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Once upon a time, there was a little boy who didn't like people much. He preferred to spend his time with the snowmen. As it happened, the snowmen preferred to spend their time with him, too.
Fifty years go by and now the little boy is a lonely, embittered man named Dr. Simeon, living in Victorian England. The snowmen are made of intelligent, alien snowflakes (yes, I know) and Simeon keeps them in a sort of giant gumball machine, where they talk to him and make him do their bidding. They have a literal Snowpocalypse in mind and want to replace all living people with ice copies. To this end, they copy the essence of a governess who fell into a pond of intelligent ice crystals. Or... something. It's all rather jumbled and crazy on first viewing.
Sounds like a job for the Doctor, right? Well, he's sworn off saving the world, because he's feeling lonely and embittered by the loss of the Ponds. Vastra, Jenny and Strax are on the case, but they can't quite fix things without the Doctor, for some reason. Just when the Doctor seems at his grumpiest, he meets a pretty barmaid named Clara, whom we the viewers recognize as Oswin Oswald right off the bat. The Doctor, having never seen Oswin's face, takes a bit longer to catch on. Anyway, the barmaid is immediately intrigued by the Doctor and follows him to the TARDIS. She's kind of a pest, but she's spunky and clever and the Doctor can't help but like her.
Except... she's not really a barmaid. Or at least, she's not one all the time, because she's also a governess to the Lattimer family, hired after the governess died in the ice pond. It's all rather confusing. Why the double life? Presumably this will be answered in a future episode. Charmed by Clara, he invites her to be his companion, which means he's back on the job of saving the world. Everyone is happy... and then the evil ice-governess pops out of the pond and fatally wounds Clara. Vastra tries to save her, but her injuries are too great. Clara's last act is to destroy all the intelligent snow with her dying tears, because the snow reflects one's thoughts or some such thing. It's as hokey as it is confusing.
At the end, the Doctor realizes who Clara really is. He's thrilled! She's died twice now, but he's convinced that she is somehow, somewhere, somewhen still alive, so off he flies to find her.
5,000,000 other things happen in this episode, including the return of the Great Intelligence, and some more background on Vastra and Jenny, but I'll get to them in the full weecap. Stay tuned.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's Christmastime, which means that Earth is in danger again. This time, the danger falls from the sky in the form of little snowflakes that have teeth like piranhas. They land in England, in the year 1842. In what looks like an orphanage or something like it, several children run around and play and pelt each other with snowballs. One boy busies himself with building a snowman. A woman approaches him and asks, "Walter, don't you want to go play with the other boys and girls?" She worries that it's not normal, his refusal to talk to others. She sighs and goes inside. "I don't want to talk to them," he says to his snowman. "They're silly." His snowman agrees with him... out loud. Walter looks around, but nobody else is nearby. He's a bit freaked out, so he runs away. The snowman calls him back. "Don't need anyone else," it says. "I can help you." Intrigued, the boy walks slowly towards the snowman again. "How?" he asks.
The boy's cherubic face fades as 50 years pass, and is replaced by Richard E. Grant's severe scowl. This older Walter oversees two men as they scrape flakes off of snowmen and collect them in jars. Walter and the jars get into a carriage with the letters "GI" painted on the doors. They travel to an estate surrounded by a wrought iron fence bearing the same monogram. Walter brings a jar of snow into a spacious study and says, "The last of the arrivals has been sampled." He's talking to a giant gumball machine with bolts of electricity zapping around it. "The great swarm is approaching," says the gumball machine in the same voice as the long-ago snowman. He says humanity is at an end. "Will the final piece be ready?" it asks. "It's in hand," Walter says. The gumball machine is filled with swirling flakes. Walter adds one jar's contents to it. Then he goes outside to where a bunch of homeless men are waiting for a dinner he's promised them. "Dr. Simeon, it's getting late," one guy says to him. It turns out to be one of those "To Serve Man" situations and a horde of toothy, snarling snowmen pop up from the ground to eat all the poor hungry guys.
