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.
Beginning of 2005 the runaway popularity of Doctor Who earned the program the prestigious distinction of having a special episode produced for the Christmas Season, ideally on the day itself. As an annual occurrence, at least on the west side of the Atlantic, it seems to be the most competitive day and night in British television. 2010 marks the sixth consecutive year for the Christmas Special but Doctor Who's flirtations about Christmas total seven in all, and here at THT Worldwide we'll begin our run-up to "A Christmas Carol" but ranking these stories in reverse order counting them up as we countdown to the 25th:
Finally our long national nightmare is over… Alright it's perhaps, PERHAPS, a bit of an overstatement but an HD version of part wo of 
Found in the course of daily travels December 8th. Yellow and blue and not one bit Martian. Probably doesn't even hiss when it talks. Amateurs. If only the manufacturers had consulted the Tour beforehand these mistakes almost certainly wouldn't have been made.
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.
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.
Over the river and through the woods…. Thanksgiving time here in the tundra means packin' up and goin' to the relatives, usually in a car trip of some length, which in turn means music (or podcasts, some of them Doctor Who related, of some length). The THT Brain Trust has some old reliables, traditions unto themselves, with which to accompany us on this trip, but it isn't music per se. For a long time I've made sure to bring the audio from various shows with me to fulfill these special occasions as it's a wonderfully evocative way to re-visit some of these old faves. 
Another essential track in this vein is audio from