Story 265: The Return of Doctor Mysterio

In which the Doctor visits New York City in the 1990's, intent on undoing the temporal damage wrought by the collapsed Weeping Angel paradox. On the roof of an apartment block he sets up a device but accidentally falls - leaving him dangling outside the bedroom window of a boy named Grant. He lets him in, and the Doctor notices his obsession with comic book heroes, which he finds far-fetched. Grant dubs the Doctor "Dr Mysterio".

Grant joins him on the roof. The Doctor hands him an alien gemstone which can supposedly give its holder anything they desire. It will power the Doctor's device. Due to a misunderstanding, the boy thinks it is medicine and swallows it. It transforms his comic book interests into real life super-powers. He is unable to control these and takes to the air, dragging the Doctor with him.

Over the next few years the Doctor checks in on Grant to make sure he is coping with his new powers.

In 2016, the Doctor is back in New York, investigating the Harmony Shoal Institute. Also interested in this organisation is a journalist named Lucy Fletcher. The CEO - a man named Brock - is evasive about their investors. After the press conference, Brock is asked to accompany Dr Sim to the laboratories, where he discovers that Sim isn't human. He has a hidden scar running across his face, and can open up his skull. A secret chamber is full of brains in jars - brains with a life of their own. Surgeons emerge and forcibly transplant one of the brain creatures into Brock.

Lucy has hidden herself in the building in search of a story and comes across the Doctor and Nardole - a fellow husband of River Song, whose head he had earlier saved from the robotic King Hydroflax body. They are discovered by Sim who threatens to kill them. He is interrupted by a sound at the window - despite them being many floors up. A masked figure is floating in mid-air. He smashes through the glass and knocks Sim out, then agrees to fly Lucy to safety.

The masked man is Grant, who has adopted a superhero persona named "The Ghost". He fights crime in the city, and rescues people in danger. The Doctor knows exactly who he is, and when Grant gets home he finds the Doctor and Nardole waiting for him. He lives in an apartment with Lucy, and works as a nanny to her baby daughter. She is unaware of his double-life. He introduced her to her ex-husband, who subsequently abandoned her and her child, so feels responsible for them both. He is secretly in love with her - whilst she has fallen for the Ghost.

Lucy wants to know who the Doctor is, and why he has come to her home. The Doctor avoids telling her the truth, and Grant then poses as the Ghost to invite Lucy to an exclusive interview the following evening.

At the Harmony Shoal building, Sim shows Brock CCTV footage of the Ghost and both agree that he would make the perfect host for one of the brain creatures. The Doctor appears and tells them that he has come to give them a chance to leave Earth. He is familiar with the aliens as he had previously encountered some of their people on the spaceship Harmony and Redemption, when they had formed part of the Shoal of the Winter Harmony. They are a parasitic species, which steal the bodies of others as they exist only as the disembodied brains.

The Doctor has worked out their plan - to abduct all of the world's leaders and transplant themselves into their bodies. They have office buildings in all the major cities on the planet. Sim informs him that they won't need to go after the leaders - they will come to them. The Doctor escapes in the TARDIS, which is piloted by Nardole. They go to the Harmony Shoal building in Tokyo where the Doctor identifies a signal being beamed out into space.

In New York, Lucy and the Ghost meet for a rooftop picnic. Grant has to split his time with her and nannying the baby, thanks to a baby monitor.

The TARDIS goes to the target for the signal and finds a spaceship. It is unmanned, apart from a pair of drone guards. The Doctor realises that the Shoal intend to crash the ship onto New York. A panic will ensue and world leaders will be invited to take refuge in their specially reinforced buildings. The Doctor decides to crash it prematurely, before the Shoal can capitalise on the event. Sim and Brock have traced the Ghost and have come to capture him when they realise what the Doctor has done.

The Doctor warns Grant who stops it from hitting his building by catching it - thus revealing to Lucy his alter-ego.

UNIT raid all of the Harmony Shoal buildings worldwide, but Sim manages to escape by switching bodies to a UNIT soldier.

Grant decides to step down as the Ghost, as the Doctor maintains that he is the person to save Earth in time of need...

The Return of Doctor Mysterio was written by Steven Moffat and was first broadcast on 25th December 2016 - his seventh Christmas Special.

During the "World Tour", which Peter Capaldi had embarked upon to promote Series 8, he had been amused to learn that Doctor Who was known as "Doctor Mysterio" in Mexico and pointed this out to Moffat, who in turn took note and decided that he might use this one day.

