Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song (2015)
It’s Christmas Day on a remote human colony and the Doctor is hiding from Christmas Carols and Comedy Antlers. But when a crashed spaceship calls upon the Doctor for help, he finds himself recruited into River Song’s squad and hurled into a fast and frantic chase across the galaxy. King Hydroflax is furious, and his giant Robot bodyguard is out-of-control and coming for them all! Will Nardole survive? And when will River Song work out who the Doctor is? All will be revealed on a starliner full of galactic super-villains and a destination the Doctor has been avoiding for a very long time.
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To me, this movie is perfection.
Highly Overrated But Still Good
Fantastic!
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Well I suppose Christmas is a time for remembering absent friends and getting all nostalgic, so given that the Doc is currently companion-less, it must have seemed like a good idea to bring back someone from his past. However having largely used up that cache in the 50th anniversary special with guest appearances by a previous Doctor and Rose, from the recent past, Steven Moffat decided to revive the character of River Song. Unfortunately she is one of my least favourite characters of the last ten years and I didn't warm to her any the more in this seasonal special.Besides which, we get the becoming-traditional guest-appearances by modern day comedians, on this occasion Matt Lucas and Greg Davies but in truth they added little to the story and their parts could have been played by anyone.I found I just couldn't get involved with the plot, the situation the Doctor and Song found themselves in lacked any edge or sense of danger while the moral decision made to sacrifice the lives of the cruise-ship, all of whom are genocidal terrorists, still seems like a grey area morally. In its favour Capaldi was again excellent in the title part but it's strange writing this review a couple of days after I watched it that so little of the story is coming back to me.It had its odd moments of excitement and humour, but overall, this episode, when compared to Moffat and Gatiss's marvellous Christmas special for "Sherlock" failed to rise to the occasion.
Moffat really tries too hard sometimes. The first half hour is a comedy and then he tries to introduce some drama and deep mono-/ dialogues which really doesn't mix well. In my opinion, the depth of the story itself suffers a lot when he tries that and actual sci-fi elements get glossed over or ridiculous conclusions. Who turns more and more into a fi-soap and buries the science, which is very sad. I liked that the Doctor had a proper adventure for a change. And yes, that has been neglected a lot lately. It was also great to have a story to River's "goodbye" of Forest of the Dead. Capaldi and Kingston harmonize very well and it was fun watching them together. However, there's again some of Moffat's (by now) famous issues with continuity. In Forest of the Dead, River didn't know she was going to die. She also mention several times that the Doctor gave her HIS screwdriver on Darillium. Now, she knows it's the end and he gave her her own screwdriver as a Christmas present?! As others mentioned before, the way the Doctor defeats the robot-body is just lazy and stupid. I'm not one of the RTD vs SM folks, both of them had SOME great episodes. I think the better mark to hold any of them to would be Sydney Newman, Terry Nation and Robert Holmes.
As this Christmas special opens Matt Lucas asks The Doctor if he is 'the surgeon'; he replies 'close enough' not realising that the man is actually looking for a surgeon. He is taken to a flying saucer and is somewhat surprised to be met by River Song and equally surprised that she has no idea who he is. She take him to her husband; Hydroflax; a tyrant whose head is attached to a robotic body. She wants The Doctor to remove a diamond from her husband's brain and would be happy if the procedure killed him she claims to have married the diamond not the man. They remove his head but that doesn't kill him. Soon they are running with the head in a bag and the robotic body in pursuit. They escape to an intergalactic liner where the universe's least pleasant characters have assembled to bid for the diamond. Will The Doctor and River survive; will River realise that the man she is with is The Doctor and will they get to have dinner together?!The trailers for this seasonal outing didn't fill me with optimism; fortunately the episode proved to be much better than the trailer suggested. It was amusing to see The Doctor dropping hints as to his identity and River constantly failing to realise this is of course explained by the fact that she hasn't seen his current faced and believed that he had used all his regenerations. More laughs were provided by Hydroflax's head screaming threats from inside a bag. It isn't all laughs; the potential buyer of the diamond is one of the series most disturbing looking characters; I can imagine that the scene where he literally opened his head would have had some viewers looking away. The ending is bittersweet as it looks as if it will be the last time we see River Song. Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston put in fine performances as The Doctor and River and Matt Lucas provides an amusing cameo. Overall a solid episode that was much better than I'd expected.
This Christmas, Doctor Who gives us something we all need; a good, hearty laugh, and this terrific story, from Steven Moffat, about a diamond, and is a diamond.Every appearance of River, embodied by the terrific Alex Kingston always leads to a fu adventure, and this time, the Doctor and River certainly do not disappoint.This Christmas gift, is the first one the 12th Doctor's been without a companion, but, this time, River - who is the Doctor's wife, comes to a bittersweet ending, which beautifully closes the story of River, and I wish all viewers will find this gift a special one, indeed, this year. Merry Christmas.