Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: Bad Wolf, bbc, christmas, disney, doctor who, game of thrones, goblins, jane tranter, Ncuti Gatwa, Russsll T. Davies

Doctor Who Christmas Special Trailer Suggests Fantasy-Filled Future

The upcoming Doctor Who Christmas Special will bring us more of Russell T. Davies' uncompromising writing and an apparent move into Fantasy.

Right, how much more can we milk out of this weekend's Doctor Who? How about some thoughts about the Christmas Special? Yes, it's only a trailer for "The Church on Ruby Road" so far, but there's enough to go on. Goblins! At Christmas! Because why not? Let's go over what we're already getting.

The next season of Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa's first, is labeled "Series One," a new soft reboot for the Disney+ bigger-budget era. Showrunner Russell T. Davies calls it not a reboot but a "reimagining." He hasn't erased or retconned away previous continuity or canon, merely cleared the decks for a new Doctor with no baggage. New viewers worldwide can start with Gatwa's Doctor fresh without ever having seen any Doctor Who before. We know now that streamings do better when a show is considered new. The 60th Anniversary Specials were considered a "soft launch" on Disney+, and the real launch for the new series will be Gatwa's first season next year. You can expect the Disney PR machine to make a big push in America.

Doctor Who is Now Russell T. Davies: Unfiltered

This is also the next phase in Davies' evolution as a writer. He's not filtering his work anymore. He vowed after he left Doctor Who last time that he would be going all-in on LBGTQ representation. That scene in the club where the Doctor is dancing and Ruby (Millie Gibson) sees him for the first time is a callback to the first scene in the original British series of Queer as Folk, the show that broke open LGBTQ representation on British television, put Davies on the map as an A-list showrunner and directly led to him being commissioned by then head of the BBC Jane Tranter (now head of current Doctor Who production company Bad Wolf) to revive Doctor Who. See? Historical events, direct cause-and-effect, consequences! And still a show for kids.

Davies told the Radio Times that he has been moving the show towards Fantasy. The Christmas Special is the first volley into that genre with goblins. He set that up in "Wild Blue Yonder" when the Doctor worried that he introduced a superstition at the edge of the universe where the fabric of reality was malleable. This and the Toymaker's physics-defying powers are the start of that payoff. Goblins are magic from Fantasy. This doesn't mean Doctor Who is becoming a full Fantasy series. It's always been Science Fantasy more than Hard Science Fiction. This means the stories don't need to be bound by Science anymore as the Doctor can go anywhere and anywhen. The show can have both Science Fiction and Fantasy stories now. How long before someone points out that the Doctor is a wizard and the sonic screwdriver is their magic wand? Who doesn't want to see Gatwa's Doctor flirting with elves or playing court games with Faeries? And how long before Davies or a writer that he commissions writes a story that takes the mickey out of Game of Thrones? You know that's on somebody's mind. What, you mean you don't want to see Gatwa flirting with a giant snarky dragon? Allow some joy into your life!

The Doctor Who Christmas Special will stream globally on Christmas Day on Disney+.

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