Chanel, Spring 2013: At least there's no iceberg this time?

Click here for previous posts on Chanel.

What's the theme of this season's show? You know there must be one, because Karl Lagerfeld is in charge. This time last year it was an Under The Sea theme featuring Florence Welch emerging from a conch shell, but this one is a little more obscure. I'm going to let you mull it over a bit and then reveal the truth after the cut, so for now just take a gander at this outfit and try to divine its ~hidden meaning~.

pics from Style.com

Of all the challenges one has to face in order to reach the Fashionista's Stone, Lagerfeld's would surely be the Snape-style brain-teaser that relies too heavily on metaphor. Actually, the idea of Lagerfeld as Fashion Snape is worryingly believable... 
Yes, it's that obvious theme for a Spring fashion show: renewable energy! You can tell because there are a whole bunch of windmills and the runway was made to look like solar panels. And stuff

"Energy is the most important thing in life," said Lagerfeld, informative as always. Evidently he's already forgotten that one time he had an iceberg shipped in to adorn one of his previous fashion shows. That's so 2010.

 Aside from the characteristically out-there theme, the clothes themselves were relatively conservative and fit solidly within Chanel parameters. This being Spring RTW there were a lot of variations on the boxy Chanel suit, but made a little lighter and more summery by chopping the sleeves off at elbow level and cropping the jackets to bolero length.

Also usual for Chanel (or, more specifically, Lagerfeld's Chanel), was the focus on outfits for thin women. I'm yet to see a ready-to-wear Lagerfeld outfit that would work for anyone with big boobs, but since Lagerfeld is notoriously fat-phobic this doesn't come as a huge surprise. Much of this particular collection relied on a slim waist/bulky jacket combination that while flattering to some figures, is unlikely to work very well unless you're an A-cup or comfortable with looking like your upper torso abruptly triples in diameter somewhere around your sternum.

Oh, and there was an uncomfortable-looking photovoltaic panelling dress, because did you know there is a theme.

For all that I find Lagerfeld to be an endless source of entertainment, Chanel is never going to be the label for me. My favourite things from this show were undoubtedly the accessories: Bright, stripey wedge-heels, and wide-brimmed hats. I love the idea of a summer hat with a completely transparent brim; it's just so gloriously impractical. Wide-brimmed hats are terribly feminine and summery but transparent/shiny materials like this are generally seen as futuristic, the end result being what looks like an Ascot hat for characters in Blade Runner. 

As a postscript, I give you two of the worst outfits I have ever seen in a Chanel show. The fact that Lagerfeld approved the manufacture of a strapless denim minidress is surely something that will haunt him to the grave. [Edited to add: This outfit is even worse than I originally thought, because someone on twitter just pointed out to me that it makes her look like "one giant butt".]

I don't even know what this is supposed to be, but I hope no one buys it. It's like someone took one of the ABBA-themed costumes from Priscilla Queen Of The Desert and then tried to make it look as depressing as possible. And decided to glue some fishing lures all around the hems, for whatever reason. HORRIBLE.

Click here for previous posts on Chanel.

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My continuing love-affair with the costume design of Revenge.

Click here to read previous Revenge reviews. Warning: This post contains unavoidable spoilers for the first two episodes of season 2.

I'm impressed by the way Revenge has transitioned smoothly from its original single-season arc to a more long-running format. With a specifically goal-oriented storyline like Emily's revenge plot I was worried that we'd end up in a Twin Peaks type situation with the writers frantically trying to pull new plotlines out of nowhere, but season two is already shaping up to be excellent. I don't see much point in discussing every little plot detail because there are just so many, but my favourite thing so far has been the way Victoria's resurrection was revealed almost immediately. Revenge is a soap opera at heart, but it's damn well-written, and I admire the decision to let Victoria out at the beginning of the season when a lesser show would surely have kept that secret hanging over half of the characters for much longer.

The huge gap in Emily's backstory is a real gift to this show, particularly since it means we now get to see a whole bunch more of her Batman side. Batmanda is one of my very favourite parts of Revenge because watching intelligent women coolly brutalise their enemies makes my heart blossom like a flower. Sadly this storyline also comes with one of the worst aspects of the show, ie the two-dimensional racist stereotype that is Takeda, but fortunately it seems like his mentor role will be explored more thoroughly this season. Flashback scenes to her Batman training with Takeda are particularly interesting because she has such a radically different attitude towards him than she does towards anyone else in the show. In the Hamptons every person aside from Nolan is an unknowing pawn in her revenge plans, but Takeda is in the unique position of having Emily genuinely look up to him for guidance.

