Live from Master Closet Studios, you’re listening to the only podcast on the internet with one host and two snowman mirrors that say whatever he wants to hear: it’s the Noobs and the Whovian!
This is the podcast that introduces a whole new generation to Doctor Who by watching an episode each week and discussing it from the perspective of a dad who’s seen it before, and two sons who haven’t.
Welcome to Episode 99 covering the 2012 Christmas Special: The Snowmen.
This is the one where the Doctor, Amy, and Rory… oh wait… that’s not… Amy and Rory aren’t… but they were just…
Oh… I guess this is the one where souffle girl inexplicably returns?
Production notes
- Story # 231
- Originally aired December 25, 2012 to 9.87 million viewers
- Written by: Steven Moffat
- Directed by: Saul Metzstein
- Pond Life
- Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
- A Town Called Mercy
Misc Trivia
- We got a new title sequence! This is the first time the Doctor’s face appeared in the title sequence since McCoy’s time.
- Tripp said “Oh they went old school!”
Cast
- The Great Intelligence – Sir Ian McKellan
- The Paternoster Gang!
- Madame Vastra – Neve McIntosh
- Jenny – Catrin Stewart
- We also saw her in A Good Man Goes to War at the Battle of Demons Run
- Strax – Dan Starkey
- He also played a hobgoblin named Randall Moon in Wizards vs. Aliens, a Russell T. Davies show I desperately want to know more about!
Checklist
- Name of the episode spoken in dialogue?
- A bunch, yeah
- Creature of the week
- The Snowmen
- The Great Intelligence – I’m sure Jared will fill in this gap
- Doctor Who Logo
- Snow
- This is the last episode with this feature
- Bow ties are cool
- He started off with no bow tie!
- Didn’t know I’d put on.
- It’s cooler. Yeah it is, it is cool. Bowties ARE cool.
- Hats
- Great top hat!
- Geronimo
- Running count – 11
- Jiggery Pokery
- Sonic
- New setting: anti-freeze
- TARDIS
- New console room!
- It’s smaller on the outside!
- Psychic paper
- Random
- Clever staircase, taller on the inside
- Sonic
- The Question/Doctor Who?
- Vastra says It always starts with the same two words
- Clara got to say it right off the bat!
- Clara who? Doctor who?
- To Jenny: Do you know about the Doctor? Doctor who?
- The puppet
- Vastra says It always starts with the same two words
- Strax’s armory
- Pulver grenade would blow them to smithereens
- I recommend a full-frontal assault with automated laser monkeys, scalpel mines, and ACID!
- I suggest we melt his brain with projectile acid fish
- Jammie Dodger sighting
- Running count – 3
Other stuff we noticed
- Simeon said that Mr. Doyle was basing his Great Detective on Vastra and Jenny
- Ok, that snowmen roar was definitely Battle Cat from He-man!
Who’s Who?
- Who is Vastra?
- The one-word test is awesome!
- Good evening. I’m a lizard woman from the dawn of time, and this is my wife.
- Who is Jenny?
- Who is Strax?
- So, Strax is by far my favorite side character!
- A psychotic potato dwarf
- He’s easily confused.
- Two genders is a bit more than he can count
- He gave his life for a friend of mine once, another friend brought him back
- I’m the clever one, you’re the potato one!
- Who is Clara Oswald?
- Why would I try to escape? I know what’s going to happen next and it’s funny.
- She has a secret voice
- She’s been behind the face of Big Ben
- She invented fish
- I told you to stay in there. Oh, I didn’t listen. You do that a lot. That’s why you like me.
- He gave her a key straight away!
- This is the day everything begins!
- This is me, giving in.
- Who is The Doctor?
- Sad Doctor
- He’s become apathetic, or at least as apathetic as he CAN be.
- I thought we were just getting to know each other. Those were the days…
- Over a thousand years of saving the universe and I’ve learned one thing: the universe doesn’t care.
- Vastra says he is not kind, he stands above the world and does not interfere.
- There is an intelligence here beyond anything in time and space
- He’s a crap Sherlock
- Do you think i’m going to start investigating just because some bird smiles at me?
- I mean, that’s exactly what you do!
- I’m allowed to be stupid. I’m good at stupid.
- We can’t chat after we’ve been horribly killed, can we?
- I never know why, I just know who.
Classic Who Connection
- Back in the serial The Time Warrior, which is the first time we meet the Sontarans, we meet Linx. He also had trouble distinguishing the difference between males and females in humans.
- Back in the Second Doctor serial The Web of Fear The Intelligence invaded London through the Underground in 1967 (which is in the future from this story). Perhaps it got the idea form the map of the underground on the lunchbox that the Doctor showed it.
- The Fourth Doctor also dressed up like Sherlock Holmes in the serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang
- There was a kitchen in the original TARDIS
- So far as I can tell, calling the TARDIS “Smaller on the outside” is indeed a first.
- When The Intelligence first met the Doctor (that was the Second Doctor in The Abominable Snowmen) it seemed like it already knew him. That was in the 1930s, perhaps we now know why.
- The Great Intelligence is a consciousness that can inhabit things/beings/etc. When we first meet it, it is controlling robotic yetis. These are the famous Yetis from The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear and others. The Second Doctor called it “a sort of formless, shapeless thing floating about in space like a cloud of mist, only with a mind and will.”
Overall impressions
- Overall rating out of 10 –
- Jared – 9 Sontaran Companions
- Austin – 9 Battle Cat Roars
- Corbin – 8 talking snowmen
- Tripp – 9 dead Clara’s again
- Creep Level – out of 500
- Jared – 200
- Austin – 225
- Corbin – 50
- Tripp – 167
Theories
- Corbin says, “In The Snowmen, the Doctor will meet a fake-out companion who will needlessly die by the end of the episode.”
- Tripp says, in the Doctor’s arms.
- Tripp said Clara is a mirror of the snowmen.
- Corbin says Clara is a ghost
The Game Plan
- Next week, we have a Classic Who Rewind on the Fifth Doctor. Join us as we discuss The Caves of Androzani.
Closing
Noobs and the Whovian is a production of Master Closet Studios, where it’s always smaller on the inside. Your Senior Producer is Austin Reason. Our Audio Engineer is Tripp Reason. Corbin Reason is our Production Editor. Special thanks to tardis.wikia.com for the trivia, and to Jared for the Classic Who Connection. Shout outs to Victor and Jared for their Patreon support.
You can find us at facebook.com/noobsandthewhovian or twitter.com/noobswhovian and email us at [email protected]. Consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/noobsandthewhovian. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you found us, and share us with a friend not because we’re a great show but because we watch one.
