It’s time for the 1920s! I for one have no idea what the historical context is, in England. It’s between the wars, and the aristocracy is quite alive — that much is clear. Other than that, I don’t really know.
Of course things are made easier by the fact that, yay, this is the time in our season when we visit a Famous Historical Personage! (reminder: we’ve already done the Place and Time of Historic calamity when The Doctor Ends Up Being Responsible, and we haven’t yet done the Doctor Lite episode). I actually mean this without any sarcasm, but the seasons are formulaic somewhat, aren’t they? Though I appreciated that they were actually having fun with some back-references (Charles Dickens / Christmas / ghosts)
Let it be said that I said it first (ok, well, I said it just in my last post). Once again the Doctor and Donna have to explicitly state that they’re not together. However, they sure don’t behave that way — for heaven’s sake, she kisses him. It’s almost as if the amount of physical contact of the Doctor and his companion is inversely proportional to the amount of sexual attraction the companion has to the Doctor.
The episode has at least one mistake here. According to Wikipedia, Christie disappeared on December 8th, 1928. But it certainly doesn’t look like December 8th.
The episode is, actually, quite funny. Not Death at a Funeral funny — which happens to be quite close in the sense of a British murder mystery comedy. But certainly the least scary and most laugh-out-loud funny of the recent episodes.
It’s a bummer that we have to wait two weeks for the next fix of the Doctor and Donna.