Cut to a cozy little tavern called the Rose and Crown. Viewers at home will recognize the pretty young barmaid as Oswin from the season premiere. For no apparent reason, she seems rather self-satisfied as she turns toward the camera, like she's peered through the fourth wall and now she's in on the secret. Also for no apparent reason, she brings a tray of drinks outside. It's not like there's going to be any al fresco dining in the snow. She notices a snowman standing there and frowns. "Did you make this snowman?" she asks a passing gentleman. "No," he says. It's the Doctor, dressed in the fashion of the time and exhibiting something of a Monty Burns hunch. He keeps walking, but stops when she says the snowman appeared out of nowhere. He takes a closer look at the snowman. "Maybe it's snow that's fallen before. Maybe it remembers how to make snowmen." She flirts with him a bit and says her name is Clara. He doesn't recognize her because he only saw her in Dalek form.
When he leaves, she decides to forget about her job and follow him, again for no apparent reason. For all she knows, he could be Jack the Ripper. "Oi, where are you going?" she calls after him. "I thought we was just getting acquainted!" Yeah, maybe after Henry Higgins is through with you, Eliza. He gives her a sad smile and says, "Those were the days." This makes it sound like maybe he does recognize her, but he just means he's not into getting acquainted with people like he used to be. He takes off in a waiting carriage, which should logically be the end of his acquaintance with Clara, but she chases after him.
In the carriage, the Doctor talks via old-timey microphone to a woman who asks, "Was she nice?" He's apparently told her about Clara in the few seconds he's had to himself. The Doctor scoffs and grumps and doesn't want any new friends, which is clearly not true, though he would like for it to be. "It's the same story every time," says the woman on the other end, who turns out to be Madame Vastra. "It always begins with the same two words," she says. "She'll never be able to find me -- she doesn't even have the name 'Doctor,'" he says. Somehow, Clara has managed not only to catch up to the horse-drawn carriage, but has leaped on top of the roof. Having overheard the last bit of his conversation, she swings down through the roof window and asks, "Doctor who?" The Doctor's look of bafflement is replaced by the new opening credits.
Elsewhere in town, a handsome bearded fellow returns to his stately manor to find Dr. Simeon waiting for him. He also discovers that the pond in front of his home has frozen, which he finds odd. "It hasn't frozen since the night..." "...since the night your children's governess died a year ago," Simeon finishes for him. Simeon exposits that the governess drowned and wasn't found until the ice thawed a month later. Simeon cryptically says that the ice remembers and the beard guy is like, duh, I remember, too, since it happened in my own house. As Simeon hands his card to the bearded fellow, we are allowed to see the text. He's from something called the Great Intelligence Institute, which will mean something to longtime viewers. "The pond is yours, Captain Latimer," Simeon says, "but what is growing inside it -- when it is ready -- is ours." Why bother giving the guy his card? Is Captain Latimer supposed to look him up later and be like, "Oh, hey, that ice monster you wanted has finally popped out of the pond."?
Later, Madame Vastra and Jenny confront Simeon in an alley. Vastra is wearing period-appropriate attire, but Jenny has on some kind of leather tights and boots. It's fetching, but odd. Simeon says something about Arthur Conan Doyle basing his Sherlock Holmes stories on Vastra and her "suspiciously intimate" companion. "I resent your implication of impropriety," Vastra says. "We are married." Presumably they are married to each other, but perhaps Simeon doesn't take it that way, because he seems unmoved one way or the other. Then again, he also seems unmoved one way or the other by the revelation that one of these women is a big green lizard, so who knows? Vastra and Jenny are suspicious of Simeon's very secret institute. Vastra is also suspicious of the snowflakes, which she finds to be a bit telepathic. "Almost as if it can detect and respond to the thoughts and memories of those around it," she says. "It could be a terrible weapon in the wrong hands, don't you think?" she asks. It's an accusation, but Simeon is once again unmoved. He forecasts the end of humankind. As he continues on his way, Vastra and Jenny wring their hands because they need the Doctor's help, except he doesn't help anymore.