Emily's costuming has made me happy right from the start because it says so much, both about her own characterisation and about how much the showrunners have thought about the way she views herself. Revenge is the latest in a very long line of dramas about rich, attractive people trying to destroy each other -- not to mention the fact that the lead character is a woman who purposefully manipulates her enemy's son into marrying her. The obvious route to go with this would have been to make her into a vamp, but in reality Emily's dress-sense is very subdued. I think she's calculated very carefully to project this girl-next-door persona which not only requires her to act nice and bland all the time, but also involves this whole wardrobe of casual white t-shirts and pretty but nondescript summer dresses. The clothes she wears to parties fit in perfectly with the rest of Hamptons society, but she always looks rather more demure than Ashley or Victoria Grayson. Ironically, it's the seemingly genuine nature of Emily's persona that makes her attractive to Daniel Grayson in the first place, because her simple style and quiet, charitable disposition provide such a contrast to most of the other women he knows.

So I kind of loved it in the first episode of season two, when Emily showed up to the Graysons' boat-party wearing this ridiculously hot, eyecatching red dress. Emily doesn't usually like to draw attention to herself, but in this particular case it was a Breakup Dress, a protective outfit for her first appearance back in the Hamptons after last year's very public breakup with Daniel. A totally valid choice both for Emily herself, and for her good-girl persona. Oh, and another thing re: that scene? I loved Nolan's temporary disguise as a normal Hamptonite who wears sombre ties and doesn't pop his collar. In fact, I enjoy any formalwear/party scene where Nolan and Emily are together, because while Emily is almost always in disguise, Nolan is almost always in costume, dressing up in playful mockery of the people surrounding him. In this case he's gone for the pinstriped businessman look, but he nevetheless stands out from all the other men because as usual, he's gone several steps too far.

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This season sees Nolan continue to be a glowing blond demigod of delightfulness, with the additional gift that he's temporarily moved in with Emily. In case anyone's wondering what my reaction was when I realised that they'd fallen asleep on the sofa together while watching blackmailable security footage, the answer is that I built a set of wings out of wax and feathers and then flew towards the sun until I self-immolated and fell down to earth as a shower of sparks and ashes. Nolan and Emily are the best thing ever and made even moreso by the fact that Nolan apparently packs a red, white and blue-striped dressing-gown in his overnight bag. Along with flamingo-pattern boxers.

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While I'm happy to see some things remain the same (see above re: Nolan's penchant for colour-coded pocket squares and popped collars), other aspects of the show are being greatly improved by change. Daniel Grayson, for one. For me, Declan was the real weak-link in season one so I'm glad to see him become less of a dick in recent episodes, but Daniel's transformation from Hamptons himbo to businessman-with-a-backbone has been even more interesting to watch. As of 2x02 we've already seen him stand up to his father in a real argument between adults, make actual real-life use of his business degree (yes, Daniel went to college, remember?), and simultaneously become more ruthless and go out of his way to do the right thing by Charlotte. And as the transformation took place, his personal style graduated from Ivy league douchebro to full-on Young Republican, complete with Romney hair.

Click here to read previous Revenge reviews.

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Elementary 1x02: While You Were Sleeping.

Previously: Elementary: characterisation, the unaired pilot, and its relationship to Sherlock Holmes canon.

This episode cemented the main opinions I formed from watching the pilot: that while the Holmes/Watson dynamic is a delight, the crime storylines are very generic. I actually found this episode more predictable than last week's, because once you introduce a pair of soon-to-inherit heiresses and a collection of murder victims who all share the same genetic traits, it's not hugely difficult to put two and two together. While the heiress-murderer plotline fell comfortably within the scope of classic Holmesian mysteries, the procedural crime drama episode structure was so formulaic that most similarities to Sherlock Holmes were lost. This is particularly true because while canon Holmes did make mistakes on occasion, this type of episode structure requires so many red herrings that just like in the pilot episode, Holmes hardly seemed much cleverer than any other TV detective. Hopefully the crimesolving and deduction scenes will improve as the season progresses.

