This is a very enjoyable Christmas special with lots of very good elements.
Richard E. Grant is a great guest star and although he is not given enough to do he makes a sinister and impressive villain with brilliant screen presence.
Having the return of a classic adversary from one of the best ever seasons of Doctor Who (Classic era Season 5) from the days of the 2nd Doctor, is a fabulous nostalgic aspect. Having the legendary Sir Ian McKellen perform the voice of that villain, the Great Intelligence, provides a fabulous, rich voice which adds gravitas to the character. Again, he isn't used as much as I would like but his voice performance is a doubtlessly positive element.
Anyone who has not seen the incredible earlier appearances of the Great Intelligence needs to go and watch The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear. They are top standard Doctor Who even with certain episodes missing and only available as animations or telesnap reconstructions.
The acting of Matt Smith and Jenna Louise Coleman is very high quality and the 'Paternoster Gang' are well acted too with Strax providing a lot of amusement in this episode.
The Sherlock references are fun, including the theme music being used and the music throughout this episode is one of Murray Gold's finest scores I think.
The special effects and the recreation of an atmospheric Victorian London are perfect.
The Snowmen themselves are well done and are scary enough to have kids hiding behind their sofas.
The story up until the end is interesting, exciting, intriguing and fun. If only there was an ingenious solution from the Doctor to defeat the Great Intelligence we would have had a really great episode. Instead the Doctor's genius goes unused as people's emotions suddenly and magically save the day instead (again) and I found this ending a bit weak.
The ending is rather a deus ex machina where people feeling a strong emotion suddenly defeats the alien threat. This is at least fairly logical here as the snow is telepathic therefore emotions influencing it makes a fair amount of sense. The problem is it is a bit of a lazy, unexciting, uninspired 'love conquers all' ending which Moffatt era stories have used too many times. In fact it was effectively being used for the 3rd of Moffatt's Christmas specials in a row! (Emotional singing controlled the clouds in A Christmas Carol, the widow's strong feelings for her family and her husband returned them all home and brought her husband back from the dead in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe and now the family's love and loss of Clara turns the 'evil' snow into rain.) It was also used in Moffatt era stories like The Lodger, Closing Time etc and is similar to storylines like Amy's love for the Doctor allowing her to remember him and bring him back into existence in The Big Bang.
The Impossible Girl arc is a bit overdone in my opinion but I prefer it to the River/Melody arc and at this stage it was certainly intriguing.
The ending only slightly lets down an otherwise very enjoyable episode for me. It is a solid quality, fun episode with plenty of interesting content.
My Rating: 8/10.
My Episode Ranking: 5th out of 14 episodes in Series 7.