He can't resist investigating a bit, though, and is currently sifting through some of the snow, wondering who's behind it. Strax the Sontaran pops up to suggest they go on the attack. He was dead the last time we saw him, but here he is in Victorian England, dressed like a carriage driver. The Doctor tries to act like he's not interested in pursuing the mystery further and calls Strax a "psychotic potato dwarf" when he protests. Roast his chestnuts, Strax! Meanwhile, Clara is locked up in the carriage, raising a fuss. "Silence, boy," Strax tells her. He still hasn't found time to take a class on basic human anatomy, apparently. The Doctor tells him to go fetch the alien worm they'll use to erase the last hour of Clara's memory. Of course, Strax ends up accidentally erasing a bit of his own memory. There's a throwaway line about a friend bringing Strax back to life, so that explains that, I guess.
The Doctor finally finds the memory worm himself, explaining that touching it erases an hour, but the worm can erase decades if it bites you. That will be sort of important later. In the midst of all this, the Doctor notices that Clara still doesn't seem scared. She's too intrigued by the snowman to be scared. The moment she starts thinking about the snowman, it pops up in front of her. It also brings along several of its friends. "They're mirroring you," the Doctor says and implores her to picture them melting. She does so, and she and the Doctor get splashed with the result. Wouldn't this mean they're now covered with telepathic water? They don't seem too worried. The Doctor decides not to worm Clara, because she'll need to remember how to dispatch the snowmen in the future. He sends her off in the carriage with Strax, with stern instructions to forget all about him.
She immediately hops out of the carriage and follows after the Doctor. She tails him to a park and sees him pull down a ladder that's been hiding in an unnaturally shady tree. Nobody else sees him, because the streets are conveniently deserted. After the Doctor and ladder disappear from view, Clara rushes over to where he was standing. She looks up but sees only the moon and sky. She takes a leap of faith and grabs the ladder, only able to see it when her hands clasp it. Suddenly, people are walking all over the street, but they don't see her because, as she somehow concludes, she's now invisible. The ladder leads to a spiral staircase that goes up and up and up some more. At the top of the stairs is the TARDIS, seemingly resting on nothing more than a carpet of clouds. Clara tentatively knocks on the door, but hides when the Doctor answers. She hurries back down the stairs. The Doctor finds only her shawl, dropped like Cinderella's slipper in her hasty retreat.
Simeon returns home to feed more snow to the giant gumball machine. The gumball machine blah-blahs about its eeevil plans. If it didn't speak with Ian McKellan's voice, it would be kind of boring.
The morning, Clara wakes up all smiles and rosy cheeks. As she leaves the tavern, the owner begs her to stay. Because she's such a good employee who would never flake out in the middle of a job to chase after a strange man. Alas, Clara turns him down. "I've got me own work to get back to," she says. "What work? Why won't you ever tell us?" he asks. "You'd never believe me," she says.
She hops into a carriage and begins to change out of her dress. By the time the carriage pulls up outside the Latimer residence, she's dressed in much posher attire. The maid addresses her as "Governess" and says the children have missed her. To Captain Latimer, she is Miss Montague and he tells her that his daughter Francesca has been having nightmares. He wants her to talk to the girl, because he's all Mr. Awkward around children. So off she goes to see Francesca and her brother Digby, who are thrilled to see her. Clara's voice and manners, like her clothes, have changed for the occasion. Francesca tells her about the nightmares she's been having about their former governess. Digby is just a little too excited to tell Clara about how the governess drowned. "I hated her," he says. "In Franny's dream, she's still down there, waiting to come back." Are we entirely sure that Digby didn't drown her? Because that kid seems like kind of a little psycho. Clara notices that the pond is still frozen, while everything else has thawed. "The snow is feeding off your thoughts," says the Doctor's voice in her memory. "The more you think about the snowmen, the more they appear." Clara makes the connection between the snowmen and the frozen pond. She's disturbed to learn that the governess promised in Francesca's dreams to return on Christmas.