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Until the crime writing picks up, the other aspects of the show will definitely be enough to keep me watching. I'm already loving Joan Watson's characterisation, particularly the objective fact that she really is good at her job. First of all, she's excellent at establishing boundaries, which is pretty rare on TV. Usually characters end up either with an established BFFs dynamic from the very first episode, and standoffish female characters are almost always portrayed as defensive bitches who need to be thawed out. Secondly it's pretty explicit that her relationship with Holmes is (currently) professional rather than friendly, which I honestly find rather refreshing considering my previous point that most buddy-cop stories have the main duo setting the tone very early on and carrying on in the same bickering-partners dynamic ad infinitum.

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Forgive me for making comparisons to BBC Sherlock, but I love the way Elementary has cast Watson as the cipher while Holmes is the more open of the two. I already have a lot of thoughts about Elementary's relationship with Holmes canon, and something that I find particularly interesting is the fact that the characterisation in Elementary is no more or less canonical than that of BBC Sherlock (in different ways, of course), and yet the dynamic between the two sets of characters is radically different. In Elementary, Holmes is the one for whom it seems like a real strain to keep his feelings under wraps, while Watson is very practised at not reacting to Holmes' deductions and jibes. It's clear that Holmes isn't Watson's first client as she's brisk and cool towards him without being unkind, in a way that suggests to me that she's had to deal with a lot worse from previous addicts. She's unruffled by things like Holmes effectively telling her she needs to get laid -- which, by the way, I am so sure that as an attractive but unfriendly/uncompromising woman she's had to put up with from hundreds of other guys already.

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Holmes' comments about Joan's ex-boyfriend followed up on last week's implication that Holmes has a very functional attitude towards sex. I must admit I'm curious to see how the Ty/Joan relationship progresses in later episodes, because presumably there's a good reason why they're not still together even though they seem to be on good terms. We already know that he's in Joan's parents' good books and he wants to spend more time with her, even though she doesn't act any more warmly towards him as she does to anyone else. If this was a more mature show like The Good Wife then I'd see this as the beginning of a storyline wherein an outwardly "nice" but secretly villainous ex-boyfriend pursues Joan (a situation complicated by Joan's client/patient confidentiality regarding Holmes), but since Elementary is more at the level of mid-range crime procedurals, it's more likely to be the start of a mildly conflicted will-they/won't-they subplot.
I'm finding that Elementary is reminding me more of House MD than of BBC Sherlock, perhaps because both Elementary Holmes and Gregory House exist in "real life" far moreso than the antisocial Sherlock. However, Elementary differs drastically from both in that it's completely abandoned the model of "asshole eccentric/long-suffering sidekick". There are moments when Holmes acts like an asshole, but the important thing to notice here is that while he may be acting like it, he isn't actually an asshole by nature. Case in point, the scene where he exploits the private detective's secret meth addiction to get answers. That scene was particularly telling because not only did Holmes take the man aside (whereas both House and Sherlock would have just shouted out his secrets in public) but after he's got the information he needs, he bashfully recommends his old rehab clinic. Elementary Holmes may not function fully in everyday society, but he certainly feels empathy in a way that House and Sherlock rarely do.

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There are moments when Holmes gets carried away or seems a bit "off", socially speaking, but the one moment where he does something actually bad (inviting Joan's ex-boyfriend to a fictional dinner-party -- a trick taken directly from the Gregory House Bad Friend Handbook), Watson immediately smacks him down and makes sure he understands that this type of behaviour is unacceptable. Which brings me at last to the topic of Elementary's hidden gift to us all -- the gift of happily submissive Holmes.

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On top of the fact that Elementary Holmes and Watson already have a genuinely entertaining rapport, there's this strong indication that Holmes is into BDSM -- and written in a way that's surprisingly free of cartoonish innuendo. It's already obvious that Holmes enjoys being told what to do. Not in the sense that he's getting off on being bossed around by Joan, but more like he really benefits from the way she deals with him as a combination of authority figure and caregiver -- ie, treating him with respect, but with clearly delineated boundaries and instructions that he has to follow. Although Joan is being paid by Holmes' father to take care of him, I think that Holmes secretly knows that he needs to be taken care of, and more importantly Joan knows how to take care of him. He seems more self-destructive than masochistic, and Joan shows up at precisely the right time and in the right circumstances to provide him with the authority figure that he didn't know he needed.

