Inspirations: The Return of Doctor Mysterio

This one wears its inspirations very much on its sleeve: Doctor Who does comic book superheroes in general, and DC Comic's Superman in particular.

Steven Moffat came up with the idea as the Doctor hadn't ever met a "real" superhero before - only the fictitious Karkus in The Mind Robber. He felt the idea would be good for a festive special due to the popularity of movies of this genre, especially the blockbusters of the Marvel and DC universes.

He loved the notion that nobody recognised Clark Kent as Superman just because of a pair of glasses - mentioned by the Doctor in Grant's bedroom - and also the fact that Superman movies involved a love triangle with only two people in it.

The principal inspirations given by Moffat were Superman (1978) and the TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which ran for four seasons between 1993 - 1997.

It had been hoped to film in New York City itself, as had happened back in 2012. New York City was the inspiration for both Metropolis and Gotham City.

The story starts with the Doctor in the Big Apple attempting to counter the problem which arose in The Angels Take Manhattan, where all of the temporal paradoxes generated by the Weeping Angels have resulted in it becoming a no-fly zone for the TARDIS (though how he got here now, if that's the case, is anyone's business).

His gizmo to resolve this requires an ultra-rare alien crystal, but young Grant - who is a comic book fan judging from his posters and Marvel-themed wallpaper - inadvertently swallows this, thinking it medicine.

This crystal won't pass through the body, but will instead cause the boy to develop superpowers.

He goes on to adopt a superhero alias - The Ghost - who is masked, wears a cape, and has an initial emblazoned on his chest as part of his costume.

Abilities include super-strength, X-ray vision and the power of flight.

The costume was designed to incorporate elements of both Superman and Batman.

Grant later grows up to be a mild-mannered, bespectacled young man, who works as an au pair for Lucy Fletcher, a reporter just like Superman's Lois Lane. Her surname was originally going to be the alliterative Lombard, but this became her married name which she no longer uses. Lucy is the name of Lois Lane's sister.

Clark Kent and Lois worked for the "Daily Planet" newspaper, whose building sported a huge globe on its roof. The HQ of the Harmony Shoal Corporation here has a similar globe on its roof.

During a press conference there, attended by Lucy, there's mention of individuals named Shuster and Siegal. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegal were the creators of Superman.

The villains this time are related to characters seen in the previous Christmas Special. Then known as the Shoal of Winter Harmony, here they represent the company Harmony Shoal. Both are humanoid in form but with a scar running diagonally across the face, and can open up their heads. Here, we learn that they are human, with a parasitic brain-like creature inserted into their skull.

Also from The Husbands of River Song comes Nardole. The Doctor has fashioned an artificial body for him, after being beheaded by King Hydroflax's robot host on their first meeting. Nardole was introduced to give the Doctor someone to talk to and explain things as he didn't interact with Grant much in the second half of the episode.

At one point we see The Ghost stop a spaceship from crashing into New York, holding its nose in his hand. This same imagery appears in 2006's Superman Returns where he stops an aircraft crashing into a baseball field during a game.

When The Ghost first rescues Lucy, he tells her he hopes the experience hasn't put her off journalism - just as Superman had said to Lois in the first Christopher Reeve movie, after rescuing her from a crashing helicopter.

A roof top date is also arranged here and in Superman.

The Doctor at one point uses the phrase "With great power comes great responsibility", which is synonymous with Spider-Man.

Justin Chatwin (Grant) opted to use a deeper voice when in his Ghost guise - something he picked up from Michael Keaton's performance as Batman.

Though not mentioned on screen, Grant's surname was Gordon according to publicity materials. This is another example of the alliterative names often associated with comic book characters, and is also the name of the police commissioner who works with Batman.

When the young Grant floats up to the top of the Empire State Building, the set was actually constructed horizontally - a nod to the famous sequences, usually involving a celebrity cameo, of Batman and Robin walking up the side of a building in the 1960's series starring Adam West and Burt Ward.

The Doctor distracts the employees of Harmony Shoal in Tokyo by generating Pokémon characters in the vicinity. This obsessive virtual collection phenomenon first came to prominence in July 2016.

The title of this story came about during the world tour undertaken by Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman and Steven Moffat for Series 8, where they learned that the programme was titled "Doctor Misterio" in Mexico. Capaldi loved this and kept repeating it in a deep voice, impersonating the TV announcer.

The movie theatre across the road from Lucy's apartment is showing a film called "The Mind of Evil", title of a Season 8 Jon Pertwee story.

Next time: new companion Bill meets the ultimate stalker, a girl with stars in her eyes who wants to take her away from all this...

Inspirations: The Husbands of River Song

Having penned a story called The Wedding of River Song, it was only natural that Steven Moffat would come up with a title such as this. It is Husbands, plural, as we get to see three other spouses as well as the Doctor. Two elements are introduced which will reappear later - the character of Nardole and the "Shoal" - humanoid in appearance, but who are able to open up their heads, and have a scar running diagonally across their face.

This was to have been Moffat's final episode as showrunner - though he had planned to leave much earlier. Originally he meant to hand over to someone else after three years, ending his run with the 50th Anniversary celebrations. The new showrunner would then have introduced their own Twelfth Doctor at the end of the 2013 Christmas Special. However, he had been unhappy some aspects of his own work on Series 7 and wished to bow out on a more satisfying note. Then, at the end of Series 8, Jenna Coleman decided that she wanted to stay on longer. Moffat wanted to round off her story himself, so this led to Series 9.

Rather than saddle a new showrunner with a companion created by himself, he decided on a one-off companion figure for what he thought would be his final episode.

Russell T Davies had been encouraging him to pair the Twelfth Doctor with River, so he decided that there was one more story of hers to tell.

The idea that she would encounter a Doctor she didn't recognise appealed to him. The Doctor would be able to see what she was like when he was not around (as far as she was aware).

Believing that The Name of the Doctor had been her final appearance, Alex Kingston was more than happy to be invited back.

It had always been known that the final meeting between River and the Doctor would be at the Singing Towers of Darillium, and so this was an obvious setting for this episode. This location had first been mentioned by River in Forest of the Dead back in 2008. This was their last date before her death in the Library. Knowing this, the Doctor had been avoiding taking her there in the special mini-episodes recorded for the Series 6 box-set (First Night / Last Night).

As the Series 4 two-parter had been his last scripts before becoming showrunner, setting a story at the Singing Towers would bring Moffat's own story with Doctor Who full circle.

