S7E6: The Snowmen *2012 Christmas Special* (SPOILERS)

If the Master made it out of the time lock, so can others.

GI - Gallifrey Intelligence.

hmm I always thought of the great intelligence as being the yeti machine...I must admit I was excited when I heard the great intelligence...but it turned out to be a bad cgi nanny...sigh. Was really hoping for a yeti.

I felt this was somewhere between Okay & Good, but I rounded it up to Good.
I'm really tired of the Doctor brooding between companions & having to rediscover the value of humans.
I loved the previous console design so I'm still underwhelmed by this bland redesign.
I'm a little concerned that Clara Oswin is a bit too similar to the other new series companions. It makes sense that the Doctor would only want to travel with the cream of the crop, but so far she seems like a "best of" companion. Maybe she keeps dying in different times because she's not a real person but an artificial aglomeration of traits designed by the Silence to appeal to the Doctor as a Trojan Horse? I am interested in her dying every appearance in multiple time periods unlike Rory who only died infrequently with clearer continuity. Maybe the explanation will finally tie back to the TARDIS explosion (like the multiple Jaggeroths due to his ship exploding).
Strax as the comic relief was the highlight of the episode. Which friend resurrected him?
I appreciated that they didn't waste too much time on the side characters' issues. Sometimes it works (the special with Gambon) but other times it's way too schmaltzy (Voyage of the Damned, last year's special). This was just enough extra detail for characters that were plot devices without overpowering the whole thing.
One thing I found unpardonable was the underuse of Madame Vastra. She was basically an exposition aid. Why were no Victorians sufficently aghast at seeing a Silurian? Why not have her slice up some killer snowman or the ice nanny with her katana? What about her knock-out tounge on Dr. Simeon? They could've tapped the power of her dormant third eye to melt the baddies to tie the Silurian redesign into the classic one. What's the point of using Madame Vastra if she's going to be worthless during the fight scenes?
The plant & pay off of the memory worm was done very well.
I liked the callback to the Great Intelligence. I'm not sure if the retcon makes sense, but it was a better callback than something like another gratuitous Davros appearance.
The weakest part of the episode was the inconsistency of the villains' threat level & nature. The snowmen start off awesome by eating a bunch of people. Then the Doctor immediately knows that the snowmen pyschicly mirror people & has Clara defeat it by picturing it melting. Why would the snowmen responding to her thoughts not just Dr. Simeon's? Could Simeon's lackeys have saved themselves if they just thought the snowmen were rubbish monsters? Why didn't they imagine the snowmen away when they attacked the house? What's wrong with Strax's plan to blow them up? If Simeon & the Great Intelligence needed to acquire the ice nanny, who brought the ice nanny to life? How did the ice nanny learn not to melt? Did Dr. Simeon subconsciously reanimate her? In one of the prequel episodes it's mentioned that it's snowing without clouds but they don't explain how that's possible in this episode. Why did the snowflakes have teeth if they weren't inherently alien? How did the Great Intelligence give Dr. Simeon's body frostbite powers? In addition to disasscoiative identity disorder & some psychic powers, did Simeon always have cryokinesis? Why was the Great Intelligence vulnerable to one family's grief?
The fanged snowmen & giant snow globe were great visuals.
I enjoyed the Doctor disguised as Mr. Punch & Sherlock Holmes.
The line about "nothing sadder than a crying family on Christmas Eve" was too on the nose for me. I understand that holidays are supposed to be joyous times, but would their sadness not have worked on another day or if they weren't Christian? NuWho has really overplayed the power of emotions saving the day.
Speaking of which, I hope the next holiday special isn't so Christmas-centric. Unless the Doctor visits the Nativity or St. Nicholas, Christmas plot points are prettyworn out. There are plenty of other religions that also have winter holidays. Why not highlight one of them for a change?
Although my comments seem negative, I did enjoy watching this overall.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Not as preachy as last year's, and it seemed more connected to the overall season arc rather than a one-shot story. Great supporting characters, and the return of a classic villain. Are they saying that 11 caused the Great Intelligence to try to use Yeti, and to set up shop in the London Underground?
If so, that is an interesting causality loop.

I hope Clara's story doesn't turn out to be too timey-wimey, or as I like to call it, River-fied. Just as straight forward as possible, not Amy's cousin's third nephew's time displaced gardener's maid's clone.

You're correct that the Doctor has now set the Great Intelligence loose on Earth and is responsible for getting the Underground involved.

I'm afraid you're wrong about the rest of Series 7 being too timey-wimey. My best guess is a companion that keeps up popping up and dying will be timey-wimey to the max and overly convoluted. Hopefully it is at least fun and even if the final answer doesn't make any sense it is at least entertaining.

I was hoping River's story was now finished. But, if they keep up with all this darn kissing then hopefully River does pop up once just to smack the cute out of Clara for kissing her husband.

squishy wrote:

I was hoping River's story was now finished. But, if they keep up with all this darn kissing then hopefully River does pop up once just to smack the cute out of Clara for kissing her husband.

I can see Clara starting her mile a minute speech trying to defend herself, and River just ending it with one straight arm KO punch.

I was able to finally watch this episode on New Year's Day, and I say "finally watch" loosely because one member of our party didn't know the show at all and had to be brought up to speed or informed at various times of the episode, which was fine. But what was troublesome was the fact that the other person doing the informing was highly objectionable to basically everything in this episode, especially of Clara and the relationship between Vastra and ahhhh what was her name... which she found horribly gross and I proceeded to borrow my friend's laptop again to keep from saying anything. That relationship I approve of 100% and haters gonna hate but whatever.

I also like Clara, from what I saw and heard. Granted, it wasn't much but still, I think she's brilliant. Sassy and full of spunk. She's pretty cool.

Terrifying snowmen who can devour a person yet if you concentrate on it melting it will... sort of takes the scare appeal out of it. I like our good old fashioned monsters like werewolves.

I'm hoping to see this episode properly at some point soon because the only thing I got out of it was that Vastra and her wife were Sherlock Holmes and Watson and Strax is some sort of butler to the Doctor, who is Mr Grumpy Gills. I really really liked Strax and ahh can we have them all travel with the Doctor? We need our creature companions because they are infinitely amazing!

Other than that I have no idea on what the episode was about.
~

rose and crown tavern....