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Looking towards later episodes, I'm interested to see what further intersections we see between Sherlock Holmes canon and Elementary. The writers are going to have to walk a fine line, because while they do presumably want to keep as many canon details as possible, BBC Sherlock is knee-deep in Holmes trivia to the extent that some overlap is already inevitable -- and Elementary does not want to overlap with BBC Sherlock too much. In the pilot there were very few similarities but in this episode we saw the appearance of what Holmes referred to as "attic theory", which sounds pretty similar to BBC Sherlock's "mind palace". These are both versions of the canon characterisation of Holmes having an encyclopaedic knowledge of things like cigarette ash and footprint patterns, but no familiarity whatsoever with "useless" information such as the fact that the earth orbits the sun.

Random thoughts

• LOVED the credits sequence. 
• Lucy Liu's disgusted expression is a delight to behold.
• This is undoubtedly quadruple idiotic coming from a person who has lived in Britain their entire life, but I'm 100% charmed by Jonny Lee Miller's accent, voice, and general Britishisms like "Stop mucking with my things!"
•  "Ty. Interesting name, that. Noun, verb, nationality." How is it that these writers can be so good at writing entertaining, snappy dialogue for their lead characters, but be such utter potatoes when it comes to crime-writing?
• The music Holmes plays at the end of the episode is Bach's Chaconne for Solo Violin.
• Zipper mask! 
• Joan telling Sherlock to go buy her some chips! 
• Who else freaked out at Holmes trying to burn his violin? DON'T BURN VIOLINS, oh my god.
• I am thoroughly disappointed at the lack of bees in this episode.

All previous Holmes-related posts can be found on the Sherlock Holmes tag.

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Alexander McQueen, Spring 2013.

It's almost expected at this point for Alexander McQueen to be one of the most critically acclaimed shows of Fashion Week, but this season's collection was so good that I dove off a waterfall like Pocahontes and then spontaneously sprouted wings on the way down. While most of Spring season is taken up by catwalk shows that showcase too many trenchcoats and not enough imagination, McQueen (currently headed up by Sarah Burton, McQueen's protege) breezed in with 32 stunning outfits themed around bees and beehives.

The show opened with a series of suits in black and gold, bearing the recurring motif of honeycomb patterns and accompanied by stylised beekeeper hats. The silhouette was familiar: rigid bodices and nipped-in waists, with the angular peplums McQueen have been using for several seasons now. "Wasp waist" is already a well-known term, but some of these suit jackets reminded me more of the iridescent shells of a beetle.

I've written before about the dangers of taking a design theme too literally, but this is surely the exception that proves the rule. Not only is Sarah Burton an accomplished director when it comes to keeping the McQueen look fresh without deviating too far from recogniseable design tropes, but she can balance a potentially cartoonish theme like "beehives" at the perfect level between outright literalism and references too subtle or obscure for audiences to pick up on.

If this were any other label I'd balk at the idea of taking a beehive theme and producing outfits that combine not only beekeeper hats but golden honeycomb embroidery and wasp waists, but McQueen has a long history of delving into specific aspects of the British countryside and bringing out something that is simultaneously beautiful and horrifying. The main surprise in this collection is the lack of sting. While previous seasons have seen models wearing slaughtered game-animals and antlers, this collection was decidedly more cheerful.

The second section of the show was taken up by softer silhouettes: corseted gowns with frame crinolines, another aesthetic mined from the McQueen back-catalogue. The colours were warm and honeyish, with the gowns sometimes taking on a frothy and seasonal peasant-skirt silhouette: milkmaids rather than beekeepers.

If you look closely at some of the fabrics, there are tiny golden bees embroidered into the honeycombs.

This outfit, with its visor-like hat and golden honeycomb patterns, reminded me of acclaimed costume designer Eiko Ishioka.

The final phase of the show was dedicated to flowers: huge, overflowing bundles of blossoms covering the kind of crinoline dresses that will most likely only ever appear on runways and in private collections. The tortoiseshell bustiers from earlier on in the show lost their aggressive edge and became mere accessories to the rest of the outfit.

I tend to scoff at Spring collections that use florals because the idea is so grossly overused every year, but in this case I'll allow it because it's so complimentary to the rest of the show. This was a Spring collection through and through: exploding with energy, and celebrating themes of nature and rebirth without resorting to cliche.

Postscript: I'm v proud of myself for managing to not refer to any "buzz" surrounding this show, or indeed mention anything to do with the McQueen Bee.

Click here to read my previous Alexander McQueen fashion week reviews.