The person deemed best fit to take over from Moffat was Chris Chibnall. A known fan of the series who had also written for it, as well as co-producing Torchwood, he had raised his profile significantly in the industry with crime drama Broadchurch. Moffat took him out to lunch to sound him out about taking over - only to learn that he was heavily involved with the third season of Broadchurch as well as the launch of a US version. Moffat decided not to even mention the idea of him taking over Doctor Who, and realised that he would probably have to stay on for another year, when Chibnall could potentially be in a better position to succeed him.

This late change of plans, plus his commitments on Sherlock, is the reason why we were about to get another gap year.

Before the Doctor and River got to the Singing Towers, Moffat wanted a yuletide romp inspired by the screwball comedies of Hollywood's golden age. In these, a man and woman were thrown together by a particular set of circumstances and, despite having opposing personalities, had to work together to overcome these - usually disliking each other at first but becoming romantically involved as they got to know each other better.

An early idea was for River to steal the TARDIS, with the Doctor an apparently unwilling companion for her. He would pretend not to know about the ship and act all surprised at what he saw inside. This, of course, made it through to the broadcast episode, and is one of its highlights.

The villain of the piece would be a big, overblown character who wasn't actually all that much of a threat, despite their bluster.

The idea that he had a robot body, with interchangeable heads, was an early one.

Hydroflax is known as the "Butcher of the Bone Meadows". This was another location mentioned by River as appearing in her diary.

For his spaceship, the director looked to old sci-fi movies, especially the saucer which appears in Forbidden Planet (1956). It was designed to also resemble a Christmas tree bauble.

Ramone and Nardole were deliberately cast as being very dissimilar in looks to emphasise River's wide-ranging tastes in men - which included different incarnations of the Doctor.

She said she knew all the Doctor's faces in The Time of Angels, and here we see a folding wallet with photos of the first eleven incarnations.

When the Doctor comments on River's numerous husbands, she counters by pointing out his marriage history - Queen Elizabeth I, Cleopatra and Marylin Monroe as well as herself.

For his date with River, the Doctor wears the suit he had worn on the space-going Orient Express - which was supposed to be his final trip with Clara.

The street in which we first see the TARDIS is very clearly a reused set - the Trap Street from Face The Raven.

When River states that "one should always have something sensational to read on a spaceship" she is paraphrasing Gwendolen in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, where it is on a train.

Next time: A boy wonder grows up to be a super man, whilst the villains need their heads examining...

Story 312: Joy to the World

In which the Doctor travels through history to deliver a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte - including the 1953 Everest Expedition, the Orient Express in 1926 and an elderly couple in war torn Manchester. No-one he approaches is the right person, however.

Meanwhile, a young woman named Joy Almondo arrives at the Sandringham Hotel in London, asking receptionist Anita for a room for the week. It is Christmas 2024. Joy notices a locked door in her room, and assumes that most hotel rooms have one of these. It opens and a Silurian in a business suit emerges, with a briefcase chained to his wrist.

The Doctor then appears with his drink and snack...

London in the year 4202, and the TARDIS materialises in the Time Hotel so that the Doctor can get some milk. He is challenged by employee Trev Simpkins after spotting a man approach the reception desk and request a room on the third floor. He has a briefcase chained to his wrist.

The hotel allows guests to visit any period in Earth's history.

The Doctor tells Trev that he is suspicious about the briefcase man as he hasn't reacted at all to anything going on around him - despite guests dressed in various historical costumes.

The Doctor has deduced that the reason hotels always have a locked door in each room is because it links to this place. He leads Trev to believe that he is a special investigator, and co-opts him onto his mission.

The man with the briefcase, meanwhile, has gone into the bar. Approaching the barman, his eyes glow and he makes a cryptic comment: "The star seed will bloom and the flesh will rise".

He passes the case to the barman, whose eyes react in the same way - the chain transferring itself to the new carrier by itself. The first man becomes confused, as though freed of some hypnotic influence. The barman tells him not to worry as he will be dead soon. He now repeats the cryptic phrase.

The barman goes outside and meets Trev, and the case is then passed on to him. The original man dies - his body disintegrating -  and then the barman perishes in the same manner.

Trev approaches the manager of the hotel, Melnak, who is a Silurian. He is looking for someone who has access to all the rooms and their various time portals. Stating the cryptic phrase, Trev passes on the briefcase to Melnak then disintegrates.

The Doctor, who had ordered a ham and cheese toastie and pumpkin latte for lunch, follows Melnak - and this is how he comes to find himself in the Sandringham Hotel facing Joy and a Silurian...

Anita walks into the room, and is surprised to see the group - though not unduly so, considering one of them is a reptile man. The Doctor attempts to question Melnak, but he will only say that if the Doctor takes the briefcase then he will learn what he wants to know.

Fed up with everyone ignoring her, Joy grabs the case - and it transfers itself to her. She now states the phrase about the star seed. 

The Doctor tries to save Melnak - hearing of how he found himself in the far future after stumbling across a doorway in a cave - but the Silurian dies like the others.

The Doctor decides to open the case, and sees inside an orb emitting an intense light. An automated message warns them to close the case within 20 seconds or its current holder will be disintegrated. The Doctor notes that Joy appears not to be too troubled about dying.

They then get a second announcement that a four digit code must be entered within the next 15 seconds or the same fate will befall Joy. The Doctor claims that he cannot use the TARDIS again as it will split the causal nexus but before they run out of time a second version of the Doctor rushes in and tells them the code - 7214. The second Doctor - who hails from the future - leads Joy away into the Time Hotel, leaving the original in 2024. 

He is told that he will have to get to his future the long way round - by spending the next year here until he can complete the time loop.

With nowhere to go, the Doctor asks Anita for a room for 12 months. As he cannot pay for it, he agrees to work at the Sandringham.

As the months go by, he and Anita become good friends. She has developed a crush on him even though she knows he cannot reciprocate. Soon Christmas comes round again and the Doctor must depart. 

The loop is completed and it is he who now turns up and takes Joy to the Time Hotel.

He tells her that he has had the time to work out what the star seed might be, and why its owners need the Time Hotel. Joy is compelled by the briefcase to find a particular door, leading to a specific time zone. The Doctor tells her that the star seed is just that - a single atom which will detonate to create a sun. Someone wishes to harness the energy of a star by creating one of their own, but to do this they need to begin the process in the distant past so that it is ready for them to exploit in the future. This can only be some very large and powerful business.

The Doctor learns that Joy has been depressed following the death of her mother at Christmas during the COVID-19 pandemic, unable to visit the hospital and say goodbye - which is why she almost allowed herself to be killed by the case.

Such strong emotions allow her to free herself from the case.

