July 29: "The Husbands of River Song"

Stuart Manning's poster for "The Husbands of
River Song" (from Design by Stuart Manning)

For the first time since, ooh, "The Runaway Bride", we get a Christmas special that's designed to be a comedy.  There's a sense that, after saying goodbye to Clara, the show wants to shift gears and do a nice, fun romp this time around.  And, on the whole, it largely works.  That's not to say it's perfect, mind, and parts of this are in fact deeply silly.  But what makes this work is the underlying tone of, "Let's just have a laugh", which means that this might be one of the funnier stories Steven Moffat has written for the show.

The opening stuff, with the TARDIS in a redressed Trap Street set, might actually be the weakest moments, but this is quickly addressed with the introduction of River Song.  I know some people aren't fond of her character, but I don't mind, and this story makes a virtue of her, showing us how she behaves when the Doctor isn't around.  And the answer isn't as virtuous as the Doctor might expect -- we get lots of back and forth between River and the guy she doesn't realize is the Doctor (since she doesn't know he got a new set of regenerations) as she tells him to kill King Hydroflax: "Is this what you're like when I'm not [around]?  ...  You're talking about murdering someone," the Doctor protests.  "No, I'm not," River replies cheerily, "I'm actually murdering someone.  Cheer up!  Get a saw, I'll kill the lights, you kill the patient."  The chemistry between Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston is really quite good, and even while it's perhaps slightly uncomfortable to see River so morally ambiguous (she must put up more of a front while the Doctor's around), it's still great fun.  And interestingly, the Doctor largely just rolls with this, even if he disapproves -- it's like he just wants to see where this goes.

The rest of the guest cast aren't exactly slouching; Greg Davies seems like he's having a good time ranting as King Hydroflax, even though he was probably rather uncomfortable with his head stuck through tables and such (and apparently his head is so heavy it's distorting the TARDIS telepathic circuits -- aka the foam rubber is rather obvious here), while Matt Lucas does a cheery job as Nardole, who always seems to realize what's going on just a bit too late.  (His best moment is probably with the Doctor, starting to wail like a modern-day Stan Laurel in Hydroflax's chamber after the Doctor says to him, "This might be an alarming question in the circumstance, but you really do think I'm a surgeon, don't you?")  And Phillip Rhys walks just the right side of the slightly dim pretty boy line as Ramone, another of River's husbands.  Really, it's only the subplot of the robot who keeps cutting people's heads off to upload them that threatens to tip this over into pure silliness, but even that is handled fairly well -- although the bits with Nardole in the robot (like "It's really very whiffy down there") are the moments that threaten to unbalance everything.  Still, this is a cast clearly enjoying themselves.

Flemming takes the Doctor and River to the onboard restaurant.
("The Husbands of River Song") ©BBC

But no, it's Capaldi and Kingston who steal the show -- from Kingston's revelation that she's frequently borrowed "Damsel"'s TARDIS without his knowing to Capaldi's deliberately overacted reaction to entering the TARDIS for the "first" time to the two of them trying desperately how to figure out how to explain to the buyers of the Helassi Androvar diamond that said diamond is lodged inside the disembodied head of the king they worship, they're having so much fun that we do too.  And even when things get a bit more serious (as when River explains that the Doctor doesn't love her and isn't around to save her), they quickly shift back into a lighter tone:

DOCTOR: Hello, sweetie.
RIVER: (after a moment) You are so doing those roots.
DOCTOR: What, the roots of the sunset?
RIVER: Don't you dare.
DOCTOR: I'll have to check with the stars themselves.
RIVER: Oh, shut up. I was just keeping them talking till it kicks off.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Husbands of River Song)

It's nice to see River be the hero of her own story, with the Doctor relegated to companion status for most of this, and even when she learns that this is the Doctor she's still largely the one calling the shots ("I'm an archaeologist from the future.  I dug you up").  But ultimately this is a story designed to be nothing more than a romp (the script even goes to pains to say that literally everyone aboard the ship Harmony and Redemption is a killer of some sort, so that we won't feel bad when they die in the crash), purposefully shallow and something to smile at without too much trouble, and at that it largely succeeds.  Which is why it's a bit odd how the story suddenly takes a hard left in the last 10 minutes or so into a melancholy drama, as we see that the Doctor and River have finally made it to Darillium, where we learned way back in "Forest of the Dead" was the last time River saw the Doctor before she died.  It's a bittersweet moment, and it's handled deftly, but it doesn't really match the previous 45 minutes in content or tone.  But I think that's OK; it's a chance to give River's story some closure (even if it seemed we'd already done that in "The Name of the Doctor"), and the cheeky reveal that a night on Darillium lasts 24 years lessens the sting a bit.

So no, it's not a perfect episode, and depending on how you feel about River Song her inclusion in a pretty shallow story might not make this your cup of tea, but I don't mind it.  It's not the best Christmas special ever, but it might be the jolliest.

And that brings us to the end of series 9, which really has been an impressively strong run for the show; I'd wager this is the best run of stories since Matt Smith's debut in series 5.  I noted at the end of series 8 that, while I generally enjoyed that run, I sometimes felt you had to work a little harder at it, even if there wasn't as heavy a reliance on the overarching plot to deal with.  But series 9 offers no such reservations: the overarching plot is minimal (you could have missed every previous "Hybrid" comment up to "Hell Bent" and have been just fine), the stories are interesting, and the Doctor here seems far more accessible than he did.  In series 8, he was a bit prickly and brusque, but it seems that that epiphany at the end of "Death in Heaven" really did have an effect: he's so much more relaxed and comfortable this series, playing guitar, wearing sunglasses, and dressing in less formal-looking versions of his series 8 outfit.  This is on the whole a good thing, as it makes us that much more happy to be in his presence.  These things, combined with all the other things I've mentioned over the past couple weeks, makes series 9 a really outstanding run.  It makes you look forward to series 10.²⁶⁸

And once again, thanks for joining me on this little trip through space and time.  I'll be back on July 30, 2017, most likely discussing the latest (still upcoming) Doctor Who spinoff, Class.²⁶⁹  See you then, and cheers.







²⁶⁸ Even if they did delay it a year, with some handwavy explanation about there already being enough big events going on in 2016 that they wanted to delay things to 2017 to give Steven Moffat's final series a bigger impact.  My guess is the real reason was scheduling (maybe incoming showrunner Chris Chibnall wasn't going to be free until then) and/or budgeting.
²⁶⁹ OK, yes, technically speaking I haven't discussed "Friend from the Future", the quick 2-minute introduction to brand-new companion Bill, played by Pearl Mackie, but that's because we don't yet know where or how this scene fits into series 10 -- it might be part of an episode for all we know.  Bill looks like she'll be fun, though.