At last, Steven Moffat succeeds in makingDoctor Whoa “dark fairy tale”

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Spoilers ahead …

So “ The Snowmen ” is essentially the story of a former heroic rescuer , who has now withdrawn from the earth and lives on a cloud , high above the city . He does n’t care that evil forces are gathering , look to launch the world into an eternal winter and overrun it with ice hoi polloi . So it ’s up to one spunky young governess / barmaid named Clara to reawaken his thirst for adventure and his desire to save the world one more fourth dimension .

And it must be said , “ The Snowmen ” nails the fairytale climate . From the gnashing - tooth snowflakes in the opening dig to the job of Clara having to pull down an invisible ladder and climb a magic stairway to get to the Doctor ’s home in the clouds , it ’s all arrant fantasy candy . The notion of a lonely male child who ’s become a bitter man , eager to fill the world with Baron Snow of Leicester that reflects his vacancy , is sort of perfect for a fay - tale baddie . The lamentable nipper , whose mingy governess drowned in a quick-frozen pool and is now coming back as an trash queen , are also musical note - perfect . They even got Gandalf to voice the snow - globe Intelligence . And at the end , Clara dies and the tike ’s grief defeats the trash queen .

Of naturally , the whole thing look on you believe that the Doctor was so broken up by his separation from the Ponds that he ’s recede from save the world — even though , in this case , the Doctor ’s inaction means the Ponds will never even be take over . When the Doctor was separated from Rose , he sulked for a class and plow poor Martha like crap . But this meter around , he ’s even more broken up — to the point where he ca n’t even do his thing any more .

Of course , this is sort of how Moffat ’s always written the Eleventh Doctor — he does n’t just go on the run for a few calendar week , he goes on the outpouring for 200 days . He does n’t just send a message to the Ponds , he pops up in history books . And so on . And I guess the Doctor ’s realized that he ca n’t be a hero without a companion , as River told him in “ Angels Take Manhattan , ” but he ’s tired of put mass in risk and bonding with an endless series of newly - faced young hoi polloi — so if he ca n’t have a new fellow traveller , he ’s just not going to relieve the day any more .

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In any case , if you’re able to take the thing of the Doctor retiring from heroism , then the account of “ The Snowmen ” in general works pretty well . You know that the Doctor will be back on his plot by around the 30 - second mark , so the playfulness is in watching him shin with his impulses . And in the cat - and - black eye plot between the Doctor and Clara , who ’s been drawn into the Doctor ’s orbit the way so many people have been before , and is trying to get to the bottom of his enigma . Clara follows the Doctor and leaps on his stage , and does n’t range away when he threaten to expend a creative thinker - erasing louse thingy on her , and finally climbs his magical staircase .

And Jenna - Louise Coleman pretty much own the installment as Clara . In the line of the story , Clara leaven her deserving as a companion over and over , using the power of her mind to run some attacking snowmen and figure out the Doctor ’s plan to lure the ice lady up into his cloud . She go Madam Vastra ’s “ one Holy Scripture ” test , answer a series of query with one cautiously prefer word . But she ’s also charming as all get - out , be Moffat ’s “ spunky skirt ” pilot with so much flair that she seems to be make it from scratch .

Meanwhile , the three support characters who were among the 1000 ideas in “ A Good human being Goes to War ” are back — and this time , they have a mo of space to take a breath . Madame Vastra is famous in Victorian London as the “ Veiled Detective , ” and she and her sidekick Jenny are openly married — basically gibe all the Victorian taboo at once . They ’re now living with Strax , the effective - natured Sontaran who is ostensibly no longer dead and also no longer a nurse . It ’s Strax who incur the bulk ( so to speak ) of the episode ’s most screamingly risible moments , including his mischance with the brain worm and his never-ending talk about grenade and frontal assaults . And his snarling at “ runty human beings ” immediately stick to by words of kindness . ( And Strax taunt the Doctor for being Sherlock Holmes , right after the Doctor has done a uproariously off - the - print Sherlock Holmes impression in the bad guy rope ’s lair , is also invaluable . )

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Vastra , Jenny and Strax seem to be getting set up as a new supporting cast of characters for the Doctor , and it ’s an interesting move . Two of them are monsters who ’ve either gone good or at least become friendlier , and Vastra herself is note as a potential influence for Sherlock Holmes . ( Moffat works in a lot of Holmes humor here , along with some Game of Thrones address . ) When the three of them are range against the backdrop of Victorian London , as fight down to Demons Run , they of a sudden become much more obviously oddballs and outcasts , whose monstrous appearance is just part of the reason they ’ll never fit in . It ’s interesting that the the great unwashed who keep the Doctor ground and plug in to the world are now , themselves , at odds with the world they live in .

Returning to the fairytale thing , there ’s a quite a little of stuff that only forge here when you see it as a fairytale — like , Richard E. Grant ’s Dr. Simeon is a fairly useless scoundrel , who strides around distinguish everybody his plan and folds like origami when the Doctor move up against him . The Snowmen of the episode ’s title are useless , just as the Doctor quickly indicate out . The chalk governess is reasonably weak as well — she only manages to wipe out Clara because of a fall from a majuscule height , which is really the Doctor ’s fault since he lured her up there . If this were an RTD instalment , we ’d have stupefy a right villain rampage , like the “ Cyber - King ” trashing Victorian London at the end of “ The Next medico . ” ( But Moffat ’s never as clothe in his villains as RTD was , and the resolution to his story often does n’t even involve the villain directly . )

Also , the sequence is overstuffed with ideas that do n’t quite get a prospect to take a breath — even as Vastra , Strax and Jenny are get the ventilation room they were denied the first time we run into them . We hear about Dr. Simeon representing strait-laced Values , but there ’s almost no hint what that intend in the linguistic context of this news report . Clara being both a barmaid and a governess is important to set up her character reference — but we scantily glimpse her barmaid sprightliness , and her twofold life feels like a cast-off idea . The don of the family Clara work for ca n’t connect with his children , which is something we cognise because we ’re told it a couple meter . Really , this is n’t a story about Victorian England at all — and the sequence mostly works best when it use Victorian England as a coloured backdrop , rather than a tangible mise en scene .

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But those are mostly minor quiddity with an episode that demonstrate Moffat revert to work with a lot of fun and zaniness bolt onto a jolly successful fairy - tale framework . The overall task of this episode is to relaunch Matt Smith ’s Doctor with a new(ish ) fellow traveller and a new(ish ) semi - regular sustain stamp , and in those terminal figure it work attractively . The tale takes the classic “ fellow traveller becomes fascinated with the Doctor and learns about him / track him down ” storyline and does something new and interesting with it . And it advance the Doctor ’s arc of trying and failing to go it alone , which Moffat has been building since “ The God Complex . ”

Oh , and there ’s a bit of continuity pornography — the Intelligence that controls the Snowmen in this instalment is unveil at the end to be ( probably ) the origin of the Great Intelligence , the villain of “ The Abominable Snowmen ” and “ The WWW of Fear . ” It ’s one of those things that you either see coming from early on in the episode , or you do n’t care about one way or the other .

So at last , there ’s a final closed book — Clara is dead , but the Doctor realize she ’s somehow the same person as Oswin , who died in “ Asylum of the Daleks . ” And that means that she ’s recurring throughout sentence , and there ’s get to be another Clara out there somewhere . geld to another Clara Oswin , living in what looks like present - day London , with the Doctor on his style to get hold her . What ’s the lot with Clara ? Has she gotten herself Scaroth - ed somehow ? Knowing Moffat , the answer will be both ingenious and a bit frustrating .

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