22 The Daleks’ Master Plan: The Feast of Steven & Home Truths
23 Genesis of the Daleks
24 The New Adventures – Damaged Goods
25 The Unquiet Dead
26 Eve of the Daleks & The Rescue

…And should I select another #ChristmasWho calendar another year, are there any John Hurt or Jo Martin festive stories?

The Doctor (William Hartnell) sits in judgement, waiting to confront the monster [The Rescue]

The Doctor (William Hartnell) giggles in the TARDIS’s control room [The Rescue]

The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) in multiple iterations in front of a wounded TARDIS [Eve of the Daleks]

An execution squad of three Daleks (hate-filled one-blob armoured tanks, this time each with not just a bigger gun but a *pair* of bigger guns. They even get to kill the Doctor a few times) [Eve of the Daleks]

An extra, final #ChristmasWho Double Bill, jumping ahead (and back) to New Year:
Doctor Who – Eve of the Daleks & The Rescue
From 1960s to 2020s, from Whitaker to Whittaker

Plus: which two Doctors did I miss?
And my whole ChristmasWho calendar, if you missed any

Father Christmas (face grotesquely masked) stands on a plain of many white cut-out Christmas trees against darkness, pointing and laughing

Sleeping Steed (Patrick Macnee) dreams himself – or do others dream him? – in white pyjamas, white bowler and a blizzard hurled into him

From above: four sinister figures sit about a round table with a snowflake design, before each of them a photo of Steed, a pool of darkness surrounding them

Oliver Twist / Emma Peel in the dark Hall of Great Expectations, raising a candelabrum to see through the veil

After watching The Unquiet Dead for #ChristmasWho, for an even greater festive TV special we continued the Dickensian horror 60 years ago today:
OTD 1965 The Avengers – Too Many Christmas Trees
Haunting, brilliant, one of the best of all The Avengers
And does this have the series’ creepiest death…?

I love many #ChristmasWho stories, from Better Watch Out / Fairytale of Salzburg which we listen to every Krampusnacht to the heartstopper of Damaged Goods and (most popular on Bluesky for me this year) The Chimes of Midnight, but here’s to three big anniversaries today…

The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose (Billie Piper) promenade on the streets of Nineteenth-Century Cardiff

Mrs Peace isn’t at peace; a revenant stalks the snowy streets, glowing blue gas erupting from her mouth in swirls!

Charles Dickens stands back as the TARDIS vanishes in an eddy of snow

Blue and yellow gas-flame Gelth swarm about Gwyneth in the morgue

Doctor Who – The Unquiet Dead
20 years ago, the second coming of Doctor Who (first of St Russell of Davies) opened in an ideal spirit, with visitations of Past, Present and Future and brought us – through time – a proper Dickensian Christmas come early
Probably still the best #ChristmasWho!

Beloved and I squinting really badly into the bright sun and piercing wind, standing by the River and somewhat precariously brandishing for the camera: Paul Magrs’ Josephine and the Argonauts Lucy McCaul’s Benton and Hawthorne Investigate Stephen Gallagher’s Sherlock Holmes A Christie For Christmas (ish) Snakedance, the #ChristmasWho that really means it (see last Saturday) Neil Tennant and The New Avengers!

@stephengallagher.co.uk Sherlock Holmes

A Christie For Christmas (ish)

Snakedance, the #ChristmasWho that really means it (see last Saturday)

Neil Tennant

and The New Avengers!

As you can see*, the bright sun is my natural habitat.

*I couldn’t

Doctor Who – Damaged Goods
On the eve of a Who-less Day—
RTD’s first Christmas special spoke to me as nothing else ever has, making me gasp with blazing, breathless hope!
Listen to me pouring my heart out (and eventually getting to the book) in Si Hart’s Library of Impossible Things.
#ChristmasWho

I’ve been choosing #ChristmasWho stories all month, and more to come (which may be my real favourites, for very different reasons)!

