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. IAs 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. Ho! Ho! WHO!

The first post-season update, an anyone-but-Tennant offering which pushed the overall image count over 60000 fir the first time. See The Master List for a list of the changes. We're also making other under-the-hood changes including…

• Increasing the maximum picture size to 1000 pixels up from 800 on the long axis of an image in acknowledgment of higher and higher resolution monitors.
• Numerous tweaks to story index pages for smoother presentation of images, all of which have been completely rebuilt.
• More consistency between site appearance in Firefox and IE. Looks good in Google Chrome too.

Enjoy!