Ah, Christmas. The time for festive holiday celebrations, annual Christmas tree lightings, heartfelt gift exchanges, and seasonal eggnog shared around a roaring fireplace.
Of course, in the context of Doctor Who, it also means killer snowmen, rampaging robots, genocidal alien invaders, and the ensuing misadventures of the UK’s most beloved sci-fi creation.
Over the past several decades, Doctor Who has made a habit of delivering otherwise smashing Christmas specials, each of which feature the Doctor on a rip-roaring odyssey across time and space. Whether encountering past lovers, future companions, embittered enemies, or alternate versions of themselves, the Doctor’s Christmas escapades are always worth watching, providing fans with a healthy dose of light-hearted science fiction and holiday-themed festivities. With that in mind, here are some of our favorite Doctor Who Christmas specials, ranked in order from worst to best.
Given its chronological placement at the end of the year, Doctor Who’s Christmas specials have a tendency to introduce characters that became a series’ mainstay at some point in the near future. Case in point with Donna Noble, the titular runaway bride of 2006’s Doctor Who special, “The Runaway Bride.” It may have been a few more years before Donna took on a central role in Doctor Who, but “The Runaway Bride” perfectly established her unique rapport with the Tenth Doctor, characterized by incessant bickering, high-pitched arguments, and hilarious verbal sparring throughout.
The first Christmas special of Doctor Who’s modern era, “The Christmas Invasion” also remains notable as boasting the first full-length adventure for David Tennant’s fan-favorite Tenth Doctor. While the episode itself is decent enough, “The Christmas Invasion” is most worth watching for Tennant’s electric characterization of his newly-regenerated alien time traveler. Cementing so many personality quirks that viewers would come to know and love about the Tenth Doctor, it’s a swashbuckling sci-fi special as action-packed as it is laugh-out-loud funny.
One of the more recent Doctor Who Christmas episodes, “The Church on Ruby Road” is also the first special to feature the Fifteenth Doctor in action. Pairing the Doctor with his newfound companion Ruby Sunday, “The Church on Ruby Road” somehow finds a balance between the classic Doctor Who stories of the Tenth Doctor’s era and the fantastical new direction Doctor Who has taken in recent years. With the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby as inspired a duo as Rose and the Tenth Doctor or Bill and the Twelfth Doctor, “The Church on Ruby Road” gives viewers a tasteful glimpse of what lies ahead for Doctor Who’s immediate future.
Ever since she debuted in 2008’s “Silence in the Library,” viewers wondered about the prevalent mystery behind Alex Kingston’s River Song. With showrunner Steven Moffat building upon this story arch for the better part of a decade, River’s story came to an official close with 2015’s “The Husbands of River Song.” At once an introduction and farewell to the character who held our attention for seven long years, “The Husbands of River Song” also underscored the tender, chaotic, often humorous connection between River and the Doctor, concluding River’s storyline with a satisfying final chapter.
As most viewers will readily attest, there have been many different versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, animated, live-action, or otherwise. When it came time for Doctor Who’s take on Dickens’ classic fantasy story, Moffat and company found a way to retell Dickens’ narrative in an ingenious way. With Michael Gambon guest starring as a cantankerous Scrooge stand-in, “A Christmas Carol”’s bittersweet tone retains the overall spirit of Dickens’ original story, with enough added sci-fi wackiness to help differentiate itself from the numerous A Christmas Carol adaptations before it.
It’s always a joy to see the Doctor team up with a past incarnation of themselves, whether discussing the encounters between the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor in “The Day of the Doctor” or the First, Second, and Third Doctor in “The Three Doctors.” With “Twice Upon a Time,” the Twelfth Doctor comes face to face with his very first iteration, interacting with David Bradley’s First Doctor on the eve of their respective regenerations. Marking the official debut for the Thirteenth Doctor, “Twice Upon a Time” also deserves praise for its more thought-provoking elements, such as its discussions of mortality and fate and its heartrending portrayal of World War One’s Christmas armistice. (If you leave with a dry eye, we highly recommend booking an appointment with your local physician.)
What do you get when you toss together the arctic setting of The Thing, the facehuggers from Alien, the comedic hijinks of Doctor Who, and … Santa Claus? Well, that’s easy: you get the off-the-walls storyline presented in 2014’s “Last Christmas.” At times side-splittingly funny, “Last Christmas” also succeeds as a surprisingly effective horror story, pitting the Twelfth Doctor and Clara against an insidious alien species that use elaborate dreams in order to feast on their victims’ brains. Filled with meticulous homages to classic sci-fi and horror films, “Last Christmas” is a stupendous Doctor Who episode that holds up as one of the series’ finest , marking a high point in Peter Capaldi’s already accomplished tenure as the famously irritable Twelfth Doctor.
