Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 822: The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe
Dear Diary,
Although I’ve never been one for actively seeking out spoilers, there always used to be a little pang of excitement when a photo from filming crossed my path. Oh, it opened up a whole world of possibilities! What was that? And who was she? And why did they have that prop, or that bit of costume? I used to enjoy musing on all the different explanations, and then discovering that I was completely wrong by the time the episode actually made it to the screen. I think the fun in that has been entirely sucked out of the filming, these days, by a number of people who seem to think it’s their mission to gather as much information as possible, and share it far and wide for some kind of status, but that’s a gripe for another time and another place.
But that excitement meant that when I moved to Wales, one of the first things I was desperate to do was to go and see Doctor Who being made. How brilliant must that be? Only problem was that they weren’t filming at that point, because it was between seasons, and the schedule being shifted around meant that they wouldn’t be out and about for a while yet. I carried on, took a job designing people’s kitchens, and put Doctor Who on the back burner. And then the call came. one day, just as I was leaving off work, I had a message to say that Who was setting up for filming just round the corner, and that Matt Smith was due to be there. Oh, I ran to the location, and watched for a few hours as a seemingly drunk Doctor was helped back towards a police box which wasn’t his TARDIS. I’ve seen a few more bits of filming since then (though, it has to be said that the novelty has largely worn off now I’ve been here a few years. I wandered past filming for Deep Breath twice on my walk to Tesco last spring and didn’t pause for more than a cursory glance on either occasion), but this particular night was special, because I’d never been so close to the people making actual brand new episodes of Doctor Who.
Oh, it was a long few months to Christmas, but we settled down to watch this episode (my first Christmas away from home and my own family, spending it instead with my then-partner’s parents), filled with a huge sense of excitement… and was instead presented with this episode. Dear lord, it was just a horrible, horrible hour. I’ve barely cast this one a second thought since transmission (indeed, when I saw a clip of it recently as part of a montage, I couldn’t place what on Earth it was from until it was pointed out to me), and so I’ve not exactly been relishing the thought of watching it for this marathon. As I seem to have said a lot during Series Six, though, I’ve been re-evaluating my previous opinions on lots of stories, and this one perhaps isn’t immune to a bit of a change…
…On the other hand, perhaps it is. Oh, I tried, readers! I promise you I did. I went for my usual trick, there, of writing the opening to this entry while the blu-ray loaded up, and had it safe in my head that I’d be able to come back to this one and say how I’d been filled with festive spirit by how marvellous the episode was, and how I’d been a fool all those years ago to not enjoy such a masterpiece of Doctor Who. But no, sorry. For a pretty large chunk, I completely zoned out and wasn’t even paying attention. I could see the episode playing out on the screen, and I could even sort of hear it, but my mind was somewhere else entirely. When I came round, the mum was flying the Crystal Maze through the Time Vortex. Or something.
For the first time in almost two-and-a-half years of writing The 50 Year Diary, I turned off after the episode, and thought clearly ‘that’s a 1/10’. I’ve had emails complaining about the fact that I’ve never given a 1/10! I sat down, prepared for it and… well, I simply couldn’t do it! Yes, I’ve disliked this one. No, I doubt I’ll be attempting to watch it again at any point in the next decade. And yet… it’s still Doctor Who, and is Doctor Who ever a 1/10 programme? Really?
For all that I’ve not enjoyed the story on the whole, and actively stopped bothering to watch for a while, there’s still things in my nots that I have enjoyed! Some great lines for the Doctor about the door developing faults, and the Doctor not being who they were expecting. Some amusing asides from the crew harvesting the trees. The frankly gorgeous shot of the TARDIS stood in the attic, which might be one of the nicest frames of Doctor Who ever…
So there we have it. I’d quite happily continue to say that The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe is my least favourite episode of Doctor Who. I don’t plan to give it a whirl again if I can avoid it. And yet, still, Doctor Who always has something to redeem it. With that in mind…
