It’s hard to think that it is now 10 years since the first Doctor Who Christmas Special of the revised series. It wasn’t the first Christmas episode of the entire series, though, as there was a curio called “The Feast Of Steven” that was first broadcast in 1965 that was designed as a light-hearted, stand-alone episode offering some seasonal cheer in amongst the battles with Daleks. It is long lost although the audio track remains along with some fan-reconstructed stills photos. It was rather controversial at the time as William Hartnell (along with co-stars Peter Purves and Jean Marsh) break the 4th wall with a Christmas message delivered to the audience at home:
The Christmas episodes of the revised series have been a hit-and-miss affair. The first, A Christmas Invasion, was a gloriously enjoyable tale written by Russell T Davies and was the first to star David Tennant giving his popularity an immediate boost. From there on the RTD era Christmas scripts were rather patchy with star casting taking priority over decent scripts and only The Next Doctor coming close with a great turn by David Morrissey as a man struggling with his identity but somewhat spoiled by some nonsense with Cybermen: a real Curate’s Egg of an episode.
The Stephen Moffat scripted Christmas specials seem to have gone in a cycle of excellent-then-mediocre. His first, A Christmas Carol was a real standout one-off episode which made excellent use of both the guest actors and the mercurial talents of Matt Smith. This was followed by The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe which I can only vaguely recall even after a few viewings as the one with the Ents from Lord Of The Rings in it. We went back to form with The Snowmen with Matt Smith in full Dickensian mode but that was followed by the somewhat patchy Time Of The Doctor which suffered from having to tie up all of Matt Smiths hanging story threads. Last year we had Last Christmas which I would regard as the best of the bunch but did that mean that this year’s episode was going to be pants?
My initial reaction after watching last night’s Husbands Of River Song was that they had rounded off an excellent year of new Who episodes with something of a Christmas Turkey but I’m actually feeling a little more charitable towards it this morning. Just as The Next Doctor had a great human story mixed amongst the aimless action, this year’s episode had one great aspect: a last dinner date between the Doctor and River, somewhat weighed down by a pointless jewel-heist MacGuffin of a plotline. The jewel heist story in itself could have been OK but it made scant use of what was a decent support cast: Matt Lucas may as well have stayed at home as his character was completely surplus to requirements and, whilst Greg Davies was on good form, why bother casting a famously giant comic actor (he is over 2 metres in height) when all that was required was a disembodied head?
The ending of the episode made up for the aimless romp of the previous 40 minutes and the Doctor’s realisation that River is approaching the end of their timeline is quite touching and shows a sensitive side of Capaldi’s characterisation of the Doctor that he seldom gets chance to explore. It also brings another hanging storyline from Steven Moffat’s reign as lead writer to a pleasing conclusion. In fact it leaves both Moffat and Capaldi with a largely clean slate for the next series.
The details of the next series of Doctor Who are rather scant at the moment. We don’t know who the next companion(s) will be and as the filming is not due to start until May it could be quite a while before the next series airs. In fact I am wondering whether the plan is to treat the next Christmas episode as the start of the next series which would provide a longer canvass to introduce the new cast members and would provide a larger audience of casual viewers to re-introduce the series afresh. I’m sure that we will hear more details in the coming months but right now, it feels a very long way off.
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