The Doctor wants answers and takes Joy and the case into a room which appears to lead to a treetop lodge, overlooking a jungle environment. He opens the case and triggers an information interface. All the carriers have had their consciousness uploaded to it, and a hologram of Melnak appears to answer their questions.

The corporation behind the star seed proves to be Villengard, the weapons manufacturers. The Doctor realises that it would take some 65 million years for the star to be ready to exploit - and they are suddenly attacked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It swallows the case.

Trev then appears in hologram form, able to communicate with the Doctor through a psychic graft implant. He tells him that the star seed is about to detonate and must be taken off-world. 

He and Joy go to another room in which there is an ancient temple. The star seed has now found its way here The Doctor realises that he will have to use the TARDIS to throw the device into space, and so visits some of the other time zones to get equipment he can use - such as ropes from the Everest campsite. This he feeds through the Orient Express to link the case to his TARDIS.

By the time he is ready and gets back to the temple, he finds the briefcase empty.

Joy is outside, her body beginning to glow as she has absorbed the star seed into herself, along with the consciousnesses of all the people who carried it.

She reveals that she will not die - merely change - and that Villengard will not be able to get what they want. She soars into the sky and a new star is born. This is witnessed by people throughout history, including Anita and Ruby Sunday. Anita is then surprised to be approached by someone from the Time Hotel, offering her a new job.

Joy's mother also sees it from her hospital bed, before she too is absorbed into the star as she dies.

The Doctor then travels back over 2000 years to see the star shining in the sky above the city of Bethlehem...

Joy to the World was written by Steven Moffat, and first broadcast on Wednesday 25th December 2024. Festive Specials were always the work of the current showrunner, but in this case Russell T Davies was too busy writing the next series. Moffat had returned to the series to write Boom, and was approached to help with the Christmas episode.

Moffat claimed that one of his inspirations was the fact that most hotel rooms had a locked door in them. (Not in any I've ever stayed in, but then I'm more of a B&B person myself).

I'll state it now, right at the start, that this is probably my least favourite festive special. Even Chibnall gave us Daleks at New Year, but this story makes the unpardonable sin of being really rather dull.

It looks good, and is full of Moffat's clever-clever touches and timey-wimey stuff, but it's totally lacking in incident. It's noticeable that the clip used to plug it was the sequence with the dinosaur attack - and that's about the only exciting thing that happens in the entire episode.

Something which I really don't like is schmaltz, and this has it in abundance. I know it's Christmas, and non-fans are watching postprandial, but the ending to this is so saccharine I'm surprised dentists and diet-planners weren't inundated with new patients and customers straight after the hols. 

Bringing the biblical nativity story into it really was the waffer-thin mint for me.

The episode takes ages to get started and another of the issues with it is that extended sojourn at the hotel with Anita. As well as taking up a huge chunk of the running time, as though there wasn't actually enough plot for an hour long special, it made no sense. The Doctor has UNIT and lots of companions kicking around in 2024. His previous incarnation might still be hanging out at Donna Noble-Temple's house. Why not go spend the time with any of them? The idea that he honestly has nowhere to go in contemporary London for an entire year is a nonsense.

The main guest artist is Nicola Coughlan, of Derry Girls and Bridgerton fame. She plays Joy Almondo - that surname being Italian for "in the Earth" or "in the world". She also played Queen Victoria as a bit of a spoiled brat in CBBC's Dodger, which had starred Christopher Eccleston as Fagin and Billy Jenkins as the titular character.

Melnak is played by Jonathan Aris, who is best known for playing Anderson in Sherlock, but who has also featured in the Moffat / Gatiss Dracula and Good Omens. He also makes an appearance in Rogue One.

Playing Anita is Steph de Whalley, who had mostly worked in theatre up to this point. We'll see her again.

From Game of Thrones and a number of comedy shows (Plebs, Twenty Twelve, W1A and Trollied) we also have Joel Fry, who plays Trev.

Millie Gibson gets a brief cameo at the end, as Ruby Sunday.

See below for some other incidental characters.

Overall, more a Hallmark Christmas themed TV movie with sci-fi trappings than an episode of Doctor Who. 14 months after the event I still have no urge to watch this again.

Things you might like to know:

• The working title for this episode came from a song - "Christmas, Everywhere, All At Once".
• When he wrote this, Moffat hadn't read the Series 14 finale - but had already read the Series 15 one...
• One of the doors in the Time Hotel appears to belong to the Hobbits from the Lord of the Rings movies.
• Another cultural reference is the Hotel's clothes store, which supplies the guests with suitable historical outfits. It's called "Mr Benn's". The cartoon series Mr Benn (1970 - 71) featured a character who visited a fancy dress shop and ended up in whatever era matched the outfit he selected. The mysterious shopkeeper wore a fez. The Loch Ness Monster one was my favourite instalment.
• And Benn is Anita's surname.
• The Hotel bar is called DeTamble's - from the novel The Time Travellers Wife, which Moffat adapted, not terribly successfully, for the screen.
• A woman on the Orient Express is named Sylvia Trench (Niamh Marie Smith). That's the name of James Bond's lady friend in the films Dr No and From Russia With Love, played by Eunice Gayson.
• The 1953 Everest Expedition is the one which first reached the summit of the world's highest mountain, on 29th May of that year - the news getting back to Britain in time for the Coronation. Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay appear in these sequences - played by Phil Baxter and Samuel Sherpa-Moore respectively. The latter is actually the great-great-grand-nephew of Tenzing Norgay.
• Another of the Time Hotel doors is said to lead to the Fall of Troy, which would have been interesting to see as the First Doctor was there (The Myth Makers).
• You can also visit the Gunfight at the OK Corral (The Gunfighters) and the destruction of Pompeii (The Fires of Pompeii) - so lots of opportunities for the Doctor to meet an earlier incarnation.
• Guests can also take a trip with Nostalgia Tours (Delta and the Bannermen).
• That whole hotel interlude was a late addition as the script progressed. The Doctor was originally to have globe-trotted for the year - cut for budget reasons. The character of Anita was expanded from less than a dozen lines on the strength of Steph de Whalley's audition.

Doctor Who Xmas Special... in 2026

The BBC have announced today that the next Doctor Who we get to see, other than the CBeebies animated series which is described as "in development", will be a Christmas Special - but not until 2026.

As we have all suspected for months now, it has also been confirmed that the production partnership with Disney+ is not going to be renewed.

The same statement confirms that The War Between The Land And The Sea will be screened later this year, though there's no mention of the possible delay by Disney broadcasting it.

