#the snowmen

The Snowmen witnesses the Doctor Who mythology’s head disappear so far up its own arse it forms a closed spacelike loop, retroactively inspiring the 2011 Comic Relief Special. It also takes to the concept of respecting the audience’s intelligence much like the Joker took to Jason Todd. With a crowbar.

If Time and the Rani were written as a serious story, it wouldn’t be much different from this. And the episode’s lack of awareness regarding how truly crap it is may be the reason I spent much of my initial viewing of the episode periodically pausing to punch floral throw-pillows while screaming racial obscenities.

OK, I exaggerate. They were ableist obscenities.

Perhaps we have, as a society, come to accept the idea that Christmas is a sufficient excuse to replace good plotting and practical morality with saccharine crap. I can’t imagine why this is; after all, Charles Dickens basically invented the modern Christmas genre, and he was all about the strong social commentary. And while the episode does make a cursory attempt to critique its setting, it does this in just about the most ineffectual and insulting way possible – by having the Doctor refer to “Victorian values” in dismissive terms, without explaining what “Victorian values” are:

Doctor: When you find something brand new in the world, something you’ve never seen before, what’s the next thing you look for?…A profit! That’s Victorian values for you.

 I’m sorry, when did we decide that Victorians invented the profit motive? And when did we decide that it died out after them?

Besides which, when does Doctor Simeon ever demonstrate that he’s motivated by Victorian values? And what does he even sell? In fact, what is his job? No one seems to work at the Great Intelligence Institute but butlers and henchmen. What’s the overhead for those dudes? What revenue stream is going towards paying them? And I know employment conditions in the city were pretty harsh around then, but may I hazard a guess that brutally feeding your snow-shovelers to otherworldly monstrosities kind of hurts your reputation as an employer? Why’s he even going through with the Great Intelligence’s plan if he’s motivated by profit? I’ve studied microeconomics, and I’m pretty sure freezing the entire human race death messes with your demand, guy.

I guess they could be talking about the “sexual restraint” thing. Simeon quips that no one would believe Sherlock Holmes to be a woman and implies “impropriety” between Vastra and her wife. But precisely how do sexist and homophobic overtones play into the, well, plot to take over the world by unleashing a lethal alien winter? Replacing H. sapiens with a race of malevolent ice people dominated by a single alien consciousness is sort of more in violation of social norms, don’t you think? Or are they going to be heterosexual malevolent ice drones with submissive ideas about the females’ role in the post-apocalyptic igloo?

(Surely I can’t be the only one to notice the incongruity between the episode’s “criticism” of what it calls Victorian values and Vastra saying they “protect the Empire” as if it’s a good thing in the prequel The Battle of Demon’s Run – Two Days Later?)

The only alternative I have left is to conclude that, for the purposes of this story, “Victorian values” means “villainous things towards nice people”. Which is sort of a mis-characterization of a pretty complex society, even if an imperfect one. Yeah, life wasn’t easy or particularly friendly towards people who didn’t fit into neat boxes, but the Victorian bore witness to the birth of the modern social sciences and the effort to actually understand socio-economic conditions in an academic context. It saw the beginning of large philanthropic organizations. Women couldn’t vote, but they were more educated than they had been in previous centuries. The same wave of evangelism that worsened intolerance in some areas bolstered charity in others.

This is not a defense of “Victorian values”, particularly, but what I’m trying to say is that there should have been a lot more to Simeon’s character. For one thing, Simeon is pretty clearly a Scrooge character, and Scrooge can’t want to destroy humanity. I’m sorry, but he can’t. What makes Scrooge compelling as a villain is not how grandiose his aims are, but how pathetic they are. He is defined by inertia, impotence, and small-mindedness. Sure, Simeon’s life has to be pretty lacking for him to think pulling a Batman and Robin is a pretty good lifestyle choice, but if you’re going to spend your entire adolescent and adult life building towards it you have to have some kind of vision, some kind of drive, something to live for. But we never get that from Simeon. He wants to destroy the world – or convert it to ice people – or conquer it - or something, we’re never really told – but we also don’t know why beyond “Victorian values”, which again for the purposes of this story means “evil”.