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Spring 2013 Fashion Week: Erdem and Vivienne Westwood Red Label

Vivienne Westwood Red Label
The beauty of Vivienne Westwood is that she can start off with literally any theme and still have the resulting show turn out like a giant "fuck you". With this season's Red Label collection she went for a ladylike mid-20th-century aesthetic, using boxy woollen suits and 1950s cocktail dresses as a jumping-off point.

The styling helped a lot to temper the relatively conservative nature of this collection, with models stepping out onto the catwalk wearing Crayola-hued facepaint and Stepford-parody hairstyles. This wasn't my favourite Westwood collection, perhaps because for once she didn't seem to be designing for her own personal wardrobe. I often find that Westwood is at her best -- or at least, at her most Westwood, which is pretty much the same thing -- when she's courting outright ugliness, rather than this watered-down throwback to the period when she was mocking the fashions of the British aristocracy.

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Word from the horse's mouth is that Westwood "doesn't care" about fashion any more, and that her main focus is "Climate Revolution" -- a slogan whose banner she unfurled at the end of the show. I'm not even gonna start on shit like this, because a) 99% of all fashion-based political campaigns are doomed from the start because they insist on statement-free slogans like "Climate Revolution", and b) unfurling a banner at the end of a fashion show is not activism. There's something very Zoolander about producing a show that touches on a political theme (the outfits are apparently influenced by recycled fashions) while simultaneously saying you "don't care" about fashion any more, and trying to put forth a political/social statement.

Erdem
Erdem Moriaglu's speciality is delicate floral patterns and neat, precise tailoring. This season he went for an unexpectedly neon turn, combining bright, almost clashing colours with snakeskin print. His inspiration was Zenna Henderson, the 20th century sci-fi author, and the result was a look that combines 1950s femininity with hints of alienness, both in the slightly-too-bright fabric choices and in the touches of snakeskin.

I decided to write about Westwood and Erdem together not because they share an aesthetic, but because their collections this season are so thematically similar. Although Westwood's designs were supposedly meant to come from a place of thriftiness and recycling (Climate Revolution! ...Or something.), what they actually look like is a typically punkish Westwood twist on conservative formalwear. Likewise, Erdem's designs were a mirror-world interpretation of his previous collections -- neat and girly, but using snakeskin and purposefully tacky colour-schemes to ofset the delicacy of each outfit.

Oh, and for extra sci-fi cred, this show took place inside a giant geodesic dome.

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Doctor Who 7x05: The Angels Take Manhattan

Previous reviews can be found on the Doctor Who tag.
 
Maybe it was a bad idea to watch Doctor Who on the same day as going to see Looper, because Looper was so goddamn amazing that most other time-travel stories pale in comparison. But Looper issues aside, this episode still wasn't terribly impressive. I avoid Doctor Who spoilers as much as humanly possible, but if you live in the UK it's very difficult to ignore widely-reported information such as the departure of the Ponds. All the coverage seemed to focus on "This episode is a real tearjerker!!" which annoyed me because a) you're not my dad, Steven Moffat, don't tell me what to do, and b) show don't tell, for god's sake! Surely it's enough that most viewers already knew that this would be the Ponds' final episode -- why bother hammering home all the stuff about how upsetting it's going to be? Let the story tell itself.

The end result was one of those TV moments that made me feel like a sociopath -- ie, a screen full of people crying hysterically to an overwrought orchestral soundtrack while I sat there, utterly unmoved. I find it increasingly disappointing that while Moffat's episodes were some of the very best in previous seasons, now that he's the showrunner I find myself practically groaning out loud when his name comes up on the credits. Of the five episodes we've had this season, the two that were written by Moffat have been laden with speedy emotional conflict/resolution subplots and the kind of sudden U-turn revelations that are beginning to remind me of M Night Shyamalan.

In theory, I was an ideal audience for The Angels Take Manhattan. I love Amy, I love the Eleventh Doctor, and I'm invested in the Amy/Rory relationship. I should have been weeping along with Matt Smith in the final scenes, but instead I found it to be rather anti-climatic. A lot of this was, I think, down to pacing, since the entire story had to unfold in a single episode and the latter half seemed very rushed. The rooftop scene was a particular problem for me because it took place so soon after the Doctor's uncharacteristically pessimistic revelation that Rory would "have to" live out the next 50 years in the Angel hotel. Plus there was the added distraction of the Statue of Liberty, which I have no doubt will be a bugbear for New Yorkers because when is there ever a time when no one is looking at the Statue of Liberty? Even if there was some moment when no one was looking at her, people would definitely stop and take notice when she began stomping across the city.

