Random "Doctor Who" Holiday Special (15 items)

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  (#13) Resolution (2018/19)

  This episode was the only holiday special to take place on New Year’s Day instead of Christmas. The special combines the thrilling return of the Daleks with the emotional heft of Ryan (Tosin Cole), a companion of Thirteen, reuniting with his absentee father.

  While the episode doesn't have much to do with the holiday, it does hit all the right notes and is wildly entertaining.
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  (#10) The Snowmen (2012)

  This visually appealing holiday special features a sneering Richard E. Grant (voiced by Ian McKellen), evil sentient snow, and the return of Jenna Coleman, this time as soon-to-be companion, Clara.

  Depressed after the loss of his companions Amy and Rory, the 11th Doctor slumps around 19th-century London until Clara, a bright governess and bar maid who feels familiar to him, demands his help fighting alien snow. She flummoxes the Time Lord by shunning his classic “It’s bigger on the inside!” exchange, instead proclaiming, “It’s smaller on the outside!”
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  (#11) Last Christmas (2014)

  This Season 9 holiday special perfectly marries Christmas iconography with a dramatic thriller. It’s equal parts fun, creepy, emotional, and action-packed.

  Santa, played by Nick Frost, comes to the rescue when Clara and the Doctor face a formidable foe known as Dream Crabs. When the face-sucking aliens - who induce idyllic dreams in their targets to distract them while the crabs consumer their brains - prey on our protagonists, the two have difficulty distinguishing their dreams from reality. Having recently lost her boyfriend, Danny, Clara must choose between facing her grief in the real world and living in a beautiful fantasy with lethal consequences.
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  (#6) The Next Doctor (2008)

  This episode playfully heckles its fans with a casting fake-out. Whovians were desperate to know who would be replacing their beloved David Tennant, and they got what they asked for - if only for a few minutes. David Morrissey guest stars in this Season 5 episode as a man who believes himself to be the Doctor and who gleefully adopts Ten's mannerisms.

  Taking place during Christmastime in Victorian London, the special features a strong female villainess, steampunk style, and one of the Doctor’s greatest foes, the Cybermen. The episode goes big and has a marvelous time doing so.
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  (#4) The End Of Time (2009)

  In what may be the most epic and heart-wrenching holiday special of the show, David Tennant takes his tearful final bow as the Doctor when he faces off against his maniacal Time Lord nemesis, the Master (John Simm). The Master enacts an evil plan to take down the Doctor once and for all, but before this plan can come to fruition, Ten sacrifices himself to save Donna’s grandfather (Bernard Cribbins).

  Packed with action and emotion, the episode earns its place as the only two-part holiday special of the series. It introduces a brand new element to the long-running series: a Doctor who is afraid to regenerate. As we bid farewell to the tousled hair, trench coat, and Chuck Taylors, Ten utters his poignant last words: “I don’t want to go.”
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  (#5) A Christmas Carol (2010)

  In Matt Smith’s first holiday special as the 11th Doctor, yet another spaceship is on a crash course, and it’s up to our favorite Time Lord to save the day. The high-stakes, space-age take on Dickens’s famous tale evens out the drama with Eleven's signature eccentricities, wacky details like a flying shark, and a wash of both romance and melancholy.

  Our Scrooge character, a hardened millionaire named Kazran (Michael Gambon), travels with the Doctor through the timeline of his own life in an effort to regain his sense of humanity. According to the previously stated rules of time travel in the Doctor Who universe, meddling in one’s own timeline is off-limits, but perhaps these rules don't apply on Christmas.

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