paul Bazely and Arabella Weir, as the trio of Androzani harvesters. Bailey is a well known stand-up comedian, as well as being an actor, who first came to prominence in the C4 sitcom Black Books. Bazely is best known for a recurring role in ITV comedy series Benidorm, whilst Weir once payed an alternative female Doctor on audio. They are there to provide some comic relief, but unfortunately just aren't remotely funny.
The Wooden King is played by Spencer Wilding, who had played the Minotaur in the previous series (and who was the new Darth Vader in Rogue One), whilst the Wooden Queen is Paul Kasey.
The Special did have a prequel, which is in many ways more entertaining than the episode itself. This featured the Doctor on the alien spaceship (the species never seen or named, though they must be humanoid judging by the impact suit which the Doctor later uses). He calls Amy and Rory in the TARDIS for help, before remembering that they are no longer with him.
Overall, the weakest Christmas Special we've been offered. There's just no real threat. It's one thing to use something as an inspiration, but another to lazily make it more of a wholesale steal. We've said before how stories which focus more on children just aren't very popular. The DWM 50th Anniversary poll had this in 229th place (out of 241). It is the lowest ranked Christmas Special, and the second lowest rated Matt Smith story overall.
Things you might like to know:
- This is the only episode which features Karen Gillan (discounting The Time of the Doctor where she cameos only) not to have her name in the opening titles. That credit goes to Skinner.
- The 2012 Christmas Special will have a character named Digby - one of Clara's young charges. There is a fan theory that he grows up to be the Uncle Digby referred to here.
- Originally Lily Arwell was going to be called Lucy, after one of the Pevensie children in the Narnia stories. Moffat changed his mind as he thought it would show the inspiration too much, despite the story overall being clearly inspired by Lewis.
- Claire Skinner is married to director Charles Palmer, who has directed a number of Doctor Who stories from Smith and Jones to The Eaters of Light. Her father-in-law, therefore, is Geoffrey Palmer, who made three appearances in Doctor Who.
- As well as playing a female version of the Doctor, Weir was once David Tennant's landlady, when he first moved to London for work. He is godfather to one of her children.
- Bill Bailey, a long-time fan of the show, once composed a jazz version of the Doctor Who theme, which he called 'Doctor Qui'.
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