There’s an accepted chaos inherent in the classic fairy tales of centuries past; an intersection of madness and mystery, humor and horror, adventure and absurdity. Even the most Disney-fied of these stories have dark contextual origins, and somehow we continue to look past these literary abnormalities because perhaps, on some level, we revel in the unpredictability and risk that runs throughout. So when Ed Hime and Jamie Childs decide to put these very disparate elements together for a televised modern fairy tale of sorts, where else could you as successfully adjoin the macabre and the madcap as in the Whoniverse?

After checking that all the mirrors in the studio do in fact have us looking back in them, we settle in for a discussion of the penultimate episode of Season 11. We spend a bit of time pining for the fjords of Norway, and then heap praise on to the vast majority of this story, up to and including THAT MOMENT — so haters, be damned! All our Team TARDIS have moments to shine (particularly Bradley Walsh once again), and the music is extraordinary. The one thing we absolutely can NOT abide is ‘Erik the Yellow-Bellied Arsefather’, who deserved far worse than the wrist-slap he received. Let’s hope his karma manifest as a more formidable creature than, say, an amphibian.

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