DOCTOR WHO: THE DOCTOR, THE WIDOW AND THE WARDROBE (TV)
Summary
One in a series of fantasy/science fiction programs about the Doctor, a mysterious man who travels through time in a device shaped like an English police call box. The Doctor blows up a massive space vessel preparing to fire upon earth. He finds himself rushing through the exploding spaceship and manages to leap out, putting on a space suit during his descent into the earth's atmosphere. He lands in a field in England on Christmas Eve of 1938. He is found by a woman named Madge Arwell, passing by on her bicycle. The Doctor is alive but injured, as the suit is repairing his body. He also finds he has put the suit on backwards, so that he is essentially blind and Madge cannot see his face. At his direction she leads him to the TARDIS, although he cannot locate the key. Madge opens the TARDIS, but in its current configuration it is merely an ordinary police call box. He asks her to leave him in there, saying that if she ever needs him again, all she need do is "make a wish." Three years later, Madge's husband Reg is a bomber pilot for the RAF, and his plane is shot down over the English Channel a few days before Christmas. Madge receives a telegram informing her of his death, but cannot bring herself to tell her children, Lily and Cyril. As the kids pull apart a wishbone, Madge makes a wish, which gets the attention of the Doctor. On Christmas Eve Madge relocates herself and the kids to an old manor outside of London in order to avoid the bombings. The Doctor appears as the "caretaker" of the house. He shows them around, breathlessly pointing out the various "improvements" he's made such as moving chairs, a lemonade tap, and a spinning Christmas tree. Madge brings the Doctor aside and explains that she hasn't told the children about their father's death because she doesn't want them to associate Christmas with his passing. The Doctor surmises that Madge can't stand to see the children happy because she knows it will be that much worse when they learn the truth. The children notice an enormous present beneath the Christmas tree addressed to the family, and wonder what could be inside. That night, Lily sneaks upstairs to investigate some strange sounds, while Cyril sneaks downstairs to open the Christmas present early. Lily finds the Doctor doing repair work on the TARDIS, which he calls his "wardrobe." Cyril opens the present, now glowing with an unearthly light, and finds that it contains a portal to a snowy landscape filled with evergreen trees. He enters and that the trees produce hanging silver balls which resemble Christmas ornaments. He picks up one and it grows in size rapidly. He runs, but returns to see that something has "hatched" out of the ball, and he decides to follow its tracks. The Doctor and Lily soon realize that Cyril is gone and dive through the portal themselves. The Doctor explains that the present was a "dimensional portal thingy" that was not to be opened until Christmas. They try to find Cyril, following his trail. They notice that whatever Cyril is following, its footprints indicate that it appears to be growing larger. The Doctor points out the silver balls to Lily; he calls the trees "naturally occurring Christmas trees" and thought that visiting this place would be a fun Christmas trip. However, he and Lily hear ominous whispering in the air, and the Doctor says that the trees are somehow communicating with each other. Madge looks for her children in the house, and eventually walks through the portal herself. Meanwhile, Cyril discovers a huge tower in the middle of the forest and slowly goes in. He finds what appears to be a huge wooden statue of a king seated upon a throne in the tower's bottom floor. As he explores the tower, the wooden king comes to life, unnoticed by Cyril. Madge is stopped by a large machine which lands before her, and several soldiers in futuristic armor come out to meet her, pointing their guns at her. They try to detect if she is armed or not, and a confused Madge starts crying. At the top of the tower, Cyril discovers a wooden queen figure standing behind a throne and holding a circlet. She too awakens as Cyril looks out at the landscape. The Doctor and Lily discover the tower and find the wooden king at the bottom. The Doctor immediately recognizes the king as being alive, and furthermore determines that the tower is actually a number of trees which grew together into the shape of a building. He deduces that they did this as some sort of trap to lure people into it, but he cannot figure out why. The soldiers determine that Madge is unarmed and defenseless and drop their guns to stop her from crying. They inform her that she is on another planet in the year 5345. Madge surprises them by drawing a pistol and holding them at gunpoint, telling them that she is looking for her children and is not afraid to fire upon them. The wooden queen approaches Cyril with the circlet, now glowing. The Doctor and Lily try to get to Cyril, stymied by the fact that the Doctor's sonic screwdriver is ineffective against wood. Lily looks out the window and notices shining globes of light emerging from the trees. The Doctor explains that they are manifestations of "pure life force," the essence and consciousness of the trees. The wooden queen places the circlet on Cyril's head and the wooden king on the ground floor rises and begins plodding up the stairs. Meanwhile, Madge ties up the two male soldiers on their mechanical platform-vehicle and tries to learn about its operation from the one female soldier. The female soldier offers to scan the forest for