Deciding that he had run out of traditional Christmas elements around which to base the Specials, Moffat elected to simply tell a good story.

There was a tenuous link to the festive period, however, as Christmas TV often saw the screening of blockbuster movies - including those involving superheroes.

Marvel had been releasing a whole interconnected range of films based on The Avengers since the first Iron Man movie in 2008. 2012 had seen the various characters meet up for the first time in Avengers Assemble.

Rather than Marvel, Moffat looked to the other big comic book company - DC. Specifically he was keen to base his Special on Superman, both the comics and the quartet of movies which had starred Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel.

The Ghost's superpowers just happen to mirror those of Superman (great strength, flight, and X-Ray vision). The Harmony Shoal building has a huge globe on its roof - just like the "Daily Planet" offices in Superman. Lucy has an "L" alliterative name, just like Lois Lane. (Fletcher is her maiden name - her married name is Lucy Lombard). Mr Brock, at the press conference, mentions a Mr Siegel and a Mr Shuster - surnames of the creators of Superman. 

The Doctor thinks he is the first person to notice that Superman is just Clark Kent without glasses, and can't understand why others can't see this.

Young Grant's room is decorated with Marvel comic characters, however, and the Doctor speaks to the boy about Spider-Man. He also quotes the Spider-Man mantra: "With great power comes great responsibility".

For his villains, Moffat returned to the beings he had created for the previous Christmas Special, The Husbands of River Song - humanoids who could open up their heads. Their nature had never been explained then, so he develops them further here into brain-like parasites who steal bodies and use them to invade planets. The inclusion of Nardole and his conversation with Grant and Lucy about the Doctor having lost someone also refers back to this episode.

The guest cast is headed by Canadian actor Justin Chatwin. He had featured in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, playing Tom Cruise's teenage son, and was later a regular on the US version of C4's Shameless. He has also appeared in Smallville, appropriately enough - the TV show based around Clark Kent's youth.

As Lucy we have Charity Wakefield, who had featured in the 2008 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, as well as appearing in The Great and Wolf Hall (as Mary Boleyn).

Dr Sim is Aleksandar Jovanovic. The majority of his work has been produced in his native Germany.

Mr Brock is Tomiwa Edun, who had been one of the Arthur's knights in Merlin.

Young Grant is played by Logan Hoffman.

At this stage his presence with the Doctor not fully explained, Matt Lucas returns as Nardole - last seen still bodiless and trapped inside the Hydroflax robot 366 days earlier.

Lucas had asked for a return to the series after appearing in the previous Christmas Special and so Moffat wrote him into a couple of the episodes of Series 10, including The Pilot. Enjoying his performance and the way he and Capaldi played opposite each other, Nardole was gradually introduced into more episodes, to the point that he became a regular, and then finally found his way into this Special.

Overall, an entertaining enough episode for a holiday broadcast. The Karkus aside, it was inevitable that the series would touch on the comic book genre, considering that Doctor Who itself had been the subject of a comic strip almost from its beginnings.

Things you might like to know:

• The Doctor is in New York to fix the problems which we saw created in the Series 7 episode The Angels Take Manhattan. Technically, the Doctor had said that the paradoxes created by the Weeping Angels prevented the TARDIS from ever returning there - leading to him having to say goodbye to Amy and Rory. The Angels Take Manhattan just happens to be the last time before this episode that the Doctor has a male companion - albeit a temporary one-off one.
• The New York city streets were filmed at the Nu Boyana studios in Sofia, Bulgaria. This is a standing set used by many productions - including other Doctor Who stories such as Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror. 
• The cinema across from Grant's apartment block is screening a movie called "Mind of Evil" - in homage to the 1971 Third Doctor story. 
• A pizza parlour is called "Joe's" after the place where Peter Parker works in Spider-Man 2.
• Moffat questioned the inclusion of a cape for the Ghost's costume - arguing that it was pointless. However, it was pointed out to him that it could be used to hide things like wires or other VFX equipment, so it was retained.
• This episode had the longest pre-credit sequence until Eve of the Daleks in 2022, at more than 9 minutes duration. (Eve is 10 seconds longer).
• Immediately after broadcast, people on-line were asking about the Mr Huffle squeaky toy, thinking it a genuine item. This was created specifically for the programme, but has subsequently been marketed (available today for around £10).