11.36: The Snowmen

In which we meet some more Claras.

First up, some more minisodes: the one where it turns out Strax isn’t dead is bobbins (Vastra doesn’t bring him back to life, it turns out he just wasn’t dying at all), which is kind of annoying. But stories that wreck A Good Man Goes To War were all the rage around this time I guess.

The Great Detective... in the intro Matt Smith refers to “the Doctor’s best friend, Rory” which is mildly amusing. Then the Paternosters stand around listing Pertwee stories. You can see why they wanted Strax back, but surely Moffat could have come up with a better mechanism?

I quite like the Doctor’s Victorian outfit but it’s a shame we didn’t get more of the long coat from 2011.

Anyway, here’s an actual episode:

Broadcast: December 2012

Watched: January 2022

“I did seven drawings, and we saw a dead cow” seems to sum up the episode better than anything else. This might actually be worse than Widow? It aims higher, but it misses by a mile. Something went horribly wrong in production, right? We see remarkably little of the titular Snowmen.

It *sounds* good. Ian McKellen and Richard E. Grant controlling killer snowmen in Victorian london. There are some great images, too: the ice governess, the TARDIS in the sky, the invisible spiral staircase. I like “clever staircase, it’s taller on the inside”. Also, the shocking end of the big introduction-to-the-TARDIS scenes, with Clara unexpectedly being pulled to her death.

But it doesn’t really sell the idea that the Doctor would be so damaged by the loss of Amy that he’d give up entirely: it’s been five minutes, we don’t see him at rock bottom, it feels more like he’s being a bit whiny rather than that he’s been broken by this. Also, when he comes back to life, he’s not quite the same Doctor: he’s clearly flirting with Clara, gratuitously dressing up as Sherlock Holmes and running a Punch & Judy show. It’s like he’s acting out. (I may be reading across from my sense that Matt Smith is on some level annoyed he has to keep making this show now his mates have left.)

There are other issues. Why is Clara both barmaid and governess? It’s never explained. Is it just a coincidence that the Doctor and co are stalking her, then she turns out to be working at Latimer House where the ice governess is going to happen? Why is Frannie having visions of the plot? Why is Liz White barely in it? 

And the one word answers bit is deeply silly - or “always pointless”, as the Doctor says. “Pond” is annoying as a way of getting the Doctor on board because it isn’t his Pond at all.

Oh, and the memory worm bit is played for laughs, but the idea of wiping someone’s memory without their consent is actually pretty creepy. Thanks, Torchwood. Also, the memory worm looks a lot like Mr Sweet from The Crimson Horror. Since they were filmed back to back I wonder if it’s literally the same prop.

The worst bit, though, is the idea that the sky cries because snow just mirrors, and the whole family is crying on Christmas Eve because Clara is dead. 

The best bit is the very ending: the Doctor energised by a mystery, the effect of ageing the brand new grave stone, cutting to modern day Clara saying, “I don’t believe in ghosts”. Even then, though, the similarity with Blink does rather highlight that she’s just Sally Sparrow and all the other archetypical spunky Moffat girls. 

I think I quite liked this on broadcast. But it’s really not very good.

Other thoughts:

• In the promo interviews, Moffat went around claiming this was a Douglas Adams idea. He just meant “the Doctor retiring”, which led to a very annoying conversation with my dad.

• Second new title sequence in half a dozen episodes. Shame, actually, the last one was great. Also, not sure we need Smith’s face in the titles.

• Hmm, I barely mentioned the Paternosters, did I? They’re a huge part of this episode, they’re quite amusing, but they’re obviously packing material. The fact it’s 1892, when the London bit of Good Man... was 1888, suggests Strax has been there a while. Is the implication that Vastra briefly manages to save Clara, the way she saved Strax? [Gonna level with you here, I have absolutely no clue what I meant by that.]

• The idea that Sherlock Holmes is based on Vastra is immensely annoying (though it is funny that Doctor Simeon is more annoyed she’s a woman than a lizard). 

• Is the Digby here meant to be the same one whose house we went to in Widow? The timings would line up

• The tube bit makes no sense within the fiction, only as a fanboy reference. The Doctor having forgotten the Great Intelligence is also annoying. I’m also not completely sure it makes sense that the Great Intelligence is just a mirror of Simeon? But I might just be rejecting that because it doesn’t fit with the Virgin books. [The ‘90s Who books retconned the Intelligence, along with a load of other faceless, god-like entities from the old show, as H.P.Lovecraft-style “great old ones”.]

• “Winter is coming!” In 2012, Moffat was watching Thrones, then.

• “Run you clever boy and remember” is a really annoying line. I’m annoyed a lot by this episode aren’t I?