The 2026 Special is to be written by RTD2, and I think we can hazard a guess that it will resolve the Billie Piper appearance which most fans think might be in the form of a one-off, potentially co-starring with 14th Doctor David Tennant, to bridge the gap until the next full-time actor is in place.

The BBC said the usual stuff about the programme remaining important to them and that it will be back etc, etc. - though we heard all that in 1989 and well into the 1990's (and got the TV Movie at the end of it all) so for older fans it's hardly reassurance. A separate announcement on the future of the series is said to be coming later (my guess being on 23rd November).

Presumably another production partner is being sought, as well as the search for a new Doctor.

There will be many hoping that a new showrunner is also being looked for...

It's less than a month to the next anniversary, and there's no word on any new colourised 1960's episodes, or Tales From The TARDIS, and the animation of lost stories has seemingly dried up, apparently being reserved now for filling gaps in the Blu-ray box sets, which are released only twice per year these days. 

It's hardly the Wilderness Years back again, though it might feel like it at times...

Inspirations: Last Christmas

A fairly straightforward one this, as most of the references are actually spelled out for us on screen...

Before we get into them, the Doctor has previous form with Santa Claus. 

In his Eleventh incarnation he claimed him to be a personal friend, and he knew him as Geoff. He kept a photograph of himself with Geoff and Albert Einstein in his wallet (A Christmas Carol).

The First Doctor - in comic form - encountered Santa in "A Christmas Story", which ran in TV Comic between issues 732 - 735. He and grandchildren John and Gillian helped Santa defeat an evil magician. Santa had been inundated with requests for toy TARDISes.

The episode title derives from the popular Wham! song of the same name, which gets rolled out every festive season since it first appeared in December 1984.

The bulk of the episode is set at a scientific research base in the Arctic. Such a base coming under attack from an alien threat naturally brings The Thing (From Another World) to mind. Based on the novella Who Goes There? by John W Campbell (1938) it was adapted for the cinema in 1951, and later remade by John Carpenter (1982). An inferior prequel / remake was released in 2011.

(The Thing was also a huge influence on the first two episodes of The Seeds of Doom. In the 1951 film, the alien is a plant-based lifeform).

The aliens here are the Dream Crabs, or Kantrofarri. In appearance and mode of attack they closely resemble the Facehuggers which feature in all of the Alien movies, starting with the original in 1979 and going up to 2025's Alien: Earth TV series. 

Possibly the most famous cinematic appearance by Santa Claus (unless you count the so-bad-it's-good Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, once voted the worst movie of all time) is in Miracle on 34th Street. 

This was first filmed in 1947, with Edmund Gwenn playing a department store Santa who claims to be the real thing. It won three Oscars. 

This was also given the remake treatment, in 1994, when Richard Attenborough played the Santa figure, Kris Kringle. One or other version is screened most Christmas times. There is also a 46 minute made-for-TV version from 1955, available on YouTube.

At the end of Last Christmas, when Shona wakes from her dream, we get to see her "To Do" list. It includes watching Alien, The Thing and Miracle on 34th Street... 

She also has a Game of Thrones watch planned. Shona is played by Faye Marsay, who just happened to later feature in the series as the Waif, who torments Arya Stark when she first joins the Faceless Men order. 

(Shona was briefly considered as the new companion, if Jenna Coleman hadn't decided to stay on as she enjoyed working with Capaldi so much).

Michael Troughton is also in the cast - brother of David who featured in the series several times, and son of Patrick, the Second Doctor.

Dan Starkey usually plays Sontarans such as Strax.

The 2010 movie Inception was another inspiration for this episode, in that it features people who can enter the dreams of others.

The Doctor trapped in an environment which may or not be a dream was previously used in Amy's Choice.

Next time: The Doctor goes on the run when Davros remembers (probably because he's been watching old Doctor Who episodes)...

Story 304: The Church On Ruby Road

In which the Doctor encounters a young woman named Ruby Sunday, who is oblivious to bad things happening to people around her...

As a baby she had been abandoned at Christmas, 2004, outside the church on Ruby Road, West London - which is how she got her name. She was brought up in Notting Hill in foster care with mum Carla and Grandma Poppy, but has always wanted to know about her real mother. Who was she, and why did she abandon her?

An appearance on a show fronted by Davina McCall, in which family reunions were arranged, failed to locate any information about her mother. Shortly after a follow-up meeting with Davina, the TV presenter was injured when a Christmas tree fell on her - the work of small goblin-like creatures.

The Doctor began following Ruby as he realised that she was being tracked by these creatures - which were indeed malevolent Goblins. One intended to harm her by dropping a huge Christmas inflatable on her after she emerged from a gig with her band but she departed safely, unaware that anything had happened.

Christmas Eve 2023 sees Ruby arrive home to find that Carla has just taken in another foster child - baby Lulubelle. Left alone with a child, she hears noises on the baby monitor and goes to the bedroom to find her crib empty. On the floor is a polaroid photograph which features one of the Goblins.

Rushing to the window she sees the Goblin on a rope ladder, hoisting Lulubelle in a basket towards something floating above the house.

She snatches the ladder and is pulled up. The Doctor suddenly appears and runs along the rooftop and grabs hold of the ladder as well, and both find themselves being pulled up to a massive rickety wooden sailing ship, floating in the clouds.

The Doctor has used intelligent gloves, which counter the effects of gravity.

They manage to get onto the ship where they find a whole army of Goblins, who are planning to feed Lulubelle to their corpulent King.

They are captured. The Doctor's sonic screwdriver fails to work as the ship is made of wood and rope, but he works out how to untangle the latter so that they get free.

However, they fall onto the conveyor belt holding the baby's basket. The damage to the ropes has yet to finish and they suddenly find a means of getting back to the ground. They take the baby back to Ruby's flat.

The Doctor notes how Ruby seems to be surrounded by bad luck and coincidence, which may be what has brought them together - he also having been a foundling.

The house is shaken and the ceiling splits, and the Doctor suddenly discovers that reality has altered.

Ruby has vanished and all the photos of fostered children have disappeared from the kitchen. Carla claims never to have fostered, regretting that decision.

The Doctor realises that the Goblins have altered the timeline in revenge and rushes to the TARDIS. Its dematerialisation is witnessed by the next door neighbour, Mrs Flood.

The Doctor goes back to the night in 2004 when Ruby was first left at the church and sees the Goblin ship floating above - with one of the creatures abducting baby Ruby.

Employing his intelligent gloves, he grabs the rope ladder and slowly pulls the ship downwards towards him. It crashes onto the spire, which impales and kills the Goblin King.

