First broadcast 25 December 2012.

So: to Doctor Who‘s eighth Christmas special in a row, broadcast in between the two halves of its seventh 21st century season. It is a strange sort of an episode, boasting good elements and bad, bringing back old elements that both do and do not work, and introducing a promising new companion but then taking them off the board as soon as they are introduced. It has some outstanding stunt casting, but then arguably fails to properly use the top-tier talent it managed to get. There is enough good and bad here in equal measure that I am inclined to agree with anybody whether they liked it or hated it.

The Doctor (Matt Smith) has put himself into retirement in 1892 London. When angry snowmen with razor-sharp teeth begin marauding the streets one Christmas season, not even the ‘great detective’ Lady Vastra (Neve McIntosh) can lure him back into action. It is only the enterprising Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) who manages to get him involved in investigating the ominous Dr Simeon (Richard E. Grant).

Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is an irresistible lure to Doctor Who, which has always played well in a Victorian England setting. It has even directly inspired the series’ Christmas specials twice before – “A Christmas Carol” (2010) adapting the text, and “The Next Doctor” (2008) adopting the aesthetic. By and large the setting works here, while also playing enthusiastically with elements of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and P.T. Travers’ Mary Poppins. Doctor Who has always found success when playing with pastiche, and it goes hell for leather in this particular instalment.

The vibe is great, and the costuming and design absolutely superb, and the episode’s titular animated Snowmen are a wonderful sort of all-ages menace for the season. Sadly the nuts-and-bolts plot of it all is less effective, and writer/producer Steven Moffat makes the inexplicable choice of tying it all into the Great Intelligence – an alien menace last referenced in the series back in 1968. Making a populist Christmas special into a prequel to black and white TV serials that are not even complete for modern audiences to watch is – as the kids say – a flex, and one of fanboyish proportions. No one is ever going to accuse Moffat of ignoring the franchise’s history. Saul Metzstein directs it all with a storybook flair, but it just winds up feeling muddled.

The introduction of pre-established characters Vastra, Jenny (Catrin Stewart), and Strax (Dan Starkey) as a returning monster variant of 19th century detective fiction is a bizarre choice, and certainly the sort of thing for which Doctor Who was invented. It is gratifying that they return in multiple future episodes, because it is simply too weird a creative move to work with once. Some of the comedy choices with Strax are rather on the nose, but on the other hand it is Christmas, when Doctor Who is most comfortable being a little silly.

Richard E. Grant manages to be creepy and miserable without actually having a great deal in the script with which to work. It is even worse for Sir Ian McKellen, playing the voice of the Great Intelligence but feeling rather wasted. One supposes if the role was any greater he would have been less likely to accept it. The entire Great Intelligence element of the episode stumbles: not developed well enough to satisfy Troughton-era fans, and presented too obliquely to make sense for everybody else.

Jenna Coleman – here credited as Jenna-Louise – makes her second series appearance as Clara Oswald, here a bartender and nanny drawn into the Doctor’s affairs. She plays the role rather well, and the novelty of a companion from outside of modern-day Earth is tremendous. She immediately inspires a slightly different sort of Doctor out of Matt Smith, which is why it is quite a shame that she is unexpectedly killed off to prolong an ongoing mystery about the character’s identity. Of the three Claras that the audience get to see, 19th century Clara is by far the most entertaining and compelling one. It is sad we did not get more of her.

There is also a couple of new elements for the episode that help separate it from the first half of Season 7: a new TARDIS console room for one, and a refreshed set of opening titles. It is fun in fits and starts, and in a disposable fashion, but Smith’s best Christmas episode continues – by a mile – to be his first.