Doctor Who Christmas Special Review

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Alex Kingston returns in this year’s Christmas Special for her first encounter with the Twelfth Doctor.

By Scott Collura

Warning: Full spoilers below.

After the heavy ninth season of Doctor Who which just came to its conclusion a couple of weeks back, Steven Moffat’s “The Husbands of River Song” is a nice, fun, wacky change of pace that still manages to touch that sweet spot of emotional resonance that the Twelfth Doctor has done so well this year.

An annual tradition since the launch of modern Doctor Who in 2005, the Christmas Specials air on December 25 (in the UK anyway) and are for some fans as essential to the holiday season as eggnog and unwrapping presents. And Christmas crackers (we Americans know about those because of Doctor Who)!

Alex Kingston’s River Song returns to the Doctor’s life in this outing, which is in fact her first encounter with Peter Capaldi’s Twelve. I can’t keep River Song’s timeline straight, and I guess perhaps that’s one of the points to the character, though it’s clear that this River -- who has no idea who this version of the Doctor is at first -- is at a similar disadvantage to where the Doctor found himself when he first met her way back when (and where, from his perspective, she knew him but he didn’t know her).

The pair run into each other when the Doctor is mistaken for a surgeon -- big difference! -- and called upon to help River remove the head of her new husband, King Hydroflax (Greg Davies). Actually, it’s more complicated than that as there’s another husband/assistant (Phillip Rhys), a sycophant (Matt Lucas from Little Britain), and a Baymax-like robot body that utilizes all of the above as revolving heads as it chases down the Doctor and River. (She’s out to sell a precious jewel that happens to be embedded in the hated Hydroflax’s head, you see.) That River doesn’t care if Hydroflax survives the removal of said jewel should perhaps not be too carefully considered here.

Capaldi and Kingston easily pick up where River and the Doctor last left off, bringing great comedic chemistry to the pair’s adventures. And the Doctor’s status as one of River’s husbands is not ignored, as Capaldi has a lot of fun moaning and groaning about his wife’s new men. There’s a great bit where River and the Doctor try to one-up each other about their former loves, until they both land on Cleopatra, which apparently is a draw.

Of course, what’s happened by the end of this episode is the story set up in River’s first appearance (way back in the David Tennant era) has come (seemingly) full circle. In “Forest of the Dead,” Tennant’s Tenth Doctor used River’s sonic screwdriver to upload her mind to a computer after she died. Ten spoke of his future self then -- “Why? Why would I give her my screwdriver?” -- and now Twelve, with the hindsight of having already lived through these moments, is the future version of the Doctor who actually gives River the sonic.

Aside from filling in the loop of that particular thread from an episode that aired way back in 2008, it also very cleverly ties into where the Doctor is now emotionally and what he has just dealt with in Season 9 with the loss of Clara. Whereas he fought against all hope to save Clara from death, here there seems to be an acceptance that even he must give into these things. It’s been said before that River and the Doctor spent their last night together at the Singing Towers of Darillium, and here they are, doing just that, in the very beautiful coda to this episode. River fears this is the case, but the Doctor knows it must be. He may be sad, driven to tears even, but he accepts that this is how it shall be.

And while he gives her the sonic, which grants -- or granted -- the Tenth Doctor an out, of a sort, in “Forest of the Dead,” the bottom line is that River did die. And Clara will die. All he’s done is bought both of them… some time.

Some notes:

• And hey, 24 years isn’t bad when you think about it.
• Carol singers will be criticized!
• Apparently Stephen Fry is one of the titular husbands of River.
• A sonic trowel?

The Verdict

After the serious, weighty tone and themes of most of Season 9, "The Husbands of River Song" is a welcome diversion into zany comedy. Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston have instant chemistry, and while the episode does get pretty silly at times, it brings it all full circle in the end with a subtle return to the lessons the Doctor learned at the end of the Clara story -- a lesson that, as it turns out, helps to inform River’s story as well.

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