The vessel is destroyed as the timeline reasserts itself. The Doctor must make sure that the baby is found and so fails to identify her mother who is walking away from the church.

The vicar finds the child and the Doctor returns to 2023 to find things back to normal.

The Doctor is worried that he may have brought the bad luck to Ruby and returns to the TARDIS, but she has worked out that he is a time traveller. She runs out to join him, and is invited to travel with him.

When the TARDIS dematerialises once more, Mrs Flood reveals to another neighbour that she knows exactly what the TARDIS is...

The Church On Ruby Road was written by Russell T Davies and was first broadcast on 25th December 2023, making it the first Christmas Special since the departure of Steven Moffat - Chris Chibnall having elected to do New Year Specials instead.

It is Davies' first festive special since The End of Time Part 1, marks the debut proper of new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa in his first full appearance, and introduces new companion Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson.

The episode also allows RTD (or RTD2 as he is often referred to, since this is his second time in charge) to set out his new vision for the show. This entails more fantasy than science-fiction.

At no point are the Goblins - creatures of terrestrial mythology - ever identified as conventional alien beings. We also have a number of conversations between the Doctor and Ruby about luck and coincidence. This will later be explained as being the result of events in the second of the 60th Anniversary Specials, the Doctor coming to believe that he accidentally allowed magic and superstition to break into this universe from a neighbouring dimension.

Ruby's search for the identity of her real mother, and the reasons for her abandonment, will form the main story arc this coming year - described as "Season 1" due to the new partnership with Disney+. (Though no self-respecting fan ever calls it this).

As well as introducing the new companion, we naturally get to meet her family network who will become semi-regulars. This comprises foster mum Carla, played by Michelle Greenidge, and grandmother Poppy, played by Angela Wynter. The latter was best known for playing a regular role in EastEnders, opposite Rudolph Walker, who had featured in The War Games.

Greenidge had featured in Davies' It's A Sin. 

Another person who will become a semi-regular but was initially just a guest artist at this point is Anita Dobson - another EastEnder and someone used to making an impact at Christmas - who plays the enigmatic Mrs Flood. Dobson is also Mrs Brian May.

It was inevitable that this character would be revisited as the episode ends with her looking directly to camera, asking "Never seen a TARDIS before...?".

In a cameo role is TV presenter Davina McCall, who had previously voiced the DavinaDroid in Bad Wolf. She co-hosts a real family reunion show called Long Lost Family.

Someone else to watch out for is a woman in the audience enjoying Ruby's band. She's played by Susan Twist, who had earlier featured as Isaac Newton's housekeeper in Wild Blue Yonder...

In terms of action, the episode has little - with only the two sequences involving the Goblin ship having much excitement or spectacle, the first of which doesn't take place until half way through the episode. When the script was initially given to Disney for comment this lack of incident was noted by them (and the Doctor's relative absence), and so the sequence with the falling Christmas inflatable decoration was added near the beginning.

Davies had often called upon Murray Gold to provide a special song for the festive specials - such as Song For Ten or The Stowaway - and here we get The Goblin Song, sung by the creatures and containing the sort of gruesome lyrics which small children might relish. Proceeds from the song's release went to Children In Need.

At another point the Doctor and Ruby sing to distract the Goblins. Davies had always wanted to do a musical Doctor Who story - inspired by the Buffy one. This will come in the following full series.

Overall, it's the sort of thing we've come to expect from Christmas Specials - nothing too heavy or too canon-heavy, to please the casual viewer. If it has a problem it's that lack of incident. It's a little dull, and the Goblins fail to make much of an impact. A bit of fluff and little more. When a single line by a guest artist gets the most attention following broadcast, you know that the rest couldn't have been up to much.

Things you might like to know:

• The fan speculation following Mrs Flood's closing line was mainly about her being someone from the show's history. One theory was that she was Susan, and the other big one was that she was the Rani...
• Ruby's address is given as Minto Road, Notting Hill, which is in West London. The location filming was mainly around Bristol, though the church was filmed in Newport.
• Mickey Smith had previously mentioned Minto Road in The Parting of the Ways, the location of a new pizza take-away (and a leaflet for it can be seen on Carla's fridge).
• As Ruby speaks to Mrs Flood before entering the TARDIS, the real street name - Frederick Place - can be seen.
• In DWM RTD2 teased that the front doors on Minto Road would be significant - and Mrs Flood's is "TARDIS blue" - another clue that she might be a Time Lord.
• The main singing Goblin was named Janis Goblin - a play on Janis Joplin, the singer-songwriter who died in 1970 aged only 27. The Tenth Doctor had previously claimed that she had given him his distinctive long brown coat.
• Other Goblin singers were named after musicians Pixie Lott (Pixie Not), Bob Dylan (Gob Dylan), Ralph McTell (Ralph McTelf) and Bryan Ferry (Bryan Fairy).
• The Goblin King is all too obviously based on Jabba The Hut, as he appears in The Return of the Jedi.
• Angela Wynter was born in March 1954, whilst Michelle Greenidge was born in June 1969.
• At the time, The Church On Ruby Road was the least watched Christmas Special since 2005, and the second least watched Special of any kind (after Legend of the Sea Devils).

Inspirations: The Time of the Doctor

 

The Time of the Doctor is a regeneration story, bringing the TARDIS tenure of the Eleventh Doctor to a close. It also brings to a conclusion the entire Moffat era up to this point, in that it draws together elements which first appeared back in The Eleventh Hour and which have run throughout Series 5, 6 and 7.

In some ways you could argue that the story really begins with Rose, as it includes a postscript to the Last Great Time War.

That is potentially going to be reignited if the Time Lords return to the Universe - last seen being saved by being deposited in a pocket time zone by the multiple Doctors in the 50th Anniversary story.

The mechanism by which the Time Lords seek to find out if it's safe to return just happens to be the crack in Space / Time which the Doctor first spotted in Moffat's first story in charge, the one in Amelia Pond's bedroom and through which people and things disappeared - the story arc for Series 5.

The thing which will let them know that is safe is a certain code - the Doctor's real name, which has been the arc for Series 7.

Along the way we meet old foes, as well as yet another of those long-term friends of the Doctor whom we have never actually met - something which Moffat has been introducing ever since gathering his Demons Run gang.

The main location for the story is Trenzalore once more, which has been referred to since The Wedding of River Song and was finally seen in The Name of the Doctor.

Then, we saw the planet devastated after the events of this story, but in an alternate timeline in which the Doctor failed.

