The Return of Doctor Mysterio

Starburst’s Resident Who-ru Takes a Look at What We Can Expect From This Year’s Seasonal Special...

- Jr Southall

it’s no secret that last year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special was once thought by Steven Moffat to be probably his last episode in charge of the programme. Having dealt with his ongoing plot concerns in Hell Bent, The Husbands of River Song was the show runner returning to his most frequently recurring creation and filling in the last remaining meaningful gaps in her story. But given that Moffat was then persuaded to stay with the series and produce another year’s worth of episodes, the question that begs itself is: where will the writer go next?

Russell T Davies’ Christmas episodes were frequently brash, sunny affairs that served to pastiche popular holiday movies of the past; Independence Day, Bringing Up Baby, and The Poseidon Adventure among others, provided the inspiration for the likes of The Christmas Invasion, The Runaway Bride, and Voyage of the Damned. Davies was content to tell spectacular, character-driven stories that usually had very little to do with the Yuletide festival, beyond the use of various Christmas trappings – laid on in order to try and persuade the watching audience that they weren’t really watching something that would have been better off set in the middle of summer instead. Steven Moffat took a vastly different approach, his own Christmas Specials on the whole looking and behaving considerably more festively, telling stories of redemptive and homecoming journeys and generally avoiding the pitfalls of filming in the July sun.