Doctor Who: Steven Moffat Reveals Details About 2016 Christmas Special
By Leah Tedesco
Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat recently gave a somewhat in-depth interview to Radio Times regarding the upcoming Christmas special, ‘The Return of Doctor Mysterio.’
Yesterday, Radio Times posted an interview with Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat. The topic of discussion was the upcoming Christmas special, ‘The Return of Doctor Mysterio,’ about which Moffat had quite a bit to divulge.
First — to get a greater sense of the tone of the episode — for a Christmas special, it will barely be festive at all. A single trimmed tree and a “Ho, ho, ho” from the Doctor is as Christmassy as it is going to get. So, kinda like Die Hard?
As we have previously reported, part of the inspiration for ‘The Return of Doctor Mysterio’ was another of Moffat’s fandoms: superheroes. The story of Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane, in particular, influenced aspects of the special. We see this quite plainly in the characters of the Ghost/Grant Gordon and Lucy Fletcher. Moffat raves about the performances of, and chemistry between, the two actors.
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The showrunner feels, however, that the special is not “a send-up of superheroes,” but a “serious” homage — that is, as serious as a Doctor Who Christmas special can be. He stresses that this does not mean that the Whoniverse has expanded to include superheroes in general. It is simply that, as a young fan of comics, Grant is accidentally given superpowers by the Doctor. Naturally, Grant chooses to put those powers to “good” use. Also, we can likely glean from this situation that either Grant or the Doctor assigns the identity of “Doctor Mysterio” to the Time Lord to fit into Grant’s comic book frame of reference for life. And the Doctor encounters Grant again many years after their first meeting, hence the “Return” part of the title.
Though the story is set in modern day New York City, filming happened at an elaborate backlot in Bulgaria, with the skyline added in later. The result of this is the special’s classic cinematic feel which is particularly stylized.
As for the monsters who are scheming “to conquer the Earth,” we learned a bit about them in a synopsis released by the BBC last week. According to Moffat, they are an enemy whom we have seen before “quite recently,” but he declines to divulge any more than that. Time is relative, though, so this does not narrow things down much. Personally, I appreciate having this left as a surprise, and wonder if it will be as shocking as the big reveal at the end of the Class season finale.
And Nardole? Well, a bit of an explanation will be given for what happened to him between last year’s ‘The Husbands of River Song’ and now, but that tale will extend throughout Series Ten.
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