Doctor Who: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

England, 1941. Madge Arwell learns that her husband, flying a mission, has been lost, but does not tell her two children; she wants them to have Christmas. She sends the family to a house in the country. There a caretaker greets them: the Doctor. In the house there is a gift box, and the inside of the box opens onto another planet: a snowy forest, a people living inside the trees, and a company arriving to harvest the world. Steven Moffat writes and Farren Blackburn directs. Matt Smith plays the Doctor and Claire Skinner plays Madge, with Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir in the cast. It is the 2011 Christmas special and an open reference to C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which the title states outright. What sits at the centre is not science fiction but grief. Madge keeping what she knows from her children joins with what the people of the forest ask of her. The Doctor is in second place here; Madge carries the narrative and the resolution belongs entirely to her. The closing scene ties back into the Doctor's own story and brings Amy and Rory back. Who it is for: Doctor Who viewers and anyone who likes the Christmas specials. Who it is not for: the context is missing for anyone who does not know the series, the middle section is loose, and the emotional register is laid on thick in places.