Doctor Who fans have joked about Santa Claus being one of The Doctor's race, The Time Lords, yet the show has dropped some hints this might be true.
Many Doctor Who fans have joked about Santa Claus being a Time Lord; one of the long-lived aliens from the planet Gallifrey who mastered the science of time travel. What few but the most devout Whovians know, however, is that there is a solid case to be made for Father Christmas being a member of The Doctor's race, based on his many appearances in various Doctor Who media over the years.
For many people around the world, Doctor Who is as much a part of the holiday season as decorating the home and gathering with loved ones. Since the series' revival in 2005, the BBC has usually released a Doctor Who special annually on either Christmas Day or New Years Day. This year is no exception, with the 2020 special Revolution of the Daleks signaling the return of The Doctor's greatest enemies, The Daleks, as well as the return of one of The Doctor's most popular companions, Captain Jack Harkness.
The connection between Doctor Who and Santa Claus goes back far further than 2005, where Christopher Eccleston's Doctor once joked to his companion, Rose Tyler, about being Father Christmas in the episode "The Doctor Dances." Various stories in books, comics, webcasts, and audio plays teamed the two long before Santa Claus joined with Peter Capaldi's Doctor in the 2014 holiday special, "Last Christmas." This begs the question; could Santa be another rogue Time Lord like The Doctor, only using his powers to spread good cheer rather than combat alien menaces?
The history of Santa Claus in Doctor Who is complicated and contradictory, which is hardly unique for Doctor Who history. The two first met in 1965, in a four-part story published in TV Comic #732-735, with a Doctor resembling William Hartnell's First Doctor. Known simply as "A Christmas Story," the comic had The Doctor helping Santa fight a wicked being known as the Demon Magician, who was using his magic to stop Santa from making toys. While the canonicity of this story is up for debate (as it depicted the First Doctor with two grandchildren named John and Gillian who never appeared on the show) it set the tone for most of The Doctor's encounters with Father Christmas in later stories.
Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor took on an adversarial role trying to stop Santa Claus from making his rounds in "The Man Who (Nearly) Killed Christmas," which was published in 2004 as part of the Short Trips anthology of Doctor Who short stories set around Christmas. In this story, the Second Doctor had learned that Santa was using clones and time loops to deliver his toys and risking massive damage to the fabric of time in the process. This led to the Second Doctor briefly trying to take over Santa's job, making a mess of it, and the two parting as friends after the Second Doctor figured out a way for Santa to construct safe wormholes for traveling across the whole of Earth in just one night.
Short Trips also contained a story, "A Visit from Saint Nicholas," where Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane Smith met Santa Claus in New York City in 1822. This incident inspired American author Clement C. Moore, who witnessed the meeting, to write his most famous poem, "Twas the Night Before Christmas." This was also the title of a 2018 webcast, in which Santa contacted Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor and asked if he could borrow the TARDIS to make his rounds after his flying sleigh broke down just before Christmas Eve.
Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor once helped to save Christmas in the same manner, in a wordless Christmas comic titled "Silent Knight." Finding Santa under attack by robots who were trying to hijack his sleigh, The Doctor saved the day but not before Santa's reindeer became too bruised to fly safely. The Eleventh Doctor also made reference to being friends with Santa (whose real name was reportedly Jeff) in the 2010 episode "A Christmas Carol," where he showed off a photo of himself with Santa and Albert Einstein from a party at Frank Sinatra's hunting lodge.
Ironically, the most definitive encounter between The Doctor and Santa Claus came in a dream. The 2014 holiday special "Last Christmas" found Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor and his former companion Clara Oswald reunited on Christmas Eve and joining forces with Santa Claus, to save a team of scientists at the North Pole from the Kantrofarri; a crab-like race of psychic parasites who fed on the dreams of other people. Curiously, this Doctor denied the existence of Santa, believing that the appearance of Santa Claus was a subconscious projection meant to guide him and Clare through a shared telepathic dreamscape after he was attacked by a Kantrofarri. The end of the episode, however, suggested that Santa Claus truly had taken a hand in helping The Doctor save the day and in bringing him and Clara back together.
There is a good deal of overlap between the powers commonly associated with Santa Claus and those displayed by the Time Lords. The chief piece of evidence is that the ability to travel anywhere in time and space would explain how Santa Claus is able to travel all around the Earth (and perhaps beyond) in just one night without being noticed while carrying a large number of gifts. That ability, coupled with the monitoring devices of a Time Lord TARDIS, would also easily allow Santa to spy on anyone on Earth, keeping an eye on who has been naughty or nice. Since most TARDISes have the ability to change shape, it would also be easy for Santa to make his TARDIS take the form of a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer or whatever shape he wished if he needed to travel unseen. If nothing else, Santa's classic red fur suit is as colorful a costume as some of the outfits favored by The Doctor.
Some fans might argue it is impossible for Santa to be a Time Lord, as Time Lords are supposed to be able to recognize their own kind even if they've regenerated into a new body. As such, logically, The Doctor should have recognized Santa as a fellow renegade. However, The Doctor has also often failed to recognize his rival, The Master, when The Master changed into a new form or disguised himself as someone else. It's entirely possible then that Santa could have hidden his true nature from The Doctor, particularly if the technology he used was not specifically based on Gallifreyian designs, as seemed to be the case in "The Man Who (Nearly) Killed Christmas."
It is worth noting that there is one Time Lord who claimed to be Santa Claus. One of the enemies of Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor in the comics was a rogue Time Lord known as Astrolabus, who had been banished from Galifrey for thievery. Astrolabus attempted to steal a number of historical treasures and claimed to be responsible for inspiring the legends of Robin Hood, Zorro, and Santa Claus on Earth, while playing at being an outlaw hero on a dozen other worlds. While The Doctor did not challenge him on this point, it seems likely that Astrolabus was boasting and trying to scare The Doctor into submission rather than recalling his true history.
Ignoring the similar powers, there is a history of Time Lords coming to Earth and adopting new identities. Such was the case with Ruth Clayton; a mysterious woman who was revealed to be an unknown incarnation of The Doctor in the episode "Fugitive of the Judoon." The same was true of Chronotis; a Time Lord who had retired to Earth to live out his final regeneration as a science professor at Cambridge, whose friendship with The Doctor informed the plot of the lost episode "Shada." As such, it is entirely possible for Santa to be a retired or renegade Time Lord, who uses advanced technology to spread a little joy and hope where it is needed most.
Perhaps the greatest bit of evidence that Santa is a Time Lord is that his history within the context of Doctor Who is as contradictory as The Doctor's own history. With the Eleventh Doctor claiming to know Santa's real name is Jeff and the Twelfth Doctor denying his existence completely, it's all but impossible to confirm that Santa Claus exists in the world of Doctor Who, much less whether or not he's a Time Lord. Perhaps, as the equally confounding character of The Curator once said, "perhaps it doesn't matter either way," for mystery is part and parcel of both The Doctor and Santa Claus, and the world would be a bit less magical if everything were easily explained.
