The Doctor Who Christmas Special is always an over-the-top, melodramatic tear-jerker, but this year’s episode could be even more emotional than ever before. Yeah, we’re talking even more than the regeneration scene from “The End of Time.” — and here’s how it’ll happen.
While we really don’t know exactly what’s in store for the Doctor in this year’s annual December adventure, we do have a clue that it’s going to be emotional.
Veteran Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss said this week that he cried while reading showrunner Steven Moffat’s script for this year’s holiday episode.
“It’s one of Steve’s best ever scripts, absolutely beautiful,” Gatiss said. Will these be tears of joy? Or tears of triumph? And what will be the context? Last year, the Doctor’s wife, River Song, returned for what seemed to be her final, bittersweet adventure, while the previous Christmas saw the Doctor reuniting with Clara and featuring Santa Clause. The Christmas before that? Well, that would be Matt Smith’s swan song, “The Time of the Doctor,” in which the 11th Doctor dropped his bowtie and left us forever.
Despite mixed reactions to Moffat’s run as the showrunner of Doctor Who, there’s no denying that he has a talent for tearjerkers. Think back to Amy and Rory’s departure in “The Angels Take Manhattan,” where a watery-eyed Matt Smith pleaded with Amy to not be whisked away by the Weeping Angels, or the romantic, horse-shattering-a-mirror action of “The Girl in the Fireplace.”
But how could a Doctor Who episode truly top the gut-wrenching Christmas Special “The End of Time,” which featured the regeneration of David Tennant’s 10th Doctor? Well, there are a few things the incumbent 12th Doctor cares about very much, and one of them is the Master/Mistress (Missy for short). If Michelle Gomez’s Missy returns for the holiday adventure and she reconciles her differences with the Doctor after all the trouble they’ve caused fighting across space and time, well, that would be a Christmas Miracle worth crying about.
