gahhh they fooled me, as i've downloaded that soppy singing crap before by mistake - you know, where
some orchestra plays music to clips of the show...
plus the site saying 'pending' for the next episode confused me...
well, it's a christmas special. it does take some liberties with more-or-less established
rules ---
such as when the doctor is part of an event he can't just hop around in the timeline to manipulate
it (this is why he doesn't usually just go back and change things until the problem "goes away" ).
and then we have this thing that the tardis can't even land on the spaceship. never expected that,
and other than using it as a vehicle to keep amy out of the episode and in danger i don't really see
a reason. they could easily have "broken" the engines in a way that even the screwdriver can't fix
easily, and the doctor is known to not just grab his companion and let everything else go to down.
on the other hand, with the way the story was set up, i don't think there was much room for a
companion to do something useful.
i guess the screwdriver not being able to manipulate the cloud machine is ok --- sort of goes with
the concept that the screwdriver can do everything, as long as it's not the solution to the problem
(it's meant to be a tool to let the doctor skip tedious parts such as unlocking doors, as well as
replacing all sorts of scanner devices, but it's not supposed to be the magical problem solver).
still, abigal getting out of the ice prematurely, released by some little kid who may or may not
know how to operate the machine properly, and the doctor not even doing a quick scan on her?
but then again, a christmas special. i think that's exactly what it was, "yet another" variant of
the old story, but a doctorish one :-)
i did miss some earthly joke about alien attacks, though. but, i guess that's what happens if the
special is located elsewhere.