Doctor Who, Christmas Special: The Husbands of River Song (2015)

After both James Bond and Star Wars released fan serving movies at the end part of 2015, I had hoped that we'd see Doctor Who show them how to develop a continuing series with style with this year's christmas special. I was half right. The episode begins with the usual christmas fare for Doctor Who, a silly, inconsequential episode that fails to acknowledge events at the end of the previous series. But then it twists and provides the most visually stunning episode in the series' history. The story descends into fan service, retconning previous attempts at trying to tell the same story and bringing River Song's story full circle. The focus on fan service in the second half of the episode will not win any new viewers, while the first half would have even die-hards switching off. I also felt that the Doctor's chemistry with River was good in this episode. I haven't been impressed with Capaldi's performance so far, but this episode gave him more acting and less fooling around (which doesn't suit his stregnths, in my opinion).

Terrible pricing for a rather silly episode. Started strong, ended weak.

One of the better Christmas episodes of Doctor Who that actually downplays the christmassy aspect in favour of showing us the relationship between River Song and the Doctor one last time. A light, frivolous plot that is reasonably easy to follow, which comes as a refreshing change to the previous couple of episodes.

It grieves me to write this, as a Doctor Who fan since the late 60s, but the show has become unwatchable. As bad as this appalling effort is, one would like to think it's the nadir. Sadly, until there are changes at the top of the production team, we can't even be sure of that.

£3.99 for just the trailer! This has to be a joke, right? Or just rip off pricing again iTunes? Even £5.99 for one hour long episode plus trailer is a rip-off guys. And the actual episode will probably be rubbish anyway, on the basis of so many of the previous Xmas episodes!