Following on with our favorite Doctor Who Christmas crossovers, another perennial favorite of the season, at least here at THT Towers is the 1966 animated classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Forget the overblown and overlong Jim Carrey movie from awhile back, this is the definitive version, and of course there's a crossover for that.
Marvelous. A for those who prefer a Seuss-ian treatment of the current Time Team, here's an example of that as well.
It's that time of year when every Doctor Who site worth it's salt brings forth it's own countdown list. We did this last year regarding a countdown of the Christmastime episodes itself, this year we're going for a slightly different tack, going through a few of out favorite Doctor Who things which are Christmas-sy without necessarily directly tying into episodes themselves.
First off, few things here in the tundra are more synonymous with Christmas than the quintessential 1965 Charlie Brown Christmas special. Fortunately someone was clever enough to graft a little of Matt Smith's Doctor Who era into one of the seminal images from that show. We love it.
And in case you thought Matt Smith as a Peanuts character hadn't been done, think again.
If it's late December it must mean a couple of things for Doctor Who fans. First of course is that we're running headlong into another Christmas special (just imagine saying that in 2001!), and the second is that every website does their own variation of a Christmas countdown. Here at THT Towers we're no less guilty of this than anyone else. Last year we counted down the seven Christmas specials (to date). A year has passed but our resolve hasn't weakened in the slightest, so here we present our countdown lost (in one go this time) of the 8 Specials of Christmas.
What can we say, you never forget your first special. The first of the modern run of Christmas Specials not only had to entertain the masses, it was the first post-regenerative story in the modern era and had to educate viewers in that as well. But what sets this story ahead of all others in our opinion is it's sense of scale. While very much a Christmas story, the invasion as the title suggests was massively global, and the way the cast reacts seems very in keeping. Rose's increasing helplessness and courage in the face of the threat make the story work. Billie Piper was probably never better than here. And Tennant showed in his brief twenty minutes many of the manic qualities which defined his early run of stories.
Matt Smith's first Christmas Special A Christmas Carol was wonderful and we liked it a ton. We have similarly high hopes for "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe."
Happy Holidays to all.
It's a Tragical History Tour tradition (and the Matrix Mutterings before that) that stretches all the way back to 1995. Our annual holiday bit of Christmas merriment heralds Doctor Who's most prominent (at least until 2005) and obvious holiday crossover. And therein lies a tale (some of it possibly apocryphal!) Christmas Day in 1965 fell on a Saturday. DOCTOR WHO was well into a successful third season in its by-now-traditional Saturday tea-time slot on the BBC schedules with William Hartnell in the lead and was going all out to appease the rampant Dalekmania that had taken England and the series by storm by unleashing the massive 12-part story The Dalek Master Plan over a three month period. Rather than take a break for more traditional holiday-fare the powers that were in the BBC decided not to break up the Dalek epic halfway through (at episode 7) and continue to run the series. The Producer at the time John Wiles felt the unusual slotting on Christmas day provided an ideal chance to break from the larger story temporarily and try something totally different.
In England the theater tradition of Christmas pantomimes was a well understood and accepted form of entertainment. Thus virtually all links to the story up to that point were forgotten for a week to indulge in the 'Christmas spirit' as it were. In other words nothing less than a full-blown pantomime and send-up as the Doctor and his companions–Steven and Sara–ricocheted from one ridiculous situation to another. 
As it was viewers at the time didn't mind the diversion–although the episode was never sold into syndication overseas. Even so the most infamous feature in this episode was William Hartnell's closing speech–directly to the audience! Although this closing exists in the scripts that exist today, both script editor Donald Tosh and director Douglas Camfield insisted it was not in the shooting script! Camfield was reportedly so incensed that, according to Heather Hartnell, he gave Hartnell the original print shortly after it was broadcast and in subsequent years the Hartnell family would then gather together after Christmas dinner to watch The Feast of Steven all over again. Ho! Ho! WHO!
Read more about Doctor Who's original Christmas Celebration, The Feast of Steven here.
The heyday of scavenging for lost Doctor Who episodes was probably the early eighties, when the first tendrils of Doctor Who fandom began sprouting in earnest in the US, beginning a worldwide boom-let of popularity that in turn spurred a renaissance of interest in Doctor Who history.
By the mid-eighties PBS stations in particular were hungry for any Doctor Who that was being made or could be found and sold into the system. This worked it's way both forward and backward from Tom Baker to Jon Pertwee (a combined package of whole colour stories and black and white NTSC copies that were good enough) and eventually to William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. And of course therein laid a problem, particularly for Troughton for which only five complete stories existed.
For the fervent Doctor Who historians the number 108 is more than a relatively perfect number (2x2x3x3x3), it was the number of episodes missing from the BBC Archives. Rumors were run down in Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. When discoveries of lost episodes were made, such as a complete The Tomb of the Cybermen, it was a cause for celebration.
Such is the case today, with the news that 2 classic episodes had been brought back into the fold, notably episode 3 of Galaxy Four and episode 2 of The Underwater Menace.
Christmas came early today my friends.
The Sixth Season Discs are arrived hither, tither, and especially yon. The much-talked about discs extra, and a first in Doctor Who as far as we know, is the inclusion of a set of mini-episodes, and while certainly enjoyable, put us here at the Tour in a bit of a quandary. We're rather disciplined here at THT Worldwide in that everything here on the site comes out of televised Doctor Who in one way or another, that's why there aren't Torchwood or SJA caps (which don't have the Doctor in them). But the set of five "Night and the Doctor" minisodes are a different kettle of fish.
Of the five, "Up All Night" reads and feels like an extended or deleted scene from Closing Time and doesn't feature the regular cast at all, and as such is the most easily dismissed.
Good Night and Bad Night primarily feature Matt Smith and Karen Gillan and, importantly in the case of Good Night, has a conversation between the Doctor and Amy that many fans wish had occurred during the season.
First Night and Last Night feature the kind of timey-wimey River-centeredness we as fans have come to expect. These two stories, set somewhere between A Good Man Goes to War and The Wedding of River Song, tie together as one story more fully but still amounts to a trifle that gives larger context to the mentioned but unseen adventures between the Doctor and River.
Almost entirely set within the Tardis, it seems likely the entirety of these minisodes we're shot over the course of a day tops, but it's nice to know the cast and crew are going that extra light year or two for the fans, who after all are going to be buying the set to begin with.
Caps for each of these minisodes have now been posted.