The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe Piers Wenger's tenure as executive producer, and the debut of Caroline Skinner in the same position. Adapting elements of C.S. Lewis's children's novel "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", Moffat intended the episode to be the most "Christmassy" of the "Doctor Who" Christmas specials, while Blackburn felt there was "magic" in it. It was filmed in September and October 2011, with some scenes taking place in an authentic Lancaster bomber. "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" was watched by 10.77 million viewers in the United Kingdom, making it the third most-watched programme on Christmas Day. Critical reception to
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wrote in a letter about stories for children: "I have tried one myself but it was, by the unanimous verdict of my friends, so bad that I destroyed it." The plot element of entering a new world through the back of a wardrobe had certainly entered Lewis's mind by 1946, when he used it to describe his first encounter with really good poetry: In August 1948, during a visit by an American writer, Chad Walsh, Lewis talked vaguely about completing a children's book he had begun "in the tradition of E. Nesbit". After this conversation not much happened until the