Merry Christmas one and all! To many, Christmas is a time for peace and goodwill to all mankind. To the Doctor, Christmas means family, presents and above all fun! The Doctor Who Christmas Special has become a staple tradition in the schedules of BBC1 on Christmas Day. The TARDIS adorns the cover of the festive edition of the Radio Times every year. In many ways, the spirit of Christmas is embodied in the childish, playful character of the Doctor. With this in mind, let’s cast our minds back to the many Doctor Who specials that have occupied this yuletide position since 2005.

The Feast of Steven

★★★☆☆

TX: 25/12/1965

Written by Terry Nation      Directed by Douglas Camfield

Although not technically a Christmas Special, The Feast of Steven still holds a special place in the estimations of fans. A brief interlude to the epic twelve-part story The Daleks’ Master Plan, this episode takes place primarily on a silent film set. Notably, it ended with the Doctor breaking the fourth wall by raising a glass of champagne to the camera and uttering the now famous line: “And incidentally, a Happy Christmas to all of you at home!”

Script editor Donald Tosh and producer John Wiles would later claim that this scene was not originally in the script and that William Hartnell made an unscripted ad lib. However, it appears on director Douglas Camfield’s camera script and it was indeed common practice at the time for BBC shows to have a direct address to camera for a Christmas episode. Whatever the truth, it works for me.

The Christmas Invasion

★★★★☆

TX: 25/12/2005

Written by Russell T Davies      Directed by James Hawes

If you were to examine the Radio Times over the Christmas period of 2005, you would have seen The Christmas Invasion, Doctor Who’s first official seasonal special, billed at a prime time slot on Christmas Day. Intriguingly, however, the special was described there as “traditional”. Already, Doctor Who seemed to be right at home amongst the festivities. David Tennant’s seminal debut as the Tenth Doctor wowed viewers with his touching eccentricity and a real sense of human passion and energy. Despite spending most of the episode asleep, this brand new Doctor was already well on the way to winning over the hearts of the nation.

The Sycorax provide a genuine threat to a world with one-third of its hypnotised citizens poised to jump to their deaths. Although the Doctor ultimately defeats the Sycorax leader in a nail-biting swordfight, this still wasn’t enough for Harriet “Yes, I know who you are” Jones PM. In a Thatcherite moment of strength, Penelope Wilton’s controversial character orders the destruction of the retreating Sycorax spaceship, leading to the Doctor’s deposition of her. The Christmas Invasion just goes to show that no matter what the ordeal at Christmas is, everything can be solved with a nice cup of tea and “a stupid old Satsuma”. The final scenes of the new Doctor, Rose, Mickey and Jackie gathered round a Christmas table really seem to reinforce the true sense of family at Christmas, all tucking into a large turkey and pulling crackers.

The Runaway Bride

★★★★☆

TX: 25/12/2006

Written by Russell T Davies      Directed by Euros Lyn

The announcement of comedienne Catherine Tate’s guest appearance in Doctor Who initially raised many fan eyebrows. However, Donna Noble went on to become the most popular companion of the revived series. But it is this, her 2006 introduction, which remains a fun frolic across London and beneath the Thames.

The robot Santas and their killer Christmas trees return from the previous year, with a few new tricks up their sleeves. Sarah Parish makes a fantastic appearance as the terrifying Empress of the Racnoss, desperate to free her starving spider-like children from the centre of the Earth. But, the standout performance has to be awarded to Tate, who’s genius comic timing and genuine pathos at times is incredibly moving. Anyone who doubted Tate’s acting abilities was firmly slapped in the face by this episode and her triumphant return in Partners in Crime.

Voyage of the Damned

★★★☆☆

TX: 25/12/2007

Written by Russell T Davies      Directed by James Strong

Voyage of the Damned is mostly held in a negative light by fans, perhaps given its tragic nature as a disaster story. The weak plotting and constant, deliberate callbacks to the story that clearly inspired it (The Robots of Death) also mar the audience’s enjoyment of this 2007 Christmas Special. However, amongst the strong cast, Kylie Minogue provides a memorable guest appearance as stewardess Astrid Peth, whose untimely death deprived us of what could have made a great companion.

