Christmas
romp! River! Hijinks!
Heads in bags! What more do you want
on Christmas, right? I’d say this
episode isn’t quite as good as I
(naively?) hoped it would be, but it delivers on the most important levels. (Light spoilers.)
The
Doctor’s solitary Christmas is interrupted by what appears to be a
by-now-familiar summons from River. Upon
being brought together, however, River shows no signs of recognition. Is she playing dumb for some strategic
reason, or does she not know Twelve?
That’s what he finds time to wonder somewhere in between the demands of
the whirlwind adventure in which River is embroiled. There’s trickery, thievery, and archeology,
along with idyllic Christmas snow, homicidal headless robots, and a veritable
bevy of sonic devices.
I’ll
start with my cons and move on to the pros.
There’s some definite slapdashery going on, nonsensical developments and
twists that don’t seem in service of much of anything. River herself feels weirdly out-of-character
for a sizable chunk of the episode, and I can’t really make heads or tails of
it. I kept waiting for the other shoe or
the act to drop – I may need another viewing to see if I can get a better
handle on it.
The
worst for me, though, is how long it takes River to twig that Twelve is the
Doctor. On some level, I can understand
it, and the scene in which she does
figure it out is excellent, but going into this episode, I was most excited to
see the dynamic between River and Twelve.
We got that, and the show didn’t disappoint
on that front – not by any means – but we could have had considerably more of it. As it is, I feel like the episode wasted too
much time dangling the prospect of what I was really there to see.
Because
once that’s taken care of, the Doctor and River are basically magic. They’re fun and funny and insane, but also
smart and take-charge and absolutely lovely.
Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston play splendidly off of one another,
bringing comedy, drama, and adventure in equal measure. There are nods to the past alongside
discoveries in the present and questions about the future, and the nature of
their relationship is explored in a few fantastic scenes in the last third of
the episode.
We
haven’t seen her for several years now, but even though River seems off in the
first section of the story, I don’t fault Kingston for it. In the parts where River is written like
River, she’s note-perfect – hasn’t missed a step. And the Doctor is fairly glorious here. His recent hardships are addressed, in a
slightly roundabout way, and he’s earnest about some tough emotions, but he
also gets to smile and have fun for a change, to just enjoy the life he
leads. Additionally, we get a few
delightfully-cranky Twelve moments (ah, bless,) and the Doctor shows off his
considerable snarking talents. There’s a
scene of him playing around in the TARDIS that’s worth the price of admission.
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