life-forms to detect her children. The captain informs Madge that the planet's trees are going to be melted down for battery fuel using a series of satellites to project a massive storm of acid rain. If she and her children don't leave the planet in five minutes, they too will be melted by the acid. Lily and the Doctor find Cyril, sitting unconscious on the throne with the wooden queen at his side. Lily sees the life force going out of the tree, and the Doctor explains that they are undergoing a mass exodus from the forest. The wooden king and queen approach them and the Doctor is powerless to fend them off. However, he realizes that they are not hostile and only wish to communicate. Cyril awakens and say he can hear the trees speaking to him, the Doctor determines that the circlet somehow attunes Cyril to the life force of the trees. The soldiers detect the Doctor and the kids, and they establish an audio link, allowing Madge to hear them. The ship issues a warning about the impending acid rain and the soldiers are beamed back into orbit. Cyril announces that the trees are evacuating to avoid "the rain that burns." Lily asks why the life force doesn't simply float up into the sky and the Doctor explains that they require a living creature to act as a medium for their travel. He realizes that this explains the purpose of constructing the tower in the first place: to attract a human being to use as a "vessel" for their escape. The wooden queen speaks directly through Cyril, saying that he is too "weak" to contain the forest within him. The Doctor volunteers himself as a replacement but they call him "weak" as well. He removes the circlet from Cyril's head, but it burns his hand. However, Lily can wear it with no difficulty; the wooden queen calls her "strong, but young." At this point, the acid rain starts to fall. Madge hears the Doctor tell the children that the tower cannot protect them from the acid rain for long. Cyril insists on waiting for Madge to arrive before they leave. Madge clumsily operates the huge machine and gets close to the tower before it topples over. She rushes inside and reunites with the Doctor and her children. The wooden king and queen place the circlet on Madge's head and the life force of the forest is drawn into her body. The Doctor realizes that "strong" refers to femininity as a force that gives life, i.e. the "strength" of motherhood. Once the entire forest's life force is within Madge, the top of the tower blasts off into space, acting as what the Doctor calls a "mother ship." The ship enters the Time Vortex, and the wooden queen tells the Doctor that the ship is guided by Madge's thoughts. The Doctor tells her that she must think of home and her memories thereof to help guide the ship. As she does so, the ship's screen shows her recalling memories of Reg, of how they met and their life with the children. However, the memories take a dark turn when she starts to think about Reg being shot down. She accidentally reveals the truth about Reg's death to the children, who are frozen in shock and grief. Meanwhile in the past, Reg's plane is going down when he sees a bright light manifest in front of him. The Doctor, Madge, and the children awaken to find the ship has landed in the manor's front yard on Christmas morning. The wooden king and queen have reverted to inanimate wood, and the Doctor explains that the life force of the forest is now out among the stars, grateful to Madge for her help. Madge sits the children down and starts to tell them about their father's death, but the Doctor brings her outside for a surprise: her memories and love for Reg reached into the past and opened the Time Vortex to his plane, thus allowing it to land safely in the yard along with them. Reg emerges from the plane, confused but unhurt and overjoyed to be reunited with his family, as are they. The Arwell family spends Christmas together and the Doctor prepares to take off in the TARDIS. Madge learns that the Doctor was the "spaceman" she encountered three years ago, and that his friends believe that he is dead. She asks him to reveal himself to his friends, not wanting them to think he is dead on Christmas. He agrees and disappears in the TARDIS, re-emerging at Amy and Rory's doorstep. Amy is at first upset, as from her perspective he has been gone for two years. However, she quickly forgives him and she and Rory invite him in for Christmas dinner.
Details
- NETWORK: BBC
- DATE: December 25, 2011
- RUNNING TIME: 0:58:28
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 109636
- GENRE: Drama, fantasy/science fiction
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama, fantasy/science fiction; Time travel
- SERIES RUN: BBC - TV series, 1963-1989, 2005-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Steven Moffat … Executive Producer, Writer
- Piers Wenger … Executive Producer
- Caroline Skinner … Executive Producer
- Marcus Wilson … Producer
- Denise Paul … Associate Producer
- Diana Barton … Line Producer
- Farren Blackburn … Director
- Murray Gold … Music by
- Jeremy Holland-Smith … Conductor
- Ron Grainer … Theme Music by
- BBC National Orchestra of Wales, The … Symphony Orchestra
- Matt Smith … Cast, The Doctor
- Karen Gillan … Cast, Amy Pond
- Arthur Darvill … Cast, Rory Williams
- Claire Skinner … Cast, Madge Arwell
- Maurice Cole … Cast, Cyril Arwell
- Holly Earl … Cast, Lily Arwell
- Alexander Armstrong … Cast, Reg Arwell
- Sam Stockman … Cast, Co-Pilot
- Bill Bailey … Cast, Droxil
- Paul Bazely … Cast, Ven-Garr
- Arabella Weir … Cast, Billis
- Spencer Wilding … Cast, Wooden King
- Paul Kasey … Cast, Wooden Queen