Clara returns to the park where she last saw the Doctor. It's daytime and there are people about this time, so she gets some strange looks when she starts shouting up at the sky. Luckily, Jenny happens to be passing by and quiets her down. "Do you know the Doctor?" Clara asks. "Doctor who?" Jenny asks back. This makes Clara smile, because she knows the name of the show.
Jenny brings her to meet Madame Vastra, who is sipping a glass of red liquid. When Clara gives her a puzzled look, she explains, "There are two refreshments in your world the color of red wine -- this is not red wine." So... it's pomegranate juice? Cherry juice? Cranberry cocktail? Big Red soda? Some of that weird red rain from India? Madame Vastra tests Clara by posing her questions to which she is allowed to give only single-word answers. This is all designed to determine whether or not they should bring her to the Doctor, and to show us how very clever Clara is. Vastra says the Doctor doesn't help people anymore. He was a hero once, but he's all sad and lonely now because he "suffered losses." "Now, kindly choose a word to indicate your understanding of this," Vastra says. Clara thinks and answers, "Man." As a final test, Vastra asks Clara to give her a message for the Doctor that will encompass everything he needs to know in one word. The word she chooses is "pond" because, well, there's a pond with a frozen monster in it. But the word has a deeper meaning because of Amy Pond, even though Clara can't possibly know that. Still, the answer prompts Vastra to call the Doctor and pass along the message. Good thing that governess didn't drown in a lake or something.
At the Great Intelligence Institute, the giant gumball machine suddenly starts freaking out because it senses that someone dangerously smart is approaching. Right on cue, the Doctor waltzes in, dressed like Sherlock Holmes for some reason. There's even a musical flourish that calls to mind Steven Moffat's other show. The Doctor blathers for a while about nothing in particular before picking up one of Simeon's business cards. If he remembers the Great Intelligence, he doesn't give much sign of it, but he does start beating at the giant gumball machine with his prop cane. "We are the Intelligence," says the gumball machine. The Doctor is thrilled. "Ooh! Talking snow. I love new things!" He says a lot of things that can be summed up thusly: the snow acts like a mirror that mimics things. He talks himself into realizing that the snow will have to evolve into something more human so that it doesn't melt when the temperature rises. "To do that, you'll need a perfect duplicate of human DNA in ice form," he says. "Where do you find that?" he wonders. Seems like any number of frozen people would do, but a newspaper article on Simeon's desk points him to the frozen governess. He dashes off before Simeon's henchmen can grab him.
stop: Captain Latimer's pond. It's really more of a pool than a pond, but then her name wasn't Amelia Pool, was it? He sonics it and talks to himself about how the aliens will get a "full-body scan" of the drowning victim. She hasn't been in there for something like 11 months but they can still scan her? Whatever. Strax shows up at Vastra's request to help the Doctor, but the Doctor is still pretending like he's not really on the case. He's kind of a dick to Strax and sends him away. Clara waves to the Doctor from a window. He shyly waves back. In spite of himself, he agrees to meet her inside. He's too busy arguing with himself to notice the cracks forming on the surface of the pond. He also doesn't notice that Simeon has arrived. Thankfully, Vastra, Jenny and Strax are nearby to keep an eye on things while the Doctor is off being a nervous little boy.
Clara is upstairs, tucking the children in and assuring them that the Doctor will soon arrive to help them. The door creaks open. Clara assumes it's her new friend, but what walks into the room is a woman made of ice. "The children have been very naughty," she says. Clara grabs the children and flees the room. "Imagine her melting," she tells Francesca. Francesca is much too scared to think about that. The Govern-Ice pounds on the door. Only now does the Doctor reveal himself, having been hiding behind a puppet show stage, just waiting for a perfect opportunity to whip out the sonic screwdriver. Because making a comical entrance was more important than a timely one. He shatters the Govern-Ice, much to everybody's relief.
Outside, Simeon unveils something that looks like one of those bladeless Dyson fans. It blows alien snowflakes towards the Latimer house.
