The Snowmen : Ranking - 203

   The Snowmen

(Christmas Special, Dr 11 with Clara (sort of), 25/12/2012, showrunner: Steven Moffat, writer: Steven Moffat, director: Saul Metzstein)  

'Seeing as it's a Christmas episode here's a Dr Who Christmas cracker joke for you. Why did the post-Yeti Great Intelligence turn down an invitation to a Christmas party? He had no body to go with!'  

Ranking: 203

 

 I feel bad giving this one the cold shoulder, for at the time it was first broadcast and it’s still pretty good, it’s just that it’s more of a series of clues than a bona fide story and now that we have all the stories ‘The Snowmen’ is something of a melted puddle of mush, not made for re-watching. As so often happens with Christmas stories this one was doubly tricky to write. It has to balance being a jolly one off indulgent romp that a family who don’t necessarily watch DW can enjoy all year long and for longterm fans be an episode that follows the high drama of a series arc - the loss of Amy and Rory – without seeming saccharine or silly. Purely on those terms it might be the best of the festive specials as we start with a Doctor whose depressed like never before after the loss of his friends (he wasn’t this upset ditching his own grand-daughter!) and living in isolation in a cloud in Victorian London. As you do. The arrival of a second version of Clara before her ‘official’ debut the following series, as a Victorian nanny, is a surprise that livens him up no end and leaves him heartbroken again at the end when she snuffs it and the joy is watching Matt Smith turn from Scrooge to Father Christmas back to Scrooge again, all buttons re-set in time for the series the following year. How can this possibly be the same girl he’s just seen inside a Dalek in the future living under a different name? The answer when we get, after another whole series-long arc of clues and hints, is a great one and there’s no reason to spoil it here but what’s clever is how open-ended the script is. For all we know this Clara could be an ancestor of the other one (or at least, that’s what I had money on). Jenna Coleman is already great, finding a whole new way to play someone whose obviously the same character but in a different period starting, less flirty and more starchy as befits well any of us who’d lived our lives in the Victorian era I suspect. Alas the plot itself is less interesting. About the only Christmas thing we hadn’t had come to life and turn into a monster by 2012  is a Snowman, surprisingly, and it’s becoming a bit old hat by now. What’s more confusing is when Richard E Grant comes along as The Great Intelligence for the first time since 1968, the joke amongst DW fans being that last time he was controlling ‘Abominable Snowmen’ i.e. Yeti and this time it’s ‘Snowmen who are Abominable’. I’m amazed we didn’t have him/it (what are the pronouns for a disembodied voice? They’re not really someone I want to get on the wrong side of) earlier, given how easy it would be to re-cast and how simple yet creepy the premise is, a ghostly whisper controlling an unseen object from afar. Alas none of this aspect really comes off: if you know the original then it’s just a pale copy and if you don’t then it just looks like one of our famed British actors has turned into a snowman whisperer for no good reason. The script also lacks a good pay-off, no doubt because Steven Moffat turns that into a second series arc that won’t be solved for another year, yet another reason why this story really isn’t made for repeat viewing now all the goodies have been let out of the box. Even so, I still liked this story, particularly on first transmission. Matt Smith was rarely better, Jenna Coleman is already lighting up the screen, the Paternoster Gang are a great invention and we have a script that’s good fun and full of the Christmas spirit, even if it’s goodwill does rather evaporate after it’s finished, like snow turning to water.    

+The Paternoster gang are a great creation, a trio of new friends who turn up in Who again occasionally but we never get to see enough of. Many fans have wondered why the Doctor only ever seems to travel with Humans – the boring answer is that it gives the audience at home someone to identify with, that they can relate to (though the likes of Leela, Romana and Turlough show that they don’t have to be all Human all the time) without putting someone through a million years in make-up every day for years. For occasional one-offs though it’s a welcome change in pace with a Silurian detective, her Human maid and an accident prone Sontaron who sound like the punchline to a joke but who feel rounded and as if they’d been having adventures long before the Doctor arrived.

- Richard E Grant isn’t known for his understatement as an actor – I mean in ‘Withnail and I’ he’s so flamboyant he makes 8^th Doctor Paul McGann look positively normal and we know how eccentric he can be -  so his performance here where he barely even blinks is a surprise. Was he channelling Wolfe Morris’ superb turn as a hissing voiced Great Intelligence from 1967? Was he tired of watching pantomime villains come and go in DW and thought he’d try something different? Was he just really tired that day? Whatever the cause he’s one of the more forgettable monsters in this era which is a real shame given how much stake the script puts into him being an unforgettable terror.