Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe"

As much as I like River and Rory, I was kinda glad to see the Doctor spend his time in this year's Christmas special with a new cast of characters for a change. This time out he played the mysterious caretaker to an old mansion which was to be the refuge for a young WWII widow and her two children. The Doctor had planned all sorts of surprises for the two children but the biggest surprise of all came from something he didn't anticipate. I guess it was a good thing for him that those WWII widows tended to be so resourceful...

Despite the episode title, the episode did not quite draw on the Narnia books as much as you might think. True, there was a trip from the mansion into a mysterious wintry world that could have been the inspiration for Narnia and I must confess that there were times when I kept expecting to see a faun or two. But apart from that, there was not much else that would remind one of things Narnian.

In any event, the episode was still enjoyable and though I had a few nitpicks as to such things as whether the RAF would really use a middle-aged father of two to fly planes when piloting planes during wartime was traditionally a younger man's game and why actor Bill Bailey was shown in the previews when his role came so close to being a cameo, I still enjoyed it more than last year's Christmas special.

I guess part of me was in the mood for a crowd-pleasing episode after the more disappointing episodes of the past season and this episode filled the bill. Granted, had it been a bit more shameless in its attempts to tug at my heartstrings, I might have had cause for complaint. But fortunately, it was not.