Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: bbc, chris chibnall, david tennant, doctor who, jodie whittaker, steven moffat

Doctor Who: New Year's Day Has Never Boded Well for The Doctor

Doctor Who Christmas Specials are magical and joyful - but here's why New Year's Day has been pretty terrible for the Doctor.

New Year's Day is coming, and the BBC just has to give us a relevant Doctor Who video; this time, it's the times the series did New Year's Day, but that only reminds us that New Year's Day sucked for the Doctor. The New Year's Day Specials were deeply mediocre and unmemorable, featuring the most unsurprising use of the Daleks in the series' modern era. Whoever edits these compilation videos might be an unsung secret critic of the series in its ups and downs.

Chris Chibnall was the one who made Doctor Who New Year's Day Specials a thing. Unfortunately, all three of his specials were mediocre. They turned New Year's Day in the UK into a time the Daleks invaded again. And poor Jodie Whittaker got saddled with how mediocre the New Year's Day Specials were. Chibnall channeled the worst, most outdated of 1970s screenwriting dynamics in just doing a plot with no thematic or emotional weight. The Daleks were once again mediocre baddies. Steven Moffat made it a point to find a new layer of pathos and theme to explore whenever he wrote a Dalek story. Watching Chibnall's New Year's Specials was basically waiting for the day Chibnall finally leaves the show. He reduced the Daleks to the equivalent of your horrible, tedious relatives who show up every year for family dinner.

The British Medical Journal has published a study stating that in the years when Doctor Who aired during Christmas – that includes when there were episodes broadcast during Christmas long before Russell T. Davies made Christmas Specials a regular part of the show – deaths in the UK were lower than in years when Doctor Who wasn't on television at Christmas.

"A new Doctor Who episode shown every festive period, especially on Christmas Day, was associated with reduced mortality rates in England, Wales, and the UK, suggesting that a doctor working over the festive period could lower mortality rates. This finding reinforces why healthcare provision should not be taken for granted and may prompt the BBC and Disney+ to televise new episodes of Doctor Who every festive period, ideally on Christmas Day"

We hope it wasn't Chibnall's idea to stop having Christmas Specials during his tenure as showrunner.  And let's face it, nobody really likes New Year's Day. Every adult is usually hungover and miserable that they have to go back to work the next day and then have another year to live through. Even the last – and only time – Davies had the Doctor deal with New Year's, he killed off David Tennant, or rather, the Tenth Doctor.  It seems Davies knew something we didn't when he insisted on making Christmas Specials an annual event.

Christmas is magic for Doctor Who. New Year's Day, not so much.

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