Doctor Who: Every Christmas Special Ranked From Worst To Best
5. The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe
Tinsel Factor: 10
Star Quality: 3
Laughter Lines: 7
Thrill Meter: 1
Christmas Spirit: 10
Soapy Spoilers: 6
Total Score: 37
“Doctor Who isn’t like other sci-fi shows because it’s more magical than that. It’s a magic man in a magic box, dressed up in sci-fi language. Aesthetically, it feels like something closer to Narnia…” STEVEN MOFFAT
From Robin Hood (Robots of Sherwood) to The Shining (The God Complex), Doctor Who has often been at its strongest when riffing on other tales, whether ancient or modern, and the writers have never been afraid of making their sources explicit.
Given Moffat’s comments above, C.S Lewis’s book was an obvious choice for the Doctor Who Christmas treatment. The book itself might be an allegory of the Easter story, but it is brimming with Yuletide associations with the snow-filled Narnia, turkish delight and even an appearance by Father Christmas.
One of the distinctive features of Steven Moffat’s time as showrunner, is the prominence given to children. Unlike his successor, Matt Smith’s Doctor is more than comfortable with being a kid himself, and in this episode, not for the first time (Night Terrors, Closing Time) he gets to play with the toys. There is an innocence and charm about the Doctor trying to make the children’s Christmas.
What the story lacks in spectacle is more than made up for by its sentimentality. The traditional messages of Christmas come in thick and fast, from ‘no one should be alone at Christmas,’ to family as the best present of all, when it goes all ‘The Railway Children’ at the end.