But of those so far:

The Christmas Invasion, the first full-on TV Christmas special and still brilliant…

Davros as God (borne aloft by choirs of tentacled Kaled mutants and flying giant clam) reaches out to touch a Dalek sucker, in a parody of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam by Paul Hanley on DeviantArt

The Doctor (Tom Baker) and Davros (Michael Wisher) talk, struggling philosophically

The Doctor is throttled / eaten by a formless Kaled mutant that’s leapt for his throat. They’re so cute at that age.

A Dalek looms over the battlefield, a one-blob, hate-filled, tank-like war machine in its natural habitat. They grow up so quickly.

Genesis of the Daleks
or
Doctor Who – The Nativity

50 years ago, yet never more topical.
The series’ crucial moral choice:

Doctor (“Nothing conforms”)
or
Daleks (“Aliens! I must exterminate! Exterminate!”)

Freedom from conformity
or
Fascism

Unwrap that.

#ChristmasWho

Trying to decide which Seasonal #ChristmasWho I’ve been selecting all month or perhaps A Ghost Story for Christmas to watch this evening, but obviously my brain is broken so a bit of me keeps tugging at my sleeve saying ‘Put in Doctor Who – The Dæmons!’ ‘But that’s set at Beltane…

Jean Marsh reads Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles 3.05 – Home Truths By Simon Guerrier With Niall MacGregor as Robert Cover: Sara Kingdom, SSS Agent, gun raised; Steven and the Doctor (William Hartnell) in the stars behind her; a lonely old house in the fens, lightning cracking across the night

Doctor Who: The Daleks’ Master Plan – The Feast of Steven: “Incidentally – a Happy Christmas to all of you at home!” The Doctor (William Hartnell) toasts the viewers from within the TARDIS, Sara and Steven behind him

In today’s #ChristmasWho, a double Bill

Doctor Who: The Daleks’ Master Plan – The Feast of Steven
This huge, tragic epic brings death, surprise siblings and betrayal (the best Christmas Space Walford ever had)
Yet offers us a selection box of planets and times
And one slice of festive silliness…

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) beckons us from a whirling vortex of colour

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) looks delighted to be on a flying Goblin galleon. Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) less so.

Ruby Sunday pauses at the door of the TARDIS…

Doctor Who – The Church on Ruby Road Target novelisation by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, cover by Dan Liles of the Doctor, Ruby and Goblins – many Goblins, the enormous Goblin King looming behind!

Doctor Who – The Church on Ruby Road
The War Between The Land and The Sea climaxes tonight, so to celebrate the newest Who-ish, today’s #ChristmasWho is the newest-ish Doctor…
These two years seem to have flown by.
And
“Here’s the King!
“Here’s the King!
“Here’s the King!
“Here’s the King Goblin!”

Doctor Who – Tales of Trenzalore “The Eleventh Doctor’s last stand” Book cover: the Doctor (Matt Smith) and… Well, several pictures of monsters that are both spoilers and not really how they are in the story Let It Snow by Justin Richards An Apple A Day… by George Mann Strangers In the Outland by Paul Finch The Dreaming by Mark Morris

Doctor Who – Tales of Trenzalore
#ChristmasWho short stories stuffed within The Time of the Doctor
[Don’t look at its cover if you want to be surprised]
One engages interestingly with the world
One a cutting of something I’ve already featured
One stylistically a hard-bitten, frostbitten action movie

Who On Horror animated Trailer animation: giant snake coils; the Doctor (Peter Davison) recoils

Snakemas partygoers revel in the streets around a big carnival snake

The Doctor (Peter Davison), thumb in mouth, sits on Father Christmas’ knee. There is nothing suggestive or disturbing in this photo [says the disclaimer]

Director Ambril (John Carson) puts on the Six Faces of Delusion headdress, smugly pointing out that it has only five carved faces but not noticing who is number six

Doctor Who – Snakedance
Look beyond the trappings and this might be the most seasonal Who of all…
A big festival celebration
Though some party-poopers claim everyone’s forgotten the true meaning of Snakemas.
They’re right!
—but no-one’s happy when they find out what it is.
#ChristmasWho

Doctor Who – The Chimes of Midnight by Robert Shearman, 2002 Big Finish CD cover: the Doctor (Paul McGann) and Charley (India Fisher) set against a clock turning to 11.59 and the blazing windows of an Edwardian town house, all in midnight blue and indigo.

