The Doctor Who New Year Special

SFX’s Jayne Nelson imagines a Doctor Who New Year special partying with the Doctor chez Pond among other genre communities, like the Serenity crew in Firefly if you hit “Previously” or Bag End if you hit “Next”.

In reality we’ve only had one New Year special, the mostly lacking in festive cheer The End Of Time Part Two which was actually set on Boxing Day. Classic Hogmanay or New Year’s Day premieres include the one after The Feast Of Steven which was nearly a New Year special but had a bit of the Dalek plan plot. Aside from that we have The Highlanders, and the opening episodes of Day Of The Daleks and The Face Of Evil. None of them festive, per se, although the Third Doctor got stuck into the wine and cheese...

So what might a New Year special be like? The “midnight kiss” plotline Jayne suggested certainly works and sounds like it could make for a fun adventure, chasing all around the world being pursued by monsters from Christmas Island to Midway via Sydney, London and New York.

And of course, there’s always the countdown leading to something apocalyptic - see the Eighth Doctor’s entire canonical tenure, aka Enemy Within.

I’d be tempted to throw in a reference to Gregorian versus Julian calendars and the eleven missing days (I believe this features in the New Adventures books) and how the modern Western human calendar is both arbitrary and important...