Ah Christmas.
Chestnuts roasting by an open fire … Jack Frost nipping at your toes … Yuletide carols being sung by a choir … and Alien-esque monsters chasing you around the North Pole … wait, WHAT THE WHAT THE?!
Well it is a Doctor Who Christmas special after all and you really can’t expect things to quite go the cosy, traditionally-festive route now can you?
Of course you couldn’t, especially not when Santa Claus (Hot Fuzz‘s Nick Frost) has appeared at the door to the TARDIS while you’re in transit to announce that The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) have some unfinished business to attend to.
(If you recall, they parted under less than ideal circumstances at the end of the season finale “Dark Water”/”Death in Heaven” when – SPOILERS! – Clara lied to the Doctor about her Cybermen-ised boyfriend Danny (Samuel Anderson) being alive and the Doctor lied going home to Gallifrey which he said was exactly where it should be, with each thinking the other was better without them … not really warm and fuzzy and well Christmassy is it really?)
And not when, like countless other heroes/anti-heroes/idiot in a box with a screwdriver, trouble seems to follow you around like your long dead/not so dead childhood friend who’s prepared – SPOILERS! – to stage an undead-as-Cybermen invasion of Earth just to be pals again.
Christmas then isn’t so much about decking the halls or waiting to see if reindeers really know how to fly (let’s hope so given what’s after you!); it’s more like running from your life in the frigid snowy landscape of the North Pole from what EW rightly called “terrifying, slavering beasties” and hoping against hope that Santa Claus is capable of more than just making wooden toys and X-Box consoles.
Starring the usual suspects Peter Capaldi as the Doctor and Jenna Coleman as Clara – for what is rumoured to be her final story as a companion – as well as guest stars Nick Frost as old St Nick and Michael Troughton (son of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton), among others, it’s looks like anything but business as festive usual for the Doctor.
Doctor Who Christmas special will air in UK on Christmas Day and in Australia on Boxing Day.