“It seems to me that this is a murder mystery where the murders themselves are the red herrings…” Doctor Who – The Chimes of Midnight by Robert Shearman, 2025 book cover (hardback limited edition): the Doctor and Charley set against a clock turning to 11.59, this version more in black and, unsurprisingly, more oblong.

Doctor Who – The Chimes of Midnight
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without—
A lively Edwardian house
An eerie piano phrase stuck in my head
Death striking on the hour…
By turns absurd, grisly and tragic. But that’s family Christmases for you.
“You are nothing. You are nobody.”
#ChristmasWho

K9 and Company
Oh No It Isn’t!

Whoops! I forgot to Skeet Benny and Sarah Jane together.
I am ridiculously fond of this pair, so it’s a prompt to go double on (work with me here) textually one of the anniversaries of TV’s first Doctor Who spin-off.

One week of #ChristmasWho to go! Probably.

Professor Bernice Summerfield (Lisa Bowerman) and Wolsey the Cat (Nicholas Courtney, not in costume)

Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and K9 (John Leeson – though he was in the voice booth, not in the tin dog)

K9 and Company – A Girl’s* Best Friend
Professor Bernice Summerfield – Oh No It Isn’t!

Festive-themed launches for two long-running and marvellous spin-off series** for two of the Doctor’s longest-running and most marvellous companions

#ChristmasWho

Midshipman Frame (Russell Tovey) all smart in his uniform and, sigh, those ears. But when he fills out a bit, sigh some more!

The Doctor (David Tennant – I should specify, he’s the Tenth Doctor in this one) and Astrid Peth (Kylie Minogue), golden Heavenly Host robots on the Space Titanic behind them

The Doctor and Astrid back-to-back, raising Sonic Screwdriver and a tray of drinks (champagne, not screwdrivers)

Doctor Who – Voyage of the Damned
What could be more Christmassy than a disaster movie?
“Information: you are all going to die”
Kylie Minogue probably* DW’s biggest-ever guest star
Oh look! Lovely Russell Tovey, shipping!
And in especially curly letters, Bernard Cribbins
#ChristmasWho

Doctor Who – The Ninth Doctor Adventures 2.1.03: Back to Earth – Auld Lang Syne by Tim Foley, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, with Leah Brotherhead and Wendy Craig. From Big Finish Productions

Doctor Who – The Ninth Doctor Adventures 2.2.03: Into the Stars – Break the Ice by Tim Foley, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, with Pip Torrens. From Big Finish Productions

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures
Back to Earth – Auld Lang Syne
Into the Stars – Break the Ice
Celebrate his 20th anniversary with #ChristmasWho and New Who, New Year (not necessarily in that order), a strange caretaker* and Jack Frost

Are there any John Hurt or Jo Martin Christmas stories?

The Doctor [at this stage in their life, an older white man] and Bill [a considerably younger Black lesbian] enjoy walking an 1814 London street in rather fabulous hats

An elephant amid the stalls and the snow on the frozen Thames

A giant fish swims under London Bridge on the breaking Thames as the Doctor and Bill watch. Nobody tries to f*** it.

The Doctor and Bill enjoy rather less walking the frozen Thames in diving suits.

Doctor Who – Thin Ice
A Thames frost fair, lovable urchins (some even survive), and this Doctor *isn’t* the Scrooge:
Several Doctor Who stories have borrowed from A Christmas Carol
But when even a visit from the Spirit of Past, Present and Future’s police box doesn’t change them…
#ChristmasWho

The Doctor (Colin Baker) in many colours faces off against the… Valeyard (Michael Jayston) in black. Family rows are always the worst.

