Top Ten Christmas Specials: Number 9

In at no 9: it’s The Snowmen


The Doctor has parked the TARDIS on a cloud for an extended sulk, whilst Vastra and Jenny from A Good Man Goes to War act as his gatekeepers, assisted by comedy Sontaran Strax, who turns out not to have been permanently killed after all.


Meanwhile, soufflé girl from The Asylum of the Daleks is a barmaid who is moonlighting as a governess. Or possibly the other way round. It’s all very odd.


I found a problem with the tone of this special. It seems to oscillate between Mary Poppins* (the scene where Clara climbs up the staircase to the cloud where the TARDIS is parked) and The Turn of the Screw in the scenes with Clara and the children.


The threat is provided by the eponymous snowmen, but they are being controlled by the real villain of the piece, who is far more abominable than his snowmen. All of which is something of a clue to his identity.


It’s very clever, but this story just didn’t do it for me.

Christmas Factor: 3/10 - still too bleak
Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 7/10 - Victorian London, but points deducted for the Paternoster Gang

*Steven Moffat seems, in the light of more recent episodes, to have something of a Mary Poppins fixation. Is it possible he was traumatised by Julie Andrews as a child?