The tent-pole of the Tour's countdown to Christmas would have been ranked at or near the bottom of the list even a year or two ago.  But time, and the success of the Catherine Tate season as a companion has softened many opinions regarding The Runaway Bride, #4 in our Christmas countdown.  Now it could be more rightly considered the first story, disconnected though it was, of Tennant's fourth season.  RTD took the criticisms and found the character in Donna that could be sustained over the course of a season.

To review so far here is the parade in our Christmas Countdown

#7 – Voyage of the Damned
#6 – The Feast of Steven
#5 – The Next Doctor
#4 – The Runaway Bride

I wonder what #3 will be?

The next story in our Christmas countdown is the original in so many ways as we have noted elsewhere on the site, but it's also the most obscure, it is…

#6 – The Daleks Masterplan, Episode 7, The Feast of Steven. Surviving only in audio and a spare few telesnaps it marked a departure from the regular story and made a rare indulgence for the series into farce and is notable for Hartnell's closing speech not only to Steven and Sara but the audience too.  As Christmas specials go it was an interesting diversion and is now more remembered for the curiosity value than anything else.

#5 coming tomorrow.

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. The following is a photonovelization taken from the Zerinza (the Australian Doctor Who Club) adaptation of the story by Rosemary Howe back in 1987.

Read all about Doctor Who's ORIGINAL Christmas Special here.  Ho! Ho! WHO!