I don’t know about you, but when this first aired I was still reeling from the loss of Clara Oswald.
The prospect of a light-hearted adventure co-starring the vivacious River Song had me concerned about the state of my neck after enduring that level of emotional whiplash.
The good news is that ‘The Husbands of River Song’ was indeed a jolly good romp, and probably the only way to carry on from the end of Season 9 without giving us a solid hour of Twelve moping about the TARDIS trying to conjure a memory of what Clara looked like using a Mrs Potato Head.
But there’s more: River’s never seen the Doctor with this face before, so she doesn’t know it’s him. What follows is a screwball caper in which Greg Davies is even taller than usual (except when he’s being a disembodied head in a handbag) and a rather alarming insight into exactly the kind of questionable mayhem Professor Song gets up to when the spouse of hers we know best isn’t around.
She’s got at least two other husbands, and several other wives, has few qualms about doing a murder, plays fast and loose with other people’s memories (after ‘Hell Bent’, that’s too soon!) and has been known to borrow the TARDIS. Tsk tsk, River. Honestly.
Full disclosure: I never quite felt like Eleven was the sort of fellow who suited being married to anybody, let alone River Song, but there was something joyous about the banter between Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston, and I’m grateful we got to see their ridiculous team-up.
But it’s not all ridiculousness (even if we get to see the Doctor, at long last, giving his impression of how a proper bigger-on-the-inside reaction should go down), as we also learn just how special the Doctor is to River, in terms she’d never knowingly admit to his face. It was, obviously, super sweet.
And what’s more, we somehow land ourselves with a happy ending, kind of.
Well, as happyan ending as you can have when you’ve already seen a recurring character effectively die as of their very first appearance, so many seasons ago. But to that end, it wraps up some questions about just how their last adventure went down, and provided some welcome closure for both of them.
Buy the Christmas specials box set on DVD on Amazon here.
Buy the Christmas specials box set on Blu-ray on Amazon here.
What’s your favourite moment in ‘The Husbands of River Song’? Let us know below…