The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe ever". He stated that "nothing is more fun to write" than the Doctor at Christmas, as he considered it "his kind of day. Everything's bright and shiny, everybody's having a laugh, and nobody minds if you wear a really stupid hat". The story is partly inspired by "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (from "The Chronicles of Narnia") by C. S. Lewis. Moffat said that "Doctor Who" and the Narnia stories "come from the same impulse that children have of escaping to another world." The scene in which the Doctor is showing the Arwells around the house originally included
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the Mouse." In the fable, a lion catches a mouse, but the mouse persuades the lion to release him, promising that the favor would be rewarded. Later in the story, he gnaws through the lion's bonds after he has been captured by hunters. It is also reminiscent of a scene from Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Pit and the Pendulum," in which a prisoner is freed when rats gnaw through his bonds. In a later book, "Prince Caspian," we learn that as reward for their actions, mice gained the same intelligence and speech as other Narnian animals. One of the