Doctor Who Series Blog – The Snowmen

For the past few years, the Doctor Who Christmas special has ignited our imaginations and given us a dose of Christmas magic. This year’s instalment featured a wonderfully inventive telepathic entity in the form of snow, but all was not right in the world of Doctor Who.

What would a Doctor Who episode be without the threat of human destruction. Viewers would not be satisfied if an episode went by without putting at least one person in mortal danger. The Snowmen brought a far more insidious encroachment, from something as innocent looking as snow. However, what looked like harmless white powder manifested into the scariest snowmen to grace our screens in recent memory – bulbous creatures with razor sharp teeth and emotionless black eyes. Even the little snowflakes themselves had grown an array of teeth that could rival Jaws. It’s probably just as well we didn’t have a white Christmas this year…

Richard E Grant gave a haunting performance as the snow’s human accomplice; a man whose isolation and depression allowed him to be deceived into plotting humanity’s downfall. Truly, this was an inspired invention of a Christmas fairytale, purely because it lacked the outlandish element Doctor Who episodes are all too often plagued with. Don’t get me wrong, the fantastical elements are fantastic, but it was nice to have something slightly less far-fetched than usual.

In fact, this was an episode far more focused on the human elements of the show and the characters’ interpersonal relationships – against the backdrop of utter destruction, of course. The Doctor was not his usual eccentric self this time – instead of witty repartee, he was consumed with the loss of Amy and Rory. We got to see a mournful Doctor who was wary of making a connection with the Earth and falling into the vicious cycle of companionhood. Indeed, he had the T.A.R.D.I.S in a sort of Jack and the Beanstalk scenario – an invisible ladder lead above the clouds, signifying his reluctance to engage with the world beneath. In The Snowmen, he appeared to have made a pact with himself to no longer intervene in the saving of worlds and ridding of evil – he is a broken Doctor.

There was something Dickensian about this Christmas special, helped along by the Victorian London setting. In Dickens, the home is often a site of conflict, and the narrative of children’s lives being threatened by an ex-governess made out of ice almost fits the bill. Even the Doctor could be an alien version of Ebenezer Scrooge; he was severely lacking in Christmas spirit. It was a good job then that we had the brilliant Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman), to spice things up a bit. A flirty and inquisitive woman, Clara certainly gave the Doctor a run for his money, with her natural intelligence and sexy self-confidence. She managed to reignite the Doctor’s spark, and provided a welcome counterpart to the depressed Doctor. Even with the whole of humanity in danger, Doctor Who still manages to keep us laughing. If it wasn’t the incompetent, bloodthirsty Sontaran, Stax, it was the interplay between the Doctor and Clara.

Clara, intriguingly, has already appeared in this series of Doctor Who as the girl/Dalek going by the name Oswin in the season premiere, The Asylum of the Daleks. The most confusing part of the episode was how on earth Clara could be the same person as Oswin, just in a different time period? No doubt some crazy explanation will be concocted in later episodes. Regardless, the dramatic irony of the Doctor having no idea who Clara reminded him of until the very end made The Snowmen all the more enjoyable.

This year’s Christmas special brought us fantasy mixed with stark realism and it certainly deserves to be commended for its innovation. It certainly leads nicely into the next half of the series and the future of Doctor Who is as bright as ever!