As well as a regeneration story, this is also a Christmas Special, so the village setting is a town called Christmas, and it's permanently snowy and festive looking.

If we go back to Dorium's words in the Series 6 finale, there's reference to no living soul speaking falsely - and that's covered by the crack emitting a truth field. This is because the Time Lords want to make sure that it really is the Doctor giving his name.

The new / old friend is Tasha Lem, who is basically a surrogate River Song - old friend who is flirty with the Doctor, that kind of thing.

She is in charge of the Papal Mainframe - the militaristic Clerics having been introduced in Time of the Angels / Flesh and Stone. She provides a hefty info-dump which explains a lot of leftover bits of Series 5 and 6. 

We learn that the Silents are the way they are because they are confessors - you'll happily tell them your sins because you'll forget about reliving them once you're done. 

Kovarian (Series 6 arc) was head of a schismatic breakaway faction who wanted to prevent the Doctor giving his name on Trenzalore, because it was claimed that silence would fall if he did (i.e. the Time War would start up again as there are Cybermen, Daleks etc waiting to either prevent this or recommence hostilities). One of her schemes was the destruction of the TARDIS (Series 5 arc).

As well as them, we also see Sontarans and Weeping Angels (despite the Sontarans never having been involved in the War, as clearly stated in The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky). Other aliens get name-checked and we recognise some of the spaceships such as Judoon and Silurian.

These enemies are all there basically to provide cameos for Smith's finale.

Nods to the classic era include the Doctor using the Seal of Rassilon (confiscated from the Master by his third incarnation in The Five Doctors) to translate a message emanating from the crack.

The whole fixed regeneration idea introduced by Robert Holmes in The Deadly Assassin is addressed her. Pre-Timeless Child, there is a 13 lives limit, and thanks to the War Doctor and a controlled regeneration by Ten, the Eleventh is actually the Thirteenth.

It turns out at the conclusion that Time Lords can issue a new regeneration cycle (as offered to the Master in The Five Doctors), but Moffat wisely declines to let us know how many new lives the Doctor has. We assume at this point that it's another 13, which should keep the series going for another 50 years (or 39, if actors keep quitting after 3 series).

One of the entertainments which the Doctor lays on for the children of Christmas is a puppet show, and one of these is modelled on a Monoid, from The Ark. He has obviously recounted many of his adventures as the kids have made lots of drawings, and we see creatures from both era of the series.

All of the aliens get beaten until only the Daleks are left. They employ converted human drones as introduced in Asylum of the Daleks.

When he first goes aboard their spaceship, the Doctor is dressed in a cloak - a reference to the Harry Potter franchise.

Karen Gillan makes a cameo appearance just before the regeneration. Interestingly, both she and Smith are wearing wigs thanks to filming on movie projects (Gillan shaved her head for her role as Nebula in a Guardians of the Galaxy outing). We don't get to see Caitlin Blackwood as Amelia, as the actress had grown too old and no longer resembled her younger self.

Drawings in the TARDIS are of creatures from Amy specific stories, like Saturnynes.

Clara sees the TARDIS phone dangling  - which we'll learn about next time.

That will be when we take a deep breath and launch into the adventures of the Twelfth Doctor and the second half of the Moffat era...

Joy To The World - Further Thoughts

The internet is back on, so here's some belated afterthoughts about Joy to the World...

I understand that a lot of people did like the episode - generally talking about the "heart" of the episode, tears in the eyes etc.

That's all very well, and we have come to expect this emotional manipulation since the series came back in 2005, but I do expect a lot more. For me, Doctor Who is an action / adventure series, and any plucking of the heartstrings has to emerge from the drama. Above all, an episode should be exciting - more so the festive special.

The only element of this special that was remotely exciting was the dinosaur segment, which we had already seen as a CiN preview clip.

Otherwise, the episode was devoid of jeopardy or threat. The whole business of the star seed potentially blowing up the Earth went absolutely nowhere. There wasn't even a threat to Joy in the end, as she simply absorbed the sun into herself and became part of it. This, of course, made no sense whatsoever. How can a person, even if they've been mentally conditioned, absorb a sun?

How could she disintegrate her dear old mum and make her part of this sun? And if she knew she did this back in 2020 how can she not have known about it in 2024?

There was zero logic behind the plot. It simply wasn't thought through. Criticise the classic series all you want, but the writers between 1963 and 1989 at least spent some time thinking about story logic. They might not always have got it right (see my regular "What's Wrong With... posts for starters), but at least they tried.

Moffat claimed his starting point was the mysterious door in your hotel room which is always locked. Clearly he has the money to stay in very large apartments on holiday which might have a connecting door (that's probably all it is) but I've never come across such a thing. 

The whole plot involves Villengard making use of the Time Hotel to send the star seed back 65 million years so that there will be power source for them to exploit in the future.

Last time I checked, there were billions of stars already kicking about the universe, so what was the point of going to those lengths to make another one? Why not just use an existing one?

If time travel is so common in the future that a hotel can use it for holidays, then why does big capitalist arms manufacturer Villengard not have access to time technology of its own?

Why resort to hypnotised people to act as couriers, when you can simply get one of your own loyal employees to check-in and deposit the seed in the room that links to 65 million years ago?

Why kill the couriers, only to have their consciousness uploaded into the case? Isn't having someone you've just murdered become part of the security system a bit of an accident waiting to happen?

And why is Villengard even a problem when we know from The Doctor Dances that the Doctor blew it up and it became a banana plantation, and the only time we've ever actually seen it it was a wasteland overrun with Daleks, with "Rusty" in residence.

If you want to bring something back from your era which you left unresolved, Mr Moffat, then why not GUS?

The Doctor claims that the Time Hotel is paradox-proof, yet we see him involved in a bootstrap paradox. Why is he not even remotely bothered about a commercial organisation which permits tourists to travel to any point in history they wish, including key moments in history such as the assassination of Julius Caesar?

And why would the hotel have a room in which its occupants can so easily be eaten by dinosaurs?

I've already mentioned the stupidity of him remaining for a year in the Sandringham when he has UNIT to call upon, or any one of his 21st Century companions. He works in the hotel because he needs to earn some money. But in a previous Christmas Special we saw how he could access cash machines with his sonic. Illegal, but he's done it before.

And why could he not summon the TARDIS with his sonic - or have his other self send the TARDIS back to him? It's that paradox which the hotel isn't suppose to have again.

Going back to some of those positive reviews, if the highlight was a few seconds glimpse of the old companion then there's something seriously wrong, both with the episode and your take on it.

