After 2010’s superb but curiously adult A Christmas Carol – in spite of the presence of the young Kazran and a giant flying shark, it was very much the story of a bitter old man’s redemption and his love for a beautiful young woman frozen metaphorically and literally in time – Doctor Who’s festive special this year manages to perfectly synergise the aspects of the programme that appeal to all ages, but with a definite emphasis on entertaining the show’s core audience: children.

With Matt Smith on suitably energetic form, all jumps and fast-talk, the story sees the Doctor take on the role of a caretaker – literally – who tries to engender a happy yuletide for the children of WWII widow Madge Arwell (the excellent Claire Skinner from Outnumbered): insatiably inquisitive ginger Potter Cyril and pouting, junior Bonham-Carter Lily.

Unfortunately, he ends up inadvertently putting them at risk on a snowy, forest planet in the far future where perfect Christmas trees form naturally and woody monsters grow out of giant silver baubles when Cyril – nice one, Cyril – opens the big blue box under the tree on Christmas Eve because he can’t wait another day. (Something the Doctor laments in a moment that might be calculated to make fanboys squee up their sprouts: his remark to viewers at home, ‘Honestly, who opens their Christmas presents early? Okay, shut up, everyone!’, has definite shades of William Hartnell’s breaking the fourth wall in the 1965 Who Christmas episode, The Feast of Steven.)

From thereon in, it’s a headlong chase through saving the kids, saving the souls of the trees, saving Alexander Armstrong and getting to the Pond household in time for dinner.

If we weren’t suffused with mulled wine Christmas spirit, we might feel compelled to point out that the story is joined together in a few places by little more than an icicle and a prayer – specifically in the moments before Madge turns up to save the day in the Androzani Harvester, where the Doctor and the kids hang around simply to be surprised by the arrival of Mother Christmas in the big, two-legged AT-AT – and that the presence of Bill Bailey and his yellow-clad soldiery pals who turn up for ten minutes in the middle is a charming and amusing irrelevance.

But the episode is better for their presence, even if the story isn’t, and who cares if it takes boring old adults a leap of faith bigger than the Doctor’s ill-fated jump into a hammock to view Manny Bianco or Bilbo Bagshot as a gun-toting military sumbitch? Nobody else could imbue the line, ‘Ma’am, please stop crying; I can’t interrogate you while you’re crying’ with such wonderfully wry sincerity.

This is a Christmas special, anyway, expertly sculpted to be viewed through the slightly purplish tinge of massive overindulgence by the whole family, and the overall feel is crucial.

There’s subtlety in Steven Moffat’s script, of course, from the pro-feminist sentiments and a sense that the Doctor is understatedly acknowledging the longstanding accusations that he’s occasionally a bit sexist (there’s a hint of Roger Moore’s mocking of Barbara Bach’s driving in The Spy Who Loved Me when he has a pop at Madge’s struggle to handle either her neighbour’s car or the Harvester) to the typically timey-wimey twist of revisiting the beginning at the end while seeing it from a newer, more revealing perspective.

But when the audience is stuffed to the guts on mince pies, it’s the bold strokes, grand gestures and big emotions that are more important than any refinements. Here, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe scores so highly that even Craig Revel-Horwood would find it difficult to award low marks.

The literal box of delights under the tree which leads to the Narnia-esque forest and the spooky, wooden-faced tree people (treeple?) vaguely reminiscent of Old Green Noah Demon Tree from The Children of Green Knowe; Madge piloting the giant golf ball-shaped mothership through the title sequence time vortex with the life-force of a whole forest in her head; and the Doctor’s tearful realisation of why humany-wumanys can cry happily when he finds out that Amy and Rory set a place for him at the festive table every year…

These are the things which really matter about this episode, along with a very childlike – not childish – sense of the joy and wonder of Christmas, which infuses almost every second in a way that Doctor Who, despite its lengthy connection with the time of year, has rarely managed to capture with such assurance.

Aired at 7pm on Sunday 25th December 2011 on BBC One.

> Order the Christmas special on DVD on Amazon.

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