There’s not that much wrong with “evil” being a motivation in and of itself. But it does a disservice to Dickens and to Christmas as he conceived it. Dickens wrote from the standpoint of one who had grown up in penury, who educated himself and won success in spite of rather than because of the system which sired him. His sympathies lie not only with the people who use their power and riches for benevolent aims, but for the poor and the downtrodden who might have been heroes if not for the injustices inflicted upon them. But it is telling of this episode’s level of sincerity that the first and last time we are made to feel sympathy for anyone of the working classes…is when the snow-collectors are killed before the title credits. There isn’t a working-class character with a line after Clara’s conversation with the bartender (unless you want to count the maid). The human problems of this story do not lie in poverty, institutional injustice, class rigidity or socio-religious hierarchy…but in the fact that a privileged and moneyed father has trouble connecting with his children. That’s about the most common type of problem you could find across the ages of human history, and yet this story aspires to critique the Victorian era!

What it comes down to is that the story is not interested in saying anything about the Victorian era. It’s instead interested in trying to make itself look better in comparison to a straw-man version of the Victorian era. The actual time period, the actual values, the actual morality is absolutely secondary to the question of “Can we use it to make women and gays look cool?”

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think moral positioning that cynical and that manipulative is an insult to the audience.

Fred Rogers, who was – in a nutshell – to the Christmas spirit what Jesus was to God, had it right: the way to do this sort of thing is not to simply label the people who disagree with you as villains, but to help them understand the simple kindness of respecting people who are different from yourself. A Christmas Carol had the common sense to give Kazran Sardick a chance at redemption. Why does Simeon never get the chance? Why does no one simply stop the action and ask Simeon, “Why? Why do something so petty? Don’t you see the Great Intelligence is sucking away your chance at a happy life?” Why does the closest the Doctor gets to offering him a shot at changing his mind come after a lengthy speech mocking him and the things he thinks he stands for, rather than leading by example?

Why does he choose to destroy the man’s memories of his life instead of simply using the katana-wielding reptilian warrior woman to restrain him in the TARDIS and take him away from the Intelligence’s influence?

Why are we expected to believe the Doctor has become a hero again after that?

Where is the Doctor’s Christmas spirit in that climax?

Where is the Christmas spirit, period?

In fact, let’s take a moment to look at our lovable genocidal maniac. During the promotional period for this episode, Steven Moffat described the Doctor’s state of being thusly: “He’s lost Amy and Rory to the Weeping Angels, and he’s not in a good place: in fact, he’s Scrooge. He’s withdrawn from the world and no longer cares what happens to it.”

OK, so the Doctor has withdrawn into self-imposed exile. Right.

Question:

Why?

We’ve seen the Doctor in this sort of state twice. The first was In The Beginning in 1963, when he was a paranoid, vicious old sod – understandable because he was on the run from his own civilization and desperately trying to protect his granddaughter from the savagery of the “primitive” worlds they were forced to use for shelter. The second was In the Second Beginning in 2005, when the Doctor had – not all that long ago – extinguished his own species and countless others as the climax to a multi-dimensional orgy of hyper-war for which he was not a little responsible.

Here, he’s brooding and asocial because his best friends very tragically…lived long and fulfilling lives, eventually dying in peace and in the presence of their loved ones.

Hmm.

I mean, perhaps I’d understand it more if the Doctor blamed himself for separating them from their families, but no one bothered to show us that horrible (but thinking about it, very necessary) moment when he tried to explain to the Ponds and Williamses that they would never see their children again. But hey, they’re just parents. I’m sure they don’t give a shit about their kids disappearing without so much as a kiss goodbye or a reasonable explanation. Maybe the vision of them weeping inconsolably at the loss of their progeny would have kind of rained on the whole “Amy and Rory get a happy ending” thing. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s not like we need to bother kids with those kinds of realities in life. I mean, the series didn’t address parents losing their child, or divorce, or anything like that before, right?

Here’s a fun fact: did you know that the Doctor Who wiki’s entire entry on Rory’s mother is the sentence “Rory’s mother was a ‘massive fan’ of Dusty Springfield”?

Perhaps it’s because I have…shall we say a history with this sort of subject material that it bothers me. But ask yourselves if cutting out the parents grieving for them was the emotionally honest thing for the series to do.

Where was I?…Right. Well, as far as the series is concerned no one seems to be blaming the Doctor for the Ponds’ fate. And he never says anything to the effect of considering himself responsible for it. So I can’t conclude we’re being made to believe that’s the case.

Is it simply grieving for not being able to see them again? Well, I dunno; it’s been a couple hundred years since he met them, so clearly he hasn’t been hanging out with them for most of that time. I mean, he does have a life, right? He wasn’t spending two hundred years just watching the Ponds at different points in their life, right?

Here’s the closest the episode gets to telling us the cause:

Vastra:He was different once, a long time ago. Kind, yes. A hero, even. A saver of worlds. But he suffered losses which hurt him. Now he prefers isolation to the possibility of pain’s return.

OK. Let me get this straight.