In a golden courtroom for The Trial of a Time Lord, the Doctor’s future – or is it? – wields an axe, watched on a screen by the court and defendant the Doctor (Colin Baker) vs Court Prosecutor and Doctor of Law the Valeyard (Michael Jayston)

Doctor Who: The Collection – Season 23 Blu-ray cover: The Doctor (Colin Baker) in fabulous multi-coloured coat, holding in one hand a scroll of Time Lord names and holding within him the Doctor (Michael Jayston), a plant-like Vervoid (actually looks like something else but I won’t go there), amphibian business-being Sil, chunky but grumpy L1 Robot Drathro, the Inquisitor for his Trial and his TARDIS being dragged down a blaze of power to a great cathedral of a space station, transformative blue and pink and scintillating white light all around

The Trial of a Time Lord – the Doctor (Colin Baker) in many colours (centre), the… Valeyard (Michael Jayston) looming in black, the Inquisitor and a Time Lord space station sending out a beam of light to capture the TARDIS like a giant Christmas bauble in the dark

Doctor Who – The Trial of a Time Lord
The #ChristmasWho conceived as A Christmas Carol
Past, present, future
Mighty cathedral spires
The Doctor is dragged back to a long family gathering

[Spoiler]

And for one of the most Christmassy Doctors—
His own Ghost of Christmas Future turns Scrooge

Doctor Who – The Three Doctors by Terrance Dicks, cover by Chris Achilleos: a huge Omega (a titan in a tall, brazen mask) zaps down from his mighty fingers – looking not at all like Galactus – at the three Doctors (William Hartnell, Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton)

Doctor Who – The Three Doctors VHS cover by Alister Pearson – the three Doctors (Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and William Hartnell) against the Black Hole with ‘space lightning’ shooting from it, Omega before them

The Three Doctors by Adrian Salmon for DWM’s Time Team – a magnificent Omega dominates all space and time, below him the Doctor (William Hartnell) caught in a time eddy and the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) caught between blobby Gel Guards

Omega raises his helmet for the first time in millions of years with a blank stare. We see two Doctors through the empty space within

Doctor Who – The Three Doctors
A joyous visitation by the Doctors of Past, Present and Further Past
A #ChristmasWho party where all the family gets together – and gets on as well as families do – for a big celebration. With jelly.
Other help me, I love this. Still my favourite multi-Doctor story.

Doctor Who The Complete and Utter History – The Evil of the Daleks montage: the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) looking haunted, Jamie and Victoria holding tight, Victorians Maxtible and Waterfield, the Emperor Dalek towering over all

Theodore Maxtible, sinister Victorian patron, huge-bearded but definitely no Father Christmas, with Edward Waterfield, troubled Victorian inventor, standing in their laboratory (Doctor Who – The Evil of the Daleks [and Evil of Some of the Victorians])

Awkward Christmas party vibes: kilted Jamie dancing to the Beatles’ Paperback Writer (if you’re lucky) with mini-skirted women in a Swinging Sixties coffee bar. Telesnap from missing episode

Lights go on in the night on the towering centrepiece of the great room – but that’s no Christmas tree. It’s the Emperor Dalek. Thrilling new colour animation of missing episode

Doctor Who – The Evil of the Daleks
One of the greatest of all tales, a Dalek ‘Faust’
I’m calling this as seasonal for the first of several times Doctor Who does A Christmas Carol:
Victoriana
Swinging Sixties
Alien city
All human life – no, far wider! – all time and space is here
#ChristmasWho

I’m Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek by The Go-Gos 7” single – passers-by react to a Dalek on the high street

Trade ad for this single, Out Today!

