The Snowmen (TV story)

The Snowmen was the 2012 Christmas special. It reintroduced Clara, who first appeared in Asylum of the Daleks, albeit under the name 'Oswin', as well as Vastra, Strax and Jenny. The Doctor also encounters the Great Intelligence for the first time since Black and White, when he encountered them in his seventh incarnation.

Synopsis
After the deaths of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, the Doctor retires to Victorian England with Strax, Jenny Flint, and Vastra. The Doctor meets Clara, a young governess, but at the same time, a sinister plot is unfolding. A series of snowmen are appearing around London and they are growing in size and power. All they want is some human DNA to take over the world, and a drowned governess is just what they need........

Plot
It is 1842. Children are playing outside. Standing away from the others is a little boy building a snowman. A woman asks him if he'd like to play with the other children. He says that he doesn't need anyone else. The woman tells a man that he's always so alone, and that it's unhealthy. As they leave, he says that he doesn't want to talk to them because they are silly. To his surprise, the snowman he is building repeats this. He runs away as it tells him not to believe anyone else. He starts to walk back to it and it tells him that it can help him. He asks it how.

50 years later, Walter Simeon is overseeing men as they carefully scrape snow from snowmen into glass jars. The jars are loaded into a carriage where they are driven to Walter Simeon's Institute.

Doctor Simeon carries one of the jars up to a large crystal ball filled with snow. He tells it that the last of the arrivals have been sampled. The globe says that the swarm is approaching, and that as humanity celebrates, it will end. He asks if the final piece is ready, and Doctor Simeon says it's in hand. The globe asks how he will keep his secrets from getting out of the men who helped him. Doctor Simeon says it's been taken care of. He says he promised to feed them.

Back at the work site, one of the men says that he doesn't see any food. Doctor Simeon says he does, and as the men look around, the snowmen rise up and devour them.

At an inn called The Rose & Crown, a barmaid walks outside with a tray. She is surprised to see a snowman standing there that wasn't there before. She asks the Eleventh Doctor, who is walking past, if he built it. The Doctor says he didn't, and walks away, but stops when she tells him that it just appeared out of nowhere. He walks back and walks around the snowman, inspecting it. He says he wonders if the snow can remember how to build a snowman, which the maid thinks is silly. She makes the Doctor smile. He asks her what her name is. She says it is Clara, which he says is a nice name. He walks away, leaving her somewhat annoyed in the alley with the snowman. As she sees him drive away, she runs after him.

The Doctor and Strax intend to use a memory worm to remove Clara's memory. The Doctor and Clara are attacked by snowmen. The Doctor tells Clara to think of the snowmen melting, and as she does, the snowmen splatter into water.

Clara asks if it is going to happen again, The Doctor replies that if it does she'll know what to do. Clara finishes his sentence, "unless she forgets". The Doctor then decides not to wipe her memory but warns her not to follow him and to forget about him. He sends her away in Strax's carriage but Clara sneaks off without Strax and The Doctor. Noticing and following the Doctor leads her to a hidden staircase in the sky reaching to the clouds. Clara then sees the TARDIS. Clara knocks on the door and hid at the side of the TARDIS just as the Doctor pops his head out saying "hello?" As the Doctor follows the sides of the TARDIS, Clara sneaks down the stairs. The Doctor hears her footsteps. The Doctor picks up a piece of cloth that dropped from Clara's dress as she sneaks away which he then smells.

to be finished

Cast

 * The Doctor - Matt Smith
 * Clara - Jenna-Louise Coleman
 * Captain Latimer - Tom Ward
 * Dr Simeon - Richard E Grant
 * Jenny - Catrin Stewart
 * Madame Vastra - Neve McIntosh
 * Strax - Dan Starkey
 * Digby - Joseph Darcey-Alden
 * Francesca - Ellie Darcey-Alden
 * Alice - Liz White
 * Uncle Josh - Jim Conway
 * Walter - Cameron Strefford
 * Walter's Mother - Annabelle Dowler
 * Bob Chilcott - Ben Addis
 * Lead Workman - Daniel Hyde
 * Clara's Friend - Sophie Miller-Sheen
 * Voice of the Great Intelligence - Ian McKellen
 * Voice of the Ice Governess - Juliet Cadzow

Cultural references

 * Simeon suggests that Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on Madame Vastra.

Communications technology

 * Vastra has a telephone that can call the phone in the Doctor's TARDIS.

The Doctor

 * The Doctor pretends to be Sherlock Holmes.
 * The Doctor has kept Amy Pond's reading glasses and seems to be using them to read.

Locations

 * The Doctor uses a tin with a map of the London Underground on it.

TARDIS

 * Upon first entering the Doctor's TARDIS, Clara describes it as "smaller on the outside" (which the Doctor describes as a first), and then asks if it has a kitchen (another first).
 * The TARDIS exterior retains its banged-up appearance from the end of The Angels Take Manhattan (TV story).
 * The new interior blends the white-walled motif of the 1963-era room with the darker lighting of the modern series. There are relatively few roundels, all of the up near the ceiling, while a hexagonal pattern predominates on the walls.
 * In the new interior design, above the Time rotor are two concentric rings of plaques, each bearing a different symbol in Gallifreyan writing; these rings counter-rotate when the TARDIS is activated, in much the way the Time rotor itself rotated in the earliest years of the original show. The archway leading to the main doors also has inscriptions in Gallifreyan.
 * The Time rotor itself returns to the multiple-vertical-rods motif, now glowing a vivid green, a stark contrast to the entirely transparent, blown-glass design of the previous model.
 * The console design now harkens back to the 1963-1982 console designs, with cleanly laid-out, but still somewhat mechanical-looking control levers and buttons.
 * The sound effects while inside the TARDIS also hearken back more to the 70s and 80s than to the New Series to date.

Story notes

 * This episode is noteworthy for three big changes. The first of which is a new companion, Clara. The second of these is the change to the TARDIS interior and the final change is a update to the title sequence - which now includes the Doctor's face - the first to do so since Survival in 1989. To go along with the new titles, a new variation of the theme tune was used.

Ratings
to be added

Filming locations
to be added

Continuity

 * Clara mentions baking Soufflés as Oswin did in TV: Asylum of the Daleks.
 * Strax still has confusion over the difference between human females and human males as he did in PROSE: Devil in the Smoke.
 * The Great Intelligence has previously appeared in TV: The Abominable Snowmen, TV: The Web of Fear, HOMEVID: Downtime, and PROSE: Millennial Rites.
 * The Doctor uses Amy Pond's reading glasses which she last wore in TV: The Angels Take Manhattan.

Home video releases
to be added