I think it would be unfair and a little on the nose to say this one is hardly worth making kindling out of. It’s hardly worth the play on words. Nonetheless, it won’t go unroasted by my sheer contempt for what is best described as one of the most forgettable Christmas specials in recent memory. I can forgive a special for being a bit fast and loose with trying to advance anything. It often has a wider audience full of Christmas dinner bored by having to listen to the Queen’s speech. I don’t hate when it does that, unlike people who claim to be fans but only want the same as they’ve always had.

With that being said, there is just nothing all that special about 2011’s Christmas special. Sure, there are guest stars, young actors on the rise, and a retelling of a classic story, all things I like. “Voyage of the Damned” had Kylie, that young actor Bernard Cribbins, and it was retelling the story of the HMS Titanic and not the very dull James Cameron movie. Nonetheless, “The Doctor, The Widow & The Wardrobe” lacks a spark to make it not only a good episode or story, but one that’s memorable for any reason whatsoever. Those of us who play games and watch E3 (religiously) will remember Holly Earl as Lily Arwell, but I think that’s it.

The wood people are memorable, but what did they do? Bill Bailey is in the episode, but what did he do other than plod around in a Halloween costume made by your nan out of old cardboard toilet paper roll tubes and some old paint your grandad had in the shed for a bit? Alexander Armstrong is lovely, but he does end up dead a few minutes into the episode. Claire Skinner’s Madge is lovely, almost as a bumbling and distressed mother version of Hugh Grant. Less so for the writing and more so seemingly from the direction. It makes her meek one minute and at the end she has turned into super-mum.

As I said at the top, I don’t mind a bit of a fast and loose run at Doctor Who, but there are limits. This is not a direct one-for-one here, but Madge is irrefutably beaten, battered, and bruised (emotionally) in every way possible throughout the episode. Yet in the end, she’s the hero. I don’t mind her being the hero, but the very modern Lara Croft-esque “character development,” which isn’t really developing anything, really annoys me. By all means, her husband is dead, she doesn’t want to ruin the children’s Christmas, and she’s on the verge of losing them on an alien forest planet. However, she was crashing a 1930s car into everything 48-minutes ago, so how is she piloting a mech?

If it was a mid-series episode, I’d be chewing holes the size of the Ardennes forest into it. Not that it is a bad episode, again it is Christmas (in July) and I don’t mind a bit of oddball plot McGuffins such as the Doctor knowing fine well kids open presents early. The biggest bee in my bonnet right now is just the size of the cast and how underutilized the majority of them are. I’ll praise Claire Skinner’s performance until the forest stops burning, and I enjoy Holly Earl’s performance too. Everyone else is just there to fill slots with names, by the looks of it. Who hires Bill Bailey and doesn’t have him for a majority of the episode prancing about as a magic genie with a piccolo? At least something.

Meanwhile, the whole thing, as you might have guessed with the overly long title, is wrapped up in a light sci-fi retelling of C.S Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Ok, a retelling with eco-concerns at the heart of it instead of theological pretensions of the novel by Lewis. The loose iteration does well enough to blend the old and the new, but as I said at the top, it leaves very little that’s memorable. Well, maybe aside from the miraculous and a little too on the nose moments. It’s Christmas thus we’re best not to let the dad die. It is very heartwarming, but when it is this way every Christmas, it becomes a bit less special.

All this said, there is one bit that I don’t really count as part of the episode because it just feels so separate. Nonetheless, every time I’m left bleary-eyed by it, simply being one of those moments that outshines the episode it is in for simultaneously kicking your heart and hugging it. I’m of course talking about the Christmas dinner bit with Amy and Rory, two whole years since “The Wedding of River Song.” Two years and “there is a place set for you.” After that I’ve bought the Water Works for 150 Monopoly-money and won’t stop. Smith beautifully milks the moment for everything it has, leaving nothing on the table.

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Doctor Who "The Doctor, The Widow & The Wardrobe"

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Skinner, Smith, and Earl's performances set the episode alight with energy and charm.
• The "place set" scene is in its own little world.

Cons

• A fast and sometimes loose understanding of character development.
• Underutilized guest stars.