Excellent but underrated film

best movie i've ever seen.

As Good As It Gets

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I'm going to be honest. Part 1 of Season 7 had me worried. I don't know what it was, but the plot-lines just......lacked. Despite the critical acclaim of Asylum of Daleks I found myself hating that episode. It felt completely off. The fact that the Ponds were still around after the somewhat closure that was given to them last season made it just...odd. I did not like the idea of the Doctor's companions only occasionally traveling with him, to the point where I wasn't very distraught by their departure. Now, I'm mystified by how Doctor Who can have so many cast changes, with viewers ALWAYS knowing that when they start loving a certain character, rather it's that Doctor (well, EVERYBODY loves the Doctor) or his companion, there's that troubling fact that you know they won't be around forever. And yet it stays completely amazing, something many TV shows likely can't pull off. I felt this episode of Doctor Who was very well crafted, fitting for Christmas spirit, as well as raising my spirit for Doctor Who after the disappointing part 1 of Season 7.

I won't lie by saying i wasn't worried because i was, last years Christmas special was abysmal. So i had my doubts. But in the end they were put to rest. With beautiful imagery and scenes, this episode was surprisingly really good. The plot felt a bit weak for me at first but as time went on i got what was happening and loved how once again Moffat used a small detail to make a huge difference (e.g. the memory worm or the fact that the snow 'mirrors'). Speaking of which the 'Great Intelligence' (an old enemy revived for the new series) was rather menacing as the Snowmen with teeth. There was great humour thanks to the likes of Vashtra, Jenny and Strax, one of my personal favourite lines being 'Hello, i'm a lizard woman from the dawn of time and this is my wife', added with Strax' obsession with grenades (how very Sontaran). Then to top it off, Clara, the new companion. I knew she was going to have something to do with Oswin Oswald and as soon as she asked the Doctor if the TARDIS had a kitchen, my suspicions were answered. this topped off the episode and has made me very excited for the next instalment of the series. How can a woman die twice but still be alive (yes Clara dies but i won't explain how), but somehow she's alive again, as was the same with Oswin. How is this possible? I hope we find out soon because i'm full of excitement. You know when you get a feeling that something's going to be really good. I got that.

I'm going to be honest... very few episodes of Doctor Who have ever made much sense to me. The show didn't make a lick of sense when I was a kid back in the 70s and it's no more intelligible now that I'm middle-aged. What I always enjoyed, though, was the sense of fun, the creativity and the scary monsters, three factors that kept me watching despite often not having a scooby what was going on.This Christmas special does feature the occasional fun moment, but the story is dull, the usually reliable Richard E. Grant puts in a forgettable performance, Ian McKellen is completely wasted, the creatures are weak (the crappy CGI ice woman was extremely disappointing and the titular snowmen did very little to send a chill up the spine), and the episode is even more impossible to follow than usual. Thank heavens for the presence of the rather lovely Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara, who managed to hold my interest despite me not having the foggiest what was going on.

For the 2010 Christmas special, Doctor Who managed to pull off a really good mix of festive traditions, sentiment and entertainment with its version of A Christmas Carol. It pulled it off so well that in 2011 they had another shot at it with a Narnia-inspired story involving a dead pilot and his grieving family among a lot of other nonsense – it was silly and poor, failing to do anything the previous special had done but on the plus side it seemed to have knocked the specials off the track of going for the sentimental and cloying aspect. As a result we get this much more enjoyable episode where the Christmas tone means snowmen monsters and big name guests as usual, but more importantly it is roundly entertaining, limits sentiment and links to the main series (albeit in a way that I would prefer it hadn't).The plot sees "memory snow" creating snowmen monsters, threatening Victorian London and, by extension, the world. This produces moments that are satisfyingly frightening as we have ice monsters made from dead tutors and friendly looking snowmen with big teeth and menacing looks – all while Ian McKellen's voice gives the brains behind the operation a sense of gravitas and menace. As the show should do, this will frighten younger children but it balances it well by having the usual sense of comedy and silliness but, not as usual, it manages to keep it in check so that it is not excessive or annoying in the most part. Even the multi-species support team (which seemed like they would be stupid in the trailer/minisode) managed to work by virtue of them being used well as characters (either to be serious or to provide decent laughs); although as usual as this is new-Who, we have to have gay characters in there like it is some sort of running in-joke, which I guess it more or less is by now.One of the main attractions for me was going to be the introduction of the new assistant, although actually a reintroduction since we had already seen her as a ghost memory trapped inside a Dalek. This offered interest to me as I hoped that she would simply be the same character earlier in the same timeline, meaning that her end was known which would mean she would ultimately be a tragic figure who would not have a big "end of the world" ending to her arch. Of course sadly this isn't the case and the epilogue and trailer suggests she will have cosmic meaning and importance, which doesn't appeal but we'll see what they do with it. As a character Clara doesn't ever threaten to break the mould either since she is yet another attractive perky girl with big wide eyes and a good line in spunky flirting – enjoyable and produces easy chemistry just like all superficial and pretty flirts do, but again we'll have to see what she does when more is asked of the character than just making a flirty and fun intro or reintro, but for now I quite enjoyed Coleman. Smith also does good work here as the material doesn't overload him with any extreme but keeps the balance even. McKellen and Grant are good with very limited time while the effects are reasonably good for the budget.Overall this is a solidly enjoyable special that really benefits from moving away from the cloying sentimentality of the last special and just focusing on thrills, fun and the ongoing series (or, in this case, season, since we are in the middle of one). It is still a Christmas special and it does still have weaker moments but generally it serves a wide audience pretty well and I enjoyed it for focusing on its core strengths rather than losing the plot like it did last Christmas.