Writing a Doctor Who story about the Titanic (or in this case a space liner version of it) was always going to attract a certain level of controversy. Nevertheless, Voyage of the Damned managed to score the programme’s highest viewing figures since 1979’s City of Death, a whopping 13 million viewers. Surely they can’t all have been for Kylie?

The Next Doctor

★★★★☆

TX: 25/12/2008

Written by Russell T Davies      Directed by Andy Goddard

Now hold on! I know that this episode has a bad reputation, but hear me out. The inclusion of the Cybermen in this special might be the main reason why I always enjoy it, given that they are my second favourite monsters. But this Victorian-era special certainly expands on their hitherto overlooked technological capabilities, albeit largely stolen from the Daleks. And hey, Cybershades were creepy, right?

This story is a breathless exploration of the responsibilities of being the Doctor being foisted upon someone ordinary. In this case, a Mr. Jackson Lake (played superbly by David Morrissey) who opens an info stamp containing a personal bio on the Doctor, scrambling his memory. The adventure culminates in an exciting battle with a giant Cyberking above London, an event so historically preposterous that it even needed a throwaway line in Flesh and Stone to address it. All in all, this Christmas special was a fun tease for an audience still reeling from the shock news of David Tennant’s imminent departure from the role.

The End of Time

★★★★★

TX: 25/12/2009 – 1/1/2010

Written by Russell T Davies      Directed by Euros Lyn

This first part of David Tennant’s tear-jerking final story as the Tenth Doctor is also a fitting departure for showrunner Russell T Davies. After a brief visit to the Ood-Sphere, the Doctor returns to Earth to reunite with Wilfred Mott at Christmas. Bernard Cribbins proves that he could have made an excellent regular companion in his sublime chemistry with Tennant.

John Simm steals every scene with his maniacal portrayal of the Master. But even he is subordinate to the main villains of the adventure: the Doctor and the Master’s own people, the Time Lords. Part One of this story sets up the second part sufficiently well, in addition to being a brilliant episode in its own right. It perfectly captures the spirit of Christmas in the UK, as well as providing the perfect end to the most popular Doctor yet. 😢 I can’t watch David’s regeneration without crying! He will always be my Doctor!

A Christmas Carol

★★★★☆

TX: 25/12/2010

Written by Steven Moffat      Directed by Toby Haynes

Michael Gambon and Katherine Jenkins are two of the most high-profile guest-stars ever to appear in a Doctor Who Christmas special. How fitting then that they should be depicted in a romance together. Kazran Sardick’s Scrooge-like demeanour is slowly picked away by the childish Doctor in this warm festive adventure. Taking Dickens’ classic tale and painting it into an episode of Doctor Who was never going to be an easy task. However, Moffat managed to blend the elements of strong humour, love and flying sharks together to form this sublime story.

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

★☆☆☆☆

TX: 25/12/2011

Written by Steven Moffat      Directed by Farren Blackburn

I am going to level with you here. Until 2011, The Space Pirates was my least favourite Doctor Who story of all time. But then, this ‘adventure’ came around. A mediocre tale about sentient trees, Androzani tree farmers (note: referencing The Caves of Androzani merely makes the viewer want to watch that instead) and a family from 1941 wasn’t enough to save this festering mess.

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe remains one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who that has ever been made. I rarely discourage people from watching certain episodes of the programme. But on this occasion, I have to concur with the London Evening Standard’s review; that this special was vastly inferior to Series 2 of Sherlock, which was also broadcast over that Christmas season. At least it had a sweet ending.

The Snowmen

★★★★★

TX: 25/12/2012

Written by Steven Moffat      Directed by Saul Metzstein

How can things change so much in just one year? The Snowmen remains my favourite Christmas special for so many reasons. Killer Snowmen, combined with the iconic Victorian Christmas setting, including the Paternoster Gang, along with a joyous introduction for Clara Oswald, serves to make this festive treat a fun adventure for the Eleventh Doctor. And if all that wasn’t enough, The Snowmen saw the return of the classic 60s villain, the Great Intelligence, played by veteran British actors Ian McKellen and Richard E Grant. In a country gearing up for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who the following year, The Snowmen felt like the perfect prelude to what was to be a truly historic year for the show.

