Gotta be honest. I was so hyped up for Star Wars these past few weeks that I found myself forgetting about Doctor Who's annual Yuletide special. What's wrong with me!?
Fortunately, "The Husbands of River Song" is quite unforgettable, in various ways.
The Doctor is reunited with River Song on Christmas Day. The problem is, she doesn't recognize him because, you know, new face, and she's found a new husband in the cyborg dictator King Hydroflax. River is after a valuable diamond lodged in her new husband's skull, sending her and the Doctor on a run from his Hydroflax's Baymax-esque robotic body, onto a fancy-schmancy spaceship, and to an event that every story with River has been building up to.
This year's special is very...wacky. That's the best word to describe it, right? It's definitely the most "out there" episode of Capaldi's era thus far, and this is both a strength and a weakness. I can clearly picture Steven Moffat, clanging away at his typewriter, having an absolute ball writing this, and that makes me have an absolute ball watching this. Doctor Who gets to unleash its zany potential for one episode, and remind us that, in the end, this is not a show that its writers and viewers should take too seriously. That being said, sometimes the wackiness became a bit tiresome. For me, it was during the surgery scene towards the beginning that I thought "This is already bloody insane, and I'm only 6 minutes into the episode." It took me out of the episode, and that wasn't the only time. So, in a nutshell, "The Husbands of River Song" is a good kind of crazy, but there's just a few times where it gets too crazy.
This should go without saying, but Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston are both great and share a fantastic chemistry. Even for good chunk of the time when River doesn't recognize her husband, they're still great, and when she finally does recognize him, it's even better. I would have preferred to see the two get on the same page earlier in the episode, but River's "a-ha" moment was really well executed. I was also entertained by the fact that the Doctor and River's relationship here is a clear parallel of their relationship in River's first story "Silence in the Library," where it was the Doctor who fails to recognize River. Then, of course, the episode's big twist is that this is River and the Doctor's last encounter before the Library and River's death. There were some fun callbacks to those episodes, like the Doctor giving the sonic screwdriver to River and finally getting to see the Singing Towers of Darillium.
Their lengthy scene at the end is very bittersweet, and manages to tie into the Doctor's struggle in the Series 9 finale. The Doctor finally acknowledges that sometimes he can't, and shouldn't, do anything to save someone he loves, but should enjoy and relish the time he does still have with them. It was a nice way of tipping the hat to Clara without tipping the hat to Clara, if that's possible.
Other Notes:
- There were a few elements that were very Douglas Adams. My favourite: "History's Finest Exploding Restaurants."
- The supporting characters were a bit short-changed and forgettable. But, for some reason, I loved that Flemming guy. He's a complete hoot.
- The Doctor finally gets his "bigger on the inside" moment, and I loved it.
- So River steals the TARDIS every once and a while and has booze hidden inside it. Nice.
Rating: 8.3/10 flowcharts
And thus this is the last Doctor Who review for the foreseeable future. And that makes me kinda sad. Sad face.
Until next time!
Noah
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