When it comes to Christmas specials Doctor Who fans are often caught in the trap of knowledge.  While fans understand inherently that a program tailored just for fans is not and cannot be sustainable in the long term, fans also don't want the program to be so broad that it loses it's niche appeal. 

This is doubly true at Christmas time where Doctor Who has held the prestige spot on the BBC's Christmas day schedule for a few years now.  The delicate needle that must be threaded, at least for fans, makes for hit or miss evaluations as to story and overall importance to the larger mythos of the show.  One need look no further than The Runaway Bride as evidence of this.

All of which brings us to this years outing.  It should be stated clearly here that there is nothing inherently bad about The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe.  Performance by one and all was uniformly fine.  Matt Smith was at his fizzy best but the sense of scale was missing this time around, kind of like The Next Doctor in that respect.  Still we shouldn't judge too harshly.  It's the last new Who for 9 months we figure so if history is our guide we'll probably be more kindly disposed to The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe come late spring or early summer when anticipation will be mounting yet again. 

For the sake of completeness here's our revised list ranking the Christmas specials:

• #9 – Voyage of the Damned
• #8 – The Feast of Steven
• #7 – The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe
• #6 – The Next Doctor
• #5 – The Runaway Bride
• #4 – The End of Time Pt I
• #3 – The Unquiet Dead
• #2 – A Christmas Carol
• #1 – The Christmas Invasion

Images and caps for The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe are now online.  BTW even though the view here at THT Towers is that "Doctor Who Confidential" had served it's purpose and run it's course, didn't you miss it too?

The Sixth Season Discs are arrived hither, tither, and especially yon.  The much-talked about discs extra, and a first in Doctor Who as far as we know, is the inclusion of a set of mini-episodes, and while certainly enjoyable, put us here at the Tour in a bit of a quandary.  We're rather disciplined here at THT Worldwide in that everything here on the site comes out of televised Doctor Who in one way or another, that's why there aren't Torchwood or SJA caps (which don't have the Doctor in them).   But the set of five "Night and the Doctor" minisodes are a different kettle of fish.

Of the five, "Up All Night" reads and feels like an extended or deleted scene from Closing Time and doesn't feature the regular cast at all, and as such is the most easily dismissed.

Good Night and Bad Night primarily feature Matt Smith and Karen Gillan and, importantly in the case of Good Night, has a conversation between the Doctor and Amy that many fans wish had occurred during the season. 

First Night and Last Night feature the kind of timey-wimey River-centeredness we as fans have come to expect.  These two stories, set somewhere between A Good Man Goes to War and The Wedding of River Song, tie together as one story more fully but still amounts to a trifle that gives larger context to the mentioned but unseen adventures between the Doctor and River.

Almost entirely set within the Tardis, it seems likely the entirety of these minisodes we're shot over the course of a day tops, but it's nice to know the cast and crew are going that extra light year or two for the fans, who after all are going to be buying the set to begin with.

Caps for each of these minisodes have now been posted.

Never let it be said that when Steven Moffat decides to throw resources behind a story it certainly shows.  Imagination, and the expenditure it often takes, were all over the screen in The Wedding of River Song.  To wrap up a story whose elements began in 2008 had to be, by definition, a daunting task.  And yet, for as much of a puzzle-box structure that Moffat seems to bring to his style of Doctor Who, in the end most of the answers provided in the story, save for the inclusion of the Tesselator, were relatively straightforward and easily guessed. 

It probably amuses The Moff to see so many fans contorting themselves to make even the most trivial inclusion relevant, and yet there's a bit of JN-T in Moffat as well.  For the second straight year his season ending story has been a self-referential continuity free-for-all, but it's been done in such a throwaway manner to remain palatable for the general public.  Still despite best efforts to make the story feel epic as happened in The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, The Wedding of River Song felt much more constrained, almost personal, and therein lies the potential for a trap.

Here at THT Omninational we felt oddly detached for the goings on and would've preferred a two-episode wrap up instead of the episode and a fraction we got, and hence it scored somewhat low in the 2011 Dynamic Ratings Table.

Know what though?  That's more than good enough as the forecast to more nu-Who looks awfully, awfully dry for the foreseeable future.

Images and caps for The Wedding of River Song are now online.