Inside, the Doctor is still pretending he doesn't help people anymore. He's in the middle of a rant when he notices he's once more wearing his trademark bow tie. "I didn't know I'd put it on," he murmurs. Behind him, the Govern-Ice reconstitutes herself. He tries to sonic her, but she's apparently learned not to melt. He grabs Clara and the children and runs down the stairs. They run into Captain Latimer, who is none too pleased to see this strange man in his house. Before he can give the Doctor a thrashing, the maid runs through the room fussing about all the snowmen that have suddenly appeared outside.
Madame Vastra and Jenny arrive at the front door. "Good evening," Vastra says. "I'm a lizard woman from the dawn of time and this is my wife." The maid screams and runs away, only to be met by Strax. "This dwelling is under attack," he tells her. "Remain calm, human scum!" The maid screams some more, then faints. The children don't seem especially upset and Captain Latimer seems more confused by the Doctor calling his governess "Clara" than by anything else. It seems that "Miss Montague" has been going by a different first name while not working as a barmaid. To add to the mix, the Govern-Ice has started down the stairs towards them. Jenny throws some kind of tech-grenade that traps her behind a force field.
Everybody runs off to the study to formulate a plan. The Doctor, with input from Clara, figures out that the snow wants the Govern-Ice so that it can make copies. Simeon probably should have staked out the pond and grabbed her as soon as she popped out, but TV villains aren't always the best planners. When the doorbell rings, the Doctor strikes out to answer it. Clara follows after him and plants a big ol' kiss on him. He flails in his usual "Ew, girl cooties!" sort of way, but he doesn't seem entirely opposed to the kiss. Some will argue that the Doctor is married and should say as much to anyone inclined to make a pass at him, but... eh. Monogamy seems like a tricky thing for time travelers and the Doctor did sort of marry River after she died. So, depending on how you look at it, he's either single, married or a widower... or all three at once. Anyway, it's Simeon at the door. It was rather polite of him to ring the bell instead of just barging in, don't you think? He and the Doctor scowl at each other for a while. Finally, Simeon says, "Release her to us. You have five minutes." He has an army of toothy snowmen behind him. What's he waiting for?
The Doctor grabs an umbrella and runs with Clara up to the roof. The Govern-Ice breaks free of her force field and chases after them. Clara figures out that the umbrella is meant for her, so that she can prove how clever she is and reach up for the TARDIS's ladder. The Doctor and Clara climb up with the Govern-Ice in hot... er, cold... pursuit. He sonics the cloud a bit so that the water vapor will keep the Govern-Ice trapped for a bit. This gives the Doctor enough time to show off the TARDIS. The new interior is sleeker and silvery and some of the metal bits have etchings that look like the writing on his old cradle. Clara stares in wonder. "Go on, say it," the Doctor tells her. "Most people do." She runs around for a bit, and then declares, "It's smaller on the outside!" The Doctor is surprised. "That's a first." Clara looks around some more, then wonders, "Is there a kitchen?" She says she likes to make soufflés. This makes the Doctor think for a bit, but the moment passes and he gets around to giving her the key to the TARDIS. "What's this?" she asks. "Me, giving in," he says. She cries happy tears. Everybody's happy! But they probably should have spent the time coming up with a way to trap the Govern-Ice for good instead of playing House Hunters Intergalactic, because the Govern-Ice pops up behind Clara and yanks her out of the TARDIS. The key goes flying from her hand. The Govern-Ice drags Clara to the edge of the cloud and they both fall down, down, down to the ground far below. The Doctor watches helplessly.
Clara lands with a thud. Vastra scans her, but can detect no life signs. The Doctor materializes the TARDIS around her, picking up both her body and shattered bits of he Govern-Ice. After Clara is brought into Latimer's study, Strax uses some kind of alien doohickey to bring her back to life just a bit. It won't last, though, so Vastra pleads with the Doctor to go be with her. He refuses to believe Clara is going to die and presses the key back into her hand. Clara wakes up. "The green lady said you were the saver of worlds once," she says weakly. "Are you going to save this one?" He holds her hand and strokes her hair. "If I do, will you come away with me?" he asks. "Yes," she says. He kisses her forehead and straightens his bow tie, filled with the old determination once more. He grabs a box, opens the front door and tells Simeon he has a piece of the Govern-Ice. He'll hand it over at Simeon's Institute.
