When published, this story was the first to feature 'alien snowmen'. As it is,The Snowmen came along later and did it a lot better.

I suppose I shouldn't be too harsh on this story as it was given away free as part of the 2011 Advent Calendar on the BBC Doctor Who website. As such, it is serviceable enough but, unfortunately, it follows a trend with many of these shorts in that it is clearly written for a young audience. Characters in these stories are often young children. This story even beats The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe to the punch by having a mother and two young children caught up in the Doctor's adventures - and these are people who, apparently, have met the Doctor before and established quite a long-standing friendship. I imagine the writer chose to do this to dispense with the need to 'introduce' the Doctor to the guest characters or maybe to play with the idea of the Doctor being a friend children can dream of having.

Either way, it doesn't really work and it makes this a difficult story to get into as the reader is left feeling a bit outside of the party. The details of how the Doctor is so friendly with this family is particularly vague.

What's also vague is the purpose of the alien snowmen who are apparently controlled by a bowler-hatted race of aliens up to nefarious things on Earth. They want the Doctor, apparently, and just so happened to have stumbled across his young friends. They are dying and need the Doctor's regenerations.

It's not a story which hangs together particularly well but, as I say, for a free short story it's serviceable enough.