Prequels To promote the special, three minisode prequels were released. The first was broadcast during the 2012
Children in Need telethon on 16 November 2012, titled "The Great Detective". The
Silurian Madame Vastra, her human wife
Jenny Flint, and the
Sontaran Strax describe a number of strange phenomena to the
Eleventh Doctor, who tells the group that he has retired. A second prequel, titled "Vastra Investigates", was released online on 17 December 2012. At the end of a case, Vastra and Jenny converse with an officer from
Scotland Yard and apologise for Strax's violent wishes for the culprit's punishment. Vastra explains Strax's origins as a clone warrior from outer space as well as her own as a prehistoric intelligent reptile to the officer, much to his astonishment. Vastra reveals that she was awoken by an extension to the
London Underground and initially disliked humans, though that changed when she fell in love with Jenny. On the carriage ride home, Jenny notices it is beginning to snow and Vastra notes that the snow should be impossible because there are no clouds in the sky. Two days after Strax's apparent death at Demon's Run, Vastra and Jenny convince him that he is not mortally wounded and invite him to accompany them back to 1800s London. The scene had been filmed as an extra due to the anticipation that fans would ask how Strax was resurrected and came to be in Vastra's employ.
Synopsis The Doctor has retired from saving people and uses his allies Vastra, Jenny, and Strax to keep people away from him while he lives in the clouds above 1892 London. Barmaid
Clara Oswin Oswald encounters the Doctor, and the two of them are surrounded by snowmen created from snow with psychic properties. The Doctor realises that Clara's thoughts are creating the snowmen and ends the threat by instructing her to think of them melting. Clara returns to her other job as governess for Digby and Francesca Latimer. Francesca has been having horrible dreams about their previous governess returning from the dead. Clara realises that the pond which contains the old governess' body is the only thing still frozen around them. She attempts to track down the Doctor, and is taken to see Vastra. Vastra tells Clara she gets only one word to impress the Doctor with if she wants his help. Clara chooses the word "Pond", which arouses the Doctor's interest. The Doctor visits the Latimer family's pond. He realises that the
Great Intelligence, the entity controlling a man called Dr Simeon since he was a boy and the snowmen, is using the old governess' body as a DNA blueprint to form an ice creature that will retain its form and not melt. While Clara puts Francesca to bed, the frozen body of the governess breaks into the house. The Doctor tries fleeing with Clara, but Clara is mortally wounded by the ice governess, which is also shattered before Simeon can get the blueprint. The Doctor tricks Simeon into opening a tin holding a "memory worm" inside, which latches on to him. The Doctor states that the Great Intelligence, which has been existing as a mirror of Simeon's thoughts, will vanish with the erasure of Simeon's memories by the worm. Instead, the Intelligence takes control of Simeon's body. However, the influence of the Great Intelligence quickly wanes, and Simeon falls dead. Outside, a saltwater rain has started, and the Doctor deduces that another psychic ability has taken control of the snow from the Great Intelligence: the Latimer family, crying for Clara. At her funeral, the Doctor reads Clara's full name on her tombstone and realises she is the same woman as Oswin Oswald, who died on the
Daleks' Asylum planet. Since a person dying twice is an impossibility, the Doctor departs in the TARDIS to investigate, hoping to find Clara again.
Continuity The
Second Doctor previously encountered the Great Intelligence in the serials
The Abominable Snowmen (1967), set in the 1930s, and
The Web of Fear (1968), set in the 1960s. Coleman previously played Oswin in "
Asylum of the Daleks", though the connection between the two characters is not clarified until Clara reveals she has an interest in soufflés, a trait that Oswin's character also had. The Doctor, after meeting Clara, wistfully replies "those were the days" when she asks why he isn't staying to get acquainted with her, which are the same words he tells Craig Owens ("
Closing Time") when Craig comments that the Doctor always wins. The final scenes at the graveyard establish that Clara shares the same name as Oswin, leading the Doctor to surmise they are the same person. As seen on her gravestone, Clara's birthdate is 23 November, the date
Doctor Who was first transmitted in 1963. ==Production==