Doctor Who Review
The Husbands of River Song
2015 Christmas Special
Merry Christmas one and all! Hope you all had an amazing time yesterday stuffing your faces with Christmas dinner and pudding, drinking booze and eating chocolate or whatever it is you do at Christmas.
Christmas 2015 is done! It's over, and I can't believe the time it's gone so quick. I had such a lovely time myself I didn't really want it to end. With all the festivities came some cracking Christmas telly. Including the annual Doctor Who Christmas Special and for 2015 Steven Moffat has put together a comedy caper featuring the Doctor and River Song. "The Husbands of River Song" was Doctor Who's 2015 Christmas Special.
River Song is back in this. I didn't think we'd ever end up seeing her again. However, having said that to be fair, I did feel there were parts of her story, that were set up from the first time we saw her in "Silence in the Library" that had yet to be resolved and are resolved in this story.
Steven Moffat said in a recent interview about River's return and I quote "I wanted to bring her back, because I didn't think I'd ever get the chance to write for Doctor Who again." and he had also revealed that at the time he was writing the Christmas Special, he had not yet signed on for Series 10. He also said that he would never leave the programme in the lurch. So I'm putting two and two to make four here, although I could be making five. I think the BBC bosses said to him "Ok Steven, you're going but we haven't got anyone to take your place" so Steven must have thought "Oh right, well I guess I'd better stay on for another year then". But that's the story behind Steven Moffat's reasoning for wanting to bring River back. Despite everything I do like her character, even though I know a lot of people don't.
I don't mind the character of River Song, I do find her annoying at times. There were moments in this were I thought "God dam it woman, shut up!" but there you go. There are characters like Amy Pond, Rose Tyler, Susan and Romana 2 who I find more irritating than River Song.
As far as story goes, The Doctor is on this planet in the far future, a little town covered in ice and snow populated by this small earth colony. They are in rule of King Hydroflax (played by Greg Davies) who is meant to be this destroyer and conqueror who people fear and respect, he's slowly dying because he had a diamond lodged inside his brain and River wants to extract that diamond from his head so that she can sell it and make lots of money. She requires the help of a surgeon. So she sends out Nardole (played by Matt Lucas) to find one. He confuses the Doctor for being a surgeon and invites him round to this massive space ship where everything starts to unravel. I should say that once things got going, after they had stolen Hydroflax's head the story was really easy to understand and enjoy. At Christmas you don't want anything overly complicated like last years episode. As much as I enjoyed it, it was hard to follow, this wasn't. This episode is a christmassy type of crime heist.
Compared to other Christmas shows that have been this wasn''t terrible. The jokes were very hit and miss, however humour is something that's very difficult to find in Doctor Who and humour done well in Doctor Who is great, if done badly or not so well and something like this were the comedy is one of the central parts of your story then everything tends to deflate like a ballon.
There's not much to criticise with this as much there was with "Hell Bent" because there's nothing much wrong with the story, the story was fine, production design and make up on the aliens were excellent, the sound was very clear and really good soundtrack all round to emphasise a comparison between moments of tension and moments of comic relief as well as that the editing was very well done, particularly with the title sequence and the snow to give it a nice christmassy feel. very well directed. I guess if I am going to fault anything it would have to come down to performance wise and humour and even they weren't too bad.
The beginning was slow paced but once things started to take off, everything worked very nicely. I would say that your understanding towards The Doctor and River's relationship in this would be better to understand had you consecutively followed all of River's story. This is another thing were the story falls down for me. In parts things between the doctor and river are patchy to say the least or difficult to follow at times. So to me, that wouldn't be clear to how other people who haven't followed it or understand it as well as a fan like me would.
I'm pleased that Derinium was included in this, and the singing towers because before River dies in "Forrest of the Dead" she mentions that to the doctor, and it was good that we finally got to see that. It was also good to actually see how she got the sonic screwdriver. I did feel the sonic trial was stupid and pretentious.
So everything is rapped up with River Song's story. We never ever after this story, ever have to see her in Doctor Who ever again. I'll give it a 6/10 because it's Christmas! :) I look forward to next Christmas and to the next series! This is it for Doctor Who 2015! Nothing now until... well I don't even know what's happening with Series 10, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Merry Christmas from me and have a happy new year! take care! :)