I wouldn't give the episode a wholly bad review. Even if I did find the supposedly tragic tearjerker scenes to be rather forced, the facts of the Amy/Rory epilogue were satisfyingly final. What interested me more was the Doctor's increasing neediness, with him noticeably freaking out over Amy getting older. I really enjoy the way the Doctor has come to value Amy and Rory as a unit without undercutting Rory's importance, even though the Doctor clearly has a far closer relationship with Amy than with Rory. Actually, I've come to think that the foreshadowing towards this episode's emotional arc was better than the episode itself, because the sense of foreboding had been ramped up so much that it couldn't really be resolved in one single episode. Even without the knowledge that this would be Amy and Rory's final adventure, the emotional focus of this season has been Amy and Rory getting older and growing away from the Doctor, and the Doctor trying to grab some time with them while he still can.
The slow-breakup story was engaging and well-timed but the ultimate breakup itself seemed weak and rushed, which to me is emblematic of Steven Moffat's main flaw as showrunner. With no one to rein him in, he tends to write stories that put huge weight and significance on the run-up but then fail to live up to expectations when it comes to the payoff. Season 6 was the most glaring example of this because the first couple of episodes were so fascinating and exciting that I didn't realise until the finale itself that Moffat had written himself into a corner and the show had been going downhill all season. I'm hoping that the truncated nature of the next companion's half-season run will avoid this kind of thing happening to her -- at least, not at first.

My feelings on River are very mixed, because while some of her appearances are entertaining, an equal number seem forced and random. She's an archetypal Awesome Side-Character, like Spike in the early seasons of Buffy, and Jack Harkness in season one of Doctor Who. Like the Weeping Angels, River is intriguing in moderation, but the more she appears the more irritating she becomes. The problem is that if you want to turn an Awesome Side-Character into a regular, you need to give them some flaws or else they just seem too larger-than-life, which is extra problematic in DW because the Doctor is already such a huge personality. This makes me irritated at myself because I really want to love a badass lady space-archaeologist, but the nature of River's role so far has been so one-note that I still don't view her as a fully-realised adult character. In this particular episode I rather liked her, which is just as well because the other Moffat favourite -- the Angels -- are reaching saturation point. The concept of the hotel/farm was scary, but the Angels themselves are a true horror-movie monster in the sense that their power lies in the fact that the audience can imagine their existence in real life. The whole idea of statues moving while you're not looking is a perfect horror-story, but the more they appear onscreen (particularly in that earlier episode where we actually saw them move, which I hated), the less frightening they become.

Tangentially related to River, there's one ongoing characterisation detail for the Doctor that I found particularly noticeable in this episode. It's never 100% clear just what goes on within the Doctor/River relationship, but I'm pretty sure that the Eleventh Doctor is supposed to be sexual in a way that Nine and Ten really weren't, as indicated by the way River flirts with him and the Doctor's reaction to that as the series progresses. But in complete opposition to that characterisation, he seems utterly baffled when it comes to other people in sexual/romantic relationships, particularly Amy and Rory. There are tons of little moments where he reacts to Amy and Rory's relationship with blank incomprehension (Why don't they want to sleep in bunkbeds? Bunkbeds are cool!) or a kind of comedic, childlike disgust (ie, he gets grossed out by them kissing), whereas any problems the Ninth or Tenth Doctors had with their companions' boyfriends were more to do with jealousy. I guess this characterisation may tie in with Eleven's strange mixture of childish and grandfatherly traits, but I still find it confusing.

Looking toward the Christmas episode, well... you know as much as I. The one comment I do have is that I wish the new companion wasn't being introduced this way, because Christmas episodes are by nature so different from a typical week's Doctor Who. Christmas episodes tend to be rather hackneyed because there's a built-in audience of drunk-on-Christmas-spirit adults and small children to entertain, and the story kind of has to fit in with various sentimental Christmas-story cliches. I suspect that the new companion may end up getting a negative reception from adult Whovians for this reason, which is unfortunate because it's already difficult to get audiences to like a new companion right off the bat.

(P.S. Am I the only one who found themselves singing the episode title to the tune of "First They Take Manhattan" by Leonard Cohen? No? Anyone?) 

Previous reviews can be found on the Doctor Who tag.

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