The Time of the Doctor

★★★☆☆

TX: 25/12/2013

Written by Steven Moffat      Directed by Jamie Payne

There were too many plot threads left over from the Matt Smith era to be resolved in just one Christmas special. This is another reason why I think this story would have benefitted from being a two-part swansong, like The End of Time. The Doctor’s tear-jerking final confrontation with the Silence and a host of other villains on the fabled planet of Trenzalore had already been whispered about since the events of The Name of the Doctor.

One of the positives of this episode is that it finally provides a temporary solution to the twelve-regeneration limit reached by the Doctor by the time of this story. The trapped Time Lords bequeath the Doctor with a brand-new regeneration cycle which not only enables him to explosively defeat the Daleks, but also to regenerate into his next, more intense incarnation: the Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi. I can’t watch Matt’s regeneration without crying! 😢

Last Christmas

★★★★☆

TX: 25/12/2014

Written by Steven Moffat      Directed by Paul Wilmshurst

Last Christmas is a seasonal hammer horror Inception pastiche, set in an Antarctic scientific base infested with dream-inducing Kantrofarri ‘face-huggers’; an alternative take on Doctor Who’s traditional ‘base-under-siege’ format. Quite apart from featuring the superlative casting match of actor’s name to role in the form of Nick Frost as Santa Claus, the guest cast also notably includes Dan Starkey, Nathan McMullen, Faye Marsay and Michael Troughton: the son of Patrick Troughton, who played the Second Doctor from 1966 to 1969.

Talking about this story now carries a sombre tone, following the recent passing of George Michael, who sang the original version of the song (from which the episode’s title is obviously taken) back in 1984 with Wham! Numerous other pop culture references have clearly influenced this tale. So blatantly, in fact, that Moffat even acknowledges them throughout the episode. Alien, The Thing and Miracle on 34th Street are all featured on Shona’s Christmas to-do list. Jenna Coleman also provides a fantastic performance as Clara alongside the magnificent Peter Capaldi as the Doctor.

The Husbands of River Song

★★★★☆

TX: 25/12/2015

Written by Steven Moffat      Directed by Douglas Mackinnon

I thoroughly enjoyed this comic Christmas caper when I first saw it last year. Although I was initially apprehensive about the return of River Song, she was mostly served well in this adventure. Matt Lucas and Greg Davies also helped to provide extra laughs along the way in an intergalactic special involving beheading, ancient diamonds and head-opening villains.

The Husbands of River Song fits neatly in-between The Angels Take Manhattan and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, at the end of River Song’s timeline. It was heart-warming but also sad to witness the final linkup to River’s first and also final appearance. The Doctor gifts his sonic screwdriver to River as a Christmas present before spending 24 years with her on Darillium, the ‘night’ before her fateful trip to the Library.

The Return of Doctor Mysterio

★★☆☆☆

TX: 25/12/2016

Written by Steven Moffat      Directed by Ed Bazalgette

From the moment I watched the trailer for this episode, I knew that I was probably not going to enjoy it. To witness this utter turkey of a tale involving a New York superhero, the Shoal of the Winter Harmony from last year’s Christmas special and Matt Lucas’s return as Nardole was highly disappointing. Bar BBC3’s mediocre outing for the new spin-off Class, Doctor Who has been off our screens for exactly one year and I don’t feel that the long wait was worth it, after watching The Return of Doctor Mysterio. However, I still have high hopes for the upcoming Series 10 next year, which will be Moffat’s (and presumably also Capaldi’s) final Doctor Who season.

