There are just some things that go together beautifully with Doctor Who and Christmas being one of them. As for a long time it was a tradition that there would be a rarely Doctor Who Christmas episode with that tradition coming back in a just a few short days time and well I thought that as alot of these christmas specials aren't really talked about and so then join me as I review the episode that really does have a mouthful of a title with the episode in question being called simply just "The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe" enjoy.
The plot of the episode is The Doctor serves as caretaker for the Arwell family where he tries to give them the best Christmas ever all the while the mother holds a secret that threatens to tear her family apart. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode was in all honesty really fun with this episodes plot being the kind of plot that you'd both expect and want in a Christmas special as it really is a solid plot that's a really perfect plot for Christmas TV with this episodes plot also really being really rather entertaining and really rather engaging as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.
Starring in this episode is Matt Smith as The Doctor , Karen Gillan as Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams. Also starring in this episode is Claire Skinner as Madge Arwell , Maurice Cole as Cyril Arwell , Holly Earl as Lily Arwell , Alexander Armstrong as Reg Arwell , Sam Stockman as The Co-pilot , Bill Bailey as Droxil , Paul Bazely as Ven-Garr , Arabella Weir as Billis , Spencer Wilding as The Wooden King and Paul Kasey as The Wooden Queen.
Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode was in all honesty alot better then what I really had any right be. As you really wouldn't expect an episode that has a really out there plot like this one to have some really good acting in it and yet that's exactly what we get with all of the actors that you expect a rather solid performance from really delivering in this episode with the same thing also being true for the episodes kid characters who are are really well acted with the cast for this episode really being helped by the episodes which gives the cast alot to work with interms of what there respective characters personalities are and as such all the cast have to do is just say the lines as they are written and a good performance will come out of them naturally.
Doing the CGI for this episode is the legends and the greats that are currently over at The Mill and Real SFX. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual CGI that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode well then in all honest I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual CGI that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode was in all honesty not that bad. With this episode having some pretty good CGI in it especially given the fact that the budget for this show especially around this point in time wasn't that high to begin which means that they really couldn't afford to do some really great CGI anyways and yet for this episode that managed to have alot more good looking CGI effects in it whilst at the same time still having some pretty dodgy looking CGI effects that really haven't aged all that well.
While this episode is largely a lighthearted affair it does also deal with a pretty heavy subject matter that being the death of a loved one. With the Madge character struggling when to tell her kids that there father was killed in the war this is something that I both hated and loved about the episode I loved it because it showed the harsh realities of going to war but at the same time I hated it because it's not the something that you want to see in a Christmas episode and plus the episode doesn't go as far as they could have done with that idea with his death only being brought up a few times and we don't even see how his death affected Madge's personality as we see her being this rather cheerful character at the start of the episode and she remains as such all throughout the episode when it would have been more impactful if we saw how the death of her husband deeply affected her and seeing her struggle to tell her kids the news would have made it alot more emotional.
For some rather odd reason both Amy and Rory basically have glorified cameos with them only appearing in the episodes end scene. Which means that for the vast majority of the episode The Doctor is without a companion which just doesn't work as we know from previous episodes that The Doctor really does need a companion to stop him from doing truly evil things and yet here he is without a companion and yet he's acting just as he normally would do which doesn't really make sense with what we know he would be like but this is a Christmas special and showing The Doctor as doing evil things just wouldn't sit well on Christmas and showing him meet up with Amy and Rory does lead to very nice and emotional moment at the end of the episode.
As with the previous Christmas special this one is alot more lighter in tone then the rest of the series however given that this episode deals with death it is still slightly dark. Altho while the episodes more darker elements do work really well they clash with the episodes more lighter tone with them going from making jokes one second and then talking about death in the very same scene with there being nothing really to bridge the two which does create tonal whiplash which is a shame because both of these elements can work well together if they were fairly balanced with the episode showing us alot more of the lighter tone then it is the darker when in reality it should have been more fifty fifty and not favor one over the other this would then make the transition between the two feel alot more natural even more so if you added in a line of dialog that helped to ease us the audience in between the two tones that this episode is quite clearly really going for in this episode.
Now then while I cannot for the absolutely life of me remember whatever this episodes running time even was I do know that this episode has / had an exact grand total running time of roughly fifty eight minuets. Which is pretty much the bogstanderd running time for a Doctor Who christmas special and to this episodes credit it does make the most of it's running but the episode really doesn't have alot there interms of plot to really cover that large amount of running time which means that we do get scenes that add nothing to the plot and are there not only for some mostly bad comedy but they also add nothing to the plot of the episode with them feeling alot more like filler scenes as they are scenes that could have been removed from the final cut of the episode and nothing of value would have been lost from the actual plot of the episode but I will admit that this episode really does have some really good pacing to it tho.
So now then as this is a action show that means that I have to actually talk about the actual actin that's actually featured / presented to us in his very episode well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual actin that's actually feature / presented to us in this very epiosde was in all honesty not that bad. As while we don't get any fight scenes in this episode what we do get is a very exciting and action packed third act which was really well done as we got to see alot of really emotional moments just come together beautifully which was something that worked really well in this episode altho it would have worked better if the episode had a much more stronger story but with that aside the third act is the most exciting part of the episode and it was thrilling seeing how everything comes together beautifully in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.
Overall while this episode wasn't as strong as the previous Christmas Special it was still a rather fun filled episode that was a rather solid Christmas Doctor Who adventure in my freaking opinions anyways / at least. Now then i've talked about all of the good and as well as all of the bad things that are in this very episode in this very review ad as such that means that means that this very episode earns itself a grand old score of exactly a 6.5 out of 10 from me.
Now then as for where I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review well then boys ad girls and as well as ladies and gentlemen I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review from the official Doctor Who fandom wiki page , Amazon . Co . Uk and Google Images. With my personally preferred website to use to get the images from these very episode that I used in this very review being Google Images simply just due to the fact that alot of the images that are on Google Images are all really fairly high in quality and as well as them all being really fairly freaking high in definition.