This year's "Doctor Who" Christmas Special will be more on the light and funny side and even festive compared to the previous year's "Last Christmas." The series itself turned quite dark towards the end, so the show decided to bring it back up with Alex Kingston as River Song back in action with the Doctor in "The Husbands of River Song."
Alex Kingston returns as River Song who is the Doctor's time-travelling wife and also the daughter of the Doctor's former companions, Rory and Amy Pond. Comedians Greg Davies and Matt Lucas will also be making guest appearances.
BBC recently released the synopsis for the Christmas Special. The Doctor's Christmas day adventure will be located on a remote human colony where he is hiding from Christmas Carols and Comedy Antlers. But he then answers to a call of duty when a spaceship crashes and sends him to a fast and frantic chase across the galaxy with River Song and her squad. However, River Song doesn't recall who the Doctor is. Meanwhile, King Hydroflax (Greg Davies) who is said to be the "other" husband of River Song goes berserk and his giant robot bodyguard is uncontrollable and ready to attack them all. The synopsis ends with two questions, "Will Nardole (Matt Lucas) survive?" and "When will River Song work out who the Doctor is?"
The Doctor first met River back in 2008 in David Tenant's time as the title character. Both of them are time-travellers so they meet each other at different points within each of their timelines. During that encounter, it was the Doctor's first meeting with River, but to her, they had already lived an entire romance. This Christmas, it's River who will not be recognizing the Doctor at all, but the reason won't be because she hasn't met him yet in her time frame. Will it be because she hasn't met the Doctor since he regenerated into Peter Capaldi?
Executive producer/showrunner, Steven Moffat, shares that having River in the show again cheered him up, as he loves writing for River. Both Moffat and Peter Capaldi claims that this year's Christmas affair will be more light-hearted compared to last year's "Last Christmas."
"Doctor Who's got to be a bit scary - but I think this is quite a funny Christmas special," Moffat shares. "Last year, Father Christmas was in it, but it was actually quite dark. This year, because the series itself goes quite dark towards the end, we bring it back up. It's Mr and Mrs Who back in action - it's mainly one long domestic in space, with a big robot!"
Capaldi adds that it will be a more festive fare. He continues, "Although I like a ghost story at Christmas - I think it should be scary! But this is much more fun, it isn't as frightening. It's certainly "Doctor Who" in a more comic vein, with lots of snow and Dickensian streets and monsters and flying saucers."
As for Jenna Coleman who just left the series, reports say that she won't be joining the Christmas Special, but that doesn't mean there will be no surprise appearance. Losing Jenna Coleman as Clara was one of the main reasons why Steven Moffat decided to bring back River. He shares in an interview, "Obviously, we've just lost Clara so I didn't want to go straight into a new companion, and it's not right to set that up at the end of a series where you're all exhausted."
Catch "Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song" this Christmas on BBC America.
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