As I said, a little heartstring-pulling is only to be expected at Christmas, but when you have an episode that's nothing but, then I've a problem with it. 

At least Chibnall gave us Daleks.

Inspirations: The Snowmen

Before we get into the actual episode itself, a word about the two prologue mini-episodes. One shows Madam Vastra wrapping up one of her criminal investigations - a convoluted tale which is clearly inspired by one of the more complex Sherlock Holmes stories, or more likely one of Dupin's (Edgar Allan Poe's detective from The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and others).

The other is the one where the Paternoster Gang attempt to lure the Doctor out of his self-imposed exile.

They each tell him about a potential threat which might pique his interest. These are all inspired by the fantasy works of Jules Verne / HG Wells / Edgar Rice Burroughs / Arthur Conan Doyle.

Strax talks about the "Moonites" - as in the Selenites from The First Men in the Moon (Wells, 1901), or George Melies' film A Trip to the Moon (1902), based on Verne.

Vastra mentions a meteorite shower, hinting at possible UFO activity - Wells' War of the Worlds (1898).

And Jenny warns of a scientist who is going to drill into the centre of the world and possibly split it apart. As well as a nod to Prof. Zaroff of The Underwater Menace, this also points towards At The Earth's Core (Burroughs, 1914), or When The World Screamed (Conan Doyle, 1928) - in which Professor Challenger attempts to drill into the Earth but wakes up a vast monster dwelling deep beneath the surface. 

Jenny also mentions a man in Praed Street who has an invisible wife - referencing Wells' The Invisible Man (1897).

The obvious starting point for The Snowmen is that this is a sequel to two highly regarded stories of the Patrick Troughton era - though it come in the form of a prequel.

In Season 5 of Doctor Who we were introduced to the Great Intelligence - a malignant, disembodied entity which sought to build a bridgehead in a remote part of the globe (Tibet). It psychically possessed a human being to act as its agent on Earth, and used deadly robot copies of local wildlife to keep anyone who might interfere away - or indeed to dispose of them all together.

These creatures were the Yeti, who became known in the West as "Abominable Snowmen" purely thanks to a mistranslation by a journalist.

So pleased were the production team with The Abominable Snowmen that they commissioned a sequel before the initial story had even broadcast. This moved the Intelligence to present day London, where it used the Underground system as part of its plan to create a new, isolated bridgehead.

This story was The Web of Fear.

In the early days of fandom, monsters were ranked - by appearances rather than popularity, though there was an element of that as well. The first Target Doctor Who Monster Book was laid out: Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Yeti, then Autons and Sontarans -  the latter three having featured twice in the series, but the Yeti were first to achieve that. (Of course this was published before the Sontarans made their third appearance in Season 15).

When it came to bringing back the old monsters in the revived series, a lot of people hoped to see the Yeti / Intelligence revisited. It took until Christmas 2012 to do it - and then only the Great Intelligence made it back into the series.

You might have thought that a monster with "Snowmen" in their title might have been an obvious choice for a festive special - and Steven Moffat did bemoan the fact that there were no Xmas traditions left to subvert, in a Doctor Who sense - but the writer opted to go with actual Snowmen. 

Men, made with snow.

The original Yeti had been a problematic costume - many children finding them cuddly rather than scary.

This is why director Douglas Camfield redesigned them with sleeker bodies, glowing eyes and guns, and transplanted them into the darkness of the Tube.

This was probably what was at the back of Moffat's mind in deciding not to resurrect them.

By making this a prequel to the first Great Intelligence story - set supposedly circa 1935 - there was no reason to have the big shaggy creatures anyway. The Yeti robots were created specifically to scare people away from Tibet.

The Snowmen is set in Victorian England, so why would the GI make Yeti?

Whenever it snows, everyone - young and old - makes a snowman. They are very easy to create - balls of snow, placed one on top of the other (three spheres if you're American, just the two if British). A carrot for a nose and small stones or bits of coal to make the eyes and mouth. Sticks for arms, and perhaps a real hat and scarf. 

The first written record of a snowman hails (no pun intended) from the Netherlands in 1380. He might be better known as one of the greatest genii of the Renaissance, but Michelangelo was also asked to create one for the Medici in 1494.

In 1511 the city fathers of Brussels launched a snowman contest, to distract the populace from a winter food shortage. They were not best pleased when everyone made pornographic snow sculptures. 

Don't say you never learn things on this blog.

With The Snowmen, as an alternative to Yeti, Moffat gave us scary looking title monsters - with Hallowe'en pumpkin-style evil-looking features.

The episode instead concentrates on the Great Intelligence, and it uses snow as a physical medium with which to give it corporeal substance. This can fashion itself into the Snowmen, the first of which latches psychically onto a lonely little boy. He grows up to be Richard E Grant - an actor who had actually played two different incarnations of the Doctor previously, one of which RTD2 has attempted to canonise recently.

He's the forerunner to Padmasambhava and Sergeant Arnold - the human puppets from the Troughton stories.

Another link back to The Web of Fear is the lunch box which the Doctor uses to smuggle the Memory Worm into the Institute. This is a souvenir of the London Underground and the Doctor gives its date as 1967 - actually the year of the first Yeti story, though production on its sequel fell into that year.

The Doctor is basically giving the Great Intelligence the idea to exploit the Tube as a potential weakness for the city.

The other big thing about this story is the return of Clara. However, like the first appearance in the series of Jenna-Louise Coleman (as was) this is a false start. She's not the person who is going to become his new companion (sort of, it gets complicated) and is a guest character only, who once again gets killed off.

One of the children she looks after is called Digby, which has prompted fandom to think that he grows up to be the absentee owner of the big country house in which last year's Christmas Special was partly set.

Next time: the Doctor and Clara, spooning at the Shard...

2024 Christmas Special Title

An article about the 7-day viewing figures for Empire of Death, in Radio Times on-line, has given away the title of the next Christmas Special. It might only be a placeholder, but it's stated to be Joy to the World.

It is written by Steven Moffat, and guest-stars Nicola Coughlan. In a preview of the episode's Unleashed, screened at the end of the making-of for the finale, Moffat claimed that it included monsters, explosions, and Mount Everest.

Inspirations: The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe

Like his first festive effort, Steven Moffat really couldn't be bothered hiding the inspiration for his second Christmas episode.

CS Lewis wrote The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950. It was the first of seven books known collectively as The Chronicles of Narnia - the fantasy realm visited by the young heroes.

Like Moffat's story, the book tells of some siblings who are evacuated from the city to a large country house thanks to German bombing raids. It's home to a scientist named Digory Kirke.

