Specials, Episode 2 | 1 part | First broadcast: 25 December 2015 | Writer: Steven Moffat | Director: Douglas Mackinnon
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Alex Kingston as River Song
- Greg Davies as King Hydroflax
- Matt Lucas as Nardole
- Phillip Rhys as Ramone
- Rowan Polonski as Flemming
Summary
Landing on the snowy colony world of Mendorax Dellora at Christmas, the Doctor is mistaken by a desperate surgeon for a simple “brain doctor” needed to operate on a patient, only to discover the patient’s wife is River Song, who fails to recognize this incarnation of the Doctor and instead treats him as an anonymous hired hand while she schemes around her latest husband, the pompous, murderous cyborg King Hydroflax. Hydroflax’s organic head conceals a priceless stolen diamond implanted in his brain, and River’s entire elaborate marriage has been a long con to extract it and sell it for a fortune, dragging the bewildered Doctor into her larcenous plans as her unwitting, unrecognized assistant. As Hydroflax’s body, a towering robotic henchman named Ramone, and a spaceship full of threats close in around them, the Doctor and River are flung across the galaxy together, the Doctor increasingly torn between exasperation at River’s recklessness and quiet devastation that she still doesn’t know who he really is. When River finally realizes the truth, the reunited pair sets the diamond, and their squabbling, aside in favor of the one thing River has always wanted most: a real, unhurried Christmas Eve date at the Singing Towers of Darillium, the very place and night the Doctor has long known will be their last night together before her eventual death.
Interesting Facts
- This was River Song’s first appearance since 2013’s “The Name of the Doctor,” and her first time sharing the screen with the newly regenerated Twelfth Doctor, whom she initially fails to recognize since she has never seen this face before.
- The episode finally depicts the night at the Singing Towers of Darillium first mentioned back in 2011’s “The Time of the Doctor” and “The Wedding of River Song,” providing the emotional final chapter promised years earlier in River and the Doctor’s shared, out-of-order timeline.
- Comedian Greg Davies, known for sitcom roles, was cast against type as the villainous King Hydroflax, continuing Steven Moffat’s tradition of casting comedic actors in unexpectedly dramatic or menacing Doctor Who guest roles.
- The episode marks one of the only times River Song’s entire timeline with the Doctor, largely told out of chronological sequence across several Doctors’ eras, is allowed to conclude on-screen with an unambiguous, extended happy ending before her established fate.
- Matt Lucas’s Nardole, previously a minor one-scene character voicing Hydroflax’s severed robot head, was received well enough in this special that he was promoted to a full recurring companion role in the following series.
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