Steven Moffat saved the Doctor Who 2017 Christmas Special; here’s why…

There is a cause of great excitement that comes from getting a Doctor Who 2017 Christmas Special, especially since there was a time when such a thing was not going to be happening at all. Originally, the idea was for Peter Capaldi’s Twelve to regenerate during the season 10 finale, which explains in part why he was in the position that he was in during the closing minutes of that episode.

So why was there decision made to go ahead and do a Christmas Special? Much of it begins with tradition — and then also showrunner Steven Moffat deciding that there needed to be one after new showrunner Chris Chibnall did not want to start off his tenure with such an event. Here is what Moffat had to say on the matter recently to Digital Spy:

“There was one big glitch, which was Christmas … I was going to leave at the end of series 10 – I had my finale planned and what I wanted to do with it. I had a good notion of that.

“Then I learned at a drinks event somewhere that Chris didn’t want to start with a Christmas, so at that point they were going to skip Christmas. There’d be no Christmas special and we would’ve lost that slot.”

The Christmas timeslots are so in-demand in Great Britain (watching television on the holiday with your family is somewhat of a tradition) that in the event the show pulled out from watching then, we’d see a situation where it may never get that timeslot back. That’s obviously not something that they would want to deal with, and as a result of that, Moffat went ahead and decided to stick around for this episode. There are challenges with doing a whole special where The Doctor is effectively on the brink of regeneration, but he’s most likely come up with a great way to have it work. David Bradley is going to be appearing as his version of the first Doctor (played on the original show by William Hartnell), while Pearl Mackie has already been confirmed to be returning as Bill Potts. There are rumors aplenty about a Jenna Coleman cameo to help send off Capaldi, but nothing is for certain just yet.

Chibnall is contributing the final minute or two of the special, which is when we’re going to get the first taste of the new Doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker. If tradition holds, we’ll get a line or two from her before the end credits roll … and you then have to wait some extreme amount of time to when the next season of the show is going to premiere. At the moment, the earliest that we see the show coming on the air is in the fall of 2018.

Want more from Whittaker?

If you head over to the link here, you can see in full one of the first interviews that she’s done on-camera since the new Doctor casting was announced. In that, we think she offers up good insight on being chosen and what could be coming up next for her. (Photo: BBC.)