The youngest of the children discovers that a wardrobe in the house is really a portal to a magical realm - Narnia - which is populated by talking animals and mythical creatures like fauns. The land is in permanent winter, thanks to an evil witch.

Lewis died on 22nd November 1963 - the day before Doctor Who made its debut.

There are four Pevensey siblings (Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy), so Moffat reduces his evacuees to a more manageable two - Cyril and Lily. Whilst the house in the book belongs to someone called Digory, it's an Uncle Digby in the Doctor Who version.

The Doctor equates to the Lion, and the Widow (Madge Arwell) to the Witch (though only in terms of the sound of the words - she's nice) and the TARDIS, obviously, is the Wardrobe - a cabinet which can transport people to fabulous realms.

However, it isn't the Wardrobe / TARDIS which leads to Narnia here - a snowbound planet.

The Doctor instead sets up this visit to another world as a Christmas present to the children, so the portal is through a large gift-wrapped box.

One of the reasons for adapting an existing story was that Moffat was tied up with Sherlock, and had little time available to concentrate on this episode.

The story is mainly set at Christmas, and on the trees on the planet we see egg-like growths which resemble Christmas tree baubles. Moffat knew that the festive episodes tended to be watched by people who did not necessarily follow the usual series, so it could be standalone.

The wooden king and queen derived from a childhood nightmare of Moffat's. He had dreamed of a wooden king telling him off.

Amy and Rory had been effectively written out of the on-going narrative in the latter part of Series 6, so they did not need to be included other than a cameo. Arthur Darvill was busy in the theatre anyway.

In their place would be a new one-off companion figure which Moffat decided should be "the ultimate mother".

Madge is played by Claire Skinner, best known for family-based sitcom Outnumbered.

Reg Arwell is a Lancaster bomber pilot. These aircraft are best known for their role in the Dambuster raids of May 1943 (Operation Chastise, which employed Barnes Wallis's bouncing bombs). This was the subject of the 1955 movie The Dam Busters, starring Richard Todd.

However, if there's one film which has inspired this sequence of the story it is Powell & Pressburger's A Matter of Life And Death (1946), in which the pilot of a doomed bomber is saved by angelic intervention.

Moffat had likened the Doctor in Christmas episodes to a festive angel.

Reg is played by Alexander Armstrong, who had been voicing computer Mr Smith throughout The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The snowbound planet is visited by woefully unfunny harvesters from Androzani Major. This planet first featured in, funnily enough, The Caves of Androzani - Peter Davison's final story.

They are supposed to provide light relief - but don't.

Billis was named for exec-producer Beth Willis, and Venn-Garr for Piers Wenger.

Next time: more Daleks than you can shake a plunger at and, boy, are they mad...

The Church on Ruby Road - A Review

The Church on Ruby Road is our first Christmas Special since Peter Capaldi handed over to Jodie Whittaker in 2017, and follows hot on the heels of the third 60th Anniversary story which introduced us to the latest incarnation of the Doctor, as portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa. (Apparently Disney are counting this as the fourth 60th Special, and it's only from this point that they are seriously plugging the show).

Our first proper look at the 15th Doctor, this episode also introduces Millie Gibson's Ruby Sunday - her character named from the titular church, for her backstory is that she was found abandoned as a baby there. She has since been brought up by a family in Notting Hill, West London.

It's a very long time indeed since we had a companion who simply wanted to travel with the Doctor for the fun of it. They all have to have ulterior motives or have some complex mystery in their past these days, and they have to be embedded within a family unit of some kind (even if they are sometimes rarely used).

With her true parentage unresolved, Ruby is obviously going to be no exception to the rule. (RTD2 has already said that the church will be revisited at some point in the next couple of seasons).

We've conditioned ourselves not to expect too much from the festive specials, the argument always being that they're aimed at a general audience which might not normally watch the series. With the way people view TV nowadays, that argument should no longer hold. There's a great deal of material available on streaming services, so Doctor Who on 25th December, or 1st January, is only really being watched by those familiar with the programme.

Not expecting too much would have done you a favour with The Church on Ruby Road, however.

The plot is wafer-thin. We get only two significant sequences with the Goblins, one of which was already featured heavily in the recent music video. The other was their defeat, which was rather hurriedly done.

The bulk of the 55 minute running time was pure soap.

I can well imagine any casual viewer losing patience with the opening section, which dragged. We had a pointless cameo from Davina McCall then a very lengthy set-up of Ruby and her adoptive family - mother Carla and gran Cherry.

The Doctor comes across Ruby a few weeks beforehand, and is interested in her due to the interest that the Goblins have in her. There's a lot about the power of coincidence, as Carla takes in a new baby on the same day she had taken in Ruby.

The exact nature of the Goblins is never explained, other than they have some relationship to Time, and eat babies. 

As mentioned, they are really underused, with RTD2 borrowing from Gremlins and Return of the Jedi for their makeup. 

If the plot is lightweight and soapy, we need some decent performances to hold our attention. Luckily Gatwa and Gibson are eminently watchable. Her character is still a bit of a "make-your-own" companion cliche, but we are already starting to see some of Gatwa's range. A lot of people were spouting the "he's already my favourite Doctor" garbage after he'd only appeared on screen for a few minutes, but others - myself included - cautioned that we really needed to see how he handled the darker material before judgement could be made.

We saw some of this here, like the scene in which he realises that Time has been rewritten, but overall the episode was too flimsy and cartoonish to allow him to really demonstrate what he can do with the role.

Plot, 3 / 10, visuals, 8 / 10, performances, 7 / 10. A harmless bit of fluff for Xmas, and that's really the best thing you could accuse it of.

When the thing people are probably talking about the most is a comment by an incidental character in a pause in the closing credits, then you know it can't have been a terribly strong episode.

(And the song? Could easily have been cringeworthy but I thought it worked okay as incorporated into the sequence. Singing or dancing to distract your enemy is perfectly compatible with the Doctor's style. Just don't make a habit of it...).

Singing Goblins for Christmas...

Warning has been served that The Church on Ruby Road includes a musical number, performed by Goblins. The piece, by Murray Gold, is being released as a single on Monday 11th December.

Before you run a mile, any profits will be going to Children in Need.

Can't see it bothering the Number One slot for Christmas, not after Shane of The Pogues passed away the other day.

The Church on Ruby Road images

The BBC have released a quartet of images from this year's Christmas Special this evening, despite us only being a third of the way through the anniversary episodes.

Guest artist is Davina McCall, who previously provided vocals in Bad Wolf.

An elfin / evil Yoda monster features in some capacity...