To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who.
The Doctor, The Widow & The Wardrobe originally aired in 2011.
I don’t understand. Is this place real, or is it fairyland?
Fairyland? Oh, grow up, Lily.
Fairyland looks completely different.
– Lilly and the Doctor get their geography straightened out
The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe is, like A Christmas Carol before it, a rather wonderful idea. A Christmas Carol mashed up Doctor Who with one of the best-loved Christmas narratives of all time. The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe does something similar, substituting CS Lewis for Charles Dickens. It’s a fantastic idea, given that Doctor Who is the spiritual successor of that peculiarly British thread of childhood fantasy.
The only real problem with The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe is that it can’t quite stretch that good idea across an hour of television.
On the run again…
Filed under: Television | Tagged: art, bbc, Charles Dickens, christmas, Christmas Carol, CS Lewis, doctor, DoctorWho, fiction, Lily, literature, Moffat, russell t. davies, science fiction, The Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe, Wardrobe, Widow | 4 Comments »