When Rose, the woman who redeemed the Doctor from his soul-crushing guilt over multiple genocide, was sealed away in a separate reality, the Doctor’s response was to keep traveling – sadder, but not defeated. But when Amy and Rory, who were basically just really good friends, left him under very similar circumstances, he gave up on the Universe?! How petty is this guy? Doesn’t it imply that he didn’t actually grow all that much from knowing Amy and Rory to suggest he’d go straight to cosmic apathy after they left him? Doesn’t that kind of undermine the whole point of their relationship?

I can’t say I like the non-logic behind the Doctor’s retirement. But I have to say that I like his reasons for ending it even less.

The Doctor returns to traveling and adventure because of…Clara.

Aha! He’s finally found a human being who can connect on a deep emotional level with him in spite of the grand scale of his feelings of pain and impotence and…oh no, it’s actually just that she dies in a bit of an odd way and this suddenly makes her interesting.

Y'know, I’m getting heartily sick of this repeated plot device whereby a supposedly average Earth girl turns out to be critical to the web of time, or destined to save the universe, or the secret ingredient in Davros’s rice pudding recipe. As if it’s not enough that the character is just an interesting, likable person we can identify with and root for – no, now we’ve got to give her timey-wimey syndrome. Because OK, OK, humans are special and everything, but come on, this broad’s too dim and weak to influence anything that really matters without giving her superpowers, you can see that, right?

But really, Clara is actually a refreshing change of pace for the Doctor’s female companions. Because unlike Amy, River, Donna, Martha, or Rose, Clara is female, sexy, sassy, clever (but not too clever), kisses the Doctor, adjusts quickly to the concept of aliens and an 1100-year-old time traveler, and is fated to save the human race in some capacity.

Actually, wait. No, you know what, forget the sarcasm. There is one regard in which Clara is unique in the New Series companion list so far. A trait she alone seems to possess.

You see, Clara has no flaws.

Like them or not, the people behind Clara’s predecessors put some effort into making them flawed characters, because they understood – correctly – that a flawed character is a more compelling character. Rose has several moments where her human nature gets the better of her moral sensibilities, especially in Series 2. Martha inflicted upon herself an impossible love for the Doctor, and part of her growth came from respecting herself enough to give that up. Donna’s insecurity about her lowly status in life could manifest itself as mean-spirited aggression. Amy took a lot of her life for granted, including Rory. Now you can argue all day about whether or not these characters were made likable enough to compensate for those flaws, but those flaws made them interesting.

And now we get Clara, whose main character flaw is…? Is…? Yes? What?

Nothing!

Whatis this vile Stepford Companion?

It was when I realized this fact about the character that I started to hate her. Yes. Hate. And you know when it was? It was that horrid scene where she tells her story about the Doctor. “Ha!” she pipes like a piccolo. “All my stories are true.” I’ve known an arseload of teachers, and these are my least favorite kind – the ones who talk to kids with that facetious kindergarten voice. This character is an unholy golem composed of the theme music to Barney and Friends (which, I shit you not, was used as a tool of torture against Iraqi POWs). Watching Clara interact with these children reminded me of Dolores Umbridge. Here’s a singular word for you, lady: simpering. Even Mary Poppins was bossy and vain once in a while, and Alan Moore just published an installation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen implying she’s an incarnation of God!

(I think we all understand at this point that I don’t blame actors for these things. Yes, I do like it when actors take a strong, active role in shaping their characters (like Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad), but if an actor is handed a shitty character, you gotta respect their effort. So I have to respect Jenna-Louise Coleman even as I conclude that Clara as a character so saccharine she makes Twilight Sparkle look like Jean Valjean.)

Ultimately, Clara is given no opportunity to express personality beyond what one would expect of a typical companion, and no opportunity to affect the plot except to die for purpose of furthering the Doctor’s personal growth. Yeah, great job distancing yourselves from those evil “Victorian” gender values, guys. Way to invest your main female character with depth and agency.

And let’s not pretend that the “one-word test” was actually a test of Clara’s worth. For one thing, restricting answers to single words is asinine. Here’s an example. Answer this question: “Does God exist?” To which your answer should be neither “yes” nor “no” nor “maybe”, but: “Which God?”

Secondly, of course, the fact that the word “pond” was the right one to get the Doctor interested has nothing to do with Clara’s cleverness or humanity. It’s a coincidence. In fact, there’s no reason for her character to have chosen that word. Think about it. Here’s Vastra’s challenge:

Vastra:Tell him all about the snow and what fresh danger you believe it presents, and above all, explain why he should help you. But do it in one word.