Simeon should probably be suspicious, but he gets back into his carriage and heads home. The Doctor and Vastra -- having traveled by TARDIS -- are waiting for him when he arrives. The Doctor sonics the giant gumball machine and Ian McKellan's sonorous voice gives way to young Walter Simeon's. Simeon, previously so stern, suddenly seems quite meek. "The snow has no voice without him," says the Doctor. "Don't listen to him, he's ruining everything," says the gumball machine. The Doctor exposits about how it was young Simeon's desire to be without others that is now reflected by the snow. Simeon grabs the box, but it's the memory worm he finds inside and not a piece of the Govern-Ice. The worm bites him, draining away his entire adult life's memories.
The Doctor is just so sure that without Simeon's memories, the snow will be done for. "You've got nothing to reflect anymore," he says to the gumball machine. "Goodbye!" Alas, his plan has pretty much the opposite effect and Ian McKellan's voice comes roaring back. The snowmen outside begin to grow once more. "Once I was the puppet; now I pull the strings," says the gumball machine. Purple ribbons of electricity pick Simeon up off the floor and move him about like a demented marionette. Simeon, now blue-skinned and dusted with ice, speaks for the Intelligence. "I tried so long to take on human form. By erasing Simeon, you've made space for me!" Simeon grabs the Doctor and touches his face with a freezing hand. "Do you feel it? Winter is coming!" He must be a Game of Thrones fan.
Meanwhile, back in Latimer's study, Clara pleads with her employer to comfort his children. As a tear falls from Clara's eye, the snow outside begins to turn to rain. The giant gumball machine fills with water. Simeon drops dead. "What happened?" Vastra asks. "The snow mirrors, that's all it does," says the Doctor. "It's mirroring something so strong, it's drowning everything else." He and Vastra run outside. Vastra tastes some of the rain and realizes it's salty. So humanity is saved, but now all the plants around there are going to die. The Doctor realizes that the snow is made of up of tears -- the tears of a family crying on Christmas Eve.
He races back to the Latimer house to find that Clara is on the verge of death. The children cry in their father's arms. The Doctor kneels beside Clara and tells her they saved the world. He promises he's not going back to his cloud again. With her dying breath, she whispers, "Run, you clever boy, and remember." She says that every time she dies.
At Clara's funeral, the Doctor, Jenny and Vastra wait for the Latimer family to say their goodbyes to their governess. Vastra wonders if the Intelligence has gone with the rest of the snow. Jenny doesn't think they could be in much danger from a disembodied intelligence, even though they just were. The Doctor takes out Simeon's business card and looks it over. "The Great Intelligence? Rings a bell." It's called foreshadowing. The Doctor finally goes over to Clara's tombstone. "I never knew her full name," he says. He knows it now: Clara Oswin Oswald. The question, though, is who commissioned the tombstone? The Latimers knew her as Miss Montague. The Doctor realizes now that Clara was the soufflé girl who got turned into a Dalek. "It was the same woman, and she died both times!" He's not upset, but thrilled. "Something impossible is going on, something..." He rubs his hands together in glee and runs back to the TARDIS, shouting that he's off to find Clara.
In the modern day, Clara and a friend visit the graveyard. The friend clearly doesn't want to be there. "Don't you think it's creepy?" she asks. "Nah, I don't believe in ghosts," Clara says, tossing a knowing smile at the camera. The Doctor fiddles with the TARDIS console. "Clara Oswin Oswald, watch me run," he says. According to estimates, he should find her sometime around the spring of 2013. See you there, too.
Tippi Blevins is a freelance time traveler. She dropped by 2012 to write this weecap. Email her at b_tippi@yahoo.com, or find her @TippiB.
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