A Dalek crowd-surfing to this banging tune (Doctor Who: The Dalek Invasion of Earth – Flashpoint, Boxing Day 1964)

OTD 1964: The Go-Gos – I’m Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek
“MORE-PLUM-PUD-DING!”
Doctor Who’s first pop hit*
A particularly topical carol today:
Impossible demands
Inexplicably cuddles up to fascists
Surely it can’t be as bad as you imagine…?
…oh yes.
#ChristmasWho

*total flop

The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) was appalled! With offensive humans

The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is delighted! With reindeer in flight

L-R: Santa, the Doctor, sassy elf, hot elf. With satsumas

Grey-green, gnarled alien Dream Crabs

Doctor Who – Last Christmas*
Of my three most Christmassy Doctors, the grouch who throws everything he has into saving someone else and discovers joy all over again:
Peter Capaldi’s Twelve has always played Scrooge.
#ChristmasWho

*Not Whamageddon! But there is an OTD Who song. You have been warned.

Doctor Who – Ghost Light by Marc Platt, gorgeous cover painting by Alister Pearson for the novel: Ace in a frock; the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) looming; an old house on a dark and stormy night

Doctor Who: The Collection – Season 26 Blu-ray cover: The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) in hat and dark jacket, holding a question-mark umbrella and holding within him a glorious array of monsters and characters, Witch-Queen Morgaine (Jean Marsh), a space-knight, the blue sucker-covered Ancient Haemovore, horned demon the Destroyer, recording angel Light, above all feral-grinning the Master, space rocks spiralling out behind and around (like this era’s title sequence but more so)

Housekeeper Mrs Pritchard (in Skeksis-black) and the Night Maid

Ace framed by a spray of peacock feathers but caught in a universe of her own terrors

Doctor Who – Ghost Light
A haunted house tale twisted inside-out and too close to home
A stony housekeeper
And an abundance of festive food, from “I’ve brought you your dinner…” to “The cream of Scotland Yard” giving me a thrill of horror
#ChristmasWho
#MerryOtherstide

This was going to be yesterday’s #ChristmasWho with an OTD crossover (first broadcast two Decembers ago yesterday) – but I’d overdone a long walk in the wind and rain, so when I finally got home I collapsed like my strings were cut.

Ha ha ha HA ha ha ha!

Inside Mr Emporium’s Toyshop, Mr Emporium (in truth THE TOYMAKER) holds up puppet Stooky Bill invitingly, wrapped like he’s in a straitjacket, not at all disturbing ALT

“Well, that’s all right, then!” snarls the Toymaker ALT

The Doctor (David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa) bigenerates ALT

Doctor Who – The Giggle by James Goss, cover by Anthony Dry of the Doctor (well, one of them – David Tennant), Donna Noble and the grinning Toymaker flinging cards (Stooky Bill as the Ace of Clubs), with a background of stars and Achilleos / Kirby Krackle ALT

Doctor Who – The Giggle
What could be more festive fun than…
Puppet shows
A panto with audience participation and a catchphrase
Or just watching the television
Joyous rebirth
In the end, exhaustedly, family
And, of course, games.
“Well, that’s all right, then!”
#ChristmasWho

Long walk
Pelting rain
Howling wind
(One reason I have massive headphones is to clamp cap securely on head. Turned a corner, roaring wind tore both off my head and I just managed to catch them)
Now very tired, so imagine what today’s OTD and #ChristmasWho should be, and see if you’re right tomorrow…

The Ribos Operation – the Doctor (Tom Baker), Romana (Mary Tamm), tyrant Graff, witch Seeker and conmen Garron and Unstoffe on the medieval ice planet Ribos (Doctor Who – The Complete and Utter History)

The Doctor and Romana, well-wrapped against the snow (he’s enjoying it more than she is)

Romana (in fabulous white) and K9 (robot dog)

The White Guardian. After all, he is the nice one.

Doctor Who – The Ribos Operation
The Doctor, Romana and K9 are on a mission from God—
Surprisingly, that’s where the fun starts.
A fairytale of two con-men, a small dragon, a very bad king and a threateningly White Christmas
However much you love the season, a 32-year-long Ice Time…!
#ChristmasWho