I watched the xmas special "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" the day after it aired over Christmas.
The synopis for the 2011 special by Steven Moffat was as follows.
During the Christmas season of 1938, the Doctor finds himself on a damaged alien spacecraft in Earth's orbit. He escapes the exploding ship and the fall to Earth by rapidly donning an impact space suit, though in his haste, the helmet is put on backwards. On crashing to Earth, he is found by Madge Arwell, wife of Reg and mother of two children, Lily and Cyril. She helps the Doctor, stuck and unable to see while in the impact suit, to his TARDIS, and the Doctor promises to repay her for her kindness.
To be honest I've fallen asleep during all the Narnia movies so I wasn't expecting this to bode well for the special just from knowing the title alone. Two minutes in I was already thinking it was like watching a CITV program from back in the 80's. There was a rather funny moment at the begining when he actually walked into that real police box thinking it was the TARDIS.
I couldn't help but wonder where you are meant to draw the line between Christmas Special and Christmas "Shoving it down your throats" Special? I swear that Murray Gold (composer) sampled the Aliens soundtrack in this as well.
Moffat is normally good at coming up with original ideas of his own but he seemed to struggle this time round. I managed to count story elements from Narnia, Lord of The Rings, The Never Ending Story, Bed Knobs & Broomsticks and any WWII film from the 40's in this. It didn't really make any sense whatsoever to me.
As for Bill Bailey he was seriously underused and didn't really need to be there.
Still it looked amazing and Matt Smith is an awesome doctor. It's the scripts that let him down. He's the Colin Baker of the new era of the show when it comes to the Christmas specials. This was a bit of a damp squib to end of considering we are not having any new episodes for a while now.
I did feel this was a damp squib as well, and this is coming from a guy who liked series 6 (mostly)
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