I know you guys watch it later in the evening and I sometimes think it must seem a bit loud for 9 o’clock, but it seems to be going very well, so I shouldn’t complain. It has to be a loud clarion call of a show to survive all of that.
It’s shown in houses full of children, all yelling and talking at once, and mom and dad doing the cooking, and maybe a Hoover. I don’t know how clear it is to an American audience, and sometimes in the way they react to it, I wonder if it’s very unclear to them, but Doctor Who is an early evening Saturday show in Britain. All these things are just exaggerations of Doctor Who. So, you have to cut through an even louder living room than normal with your story.
They’ve had food and been drinking champagne since 10 o’clock in the morning, and they’ve eaten an amount of chocolate that would kill a horse. There’s no point in trying to pretend that an ordinary episode should pass muster on Christmas day. The other challenge is that I do think a Christmas special should be Christmas-y. People, certainly in Britain, know Doctor Who incredibly well, so it doesn’t need a lot of introduction, even for people who don’t watch it that often. You have to have a quite basic version of Doctor Who, but when I say that, I’m lying because that actually happens with every episode of Doctor Who. The additional things that are different about Christmas, although not massively different, is that we have to remember that a lot of people will be forced into watching it that don’t normally watch Doctor Who. So, when we come to do the Christmas special, which has to be an event episode, we’re used to that. It has to be the thing that everybody is talking about, that day. The thing about Doctor Who and the way we approach it, and it’s paid off, is that I often say to every writer, or myself when I’m the writer, is that every episode of Doctor Who has to be an event. MOFFAT: It’s not massively different from just writing an episode of Doctor Who. MOFFAT: Watch on Christmas day and find out.Īs a writer, what is your process of planning and plotting a Christmas special, every year, and what are the challenges? I thought Doctor Who would improve any day.īecause he can manipulate time and space and has lived a long time, do you think Santa Claus could be a good Time Lord? The first time I thought about a Christmas special was when Julie Gardner told me that they were going to do David Tennant’s first episode as a Christmas special on Christmas day, and I thought it sounded wonderful.
The classic series once has a Christmas episode purely by accident because it happened to fall on Christmas day. MOFFAT: I think I always had a vague wish that Doctor Who would meet Santa Claus, when I was a kid, but I never thought about it more than that. So, it feels fairly right for Christmas day.Īs a fan, when did you first start noticing that connection?
It’s a show that the entire family utterly engages in. It’s not a show that children tolerate for their parents, or that parents tolerate for their children. Families watch it together, and Christmas is about family. It’s also, certainly in Britain, a show that is beloved by families. It features, at its core, this improbable man with a time machine who does feel like the science fiction equivalent of Santa Claus. It’s a big-hearted, optimistic show that does, of course, have monsters that want to commit genocide of the entire universe, but apart from that, it is a big-hearted, optimistic show. It’s not all the way to Narnia, but it’s closer to that tradition. Aesthetically, it feels like something closer to Narnia, at times. It’s a magic man in a magic box, dressed up in sci-fi language. STEVEN MOFFAT: Doctor Who isn’t like other sci-fi shows because it’s more magical than that. Question: Doctor Who and Christmas seem to have a special relationship and really compliment each other. Check out what he had to say after the jump. It is the tenth Christmas special since the show’s revival in 2005, and the first full Christmas special to feature the Twelfth Doctor.ĭuring this interview with press to promote the upcoming special, showrunner Steven Moffat talked about why Doctor Who and Christmas have a special relationship, the challenges of plotting and planning a Christmas special, why it took so long to use Santa Claus as a plot point, how Nick Frost came to be cast in the role, the Doctor’s view on Santa Claus versus Robin Hood, getting more clarity on where the relationship between the Doctor and Clara stands now, why companions typically end up being contemporary characters, his fondest memories of writing his five Christmas specials, and the best Doctor Who merchandise he’s received. Airing both in the US and UK on Christmas Day, in Doctor Who: Last Christmas, it’s Christmas in the North Pole and the Doctor ( Peter Capaldi) and Clara ( Jenna Coleman) are joined by Santa Claus ( Nick Frost) and some grumpy elves for an all-new adventure.