Twice Upon a Time

★★★☆☆

TX: 25/12/2017

Written by Steven Moffat    Directed by Rachel Talalay

The Twelfth Doctor is (reluctantly) regenerating and he reunites with the First Doctor who is also regenerating. The pair bicker and squabble like an old married couple. The Twelfth and First Doctors meet a distant ancestor of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The three are captured by glass avatars and taken to a distant planet. The First Doctor is shown his future as “the Doctor of war”. The Twelfth Doctor is reunited with a glass avatar of Bill. The First Doctor tells Bill about why he left Gallifrey in the first place and Bill sees how much the Doctor that she knows has changed since his early days. The Twelfth Doctor is reunited with Rusty the Dalek, whom he previously encountered in Into the Dalek. Rusty still hates the Daleks, but Rusty is not the Doctor’s friend however. Rusty reveals that the pilot and its ship, known as Testimony, were created on New Earth, designed to extract people from their timelines at the moment of their death, and archive their memories into glass avatars, which are an invention of Professor Helen Clay of New Earth University. The Doctors return Captain Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart back to No Man’s Land on the battlefield in France during Christmas 1914. The Christmas Truce of World War I occurs before the Doctors’ very eyes. The First Doctor realises that this is what it truly means to be a Doctor. Content, the First Doctor leaves in his TARDIS and completes his regeneration. The Twelfth Doctor is encouraged to do the same by glass avatars of Bill, Nardole and Clara. The Doctor bids goodbye to his friends before leaving in the TARDIS. After a long speech, the Twelfth Doctor regenerates into the Thirteenth Doctor. The new Doctor presses a button on the console and the TARDIS explodes around her. The Thirteenth Doctor is thrown out of the exploding TARDIS and she falls to Earth…

The Church on Ruby Road

★★★☆☆

TX: 25/12/2023

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Mark Tonderai

The Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) met his new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) after he visited a church where she was abandoned as a baby. The young Ruby was adopted by her foster mother and lived with her in an apartment in London. Her mother also fostered a baby called Lulubelle, who was later kidnapped by some goblins. The goblins had been causing mayhem in Ruby’s life for some time. But thankfully, the Doctor came to Ruby’s aid. The two of them boarded the Goblin Ship and they rescued the baby Lulubelle from being eaten by the disgusting Goblin King. However, the goblins then went back in time and as revenge, they kidnapped Ruby as a baby. The Doctor returned to the Church on Ruby Road and saved the baby Ruby by destroying the Goblin ship and impaling the Goblin King on the spire of the church. Having put history back on track, the Doctor returned to the present day, where his new companion Ruby Sunday decides to join him for further adventures in time and space. The two depart in the Doctor’s TARDIS, which is noticed by Ruby’s mysterious neighbour Mrs Flood…

Joy to the World

★★★☆☆

TX: 25/12/2024

Written by Steven Moffat    Directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai

The Fifteenth Doctor decides to check into the Time Hotel, which has rooms linked to all of time and space. This includes Mount Everest in 1953, the London Blitz 1940 and the Orient Express in 1962. Guests can spend Christmas everywhere all at once! The Doctor goes through one of the doors to a hotel on present day Earth. The Doctor meets a woman called Joy who is being controlled by a briefcase that contains a bomb. The briefcase has also taken over other guests at the Time Hotel including a Silurian and a man called Trev. The briefcase ticks down to detonation, but thankfully a future Doctor bursts into Joy’s hotel room and tells them the correct pin to disarm the bomb. The Doctor spends a year in the hotel on Earth, where he befriends the receptionist and works inside the hotel. The Doctor makes it back to the Time Hotel and is able to give his younger self and Joy the pin to the suitcase, using the bootstrap paradox. The Doctor breaks the suitcase’s hold over Joy by making her upset about the death of her mother during COVID-19 at Christmas whilst Partygate was happening. Joy and the Doctor open a door to 65 millions years ago, where the briefcase reveals itself to be made by Villengard, a weapons manufacturing company with plans to detonate a “star seed” to use as an energy source, using the hotel’s time travel to allow it to grow 65 million years in the past. The briefcase is eaten by a T-Rex, and the Doctor and Joy flee. Trev, who connected psychically to Villengard’s system before he died, contacts the Doctor. Trev reveals the briefcase’s location, and the Doctor finds it sealed in a shrine. The Doctor opens it, but Joy takes the briefcase outside, and lets the star seed enter her. She and the other people killed by the seed pilot it safely into space to detonate, becoming the Star of Bethlehem. At various points in time, the star gives hope and comfort to those who see it and saves Joy’s mother.