OK, bearing in mind that the Doctor doesn’t know about any pond, let’s examine how well the word fits.

“Tell him all about the snow…”

A pond has nothing to do with snow.

“…and what fresh danger you believe it presents”

And ponds don’t traditionally pose fresh dangers to humankind. Moving on.

“above all, explain why he should help you.”

If I need to point out why the word “pond” does not constitute a rationale for requesting assistance, I think I’ve profoundly failed in my attempt to raise the level of discourse about this franchise.

But then this episode is stuffed to the gills with those sorts of absurd contrivances for the sake of pandering to the continuity hounds. For instance, when Vastra says to the Doctor that “it always starts with the same two words”, she’s bizarrely wrong: it almost never starts with those two words – and it didn’t start with those words with any of the companions Steven Moffat wrote before! So why throw in that nonsense? Because it sets up a tiresome running gag. Then we get the revelation that the snow mind was the Great Intelligence. But surely the whole “create an apex predator adapted to Earth” thing falls under the Nestene Consciousness’s methodology? Why does the Doctor call the mystery of Clara “impossible” when he’s already had two companions who simultaneously existed in different versions (Fitz Kreiner and Samantha Jones), not to mention a supporting character (I. M. Foreman) and a villain (Scaroth, who is a canonical character!)?

In fairness, it may not be a consequence of a half-hearted attempt to evoke continuity to much as a general half-arsedness. Much of the dialogue and logic in the story bears the unmistakable imprint of a single butt-cheek. When Vastra says “There are two refreshments in your world the color of red wine. This is not red wine,” she seems to be implying that blood is a refreshment in Clara’s world, which…er, I’m pretty sure it isn’t? Or is Vastra drinking cherry juice? Why is she being so coy about saying she’s drinking cherry juice? Is she trying to intimidate Clara with her superhuman renal efficiency?

Then we have Walter Simeon’s line “Do you know why I’m telling you all this?”, when he’s only told them one thing – that a scary winter is coming. Or two entirely different characters – Simeon and Vastra – using the extremely Moffat-ish dialogue construction of “No X, not X, not ever.” Or the rather bizarre mistake of having the Doctor find Clara’s shawl when I’m pretty sure she tossed it to the street before running after the Doctor’s cab. And why do the snowmen have eyes? Why do they even have teeth? Couldn’t the snow just devour something by swarming around it piranha-style? Wouldn’t that be more efficient? And probably a lot creepier?

In fact, why was it that the very first thing we saw in the episode was the snowdrift of killer flakes? Aren’t you supposed to kind of, y'know, hold back on revealing your monsters? Isn’t that one of the cardinal rules of monster horror?

And why is Strax back? Doesn’t that sort of diminish the point of having him apparently die in his previous appearance – the point being that the Doctor’s ego caused him to get good people killed? And why is Strax an idiot? What soldier seriously suggests killing someone before interrogating them? What soldier doesn’t understand the basic principle of handling dangerous equipment with care? Sontarans are supposed to be meticulous and scientific in their approach. Strax instead appears to have been written to be the Doctor’s butt monkey.

Y'know, it’s just exhausting. I don’t spend my time coming up with reasons to hate on these sorts of stories. But how else am I supposed to respond when an episode seems so determined to fling crap at me?

Enough. Too much. Moving on to the second half of Series 7. Or as I like to call it, “Series 8, but with a different name to disguise the show’s budgetary constraints”.

OK. OK, look. I’m going to make a deal with you.

You see, I’ve just sat through…well, I don’t fully comprehend what the hell it was I actually just sat through. I remember the general shape of it, though. Like a Lovecraftian monstrosity, it was difficult to grasp its full majesty - though the shadow of its passing lurks in the back of my mind, gently inducing nightmares.

Because I literally cannot remember the last time I endured an hour of such vapid, thrill-free, saccharine crap, I…

…I’m sorry. I said this review would be done not long after watching. But the truth is that this episode made my feel like my brain was leaking out my arse, and I cannot simply review it. I have to exorciseit.

Every aspect of it. From the Tommy Wiseau dialogue to the cardboard characters to the - fucking - references to the brain-free plot to the ungodly nails-on-a-chalkboard abomination of the Doctor’s arc to the horrendous wasting of good acting talent…

This is, to quote The West Wing, “calling down the wrath from high atop the thing” time.

Make no mistake. For the past few months, I haven’t had much room in my head for Doctor Who.

But now, I have room for nothing else.

I’m not going to give you a review now. But tomorrow, I’m going to give you a written assassinationofThe Snowmen.

Merry Christmas.