Thank God, Doctor Who’s Christmas Specials Will Return Starting Next Year

When Chris Chibnall took over Doctor Who, one of many strangest selections to return out of his period was a easy programming change: the Doctor Who Christmas specials, a practice since 2005, had been all of the sudden no extra, changed by New Year’s Day specials. Now, 5 years later, we all know that the change is being reversed.

Previously, the BBC had quietly confirmed an episode “over the festive period” in 2023 with its announcement that Doctor Who would return in November subsequent 12 months for 3 specials celebrating the collection’ sixtieth anniversary. However, within the newest concern of Doctor Who Magazine, Russell T. Davies explicitly acknowledged a return to Christmas specials, confirming that he was presently engaged on his second particular of his returned tenure as showrunner, which is able to broadcast in 2024.

“For the first time ever, I’m writing a Christmas Special… at Christmas!” Davies wrote in his new common column for the journal. “The 2023 script has been long since signed off. The new one is for end-of-year 2024!”

Bringing a seasonal Doctor Who particular ahead every week might seem to be a small factor, however not solely is it a simple transfer for Davies to make—the choice to finish the custom within the first place was removed from well-met by followers—it’s a easy one to return Doctor Who to a scores prominence it has struggled to fulfill in its present kind. Christmas Day is a serious broadcast scores day within the United Kingdom in a approach that New Year’s Day merely isn’t, and it affords a likelihood to hook the wider household viewers Doctor Who had expertly cultivated within the earliest days of Davies’ first tenure as showrunner in 2005.

The Christmas particular was a practice that endured for 12 years, enshrining Doctor Who in a festive canon for a technology of its viewers, and in addition giving it the chance for large, daring tales, foolish and seasonal however able to attracting main expertise, like Catherine Tate and Kylie Minogue in “The Runaway Bride” and “Voyage of the Damned,” respectively. The New Year’s Day specials, compared, whereas total fairly strong—largely due to a copious quantity of Dalek-shaped spectacle—by no means actually managed to seize the identical sort of distinctive feeling, merely feeling like one other episode of the present quite than an occasion. Like a lot of what’s thrilling to return in Doctor Who’s future, we’ve received to attend a bit to see it, nevertheless it’s already good to have one thing to look ahead to underneath subsequent 12 months’s doubtlessly killer Christmas tree.

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